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21 december 2001-14 january 2002
5 december 2001-14 december 2001
20 october 2001-23 november 2001

philip[at]swordfight[dot]org
(The equalizer@excite.ca address is defunct. Any messages sent there will disappear forever into the ether.)

Oh, by the way...
Swordfight is a record label.
         the deepest cut


~ saturday february 23 2002

~ The phone rang and I jumped out of bed. I had dozed off with my contact lenses in. My mouth was full of dryer lint. My vision swam as I tried to look at the clock. "Oh, shit." It was 7:01. "Shit."

Soundcheck in Hell's Kitchen takes place at 6. The phone was no doubt my boss, or maybe someone from the band, wondering where the hell I was. No way was I answering that phone.

It rang and rang as I fumbled for a shirt off my bedroom floor. I swore and swore as I hopped around the room and pulled my pants on.

I left my room in a haze and almost fell down the stairs. Call a cab and show up as quickly as I could. It was, let me see, Al Tuck and No Action tonight. They're usually pretty laid back. They were probably late arriving themselves. If I got to the club in ten minutes I could probably throw together a rough and ready soundcheck.

Shit I was tired. Hard to believe I had slept all day. Today? Was it Saturday? I remembered working last night, late, a few drinks, conversations into the early morning. Back in my room, I looked at the clock again. 7:05. Something clicked.

It was seven o'clock on Saturday morning. I had been asleep for an hour and a half.

Whoever makes phone calls at 7 on a Saturday morning needs to burn in hell, was the last thing I remember thinking.

~ I get the feeling that the key skill of 2002 will be the ability to keep performing--to keep moving, even--in spite of being weighed down by the grey armor of exhaustion. Working seven day weeks, ten hour days and 4am nights, getting sleep wherever and whenever, hot action wherever and whenever, dragging myself from place to place in Halifax's North End. It seems like a blip at first but starts to take on the pattern of normal life. I fear that this intensity isn't leaving room for the quiet moments of contemplation that nourish creativity.

Grab my arm and lift me up off the couch like a big sleepy child. Lead me to the working place and sit me down in front of a rack of gear and say, "Philip, it's time to make something now."

Plug me in. Turn me on.


~ tuesday february 19 2002

~ Jack Henry Abbott committed suicide in his jail cell last week. He was fifty-eight. Abbott wrote a book called The Belly Of the Beast that was the inspiration for the A/V song "I Escaped For Six Weeks."

Here's an mp3: iescaped.mp3 (2.9MB)

~ The dishwasher in the kitchen of Bloomfield House has a photograph of itself on it. Yes, someone took a picture of the dishwasher and stuck it on the dishwasher. I saw today that someone had cut out a tiny picture of a piece of pizza and stuck the picture of the piece of pizza on the picture of the dishwasher that's on the dishwasher. I need to spend more time at home because clearly I don't have a clue what's going on anymore.

Oh by the way, Sara is leaving Bloomfield House, so if you need a place to live March 1st and have an ounce or two of common sense please send us an e-mail.

~ I've been working ten-hour days in the studio and doing live sound at night in Hell's Kitchen. Nonetheless I am starting at least one and possibly three new bands. Can't wait for some free time, I've scarcely recorded a note of my own music in the month of February.

~ Not only do I write about rough sex, I sing about it too. Here's a song off the first A/V disc called "Slow Attack," featuring guest vocals by the lovely Shannon whom you might having seen playing one of the lesbians in the movie Parsley Days. That movie had lots of shots of the corner of Creighton and Falkland in Halifax's North End--site of the infamous Electro Stoop.

slowattack.mp3 (3.8 MB)

~ Apparently the big article I wrote for The Coast about my sex life has a lot of people talking, but I don't really know what they're saying and it's probably just as well.


~february 13 2002 8PM

~ In honour of Valentine's Day, it gives me great pleasure to unveil hot action, the online guide to sex with Philip Clark.


~ february 12 2002 10:30PM

~ I was starving the other night and had no groceries in the house. It had gotten to the point where I was contemplating eating a mayonnaise sandwich.

Just then my roommate Gerry walked in the door with his brand new girlfriend. He had a Pizza Hut box in his hand. "Would you like a piece of pizza?" he said.

He opened the box to reveal a mouth-watering, warm, fresh, veggie pizza. "Go ahead, take two pieces."

"Holy shit," I said. Right away, I was stuffing pizza in my mouth. "Thanks man."

Then Gerry walked over to the dishwasher. He opened it, slid the pizza inside and shut the dishwasher door.

"This is where the pizza goes," he said.

Then Gerry and his brand new girlfriend disappeared upstairs.

I checked the following morning. The pizza was still in the dishwasher.

~ I met the president of Sennheiser Canada when I was in Saint John during ECMA weekend. He had heard about A/V's video for "I Stole You A Sennheiser."

Well, not only is he not going to sue, but after I e-mailed him the link to the video, he sent me a clip to a 421 microphone by overnight courier (421 clips are precious and rare, and to be prized almost as much as the mics themselves). It's pretty exciting. I came down to the studio today and with great pleasure peeled the duct tape off the studio's 421, which we'd taped to some old clip we had lying around. Then I snapped on the official clip. I can't wait until Terry comes in and sees what I got.

I don't often get star-struck, but holy smokes, I met the president of Sennheiser.

Next thing you know, I'll be bumping into whoever it was that invented the shopping cart.

~ Thursday night at the Marquee, I'll be performing with Alison Outhit at the LOVE ("Leave Out Violence") benefit. Our set time is 8PM sharp. We've decided to be a band and to give ourselves a name. We'll be known as Neutralina.

And be sure to pick up a copy of Thursday's Coast Weekly. It's the "Sex" issue. I wrote a big story for them about, uh, well just read it.


~ february 9 2002 3:30PM

~ The East Coast Music Awards last weekend were forty-eight hours of mayhem and debauchery. Played four shows and found all sorts of trouble. That weekend exemplified the correct way to live one's life, I think.

~ I came back from Saint John and went straight to work. Worked every day on various projects. Work, I suppose, is a good thing too... I guess.

~ Last night James Covey and I performed a Rotator set at the TKO. Also playing were Flesh Made To Suffer, 283 (from Fredericton) and The Plan.

This is one of the strangest shows I have ever been to. Nick Oxner, the guitar player from Flesh Made To Suffer, passed away on Wednesday. The band chose to perform as a memorial of sorts. It was pretty intense.

I'm going to try to find something positive to say, even though I don't feel very positive, by pointing out that a punk rock show is an amazing thing if it is capable of giving release to the sort of emotions that came out last night. Before every song, Morgan (singer from Flesh Made To Suffer) and various others would share stories of their friendship with Nick and what his life and death will mean to them.

Despite being pretty choked up, Morgan spoke eloquently about the effects of losing one of his best friends and about how we should never take life and friendship for granted.

Eventually, words would just run out and there would be a moment of silence broken only by sobs coming from the crowd. And then the band would look at each other and at some unseen signal would launch into some of the fiercest screamo hardcore this city has ever heard.

~ Tributes to Nick Oxner are currently being posted on the 902 hardcore messageboard and are being archived here.


~ thursday january 31 2002 2AM

~ I signed up for a blogger account for the first time in two years and plan to start a couple of new blogs. One of them is Pirate Video, which will be a video blog. I'm gonna take the studio's DV camera, run around the North End of Halifax shooting footage, come back to the studio and edit it down to downloadable length, and then compose a fresh music track to the picture and throw the whole thing onto the web. It's meant as an exercise in high-speed creativity. I've only got a couple of things up now, but I'll be updating frequently as soon as I get the Blogger template under control.

~ The other new blog will be sexy and funny and is sure to get me in all sorts of trouble. I'll be launching it on Valentine's Day. Heh heh.

~ As soon as I get back from the East Coast Music Awards I am going to reclaim ownership of that crying little baby, halifaxstories.com. It launched before Christmas; I got some discouraging e-mail from web designers who were offended by my shitty HTML and design skills, so I said to hell with it. Fortunately, there are also some very nice internet people in the world who were generous with time and advice (especially Alison Cass). I have a few story submissions that are waiting to be posted, and that site is going to get a redesign if it kills me.

~ Arrrrrrrrr I should not be at the studio at this hour. Sometimes I feel like I might as well bite the bullet and start sleeping here. Yeah right, I'm going home to bed.


~ wednesday january 30 2002 2AM

~ Came down with a surprise day off tomorrow, a surprise twenty bucks in my pocket for services surprisingly rendered, went to the Khyber, two dollar shots of Jim Beam all night, and wasn't that a surprise... and that's pretty much the beginning and the end of my story tonight.

~ Left the Khyber late and alone. Made a city snowball off the sidewalk. Cocked my arm and at the last second I thought, "Now, when I miss the telephone pole, it's usually because my aim veers too far to the right." So I corrected at the last second and my snowball exploded off the lightpole in a shower of greyish heartbreak.

~ Wandered into Hell's Kitchen for rock'n'roll jam night thinking I might do a Spinoza set. But I was too drunk, obviously. As I was leaving I ran into some guy heading up Portland Street with his lady.

"You not gonna stay and talk to the cops?" he said.

"Shit no," I said.

"Cops? What cops?" said his lady friend.

"You didn't see the cops? You two didn't even see the cops," he said.

"Man, I didn't see the cops, they didn't see me and that's the way I like it," I said.

"Yeah," he said. "That shit's just too intense for me."

"Yeah man," I said, "that shit's no joke."


~ friday january 2002 6PM

~ I was poking around in a filing cabinet at the studio, trying to find a copy of the Piggy covers compilation (it only came out on my own so-called label, duh, I should have a copy around here somewhere). When, what did I find but a CD with some Equation Of State mixes on it. This was my old hardcore band from a few years back. This song is called "Giving Up," originally recorded July 5, 1998.

~ givingup.mp3 (1.5MB)

~ I miss playing guitar, even though guitars are obsolete. I would love to play guitar in a band like this again but someone else would have to take care of all the logistics and shitwork. I have enough trouble with that stuff as it is.

~ "I did not anticipate this opposition. They're eating broken glass and calling it tradition. My stomach tolerates the swallowed shards. I never knew that going soft would be this fucking hard. The last time--until the next time--the choice is always mine. I set out at a run towards the water. And if the splashing waves are trapped inside a bottle, I'll tear up all your maps, proceed in darkness. As I disappear my fears are screams into the silence. And before your songs of disappointment rise to a grating drone, please keep in mind the only back I'm stabbing is my own."

Bye.


~ friday january 25 2002 1:30AM

~ I'm not updating my website right now, this is dumb. I'm going home to bed. OK I lied... I'm updating my website. Hey everybody, watch Going Coastal on Sundy night (that's the New Brunswick pronunciation--"Sehrdy, Sundy, Mundy") on MuchMusic. Actually, I'm hoping somebody with a VCR can tape it for me. Mike Campbell came down to Soundmarket t'other day and interviewed A/V, that is to say, me, and it turned into a little rave out on the Gottingen Street sidewalk. We talked about shopping carts. I want A/V to cover "Lost In The Supermarket" by The Clash, ha ha. I heard that song recently and it made me want to cry. Well, no it didn't.

~ WHO, the HELL, is going to the ECMAs, nextweekwhocangivemeadrive. I'm playing three shows in Saint John with A/V and Spinoza and whatnot that weekend but my drive seems to have fallen through. Bands, interested parties, anyone, I'll provide gas money and a place to stay. E-mail me. Saint John is my old home town so I can find us some good ruckus.

~ I went outside this morning and it was amazing. It was just like spring and I said "I bet we're gonna be seeing a lot of big black boots." And sure enough, all day long Halifax was big boot central as horny women in skirts wandered the streets waiting for their boyfriends to get off work.

Snowing like a bastard out there now.

~ Release Your Inner Tramp, the new bestseller by Philip Gregory Clark.

~ Been working like the damn dog I am, all this week at the studio. I sold eighteen seconds of a Rotator track for use in a TV commercial on that Eastlink TV Guide channel, got $150 and went out for Chinese food.

Funny that I haven't been hyping the new Rotator CD because I think it's really good. I uploaded the entire CD in MP3 format to the server here, and never got around to linking to it. (Memo to self, find someone who has a clue about marketing a record label.) Anyway, here's the track that's gonna be on TV.

~ Rotator - BXR RXB

If you like minimal Detroit techno a la Basic Channel then you'll like this, if not then vice-a verse-a.

~ Someone on the Pirate Club mating list er sorry mailing list suggested I should start an "Ask Philip" column on this site, for all your sexual or romantic queries and requests for advice. Hee hee, bring it on, discretion assured. You can post questions on the Swordfight message board or e-mail askphilip[at]swordfight[dot]org.

~ Aw geez, this Rotator is beautiful for a snowy night, here's another track.
Rotator - QXR RQ6

~ Even though sometimes it's a pain in the ass, I like having a detachable penis.


~ sunday january 20 2002

~ Unlike some people who work in the audio field, I am not one to fetishize microphones.

I make an exception for the Sennheiser 421, the sexiest microphone in the world.


Last year, Becka Barker shot a video for an A/V song entitled "I Stole You A Sennheiser." Here it is in Quicktime format.

~ avstole.mov (10MB)

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