Giant Drag News

update

info@giantdrag.com (Giant Drag) — Sat Apr 19 10:13:51 UTC 2008

sorry it’s been so long since i’ve updated, i didn’t take your donations and run off to vegas. first i was busy and happy, recording four new songs and getting back into the swing of things and then, before i had the chance to tell you about it, things changed when i was informed of the death of my friend Dean. he was a great guy and was taken from the world too soon. my condolences to his family on this tragic loss…
dean lowtrip
8/8/82 – 4/10/08
rest in peace my friend

so, the news. with the help of your donations and the catalyst of a last minute song request for something in the UK i was finally able to get into the studio. instead of doing the one song that was requested we managed to pump out four songs in four days and i think they came out pretty good. my plan is to make a music video and then release an enhanced EP to tide you over until more donations are raised and a full length can be made. since 3/4 of the songs are pretty old it will be nice to get them out since i’m sure a lot of you have heard them live or as a live b-side on the “kevin is gay” UK single. now they’re all properly recorded and just need to be mastered. the track list, in no particular order (well, i guess in the order we recorded them) is:
swan song
stuff to live for
white baby
heart carl
think of it as a little pu-pu platter (not to be confused with poo poo, google it) that represents the different things you might be hearing on the new record. y’know… vibes, man. a little bit of the old vibe, a little bit of danzig in a dress vibe, a little bit of foil-wrapped chicken vibe and a little stripped down acoustic jam vibe. don’t forget the mustard dipping sauce, it goes great with vibes.
it sure is nice to get to do things my way for a change, this whole getting dropped thing is super rad, though it does make doing certain things more difficult (touring and anything else that involves money) . joe cardamone (who also now has an ebay store, check it out: http://myworld.ebay.com/gangbangpark/) and i got to do our first real recordings as a co-production team and our buddy chris rakestraw engineered. micah even came down to do his thang like he used to, since we did those songs together so many times it was the only natural choice. it was fun because back in 2004 when we were recording Hearts and Unicorns the same group of people were in the studio during basic tracking back when chris used to work at paramount studios so it was a cool little reunion.
all of your donations helped make it possible to go in there at the drop of a hat. but on the real, recording is not cheap even when you do it in a cheap way. people keep kind of telling me how i should do this new record and saying i can make it for free but unfortch it doesn’t really work like that, especially if you want it to sound good and don’t own any recording equipment. studio time must be paid (which is in the $400-500 range for a small, unfancy place)engineers need to be paid to turn dials, musicians need to be paid, even if it’s just buying their lunch, mastering is a whole other studio and price, eventually the production of a tangible cd must be paid for, the list goes on but i am trying to keep it as cheap as i can. besides, if i listened to strangers telling me how to make my record it’s like being back on a record label except without the money and free lunches!
so thanks to everyone who has and continues to make donations and purchase things from the giant drag ebay store thing (link to that in the post below this). i haven’t reached my goal yet so please keep on donating and/or buying my crap on ebay and the tunes will keep coming. plus you get the added bonus of having your awesome name on an album if your donation is $75+ (i’d like to put everyone’s name but then i wont be able to afford all those pages of cd layout, the bigger your donation the bigger or special-er it will appear and the big donators get even more special treats! all donations are being kept track of for those who are donating in increments), even if you have no musical skill, you get to be on an album and be like totally famous!
as soon as i pay for these four songs to get mastered i will shove them up on myspace, i really hope you like them. i continue to be touched by the support everyone has shown me. i cannot thank you enough.
xoxo annie

linkz

info@giantdrag.com (Giant Drag) — Fri Mar 21 20:38:15 UTC 2008

it’s been brought to my attention that my ebay store is a little hard to find so here is a link to it (thanks kevin):

Ebay Store

of course not even 24 hours after my post about American Idol’s charity stuff they run some footage of Fantasia and some dude giving people nets in Africa! obviously they read this website and did that right quick so they wouldn’t look bad. i hate when that happens!
Happy Good Friday, So-So Saturday and Easter Sunday!
xo annie
p.s. check out the donation button at the top/right under the empty upcoming shows (thanks for the tech support micah!)

yenom deen eye

info@giantdrag.com (Giant Drag) — Wed Mar 19 05:55:30 UTC 2008

that title there is an old swahili saying, in english it roughly translates to something like ‘please put a money in my bucket’. my bucket, in this case, would be the paypal donation button for the Giant Drag Relief Fund. i know this comes at a rough time since American Idol will soon be doing their “Idol gives back” thing where they have people from Fox shows and movies lip sync to “stayin’ alive” between clips of Seacrest giving starving Africans MacBook’s and saying they too want your money in their bucket so they can buy more computers, but i can promise you that 100% of the money you put in my bucket (minus the 2.9% those assholes at paypal take from me for no good reason) is used for the GDRF. i don’t know how Idol does things but if there’s one thing i’ve learned this year its that donating to charity isn’t always what it seems and a percentage (larger than 2.9) goes somewhere else. somewhere mystical? somewhere in some guy who brings Paula Abdul her medicine’s pocket? i am not sure. i gave them 50 bucks last year because i felt bad for the people on tv, mostly the African kids who had to listen to Carrie Underwood, she’s good at singing and all but i bet they’d rather have some food. they looked really hungry and you can’t fill your belly or swat the flies away from your eyes with a country song. but i digress, i gave $50 and i don’t know where it went, i think i bought a white kid a book when i was clearly trying to buy an African a mosquito net and a cliff bar. nobody even thanked me AND i used my Amex so including interest…you get the picture. i’m not saying give me your money instead, i’m just giving you a firm promise i wont be buying lap dances with it (i use my Amex for those).

some of you have asked if you could bypass paypal and send me a check directly. yes is the answer. email me (annie@giantdrag.com the same email as for the paypal donation thing) and i will give you an address where you can do such a kind thing.
oh and all of you who live in another country and are using the paypal, feel free-er than free to pay in your native currency as in most cases it is worth more than the american buck. even Australia is catching up.
anyhoo, incase you are hearing about this for the first time, the way to donate for now is by going to www.myspace.com/giantdrag and clicking the donate button in the Bio section, or if you know your way around paypal you can just use my email address i’m told. I’d like to thank everyone who has donated so far from the bottom of my heart, i am really so grateful. whether it be the one dollar that my best friend Joe donated (which worked out to be 61 cents.. and the smallest donation) or the donations with a couple more zero’s, i really appreciate your support more than words can convey. and i’d like to thank the fans who suggested this donation thing. you, my friends, are wise people.

don’t like donating but still like Giant Drag? well i have opened up an ebay store, which is a lot more work than i thought it would be so there’s not too much stuff but there will be more soon (i’m trying to figure out the whole shipping thing and how to make it the cheapest but even with Audrey’s help it is confusing). feel free to email me suggestions of anything you might wanna buy because i want it all out of here. bag of sun chips? lock of hair? i got you. and everything in the store, which is called “giantdragstore” (inventive, i know. someone took “giantdrag” AND “giant_drag”) can be autographed by me, to you, if thats something you might like. right now its mostly Giant Drag stuff and like two cd’s that aren’t by me but soon i’m going to be putting up clothes and other stuff.
don’t like donating, ebaying or Giant Drag? well i don’t know why you’re reading this, you confuse me.
love and thanks,
annie

alright, its working again

info@giantdrag.com (Giant Drag) — Fri Mar 14 05:49:06 UTC 2008

i have proved myself to paypal to be…myself and they have re-activated the donation button for the Giant Drag Relief Fund to get this record paid for (even though those assholes are taking a percentage of every donation, jerks) and to put the random grape in my belly. so if you’d like to lend a hand and be a part of the next Giant Drag record please go donate. soon i will announce the rewards for the specific donation amounts sometime later and Audreytern will help me keep records of everyone’s donations/total amounts. its been brought to my attention that jill sobule (she sang that song about kissing a girl) did this…i’d like to believe it was my idea first and i just needed help to do the dang thing. i’m told she has prizes like “for X amount you get to have your name in a song and maybe even have it rhyme with something”...sorry, i am not going to do that, unless someone donates 75 grand in which case i will name the whole album after you. but hopefully my rewards will be just as fulfilling without being so…uh… not my style?
to donate please go to www.myspace.com/giantdrag and see the button in the Bio section, or just use annie@giantdrag.com if you know your way around paypal.
hopefully micah will put the button right here soon because i don’t know how.
thanks!!!
annie

regarding that last post

info@giantdrag.com (Giant Drag) — Sat Mar 08 10:29:05 UTC 2008

i can’t seem to do anything right when it comes to these internet machines! the only way to donate at the moment is to go to the “Bio” section of Giant Drag’s myspace page or maybe by entering in annie@giantdrag.com on paypal.com? what happened to letters and books? my heads spinning, sorry for the confusion!

www.myspace.com/giantdrag

hopefully a smart person will come fix this for me soon. until then i’ll be in my kitchen throwing coal in my stove so i can make some toast.
thaaaanks!!!!
xo annie

UPDATE: PayPal is giving me problems and making me verify crap. no more donations can take place until next week when i verify my existence to them. ugh, this is so frustrating! thanks to the people who made donations in the 24 hour time window where this worked. i really really appreciate it, though they will be sitting in limbo for a few days. i will let you know when its back up, if you aren’t over it by then…why me?

i get fries with a little help from my friends

info@giantdrag.com (Giant Drag) — Sat Mar 08 09:55:44 UTC 2008

many people have suggested i take donations to wrangle up enough money to get this new album recorded and release it on my very own record label and finally today this dream has become a reality! well, not the dream of the money to pay for the album, the dream of putting up a paypal donation button. with your help my broke ass can get things a-movin’ and give you some new music, if you want that. do you want that? i want to give it to you. oh yes, i want to give it you. in the near future i will also be putting up an ebay store where you can buy my stuff, like all of my stuff that wont fit in my car which is where i might be living if i don’t make this dang record soon. its been sitting stagnant inside me like a constipated BM and if i don’t push this record out soon i’m afraid of breaking my toilet brain with the immense volume of my musical turd. not that the album is going to be crappy…you know what i mean.
if the link i post below looks more like alien scribble than a donation button, please go to www.myspace.com/giantdrag and find the button in the latest blog or the “about me” section.
i thank you all very much for your support, donations or not you have kept me from turning in applications at cheetah’s and other fine exotic dancing facilities with your kind words of encouragement.
those who make certain sized donations will get certain surprises but i can’t reveal them or they wont be a surprise. now i will paste in the thingie for the button thingie, fingers crossed!

it is time for a movement...

info@giantdrag.com (Giant Drag) — Sun Nov 18 10:20:09 UTC 2007

and not one of the bowel family, well, sort of.
about 13 years ago i was 13 and attending jr. high school. once a week we could buy Taco Bell at lunch and my favorite item was a little something called the “chilito” which consisted of chili and cheese wrapped up in a flour tortilla. i graduated jr. high but i did not graduate the chilito. i don’t remember where or when but one day i gazed up at a Taco Bell menu and noticed my friend the chilito was absent. it gave no notice, it just up and left without saying goodbye. Taco Bell had wronged me and i wouldn’t be that upset again until they changed the delicious green chile sauce in their quesadillas to an orange, disgusting “fiesta sauce” which was even worse than taking away the chilito, it was as if they kept the chilito and filled it not full of chili, but of dog crap and called this crap “fiesta sauce” and called the whole thing a quesadilla, well i call it bullshit. it was still there but it might as well have been gone, it was dead to me. ironically the taco bell i used to eat at was right next door to a funeral home.
as the years passed the pain of losing the chilito, the weird sauce that made quesadillas more than a tortilla and cheese, and finally the tostada was nearly forgotten as i had stopped eating fast food after learning to cook and watching the movie Supersize Me. then i started going on tour. i don’t remember where (somewhere on the right side of America) or when (a few years ago) but one day i gazed up at a Taco Bell menu and saw an old familiar friend. he may have changed his name to “chili cheese burrito” but he was still the same delicious treat i paid $2 for on tuesdays back at Shorecliffs Middle School. foolishly i thought this menu item had been brought back and i just hadn’t noticed it but when i returned to los angeles i realized it does not exist here. had i eaten a ghostito out on the road or do the powers that be at TB get to play with America’s hearts and stomachs like a bunch of jerks? me thinks they do. i would not forget about this and would bring it up in every Taco Bell-related conversation i had…until five days ago when everything changed. i was on my way to hang out with Amy (who sent me that html right there in an email so i could copy and paste it, i don’t know how to do that shit) and saw something on the Taco Bell window that i already knew about but had never put two and two together. “New Chili Nachos Bell Grande”!!!. i kicked amy’s door open and told her what i saw and what it meant and we went to Taco Bell to see what we could find. nothing on the menu but after a short talk with the woman behind the register two chili cheese burritos were on their way to us. i used my change to play that game they have where you try to land a coin in a tricky place and depending on what you land you can win a prize. on my second drop of a dime and spin of the spin-thing i won! i never win anything and i made that obvious as i screamed “i won, I WON!” like i had just won the lottery instead of a taco (which i opted to downgrade to nickel winning cinnamon twists), this was the best day of my week, maybe life.
anyway, the point is if you too enjoy chili cheese burritos go to your local Taco Bell and make them give you one. trust me, they will catch on quickly after you say “no, i just want chili and cheese in a tortilla” and soon you’ll only have to order it by name and they’ll know what you mean. and if you win something in their plastic donation/game thing they will probably remember you, because you are a winner and people remember winners. lets bring the chilito back, for good.
and now onto news…i played an acoustic show on wednesday. sorry i didn’t tell you about it, it was kind of a secret and i didn’t want you there incase it went poorly but luckily it was swell so i will do it again. i am also putting together my brand new band, Giant Drag 3.0, so i think shows will soon follow.
in the meantime lets all work on this chilito thing, yeah? i’m working on a recipe for chilito stuffing since the holidays are upon us and i always make the turkey. usually i stuff it with fruits and veggies that act as aromatics but this year i may get el pollo loco up in this bitch and shove a chilito up a turkey ass.
and if you want to put some giant drag merch on your xmas/hanukkah/kwanza wish list, send this link to your family and/or santa.
http://www.merchdirect.net/giantdrag
it’ll be like buying two gifts at once because its a present to me as well. though i’m sure someone is just stealing that money from me anyway. blah humpbug!
love,
annie

fuck, my ass!

info@giantdrag.com (Giant Drag) — Thu Oct 25 02:35:57 UTC 2007

that statement is totally different when you remove the comma. but it doesn’t matter because i am yelling “fuck, my ass!” because of how many different times, ways, people and corporations have managed to “fuck my ass” into a bloody pain-hole this year. just thinking about it weakens me of any strength to write about it but i can tell you honestly and without doubt that this has been the worst year of my life. and every time i try to forget my woes by turning on my television and escaping to imaginary happy land, one of the seven versions of the nip/tuck commercial that i some how will never make a dime off comes on and opens the wounds like a veritable ass stigmata.
that is all i care to say right now as there are worse things happening in the immediate area. thank goodness i am poor and do not live in a high-risk area. i hope none of you are on fire, but if you are i am very impressed and honored that you chose giantdrag.com to be the last website you visit before being engulfed by flames.
if only my ‘assmata’ could rain down blood upon the flames of each fire in each canyon and save every person, animal and house, i would pay for the helicopter (as long as they take american express) to take me over the flames, pull my pants down and make it rain with the inspiration of the nip/tuck promo playing repeatedly on one of those iphones i can’t afford to buy while the captain asks me when my record is coming out.
you know, maybe if you guys recycled a little harder it wouldn’t be so hot and my cable box wouldn’t be saying “Warning: the system is experiencing above-normal temperatures. Unless corrected, it will shut itself off. Please move it to a cooler place.” how does one move a tv, cable box, etc. to a cooler place in an apartment with french windows(many of which don’t even open, i live in a shithole) that wont allow for an a/c unit therefore does not possess a ‘cooler place’? i took out a bag of grits from the fridge and set them on top of my cable box but that didn’t work, nor did turning on a big fan thats blowing all sorts of dirt around the living room and into my eyes. i’m just sayin’....recycle, or use birth control because by the time your children are grown the only positive thing about the earth will be the lack of color lines and racism because everyone is just going to be red. or maybe burnt orange. possibly even black. i guess we will see, wont we?

i'm just trying to learn html...bear with me

info@giantdrag.com (Giant Drag) — Tue Oct 23 01:29:20 UTC 2007

my best friend amy who is also my fabulous make-up artist has started a new blog. its brand new but i expect great things from it. and when i say “great things” i obviously mean “lots of pictures of me”. just yesterday we were both working on the icarus line’s video for “slayer”, a song joe wrote that we share because thats what friends do, they share. and now, my friends, i share with you my first attempt at html to bring you amy’s blog.

The Amy Face