This entry is veeery long so I'll put it all in seperate spoilers. Most of it is about my band then about me getting fired, Jitsu beatings and my Jitsu 'prom'. I apologize in advance for any cheesiness and I really am sorry if I haven't replied to your comments but I had no internet until 2 weeks ago !
Woooh! J'adore voir que mes commentaires chez SGFrance sont effacs!
Vive la censure!! Ouais!!
1.Remember all those things I said about not having
my music on the internet ? Well originally it sprung from a common hatred of myspace amongst us.
We'd opened up a page a while ago and closed it the next day, disgusted by the concept.
Having looked back on it, what made us uneasy about it is actually a great tool for a band : shameless self-promotion. Living in the era in which being obsessed with one's representation to the cyberworld is no longer a vain display of narcissism, it's no surprise the myspace page has become an industry standard. Or so we've been told
So here it is!
Destruction Incorporated's webspace : (until we get a site at least !) :
www.myspace.com/destructionincorporated
a.First, I'd like to tell you a bit more about the project itself because it can be a bit confusing.
Destruction inc. is three things :
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
-A fully operational recording studio put together and operated by my band in the heart of Paris.
-A rock trio formed by my guitarist, my bassist and my drummer. I am currently writing two of the songs for their record and will do vocals on another. That's my only involvment with it.
-My band, which has the same people as above, me and a few guests. In the future, my guitarist has said that he will only participate in the vocals of the trio leaving me more space with the guests on this project. In regards to its concept, the project can be compared to Josh homme's 'Desert Sessions'.
Some pictures of The Studio
It started as a joke but the record will be called 'greatest hits ! volume 1' (hey it makes me laugh). If you're wondering where the name of the band(s) comes from, it's from a novel by maurice G. Dantec.
Us. Top row :Greg, drummer for [No One Is Innocent], Shanka our guitarist and the one who founded these projects. Bottom row : Bastien, our bassist, Pierre, our drummer (who also plays in Lofofora), me, Gaspard Murphy, Elliott Murphy (his dad). No idea who these people are ? Then read on...
b.Featured on the page are four of our songs, good but not the best of our stuff which is remaining hidden for the moment. I will however tell you that I'm incredibly excited about some of the tracks...
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
One of my favorite on the record is a cover of an incredible track which we remade into a duet featuring me and
Elliott murphy, who happens to be a good friend of my guitarist and a close friend of Bruce Springsteen. Really interesting and talented guy. His 14 year-old son (who's a crazy guitar whiz kid) does a kickass solo on one of the tracks !
c. Then there's a tribute to Motorhead which I wrote called Ace of Clovers.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
The vocals on that track are by Kemar who is the vocalist for my guitarists' main band
[No One Is Innocent]. You wouldn't know them in America but they're really big in France and have been around, with a few line-up changes, for a while. Their style is very close to Rage Against The machine without being a cheap imitation. I've been given the privilege to write a track for their next record and do some vocals which I'm also very excited about ! There are a couple tracks in English so if you go have a listen, Genocide and Henry (from the first record in 94) are both in English. Anyhow Eliott and his son Gaspard have done an excellent
introduction to the song, I swear it cracks me up everytime I hear it !
Kemar... You've seen him before in
my journal.
d.Then there's the track Mayngel which I wrote with my guitarist. It was originally my only involvment in the project which step by step I became more and more involved with until I was officially part of it.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
It's a love song you guessed it It's very important to me and I think it stands as a testimony for the incredible creative energy (amongst other things) I developped with him. but I'll stop there for the explanations because the rest is very personal.
e.Finally there's tacit fauna (which I wrote) and Be My Slave which I wasn't involved in. Both great tracks (Obviously I wouldn't tell you otherwise !)
f.There's a track which is probably my favourite so far which won't be featured on the record (we're not quite sure what we're going to do with it yet).
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
It's a cover of A Perfect Circle Before you scream 'blasphemy !' (as any normal human being would I mean come on, how can you cover APC or Tool ?) I will add that it's very different and was a lot of hard work. I originally had in mind that we should change the track to make it sound 'oriental'. My guitarist didn't think it would work but eventually, thanks to his patience and great talent, it became something quite different and unique. I'll keep you posted on that one
The other tracks, you'll discover later !
Our mascot, the giant animated Elephant! No one really knows where it comes from, it's always been there :
g.The pictures I've posted on here previously (one of them is my profile picture) -and for which I have received numerous compliments which I didn't deserve (if being the daughter of a talented photographer has taught me anything it's to acknowledge what an incredible work our photographer did on this)- were intended as the main illustrations for the record but are not yet featured on the myspace page because it's a bit early to release them (you get to see all of it early, you lucky bastards !).
h.Oh and we have a manager now, he manages a really big French metal band (yes, there is such a thing !) called Gojira. He'll essentially be looking for international deals for us at this point.
An article about us from Rocksound magazine : (sorry if you don't read French!)
i.I'm not quite sure what the whole story is on this but basically Mike Patton likes our stuff (talk about a compliment !) and put us in his top myspace friends thing (I'm told that means we're really cool). There are talks about him contributing to a track for the rock trio but you know what they say, don't count your chickens until they're hatched (In French that's don't sell the bears'skin before you've killed it !)
So there you have it, I've given away some of my secrets ! 
2. I managed to get myself fired from that shop I'd gotten a small job at
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I've had shit jobs before but seriously,
I've never seen so much abuse going on in a single place... I really tried my best too but there comes a time when it was simply not possible to continue working for these assholes. I won't even begin on all of it because it would take a whole entry to talk about it. So while it was fun to bring home the bacon and not be broke for 2 months,
I'm happy it ended. These people actually made me cry in the shop twice ! I'm also glad I threatened them before I left because they did pay me a week for not showing up. Never in my life did I think I could actually scare someone by threatening to beat them up.
In a way
it worries me because I imagine you deal with abuse (though probably not to this level) in most jobs you take up in your life. But what my father imprinted onto me is 'don't take shit from anyone !' ;a code of conduct that's now so much a part of who I am that I really wonder
how I'll survive the next time I have to get a shitty job for a few months.
The last thing I'll say about this horrible experience is that come this fall,
they're going to fucking pay While it would probably be wise to let this go and get on with my life, I believe the kind of abuse that went on there is due to people not doing anything about this. I'm not out to rid the universe of evil or whatever but I think it's payback time
Part of a window display I did for them
I can't afford to go anywhere on holiday now and I'll be broke again come this fall but I'll still have my sanity. And hey, at least I met some really nice people.
3. So I went to my first 'Saturday session' which my new belt allows me to attend now. It took me a while to get the guts to show up and I was seriously petrified when I got there...
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Basically it's a session for Senior grades where a lot of instructors go to train ;needless to say it's not exactly the same level of training
I'm not quite sure how to describe it so I'll just say 'holy shit !'. After that, normal Jitsu sessions suddenly became a lot easier, I seriously had never been so tired out. And because it's not 'my' home club where I feel nice and safe I felt a lot more pressure to not fuck up or act like an idiot. I'd convinced this girl I trained with every now and then to show up with me and she broke her collarbone in the first half hour doing something which I'd never done before either At this point I was seriously thinking 'right, should I make a run for it ?'. I survived by some kind of miracle but fucked up my knee and need to go see someone about it I guess being taught by one of the greatest instructor in our foundation has a price.
I am however, rather disapointed by the 'beating-up' that toke place after the session. Basically this guy was leaving Jitsu and generally everyone present throws the person one last time as a goodbye thing. It's always done in a friendly and amusing way. Only this guy got beaten up (I mean kicked and punched, no Jitsu here) by these two instructors for an hour. The guy likes violence and I'm sure he enjoyed it in a way but it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. One of the instructors who heard me say that in the pub said that it was perfectly normal to do that. Whatever. I may not be an instructor but I thought it was disgusting and I'm not the only one.
4. We had our annual jitsu ball last july which was lots of fun ! We had the place until 4am which meant hundreds of Jitsu people getting really, really drunk
The dress I was wearing was this gorgeous, open back 1940's frock. I wish I had something better than a blurry self-shot but unfortunately most Jitsu pictures usually end up like this :
5.So now I'm in Paris until sometime in september getting fattened up by my parents and sleeping in late. It actually feels great to be away from Jitsu. I got so absorbed in it last winter, it was becoming unhealthy. I'll have a lot of work to do for my club when I get back, recruiting new members, making sure my comittee and treasurer are working hard etc etc. Only this year I need to not get so worked up about all of it. Most people in the club aren't as motivated about jitsu as I am and I need to understand that.
I'll finish this update with a big acknowledgement and thank you to Shanka without whom I wouldn't have been a part of all this, wouldn't have moved to London very successfully and generally wouldn't have have half of what I have today...
I hope you've all had a nice Summer!
Now tell me, would you rather listen to mediocre rock music or good dance/pop music ?
