as pointed out by our friend S.L. in the shoutbox, revenge & regret got a great review from stephen carradini of delusions of adequacy. i might be one of the few people who doesn’t bristle at the mention of the dreaded ‘E’ word. when i hear the world emo i think of bands like sdre, sense field, jimmy eat world, etc. heck, i remember when fugazi was considered emo. but like all scenes, somewhere along the way emotional rock became something where how you said things became more important than what you were saying and that’s when you end up with bands like… i dunno, dashboard confessional? yechhh. i’d like to think ‘revenge & regret’ has a little more heart, is a little less pretentious and is more in the tradition of those early days. i’m certainly old enough to remember them and it’s really cool when people pick up on it.

thank goodness spring is here, winter was really getting to me. we ran through a couple more new songs last night and afterwards it was just as warm outside as it was when we got there. that makes a total of 12 or 13 for the new record. we’ll probably tape the next few rehearsals to get all our parts down before we start recording in may.

our friend bob sheairs is premiering his documentary of the 2004 philly zine fest at the NJ zine fest in new brunswick this sunday, april 10. the film is a great look at the crazy, word-filled world of zinesters and it even includes some songs from us, u.s. rail and i dreamed of pompeii. you should come too!

also, one of my favorite songwriters, jonatha brooke is playing this saturday, april 9 at the dennis flyer memorial theater at camden county college’s blackwood campus, which is like two miles from my house. while you’re at her website, check out the j-bro fund drive - it’s a neat idea to finance new projects but it also kind of bums me out that she’s auctioning off her first guitar.