I Am Gary Hampton.

Mac is Back!

I got Stuart (my MacBook) back from the shop today. He’s all shiny and new! I even got my old hard drive back so that I can try to recover the data on it. Hopefully that works out!

It’s strange having to start fresh, fix all my settings to the way I like it, download all the programs I need all over again, etc. But it’s coming along!

One plus to this whole thing is that they upgraded my hard drive! Instead of the 80GB I had (I bought the first generation MacBook Pro) I now have a 120GB drive! NICE!

Hopefully I can get my data recovered and have a fresh computer plus a new external drive with all my old files. Fingers crossed!

-gh

PS. To everyone asking about the old apartment situation updates, thanks so much for your interest! I think it’s a travesty (haven’t been able to use that word properly before) and once I get updated I’ll let you all know. For now, it’s looking good for me, I have a very strong case.

Dreams

On MTV Live today we had Russ Lightwing, who analyses dreams among other things. The past few nights I’ve been having some weird dreams, so after the show I had a chat with him about what they could mean.

This guy is amazing.

I never believed in things like this before but without me saying anything, he outlined so much of my life for me. This is what I told him:

In my dream I was heading to a store, not sure which one, and to get to the store I had to go up some stairs, which then turned into a ladder which hung on the outside of the building. The whole time I was climbing I was terrified I would fall, and eventually climbed onto a balcony. The balcony belonged to an apartment building with one of my friends inside, along with her friends. They saw me, then asked me to come with them to a specific store they had in mind, yet I was too afraid to go back down the ladder with them and preferred to stay inside.

He then asked me my birthday and looked up some things in his book and told me this:

In past lives I was many things. I was once a Bolshevik communist and killed 4 members of royalty. He told me the ladder represented the climb of hierarchy, and even though it’s terrifying to go up I was also afraid to go back down. He told me to look into what had happened with the Bolsheviks around these months and I would find it similar to my own life. Turns out in the July months, a situation of dual power developed which was helpful. This is precisely what has happened to me at work over the past few weeks. He also says, like the communists, I have a strong love for money, but not in a sense that I want to keep it, in a sense that I wish to have it so as to not worry about it and to spread it among people I know. This is why instead of saving money I lend out to friends or start record labels to put out albums recorded by friends and don’t ask for anything in return.

I was also a Monk in another life. Once again, the want to spread wealth to others in need. He told me I have the feeling that I will live forever, which is why I never plan for the future. He told me I put myself down a lot, and that I have a fear of women, a fear that letting them into my life will lead to them harming me in some way.

He also went on about some personal things to do with my parents which was amazingly spot on, I didn’t even tell him they were divorced. He told me why it happened and also that what I think happened is wrong, even though he never told me what that was.

I’m simply astounded. I don’t even know what to say. But he did tell me to watch what I eat, that I could eat some bad meat and become sick, which is bizarre considering my mother came home with about 5-6 chickens worth of chicken and I brought most of it home to eat for the week…now I’m a little iffy about eating it.

-gh

Anthony, solo.

My computer is in the shop so I write this via my Nintendo Wii, I am simply too excited to wait to share this news.

Anthony Green (Circa Survive, The Sound of Animals Fighting) is releasing a solo album. Finally !

‘Avalon’ is due to be released August 5th on Photo Finish records. You can pre-order it at the Photo Finish Webstore.

I just took a look at the track listing, it looks like a collection of old songs (‘Babygirl‘, ‘I’ve Been Dying To Reach You‘ which is actually called Dear Child) with some new tracks as well. Also included on the disc is the entire High and Driving EP and some old recordings most fans already have.

Some quick videos of recording:

I can’t wait. Thank you Anthony. Hopefully this album means a full tour. There’s an American one planned, but I’m hoping for a Toronto date.

gh

The Used Interview (2004)

I’ve been getting some great feedback about some interviews I’ve been posting, especially the My Chemical Romance interview from 2004. Thanks for all your comments, it really means a lot! I’ll continue posting these old interviews, and this is the one people have been asking for, so here it is.

Here’s an interview I did with The Used on Halloween night in 2004, and these guys are so nice. After the interview they said ‘hope you enjoy the show’ and I told them I didn’t actually have a ticket, I only came for the interview because the show was sold out. Jeph went out of his way to track down a ticket for me so I could see the show and I’m so grateful, it was a fun night. Thanks again Jeph.

Read below and let me know what you think!

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Band: The Used
Members: Branden and Jeph
Label: Reprise Records
Location: Kool Haus, Toronto
Date: October 31st 2004
Interviewer: Gary Hampton

This past Hallowe’en I had the chance to interview Branden and Jeph from The Used. Thank
you to them for sitting down with me and thanks to Warner Music for setting
this up.

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On Hallowe’en night The Used were in full force taking over Toronto. Since the early hours in the morning this wasn’t an average day; they were all strip searched at the border and forced to wait around outside in the cold for hours. When they arrived in town they mad an appearance on a local radio station, Edge 102.1, an in-store acoustic performance at Sam The Record Man and a bunch of interviews at the venue. But they’re no strangers to the Toronto area, they even filmed the video for their single Take It Away here, and I asked them why they chose to do so.

BRANDEN: We have friends of ours that shot videos in Canada and we heard that some of the laws and the ways of going about shooting in Canada are much simpler than the states, and we were touring at that time on the east coast, so there were just so many things that kind of
came to the table that made it right that it just worked out perfectly. They had the perfect locations just like we had envisioned for the video, things like that. So it worked out really nicely.

With such success with their debut selftitled album, how much pressure was put on them for a good sophomore release? Not only from themselves but also from the fans and the label, and where did they want
this record to go, what did they want this record to mean to them? Continue reading →

Incomprehensible.

Picture this: you live in an apartment for 19 months and you’re ready to move on. You give your notice to leave by a certain date, but receive a letter in the mail saying your notice was rejected and you’re forced to pay for an extra month’s rent. You fight it, but are told you’re powerless, you’re forced to be there a month longer than you wanted. So you accept it.

Over the next few months you slowly start moving your things to your new place. With just over a month left in the apartment the only things left are important paperwork, tax forms (T4’s), receipts, all of your lease information, all of your brand new kitchen stuff, your hard drives, clothing, plus thousands of dollars in musical equipment and your own albums. You even leave a couch there so that you can spend the night if need be.

Now, picture heading to the old apartment with plans to continue tidying and continue cleaning up. You get to your apartment, open the door…and the place is empty. All of your belongings; gone.

You walk out on the balcony, look at the garbage bins, and see your couch. You can only assume that’s where the rest of your stuff went to. Continue reading →

MacBook = Dead?

Mere minutes ago, as I’m checking my blog stats, my curser stops working. Then none of the keyboard shortcuts work…so I turn off my MacBook Pro, wait a few seconds, and turn it back on.
What do I see?

A folder, with a question mark, flashing on my screen.

I call Apple Care and I’m told my computer isn’t talking to the hard drive, it basically can’t find it. SO now I have to bring it in to a store for them to look at it, with a chance that everything on my hard drive will be lost.

THAT WOULD BE DEVESTATING!

I have way too much important stuff on my computer, I can’t afford to lose it. One thing is for sure, if (fingers crossed, prayers answered) my data is recovered, I’ll be backing up my hard drive weekly from now on.

This sucks…

-gh

Ps. I’m writing this from my Mom’s Dell. Bah.

Busiest Day Ever!

Wow, it’s only noon and today is officially the busiest day for this blog EVER. Checking the stats, it looks like this is mostly due to the My Chemical Romance interview from 2004 that I posted a few days ago. Thanks to Jaime_Lamour for linking me on the MCR Live Journal page. I’m also getting some traffic from the Jimmy Eat World message boards, so thanks!

Please feel free to leave comments, I’d love to know what your thoughts are. (you don’t even need to sign up or register!)

I’ll be posting more interviews soon, but thought I’d ask everyone what they’d like to see. Here’s a short list, let me know what you want!

• The Sound of Animals Fighting (2005, their first interview ever)
• A Wilhelm Scream (2004)
• BoysNightOut (2003)
• Moneen (2003)
• The Used (2004)

You can already see my Funeral For A Friend interview from 2004 here!

-gh

EDIT: A new record was set on August 8th 2008, the Radiohead in Montreal post.