Thursday, January 25, 2007

Cory McAbee online

One of my heroes, Cory McAbee of The Billy Nayer Show and The American Astronaut now has a personal website, corymcabee.com. If you don't know about the band or the movie please check both of them out. He has some clips of his work and the trailer to The American Astronaut on the downloads page. This is an illustration Cory McAbee did for their album The Villain That Love Built,


The first time I saw these guys play was at Cornell College in Ithaca, probably in 2003. Bob, Tom, Aaron and I went to go see them since they were going to be screening The American Astronaut there, and Aaron and I had been watching for the film since freshman year (longer for Aaron, since he was the one who told me about it). I had just come out of a heavy breakup and I was feeling all around rotten. So we go and cram into this tiny campus theatre packed with Cornell kids and everybody was eating Astro pops (I think that's what they were called... loosely rocket shaped candy). The American Astronaut came on and it was the most weirdly funny and touching film I had ever seen. After the film I was expecting to up and leave, but the band from the movie came out (Cory McAbee played the lead role of Samuel Curtis and The Billy Nayer Show band appeared in the film and scored the soundtrack). I was amazed, right after seeing these giants of weird pathos on the screen they were going to perform for us live!

They were the best therapy I could have asked for at the time and it was one of the best shows I've ever attended. Their music is like a bawdy running joke with God, told by a man bruised by love but not quite out cold. It really struck a chord with me and still does. They've been generous enough to come through Rochester twice while I was at school. Seek them out!

1 comment:

Eric Peterson said...

American Astronaut? That's awesome that you saw that... I made a short film after last year's Comicon, and everyone that watches it says I need to see American Astronaut-- I guess they are similar or something.

How are your books coming, man?