It is my personal belief that Brian Cassagnol is a genius.  Now, I know the term, “genius” gets thrown around a lot, but I feel compelled to stress that my deeming someone a genius should not be taken lightly.  The criteria is as follows: said “genius” must be a) smarter than I am in some field that I maintain to have expert knowledge in, and b) everybody knows that a good outline needs to have at least 2 points per subheading… hence, point (b).  For those of you who are unaware, Brian Cassagnol is Mieka Pauley’s guitarist, music director, and engineer of an overly elaborate and menacingly complicated system of guitar effects pedals.  Brian has had a huge part in helping steer the sonic landscape of Mieka Pauley’s music in a direction that the rest of the band and fans alike have been coming to recognize as fresh, innovative, and a shit-load louder than it was before.  In addition to Mieka Pauley’s music, Brian also fronts his own band, “The Books of Brian”, in which he sings… better than I can… technically making him a genius by my definition of the word.  In addition to Brian’s “vocal performance genius”, Brian also knows a lot more shit than I do about classical music, music theory, opera, and “staying calm when you’re super late for some shit that you weren’t supposed to be super late for”.  I am fiercely envious of this last manifestation of genius… which brings me to the point of this blog post.

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