Thursday, January 29, 2009

Plan, [plan] - noun:

An approach to achieve an objective. An indispensable and unavoidable expenditure of effort which may include, but is not limited to: lists, goals, materials, budget, discussion, haggling, Excel spreadsheets, Power Point presentations, contingencies, assumptions, getting one's head around, reaching-out-to and bouncing things off of. Plans fall into two categories: Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is a fanciful stretching of the imagination for the purpose of inflating expectations to the point that one may become bouyant, possibly causing the feet to leave the ground. Plan B is the plan that is actually executed, at least in the early stages of Plan B. In practice, it is abandoned no more than a day or two into it's execution and replaced by activities constituting the reality of achievement of the objective. Some refer to this as Plan C, while others doggedly insist upon referring to it, erroneously, as The Plan.

Though seemingly useless in hindsight, plans are, in fact, essential. Without them we would be consigned to an aimless and dark existence of things that simply occur, for no apparent reason and with no obvious intent. Furthermore, it has been empirically shown that the act of planning stimulates the same area of the brain that deals with self-esteem and ego gratification. Planning also releases endorphins. This is seen to be a necessary balance to the overused and slightly charred areas of the cortex that are responsible for putting on your pants, getting out of the house and actually getting the thing done.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Unreliable Sources

Before Kent, I got music from unreliable sources. When I was in sixth grade a kid named William showed up to class with the first record album I ever felt a visceral covetousness for. It was the double album of "Jesus Christ, Superstar", the brown one that came out before the Broadway show or the movie. When Mrs. Rivers was out of the classroom probably having a cigarette or getting a little space, William laid one of the LP's onto the vinyl upholstered, educational-grade record player that sat near the door of the classroom. He dropped the needle onto the spot he liked best. Pontius Pilate screamed at a full tilt: "Don't let me stop, your great self destruction!" When it got to the screamingest part William, whose fingers rested nonchalantly on the volume control, would spin the knob up a touch to get a little extra mileage out of the system. The result was that my mind was entirely blown. As a mix engineer I've adopted this technique many times to positive effect.

That very first time I heard it, there in the classroom by the open door, with the sound echoing down the elementary school hall, at the instant the singer shredded his vocal chords, I had a wild sense of expansiveness overlaid by delicious terror. This sensation was brand new and I felt it as discomfort, fear. It must not have been so bad though, because I ran to the store and purchased the album for myself as soon as I could scrape together the dough.

"Jesus Christ, Superstar" constituted my entire on-purpose record collection for a year or so. I did have a few items in my library previously, but they were not obsessive objects of love. Somehow a Credence album landed there, I'm not sure why. My favorite song on that album was "Lookin' Out My Back Door". I listened to it about a hundred times before moving on to other activities that had to do with my bicycle. My Grandma heard I liked music and apparently bought the next album she saw, which was "The Very Best of the Cowsills" because it was an album. I don't recall any of those tunes, I'm not even sure I listened to it because the dorky cartoon representation of the band on the cover made my nose crinkle. Before all of that, when I was but a pup, I made my mom buy me a 45 of "Dizzy" by Tommy Roe at the supermarket because I was taken by the red label in the rack at the checkout line. I played the A side so many times that I actually became ill. Try it yourself, you'll get the same effect. That might have charted the depths of my musical obsession until William came rolling into class with his trophy. I liked everything about Superstar, the two-recordness of it, the ritual of playing the sides in a certain order, the fake leather texture of the classy cover. Even the music.

The next acquisition was a profound stoke of maximal dimensions. An unsophisticated guy named Dave who lived down the street decided to get out of the business of listening to records and divested himself of his entire collection. I bought all ten of his albums for a buck each. This gave me eleven albums in my collection. Kiss my former life goodbye, I was now a fledgling music fan.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Writer, [ry-ter] - noun:

One who practices a scribbling of language onto paper, or lately, digital form. In some cases, the content of said scribbling is of great value, if not of some utility, though for the most part it is neither. In the case of digital writing, especially that of blogs, a secondary writing known as comments, takes up the matter of precisely what value shall be assigned to a particular piece of writing. The comments are not writing in and of themselves, but they do determine that someone who has encountered the original writing has taken note of it to the extent that it merits an additional round of scribbling.

The toilet-stall bard Nickerson has composed a limerick describing the commitment required for quality writing:

A scribe with an intellect fine
Supposed he would write all the time
He picked up a pen
But just wrote now and then
While sipping a glass of red wine

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Brazilian Serenade


Can you bear the longing
Of a day that won't surrender
To the car alarms shrieking in the street?
Even though the night has come
And tomorrow's far away
And the day has nothing left to offer...
I'd empty out my pockets
If the batteries would die
And give us just an hour's worth of sleep
I'll surrender all my language
And strip down to the clay
Get out the booze, I'll sing you
A Brazilian serenade!
A Brazilian serenade.

Can you feel the pull
Of a moon that is full?
Can you feel that hound dog wail across the yard?
Every night the shadows come
And every night that dog goes on
Until the sunlight presses on our window.
If we could only keep that dog from barking for one night
I know that all our problems could be solved
I'll surrender all my language
And I'll strip down to the clay
Get out the booze, I'll sing you
A Brazilian serenade!
A Brazilian serenade.

Can you feel the desire
Of a body that's tired?
Can you hear the neighbors fighting in the street?
Every night the crying comes
Sobbing 'till the morning sun
And the sweet golden rays come shining through.
If we could only keep that couple happy for one night
I know that the world could be ours!
I'll surrender all my language
And I'll strip down to the clay
Get out the booze, I'll sing you
A Brazilian serenade!
A Brazilian serenade!
A Brazilian serenade!
A Brazilian serenade.

Friday, January 9, 2009

The Album

I don't want to forget completely about the CD, it's very important to me and I wouldn't want people to think otherwise. I started working on it this past summer. I had five or six songs that were so good they constituted momentum. Just a few more and I'd have a whole album. This won't take long at all.

The idea of an album has become confused lately. So much is strewn about the Web in the atomized form of individual songs, if even an entire song, that I wonder if it matters to have an album at all. I referred to these songs as one-sided singles to my friend Alan and he lit right up. I don't want to spiral into nostalgia on this, like I've aged well and I have a special understanding of the value of an attention span. You know the rap. - You kids! When I was your age our records had two sides for a reason! People had principles and gave a sweet damn if your songs made sense one after the other! Today you groogle it on your internets or some damn thing and get just exactly what you want to hear without having to work for it! Where's the integrity in that? Now what the hell did I do with my glasses...? -

No, I don't want to be like that.

Sure, it's just atavistic sexual imprinting, but I won't abandon an art form that gathers songs into a physical object. I naturally think of songs being together in a collection. An album, named during the era when a bunch of 78rpm records were collected in a heavy, fragile book that looked like a photo album or an industrial era scrapbook. At the close of the reign of that demented troglodyte Reagan, when the object seemed to have settled for all eternity into a thirty-three and one third "long playing" vinyl record, it became suddenly obsolete. Our album collections devolved into long, sad rows of unplayed dust-catchers waiting to be escorted to the thrift store or the curb a few at a time to free up shelf space or to avoid having to lug them up the steps for the next move. The CD's that replaced them were small, precise, less able to contain the emotions that the music inside shook loose. I love the online world with the instant availability of anything, or at least anything that will fit into a computer, but I do still love holding an album cover on my lap with both hands while hearing fifteen or twenty undisturbed minutes of music spool off of the turntable.

I won't even discuss the sound of vinyl here because I don't want to start a fight.

So, though it will be digital, it shall be an album. It will be fine. I don't have a functioning band at the moment, so it will be me and just the stuff I really need. A uke, some percussion maybe. I can't do without a guitar now and then. Must have bass. But that's it. Let's not overproduce it. Not even one trumpet. Solo album, intimate. Maybe too intimate. Gonna be an album, obsolete before it's even finished. Behind the curve and out of the running. But deep from the heart.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The Reading

I had the first reading of South last night at Dixon Place and I awoke this morning to a sense of proximate calamity. I mentioned this to Alison before she could get from under the covers or even turn off the alarm clock and she said, "right on time."