Sunday, November 16, 2003

Show last night. played really well. had the crowd really going. it was a sea of love coming to us and from us. played a serious rock show. Debuted the song Junkie live. Crowds favorite. Drummer’s first show. He rocked. No piano man though which sucked. I like having the keyboards there. separates us out from the pack. We are starting to explore on stage, going off, getting creative. So diluted and boring the American music scene is now. such boring predictable rock band crap. us included. We all get up on stage and play song after song, boring repetitive rock or pop songs—. The electronica bands or dance bands or hip hop acts are even worse. I can’t stand to hear the same style of music for more than a few minutes at a time, any style. My friends hate that about me. I never go to concerts of other bands cause they're just too fucking boring. Although if I can write or something on my handheld its alright or if I can just leave early and meet up with them afterwards. They think that's weird.

My mind is just too hyper active for that. I feel the same way about us. just putting on these fucking one hour shows filled with the same style of song one after the other. We won't for long. Some of the reviews I read about our new album talks about how different it is from rise and shine. they said the same thing about rise and shine as if there was something wrong with us for making an album with more than one style on it. but to me, I mean to me as a music fan, that's a great thing. Or else I'd be bored to death. There are very few albums that I can listen to all the way through. Isn't everyone the same way? you would think they would be. but who cares. That's the way that I am. So from now were going to start mixing it up more and more at our shows. Mixing all the different styles that I have done over the years. on all my different albums. Some acoustic stuff here, some rock stuff, some world music stuff, whatever. just throw the whole style thing out the window. Its what I've always done. A ravenous explorer and exploiter. Nothing sacred. What is it with this fucking rule that a singer songwriter is supposed to be the progenitor of one particular style of music anyway? where is this written? So that is where the idea for the nothing is cohesive album came from. G2 telling me that. everyone telling me that. and me sitting in front of my computer screen smiling a Cheshire cat grin because I know it. they think they are telling me something I don't know. but I know. I know that I change my mind all the time. I know that my lack of cohesiveness drives the people that work with us mad. I'm sorry for that. But that's the way I like it. so I don’t get bored. in life nothing is really cohesive. Its all just pretend cohesiveness. Its just the perfectionist thing in me that wants to keep getting it better and better, deeper and deeper, less and less cohesive so to speak, more like a movie, an indie. Something rich and thick—that stretches time and space. this is what I am trying to do. So maybe I'll change my mind a lot and then yeah by the end its this mass of confusion that it isn't cohesive. and the designer is screaming and the guys in the band are screaming---not really though because both father Bloopy and Vancouver and I think the new drummer cooper haze understand this and they feel the same way about music----so the producer is screaming and threatening to quit the project. And the engineer.

On sleep with you the mix engineer spent all day with the song Junkie trying to mix it. All fucking day. and we had like ten different guitars on there by both me and Vancouver. And so many other things in there too. a lot of just noise. He just threw his hands up and said fuck this, I can’t get it, this sucks. I'm going to get some beers. And so me and Fred the producer finished it ourselves. I just told him ‘just turn all the faders all the way up to where they are maxed out but no distorting. O.k. and now turn up my vocals to where you can hear them above all that noise. O.k. now that's a mix.’ He just looked at me and laughed and said I was crazy. but now fans are saying its their favorite song on the album. so that just shows how crazy I am.

But I will say this to close because my friends are standing around waiting for me while I'm writing this and I'm stupid enough to think its important that I'm writing it. I saw this commercial on TV the other day about ADD and it showed this visual and audio kind of hallucination piece to try to show what it is like if someone has ADD and it was this woman and she was so confused all the time and always hearing all this stuff and seeing all this stuff and going backwards and forwards in time and never hearing what anyone was saying in the present moment to her. I thought wow that's what its like all the time inside my mind. That's me. and then at the end it said “you can get help. call your doctor for more information.” And I thought, wow. They’re onto me. they figured out this thing I call my mind. Other people have that?! unfuckingbeleivable. But what was really wild about that moment was realizing that I wasn't going to call the doctor for more information. and I wasn't going to accept the diagnosis either. Why would I want to do that? I like it. I think it helps me create. Its who I am. O.k. so I can’t fucking sit through a whole concert or listen to a whole album or attend a sporting event or get through a full day of school or work a regular day to day job like normal people can without getting so bored I feel like going out of my mind or doing something insane, maybe I really do have this disease, but maybe that's just me and its alright and maybe just maybe its part of what gives me my music and my writing and my life’s work, the whole Fishy thing, the whole Transcendence thing, whatever you want to call it, the whole ‘nothing is cohesive’ thing, is maybe nothing more than the byproduct of a guy with really bad ADD.

So no I'm not going to tell. Thinking more and more about the whole national thing I was thinking about so much last night. I'm right. Local is a waste. It is a miserable trap that leads to nowhere. Had a wonderful talk with Little Tree yesterday. Caught up. She helps me stay sane and grounded.

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