Memories

Today we spent all fourteen hours at the hit factory/criteria studios in Miami. this was time that we had purchased years and years ago that we just never bothered to use. Kept making album after album at other places and never used this up so for the last few months we have been rehearsing songs for this album knowing that we would go to this world-class state of the art studio and just spend all day and all night recording and try to nail down the rhythm tracks to all the songs on the new album in one shot. We almost made it. recorded nine songs. Plus an extra thing or two.

Memories. Tired. Past two am now. just want to capture the moments before they disappear into the events of tomorrow. songs were: we are columbine, messed it up again, blind eye, song for Jasmine, Solaris, all your heroes become villains, here it comes, she's so bad, all of my love (not the zeppelin song). I think that was it. jasmine won't go on this CD, but on the girls CD. we need one more rocker for this one and then it will be complete.

Memories: I love these boys and feel as horrified and scared and sad that I am leaving them to move as I am convinced that that is precisely what I need to do for my life. so I am caught between these strange feelings. Knowing intuitively that I am not comfortable here anymore and need to get back to the city, but at the same time wondering what the hell am I doing moving away from my band at the peak of our fucking careers as a group together. me and Infinito have been together for six years now, having founded the group back in 98. he was so stellar today. everyone was.

This studio is like forty years old or more. maybe fifty years old. ‘I feel good’ by James brown was record here. the rumors album. All the bee gees hits. Saturday night fever, grease, layla, hotel California, lenny Kravitz, bob seger, Iggy pop, American fool by John cougar, and all the Aretha Franklin hits, the list goes on and on forever. gold records line every wall in that place. REM recorded monster here, my favorite of theirs, and their last two or three as well. they just left a few weeks ago. Missy Elliot was in there tonight in another room. It was just such an honor for us to be there in this place of such infamy and history. And it really rose us up to this whole other level as a group. Fred the producer couldn’t believe how great we were. He spent most of the time just getting baked out of his mind but helped us out a lot with arrangements. He felt like a proud father, comparing what we were like today to when he recorded us for the sleep with you album two years ago. Impressed by how far we have come as individual musicians.

Part of me feels sad that we are not successful yet for how hard we work and how good we are. It is not hard to feel that sadness underneath it all. after all, objectively and in all honesty, I am at the peak of songwriting right now in my career, famous or not. I'm just peaking. But I'm not peaking for the masses or in front of millions of adoring fans, but pretty much just for the few who know and love us. and that's a small number of people.
I thought a lot about that on the way home tonight. here we were making this amazing album with all these great songs and you know, we’re pretty much just doing it for us still, for our own allegiance to that rock and roll dream and for our own individual love of making music. maybe that's what its all about in the long run, in fact I know that's what its all about. But still, it would be better if we were playing a much bigger game. In the spotlight more. but as men we must accept where we are as a group, as people, and just always do out best.

It begs the question, is what you're doing going down for posterity so to speak, even if it is only going to be enjoyed by a very few select people rather than for the masses? I mean, if it never gets out there, really out there, to the mainstream public, is it art? Lets put it this way. is what missy Elliot did there tonight more important, more significant, more art, than what we did there tonight, just because hers will hit millions over night, and ours may never hit more than a few thousand? That's the question.

Either way, I'll tell you this. what we laid down tonight, is the best music we've ever done. This was the best single most transcendent collection of songs we have ever recorded. Tonight. we did it. they were all, each and every one of them, fucking amazing. total vibey, and yet really polished and professional. for us at least. I may never make an album that has a better, more cohesive collection of material on it. one more rocker and we can put this baby to rest and call it a day.

Really starting to feel a need to get some assistance with lyric writing. the poet has written some lyrics before and I dig it. I just feel that we have some really good songs, I mean if I have anything, its that, to be able to grab these great songs out of the air at the drop of a hat, but I don't feel like I'm really doing it lyrically anymore. Maybe I never did and just never knew it, but now I can really feel that our songs would be much better served by having someone add some more intelligence to them, more wit, more creativity and depth to the ideas, which is what I feel my lyrics lack the most. When you listen to the lyrics of Billy Joel for instance, or Matthew Sabatella. Who are both brilliant lyricists. You can easily be impressed by how brilliant their lyrics are in so many ways. Clever I think would be the word that best describes. I've just never been that good at lyrics. kind of like John Lennon, but never as bad as Paul McCartney, lets put it that way. I would really like to get someone else more intelligent to help us with lyrics so the songs become that much better.

We have a shot on this new album of creating something stellar. I know I may always say that, but this time I think there is some actual truth to it and its not just the inspiration flowing that is making me say that.

Of course we are completely out of money now and don't really have a way to finish this album. It may never get completed. That's the really sad and scary part. But we did what we did. somehow we will find a way to complete it.

Me living at near poverty level now with no way of knowing if I will even be able to eat pretty soon and still maintaining this discipline and this drive to keep creating the art that is so dear to us, man, I'm either crazy or what... brother Beaver keeps telling me, dude just please go get a job man. Please just get a job and make some money so you're not living out on the streets. and all I can think of is how we are going to get into the studio to finish this album. Man that's funny. And scary. Like how does a person’s priorities get so confused?  But somehow I believe. I just believe. And that's what keeps me going.