New Album Coming Along - Stepping WAY WAY Out There Now

         Well I think we're doing it again. Princess Little Tree and I joke around about "what a challenge it is to BE Ed Hale" compared to just "dealing with him" like other people do. I'm always like "yeah yeah I know, I'm sorry about that," when she complains about how many different projects I have going at once and how unwieldy and crazy our schedule is, "but just imagine BEING the person who has to LIVE AS me!" I respond. "It's hard enough dealing with me, I know, but it's a whole different thing to keep waking up to the fact that you ARE that person and trying to figure out ways of handling being that person!" 
        I think of it like this: I'm just me. A regular Joe like anyone else. But on top of it, I was born INSIDE this totally crazy super-curious and ambitious wild man who never stops thinking and planning and taking notes and starting new things. If it were up to me, I'd just be chilling like anyone else. The usual things, picnics, TV, movies, family, the park, having drinks with friends, I don't know, whatever normal people do... But I feel like I've got this responsibility to try my best to honor this guy that I was born inside. And he's got this massive imagination and all this ambition and he really does believe he can do it all and more. So I just do my best to make that happen and hang on for the ride; and hopefully survive it all. Yep. It feels like that.
        So we started Ed Hale's new solo album in the summer of 2011. Right at the right time. The first single from the last solo album was taking off. A few months later the second single was doing even better than the first. We needed a new album and we needed it fast. Problem was that we recorded about 17 songs initially and instead of one good solid album, it sounded more like two partially completed albums. So we all flew back to New York to record more songs. Ended up with 34 new songs. So now we've been slowly making progress on them. Little by little. Drums, bass, acoustic guitars and vocals are slowly all getting done. Along with various percussion and keyboards. The crazy thing is how many hundreds of hours it takes to finish one song. At least for us. Now. On this album. Let me put it into perspective. We're in the summer of 2013 now and I'm only done with 12 songs in terms of being done with MY parts. That's insane. I know it. But it's just a lot of work. 
        This album started out as a continuation of the Ballad On Third Avenue album. Acoustic pop, or what in the business we call Adult Contemporary; that's the actual format. But what we've ended up with is three distinct sounds for three distinct different albums. One is still more organic acoustic, what you would call almost folksy. Think Bon Iver or Fleet Foxes or The Lumineers. Simple stuff. Do it in your sleep stuff. But I tire of that real quick. Whether it's mine or someone else's. I have a tough time getting through three songs in a row of that kind of material. So we branched out and made some of the songs more electric, more upbeat, more pop. I dig that. Though it takes a lot more instrumentation and production. And then there's this third style that's coming out that's more like electric folk, kind of like Dylan when he went electric... Rubber Soul perhaps? But not really cause it's more folky. 
        It's all acoustic based. None of it is "rock" per se. And that was the plan. These are Ed Hale solo albums after all, and since all the same players play on these that do the Transcendence albums, THAT'S the only difference between the two artists at this point: the solo albums are slower and softer, more acoustic, more pop, and Ed Hale and the Transcendence albums are more rock. It's just a name/style thing, rather than a change in lineup. I've been working with the same group of guys since 2002 and don't see changing that anytime soon. They're like brothers now. They know what I write and sing like. And they call me on my stuff; they know what to do and say to bring the best out in the music. 
        I've been living in Seattle for the last few months and so we're working out of a studio here. Only problem is that all the guys are in different cities and states around the country now. Most of the guys are still somewhere in South Florida. But others are in LA or Texas or Minneapolis or Atlanta. It's crazy. What we've decided to do, what I've decided to do, is keep on recording the songs here, my parts, and then we email the songs out as MP3s to all these other players -- we've got about 15 additional players now around the country, adding strings, woodwinds, horns, guitars, keyboards, drum programming, background vocals -- and have them import the MP3 into their recording studio rig. They then record their parts onto the track to their liking and then they send only their parts back to us and we then drop them into the original open track, as if they were there in the studio with us. 
         We're really tracking three albums here... We have about 13 songs done with "my parts" now... meaning the basic drums/bass/acoustic guitars, some keys and all my basic lead and background vocals. That's what these guys will be tracking to. But we have musicians all over the country adding other instruments while I am NOT there. And neither is the producer. So there is no way to monitor what they're going to be recording. I've never done ANYthing like this before... NOT being there when peeps record their parts. It could turn into a total MESS. But I'm hoping to create a totally NEW sound by doing it this way -- encouraging the dissonance that will naturally come from the musicians stepping all over each other without knowing it. Trumpet parts stepping all over sax and flute parts etc. It's a crazy idea. 
        Of course we'll mix the messy parts out and just keep the "good parts" Meaning whatever fits and sounds good. And hopefully that will provide a GIANT palette from which to choose for Zeke Zaskin who is set to mix yet again. He's mixed every one of our albums since Nothing Is Cohesive and he always does a great job. Bear in mind that we usually provide absolutely insanely confusing tracks. Usually very messy because we record A LOT. I'll lay down at least 15 different vocal tracks plus three to five guitar tracks and two to five keyboard tracks. In addition Vancouver will lay down five to ten additional guitar tracks. Now we'll be adding an additional 10 to 15 additional musicians all laying down whatever they want to however they want to... 
        It has the potential to be a royal mess. But it also has the potential to be a roaring success, something brand new and exciting sounding. the potential for the musicians to step on each other musically is VERY high. Notes that may sound good to them clashing with notes that other players have added... Cause none of us are going to hear what the other people are adding. But that's what i LOVE about the prospects of this new way of doing it. The utter randomness of it. No, it will not be the usual organic "all built up from the bottom up together as a unit" kind of recording style that we are used to. It's going to be the exact opposite. But that's what I am kind of digging about this new method. We now have the technology to record in this fashion. Of course no one in their right mind would do this on a professional commercial release. It's crazy for sure. But it just may blow us all away with how cool it could sound. 
        In any case, there's a catch up for ya. That's where we are. If you were wondering where this new album is. Yes I know we're a year behind schedule. But there's a valid reason for it. We're trying something a little different with this one. So be patient. As soon as we have something finished, IF we ever finish a song that is.... We'll post it for you all to hear. Frankly I can't wait to hear what this grand experiment produces. It's bound to be new. Good? Can't say yet. The songs are good. But I just may ruin them... LOL! We'll just have to see. Standby on that. 
       As always, more later.

A Fascinating Consideration - What ARE Musical Notes? WHY?

        In one of those "Human beings are amazing. You never know what they're going to discover and/or explore" moments, someone randomly posted a YouTube video to my Facebook wall. Normally this is not something I enjoy or encourage. Not even a little bit truth be told. But in this instance I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not one of their songs or videos or essays or lectures as is usually the case, nor was it some political article skewed one way or the other. Rather it was a strange video explaining why the note we know as "middle A" in Western music is tuned specifically to the frequency of 440 Hertz. I knew this to be true, just as any musician does, amateur or professional, because this is what we are taught in school. The real question is WHY do we never question why that particular frequency was chosen to represent this particular note?
        Back in music school when I was a kid just out of high school, all the other students were a few years older than I was -- to say the least. I was 17 at the time. I think the youngest person in any of my classes was probably in their early 20s. So there was a lot of learning for me then, both in the classroom and out. I actually believe that I could confidently state that I can recall more of what other students taught me or attempted to teach me during those two years than anything I learned in any particular class. There were many lessons... About romance, the art of music, literature, and life.
        One night in particular I remember this guy named Tim who was probably about 25 at the time (though to me he might as well have been 40 -- everyone seemed old and very adult to me there) explaining to me how the notes and scales we use in Western music are random when you consider them from a bigger more global viewpoint, especially contrasted with music and scales from other countries. I had honestly never thought of that before. Didn't even know about it.
        How we just assume that there are 12 notes in between C and C, when in fact there are many more, infinitely more in fact. This blew my mind. How our guitars and pianos are actually crafted to ONLY play those 12 notes. We can't play all those other notes in between those dictated 12 notes even if we wanted to due to the construction of the instruments we play here in the States and in other so-called Western countries. Imagine that...
        How we consider C to be the start of our scales. Why? How we usually have 8 notes in a scale. Why? Other countries don't necessarily limit scales to that. Some have less. Some have more. That all of our music, including what we call Middle C, is based on a random tuning of the note A to the frequency of 440 hertz. I had never thought about musical notes in terms of what frequency they are tuned to... Never got that deep with it. I was 17. Just beginning to peek my head out of the clouds. I did remember learning that electronic tuners, the ones we use to plug our guitars into, were calibrated based on A being set to 440. But I didn't really know what it meant. I just remembered it as one of those unimportant random facts we pick up along with the way.
        Ever since that evening I have gone back to that conversation again and again in my mind... Especially when listening to music from other countries that do not use or rely on the traditional Western 12 notes for their music... wondering about those secret hidden notes between the 12 notes we use. Simply put we go from C to C for example and in between those two Cs there are 10 notes and that's it. Bear in mind that we have no actual scales that use all 12 notes because it wouldn't sound like a scale per se. It would just sound like a bunch of notes all run together. Unless someone just plays what we call a "chromatic scale" which literally translates to "play all the notes in between one note and it's octave (the C higher than Middle C, the C higher than that one, etc...)" What you end up with is the sound of "no discernible scale" because you're playing ALL the notes available to us. But "available to us" is the key to seeing the magic and mystery in that sentence.
      . Most of our most common scales have only 8 notes in them actually, 7 really if you don't count the octave (the C higher than the C you started on). Think Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. That Do represents C. So really there are only 7 notes. Sometimes we'll veer off of that and add an extra note or 2 in there, such as a 7th, a 2nd or 9th, a 6th. These are all pretty common additions. Depending on how you play it you might be still playing just 8 notes or you might play 9 instead. Sometimes we'll use more than one of those, let's say for example the chord Cmin7(9), meaning that we're adding the 7th and the 9th to the chord in addition to the usual 1st, 3rd, and 5th. On and on. It's an endless contemplation. And not really pertinent to this post. The main point is that we have for whatever reason limited our music in the West to the above explanations. For better or worse. That's just how it is.
        But deeper than that. We've also limited it in terms of WHAT each individual notes ARE exactly. That's something that most of us don't think of. Hum something right now to yourself. Just one note. Out loud. Any note. See, here's the deal. You MAY have hummed a real note (in Western music) OR you may not have. You might have been off a little. Perhaps you were "real close" to humming an A let's say. That's what is known as a tone or a frequency in reality, in the study of sound. You hummed a tone really. We don't know if you hummed an actual "note". It's a tonal frequency, but not necessarily a "note" in a strict sense. We'd have no way to know IF we hadn't chosen specific frequencies to represent the individual notes we use. How would any of us know what an A was unless we specifically decided as a society that the note A was to be represented exactly by the frequency of 440 hertz? We wouldn't. We'd all be playing slightly different tones or frequencies and calling them "A". SO at some point 440 was chosen to be "A".
         So... What's all this lead to? Well the video below says it way better than I could at this point. The main thing to consider is this: What if A isn't really 440? Hah! In reality it's NOT. That's the thing. It's an illusion that we have all just agreed to agree on. Like almost everything we think we know or believe as humans. That seems to be the pervading theme of the Transcendence Diaries isn't it? All these illusions that we have agreed to agree on in order to make life more acceptable and sensible to us, to create order out of the chaos. Of course that's where we get Chaos Theory and Quantum Mechanics, this realization that the actual universe is NOT ordered or sensible, that there is no way to really nail things down as much as we'd like to... not even things that seem relatively stable and solid such as atoms or time or gravity... Ever heard of leap year? It's mind boggling really.
        It's certainly NOT the year 2013. We know that. My name isn't really Fishy. We know that too. truth is I have no name. My parents were asked to and one assumes felt compelled to at some point "name their first born son". So they did. But it isn't really my name. This isn't really the United States of America that we live in. Consider the origin of this country, even just it's name... and you really start to bend over backwards trying to take in all the inconsistencies and hypocrisies. Primarily because it's all randomly man-made. They say Christopher Colombus "discovered America". But we know in reality that his name was Cristóbal Colón; that the land he "discovered" had already been discovered 10,000 years before and was inhabited by millions of other people; that the name "America" came from the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci who supposedly had "discovered" the land before Colon had. And on and on it goes. That's just the tip of the iceberg really. So many illusions, just in regards to the name of one country. 
        Forget about all the other illusions that we agree to agree on. "God" anyone? In the history of humanity we've believed in and had over one-thousand "gods" so far. And we're really just beginning in our evolution. Hell we don't even know when we started out in our "evolution" or if we even evolved so to speak. I cannot help but entertain the theory that we may just have been created by another species of sentient beings entirely and that we never really "evolved" from fish as some people agree to believe. I mean, that's the thing isn't it? It's all just man-made. 
        Which beings us back to music. More and more people are beginning to explore this idea of WHY we use the specific frequencies we do for the musical notes that we use to create music in. The video below goes into this. How some frequencies are "healing" and how some may be "harmful". I'm not sure I could fully get behind believing in this belief system 100%. After all, it is just a belief system. Being true for a person to the degree they believe it to be true and thus dictating their experience. But it is a fascinating thing to explore. What if we did decide to change our entire musical architecture and make the note A 432 hertz instead of 440 hertz? We could easily make that decision. No problem in that decision. The problem would be all the music instruments all over the world would have to be re-tuned and re-calibrated. In other words, we're so far gone in this belief system, it's such a rigid system, that there's no way in hell that collectively enough people will ever allow this decision to be made. 
        And therein illustrates a damn good example of why so-called conspiracies exist and may just not always be "theories". One might say that certain conspiracies exist simply due to the fact that the majority of people involved in the decision making process of whatever paradigm or system we are discussing decide that things are fine the way they are and that it would be too much trouble to make things different. 
        This isn't to say that WE can't choose to decide that the note A will from now on be represented by 432 hertz instead of 440 hertz. We can. We can even re-tune all our instruments that way and continue to write all our music like that from now on. Of course no one else would be able to play with us unless they did the same thing. Frankly it's something I'd like to hear. Changing A would necessitate changing ALL of the frequencies of all the notes in any musical scale we would use from that point on. So every note we play in any given piece of music would have an entirely different sound to it.... Fascinating... I'd love to hear it. So much more. But good for now.

I highly recommend these videos. Check out this one.

Writing a few songs now. as always. Writing songs. Not finishing any. Or finishing them and never returning to them much after that. there's that whole, ‘o.k. fine I won't abandon you unfinished but I'm never coming back after this you know’ kind of thing with me and songs lately.... Maria full of grace was o.k. but still just so ME. tired of the ME sound. Tired of my way doing things. today got the glimpses of a new one, maybe about San Francisco, a scene in San Francisco, like that. but again I just keep setting the guitar down tired of hearing myself go to the same things....

the sun is setting. A mild wind. We walk to the beach. I scream ‘fuck. God. fuck’ a couple of times. ‘what?’ ‘nothing. Just have to get to the next place now with the songwriting. Have to get to a new me. feels a lot like ten years ago. When I had reached the end of regular tuning songwriting on the guitar. I just sat there and played with tuning pegs until when I strummed something cool came out. what I ended up with was an Open D9 it turns out. and the first song I wrote like that was ‘Bored.’ because that's exactly what I was feeling in that moment. from there came lots of variations of open Ds, and open G and open A, and open Em and from those spaces great songs were written. so I'm not worried too much. Just what's the word... impatient. I know something is coming. A whole new way of doing it. I'm just tired of listening to what I'm creating now while I wait. I could always move back to piano but again the piano is still strung the same as other pianos so you're still going to hit relatively the same notes and chords and still have that ‘western music’ sound to it. gotta be a way to go totally out.

a three doors down song comes on. I go to flip it. ‘hey I like that song. you don't?’ its not that I don't like it. I just hate shit when its so formulaic. I already know what's going to come next. ‘that's not formulaic?’ she says pointing to the new gwen stefani CD I want to put in. ‘well this may be formulaic too, but it’s just so damn creative, you never know what's coming next. really exciting stuff here....’

I'll tell you this Fishy. this is all going to come down to you. you're either going to do it or you're not.

Current spin: Gwen's new one, or is this her first one? either way, VERY pop and formulaic, screaming ‘we want a hit, we want a hit’ from the first note... Wins the award for the most contrived musical project since Cher’s last CD ‘do you believe’ that took five years, six songwriters and five producers etc... but you know, it’s just so fucking creative and catchy.... its like a musical smorgasbord... I get and learn a lot out of projects like this. you can’t help but admire it. rock or not rock... dig it.
 
Also, secret machine, nowhere again is a great song. (now to prove that I'm totally schizophrenic) you know sometimes music doesn’t have to break any molds or go off in some totally different direction. Sometimes it can just be so cool that its good just being normal. That's the way this song is. that's the way the strokes are. you hear them and you think you are hearing some long lost Lou reed or Iggy pop album and its great just like that.

So here we are in the mid-two thousands and the music world smack dab in the middle of an early eighties obsession/rehash as the twenty year cycle finally comes around again as it always does. Its actually more of a twenty-three year cycle I've noticed. Just as planned. Just as expected. Just as always. The current buzz bands franz Ferdinand the killers modest mouse vhs or beta and secret machines is a none too subtle rearrangement/amalgamation of the music we all grew up listening to when we were kids in the early to mid eighties. (the two-thousands currently obsessing/swallowing the eighties (just as the seventies was obsessed with the fifties (happy days, lavern and Shirley, sha na na, etc...) the eighties obsessed on the sixties (Woodstock revivals and constant documentaries about the sixties culminating with the peak of the grateful dead’s success in 1990 and the entire country dropping acid again for one or two solid summers in 1989 and 90 and the nineties obsessed on the seventies (remember the bee gees, disco and bell bottoms were the WORST things you could say, or perhaps the funniest, for a brief twenty years and then the nineties hit and they all of a sudden became the rage all over again...  the nineties was all about disco and funk and seventies rock and pop revival etc...))  This new two-thousands obsession with the eighties that is going on now though is very obvious. A lot of these bands don't even hide it. they might as well be the new cure or new order or smiths albums...  Perhaps it always was like this and maybe I'm just starting to get astute enough to be able to notice it.

Anyway, plenty of good original stuff being made. God so much. Music so amazing now. joyzipper is a new fav of mine right now. Belle and Sebastian’s new one. keane is great. Muse – my favorite!!!! They are amazing and sound like no one except Jeff Buckley. Coldplay don't sound like anyone. I mean, obvious a strong U2 influence there but just great music. travis is always good. Ours – what will become of ours? will he ever break?

So I'm walking home at midnight and I'm listening to all this new eighties revival music that is so popular now that people think is new... and I'm thinking about **** from **** records being cool enough to invite me up to his office to listen to the latest hottest music... so we could compare the new transcendence album to what's hot now. and I'm thinking man there is no way me and the guys are going to start making music like this. its just not in us. we can’t force something that we aren't. I don't think any of us ever really got into the eighties music when it was popular let alone now twenty years later.

Dasher still trying to get me to hone in on the show, make it more cohesive, a stronger, bolder, more singular statement....more filming, more shooting, more editing, just to film a fucking pilot... almost fifty hours of film now scattered about the office desks... and I just keep going all over the place with it. now I am working with this idea for the apple ipod to get it right into the TV cameras and my ears at the same time... a brilliant idea.. totally revolutionary... and he's like, ‘what? you want to do what? add music during filming? instead of in post? What are you fucking crazy? Fishy we don't do it like that bro.’ ‘yeah I know, but what if we did?’ and I flash him this smile...

‘Too Picasso.... you're just too fucking Picasso man... That should be the title of the documentary about what it is like to work with you Fishy,’ Dasher tells me. ‘you're just all over the place... too abstract. you have to hone in man, just hear me on this... you can’t go interview people about health care problems and hear all these fucked up stories for instance and then head out into the street with your ipod and be dancing around ten minutes later to a Jay z song. people are going to think you are a bastard and its going to totally minimize the impact of what we’re going for in the story...’

‘bro I hear you. o.k.? I really do. But check it man. Life is sad. I'll give you that. life is always going to be sad. God knows that's part of what we’re doing here with the show is showing how fucked up everything is... but bro... that's just life. life is always sad. No matter what. all the time all of us know someone in our life who is going through something fucked up and sad... but man life is good too... at the same time... you know?’

‘O.k...’

‘Yeah man, and like with music.... music is there for us no matter what. good or bad... even during the sad times... so o.k. so lets say I do the interview with the freedom fighters in Chechnya... and they're all fucked up because the media is inappropriately labeling them terrorists and blah blah blah and its really sad that Russia has killed all their fucking men in their whole country and all that's left now is young kids and women.. and sure that's fucking sad as hell man.. and I'm feeling that sadness... I mean, bro you know me... I'm feeling that pain...’

‘I know you are. That's what I'm saying... you're there... and I love that. and I think people are going to see that Fishy....’

‘o.k. but dig what I'm saying.... o.k. so then... on the plane coming back home, some girl and I are digging each other right? and I want to film us dancing to some awesome music and just let it out... you know man.. that's life.... or maybe we get it on in the bathroom at thirty-thousand feet and I want to film that and put it in the show... that would be cool man...’

‘No Fishy that would not be cool. that's why I mean... it won't work man... it would just never work...  people do not think like that... they need something solid. They want one statement... they don't want ten statements... maybe you do... and I respect that man. You're an artist... I understand that... I do, but its not going to sell. And we’re going to bomb bro. and I am too young to bomb. You're going to have to trust me on this.... I respect you, but you're going to have to trust me on this...’

I'm sick now. have a cold. I love having colds. I love sneezing. I love blowing my nose. I love the whole art of having a cold. Its never unwelcomed...

Current spin: Al Green – I'm still in love with you. this is the original album, the masterpiece. One of them. Just great. Perfect. so singular in what it attempts. Pulls it off perfectly. digging into all of the old original Al green releases. A master in his time. He and Marvin and Curtis and Sly and Ray and James. And then Prince sashayed in. So forget about it. He just blew the doors off of place.

Just saw the FMQB charts this week. Sleep with you made the top 25. In 23^rd place this week. That's awesome. DJs are spinning the album and the peeps are digging it. 

Processing a lot. Had almost over an hour CHP today with one creation. A wild ride. 

Current Spin: Justin Clayton, Limb. This is a great guitar pop record by a master songwriter and producer. Really good. Listening to this on the way over the causeway from the beach to the mainland extremely loud. Makes you wonder what more is left to create with music. that's how good it is. makes you not able to think of anything better to do on your own. so you just don't want to make music for a while. 

I wonder, do you ever wonder, how would we ever make something really grand and wonderful? With any lasting value. Think of Rome for God sakes; it is filled with giant memorials to many men's quest for the same ambition. Or Egypt. [one has to wonder underneath this if the reason why we feel this way is just because we long to make something real and valuable and meaningful for ourselves. I mean this can’t just be for other people, for the fans, or whoever. In the long run who really cares about that? It has to be about what is of lasting value to us. I think that secretly that is who we are trying to please.] Listening to Justin’s CD here, thinking about how it went so un-noticed around the world. What is the difference between the famous and the not famous? How does p diddy get to be a millionaire but Justin is still just one of the many songwriters who put out an album? I wonder what else is at play there besides music? Underneath the surface of it? things cosmic or karmic? Or just the luck of the draw? Right place at the right time? I don't know. but listening more you can just hear it. you put on p diddy, and as base and shallow and inane as it is, it is really creative; it really gets you moving. It just has this “thing” about it. sounds and feels upbeat and contemporary. And you can tell that it is going to appeal to a broader demographic. You put on Justin's album or any number of other singer songwriters out there and its just guitar bass and drum pop rock music. a lot of times really smart and catchy and intelligent and sometimes even moving (like Justin's song Drag—download this track for sure). And sometimes, rarely, it can really be sublime like Robbie William’s Escapology, or Aimee Mann magnolia, or Jeff Buckley’s Grace. But that's it. its still guitar bass and drum music. Frankly I'm sick of music sounding like that. I hate it. Which is funny cause that's what we do stll. I always tried to avoid it. Until sleep with you, where we really tried to embrace the idea of sounding like a band of five guys. There were a lot of moments where I reached out and tried to do stuff that was out there but the producer didn't let me, he would scream and say I was crazy and remind me that I was broke and that we were trying to make an album where we all could make some money. so I held back on being experimental and just tried to sing and play really well. But before that I was always into trying to rise above that. on rise and shine we really tried. People thought we were all over the place. Which we were. But totally on purpose. There is no mold to making albums. Like all art. and every time you discover a mold, you should immediately break it. our new album is more of the same. Five guys making music on their instruments. Very natural and organic. You can hear the voices and the instruments. Whereas say on a p diddy or the new Justin Timberlake album, you can’t hear any instruments. Its all just music, because so much of it is made in a computer or on keyboards. So its just this combination of sounds---rhythm and melody and harmonies—that come together to create this sound. And I like that. and man I could go on and on, because my favorite stuff the last few years has been like that. ginger baby by father Bloopy is very raw at first listen but it is very experimental; the two Radiohead albums kid a and amnesiac are more mainstream examples of that. They almost got there. but cats like takemura Nabukazu or the silver mount Zion memorial orchestra or stars of the lid really go all the way out there, where there isn't even a song structure anymore. And I think that's the future. Been so busy trying to make it mainstream I haven't had time to create more music like this, but I would like to focus more on it. I think then I would feel as if I was contributing more value to myself as an artist. Because at this point I think that as an artist I have kind of superceded where I am in my music career. Still putting out three and four minute pop/rock songs with a five piece band, but my heart is longing for twenty minute one note drone music that goes somewhere else entirely. 

The only male strokes fan in America speaks. That's me. all my guy friends give me a hard time for it. I love them anyway. went out with the guys tonight. I am so drunk. waiting for my Minnie driver. Some smart witty and charming girl to come prancing into my life with a mind bright and sunny, deep and rich and sparkly and never ending.

My friends always high fiving when they see some hot girl on the street or in a bar. They don't know. man we’re we wasted. that's not where its at. Smart girls rule. Funny and smart girls even better. Watching royal tennenbaums drunk. Funny. Hanging out with my friends tonight at the bar. Listening to all the old music they play from the eighties. The eighties are so in now. Remember when the eighties were so out? they were. Think of grunge. O.k. I don't mean think how popular grunge music copy cat bands are still today in the MAINSTREAM; what I mean is think of how really really really cool people think of grunge... o.k. now you get it. Exactly. Like please turn that off NOW! that's the way we used to think of eighties music, once it hit the nineties, even though eighties music was still being shoved down our throats everyday in the mainstream. It used to be so hated and made fun of. Don't worry, in ten years, by approximately 2013, maybe 2017 grunge will start coming back big-time [I think it has already—God will it just go away for a few years at least???] It will be HUGE!!!! And bands like green day, blink 182, sum41, 311, good charlotte, and creed, and staind and disturbed, and all the other one-name nirvana wannabe bands [forgive me for knowing all these names; I had no idea I did really] will be on those sort of reunion or nostalgia tours together. Wait and see. And it will be worse than that. There will be Seattle and grunge shows on VH1, showing all the same shit we've already lived through. Yakking it up for the younger generations. It will happen the same way all these metal hair bands are just about to start doing it today, or even all the fifties doo-wop groups are doing it, or all the older country singers are doing it. the nostalgia tours. it aint a pretty picture, but it’s a living. Simple.

We humans are so predictable. It all comes in twenty year cycles. Sometimes twenty five. Like what is actually happening now with eighties music. Seriously. Bon jovi is actually starting to become cool again. with the kids. Its nostalgic for us man. Last night we were wasted and what were we doing when bon jovi came on? We were guzzling booze and shooting our hands up into the air singing “I'm a cowboy on a steel horse I ride!!!” and high fiving each other. Cheesy or not. yea baby. Duracell commercials or not. crazy. if I ever start doing Duracell commercials I pray that any of my friends please kill me. as a favor. Thanks. I will appreciate it. got me thinking about it. I miss my friends from high school. I think about them all the time. remember that? man getting drunk or getting laid was all that mattered. When did it all turn into being about making money? I don't know. but that's pretty much it now. everyone’s always talking and thinking about success and money. but tonight was different. All singing and dancing and high fiving and drinking. It was fun. Me and Bas talking on the way home about the friends we had in high school that we don't hang out with anymore. We decided that its important to really be careful or at least to have some care or concern when we’re hanging out with people. not just to hang out with anyone anytime. You take the risk of ending up spending all this time of your life hanging out with people who aren't even going to be true blue or close to you later. You know, its that whole thing of not giving yourself away to people who don't deserve it. sometimes you have to be strong to master that way of being. [remember that one time when Anthony Robbins told everyone ‘you are only as successful and as happy as the people you choose to have around you. look at your friends. Take a good hard look at them...’ and he went on and on and it really had an impact at that time on us. you do an inventory. I look back at the six or so best friends I had in high school and only two of them am I still tight with today. the other ones we just grew apart. It happens. its not a bad thing. It happens. sometimes I think I gotta look so and so up and see what they're doing. Sometimes you hear stuff about them like oh did you hear that such and such has aides, or got hit by a car or won the lottery. Its fucking crazy. cause as obvious as everything seems around us, it never hits home really till it hits home.

Current Spin:. Non-stop strokes new one. not as good as first one for me yet. but still like it.

In the studio all day yesterday, over twelve hours, adding two new tracks that may or may not go on the new album. but we worked our butts off. 

I am tired of seeing a different articles or dissertations pop up every other day about music downloading. People are wasting their time and everyone else’s talking about it, philosophizing about it. what we need is a programmer to come out of the closet and he will make millions of dollars overnight. The solution, what will happen, is very obvious. Hear it now, believe it when you see it. All music will be digitally encoded with download stamps, to prevent it from being downloaded except through proprietary software that comes on everyone’s computer that you pay a monthly fee for, just like you now pay for your phone bill or your electric or your cable. All computers will begin to be manufactured with anti-music-downloading software that you can turn off by paying your monthly bill. Don't download music? Don't pay. Don't want people to have to pay to download your music—for example with a free promo track? Then don't digitally encode your new song; or better yet—encode it open or closed, depending on if you want people to be able to stream it or download it and how many times. If you choose to, you can always go buy a “descrambler” to avoid paying like many assholes currently do in order to steal cable TV. Cliona told me the other day, “I guess people just don't feel the criminality of it as much because they don't really know the victims and no one really gets in trouble for it.” once this system is setup it will be more illegit to steal music, etc. like anything else, internet access, electric, etc. most people don't go around stealing that stuff. it's a service and most people are happy to pay for it. again, what we don't need is more people talking about it, ruminating on it. what we need is for the programming to be done and licenses secured with all the major computer manufacturers. 

Current Spin: rock bottom by Robert Wyatt. A classic, although it hasn’t gotten under my skin yet. 

“Grief doubts God.” Ram Dass. 

Again and again I find myself filled with enormous feelings of gratefulness for my close friends and family; I am very blessed and lucky for this. 

Discovering a personal power within that is based on not wasting any time on things that are not aligned with my outcomes/results for the year and over all life. This is not easy. It is a field I have studied for years now. I have about sixteen years of intense study invested into time and data management skills. And still feel like I am just learning what it takes to achieve, to really achieve results. The more you focus on it, the more you learn, the more you realize how short life truly is if you plan on achieving everything your heart desires rather than just dreaming. I observe that a lot of people spend a lot of time doing things that will not contribute to the achievement of their personal goals; unaligned actions abound. Spontaneous watching of TV [as opposed to deliberate scheduling and taping]. Drinking and ‘partying’ is another very popular one. People will ask, hey lets go have a drink. Things like happy hours, going to clubs at night to sit or stand around and watch others. I am not against any of these activities for others, just observing how much time one can spend in a lifetime doing them while discussing their real life goals and passions rather than actually doing them, or even starting them. the difference between the doers and the dreamers. The haves and the have-nots.  

I don't think I am any better than anyone else at this. but I am finding it easier and easier to “know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em,” so to speak. Knowing when to stop watching a movie or a video as soon as I realize that I don't like it. The tendency is to finish watching it anyway, just because you started it. Now I just turn it off. Same with music. I used to feel like I had to listen to a CD all the way through, maybe there was something there that I needed to hear, you know, like studying it or something, getting to know it because everyone else is into it. Now I can get through a CD I don't particularly enjoy in less than five minutes. I follow my intuition. If I am not enjoying, then I just skip through it. I no longer feel this need to hang on. My intuition knows. This creates more time to enjoy the things we find that we actually really get off on. And for each of us that is different stuff. just because the rest of the world is at the moment obsessed with eminem, Britney spears, or Jennifer lopez, or with forwarding email jokes or chain letters et al., doesn’t mean they hold any significance to you or me.  

We went and saw Zach Zischin perform tonight at the wall flower gallery in downtown Miami. The guys from DC3 were backing him up. The sound was amazing in there. Zach was so good. I spent half the show moved and inspired and the other half depressed out of my mind that he isn't yet famous and for that matter the rest of us aren't yet either. I swear to God he was playing for ten people. And he was putting on a world class concert. Crystal clear. Gorgeous pop craftsmanship. So me and la Princesa

I cannot believe how much great unknown music is out there. Everywhere I turn there is some great band or artist that I had never heard of somewhere on the planet making some great music.