one year later

its been almost one year since the kayo dot tour ended and all the craziness that ensued with it.

i look at what the remnants of the band are doing now and i feel strangely unimportant.

obviously toby and mia continued on with kayo dot and in addition to getting to record and self-release his tartar lamb project, toby also composed the entire new kayo dot album and from what i am told it is going to be very different but toby seems genuinely excited about it, moreso then i have seen him in a while so i have high hopes.

forbes is now booking a bunch of shows at a music space in hyde park and also keeping up with his own recording and gigging career and doing well for himself in that regard and getting more high profile gigs.

and then ryan, john, and tom have formed a new band called ehnahre and given the little bit i heard of the project when i recorded a solo for their demo, i was really excited about the project and now i see they started a myspace page and have gotten some extremely positive praise.

and here i am still plotting how the baliset album will eventully surface, these guys are all making me feel very un-productive. which means, i need to start working harder! i don't want them to have all the fun now would i?

i keep thinking i should post a blog about why i quit the band, not just to explain for anyone who wants to see it but also to make peace with myself on why i did it.

anyhoo, above all the crap that led to what happened in the band and above the different sides of that discussion, i have to say that these guys are some talented ass motherfuckers and to see them moving onwards towards really cool musical experiences and projects makes me happy.

after 15 years even i sometimes don't understand it

i spend months upon months agonizing over musical ideas or lack thereof. i record some vocals i want to eventually redo and i feel more frustrated as a musician then i have in a long time and yet...


i record demos of my ideas so i won't forget them and then i take a couple days to get back into a practice routine and it ends up making all the difference in helping me remember what it means to play guitar again. i play a little bit of a paganini exercise i practiced alot in college or i play "whiskey in the jar" or some johnny cash tunes to work on my vocal abilities and i find myself at ease again with myself. its a quiet night in somerville, the air is cool, and i feel at ease for at least a few minutes...

in other news, i bought the new radiohead album for $3. they said name your own price and i wanted to take part in this even with my normal shortage of funds. the reason why i felt really inclined to do this is that this felt like an *important* musical thing going on in the business. the songs may or may not be awesome but the way radiohead is helping present a model for digital music distribution is like a light going out to all the "sinners" aka downloaders like myself and millions of others. will we be repentent? or will we continue sinning? i am not sure but i like where this is all going.

as a good friend of mine named Eric Peltier was telling me, he thinks the model is good for radiohead but may not necessarily work for other artists. i tend to agree with this. obviously what this all represents is another step on the way to taking hold of the world we are given now and the possibilities we have to promote ourselves and merchandise ourselves digitally while still being able to profit from the venture. lots of other artists besides radiohead have been doing this for awhile now. i mean look at youtube or any other site where you can become an independent celebrity. but the key thing with the radiohead manuever is that it has the momentum and thought of all those other artists trying to reconcile the 21st century with the music business, however what radiohead has that others don't is a familiarity throughout pop culture with a strong history of integrity and critical notice and the sales history to bank on. so their endeavor will help shed a light on the movement as it were and open up more of the big wigs eyes to the things we all have been understanding and dreaming about and working towards for years.

testeroo

testes testes 1...2...3?

art v. ambition

i just sat through the special edition of the movie Dune. almost three hours long. and the entire time i was watching it i kept thinking about the idea of what separates art from ambition.

with all due respect given to the source material, as the novel gave birth to my long-aquired band name, i sat through the movie marvelling at the ambitious ideas that david lynch was trying to accomplish. obviously the special edition was put together without his consent and so i can't judge his intentions on it but i have seen the original cut and saw the problems with the way they told the story.

too much exposition, lots of inner monologue and not a ton of action. but at the same time it made the movie one of the most interesting film experiences for me. so i found myself liking the movie tremendously for what it was attempting to do and seeing faults with it at the same time.

so tonight while i watched i came back to the debate i was talking earlier about and wondering where the disconnect happened for david lynch and where that disconnect happens for any artist. he had grand ideas going into the movie i am sure and judging by the time put into the cinematography and effects he definitely was trying hard to achieve some sort of innovative use of the sci-fi film. but in the end nothing in the movie gels quite right.

so where did the ambition go and when did it decide to leave the final product or was the project doomed from the start.

as i type this i realize that this problem affects me too. i had a grand blog running in my head while i was watching the movie and couldn't wait to sit down and type it out. but the blog i am posting is hardly the kind of impressively well thought out idea i had in my head. so where did the disconnect happen? how will it affect other aspects of my creative life? has it already happened without my knowing? how do i prevent it?