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.