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July 31, 2004
July 30, 2004
Who Watches the Watchmen?
When I was young I was really into comic books. Always was. Started with whatever I was given as a gift: Batman. Justice League, Superman, etc. Then as I became more interested, I got really into the X-Men. That did it. The first issue I bought with my own money from mowing my Dad's lawn was Uncanny X-Men #123: Chris Claremont writer, John Byrne pencils, and Terry Austin inks. That holy trinity of comics creativity got me obsessed. The X-men were powerful yet flawed, with problems, issues, demons. I was hooked. From there I got into Avengers, vintage Spiderman, Hulk, Fantastic Four, new McFarlane Spiderman, Cloak and Dagger, and then ...The Sandman and Swamp Thing. Right in the middle of my high school years, I had enough dough from waiting tables at an Itailan restuarant to keep my comic habit satiated. At that time, came...
THE WATCHMEN.
Alan Moore writer, Dave Gibbons pencils and inks. Alan Moore was something of a comics rock star, having written "Swamp Thing" for years and turning it from an odd book at best to the most mind bending, universe travelling saga I had read up to that point (besides, of course, The Sandman: Neil Gaiman's masterpiece). The Watchmen was a 12 issue year-long series telling one single story. The first issue was like nothing I had seen, it read like watching storyboards from a film, complete with camera movement. It was the story of a future where "costumed adventuring" had been commonplace, but was now outlawed. The "superheroes" were not super powered (save one, an accident of science) just odd characters who felt some need to be of service. The Watchmen examined the superhero model critically; asked why and what was wrong with people who would do this. And why the tights? As the series started, the heroes were aging, getting paunches, and living "normal" lives, when one is murdered, the story begins. There has never been anything like it.
Years ago, I had heard the Terry Gilliam was set to make The Watchmen movie, and I was really excited. I found a copy of the script at a convention, and bought it. That was all I heard about it until now. Looks like Darren Aronofsky, director of Pi (great movie), and Requiem for a Dream is finally making it. When I read the news, I dug out my copy of The Watchmen compilation and have been reading it again. It's just as great today, it makes the same sense. Talk about flawed power; the heroes have problems relating to people, there are subplots involving infidelity, insecurity, the government, and rape. The main plot? The end of the world of course...it has that in common with other comic books.
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July 29, 2004
Wicked People Have No Songs
Listening to Nick Drake. We got alot done this week. Dave has "famous guy" stuff to do for the next two days, he's hosting the GPhoria Awards show for video games on Saturday with Carmen, and the next two days are in preparation for that. It's cool, cause I could use a little private working time.
Monday we worked on "Skin of Your Soul" and got it pretty solid. This one is now my favorite one to play. Might just call it "Skin"... jury's still out. We also did some work on "Half Hearted" and ran all the other ones.
I collected a list of the band names that had made it through our 4-man bullshit filter, so we could see them all in one place, and maybe vote and pick a few per guy and see if there was some overlap, and that might show us something. Dave and I had been brainstorming on some new names the night before ( I had to let my frontrunner name go, just wasn't going to happen) and we were ready to set one. When we all sat around and brainstormed, Dave's very first band name came up again, and it sounded pretty good. We were hashing through one name after another, then all of a sudden he shouts - "Guys, how about "___ ____ ______"? And for the first time with the name hunting, all four of us smiled and said "Oh, yeah - that's ...a good one". Not that there is alot of disagreeing, but with band names, like I've said, there is always someone with a veto or some band already has it. ALWAYS. This time, unanimous... It ended up being one word from Dave's very first name, before we even had officially joined up together, and another word from the previous night's brainstorming. Like we had a piece from the band's beginning, and a piece from the fruits of all the trial and error of discovery. I am being vague because we will spill it in the next few days. I bought the domain, and posted a page... somewhere out there on the internet is our new home. Being a Gemini (ok, I halfway think astrological profiling is a massive load, and half have to own up to the fact that the Gemini "description" fits me alarmingly well.) That night I was waffling back and forth on the name, loving it, not loving it, mocking it up to see how it looked in a logo, and wondering if it was the name. Yesterday the name sank in, and now I love it. More discussion on it when we announce.
Yesterday in rehearsal we worked on "The Loophole" and fleshed out the chorus, and found some great new parts that are making the song much stronger. "She Won't Last" and "The Loophole" were two of the first tunes we wrote together back at Perkins' garage, and now with all the new songs sounding so good, so much more like a band, the "older" jams are benefitting from some fresh examination.
Still playing Dave's old/new jam as an instrumental til I have my parts dreamed up. Today we gave "She Won't Last" one more bit of focus, and It sounds better than ever. Same thing as "The Loophole" - we are getting used to playing more and more, so the earlier stuff can be turbocharged now. It sounded passionate and hyper dramatic today. Afterward, everybody laughed and was stoked. When something synergizes, sounds greater than the sum of it's parts, it's intoxicating.
I read a post on 6767.com where someone implied that I have pull at MTV since I used to be VJ back in the day. And that is some reason why the guys might have wanted to play with me. I guess I would probably think the same thing ... if I wasn't me. In case any of my avid readers are under this impression, let me clear it up for you. I have absolutely no "pull" at the old "M". I worked there for a year and a half over a decade ago, and have no ties with anybody there. I wish all of the people I worked with well, but I'm just kind of crappy at keeping in touch. I have written an email or two to Kian, the super-cool makeup girl, and to Alex Coletti, the producer of MTV Unplugged when my Skycycle record was finished. I sent him a CD, cause of all the people who worked at MTV, he seemed by far the coolest, and the most into music as a fan. One of these days, I will unload the whole MTV saga for those interested, up until now I have had such a chip on my shoulder about it, but as time goes by, it settles in my memory as an amazing trip, and one I am glad to have had. My two years in New York were a frigging circus, and while I think I probably would do it differently if I had to again, I know that every experience is a good one if you can grow from it.
In a nutshell, I was hired because I was a musician, and got all hyper when I talked about music I liked, and my downfall (and why they fired me) was that I wasn't so good at talking about music I didn't like. Right after I got hired, Nirvana broke, and MTV was, for a brief and shining time, all about GREAT BANDS: Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. (I know it's hard to imagine watching it now... but there used to be music on MTV)
Hey, it was fun for a while; I got to go to Spain, saw tons and tons of shows, got to live in New York, and most importantly (and most painfully) lost some of my naivete about the music business. I have some crazy stories I will have to lay on you sometime about that.
Anyway, the point is, I don't have any magic connections to MTV that make me any kind of asset to the guys. I mean, please; Dave just finished his own reality show on MTV, I think they will take his calls just fine without any help from little old me.
Some people go to college, some people get jobs out of high school, I was fortunate enough to get to pay rent by talking about music I loved on MTV... for a while, it was great.
Well that's it for today. I am debating being as forthcoming as I have been in this Blog in the future. All the stuff I write about the songwriting process, and exactly what happens in rehearsal, etc. On one hand, I think that I as a reader would be really into a band being frank and honest about what they do to make music, and on the other hand, it can be a mystery killer. On the third hand, I want to read this back someday as a diary and relive these exciting times, and since I have always been awful at keeping a journal, this will have to do.
Not sure...
(closed)July 24, 2004
Houses, Channels, Agencies
Today Dave burst into the jam room all excited about a piece of music he had had lying around and wanted to put together. He had a bass part, and a verse and chorus section. I learned the parts, and by that time Chaney showed up and got the bass up to speed. Dave came up with a really heavy Sabbathgardenish bridge with some tricky stops that is really fucking fun to play.
Speaking of fun, I have to say that more and more, Stephen Perkins is just a God. He tackles every single part that comes up instantly, and he always, absolutely always plays with solid conviction. We played the Dave Jam over and over cause it was so fun, I was having a great time just playing the guitar, and didnt want to work on singing yet. Got it on "tape" and moved on.
Yesterday we got a basic arrangement to the other new one together, but I wasn't sold on it yet. Went through some older versions before I had lyrics when it was "Untitled" and found that the guys were playing a tighter arrangement that got to the chorus quicker and it seemed to be better. We re-did "Skin" for a while that way and it sounds good.
Later, I came up with the start to a song that is kind of weary that I really like, I am listening to it now. After I got it recorded a bit, Dave started playing the chords to Nirvana's "In Bloom" and we joined in and played the whole thing, what a great song.
"Sell the kids for food"...
(closed)July 23, 2004
2 new songs
Today was a productive one at rehearsal. I went into it thinking I would just have some finished lyrics to "Outsider", but I did some playing before we started (everyday at 3pm) and got inspired. Woke up at noon, (kind of digging the no day job schedule) and started listening to mp3's of rehearsal. We have been rocking one, "Untitled", that all of a sudden, I started getting lyrics to. I was still writing when I showed up to rehearsal and Chaney wasn't there yet, so I took a break to walk around the hot San Fernando valley with my sketchbook to try to get as much as I could down before we started playing. I came back with most of them done, it turns out that my library visit yesterday was really productive. I was inspired by a section in one of the Nietzsche books that compared the skin that covers the bones and blood of the body, to vanity which covers up the passions and needs of the soul. We worked on that for a bit, then did "Outsider" for a while, then spent some time on "Half Hearted".
July 22, 2004
Downtown Library
Yesterday we had the day off, so I drove downtown to hit the Los Angeles public library to wander around all the words and work on some lyrics. Just walked up and down the aisles and looked in random books for things that excited me. I checked out some Nietzsche stuff and it was really engrossing. Especially a chapter in "Human, all too Human" about the soul of the artist. Amazing stuff. Then I went into the crime section and checked out a book called "The Dark Fountain" about some serial killer early last century that posed as a religious missionary from "The Lamb of God", but would end up murdering his prospective converts.
The Library was massive - I only saw a fraction of it, looked around the Tom Bradley wing mainly. There is a huge atrium with these giant art piece chandeliers that reminded me of New York. When you see that kind of grand interior installation, it's pretty common out there, but in L.A. it's pretty special. I walked around the streets a bit, then the lyrics to "Outsider" started to come so I sat in my car and put them down... nothing about Nietzche or Dark Fountains, but I find that "getting lost" and letting the randomness of a day hit you can let your mind open up to the creative voices sometimes.
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July 20, 2004
I Will Always be the Outsider
Just got back from rehearsal. The blistering fast pace continues. We have "Outsider" -our first acoustic-ish jam almost ready, I have the chorus lyrics, but am still "la la la"-ing the verses. Want them to be just right. I really like this song, very moody and melancholy. Makes me think of rainy days. The songs are growing and tightening up, we're tweaking and refining our parts, and Dave is coming up with a lot of great in-between song jams for when we play live. We're starting to sound more and more like a band. "She Won't Last" and "Ashes" are sounding especially powerful to me. We have two musical jams , one that I have "la la la's" over, and one without that the guys are raring to play, but I don't have lyrics yet. Bums me out a bit, cause I want them ready to play. I can't write if there are no words floating around in my head. I find that typically, there is one week a month where the "spirits" are present, and I am inundated with ideas, the rest of the month it comes and goes.
Anyway, I think this is a dry week. All words seem the same, they are blank of meaning, just consonants, vowels and volume. The melodies are always not far away though, that's why I can usually always come up with "la la la's" if need be. So here I wait, waiting for lyrics to "Nothing Wrong with Me" (if that what it ends up being called), and "Untitled". "Outsider" is what I am trying to finish first, it's right on the edge of my mind, and if I keep it there, all of a sudden-- while eating lunch, walking up the street, doing something very far removed from thinking about it, there they will be, the words.
Also, the guys can jam songs, and come up with parts very quickly, and I need to hunker down with one song at a time, to really get it written, I can only really single-task with songs. Last was "Ashes" -which sounds great - very heavy - and now; "Outsider" - acoustic and melancholy. After that, who knows.
(closed)July 14, 2004
In the thick of it
Well, we've been at the rehearsal space for 3 days now, and it's is going really really fast. There is an awful lot of energy and excitement surrounding the new jams. We've been wood shedding and refining "She Won't Last", "Unholy Ghost", and "The Loophole". We've got a new one called "Ashes" up to speed now, and two more fully realized songs that need lyrics. We work today, then Chris is out of town for a few days for his sister's wedding. Dave and I will use some of the time jamming some acoustic ideas. We've got a couple of sweet Yamaha acoustics down at the studio, and we're going to get some non-rocking stuff started. I am really excited about that because since Skycycle broke up, that's where I have put my musical energy - the melancholy acoustic stuff. Dave is singing more and more in the band, and I think our voices blend well. I think if this band can have the hard rocking shit (which it definitely does), and the more song-based jams, and also a gentle acoustic aspect, I think we'll have it all.
I have been working on recording rehearsals, and documenting what we do. My whole musical life, I have relied on tape recording rehearsals with a crappy little hand held recorder, that made up for in portability and ease of use what it lacked in sound quality. And boy did it lack sound quality. I find that the only way I really can get the songwriting machine working is to live with the jams in daily life away from rehearsal. Usually in rehearsal if you play or sing a part, and no tape is running, you think you will remember it right the next day, but that's just lazy and usually wrong. The next day comes, and you try to re-create it, and it always ends up different. With this band, I wanted to get something more thought out happening.
Here is the new process: I bring a tablet PC I bought last year (a PC with no keyboard, you write on the screen with a stylus) that I was going to sell- to rehearsal. No need really for a tablet PC, it was the only thing I had lying around to use. I hook up a stereo mic to it (got adapters so that it goes down to a quater inch jack for the tablet). I use SoundForge 6 (a simple waveform editor and recorder) to record simple .aif files of us jamming. Not super pro quality, but one million times better than a cassete recorder. I take the tablet home every night and copy the .aif files over to the G5. The PC works with the Mac great on my wireless network, incidentally, the tablet just pops up on my desktop and I pull the files over (would have thought It would be much harder). The copy usually takes about a half hour, for a gig and a half of files. That's way too much space, so I open the files in Peak 4 on the Mac (pretty much the Mac equivilent of Soundforge on the PC) and cut them up. Make them mono to save space (the way I'm recording, it sounds like mono anyway), and save them as mp3's. Then for my own personal use, I drop the files into iTunes. I make all the "album" names "rehearsal" and set up a smart playlist, so that anything with the album name "rehearsal" will show up in it. So far, so good. Next on the list is to set up a place online for the guys to get to them and download. Looks like it will take a bit of time every day before rehearsal, but overall, it's light-years ahead of what I have been doing, and at the rate that this new band creates new music, it's absolutely necessary. Also I am enjoying it, just waking up, getting my tea (trying to drink green tea these days instead of coffee) and listening to the day before while getting new ideas for today.
July 09, 2004
The worst song of all time
I am in the theatre waiting for "Anchorman" to start, and we just
heard what I am sure is the worst fucking song of all time. It's called
"what's up with that" by some plankton named Skye Moore. I pray you never
have to hear it. It's so bad, I don't even know if I can concentrate on the
movie. It's so bad, the theatre actually smells like feet and hot garbage
after it played. It's so bad, Satan is thinking about giving his soul back
to him becuse he doesn't want it anymore. It's so bad it loosened the
fillings in my mouth. It's so bad, the guy from Creed just called him to
give him props. Uh oh, the lights just went down....
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July 02, 2004
Back at Danny's
Last night Dave and I went back to Danny's (the Canadian rappers finsihed tracking) so he could put down the "final" guitars on the demo for "She Won't Last". This is still just our first three song demo, but Dave wanted to re-track the guitars going through real amps instead of the Line-6 Pod for sound. He laid down a sick solo, really nice, very sad and dramatic (the song is about a doomed girl, who can't see outside of herself to see her situation). Jeordie from A Perfect Circle came by and hung out, He and Danny and Dave are bros. A good guy. I brought the video camera along and got some footage, but I am not sure how good it will be because digital camcorders seem to have such a hard time in low light. Dave added some really good angry bleeding bits at the climax of the song and we got out of there around 11pm. We are in a bit of a conundrum with the second verse, as we are trying to decide how organic/inorganic we want the approach to be. There are alot of both kinds of tracks laid down and it could go either way.
Tonight I go in to track the "final" vocals.
Next week it looks like we move from Stephen's garage to a full fledged rehearsal room. Great news. Perkins' place is really nice- all comfy and soundproofed, and his house has a good vibe to it, but I like the idea of a jam room that is separate from any other responsibility than allowing us a place to work.
July 01, 2004
HumanDescent -> Gallery
Wow, this is some sick-ass weird photoshop work. Very nice.
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