I've listened to alot of the stuff I did over the past two years, and I cringe when I think of what I've done to other people's tunes. What the Hell was I thinking? Well, I haven't a frickin' clue, really. A couple turned out okay, but for the most part, I'm serious crying out for musical therapy. Dr. Phil would've probably beat the shit out of your gentle narrator with my own Strat. It's just too easy, kids. Too easy to string together a tune with a buncha samples and then sample yourself at that one moment you played the frickin' part correctly, and call it a tune. Get a few guys to loop their shit on there, and you've immediately became a songwriter, engineer, record producer, band member, and cottage industry for free downloads on Soundclick to help 'em sell Google Ads, pop ups for Viagra and VIP Accounts for people who have a better credit report at the moment than your gentle narrator right here. Reading the above-- Yes, I actually read it -- I can see quite easily how this can be quite rewarding and, yes, dammit, fun for alot of people. It's a great way to reach out and jam with other musicians, learn about song writing and collaborating (gotta give and take, kids). And I've certainly enjoyed it. But there's a point where it really does cease to become real and tangible for me. And, despite this lengthly crock I'm typing, I really do value your time and have a soft spot in my incredibly small heart for you. Music's incredibly painful for me to create. It's not a shitload of fun from start to finish. I've learned to be acutely aware of when I'm having fun, and it's clear that what I'm doing at that give moment isn't worth doing. There's no sense of accomplishment in just being clever. Beware of that, folks. There's alot of guys out there right now putting on Puppet Shows (sorry about the caps) with samples and bits of noise and calling it music. And there's alot of muscians stringing together bits just far enough out of context to not get sued by the original artists and calling their stuff original work. But, and let me bottom line this, what I need to do, what I'm really struggling to do here, is accomplish Independent Music. And it clearly can/will/should/and might not suck canal water. But there should be a sort of guerilla quality to it. It should be a bit rough around the edges. But it should be honest. It should be a real as I can make it. It should have a powerful and painful and soul-wrenching reason for being recorded in the first place. It should be original from start to finish, sneaking in under the cover of darkness. It should be a very personal solution to the everpopular Empty Canvas Problem. So, lemme ask you, "Do you like Gladiator films?" I bet you do. Peace, Jim

Copied from a rant I did on My Space awhile ago: So, make sure your luggage is clearly marked and you put your lunch in the communal fridge with your name and today's date printed clearly on it with a permanent marker. Okay, been thinking about this Independent Music fiasco and looking at some of the common side effects and how it's affected what I've been attempting to do with/in a band and all by my lonesome all these millenia. What was once simply a basement hobby, shared with a few, and annoying to many, now has growing to epic proportions thanks to cheap recording software, an semi-easy learning curve and the advent of samples. I remember using LP records years ago by a drummer called Dave Kreiger(probably misspelled his name, but, hey, sorry, Dave! You're an Icon in my book), and they were called Drum Drops. He'd play drums in a simple pop/rock format and you could dub the shit out of your own stuff and it sounded like a song, complete with record static. What more could a budding Billy Joel Zappa possibly want? Later there were the myriad of drum machines and bass sequencers and midi-coffee makers and such. I've monkeyed around with all that stuff, especially the midi-coffee maker, and I've drawn some fairly obvious conclusions. It's pretty easy now to market yourself as a band, if you know enough about looping samples and such together. Hell, I know a kid from India who's a freakin' genius at it. He's so good he can actually sample tunes, process the hell out of his sample through some relatively cheap software and when it comes out the other end of his PC, it actually is almost his creation, and it's music. But is it really the path for a mammal like myself to travel? Naw. I think not. The internet band/PC music genre is turning as stale as Cheryl Crowe's last 10 CD's for me. The driving need to experiment is still there, friends and neighbors, but the impetus to write relatively listenable pop/rock tunes ain't really there. From time to time it's necessary for me to say "Ain't" so people will forget I was an English Major. Beware of grown men who go to college to master their native language. Suffice it to say that after having spent the last five years listening to Independent Music from good folks from all over this great globe of ours, I've learned that there has to be something a bit more visceral, emotional and soul-revealing than writing the everpopular Tune Of The Day. Damn, I got trapped into that one. The incessant worry someone might think I was being a turd cause I hadn't posted yet another butter-fingered guitar interlude in that seemingly mauled progression in A Major. Sorry, folks, all of you kindly souls who suffered and hopefully survived that (in hindsight) audibly painful growth period from yours truly, the gently venting author of this here Blurb. Call it a Blog if you like, but I'll take a fine Blurb over something with a name similar to the effluvia I recently passed through my lower intestine as a result of too much of that fine Dinty Moore Canned Chili. Okay, so lessons have hopefully been learned. Otherwise, we're all gently stroking ourselves in yet another sublimely private yet rewarding adolescent daydream with guitar in hand and adoring hordes of the gentler gender swoon as another power chord is ripped with a dashing pick scrape across the polished steel from those mills in our Great Midwest. I've learned that I can't post alot of tunes, especially something I hacked together in a couple hours of noodling with yon Fender in the wee hours of the morning. I've troubled myself over that alot, I have.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 IDENTITY Category: Music So the guy asks you, "Ah, you're a musician? Who do you sound like?" And here, for the edification and continued enlightenment of anyone bored enough to read these things, here's another topic to annoy and bewilder... It occurs to me that I've written music for longer than most of you have been alive, except for a few of ya', and I know who you are. Consequently, there's been a journey to a secret destination, not even map coordinates, and I've taken it to this point, and I'm standing there on the spot marked, "Is This Trip Really Necessary?" Answer, Yes. It is. I reckon it's important to say that I am a musician simply because it's a part of who I am. Apparently a large part, since I've done this for more years than I've done anything, including smoking. And like smoking, it's a skill... It's not something you simply drop because you're bored with it, or discovered the joys of topiary or flycasting or basketweaving or weaving parachutes from wildflowers. Long after the hairstyles have passed on to something else, and bell-bottoms become "retro," I'm still at it. So, I've taken the liberty to go through what archives of music I still have that I've recorded over the years. Seems pretty clear there's been a search in progress, and for what, I think I'm starting to understand. Musical Identity seems as fair a title for it as anything. Seems like I've done the four chord rock tunes, the 20 minute long space rock tunes, the 4 minute country tunes, the quasi-synth insipid tunes(other folks do them much better), some industrial stuff, and alot of other stuff I'm not sure they have a name for. Part of this, I'd find it really easy to blame on the fact that I play more than one instrument. That leads to the inevitable writing on more than one instrument. How many? I'm not really sure. But I don't play drums. So, I'm left with a confusing array of musical styles and no clear path to what I really sound like. "Who Do You Sound Like?" Beats the Hell out of me, Sparky. If I do something on acoustic guitar, my daughter says it sounds like country, even with the sheet metal press sample gently grinding in the background. So go figure.... I'm starting to think, however, that it's more how I present stuff. I'm thinking the best thing to do would be to put all the weird space stuff on a seperate page, the countryish stuff on another, the 4 chord rock on another, and, I know you've been waiting for this, and so forth... Musical Identity, I think, has more to do with influences than anything. Apparently I'm influenced by everything from a great toilet flush to that cheesy music they play in Chinese restaurants (Love that stuff with the weird mandolins). I find it very difficult to dislike any type of music, unless my kids are playing it louder than the TV so I can't hear that documentary on maimer bees elected to the US Senate. But it might be a great time for some judicious pruning on some of my music pages... Peace, Jim