Sunday, March 19, 2006

Music is Poisoning Me

i used to listen to music all the time.

it was like church.

from the time i was really young, it was sit, sit sit, then later sit and cut and paste and listen listen listen to music and get lost inside of it. worshipping, mindlessly.

what happened?

i think it was a few things.
i have to now point out the irony of the fact that i tried to put on music on my itunes to write this diary entry to and had to turn it off.

i can't handle a soundtrack anymore.
everyone else around me seems totally capable of listening to music while they email, while they work, while they write, talk, live.
i can't do it. actually, who am i kidding. i've never been able to. i couldn't do my homework with music on. i coudln't concentrate.
music was different. music was an activity in itself, unless i was doing something completely visual, like drawing or collaging or making a fanzine or pasting up shapes and glow-in-the-dark-stars on a ladder onto the ceiling in myu bedroom. music was o do physical, listening work to.
i think part of the problem is that i don't do those things anymore. almost all of my work is brain work. that doesn't allow listening. and when i am doing nothing, i want quiet.
i don't listen to much music anymore. i can't really handle it. and it frightens me.

it's an identity crisis of sorts.

i've been at south by southwest for 3 days now.
this is the land of music, of overmusic, uebermusic, of too much sound, of show flyers and business cards and CD demos flying through the air like so much pollen. they all land in the gutter.
you see them there, soaking in the dirty rainwater, but you can't stop to reflect, the crowd pushes you on. noise and more noise drowns out even the good music.

in the last 3 days i have
-played in a rehearsal space with brian for 7 hours
-played a show for about 1000 industry people (it was a good show, a good show yes yes yes)
-laid comatose in the hotel room, shunned housekeeping
-spent 12 hours in the studio recording with ...and you will know us by the trail of dead
-been in countless bars and clubs playing music

and i have been wondering all the while.
music?
what is this shit?

so

i put music on, music people give to me, and i can't hear it anymore. my mind is full of things that aren't music.
but there are So Many Ways of listening. i can't help it. i have always listened to lyrics first. through the years i listen with my business head, my ME head, will this band be a good opener, will this band appeal to other people, will this band XXXXX and all of a sudden i cannot hear anymore. my head is so clouded with judgement that i can't listen. i can;t hear the way i used to.

i used to just listen. and i liked, or i didn't. then all of this happened.

that's why i was so ecstatic when i found regina spektor. sure, i was excited because my brain fired off FRIEND COMRADE WE SHOULD PLAY TOGETHER OOH TELL PEOPLE OOH but fundamentally there was something deeper, something that said: none of that shit matters. i felt the same way when i heard the latest antony & the johnsons, and the trail of dead record that came out last year. just.....Good. good good good. disregard all other voices while listening. but it's getting harder.

i almost never listen to music anymore. i own great headphones. i have a great stereo at home. but i almost never use them. i can't. when i have free time and i am on the internew or emailing, i need silence. when i am at home, i like to listen to my apartment. when i am doing dishes, i turn music on. i have two choices: Friend Rock or Not. Friend Rock is the name i adopted (from ad frank, orginally) for the CDs that friends and fan give me. they accumulate very quickly. when i get home from tour, there are usually dozens. they get given to me on the road. i do not listen as i go along. i can't. i probably, at this time, have over 300 un-listened-to Friend Rock CDs in various piles and Cd wallets at home. I keep up with them, i organize them, but i rarely sit down to listen. when i do, it is a job. sometimes brian joins me. it goes like this:

insert
play first 10 seconds of track one
> if engaging, listen to next 30 seconds
x if not, eject and fling
> if engaging, listen to next minute
-- if not engaging after one minute, skip to next song
x if not engaging after next song, eject and fling
> if engaging after next minute, comptee song and continute listening
> if still engaging, rejoice

this is a VERY basic breakdown. often i will skip through 4 or 5 or 6 songs on a bad CD before flinging.

but a lesson in demo-giving....make sure the first two songs are strong as fuck.

back to my conundrum.
listening to music has become WORK.
i don't want it to be. i listened to music for years because i loved it, not because i wanted anything for or from it, not because i wanted to DO something with it.
though that;s not really true....even in high school i was making music videos in my head to every song on my walkman. but that was outside reality, it doesn't count.

it's all fucking relative.
we played for a huge audience at SxSW, and fucking slayed the show as far as i'm concerned, and the first reviews to come up on the web were terrible. but the show was great. it's starting now....the Great Divide.
i can tell now, there are going to be people out there that just Have to Despise this band. what are they listening for? what do they want? some people freak about us, some people hate it. obvious. but DESPISE US? is it that we're so threatening? why? because we're dong what we want? because we're not directly mimicking bands from 1983? or 1973? or 1993? i dunno. maybe.

but i think Everyone is listening differently nowadays. the Joy Of Music is disappearing rapidly. it's all about other things. things outside. things like credibility, coolness, crowds and t-shirts. when did it happen? this must have been happening in the late seventies when some people were listnening to donna summer and some were listening to the sex pistols and that's how you chose your friends. but was it like THIS? where a band was a compelte advertisement of Who You Are, the way it seems to be with teenagers nowadays? was i in the middle of it and didn't notice? confused. bob lefsetz would have an answer, i am sure (bob: i was born in 1976).

about a month ago i got the new kate bush CD. i am not a fan, i actually just recently discovered her catalog, which i like don't love.
i was curious. she hadn't put out a CD in 12 years. double disc. i heard the about the fourth track (mrs. bartolozzi) on the first disc and i just stopped. i fucking loved it. and i didn't listen to anymore. i just listened to that track. over and over. for five days. i probably put it on 20 times. i couldn't bring myself to listen to the rest of the disc, much less disc two. wrong of me? i don't think so. i was just so excited that i wanted to savor it.

i want music to be like church again.



ach.


conrad from trail of dead fascinates me. he is one of the best songwriters i have ever met and he seems to be totally blase about recording. but then again, he's made more records than i have. will that happen to me? will i disappear into the next room into the clutches of a video game when someone is singing a vocal on my next record? it's totally possible. he's a genius. he can do what he wants, he gets no complaints from me. rock and roll and what it means, all of this shit, is a myth. everyone does what they want to do. always has been. there is no Truth.

recording with them today was mind-blowing. so different from being in the studio with brian. this band pieces songs together. they're almost never in the studio at the same time. i can't fathom that. what can that possibly BE like? we listened to track by track and i laid down piano on a few tracks that weren't finished, taking sveral takes to get everything right. then we did a new song track from scratch (me on piano and conrad on guitar and donald on drums) and then conrad and i laid down some back-up vocals on the one we;d just recorded. and it all seemed....so....simple. when brian and i are in the studio it's like take after take of MUST BE PERFECT madness. and this was just...."oh.........yeah. it's fine". and it was fine. maybe we're too uptight. but then again, it's all relative. i listened to two ofd the finished tracks from the new trail of dead record and that shit is TIGHT. i assume they will take the mess and drivel i recorded and turn it into some kind of sonic masterpiece. donald and i had some art-noise fun doing a nuch of overdubs for a long song in which we put a brick on the sustain pedal of the 9-foot steinway and just made as much noise as possible inside of it using brass knuckles, sticks and guitar picks. conrad and i went out drinking and talked about music and the State of It.

there were moments in that studio earlier tonight where i felt complete, ever more complete than being in the studio making my own recordings. it felt real. making music without thinking too much. conrad and i came back to the studio after drinking at the local (have you ever tried an irish car bomb? - don't) and just played and played on the piano, re-tracing all the songs we'd written back to their stolen sources. his came from a shane macgowan song. mine was stolen from the psychedelic furs. his was stolen from radiohead, which was stolen from a paul mccartney song. indeed, he said, there is nothing new under the sun. we could have played this game for hours.




in other news:
the album is coming out (in the USA, at least) in exactly one month. the tension mounts as the reviews come in black and white from every side. the press in the USA is indifferent, the press in europe and australia are freaking. i am going home for a week or so of family and friends and rest and then we are hitting the road for about ten weeks nonstop. i will be surprised if i have the energy to blog but i might surprise myself as this had become ever more therapeutic. reading all of the comments (yes, i still do, you motherfuckers) is one of the things that keeps my life rolling and helps me not feel alone. i am constantly astounded and ecstatic to find how many intelligent and literate people read this shit and comment on it. i love the internet. i still can't believe it's completely real but i am starting to. every time i get a real, thick book from amazon.com i have more faith.










love
a

6 comments:

Redshift said...

I know how you feel. But it's too much subjection to this shit they call reality. When you listen to to much music the whole thing becomes major, minor, key changes, and mathematical patterns. The humanity (whatever the fuck 'humanity' was supposed to be in the first place) is lost. But you're a successful musician. I can't imagine how I would feel if countless people wrote in to tell me how my music had changed their lives. Since I discovered your your music about a year ago, it's kept my warm through every fuck up of a relationship, every day I've come home from losing jobs and my dignity. If you just knew how it'd touched people, the humanity would come back to you.

A few days ago, I discovered 'modern moonlight' on your myspace, and I'm already in love with it. I played it to my girlfriend in bed two days ago, and it changed things beyond recognition. But is this a runaway train? Did you intend your lyrics, your key changes, your major and minor to be expressions of yourself, when fans have taken it to be something "life changing" and meaningful? If so, then isn't that still music? Whatever you carry on to write and record, I'll still put it onto my MP3 player and go and sit on a bench somewhere with a cigarette and contemplate my life. And it'll still make me feel as though the world hasn't totally lost it's meaning. I have no doubt it'll carry on to pull me out of this teenage dementia.

Rob Hill said...

I have a NYC playwright comrade who went through a sorta-similar process. One day he realized that instead of writing for the sheer love of writing, with himself as sole audience member, a certain degree of success had changed all that. He was now writing FOR people, their expectations, their requests. It became working for commission - a business. Like house painting - "what shade do you want the pantry?" It took him a while to rediscover the pure joy of just emptying the contents of the brain onto the page again & mucking around like a kid with playdoh - not for anyone's benefit but his own. So I guess it's just a process you go through, & you're not alone. Maybe you'll be able to hear music naively (again?) around the same time you achieve studio blase-ness.

Meanwhile, I got Kate Bush's album the nanosecond it came out. Like all of her albums, I had to stare at it for a while before it sunk in. I knew better than to approach it expecting Hounds of Love II, so I tried to receive it openly, on its own terms. It took a few listenings, then it really snagged hold & I couldn't listen to anything else for well over a month. I even dumped it onto the computer in order to shorten the intermission of changing discs. Kate Bush creates this gauzy alternate universe for me that I don't want to leave just because the album quits spinning.

Also wanted to mention I've so far discovered Regina Spektor, Devotchka, & Casey Dienel through Dresden Doll intervention - so thanks much for that. Support our troupes.

md said...

I listen to music tons and bunches, but not when I neeeeed to think. I don’t know music. I mean, I know what music I like and what music I dislike. I don’t know the ins and outs of music like you do. I am jealous of that sometimes, but I am happy being in my little ignorant music bubble giddily bobbing my head to whatever comes up on shuffle. I wish I knew more.
It is true that a certain group of people listen to types of music and we get clustered… for example, I saw “v” for vendetta over the weekend and the music played in the background was cat power, antony and the johnsons, elle fitzgerald… all things I listen to, all things my friends listen to….oooooh yeah we were all excited to see this movie too… oh yeah, we all have the same tastes ha, those crazy movie makers for knowing this and putting are nice music into your nice film that our little group can enjoy and feel nice to. nice.
I am sorry that you can’t enjoy music like you used to. really. Critiquing everyone elses. Well, I guess, it is the same with paintings and me. I can’t look at a painting without critiquing it. I can still enjoy some of it though, I find ones I like and they hang in my room but don’t ask me to walk through a museum (some galleries are safe though). Ooo, you know what always happens is that I want to redo paintings and make them how I think they should be ooor just try to accomplish what they did do. (Is this why you do so many cover songs?)
It happens to anything you know too well. I would imagine writers can’t read just anything.
Why incredibly advanced in the mind people can’t be or function around other people.
I never thought about it with music before because, I don’t know, I am too in love with listening and being taken by music that I never thought you could just grow out of that with more exposure and living with it. I am sorry.

Enjoy your little vacation though. Be.

ESO said...

i have been here all week. eventhough i know it is a lie, right now i never want to see another show for the rest of my life. i want to go home and never come out of my door again. if you are still in austin, shoot me an email and i will let you know about the secret fugazi show at tgi fridays....

UrbanCelt said...

I'm the same way with music too. It can be a good thing or a bad thing. hehehe But yea, I think it really started back on the 70's too. But now more so with shops like Hot Topic springing up in every mall across the US. I personally listen to anything and everything I can come across. After all, that’s how I found your music :)

June Miller said...

Funny, the way you spoke of Regina is the way I felt of you guys when I first started checking you out. I still feel that way, honestly. I feel that way about Regina, too. Both of y'all are quite unique acts, and I can definately appreciate that. So while certain music critics may speak poorly of you guys, perhaps you should take Nick Cave's route and just ignore them, because they're most likely not worth your time or effort.

While your music not attract everyone, it'll attract the people that matter. You know, folks like the people who post here to tell you things like 'keep your chin up' and whatnot.

I can't imagine not listening to music everyday. I can imagine getting burnt out on it from being around it so much and having to work so hard for it, though. It seems terribly stressful. Perhaps on your week off you should just...I don't know, go for an evening stroll and listen to classical music on your iPod? Either that or songs you grew up listening to and loved and all that. In the back of your head you could be like 'Hey, I could incorporate that into a song', but mainly I recommend just listening and focus on the stuff around you. Nature walks: they're nice.

DAMNIT. I wanted to keep this short, too. Lastly, I'd like to say thanks for acknowledging us kids who post here. It makes me feel cool, at least. I'm sure the other folks appreciate it as well.