The City Veins

To shed a little more light on some of the issues within the band that Charles eluded to in his last blog, part of the tension results from songwriting and creative mission. My personal draw towards music has always been from a creative perspective. It’s a given that it’s fun to stand on stage and feel as if you’re important, and no-one in their right mind would totally distance themselves from the sex, drugs, and rock & roll fantasy. However, a great many musicians whom I respect did not approach their craft with any of that in mind, or at least convincingly appeared not to care about excess. In a very small way, and in it’s most palatable and benign form, this is what some of our arguments are about. How do you create a song? Who is your audience? What influences do you bring to the table? The answer to these questions are all relevant as you determine whether or not what you’ve just created, either collectively or individually, is worthwhile or a piece of shit. And it seems that no two people ever hear it the same way.
Music exists within the context of it’s own history, and from a creative stand-point you have to be cognizant of what tools you are utilizing and where they’ve come from. One is likely to think a song or work is valuable if they feel they are properly channeling those artists they respect, and equally likely to disregard elements they find to be juvenile based on their own musical preferences. It stands to reason that if the members of a band have differing influences that sometimes it feels like “A martian talking to a fungo” (Costner, 1988). As it turns out, we in The City Veins all have similar influences, but the differences are somtimes magnified when a single element of a song deviates from that particular intersection. It seems to be at the point of deviation that people become the most opinionated, and this issue has yet to work itself out.
Geography does, I believe, play an important role in the musical preferences of almost all people, especially for those who live near large urban areas. If you grew up in NYC, your likely to support various forms of hio hop, punk, and indie music, while influence in this area may be distributed by Fugazi, Q and not U, or Ted Leo. The DC punk sound is distinct from New York punk, as Seattle rock was different from all other rock of the ’90’s (and LA rock is inherently soul-less and concerned with excess and stardom). This may seem tangential from the previous discussion about our band arguments, but I think our personal geographies have more to do with these arguments than any other specific creative issue. While three of us are from the DC area, we have had diverging experiences and locations. Charles, who is the only one of us to ever live at a DC address, is much more tuned-in to the native DC scene than the rest of us. Adam lived in the southwest, so he is influenced by The Shins and other such bands. So times our differences geographically effect what we like and don’t like, and I think we each struggle to keep an open mind to each others opinions. Once that’s worked out: brilliance.
As a last point (if you’ve decided to read this far, bully for you), as someone who aspires to properly articulate his influences, I have a tendency to think of band value only in terms of creating something new and genuinely contributing to musical history. If we make money, that’s great, but I think the best bands are the ones that simply did what they thought sounded best and at least TRIED to push things a bit. That may not be the first thing we all thing of in terms of why we want to play, but it is mine. not that we don’t each want to sound like the artists we love, it’s just that they aren’t all the same artists.