The City Veins

As time marches on, pressure mounts on us to try to get the ball rolling on our EP. We had a very good practice on Saturday; all of our stuff sounded better than it has in a while. We’ve worked out a good 7-ish songs to record for the EP. As of right now we are undecided about how many songs we’ll release, choosing instead to wait to see how things turn out. In the end it could be any number between 4 and 8…we just don’t know right now.

Charles and I had written the beginnings of a song about a month ago that was based on a Billie Holiday chord-progression. The song as it stands sounds nothing like a Billie Holiday song; ultimately it is just a pure rock song. I believe I blogged about the process of writing this song a while back, but its final incarnation is actually the straight forward rock song that we had been trying to write but failed. Though I stated that we had finally settled on something more complex and “intelligent”, everything is subject to change when you add the drums. The fact is that in a three-piece band each member can drastically influence the feel of a song with even the smallest of actions. I am not trying to say that Spencer dumbed-down the song, although his inclusion in any activity does make those around him dumber (do you see what you get when you mess with a warrior?). But Spencer has an amazing capacity for doing what any good drummer should: arranging a song through influencing its dynamics. He can add power or pull a song back for some space. To his credit he has been doing this very well since the band moved out of songs written before he was in the band. If you are going to be a great DC band, you have to have a drummer that can influence a song. The musical legacy of the district is based around the drums, so your boy better be good.

(Note: This post was written before Spencer called me snarky. This is not attempt to mend fences….generally, I still think he’s an ass, but you put up with it for talent)

In addition to the drum-led legacy of the district, it’s pretty-clearly punk that has traditionally driven this city forward. But there is certainly a difference between west-coast punk and DC punk. Actually, there’s a difference between DC punk and almost all other punk scenes. For my money—though I am certainly biased—the DC scene is willing to borrow from multiple musical formats, while punk from other scenes can be guilty of sticking to a script. I think this allows us to try to use the DC scene as a strong influence without actually being a punk band. A punk mentality can be a huge asset to people who like to think to much.

On this here blog last Tuesday, Charles partly described how crazy he is. I highly recommend it for those who missed it; I thought it was one of our better posts ever. Maybe that’s just because I know Charles, and know that he is genuinely crazy. Not crazy in the harmful way, mind you, just in many weird little idiosyncratic ways.

My favorite idiosyncrasy is how one beer makes him so much better at playing guitar. He doesn’t need to be drunk or buzzed, nor does one beer get him drunk or buzzed. But it’s all he needs to play better. It’s like he’s Popeye and the beer is his spinach, a magical music juice.

I am in the process of trying to convince Charles to make “Charles is Crazy” a weekly series of blog posts; I picture it something like “It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means. Time for another installment of ‘Charles is Crazy!”’ If you would like to see such a column, please comment and tell us. I also encourage those of you who know Charles to share your own favorite Charles idiosyncrasy. Best one wins a free City Veins CD (oh wait…)

Photo by Flickr user it_grrl

Today it’s time to talk politics; namely, the Democratic primary. I’ve avoided doing this for as long as I could because 1) I’m not sure our band blog is the right place to do it and 2) I’m pretty sure no one really cares what my opinions are anyway. But in the absence of other posts today, this is what’s on my mind so I’d thought I’d share.

As Aaron has noted in his snarky “God, I am soooooo clever” little way, I am for Obama. This is not to be “cool” or as part of some idol worship; indeed, Like Dahlia Lithwick in this Slate article, the excessive adoration and “hip” celebrity status he’s achieved has caused me to question on numerous occasions whether he’s the real deal or just maybe the coolest politician ever, a guy everyone wants to be friends with but with little substance. I also don’t support him out of some deep belief in “hope” or the notion that he’s a messianic “change” agent here to deliver us from the evils of Karl Rove; I’m far too cynical for all that. In fact, I think I support him despite these things.

I’m for Barack Obama because he’s the best person for the job and I believe his plans are the right ones to address the issues we face. Rest assured, that wasn’t a decision I made without inner turmoil and wrangling - over his ability to be commander-in-chief, over his resume, over whether or not his rhetoric really was empty. But having wrestled with my decision, I’m more confident than ever in it. I won’t get into specifics on why; anyone who wants to have that discussion and/or debate, I welcome it and I can be e-mailed at spencer@thecityveins.com

In other words, my vote is for Obama, not just against Hillary. That being said, the last few weeks have really shown a lot about why this woman should not get the nomination. Frank Rich sums this up beautifully in his editorial “The Audacity of Hopelessness.” For those without registration on the NYT site, in the article Rich cites the preemptive arrogance Hillary had in the beginning of the race (believing herself to be inevitable), the innumerable blunders and strategic mistakes of her clearly clueless staff of advisers, the way she and Bill insult every state that she doesn’t win, the campaign’s complete misuse of its funding, and so on.

Some of the best lines from the article:

“This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.”

“The “experience” mantra has been compromised not only by her failure on the signal issue of Iraq but also by the deadening lingua franca of her particular experience, Washingtonese. No matter what the problem, she keeps rolling out another commission to solve it.”

“This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.”

I think you’re seeing Hillary for what she really is: a self-righteous, self-made martyr who thinks that power is owed to her and lashes out like a petulant child when she doesn’t get her way. She also wants to take credit for everything in Bill’s presidency that people still like and she wants to stand against all the stuff they don’t. As Obama said, “she has essentially presented herself as co-president during the Clinton years. So the notion that you can selectively pick what you take credit for and then run away from what isn’t politically convenient doesn’t make sense.”

In a little more than a week, Texas and Ohio vote and here’s hoping those states give this spoiled child a time out.

As we’ve continued discussion on our upcoming recording/EP release plans, we’ve turned our talk to what to call the finished CD.  Naming things is always one of the worst parts about being in a band.  It’s a fine line to walk to choose a name that both represents what you want to represent without being one of the following: cheesy/cliched (see: this Toby Keith CD and most country CD titles in general); pretentious/obtuse/confusing (see: the full title of Fiona Apple’s “When the Pawn”); or just dumb (see: this Elton John album). (NOTE: Thanks to Cracked.com’s “20 Worst Album Titles of All Time” for these titles)

Fortunately, in the hierarchy of naming band-related things, naming CDs is not the hardest thing. Naming the band itself is the hardest. CDs come and go, and one bad title can be made up by a great title after it. Also, people will often forgive a dumb title if the music is great, such as with Sufjan Stevens’ “Come on Feel the Illinoise,” an inane title for a collection of brilliant songs (which themselves have dumb titles).  Songs are the least hard to name, though with them it’s much harder to avoid cliches.

Album/EP titles fall somewhere in the middle.  You want an accurate reflection of the songs contained within, but you’d also like it to convey some greater meaning.  Well, this may not be true of everyone, but it’s at least true for us.  Our first disc, “A Weekend Affair,” referred to the fact that those 4 songs were largely written and recorded over the course of 2-3 weekends.  This was back when The City Veins was a band in name/concept only; I didn’t know Charles, Aaron, or our former guitarist Adam yet and those guys put computer drums on the tracks when they were first recorded; I added the live drums to those tracks a few weeks later.  They hadn’t practiced or performed together yet. Now, we’ve been performing for a year.  We’ve defined our sound and musical direction through a year of evolving and experimenting (and the aforementioned line-up change).  We’re looking for something that sort of brings that all together. Plus, we’re most likely going to have cover art this time around, so the title will have to invoke some kind of idea for that too. It’s an interesting choice to make.

That being said, we’re leaning toward 2 choices, both taken from different lyrics Aaron has written: “Something Much Louder” and “By Sight and By Sound.”  Both are by no means final.

Your thoughts?

I grew up in a philosophy heavy household. I didn’t know it until I was in college and became a philosophy major; to me philosophy was just conversation. But my mother is an aspiring theologian and my father holds a PHD in philosophy, so the dinner table becomes a testing ground for all sorts of philosophical rhetoric and discourse. This, of course, makes us a bunch of asses. But this is what I see when I float metaphysically above my family and try to stare back at myself. A dangerous past-time indeed.

As a band, I believe we are guilty of spending an awful lot of time trying to define ourselves to the world. What is The City Veins? It is a constantly negotiated and created being. We write a shitty song and suddenly we are a shitty band. It certainly has happened. We write a great song and we are on top of the world. The same goes for gigging and now album creation. Each moment allows you the opportunity to redefine and shift your personal meanings. And when I ramble it solidifies my stake as a musician and not a writer of fine prose.

Spencer is combing through our lyrics to come up with names for the EP we are working on (actually, we’re not working on it yet). Admittedly this seems extremely pre-mature since we have yet to record a single moment of music, as well as come to some conclusion about what the EP will include. We probably need to write another solid song or two in order to really have a fine sounding EP. And of course we want to put our best foot forward as this is a Zeitgeist-construction moment. However, coming up with a name before the fact may help to point us in a direction, any direction. There is no one correct creative process that all bands go through, or at least I doubt there is. I often wonder whether other bands start an album with an idea, a note, a full song, an ideology, or maybe something more comprehensive. Often I will arrive at the end of an album or a song and wish that I had started at a different point; that the end product would have been better had I begun the process from a different point altogether. So let’s try naming an album before it’s complete, base the music and lyrical content of a portion of the songs on the name of the album and the cover art. After all, we are anything but a completed article, so why not start by defining something in a vacuous and flimsy way.

(Note: I am not being sarcastic; I actually think there is value in this)

So, like my parents dining-room table, I am using this blog as a medium for testing my ideas and philosophies. I always understand things better after I’ve said them, even when I’m spouting shite (as the scousers would say); talking bollocks. This is an area of construction, just like gigging, writing, etc. Check back as we start this EP-writing process…there is more bollocks to come.

(Authors Note: I am aware that Zeitgeist is not the proper word for what I am referencing; that the word has to do with ethos of a culture and people, not of specific entities within a system. But the word has wrinkles of meaning that don’t translate perfectly in English, and who can really tell what German words actually mean anyway. Also, to divert your attention away from this, I will point out that Charles thought the song “Glad Girls” by Guided By Voices was “Black Girls”—- making it the most racist song in history—because they “only want to get you high”. That’s some J. Edgar Hoover shit right there. See—he’s dumber than me sometimes).

Photo by Flickr user hive.