The City Veins

I am crazy. On my last blog, I categorized many of the small things that make me crazy. In fact, that whole blog is mainly a monument to my insanity. I have kept most of the things that go through my head from this blog for a while now, but no more!

For some reason, I am almost always doing math in my head. For example, if I see a digital clock display, I tend to figure out all of the prime numbers that are multiples of that number. I have been doing this for most of my life. There are other operations I consistently perform in my head, determining if numbers are can be evenly divided by 4 or 8 for example, but I have one that stems from being a musicians that I wanted to relate. When I am performing repetitive actions I count them in my head, but I don’t count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9…, I count 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4… For example, when I am running I am count 1 2 3 4 over and over again in my head. Always 1 2 3 4, and I wonder if this is a side effect of playing a lot of 4/4 rock music for the past 16 years. Do non-musicians count like this in their head? Did Johann Strauss II count 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3…?

As a side note: Is the Count from Sesame Street really named “Count von Count?”

Photo by Flickr user Looking Glass.

As my good friend Charles and that dick that sings for us have recently mentioned here, we are going to be doing some new DIY recording soon. However, we don’t have the capacity (technical or mental) to record drums ourselves, so if you know of a good engineer with a knack for getting awesome sound of the drums, we’re happily accepting recommendations.

We are a band. We’re making moves. We had a couple good concerts last weekend. Now we’re shifting our focus to recording a new EP of unspecified length. I think we are all agreed that we need a few more quality songs in order to put together a great EP, and of course that’s what we’re looking for. Now if we can just get Spencer to stop his Obama rant. I love Obama and I voted for the guy on Tuesday, but Spencer has become the Obama Girl without the breasts. There is the low buzz of MSNBC present for nearly every one of Spencer’s waking hours, and thus mine as well. The note on “twitter” that Spencer is praying for Obama to come back in New Hampshire is not out-dated; he has not given up hope. I just want the candlelight vigil to end before he sets fire to the house; though it was nice when our heat went out the other night (do you know how expensive oil heat is? It should have been an alternate cause of death on The Oregon Trail to dysentery and gout). My point is we need to wait for the fire in Spencer’s loins– burning brightly for Obama—to subside before we can start writing new stuff.

We all really like the new song we’ve written, even though it was met with mixed reactions by all of the people outside of the band who have heard it. But we are becoming more infatuated with odd time signatures, which I think could benefit us in a good many ways. First of all, it forces us to think about transitions and parts in a way that we normally do not. When a song is in a constant time you don’t really have to consider the movement from one section to the next; everything is naturally smooth. But “naturally smooth” often becomes “boring and derivative”, so switching things up to force genuinely new thought is really a good idea.

The primary goal of effective songwriting (in my opinion) it to put yourself into the music while getting yourself out of the lyrics. I hate pronouns in songs, unless the person is play-acting. If I use an “I” or “me” or “you” in a song, it’s likely that I’m trying to play the part of someone I find abhorrent. I like to create characters, mostly psychotic or evil in some way. Martin Scorsese once said that whether or not he chooses a film to direct was dependant upon the main character’s approach towards both evil and exceptionality. Every man has evil in him—even the most moral—because without knowing evil you cannot know morality. So I like our songs to serve as surveys of morality through the microscope of a fully examined immorality.

Photo by Flickr user John Joe Crimmings Photography.

I think that Aaron gave short shrift to our concert at Iota last Friday. It is one of the highlights of my music career. On Saturday, Aaron and I were trying to determine if we have ever had a better concert. We could come up with shows with more people, but none with the feeling and excitement of Friday night.

First, I actually walked away with money! I had been complaining for a while that I had never left a concert with more money than I came in with. Whatever money I have ever earned has always gone into the nebulous “Band Fund.” This is a complaint that Spencer has heard many times, and after the concert he told me how much we had made. He then said something like, “We do have a Cd to record, and other costs, but…” and I interrupted him and declared that we were all splitting the money evenly. Spencer readily agreed, probably thinking that this would stop my complaining. He should know me better than that.

Anyway, the real highlight was the concert itself. The number of people who came out was overwhelming. Spencer, Aaron and I were just sitting in the back, watching the club fill out and wondering what to do. Usually, we spend our time worrying if enough people are coming. By the time I got on stage I was filled with energy, and probably grinning like an idiot. I honestly don’t remember most of what I played. After Spencer counted off “Strike Up The Band” the concert is one big blur. I also wouldn’t be surprised if every song was markedly faster than we usually play them.

Mostly, I remember looking out at the crowd. I remember my sister and cousin looking up at me, and smiling. I remember my friend Spencer freaking out when we started “Death or Glory”; it turns out that he has the title to the song tattooed on his arm.

So thank you all for coming out. We would also like to apologize for all the emails that you received in the week prior to the concert, but I think that spamming you was worth it.

There is almost too much to say regarding the events of this weekend. If you are reading this blog, it is likely you were at Iota on Friday night. I don’t know many more people than those who were out at Iota. It was a ridiculous show. For the first time in this band we felt like rock stars. We obviously don’t expect that sort of support to occur all of the time (although most of the time would be nice). And now it’s Monday and I’m back at work (clearly only in physical body), made painfully aware of the fact that I am not a rock star. However, for about two hours (the show and the moments afterwards) last week we were rock-stars. If we can move that to about two hours every week, on average, I think we will be pretty close. You have to ask yourself what constitutes your existence. We all spend roughly 25% of our lives sleeping, but that does not define who we are. If we could up the percentage of time we spend “rocking” to an audience of many as we did Friday night, I believe that we could find justifiable support that we are rock stars. We are certainly very close in our own minds.

So yes, Friday went well. Because it easier to bitch than to bask in your own splendor, that’s about all I would like to say about Friday.

Saturday was also nice. There were some complicated situations that arose out of the night, of which I will spare the reader. But let’s just say that despite the fact that the sound system is horrible, the people at Lo-Fi Social Club are great. It is rare to find good people who run clubs that are genuinely concerned about the experience from the musician’s perspective, and I’m not just talking about on-stage. The ownership at the club—a young guy named Neil—generally treated us with respect and acted the way that humans should treat others. Sappy, oh yes it is. But in a business in which words like “respect” and “justice” are only used with a prefix, it is worth noting. We all agreed that we hated the sound system; it’s just a tough room because the drums reverberate like crazy. There is very little you can do about that, save for becoming an antiquary that specializes in tapestries. But I shall forgive them that, for though I hate the Baltimore music scene I quite like the Lo-Fi Social Club.

On a final note, I’d say the one telling moment to take from the weekend was in the last transition of our newest song. We currently call this song “Seashore” as a reference to Broken Social Scene’s 5/4 Shoreline because our song also is in 5/4. (Editor’s note: Shoreline by BSS is actually in 7/4, Aaron is just an idiot) Anyway, we fucked up the last transition. It’s hard to tell whose fault it was, but we were not on the same page. But it didn’t matter: we were having fun; we were playing hard; we were taking risks. We wrote that song less than a week before performing it in front of the biggest audience we’d ever experienced. And that moment signifies the sense of hope feeding off of risk that we can use both musically and mentally. This idea is not really as obscure as I’m making it sound. If we take risks, good things may happen or they may not (the song is good, but we fucked it up), but at the very least we can foster the hope that we can succeed.

And now I’m Tony Robbins.

Photo by Brad Diamonds.