Go Analog Baby

Modern recorded music is boring. Hundreds of tracks per song, and yet everything just sort of blends together to create a sterile feeling of plastic unease. It feels like something created by a guy sitting at an office chair, far too comfortable to get any sort of emotion out of the music.

To combat this, I am recording my next record (or four) on a 4 track cassette machine. I’m not doing this so I can have a “Lo-Fi” sound. I’m doing this because of what I can’t do with a 4 track cassette recorder.

I can’t stack endless guitar tracks to create a “full sound”. I can’t comp multiple takes of a part together for the perfect performance. I can’t manipulate sounds endlessly to fix mistakes. I can’t cut and paste.

In late June I will be going to a cabin in rural PA to record. I’ll post about my journey here once it’s complete to inspire others to do the same.

Forward Towards Freedom

I think I have ADD or something. I switch drastically from one idea to the next. One week I want to be a big mug maker, the other a musician. Setting up websites in the modern era is both super simple, and overly complicated. SEO is trash, all the stats and analytics.

Dammit Jim I’m an artist not a mathman!

Whatever, I’ll figure it out. I’m ordering a new tape recorder, and I think I will document the process of making that album. It should be fun. Everyone loves a documentary.

Just stop thinking, start doing.

I will also be making more mug at theneonbee.com go check it out!

Marketing

I’m not good at marketing. There is a deep seated block inside me that prevents me from marketing and promoting my music. I don’t know why it’s there, but it’s there. I believe it’s some sort of genetic thing. I can’t dunk a basketball, I’ll never bench 300 pounds, and I have no ability to “sell” myself.

This doesn’t bother me. In fact, the moment I just accepted this, the moment I felt free. Instead I can focus on what I’m great at, creating. I don’t have a dedicated business plan, or a desire to exploit all the algorithms a bunch of Silicon Valley douchebags created. I’m just going to create the Best Rock & Roll Album of the Decade.

A lofty goal for sure, but if I hyper focus on creating a great album, I can play shows again to promote it. Maybe only 500 copies get pressed, and maybe it takes me 5 years to sell all 500 copies, but it’ll feel so relieving to know that those 500 people are the right people to have what I have created. It’s better than ending up like Hootie and the Blowfish, with copies Cracker Rear View selling for a Nickle at used record stores nationwide.

My only promotional tactic, outside of shows and open mics, will be cover videos on YouTube. It’s a bit of an oversaturated market, but it can at least get a few people interested, and it’ll help me to become a better performer in the long run.

Be your own manager

I’m in the process of getting a few songs on Spotify right now. Doing all the “promotional” type stuff required to be a manager and marketer are exhausting to me. There’s a block in my brain to “play” the algorithm game, to make an EPK, to be inside a “genre”. I don’t know how other acts do this.

Am I just experiencing “resistance”. A wall that my mind puts up to prevent me from having success? I’m not sure. I’m just a little anxious. I’ve never attempted to take things serious before.

I’m going to just leave everything ready to be submitted for now, take a break, wait for my lady to come home and eat some dinner. We can take a good “cover photo” tonight. Slow and steady wins the race.

I Wanna Soak Up the sun

I took a walk around the lake today. I sat by a small stream and wrote a poem. Got some ideas for a novel that I swear I’m going to start writing soon.

I’ve come to realize that a simple walk and some sunlight can spark pure creativity better than any drug can. It might move slower, and require more work, but you won’t get fat and you won’t forget you’re ideas.

In Defense: Abandoned Pools – Remedy

In the late 90’s and early 00’s my dad would play The Revolution 101.1 when my brother and I visited his apartment. I remember hearing Remedy sitting at the dining room table while my dad was cooking dinner just engrossed in the song. I only heard the song a handful of other times, but the main hook ( Then you can be the remedy, and I can be the enemy…) got lodged so deep inside my psyche that it became my “default” song when I mindlessly sing.

Given that there are many other songs titled “Remedy“, it took years (and the advent of YouTube) for me to finally track down Abandoned Pools version.

Founded by Tommy Walter, the original bass player for The Eels, Abandoned Pools was a barely noticed and quickly forgotten alt rock band. Sporting only two singles, the aforementioned Remedy and Mercy Kiss the band never really caught on.

Remedy has touchstones of early aughts alt rock, (glitchy programmed drums, copy/paste repeated vocal lines to fill up space, held power chords that hold on for just a bit too long) and songwriting wise, it really isn’t that great. It could use a better bridge, and the chorus could really benefit from the “Drive My Car” trick, and the song isn’t anything special live. Yet, there is still something so satisfying to me about this song.

Maybe it just captures that post 9/11 melancholy aesthetic in a way that at 12 years old I could have something to attach to. Maybe the melody to the chorus had been rolling in my subconscious, unused, until Tommy grabbed it from the ether. Maybe it’s just catchy. Whatever the case it’s stuck with me and has influenced how I go about crafting choruses to this day.

Getting Started

Well, I finally bit the bullet and created a full on website, domain name and everything. I will do my best to make a blog post daily.

The picture above is from a bathroom at a bar in Brooklyn. I had just gotten out of the psych ward the day before and instantly jumped in a car for two shows in Brooklyn. I stayed sober for the entire weekend. Some Brooklyn band thought I was a great vocalist. I played tambourine in Walking Distance. Josh Mackie of Gunk got us kicked out of the bar. I stayed at some house in Jersey that had over 200 copies of Jerry Maguire on VHS where I ate homemade sushi.