In Two Weeks I Will be Back In Fresno

I'll call Max while Conner is setting up his drums. I'll call Grayson while Max is setting up his keyboard. I'll call the cops while Grayson is setting up some terrible mountain of guitar terror and tell them to disregard any irregular seismic activity they feel coming from the lesser Fig Garden area. If they show up, we'll just write a little ditty for them.

I'm at the point where songs are harder to write because I've been writing in a specific style between these two albums that I'm working on and when I come up with something new, usually there's a big leap from the last song that I've written and I have to figure out if I can successfully translate what my brain's ambition is for the song I am currently writing to the page/keyboard. Like taking into consideration the album's themes/sounds and where they could go, I'll write these new songs and sometimes fail and sometimes succeed. This last song that I wrote took me about ten hours spread out over about three days.

So in the period between now and when school stops (really I've just got two tests and two essays), I've got to get all this radicalism out there on paper and keep on learning these songs and striving for them to be better. We will not be ignored.

There's a band named Art Brut that has a really good album out. Bang Bang Rock and Roll. Its shouty and guitary and most importantly it is of a brief duration. The lead singer just kind of talks through these meta-songs, like the one called "good weekend" where the best line is "I saw her naked... twice!". I might hate it in a few months but I really like it now. Its kind of how we'd all have liked the Libertines to have been, smarmy self-aware brits that just ROCKED. 7/10.

Blah-r Blah-rs 3
(Contains Spoilers of sorts, but you already know how it goes)

We saw Star Wars three last night and it was a revolting mess. I haven't seen Episode two yet, but I've seen the others. Having not seen the middle of the original trilogy, a few things were kind of confusing at first, but nothing too big, things like Anakin's mom dying and where all those clones came from. Besides, the script is telling us what is going on and reminding us what has gone on constantly so there's no way for us to get lost. They relate this in the way that a Star Wars fan would relate it to someone who hasn't seen the film. At one point, Obi Wan says to Anakin 'I owe you. You've saved my life eight times, I won't count that other time on (exotic planet name)' And you can picture the guys in the audience with the t-shirt that says 'Luke, I am your biggest fan' counting it up on their fingers, yep, eight.

It looks and sounds awful. The graphics have gone nowhere good, the shooting and the robots look cold and robotic, as you would expect, but its the backgrounds that truly offend. There's a scene in which Anakin goes to visit Palpatine at something like an Opera house, and the performance they are watching is supposed to be like a Cirque de Soleil wonderment kind of thing, but just looks like a really shitty screensaver, its an orb with some flowy red ribbons. If you saw it on someone's computer screen you would change it to a scrolling Marquee that says "Hey! Idiot! Get some sunlight!" The senate backdrop is one of the worst looking things ever, its an awkwardly endless room full of the exact same wild water rafts.

You get the feeling that George Lucas, original sci-fi auteur as he is (well, second only to Ed Wood whom he channels tons in this unintentionally), wanted to do EVERYTHING himself. The end result is like a toddler vomitting on a half-colored in fun napkin at a family restaraunt, the movie means so much to so many people that they'll probably fold it up and put it in their treasure chest. What could have been a halfway decent thing he has to muck up with money and computers. Natalie Portman, for example, who I find attractive usually, looks in this movie like she's modeling for an outer space Land's End catalogue. When Anakin stammers 'you... look... great...' it is a truly ungenuine moment.

You picture George Lucas at four am in his souvenir-dotted den drawing up Anakin's little Jedi room, 'oh, there's going to be a nice spherical fountain in the middle of the room and a nice view of the city. Oh! And a desk with a tablelight against the window! In case he needs to write his Jedi memoirs and wants to look at the city! Man, I need some more Red Bull!' He finishes and goes to sleep. The next morning he wakes up in his Jar Jar Binks pajamas and takes his coloring pad to the studio and shows everyone and then the executives have a secret meeting: 'George is off his rocker! We need to hire ANYBODY ELSE to draw up these blueprints' 'But you gotta admit, Lucas brings in the bling!' I like the halls though. Lucas has good halls, like the opening spaceship hallway from episode four which they keep returning to in the latter half of this episode.

John Williams' score is nice enough, aping previous moments so we know when something important is happening, and to remember how much we liked it before, but it doesn't really add anything new. The robots sound terrible, they do these little Jawa-like squeaks that were obviously overdubbed to add some sort of comic effect that might only work comedically on five year olds or sixteen year olds watching with their grandparents. A droid will walk by and say something like 'hey, watch it', or they'll say 'ouch' if they've been shot. There's this terrible evil droid that's sick the entire time?! What? He's so annoying, its so painful to watch him move. And when they start fighting, you get pissed off, because apparently he was good at moving all along. Lucas, you fink. There's a lizard that Obi Wan rides around for a while during a pursuit and it is the most irritating sounding and looking thing ever.

The acting is atrocious. You see all these good actors, Samuel L. Jackson and Ewan MacGregor and heck, even Jimmy Smits, up there just looking as blank as chalkboards. You get the idea that Lucas was relying on their star power or natural charm to get himself through this mess. But the things he was so successful with, like Han Solo's goofy guile, he spreads out across EVERY MALE CHARACTER, diluting the original effect. The movie coasts along on the fact that we know where its going to go. This prequel trilogy is brilliant marketing in that it doesn't need to be good to do what it has to do, we know that Obi Wan is going to be in the desert, the movie just has to get him there. We know that Anakin is going to become Vader, the movie just has to show his arms getting chopped off.

It doesn't help that Lucas' dialogue is either clusters of monosyllabic ejaculations "Look Out!" "You Look Good!" "You made me blind with love" or quasi-political wankery "I thought we had a democracy!" The movie stutters along with all the grace of one of those battle walker things tipping over. Or it creaks along mid-cardiac arrest like Jabba the Hutt. Or it sinks impotently like those first few missiles that didn't destroy the death star. You see what I'm doing here, not only am I saying that this movie SUCKS, but I'm pointing out moments from the original trilogy that are infinitely more memorable than this trilogy's shiners (remember again I've only seen one and three): the pod race, Yoda doing some flips, Mace Windu flying out a window, umm... the underwater frog city... Natalie Portman's wardrobe... can't really think of any more...

The only way I could enjoy the movie was by watching it as you would watch a group of kids playing at an action movie on the playground. Nothing made sense coherently but everything made sense in the moment. Like in the introductory scenes where Anakin and Obi Wan are flying down to the surface of a planet, they are in the middle of a large-scale battle. They maneuver deftly through action after action and then suddenly a missile full of a lot of rowdy destructive droids hits one of their jets. Conveniently, every other ship stops shooting at them so the two jets can sort this problem out. Like kids on the playground you can't take everything into consideration. What is this, middle school?

There are many scenes in which we'll find ourselves watching a jedi knight or two being surrounded by robots and its like the robots are only programmed to watch what's going on. Rather than the room erupting into blasts centered on the Jedi Knights, the robots prefer to take them on one at a time. Again, here we go with kids playing with action figures. Once you've chosen your main action figure, there's no way that he's going to lose. You're a kid sitting there with one hand for holding your superhero and making it do insane fighting moves and the other hand for throwing the other action figures up in the air - there's no danger of them actually hurting the main character- they always die before they hit the floor. Lucas creates nothing likable, just uneven displays of jedi/sith power and piles of robots.

The movie starts picking up when Anakin goes evil. The transition between Galactic Republic and Galactic Empire is abrupt, but watching the Jedi all get turned on by their fellow fighters in the midst of battle is both kind of cool and sad. I felt nothing when Anakin attacked the young jedi, but the earlier scene with Mace Windu, though visually awkward, was kind of effective emotionally. At this point in the movie, so many things are happening that you are just kind of pissed off when fights aren't happening and kind of passively excited when fights are happening. Its a good, numbing effect.

The end was a let down. I mean, Anakin + lava bath = kind of a cool idea, but in execution, like the rest of the movie it was bad looking and un-involving. It was bold at least. But the real end, with Luke's "aunt and uncle" on Tatooine is boring, plain looking, and a bland bland way to end it. 3/10

The List:

Effective June 11th 2005 until further notice.

A. Music

(rules one through three are for Tyler, but may be followed by other band members)

1. Practice Keyboard for two to four hours a day (this rule is for me until school gets out):
Work on scales, pentatonics, basslines, syncopating

2. Practice an hour each day with either trumpet or bass:
Bass: octaves, runs, tone, speed
Trumpet: intervals, steadiness, speed, control

3. Dont practice guitar at all, just hold it whenever you aren't doing anything else.

4. Spend ridiculous amounts of time on tone: and helping others find the tone you want, muffling sounds, natural reverb. Synthesizers can only lead you down wonderful paths, the maze is always instantly exitable.

5. ** Make the instruments and the instrumentalists volatile enough to the point where we have to be careful. Danger has to follow at every turn in order for our journey to be compelling. Guitars are sparklers, drums are cannons, keyboards are radar screens where all can be seen, the bass is calvalry. Voice should be the reason that they're all there. **

6. Sing constantly: pitch and emotive control will develop out of this. Your pitch can't get worse it can only get better. Don't sing when you're sick. Tape over the mouth will help you creatively communicate when ill.

7. Listen to guitar music academically and pop music profoundly. Guitar music moves, but pop music creates. Be a guitar bachelor and a pop graduate.

8. And classical music when things need to be quiet. If you ignore it, okay, if you pay attention you might get better at where to take things.

9. Record instrumentals with the intent of them staying instrumentals.

10. New music must continually be sought out and listened to in a group. New music includes old music.

11. DO NOT RECORD THE SONG UNLESS THE BAND KNOWS IT. Not only knows what its about, but knows what it can be. Each member should be soldier and general. This will cut down on wasted time and improve abilities.

B. Daily

1. Eat breakfast every day. Jam on toast with orange juice will suffice. Cereal is second best.

2. Eat Lunch or Dinner or both every day. Lunch must include either fruits or vegetables. Meat is nice but not essential.

3. Light snacks are okay as long as they aren't french fries.

4. Penalty for violation of the healty food agreement is a strenuous jog in which walking is not permitted under any circumstances.

5. Eight hours of sleep at minimum. All-nighters may be pulled with jogs to increase awareness, and written justification of all-nighter.

6. Weekly backup of progress. Sunday nights at eleven fifty nine pm.

7. Two computers working on things. Dell for main recording, Gateway for overdubs. Names will be assigned to computers on a personal basis.

8. Practice will go for a specified duration as decided either early in the week or at the beginning of practice. Practice also includes group recording. Practice will continue until the appointed time unless it is unanimous that practice stop. If it is not unanimous the dissenting voice may challenge the opposition to a game or feat similar to the proposed reason for stopping. If the dissenter is victorious, practice resumes and must extend equal to time that the game or feat takes.

9. NO DRUGS OR ALCOHOL.

10. Epiphanies must be noted and appropriately dealt with.

11. Telephones are to remain off/inaccessible during practice.

Do They Move You Like Beethoven?
Do They Move You Like Bruckner?

This isn't like last year at all. Last year I was in my room alone and pacing around the room in a feeble attempt to understand Russian Women's literature. I would sit in my tent for a while and listen to Don't Stand Me Down or Tormato. When things got lonely enough I would put my can of change at the bottom of my tent and seal the tent up and kick it around like the lottery. Ted's bed was vacant and I used it to keep my Morrissey poster above and my Christmas candy that I still haven't eaten on. One morning when Jesus (Jesus Diaz, my housemate, not Christ) was playing "Stairway To Heaven", the kareoke version apparently, I moved over to Ted's bed and had to listen to the guys downstairs recording a rap album instead.

Today I saw Steve in the dining hall. Steve was my best Santa Cruz friend last year. He worked the door at the Porter cafeteria and I would always go and talk to him about music for a long time. A few times I went over to his house for parties or what have you. The first day we met I played a Fall song on the piano and he asked me to join a band of his that never ended up happening. It was college night tonight and the theme was 'Carnival', which is slightly less delicious than the Cinco De Mayo night but infinitely more delicious than Hippie Night. My goal of the week is moderation, so I had only half a corn dog, some fries with chili on them and two small bowls of fruit. I wrote an essay about Robocop in an hour and it might be the best essay I've written this year. Well, except for the Faulkner, but people, NOTHING could top that one.

I told Steve about Robert Wyatt. He was tending to one of the games set up in the cafeteria where people threw bean bags at clown heads. "I've already been hit by the bean bags tonight", Steve said. We talked about some of the music we were listening to. We both had really been listening to John Cale recently. I told him mistakenly that "Buffalo Ballet" was on Vintage Violence. I hummed a few bars of "Graham Greene". A few nights ago I was talking to Sam Saarni at his house, mentioning John Cale, and he told me who Graham Greene was and I told him that he was already a way better literature major than I was. I haven't even done any drugs.

The summer isn't just going to be recording music. It is also going to be about trying to hold on to Santa Cruz. I'm going to get everybody's address and bankrupt myself sending them mail and CDs. I don't know where I'm going to end up at the end of Summer. I've been telling people I'm going to design school up in Oakland, but I don't really have that much design experience and I'm too old to start. And plus the world doesn't need another degree that doesn't do anything for me. People at work were shocked today when I told them of my graduation ennui, they said that I could go to another country and teach english to underpriviliged kids, but that won't happen.

Last year I had zero songs and part of "Cuba" written going into summer. This year I have forty and at least ten of them are good enough to be singles and at least three of those are good enough to be number ones. But number ones in the seventies or the eighties, not the bland 2000s. To get a number one right now I'd have to have been a celebrity of minorly major acclaim for three years and be riding on the coattails of smoove beats and a female backing vocalist for nine weeks or however long Stylus Magazine said its been. So I'll get a number one on the college charts and we'll be a crossover hit and Target will like our music so much that we won't have to worry about jobs for a while, because "Look My Way" is going to be such a crowd-pleaser, we'll get sick of it and probably kill a roadie and "10" is going to be such a roof-raiser, they'll want to bring in a fire safety expert whenever we play it live and "Birds Rush In" will blind you with melancholy melodies and "My Light N My Time" will make you seventeen again and call some girl and say really stupid things to her.

I'm in a mixed place, emotionally. Its been a tough couple months as far as things go, I've been desperately wanting to get back to Fresno to do work, but I know that as soon as I go back to Fresno, my life is over and I fail. I'll get a job that will be able to buy me an apartment of my own, if only because I don't want to put up with the 'rules anymore' and I'll fall into a safe and repetitious group of friends and get fat and wrinkly near a college. Julia's dad said 'nobody EVER goes back to Fresno'. Its okay for the summer, though, isn't it?

Every place I consider has some sort of reason why I shouldn't go there. Fresno has few friends for me. Santa Cruz has too many friends and I'd get distracted. Culver City has nothing but taco stands. San Fransisco doesn't have any nothing. Portland rains and the thrift stores are picked over. Los Angeles is a giant octopus of horror descending from the deep to return us to various terrifying orifices. The weather's either too bad or too good everywhere. A "great day" in Santa Cruz means less and less. Fresno is so hot that old people randomly die on the streets and vagrants (who are the only people in Fresno who wear fitting pants) rush up and claim their watches and pocket goods.

All the states on the East Coast are too smart for me, all the states between the East Coast and here are probably too slow for me. The only time I was on a plane, it was hundreds of miles of nothing out the windows; Nashville was middle america's real attraction and you couldn't really tell from up there. I'm sure Nashville is nice, and I'm also sure that the parts of it sophisticated people like are similar to the sophisticated parts of Fresno that people like. Or at least the parts that allow for the sophisticated people to keep on living there and at least keep the depression at arms' length. I'm not particularly concerned with sophistication, its just another one of these ongoing battles.

I guess the best places for music would be like San Fransisco, Portland, Los Angeles or New York, but we're at the place in time where every guy with glasses and a salon cut fancies himself a genius and thus fancies everybody else less so. As long as our Ipods have at least a thousand songs on them, we're experts on being experts and don't really have to deal with anybody else's (comparably laughable) expert expertise. I'd have to either move the current band or get a new band. We'd have a guitarist from another country who could play really sweet licks.

Ah yes, last year. Last year there were no life-goals either. There was no medical school or law school or technical school or so on. There was the vague threat of graduate school, but that's done with for now at least. There was just us launching full-on into Love Drums, which apparently we aren't ready for. That'll be the first major label album we do. I'll go into the board room with a series of charts and describe to them the utter mastery and supreme marketability of the album. They'll be sweating tears and bullets of delight. I'll get a sixty million advance because my ideas will take a thousand musicians to create and they will each get paid 60,000 dollars because what use do I have for that advance money? If the advance is that much, think of what the royalties'll look like... thats some sweet mansion I'll have.

Steve's favorite bands were all really guitar-oriented. He would say that they were bass-oriented (I think the reason that he and I got along so nicely was because we were both admitted only-bassists, there's not shit about 'oh yeah, I play guitar too.' we both know that we only play bass.) but secretly there would be a lot of guitar in there. Bands like Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid, too abrasive for me I think. Husker Du, who are now completely unlistenable to me. I get a headache thinking about Sonic Youth- and don't think I haven't tried, I've owned all of their albums at some point, they just keep on not clicking with me. I swear I'm going to try and make guitars sound better.

Last year Grayson came up on my birthday and we had Mexican food twice and stayed up watching Patton and making a comic book. I'll talk about this years birthday next year. There has been no pacing this year, the nervous walks come in grander sweeps. In my mind there are magazine layouts and there are thousands of pages of scribbled notes, but those are in real life as well as in my mind. Both years the room has been full of discarded clothes and receipts from record stores, but this time I've got to be wary of keeping at least a little clean and I can't play the ukelele at four am because there is an Antonio sleeping not five feet from here. Last year I had the ability to nervously pace whenever I wanted or do jumping jacks. But this year, my claustrophobic activities are slightly more claustrophobic and self-consciousness. I can't live with friends though, I'd never get anything done.

Steve's job description moved downstairs, away from the cash register, so I couldn't talk to him for free anymore. I have to use a meal and go stand by the mashed potatoes to talk to him. We see each other briefly now, whenever I'm in the Porter dining hall area and we talk about Sparks and Scritti Politti and The Cocteau Twins and Roxy Music and all these other bands, but its different. I've got a new crowd- I've got a crowd, you know, and this year I just haven't had that kind of terrifying leisure that affords us moments of rare greatness. My Song right now is Robert Wyatt's "Sea Song" my song last week was "Paris 1919" by John Cale.

My goals for the summer are to record the three albums and stick my head in a bunch of different bodies of water.

Salvaged from the fifty five minutes of me recording myself writing the song "Brief Rebellion":

"that's not rebellion, that's smooth friday nights at pete's taco hut"
"the problem with writing a really brash rebellion song is that it doesn't work with jazz chords (switches keyboard from electric piano setting to electric guitar setting)"
"obviously these aren't going to be the words.. they have to be deprecating to someone"

No Room For Youth Or Yelling

So while I was truthful about not liking that song as I wrote it, I decided this morning that it was okay and I liked a bunch of the parts anyway and now it has a great bridge with harmonies and everything. Problem is it sounds like the song that comes after it on the album. They've both got the same kind of Billy Joel rip-off singing up high for the chorus thing going on and are both a I - V progression. They are also both out of the home key of the song. I'll make it sound different somehow. I'll double the vocals in one of them or something. Or maybe because they're songs of a similar type, I'll just play up the difference.

Also a lot of people on a *certain soul-searching computer program* are downloading a song from our very first album, entitled "The Speed Of Sound". This is because there is a Coldplay song out now called "Speed of Sound". The difference between the two is immense. I have not heard the Coldplay song, but I assume it doesn't have group vocals messing up singing satirical things. It is also probably not performed by a synthesized guitar and acoustic bass combination. Actually, nevermind. They are in for a treat. This song is great. I do a Paul Lynd impersonation.

Oh!, and at the end there's a little skit! The first character is me trying to sound like Goofy and the second character is me trying to sound like Moe from the Simpsons:
"Hey Mr. Bixby, how did we do?"
"Oh, well, um, I definitely thought it was one of the more upbeat tracks, you know. You've done better. But I think its going to be one of the more popular ones with the kiddies."
"You Think so?"
"You know, if you're into rock and roll, you'll definitely like this song, but you know, its not my forte, no, I'm more of a jazz man, you know."
"Okay, thanks Mr. Bixby thanks for the criticism. I'm going to get a burger now. (walks away)"
"Okay, bye. Oh, Jesus, I might as well just hang myself. Goodbye world, goodbye. (noose sound)"

The Spectacle! To Berkeley for the show!

I spent about two hours recording myself in the process of writing a song (I say um and 'not catchy enough' about a thousand times). I was going to transcribe it and post it here. I'd play a few chords and sing some place-words and then interrupted by a few famililal phone calls, I would get back to writing it. Talking about it helped, it helped orient exactly where I wanted the direction of the song to be going. Though it probably did more harm than good, it ended up being a song that I would really like in theory, or would really like, but would be by myself in appreciation for it. Like "Farewell Hijinx" from The Drop, I love that song but nobody will give it a second listen. I go through this five minute debate with myself concerning whether or not I want to nab a quote from one of my communism books, I come to the conclusion that my melody doesn't do it justice. I break for a telephone call and when I come back, I'm continuing as if I had never had the debate, singing the lyrics monotonously away.

I ditched the song in progress and ended up writing a satirical song about punks. They think till they're drunk and then drink until dawn, apparently.

Lovely Shoes, but What's the Use?

I want these albums to sound timeless. I want my records to sound like the Homosexuals or Red Krayola where the sound quality is so vibrant and powerful and BAD that you don't know where you are or where the people playing instruments are or what time it is or what year it is. I want the cds to be stamped permanently with audio scars and pocks and check marks. I want you to listen to it and wonder what it could have sounded like if we had gone into a studio. But this is what you get. Imagine it sounding how you want it to sound.

I want guitars. I want them to ring like the bells of truth from the highest towers. I want to not be frustrated when the band is there and I can't think of what song to do. I can think of it and I will. I will be able to practice and perform and play together as a band. These two albums are more and more completed every day. I'm jotting down ideas for the rock album, we're going to do that first, before we touch the others. And I'm already starting to think about album number four! I can't do that! I have to keep my head together and here right now.

I keep telling myself that if we ever get to a place where we can make money touring and writing songs etc is that when I get there it will be much easier. I will just write songs all the time and have a manager named Harry who will overhear a song I'm working on and say 'Brill, just Brill my boy. This one is going on the next elpee' because as it is, I write too many filler songs and don't care. Presumably I'll also have a producer that cares about what I think and doesn't just put compression on everything to make us sound like the radio. I'd like to have someone important have faith in me.

I'm okay with just a few people liking our music. When I was younger I pictured us like Jandek or something, except less cryptic and more productive. People would want to have all of our albums, but there was no way they could get them all, I don't even have them all. There would be posters and bootlegs and such. Maybe there'd even be a documentary.

But now that college is nearly through, I've got to start making something of myself. We've, I guess, got to get ourselves out there, because lingering in obscurity doesn't pay the bills. I'm frustrated because I don't care. I just want to make the best albums that nobody's heard because I don't care if other people hear it. Its either importance or uselessness, there's no 'kind of' success. I've got to keep on doing music, because its important to me. It will pay the bills someday.

This is part of an email I sent to my mom:
Of course I'm worried about being stuck in Fresno, you
> know, its the same old story with EVERY musician and I
> hate to have to bite the bullet and get something 'just in
> the meantime', because then I end up like the entire
> history staff at fresno high, they were just going to be
> teachers in the meantime and then they were fifty. And
> what is the meantime? Its MEAN time because time is
> actually going against you because yo u aren't [doing what it is that you want to do. Because you have to compromise your life away.]

I Could Be Such Good Company

So right now its pretty exciting. Its 'quiet hours' and so I'm trading off two pairs of headphones, one in the computer so Thor and I can trade back and forth examples of our favorite singers (his are from the sixties, mine are from the eighties) and the other in the keyboard so I can put the finishing touches (read: the sweeping final chorus) on this really promising song I'm writing.

Conner says "Dude, slow down, we only need to do one album this summer." But Conner, You dont understand. These songs are so close to being finished, we just have to do them. I've got all the intricacies and etc planned out, I've got rough drafts and keyboard demos. Anyway.

Right now its pretty exciting. Finals aren't going to be much of an obstacle at all. The 60s thing I'll just write some self-manifesto. The Film Violence thing will be another piece of cake, I might even write the extra credit essay. Modernism will go as modernism goes, Professor Dick Terdiman has this way with stressing over the most insignificant writing errors (participals, what are those? split infinitives? Didn't we run out of those in the sixties?) and cutting to the bare essentials of your thesis, but I don't really have any problem with that. He's a good, bright guy and he deserves better students than I, if my grade reflects that, so be it.

So now there's only moving out and graduation worries. Got to condense the stuff and figure out what to say to these friends of mine. I'll get everyone's addresses and then each time I complete an album, I'll feel like I'm more popular because I can send them each a CD. Part of me thinks I'll be returning to Santa Cruz, but part of me knows that besides friends and good times there's not much here for me. There isn't really anything musically happening in this town. Sure, pop punk bands from yesteryear come through, and modest mouse played once, (and Of Montreal is playing on May 28th!) but all of the local bands are just skinny kids trying to look good with guitars. Except for the living room bands, but as previously discussed, living room bands lack chutzpah.

James Rabbit, not lacking chutzpah, is going to struggle in a vain search for musical peers, and not finding any, is going to strive to maintain their position on the top.

Hopefully. I mean, we also need to change our band name. We named ourselves after a few things, number one: my friend Dan and I used to have a band named Ultra Secret and our screen name as Ultra Secret on the internet had an internet nemesis named James Rabbit, which was a name I amalgamed from a few books in his library, something by James Clavell and Rabbit Run, right next to each other. Dan and I were quite fond of starting ridiculous/fake online debates on message boards, James Rabbit was the feistier one. When Ultra Secret 'broke up', I got a new computer and started doing songs by myself and named the first album, as some sort of hilarious high school revolt: James Rabbit "We're All Winners".

So I've created a James Rabbit band page. The purpose of it is to be a more official looking thing, when I say official I don't mean flash graphics and fan club offers, I mean less stories about my dreams and flashbacks about how we didn't get any recording done one day or another.

Call the Cops and the National Guard

I've changed my mind about Sufjan Stevenses album. I think I really like it now, its probably my number four of the year so far. I wrote this really mean thing about how it sounded, which, though it still applies to the album, applies more to other albums that I'm not listening to. Guitar oriented things where bands can't be bothered with making something that doesn't sound like EVERYTHING ELSE. IMAGINATION, PEOPLE.


So between Cavalier and Continental there are going to be near forty songs, counting B-sides. I have about seven or eight more songs to put my magic to, (rewrite lyrics, record keyboard versions of onto computer) and those are going at a rate of about one every other day. (Sometimes I will finish three in a day, but others will take me four or more days). The writing leg of the journey is nearly over.

I'm trying to get the band (of performance, of recording) together, knowing who I'm going to be dealing with this summer. So far, definitely its me, Max and Conner. Now we three by ourselves could churn out some real humdingers. BUT. I want more. I want guitars. We've spoken with Sam Rocha who did some tuba and banjo work on The Drop to step aboard as our guitarist, hopefully permanent, though he does have other musical obligations. I spoke with Thor Andersen of Nicky and the Dreamers and Monsters from Mars to come aboard and help us with guitar, synth and production knowhow, this seems promising. Grayson's got the candy touch that amps go for, he'll probably step up to the plate.

The important thing though isn't getting these peoples word, its getting their constant and unfailing attendance. Infamously during The Drop there were a lot of absentee issues that cost us a lot of time and productivity. When there is an agreement between two people to meet at a certain time, usually one of them is there waiting. And chances are that person is me who is a great waiter in that he will spend all of his time that he had budgeted for guitar overdubs waiting, because that's how good of a waiter he is. Stupidly waiting, because apparently there was some emergency/amusement issue that could not be bothered a phone call about, but what a waiter, such a waiter.

Obvious problems though, there is no reason to show up for James Rabbit recording sessions. I have nothing to offer but a harsh militaristic environment and inclusion in the albums credits. So, you show up for workdays that have no forseeable end, you get yelled at by some jerk who thinks he's better than you, you stand around watching things that you don't have anything to do with happen, and then you get your name misspelled in the liners: Maxe Benet-Prlaker. You lose all of your friends and the respect of your extended family, but in the end you get a copy of this CD that you helped make. Pretty much you are making a leap of faith, that I have in store for you a deeper spiritual journey than you would have otherwise taken if you had gone to the Peach Pit with some burn-outs instead.

So the idea in my mind is that we'll have the two computers working non-stop. We've got the good one for recording rhythm tracks and doing final work and we've got this one for overdubs and stuff. I'm stupid with recording programs, all I can handle is N-Track, so I've got this for myself. So ideally Conner and I will be working out a rhythm track in the back room, explaining to Thor how a guitar part should not step on anybody's toes, while Max and Grayson are messing around with how to make a keyboard amp as loud as possible in the front room.

But possibly more important than this is what I would be otherwise doing besides music. You know, graduation = Crunch Time. Time to either make life miserable as a useless grim graduate student or make life miserable as a member of the working week. The terror is you are either a loser for pursuing music and not having a job or you are a loser for having a job and not pursuing music or you are a loser for pursing watered-down versions of both. Having a full time career prevents you from having any sort of musical devotion and having a full time musical devotion insures that you will be working at Temp jobs and musical instrument stores for the rest of your twenties, until you get some chick knocked up and have to accept that position at the new hardware store. After that, life becomes hard rock radio and Beer Fridays until the friends slowly leave you for greener pastures and Bay Areas.

I'm kind of thinking that if I wanted to give up on relevant art life that I would go in the direction of advertisement. I figure I've got a snappy enough mind to dream up commercials or figure out songs to put in commercials or write songs to put into commercials. I could start my own firm or something. It would be called 'Failure Incorporated: we do jingles for you because my songs couldn't stand on their own as works of art, couldn't break any hearts or grab the pulse of late night radio and not let go until relevance was firmly established. And the people I trusted to be my band members didn't show up because they were too busy dressing up for their in-the-meantime gig as a menu-folder'.

Overcoming the pop uncomfortability barrier.

So I'm listening to John Cale today and in his heartbreakingly beautiful "Andalucia" he has the refrain go 'I lovvvee you' but sung really high and in falsetto. And it occurs to me. I wouldn't have written this song. I would not be kneeling in my apartment just in front of my keyboard and it wouldn't have occured to me to sing those words. And even if they had come out, those words would have been placesavers until I had found something better, safer.

Writing a good pop hook is like having a good solid ideology. If you've got the goods, people will listen. Unfortunately, delivering it is the same kind of thing. I can't go up to you and sing you part of my song because it would be just like a hippie handing you a flier to Dirtfest 2k5. Both get thrown away, mine's probably more startling because you are used to dealing with hippies. You have to sneak your song in through the back door of the subconscious. Or through a radio station or something.

At the same time, nobody has ever accused a song of being too ridiculous. Let me qualify this. Of course, Zappa and Ween and all of them are ridiculous, but they're silly in a teenager way. If I'm writing a pop song, truly aiming for the upper echelons of human accmoplishment, my song is not going to be called "Mud on my Groin". If I'm writing a hook though, hopefully anything goes. It can be played by any instrument at any volume at any time of day, the pitch doesn't even have to jump around that much, its just got to shine. The trick is getting all of these things acting together in a similar way.

The problem is, what do you do until then? I mean, lets say I haven't felt the melody angel descend upon me yet, with this batch of songs. Should I scrap all of these songs and start over? Or should I trust the practicing/recording process to enlighten us as to exactly what the song needs? It probably wouldn't hurt showing up with a basket full of gold. We'd look at it like it was a flier handed out by a hippie and say 'psh, we know what to do with this.' As it stands now, I'm placing the band in a fairytale, having us spin hay into strands of gold. But then what?

Been a Year and a Day

John Cale's Paris 1919 is my medicine now. It goes down so smooth.

Tearing through tombs and tunnels town after typical town

I've nearly finished writing one of these new albums, Cavalier, and I'm really excited for it. Sometimes when I'm writing a song I just know that it has the possibility to become something. I felt this before with "Challenger" from Heart of Gold and "Half Hearted Holiness" from Le Fou. Its a wonderful feeling that I feel gets rarer as I get older and less excited about what I can do with the keyboard. A minor to E major used to be a big revelation, but now it takes more. Now it takes C Fm6 A Bb F. And after its taken that, now I've got to put some good lyrics on top of it. Continental I'm writing in pieces, music here lyrics there, but Cavalier I'm writing all at once, lyrics and music together. The music I feel is given a different sense of urgency. While Continental's songs mostly progress in a nice, complicated chord changes way, Cavalier gives more slack to the way the song wants to move. This all makes sense in the way that they end up wanting to sound, you'll have to wait to hear maybe.

I'm stressing out constantly about what to do over the summer. Well, record music obviously, but I've been feeling this pressure recently to be a success. You know, to do something with this impending bachelor's degree. I won't, I think. I can't imagine myself being happy in a place where I'd be judged by anything less than my creative abilities and bass playing skills. Temp work is out of the question, I spent all this year being a temp, and while I feel plenty endeared to the office folk, it is not something I'd be happy with long or short term. I think the plan is (nicking this idea from Kelly) to work as a stock boy in a supermarket. I'll just work all night and play all day and sleep all evening, what are the evenings worth anyway?

Summer has no end for me, now, unless I choose to end it.

My Heart Might Break but My Body'll be Safe

A dream I had last night:

So I catch the bus to go up to campus, I wait a long time and it takes forever, I have to go to the apartment to tell Nick to come downtown! because its important! I get up there and I open the door and I don't have my glasses on. Nick and his girlfriend are there and I'm embarassed, thinking that I interrupted something, but it turns out that the room is full of people, and I have my glasses back on all of a sudden. I say 'hey, let's go downtown because there's something totally necessary going on!' Nick says 'Brooke is leaving in a little bit, I have to walk her out to the car so I'll meet you downtown.' Oh brother. So I run to catch the bus to go back downtown and I see the 19 drive by right as I'm running but I can't move at all towards it.

So instead of the meadow area in front of Porter, there's this big bus graveyard where the busses are spitting out their names and where they go (near the metro this is a sign of comfort, because you know that there are busses nearby ready for you to take) but all the busses here are all melted away and revealing visceral insides and changing numbers so they are useless. I run up and wait with a bunch of suspect skater kids. Finally the bus number 4 comes (a bus that does not come up to campus) and its completely full of kids, so I have to sit near the back. The way I'm sitting is kind of ridiculous and ends up that some guy wearing a white shirt is the back of my chair. And he's crying. So my back gets wet.

Fortunately I find solace in a record album cover that just happens to be there. Its a fictitional James Taylor album cover which is mostly white but has a picture of his face in the upper left hand corner and a whiskey bottle standing upright on the bottom. I take the whiskey bottle out of the cover and start alternating carving something in the label with my fingernail and writing on it with orange permanent marker. Each word is carved in a different way, I spell out something like 'You won't last'

So here's why we were downtown in the first place. Conner and I heard there was going to be a showing of a 10cc concert film/documentary and we really wanted to see it. It was playing in downtown Santa Cruz, of course. The cost was fifteen dollars and conner didn't have any money so I had to pay thirty dollars. I remember holding it against him that he didn't say thank you. Somewhere in here Mike comes up and tells me there's something that I HAVE to see. So we nonchalantly stroll down to the industrial area (near Bay, I'm remembering, though in the dream I had a lot of worries about how to get there and back) and there's some sort of door or portal there and we head in.

This room is some sort of alternate dimension where there is a large pyramidal stage off to one side and the rest is a kind of arena. Its full of people, but in a way that I didn't notice. Apparently we are there to watch some sort of battle of the Gods. There is an all powerful floating being over off to the left of the stage who takes everyone's keys, he tells us we cannot open any old doors until we've seen what the gods can do, he has at least one ponytail. We crane our necks up and watch the battle, and it turns out the gods aren't too impressive. They're kind of like anime characters, I mean they look real but they move in jerky ways, but less exciting, kind of poking at each other for long periods of time, you know the whole immortaility thing. I decide I'm going to leave and I see Mike crawl back through some decorational shrubbery, holding the all-powerful beings keychain with EVERY KEY on it. I laugh hysterically, I've got to go get Nick, I think.

Stick with the evening if its easy

About your influences, bands. How does their work manifest itself in your work? As a creative force how do you borrow from other creative forces?

Let's take the Beatles for example. Everybody says that they are influenced by the Beatles, but that's too easy. How are you like the Beatles? Is it because all four member of your band write songs? Is it because your chord progressions move like a swan gliding over a calm lake? Do you hop genres without a care in the world? What about orchestras? Use em? I mean, certainly you didn't borrow the Beatles' humor, because we're not supposed to have that in music nowadays. Do you just have guitars in common with the Beatles?

Because what you are doing, bands, by not sounding vibrant or interesting, is wrecking the names of bands that are better than you. Because next time we listen to "Honey Pie" or "Rocky Raccoon" we are going to be reminded of the time we saw you in concert and you bored us. Then we are going to look at our LP jacket our album sleeve and we are going to spit in the lonely hearts club band's faces. This is what you are forcing us to do.

It doesn't count if you like how they sound. When you are thinking about your influences you have to really get down to who exactly comes across in your music, not just because they did something before you, but because you have something profound in common with them, maybe something that doesn't just manifest itself in descending melodic figures. They can't've just come from before. Just because Bob Moog invented the synthesizer does not mean he is an influential person to me. Just because Bill Gates invented the computer does not make him an influence of mine. I want you to re-do these lists, folks.

So here's some things that happened today:

I had this dream where my high school band teacher was making us do feats of strength so I walked all the way from my apartment to downtown Santa Cruz with our couch balanced on our head. When I rode the bus back, it was small enough to fit into our apartment and everybody on the bus waved goodbye to me.

I woke up and went downtown where I bought raspberry snapple, soap and ROY WOODS BOULDERS ALBUM. This is one of the albums I have been looking for in one of those 'ha ha, they'll never have it' ways, and what happens to me once I've found it? Right afterwards I ran into Joe on the street:
"Mott the Hoople!"
"Hey, Joe. I just found this record that I've been looking for forever"
"Oh, hey, Wizzard"
"No, way better than Wizzard"
"Yeah, Roy Wood, Wizzard"
"No, way better than Wizzard"
"Wow, this guy plays so many instruments"
"Thank you for sharing this moment with me Joe"
I was pretty tempted to give him the record just so I could have the joy of finding it again someday. My initial reaction wasn't like 'wow', it was a reaction as if I had found the wrong Roy Wood album, I was like 'psh, Mustard, almost' because my brain has a stronger connection to the Mustard album cover than it does to the Boulders album cover.

I wrote a really good song, but I hurt my back while I was doing it. I spent about six hours wondering if I was ever going to walk again/walking.

We saw this movie tonight called Badlands which was the best movie ever. It has Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek going on a not-exactly killing spree, but mostly doing wonderfully random things like naming state birds and running over cows to 'conserve ammo' but then shooting a football because it was 'weighing us down'. I would like to be in a situation someday where I have to conserve ammo.

Hey, yeah, by the way

All these songs I'm writing, I'm working on REALLY hard. You know how I used to be like 'yep, album written and recorded and released in a week', well now its like I write the album in a week and then listen to it the next week and go 'oh my, this song clearly has nothing of interest, allow me to rearrange it a slight bit... there, now we've a winner on our hands'.

I'm learning slowly, all this stuff I'm just now doing, like thinking things out in advance are things that I should have done a long time ago. I'm not going to tell you how many albums we've released, let's just for arguments sake say that The Wanderer was album number three. We're All winners was number one, but really that hardly counted as an album because all we did was use keyboard drum beats and keyboard presets. First albums are always forgivable. Le Fou was album number two where we found a bunch of real instruments and and wrote some uninteresting songs and made them sound really good. The Wanderer was just some friends fuckin around over spring break and we got a few good songs out of it. See, three albums, that's not at all a loserish figure for a band.

Instead of being stubborn as in the past, saying to myself 'psh, no Conner I don't need drums, besides, Dan wouldn't like that' I'm thinking realistically, I'm thinking with focus and pride and sheer attitude. I'm thinking out all the parts of the song before writing it and then I'm writing it and then I'm going back and rewriting it and then I'm demoing it and then I'm painstakingly writing lyrics for it (it takes like three days to write lyrics for every song) and then when I get to Fresno we'll learn the songs as a band and then we'll demo them and then we'll figure out what went wrong and we'll labor long and hard over getting the right drum sound (though according to other people we're doing pretty good with this). And we'll labor kind of hard over getting the right guitar sound because I don't really care what guitars sound like, but apparently you have to have guitars in a band, so phooey.

And in my head I'm making copious notes listening to these demos (which is what I do when I am unable to play the keyboard and sing on account of other people being in the room), and in my head I'm casting and recasting different instruments as different voices. And I've got to tell you, even though I'm being kind of optimistic, I've got to whisper in your ear that I think we have some good stuff on our hands.

Like a bolt from the blue comes Saturday, On Time

Whenever I am at a show I don't go to watch and enjoy the band or to be with friends, I go because there are other minds functioning out there along the same lines as mine, minds that have a similar drive to create music. I go because music is an ongoing competition and I want to look at my fellow drivers as they gear up. As they play you check their tricks, their meaning the combined force, usually a group only has one songwriter, but a lot of times individual members will contribute, so its like 'wow what a good chord progression' AND 'what a good time to play that bass part', and you kind of start weighing your abilities or your bands abilities against theirs. So, for me at least, and stop me if this happens to everyone, the show is less a performance as much as it is a dialogue.

I'm standing there, and from the opening notes I'm tearing the band to shreds. Is this a good idea for an opener? And of course, you can't hear any of the lyrics, partially because of shitty PAs and partially because these people don't know how to write in such a way where the rhythm of the words is best complemented by the rhythm of the music, so it all sounds muddled. So basically what you are listening to is the song structure. Is the intro, really just a wimpier version of a later theme in the song really necessary? Does the verse provide adequate narrative information, both musically and lyrically to have us stay interested to the chorus? Is the chorus a winner or a weiner? I mean, seriously, sometimes is there even a chorus? I mean, as far as structure goes, the part that gets repeated the most, that's the chorus, I'm not trying to be some traditionalist form guy here, but really that's how most songwriters work. Is the chorus worth anything? Can it take us anywhere besides its cold musical-skin-and-bones composition?

And then you have to consider their set as a whole. How many hits or hit-like things are there in there? None? Consider the band in a different setting, sure they may work in front of a group of mop top kids but will they succeed in front of a bunch of fightful bikers? A house party in Compton? Will any part of any of their songs be remembered in the tiniest shred of the audience (not counting bands girlfriends or bands want-to-be girlfriends)? Nine times out of ten the bands are useless. Nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a thousand the bands will never go anywhere, not out of the town and not into the history books. We at the James Rabbit corporation would like to be that thousanth band, or at least band 997.

There has never been a successful song whose melody you can't remember. All successful local bands are only successful rhythmically or attractively. They are local bands because they aren't good enough yet. James Rabbit is writing songs and touring this summer.