It Was Easy It Was Cheap, Go And Do It!

Things are settling. I have a job and I may get another job. I may have found a room in a house also. I have at least three bands and I might just have time to play shows with them all. Since I will not have to pay for transportation (aside from maybe purchasing a bicycle) I will be making enough money to pay off the credit card bill and the ill-thought-out return to Fresno City College. I am not doing music on my own because I do not have any instruments up here, but I will soon enough once the dough starts rolling in.

I'm having kind of a hard time getting used to the fact that this is what life after college is like. I mean I knew that there would be a lot of work and grown-up stuff etc. but I had no idea that a college degree was like some sort of personal vow to accomplish something through it. Working as a clerk and a counselor will find my knowledge of Faulkner and Dante and Baudelaire going to waste, not to mention my musical skills. I figure I should be working at a publishing house or as a producer or something, doing something that relates to what I've done before. I suppose this is the price I pay for not speaking to my professors or counselors ever. Maybe I should have been more arrogant and instead of thinking myself below them for not knowing as much about Russian Literature, thinking that I was their equal and could have taken them on. So instead of 'no, no questions Bill Nickell, I should have said 'hey, stop wasting our time with all this minutae, we've got to start learning!' and he would say 'yes! you are a bright lad, I'm giving you a card redeemable at any party in Los Angeles for a job at a recording studio in Culver City' and I'd say 'this is unlikely but highly appreciated!'.

But no, you have to try for those jobs and be arrogant and lie on resumes. Or just have a bunch of friends that smoke expensive cigarettes and take half an hour to put their pants on. Or be born upper middle class and have parents that can buy you a few work-free months in a town where important jobs are. For me, it looks like two years of blissful stasis. I'll work and then work and then sleep and then work and then work and then play a show and then sleep four hours and then work and sleep for eight extra hours and etc. I might miss holidays because the jobs are so demanding, but damn it, I'll be able to afford my teaching credential after 780 days of this and then I'll have evenings and summers free for recording albums. I'll be twenty five when this is over and maybe thirty when I start teaching, the same age as my second grade teacher, Ms. McQueen, who was not yet wise enough to bring anything of depth to our study of geometric shapes and seven deadly sins. But I will have been wise enough. Just not ready, because if I was ready, I'd be there already, wouldn't I?

I realize the 'big time' isn't for me, because I can't even visualize what the big time is like. Jay-Z, Billy Joe Armstrong, Rivers Cuomo, these people don't really have anything that I want. The attention, the entourage, the debauchery, yeah, I'm not wanting for any of those things. Airplay maybe, but what is airplay besides the successful selling of your melody? Maybe it is just that I will never apply myself. Maybe I'm not taking enough vitamins. Maybe there isn't enough conflict in my life for me to be writing interesting songs anymore. I feel like I could do it, I just don't currently have the means or the space. And once I get those things, whammo. I've taken multi-month breaks before, one more isn't going to kill me. And in the meantime, all I really want is some friends, a junky car that I can drive incredibly long distances if I feel like it, 50 compact disks, and enough money for the occasional meal.

Batman or Superman or Ever-lovin' Spiderman

This Friday night a few of the Santa Cruz bands that I'm in are playing a show upstairs at the Beehive starting at six pm. A few other bands booked themselves too, which gives you a clue as to what its like when I'm in charge of setting up shows. Its a Christmas party. That's what the theme is. Playing live and in person are:

Antarctica Takes It
1,028 Exclamation Points
Chris (Jen's Roommate)
Ghost Mice
(unnamed punk band)
Dan Merrill
Dad

Beehive, 314 Walnut St. big yellow house on Walnut and Chestnut. 6pm. No admission charge.

I'm in that SC State of Mind

Again, back in the SC. Resuming the old bands, Nicky and the Dreamers and 1,028 Exclamation Points. Additionally I have joined my friend Dylan in his band Penguin League (or Antarctica Takes It or Muscle Beach or Team Limo) and so musical expression is on the up. We played a show on Thursday and were received rather well. I'm finding that this is how it goes with bands that I'm in, but not in charge of. I'm looking to start a band band and am making lists and so forth of musicians I know who'd maybe like to work with me but so far I can't envision a quartet who is both musically talented and substance-free. These are the hopes, these are the breaks.

I'm doing interviews and handing out resumes and things are looking well (much better than the ol' Frez) for post-collegiate Tyler; but still not as well as they should be. I should be doing things like schmoozing in Hollywood and shaking hands, even if in the supremest acts of fakitude, with people that could connect me to labels and bandmates and overdubs and software. But I can deal with college-house mischief for a while, if only at twelve dollars an hour.

Max and Conner, meanwhile, are continuing recording our epic seven CD set.

Tsk Tsk Kevin Ayers, Tsk Tsk I Might Love You

I'm listening to Kevin Ayers' third solo album "Whatevershebringswesing" for the first time right now. And I get to the title track and it's going pretty good so far and he says 'just bouncing this ball / up and down the hall/ but its full of best wishes...' I say to myself, 'God, I'm about fifty fifty with this record so far and he's made some bad lyric decisions, please oh please have this phrase end with 'kisses' or 'stitches' or 'riches' or something, ANYTHING but 'fishes'.

Because the album's been kind of like that, he'll put one half of a rhyme in front of you and like you're in a kindergarden class or something, you just know which word he's going to rhyme with it. Boat=Float Bee=Tree Chair=Bear. Maybe a more relevant example, you are watching a really important scene in a foreign film and you finish reading the subtitles before the character actually speaks the words and so you've already gotten to the end of the page before the rest of the characters on screen. You wait, and depending on what's happening, it can be a painful stasis. So the situation I'm in in these painful few seconds is like watching Blind Date where the characters are riding in the SUV to their first date location and they're kind of getting along and he starts to say something and a little pop up thing comes up that says "Kevin fucks up in :05 seconds".

I'm about ready to make a copy of this and listen to it and recommend it to friends, some of them might really like this, please, Kevin don't blow this, I could make it worth your while. I could talk about you as a wacked out british Lou Reed (in the song "Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes" how charmingly skewed his take on New York cool is), I mean you even did a Dixieland song earlier in the record, how much do I love this in theory!?! Just please don't mess this up, we could be so beautiful together, Kevin Ayers. I hold my breath, fingers crossed behind my back. The clock strikes 4:15 am. And the next line of the song is "...and suffocaaaaaating fishes."

I'm shocked, but not really. Its like one of these moments where you are deciding between two important things and your brain decides to leave it up to perfect, nondiscriminating probability and you flip a coin and you have to do it again because fate made the wrong decision for you. I didn't press the stop button, I just kind of cringed and died a little inside and continued enjoying the smarmy guitar solo and low-register crooning. I'll keep this between you and me Kevin.

PS. There's also a bonus track called "Fake Mexican Tourist Blues" which Kevin sings in an awful, fake accent and offers various hypothetical Mexican sisters of his to the listener. It's all very offensive, but there's a really good trumpet solo. Maybe that's the mark of a great record, constantly pushing your audience to the limit where they might start hating your music at any minute.

Kanye West - Late Registration

Kanye West's first album was a King among men, this one is like a CEO or something. The best songs "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" "Hey Mama" "Gone" "Gold Digger" are only as good as the worst ones on his first album, the other songs are just as good as normal hip-hop filler. And even the best songs aren't really that committed, the best part of the album, for example, is the little vocal hook in "Hey Mama", which sounds like Kanye West pretending to be three years old and making a teddy bear sound. The best moment is also the cutest, that's how much merit this album has.

There doesn't even seem to be a single on this album. "Diamonds" finds Kanye ripping off something Jay-Z said and its about, what, the jewelry he wears? Why do I care about that? This album seems like it was rushed. The skits, for example, all concentrate on a humorous fraternity, Broke Phi Broke, kind of coming back to the same punchline each time. One kind of pictures Kanye recording all this in a weekend and kicking back for a year, thinking how to promote his greatness. The album's title itself kind of casts it as a sequel (as in diminishing returns sequel) to the first one, maybe even as a B-sides collection. I have no qualms with any of the production or the performances, I just wish it could have been at least on par with his first album. Jon Brion's involvement with it I can kind of hear every once in a while, wherever there's the peppy keyboard stuff, I assume its him and that's pretty good, but it doesn't really add that much or 'push things to a new level'. Anyway, skip this unless you're in the mood for leftovers. 6/10.

Lightning Bolt - Hypermagic Mountain

Lightning Bolt has always been a big comfort band for me (There's something in this blog from my first week at Santa Cruz where I write about how I was going to dance around my room like a maniac thanks to lightning bolt and coffee). They are there in the sad times and the alone times (and the times when you want to piss off/alienate your room mate) and yes, they can even be there for me in the bad ass times. Today, for example, I was driving around and parked at a stop light by Fresno State and some nerdy guy with a hawaiian shirt on was just kind of sitting there and I looked over and I was like "Yeah, Yeah I'm bad ass". It doesn't matter if I'm wearing shoes that are too big for me and cargo shorts and that I was drinking a root beer, when you have lightning bolt you are COOL. Lightning bolt play the kind of music your priest or pastor probably thinks rock music sounds like when he warns you against it. If your parents caught you listening to it when you were eight you would be sent to a troubled children's school in Guam instantly. They are the aural equivalent of YOU doing something terrible. Your parents will bow their heads and your pastor will nod. "Yes, yes, he did". I don't listen to punk music or hard rock music very much because all the bands I've heard are too wishy washy (Led Zeppelin rocks but it seems like you have to spend a lot of time with them, they're like the jealous girlfriend of bands). Heavy metal I think I would like, but every time I start listening to it a piano will pop up or something, wrecking all the RAWK ATTITUDE, and plus, its hard to find a good starting place.

With Lightning Bolt you get a starting place and an ENDING place. Each of their albums is the new best album that any punk or punk-like musician has ever done. Listen to it alone, you can bet that you are the rockingest person on the planet at that moment. Listening to it with your friends you will share smiles of delight and amazement. Today as I was walking I envisioned a Lightning Bolt/Deerhoof team-up and my smile would have broken any picture frame had you tried to paint me at that instant. This was a feeling that I hadn't felt since elementary school where one becomes excited about the idea of the X-Men and thinking something like 'wow, what if the X-men teamed up with the Fantastic Four', because Deerhoof and Lightning Bolt are musical superheroes and next to them I am a gawk-jawed little kid, standing on the field at Powers Elementary with David DeLeon and David Mittlebraun trying to turn a pocket calculator into a laptop computer.

So this is their best album to date, the rocking parts rock harder, the oblique parts are obliquer. "Magic Mountain" is every seventies cop speeding past you in a race to get to the worst criminal ever. "Megaghost" is the largest Godzilla you've ever seen tearing up some post-apocalyptic uptopia, only to rebuild it as a more ideal land. "Dead Cowboy" was directed by Sam Peckinpah and stars Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. "Bizarro Zarro Land" begins like AC/DC but then knocks you over like your older brother and kicks you in the head for four minutes and forty seven seconds for looking at his auto magazines. You will be so impressed with this album you will tear up your comic books, not care that your girlfriend broke up with you, eat six pizzas, drink a gallon of root beer a day, make devil horns at those less cool than you, wink at your pastor, throw a big block of cheese through the fish display at your supermarket, run away to Nevada for a weekend, eat someone else's leftovers at a restaraunt, do all of the things that you were afraid to do before Lightning Bolt gave you the power, the fury, the COOL. 9/10.

Martin, T. Martin

So here I am again, walking the line between crazy and lazy. The options are 1. drop out of all the classes and have a semester full of seven W's or 2. continue with this "Be sure to keep a tidy folder for your portfolio" bullshit. The goals, the priorities, they're all cloudy. Either I'm a good little study-about or I'm my own wild man. My goal is to get up to Santa Cruz, where, if nothing else, I've got a zillion friends and tons of renown. I've got to clear some time for jobs, because right now the bank account is an orphan, living in a musty boarding house with nothing but coughs and bad company. Honestly I've only really applied for one job and that was through an e-mail. I'm a joke. So I'm going to quit school, which is nice and technically challenging and all, but I don't really need to know about forty-five degree angles or CLS commands, I'd really rather be off doing irresponsible bohemian things and making music than having to wake up every morning before eight am so I can walk to a place where people who have settled into the rut of what they are going to do for the rest of their lives try and trap you the same. Seriously, though, I've already finished school, this other stuff was just a joke and nobody got it, so I'm stopping before the hilarious punchline, I'll tell you the punchline= "its December and I still don't give a fuck about precision drawings or Linux." Yuk yuk. There's got to be something out there hovering barely above ground for me to hop up and claim it.

Musically, things are looking better. Max and I and whoever cares to help out are recording a ridiculously epic seven cd set and it sounds spectacular so far. We've got everything sketched out and we're going to have everybody we know participating instrumentally and authorially. In the meantime, we're going to do some punk albums and stuff where we play really fast and sing faster. Hopefully this will get the energy motor-vatin' in my head. And before you know it we'll be heaving cinder blocks through windows and threatening entire quadrant closures.

As far as the first two non-album singles, they are done and there's only a few days before we get around to mastering the first two and sending them out. Or you know, putting them in a pile and having them languish in obscurity with the rest of all my ideas. You say potato, I say potat-oh. We've got some other singles conceptualized and a third one that we've done the rhythm tracks for but I'm not really happy with the structure or the lyrics of the A-side, so I'm going to re-do it maybe entirely. I'm excited about these singles as the first one by itself more than makes up for the disappointment I feel with the still-I-don't-know-what-I'm-going-to-do-with-it album Continental. Okay, so here's where that stands, either I keep it to myself and think 'what could have been!' or I release it and twiddle my fingers at whether people hate me now. I could do the Preminger thing where I release everything I do and then forget about it, hoping that one will catch on, that seems a pretty good bet. Whats happening right now with that is that I sent a copy to Thor, who is going to maybe add guitar and keyboard parts and then we'll see from there.

The problem I face in these upcoming weeks and months is translating my 18 year old fantasy of "The year is 1890 and I'm higher-educating myself to become a man of the world" myth to rest and accept that its 2005 and I'm twenty two and have very little life or work experience and have to start making things go the way that I want them to go for myself or else I'm just going to get more attractively, attractively depressed. May I have faith in myself and everything else that all will be well, and no fear or famine find us, and a turkey in every pot.

I'll keep you posted.