Please bear with me while I wallow in a pool a self-pity.

Yesterday, I woke up with much more dizziness than usual, compliments of my now four-year-old brain injury. I waited for it to spin down a bit, it didn’t. And so I was faced with a choice I have become immensely sick of: stay home and do nothing or get up and try to make something of the day. Now, this might seem like a no brainer (ho, ho, ho) but it’s not at all. There is no clear choice to be made.

Staying home means that I will most likely feel better faster, possibly even in time to make something of the day. Or not.

Getting up means that I will most likely feel worse, possibly even in time to simply miss the whole day anyway. Or not.

Yesterday, turned out to be the latter, without the “or not” part. I arrived at my freelance gig feeling terrible, soldiered through what had to be done, then went home and went to bed until 7:00 PM or 8:00, watched a bit of TV, then went back to bed.

And in this tale lies the very crux of my condition: damned if I do and damned if I don’t. And I am sick of it. Every day, even when I’m feeling okay, I struggle with how much living to do, because it seems like the more I try to get of life, the more it takes out of me.

I confess, I’ve been busy these last few weeks – last few months, really – trying to work more, trying to write more songs, trying to go out a bit more, and overall, I’ve done surprisingly well. But lest I start to think I’m out of danger, yesterday happens. And today, for that matter. Tomorrow, I should be back to my normal level of misery.

And it will start all over again.



Post-Gladwell, I was about to declare myself to be like Cezanne, then I read a little further.

Two nights ago I fell asleep right after reading a Malcolm Gladwell piece in his book “What the Dog Saw”. The piece was about how there are two different types of artists in this world, the prodigy, who does his best work young (Picasso) and the late bloomer, who does his best work old (Cezanne). 

As with almost all of Gladwell’s writings, this piece instilled a certainty within me of Gladwell’s rightness. He had cracked yet another of those everyday mysteries that sit right in front of us, yet we neither notice nor solve. More important, he had made me believe that, even at my advancing age, my best art was still ahead of me. Just before I dozed off, I started to think about how Gladwell’s notion of the prodigy vs. the late bloomer would make good blog post about me, since I am most certainly no prodigy and, if anything, a late bloomer.

But before I started writing my post, I did a little research, meaning of course, I googled a few terms. After entering in Gladwell, Cezanne and Picasso, I was presented with a list, number one on which was “Annals of Culture: Late Bloomers : The New Yorker.” I was about to click, when I notice that number two was titled “Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog: Cezanne vs. Picasso vs. Gladwell”. No contest, I clicked number two.

What I discovered was a very compelling counterargument to Gladwell's. To sum up iSteve's point, there is no pattern, no such thing as a neat dividing line between prodigy's and late bloomers. iSteve makes his case by pointing out how Cezanne had painted his whole life with little success, because he never quite mastered perspective. Then perspective became passe and suddenly Cezanne's warped reality art was hip. Is this true? I dunno, but then, who's to say Gladwell's thesis is right? Further, iSteve rightfully questions Gladwell's measure of success, which is prices paid for paintings.

In the end, because I am way more likely to believe things that take me down a notch than things that build me up, I went with iSteve. And if my art ever makes a dent in the world of music, it will be as much because of chance as anything else. And hard work. And The Maton.

A huge thank you to Erik Proulx of Please Feed The Animals and the movie Lemonade.

Several months back, I heard about a movie that was coming out called Lemonade. It was about people who had lost their jobs and gone on to discover more meaningful lives, by figuring out what they truly love to do and then diving in, rather then simply fighting to get back into a world that had kicked them out. I was intrigued. Such a story was right up my alley, especially because so many of the subjects of Erik's film had been in advertising. With a few Google searches, I found Erik's blog, Please Feed the Animals, and started reading it and commenting occasionally. 

Much to my surprise, just a few months ago, Erik wrote to me and asked if he could use my story as part of a presentation he was about to give. I wrote back giving him an enthusiastic go-ahead and thought nothing more of it. Then a friend who saw the presentation wrote me and said Erik had made me look good! 

Today, Erik posted a video of the presentation (above!) and my friend was right, Erik did indeed make me look good. So, thank you Erik and I wish you every success as your movie and writing careers grow.

John Mellencamp rants about the music biz. I rant about John Cougar's rant (that's right, John COUGAR).

In a recent Huffington Post articel titled "On My Mind: The State of the Music Business," John Cougar Mellencamp proves one thing: nothing.

Before I go on, let me say that I like a lot of JCM's music. In fact, one of his songs, Paper and Fire, is one of my all-time favorites. But just because you can write compelling music doesn't mean you can write about music compellingly.

I'm just going to go through his main points, as I see them, and describe why I disagree.

1. “Had the industry not been decimated by a lack of vision caused by corporate bean counters obsessed with the bottom line, musicians would have been able to stick with creating music rather than trying to market it as well.”

This from the man who first changed his name to Cougar then back to Mellencamp, both for marketing reasons! Anyway, for JCM to suggest that musicians shouldn’t have to concern themselves with marketing is ludicrous. No major musical force I can think of didn’t concern itself with image. Not one. And the reason is clear: image and music go hand in hand in rock.

2, “During the late 80s and early 90s the industry underwent a transformation and restructured, catalyzed by three distinct factors” [consolidation, SoundScan and BDS].

Consolidation: hate to break it to you John, but it’s called the music business because it’s a business and businesses consolidate – always have, always will.

SoundScan: Dude! Before SoundScan, sales were counted as units shipped, not sold, so record companies shipped a shitload of the albums they wanted to promote, and Billboard dutifully posted these “hits” at the top of sales charts. SoundScan is way more fair!

Broadcast Data Systems (BDS): JCM may be right about this one, in saying how it has led to the nation’s musical tastes being driven by big population centers instead of small towns. But what about Clear Channel? Why does he not lambaste them? Afraid to bite the hand that feeds, maybe?

3. “Record companies soon discovered that because of BDS, they only needed to concentrate on about 12 radio stations; there was no longer a business rationale for working secondary markets that were soon forgotten -- despite the fact that these were the very places where rock and roll was born and thrived.”

JCM could be right here, but I’m not ready to concede that the future of rock is going to come from small towns. I think cities are the true cultural catalysts of our time – maybe of all time.

4. Country music is where it’s at!

I just don’t know what to say. Country? Talk about packaged and corporate.

5. “The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed.”

JCM is officially a Luddite. The CD was a new media storage format, nothing more, and it’s already dying. I mean, to suggest that the CD was foisted on us all by greedy record companies to force us to re-buy all our music is just moronic. Sure, that was part of the plan, but not The Plan.

6. “…the way [music] is presented to [people] ignores their humanity.”

Really, JCM? You’re telling me that the old days of unapproachable rock gods was more human than today’s Internet fueled frenzy of interactivity? Gimme a break.

7. “So let's try to put our best foot forward and remember that anyone can stand in the back of a dark hall and yell obscenities but if you want a better world it starts with you and the things you say and do.”

JCM, go back and read that again, it doesn't make any sense. 

Apple, you are the apple of my eye.

Over the past year, I have done a lot of complaining about Apple. There have been upgrade snafus, update snafus, hardware failures, software "issues" and on and on. Aggravating me further has been Apple's closed system, in which things either work Apple's way or not at all.

But, Apple, I still love you!

It's a love affair that began way back in 1984, when my Dad brought home a Mac 512K. Back then, I was all about Mac Paint, a drawing program that my friends and I put to immediate use creating "album" covers for our cassettes (both mix tapes and collections of original material). But in time, I grew bored of Mac Paint and spent more and more time hunting and pecking on the word processor. And I have never looked back.

I can safely say that if I had had a Mac in high school, and especially in college, I would have done better. I liked writing, but I hated the mechanics of it. Typewriters were my nemesis, and my handwriting was/is so bad, not teacher would read it and not be influenced by the sheer sloppiness of it all. What of spelling? What of it? Couldn't do it. As for early word processing, well, before the Mac, it sucked the life out of my inner Hemingway, too. Remember Wang word processing? Green type, no WYSIWYG, horrible. But on the Mac, writing became painful for the right reason, because writing well is hard.

Sometime in the later 80s, I upgraded the Mac 512K to 1MB, then bought an SE-30 (I think), then a PowerBook 170, which I still have, then a faceless mid-90's beige box (Scully, you suck!), then one of those blue towers (I think), then a newer PowerBook, then a titanium PowerBook and now, my current Mac Book Pro, which rocks (mostly).

All of these machines have fueled both my creativity and my professional aspirations and without the Mac I don't know what I'd be doing with my life, I really don't. Would a PC have done the trick? Not without the Mac, I really believe that. All of Microsoft's "innovations" have been copied from the Mac, and now, Microsoft is even being forced to copy Apple's extreme quality. What would Microsoft have done without Apple to copy? I don't know, but Microsoft Surface is a decent indicator. It was launched with much fanfare as a new kind of computer and featured a touch interface. At the same time, Apple launched the iPhone. The obvious difference? Surface fit in your living room and the iPhone fit in your pocket. Oh, and the iPhone did way, way more.

Apple, you rock, and when I complain, it's out of love. I want you to KICK ASS -- as you always have (except during the dark days of Steve's absence).

Starting before finishing.

Yesterday, I headed to Hyde Street to track some songs for my next collection, even though my first one isn't even finished yet. I would wait, but I can't think of a good reason to. I mean, at any moment I could fall and hit my head and my life could come to screeching halt, right?

Amazon MP3 vs. Apple's AAC music format. Smackdown!

I have heard from reliable sources that AAC, Apple's compression algorithm for music, sounds better than MP3, the compression algorithm brought to the world by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. Not being one to take anyone's word for much of anything, I decided to put these two formats to the test.

For my track, I selected Josie, by Steely Dan, because it's a song I know well and, like everything else in the Steely Dan catalog, it was recorded meticulously. For the AAC version, I stopped by iTunes. For the MP3 version, I cruised into Amazon.

Both files homesteaded on 8.3MB of hard drive space and are in 256K resolution. I played the AAC first. Nice! Clean, crisp, clinical, not exactly warm -- just as I would expect low resolution digital to sound. Next up, the MP3. Now, given how many times I've heard about the dismal quality of MP3s vs. AAC, I was braced for the worst: muddy highs, mushy bass, zero dynamics, muddled separation. Oops, must have accidentally hit the AAC track again because this sounds great... Give me a minute… NOPE! I was indeed listening to the MP3 and it sounded absolutely identical to the AAC. Now, in case you're wondering if maybe my playback system was a pair of cheap ear buds, guess again. I was using AKG240 Studio headphones, perhaps the most accurate headphones I have ever auditioned.

The verdict: a tie, complete and total. Seriously, try it for yourself, just make sure you're comparing apples to apples and check the bitstream rate of the tracks, as both should be 256K.

Apple takes a page out of the John D. Rockefeller playbook and shuts down Lala.

Back in the glory days of greed (really, today is nothing), John D. Rockefeller built Standard Oil by buying competitors and shutting them down -- or keeping them -- and raising prices. His actions were a major driver in the creation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlawed the practice of using monopoly power to limit competition. Steve Jobs and J. D. are birds of a feather, for after buying Lala, Jobs has opted to shut it down.

For those who don't know, Lala was a new kind of a new kind of music service and its business model was difficult to grock at first because it was so damn innovative -- not to mention unbelievable. In essence, Lala offered music in three ways: one-time full plays (after which you could only hear 30 second sample), MP3 downloads and, most innovative of all, web songs, for which you paid around $.04 and could stream anytime. But that wasn't all. Lala also allowed you to upload your entire music library and make it available for streaming to any device. Even this feature, though, was staggeringly well done, as Lala first compared the songs you wanted to upload with the songs already in Lala's data base, then only uploaded the ones Lala did not already have. Smart. Very smart. Lala even allowed you to post widgets to web sites (such as your blog) that would play songs in your Lala database. Unreal!

I took to Lala straightaway and happily bought a number of web songs, uploaded a lot of my library (especially bootlegs!) and even bought a few MP3s. When Apple first bought Lala, I was concerned, but I figured Apple would somehow integrate it into iTunes and at the very least allow me to keep what I had purchased. No such luck. As I understand it, Lala is history, full stop. Apple will credit the amount I have used to purchase web songs and refund unused money in my Lala Wallet (another cool Lala feature) as either a credit or a check (a tricky process, thanks the nanofont deployed by Apple to let you do this!) but that's it. My Lala library will be shut down and going forward Lala will no longer be a choice for me on the musical landscape.

I sincerely hope that someone at the federal level takes note of this goes after Apple for anti-competitive behavior. Lala was a blip to Apple's monopoly level share of the music download market, but so were those little mom and pop gas stations J. D. gobbled up.

Lala, I bid you farewell. Apple, you have given me one more reason to never use iTunes to purchase music again. Thank god Amazon is a FUCKING HUGE and not able to be bought and shut down so easily.

Obamacare. Am I for it or against it?

In late January of 2006, I fell and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. The diagnosis: a subdural hematoma, which means bleeding under the membrane that surrounds the brain. When your luck is bad, such an injury is fatal, as in the case of Natasha Richardson. If your luck is good, you live, but results may vary. If your luck is very good, as mine was, you have very few cognitive problems and stand a good chance of recovering fully, although, for me, a full recovery does not seem to be in the cards.

Such an injury is sure to make you well acquainted with the health care system. I have been in a few ambulances, emergency care, MRI and CAT scan machines, gurneys, double-occupancy hospital rooms, crowd-occupancy hospital rooms. I have seen specialists, generalists and even a herbalist. I've taken some drugs, seen a psychiatrist, gone on disability, breathed pure, pressurized oxygen. It's been a ride, to be sure. And overall, I've been impressed. My care has not been perfect, it could never be, but it's been darn good. And my insurance companies have been good, too, especially UnitedHealthcare. (Note: I know, I know, I was LUCKY to have insurance, very lucky.)

So when Barack Obama went on the warpath for to make health care a government run entitlement, I was not exactly loading up my musket to help him out. In fact, I was worried from the get go, because his ideas just seemed so, how should I put this, lame. I'm sure many out there will dispute what I'm about to write, but I'm ready for you!

Obamacare can be summed up thusly: the government should do it.

Naturally, this failed right out of the gate, as Americans know better than to blindly believe the government can do much of anything right.

So Obama went back to the drawing board, sort of. More accurately, he turned to Congress an said, "You figure it out." The result is something only a true bureaucrat could love, a multi-thousand page legislative labyrinth that references thousands of other pages of legislation. I read once that to truly know what's in the health care bill you would have to read over 50,000 pages of single-spaced governmentese. Kafka could not have done better.

Yet Obama blessed it and made it law. And I am against it. What he has done is pass a massive, nearly impossible to understand bill that will affect the lives of every single citizen of this country -- of the world, really -- as our economic engine chokes on the grime of government largesse. Even the one bit of the bill that appeals to me -- the bit about pre-existing conditions -- is complex and not totally clear. As things stand it becomes law in 2014, I think. Honestly, I'm not sure. But no matter. I'm betting now that this clause won't last. In the end the health care bill will be an enforced, yet unenforceable, travesty, clogging courts with case after case, while driving up costs and creating massive uncertainty around care. Damn, it's enough to make my head hurt.

(Next up: what I would have done!)

Reading a friend's short story and watching the sun set as hopes rise.

Back in college, I met a fellow classmate named Evan Williams. He was a history major, if I recall correctly, and shared my interest in all things Hemingway. In between our college years and for a bit after, we'd send each other letters every now and then that were a mix of "hey, what's up" and "let me try out this writing idea I have". As a result, the letters were often long, ambitious and more than a little cryptic (honestly, mine were probably just confusing, as cryptic implies some sort of hidden truth). Unlike me, Evan had some real writing talent and the drive to pursue it. He attended the Iowa's Writer Workshop and has kept at his craft ever since. Pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

 

Well, thanks to Facebook, Evan and I have reconnected a bit, and so I was over the moon to read his status a few weeks back announcing the inclusion of one of his stories in the Kenyon Review. I ordered my copy straightaway, and yesterday it arrived on my front steps, tucked inside a torn and frayed manila envelope. Outside, the sun was still decently above the horizon, so I opted to go for a run, but on return, I grabbed my Kenyon Review and my camera and headed to one of the best view sites in SF to take in Evan's prose and maybe snap a decent shot of what was shaping up to be a spectacular sunset.

The story is great, perhaps the best I have read of Evan's work. It's a taut tale filled with apprehension and riven with darker emotions and written with a cool technique to reveal one character's true condition. Despite the somber, tense story and setting sun, I was filled with positive feelings, as I sat on the bench and read. Why? Because Evan had done it. He had pursued his art and been published in one of the world's most prestigious literary magazines. This wasn't the first time for Evan, but it was the first time I have been able to share somewhat one of his artistic triumphs. And walking back down the hill, I was more motivated than ever to get my first album done and get it out into the world.

Thank you, Evan.

Manifest Shania. Thoughts on American Idol's Shania Twain week.

For the most recent episode of American Idol, the songwriter/performer whose music was highlighted was Shania Twain. I gagged (just a touch). Shania for me is the worst kind of pop star, a (very nearly) wholly fabricated act along the lines of The Monkees, The Backstreet Boys and countless others. Now, I confess, I like The Monkees quite a bit, but I think it's because they were so obviously a marketing idea more than a true band, not to mention the fact that they had phenomenal songs. Shania, on the other hand, was not obvious at all. There was no goofiness about her "talent" or about her authenticity. She was marketed as a true country star who crossed over. Please. Here's the real story, as far as I know it:

She was a blip on the Canadian music scene, when Mutt Lange heard her stuff and took her under his wing. In my gossip-informed opinion, which is bolstered by powerful deductive reasoning, Mutt saw in her as much as he heard and decided that with the right material, Shania could be a lot more than a Canadian singer/songwriter.

Wait, you're wondering, who the hell is Mutt Lange? A producer. But not just any producer. Mutt is behind some of the biggest selling albums of all time, including AC/DCs Highway to Hell and Back in Black, Foreigner 4, Def Leppard's High and Dry, Hysteria and Andrenilize and many other rock masterworks. All of these albums are paragons of commercial songcraft, and on all Mutt helped not only create the right sound for the songs but also he helped write the songs. But getting back to Shania…

What bothered me about the Idol episode was not that I had to listen to her songs (honestly, her songs are solid) but that I had to listen to her repeat over and over and over that she wrote them. Not fucking true. I'm sure she wrote parts, maybe even entire lyrics, but Mutt wrote a lot too. More important, I personally believe it was Mutt who made her songs such big sellers, not Shania. In Shania's defense, she's rightfully pissed that her marriage to Mutt ended after Mutt cheated on her (he denies it, but, um, well, let's jut say he and Tiger would like each other) but still, she should have shared some of the credit for her music with Mutt. Instead, she was Me, Me, Me. Turned me off in a big way.

And that's the end of my rant!

For love or money, part four (of four).

This is part four (FINALLY) of a four-part series on how I finally starting thinking about what I am instead of what I want to be, or something like that. Sorry for the long post!

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

I remember flying to Germany that first time. I had a roundtrip ticket, but no clear intention of using it. The plane left San Francisco in the late afternoon, and after a few hours of flight, it was over maybe Montana, honestly, I’m not sure, but I looked out the window and saw the darkened sky behind me and the still-light sky ahead and it all seemed to be the perfect metaphor: I was leaving the past behind for a better future.

And to my mind, it was a past worth leaving behind. I had never amounted to much at school, I had struggled to meet girls, my career was nothing really (despite my having worked at Sharper Image). Europe looked like a clean slate for me, and this turned out to be true. Not only were Europeans much less concerned about "success" than Americans, they truly accepted you for who you were, or at least the ones I met did.

For money, I taught English, my most interesting gig being in East Berlin not too long after the Wall had come down. My students were former border guards being retrained to work security in department stores. (Remember that, if you ever contemplate pilfering a stein from the KaDeWe!)

For love, I simply lived. For the first time in my life I felt accepted by those around me, I was not consumed with worry about finding a career, I could watch a sunset and just feel happy.

But like a cancer, my American drive for "success" and "career" ate at me, nibbling at first, then gnawing away pounds of flesh. In time, I became consumed by the notion that I was about to turn 30 and had no career, no money and no prospect of either.

I began to plot how best to do gain these things given my limited skills. (Did I even consider just "going with the flow", giving chance and chance? Hell no. I had to figure out what to DO. ) After taking stock, about the only skill I had that seemed remotely worth anything was my ability to write. I did not want to go back to writing catalog copy, though. What about copywriting, I mused. I thought back on the classes I had taken in San Francisco, and on the brief exposure to adland an impromptu tour of a famed SF agency had given me. I was intrigued, but what sealed the deal for me was a simple equation: you spend more time doing your job than anything else, so you should enjoy it and if you don't like it that much, the money per hour should be as high as possible. (Note: I was fixated on hourly wages, because that's how all of my various gigs in Europe paid me.)

So I began to investigate US ad agencies as best I could from Munich, pre-Internet, mind you! I found some things, set up some informational interviews, which I conducted on visits home. The more I learned about advertising agencies, the more obsessed I became with getting a job in one. I began to live in two places at once, Europe and the States. I became myopically focused on Landing A Job. I was irritable. Munich, which was once a veritable paradise for me became a prison, of sorts. My sense of possibility, which has so expanded overseas, began to shrink. The world became less a place where I could anything and more a place where I had to do one thing. Finally, I decided I had to leave. I had to be back in the States to get The Job.

I was very cold and methodical about my departure. Over several months, I packed up all my stuff (it fit in 20 yellow boxes, each about the size of four shoe boxes) and then I left Munich and everyone I met there and the girl I went there for and I headed home to get a job in advertising.

Did I take money over love? Man, I go back and forth on this. The girl and I were having problems, everyone I knew there was also contemplating leaving (we were all in our early to late 20s), I really didn't have any career prospects there, etc. My whole perspective was so distorted and confused, I honestly wouldn't say I made a choice. More than anything else, I was feeling desperate for change, change from a world where I had so little control over my future, to a world where I had some control. More important, the US offered the future I felt I wanted: a high-paying job in advertising.

Fast forward several years later, though, and I was definitely taking money over love, not so much romantic love, but love of life. I had worked like a bastard in advertising and risen to the top creative slot of the S.F. branch of the agency I worked for. But along the way I had given up most everything else. My guitars were more art objects than instruments. I wrote nothing but headlines and copy. I ate, slept and breathed ads, ads, ads. And ads. And more ads. I grew bitter, deeply unhappy, hopeless, even though I earned a lot of money and had a position of power. I didn't care. Even the fact that I had fallen in love again failed to dent my cynical carapace.  

And then I fell.

In the aftermath, I re-awakened to life's possibilities. I eventually married Catherine. I picked up my guitars again. I started writing stuff besides ads. And now, many years later, I even like advertising once again, but I will never ask it to be everything for me.

And as for love or money? Whereas I once struggled to answer this, I am now resolute: love.

Do I even want a music career?

I admit, to even think that music could be a career for me is highly presumptuous. 

However, yesterday evening, after a long day of walking and copious consumption of fizzy water, I was talking with the estimable Sara Currie, who was visiting the States for business from England, about that very notion: writing music for money. We had just listened to several tracks of mine from my upcoming (I promise!) album and the question arose: what's the plan?

I started to blather on about all kinds of stuff, when Sara stopped me and asked if I really wanted to take this thing I loved so much, songwriting, and turn it into something I did for money.

I paused.

The short answer is no. 

But let me back up for a second. We were talking specifically about what I might do with my music once I have the album ready. I went through my usual recitation about how my plan was to approach folks in charge of purchasing music for film and TV, as well as producer-types, who buy songs for performing artists to cover. Sara observed that because my songs had a lot of variety, I should be in good shape. I replied I wasn't so sure. People want FOCUS, they want to be able to count on songwriter A for country and songwriter B for pop and so on. A jack of all trades is almost always a master of none, and when you're investing in talent, you want a master, not alway, I know, but usually.

Then she asked if someone liked, say a country song of mine, would they ask me to "write 10 more like that" and would I want to. I looked out the window at the sailing ship being hit by rays of a setting sun and felt a wave of hopelessness. I recovered a bit to note that I would essentially be writing songs to a brief, just as I have done for years with ads. Then it really hit me: to write under contract would be to transform the songwriting process into the exact same process advertising requires, only I would finish with a song instead of an ad. That sealed it for me. No way, no how.

As the sun dried the last light from the day, I concluded that if music should ever become a career of mine - A HUGE IF -- it would have to be on the most idealistic of terms. Namely, I'd write the songs I want to write, not the songs some Hollywood-type wanted of me.  Which means I'm still gonna have to work for a living. 

Sigh.

Is Passive Promotion right? Are bridges a fool’s game to write for budding superstars, such as myself?

 

Brian Hazard at Passive Promotion, a killer blog for indie musicians, just posted about how songwriters who are just starting out should keep things simple and not write bridges for their tunes. Instead, they should stick with verses and choruses only and keep things simple. Naturally, the post inspired a lot of debate. But before I get into my particular point of view, a few words about bridges.

First off, I call the bridge a middle 8, and a middle eight is usually that one part of the song that’s different from the other parts. One of the most famous middle 8s is in a song by the Beatles (of course!) called Try To See Things My Way.  The middle 8 is the bit that goes “Life is very short and there’s no time…”, thought by many to be the bit that makes the song. Brian says middle 8s don’t repeat, but of course they do.

Anyway, Brian goes on to suggest that inexperienced songwriters should not write bridges, because a bridge will over-complicate a song and make it more difficult for listeners to get into right away. In other words, it won’t be a hit.

Truth be told, I agree with Brian. If you’re just getting going — just hoping to get someone to listen and be hooked — your verses and choruses are what you want to nail. HOWEVER, bridges usually don’t’ occur until later in a song, so if your song hasn’t hooked someone by the time the bridge happens, what does the bridge even matter?

Here’ what it all comes down to for me: to quote (roughly) Tom Petty, if one part of your song isn’t as good as the other parts, kill it or rewrite it. To me, that is such good advice. Petty’s only rule is MAKE IT GREAT. I’m good with that.

Oh, and what the hell do I know? I’ve NEVER had a hit!

The Axis of Awesome shows me how it's done.

As a rising force in the world of music and a future pop sensation, I spend a lot of time torturing myself over chord progressions for songs.

"What is the secret?", I often mutter. 

NOW I KNOW!

It's easy: The secret is four chords, that's it. Don't believe me? Watch the video.

All this useless beauty.

Elvis Costello wrote that line, and while I don’t know the song and don’t particularly like the lyrics to the song, the line resonates deeply within me. Every day, I look at out at the San Francisco Bay, I walk among the skyline, I stand under blue skies and in fog, and every day I marvel at the beauty of it all. And it truly seems as though I am living in a vast pile of currency no one will take. Why? Because, for whatever reason, I equate value with doing something. And simply gazing at beauty seems to be useless. I know in my heart it’s not, I know, know, know this to be true, but still, to look out on beauty fills me with helplessness and loss. Helplessness because there is nothing for me to do with the it. Loss because I have to let it go.



I got religion and it all went to hell.

I don’t remember where I was exactly, but, per usual, I was busy having some sort of inner dialogue (monologue?) with myself, when the phrase “I got religion and it all went to hell” materialized in my brain. Now, some might say God put it there, but I doubt it and if He did, well, good for him, because it would mean God has a sense of humor. Regardless, my first thought was, “Hmmm, that would make a good country song.” Now, several months later, said song is finally done. Many thanks to Catherine for her brutal editing on earlier versions, which, I confess, I can now see sucked.

Recording on this number will follow the usual chain: I’ll send my embarrassingly bad demo to Tim Young in LA, where he will lay down a driving acoustic to groove up my drum machine, then I’ll take the tracks to Studio C, where Jaime Durr will coax maximum thumpiness from Andy Korn, then everything will go back to Tim for more guitar work, then to Sam Bevan for bass, then back to Studio C for vocals, which I plan to have done by the incomparable RodDamnit.

I GOT RELIGION
(AND IT ALL WENT HELL) 

I was a godless man in a god-fearing town
And Frankie's Bar 
Was my sacred ground

I was true to myself but I cheated on my wife
Wore rattlesnake boots
I was living the life

And all the money we saved
I gambled every penny away
And I didn't give a damn
About God or any plan

Then late one night just about dawn
I was driving home
I was pretty far gone

When out of the dark came a blinding light
I could not see
Everything went white

(I) woke up in a hospital bed
All the doctors said I should be dead
And it was that very night 
I asked God to set me right

(Yes and)

I got religion (Ring them bells!)
Yes, I got religion (Hallelujah!)
But if Jesus loves me I can’t tell
‘Cause when I got religion, it all went to hell

I confessed to my wife, (and) she called me a liar
She called me worse
Then she called a lawyer

I confessed to the judge and he said, “Son,
This is one of those days
My job's gonna be fun."

Then my credit cards got stopped
I called the bank they said I got dropped
Then the alimony got set
She got more than she could get 

And I got religion (Ring them bells!)
Yes, I got religion (Hallelujah!)
But if Jesus loves me I can’t tell
‘Cause when I got religion, it all went to hell

(crazed solo on G)

(And) If there’s a lesson here 
Call me dumb but it's not clear
I confessed all my sins
I did my best to make amends

CHORUS 2X

The Bridges of SF County.

Every guitar – every stringed instrument, in fact – has a bridge. It’s usually made of metal on electric instruments, and usually wood on acoustic, but on all it serves the same function: to help align the strings properly and keep them at a playable height above the fret-board.

To me, however, the bridge is much more. When I first got an electric guitar, a Les Paul (in the upper right of the photo), the bridge was the most fascinating part. It was the most intricate, but clearly so simple in function, that it seemed to be a contradiction. After all, how could so many screws and metal bits be required to align and raise six little strings? It was also the part I was most nervous about messing with. Sure, the height adjustment seemed to be simple enough and each string saddle was clearly movable via a teensy allen screw. But what was the right height? Where should the saddle sit?

Most important, the bridge is the guitar equivalent of the human naval, if one takes the term naval gazing literally, namely: to stare at one’s belly button and think. Naval gazing is the most common activity in advertising -- my once, current and probably future trade, if the music thing fails – and when I write songs, I naval gaze deeply, except what I stare at most, when I’m not looking at my left hand, is the bridge of the guitar.

A guitar bridge is short, but the distance one can travel along it is infinite. As are the places one can go. And every bridge on every guitar I own has been traveled across countless times, as I seek songs. And no matter how many times I make the journey, I can make it again and have a different experience. Sometimes I end up in the river, wet, cold, silent. But mostly I get somewhere, a riff, a chord sequence, a rhythm. And either way, I always want to make the journey again.

Re-amping. Not quite teleportation, but still cool.

The day before yesterday, I headed into Hyde Street for a mixing session. The plan: reampmania!

For those mystified by the word re-amp, it simply means to take a recorded direct signal from a guitar, and run that signal out to an amp. Seeing it in action is weird, though, because when you run the signal out to the amp, the amp becomes like a player piano. I mean, it’s playing, but no one’s playing. Spooky.

Anyway, I wanted to use reamping because Tim Young, the guitarist I’ve been working with, lives in LA and does not have access to my Carr Mercury amp, which I would like to use as much as possible on my album, because it sounds SO GOOD. To overcome the minor issue of Tim being about 1000 miles away, I’ve been having Tim record both an amped tone plus a direct tone, so that the engineer and I can either keep Tim’s original tone (always rocking, because Tim has a vintage Fender amp), use the Carr instead, or blend the two. For Tuesday’s session, we mostly ended up blending the two, as the Fender is bright and sparkly, while the Carr is a darker, brooding beast and together they create a wall of sound that Phil Spector would approve of.

Sadly, however, while I headed home from the session on a high, the excitement of it all put me in bed for most of Wednesday. To ease the pain and shame, I pretended I was recovering from a coke and alcohol fueled binge, further colored by pot and ‘shrooms and a late night visit to whorehouse then a brief jaunt on Lady Gaga’s jet to Vegas, where we partied with Mike Tyson and washed down the night with bloody Mary’s at the Hard Rock.

On the meaning of shadows.

On the meaning of shadows.

The other day, I had just finished a morning run and because I had gotten started a little earlier than usual, the sunrise was maybe only 30 minutes into the day. I turned away from the sun, so it was at my back, and surveyed the Bay. Then I looked down, and stretching before me was my shadow. It was l-o-n-g.

Not having much else to do, besides recover a bit, I started thinking about what a shadow means. Is there any rhyme or reason to their length, beyond the obvious fact that the position of the sun plays the main role?

I think there is.

At the start of the day, your shadow is long because it represents the opportunities before you. It’s like a red carpet that’s been rolled out to great you and at the end lie hopes and dreams and luck.

By midday, your shadow has shortened to near non-existence. Which makes sense, because you probably aren’t doing much hoping and dreaming. Instead, you’re hard at work, nose to the grindstone, not thinking so much about what’s next, but rather what needs to happen now.

In the evening, your shadow is once again long. But now it represents obstacles more than opportunities. It shows you the true reality of what you want, a reality you now know is difficult to achieve, especially after trying to reach it all day long. Doubt lengthens your shadow. Bad luck. Missed chances.

And tomorrow it starts all over again.

Unless, of course, the weather erases all shadows. Not sure what that means…