"Straight and True" album dissection, Part 4: THE WHOLE WORLD'S GONE
You can buy this song here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/straight-and-true/id370407821
Jan. 1st, 2010, 2:00am:
We are on the porch underneath a light bulb and we are freezing. I wasn't thinking of jackets or hats or gloves because I was thinking of you. There is a storm blowing around us and snowdrifts are being sent back and forth across the lawn. The screeching wind and the bending trees and all the storm's fury are nothing next to your purring calm. I am nearly flatlining with serenity and neither of us are shivering, standing in the midst of the storm in our t-shirts. Do you remember this? If I put it in the present tense maybe the sensations will come back to you. I'm not thinking of the set that my band has just finished, I'm not thinking of the significance of a new year beginning, I'm not thinking one second into the future because I am thinking of you. You are suspending time for me and I am grateful for that because I don't want to work when the sun comes up, I don't want to feel my Jameson-buzz turned into nausea in the morning, I don't want to face the storm. I want the clock stopped and I want your face illuminated by a porch light. Except I am not thinking of any of this because I am thinking of you.
This is funny because we are virtually strangers.
I am saying, "I will love you like an avalanche, and you will be swept under my raging romance."
I am saying "Your lovers are like a mellow breeze, cuz they wanna lift your skirt and then they wanna leave."
I am not really saying these things. I am saying something that is probably profoundly stupid and you are politely listening because there is something about me, you think, that makes all the jabbering tolerable. This will become a recurring theme with us.
We are both probably thinking of 4 years ago, of how this is not a beginning but a continuation. I am remembering you standing in darkness, or maybe because it's a distant memory I remember you dimly lit, but I am remembering you standing in darkness. Your hair was snaking down your back and my eyes were snaking down your hair. Your eyes were obscured by the dark and I couldn't tell what they were doing, and so I was hoping you couldn't tell what mine were doing as they moved from your hair to your hips. Good God. Were you thinking of us 4 years ago as we stood on the porch, or were you thinking that it was cold and that you needed a jacket and that I should probably stop talking if I wasn't eventually going to kiss you? Because I was thinking of us 4 years ago, and saying to you (even though I was not truly saying this):
"I've been watching from this mountain top, and waiting for the sound of your beauty like a gunshot. Now you've got me rollling at your heels. We're gonna dance on down this rocky hill."
Do you remember this?
May 2nd, 2010, 2:00am:
Ok, it's a similar scene, and we are on another porch. We are both tan because we traveled to opposite ends of the Earth and came back looking like the natives. I also came back afraid. Last winter, on New Years Eve, I was singing Marvin Gaye to you while standing on a chair. They could have made me into a marble statue with a plaque reading "Confidence". But, as I said, I came back afraid. Making the grand gesture is one thing, and I consider myself an elite Maker of Romantic Promises (I will love you like an avalanche...) But any gesture needs to be followed by 1,001 deeds, and the idea of the doing is what has made me come back from a tropical paradise afraid. I was thinking about you under the palm fronds while the monkeys grunted. I was trying to come up with 1,001 deeds to show my faith, and none of them consisted of doing much of anything but only of talking. I wanted to write you a poem. I wanted to read you a poem. I wanted to sing you a song. The monkeys began grunting louder. The nightclubs and beaches were packed with nubile tourists and lithe natives, but I sat in the shadows of the palm fronds and dreamt of returning home and being back on a porch with you. I saw you standing there, looking up at me talking. Then I saw you take the porch steps down to the driveway and I saw headlights flood the porch. I know there are no monkeys in Vermont but I imagined a monkey grunting from the pine trees.
Now we are back on a porch. It is warm and everything (including you) smells like potential and everything should be perfect. This is what happens, though. This is what I was trying to tell any and all comers.
I am saying, "I will love you like a foundering ship at sea. But I know that you are just like a starving refugee. Right?"
Do you remember this?
I am saying, "In no time, I'll be springing leaks and hitting storms and you'll be losing faith and thinking about jumping overboard. So you've gotta lash yourself to the mast. Because we've both got troubles. Right?"
The monkeys grunt.
July 23rd, 2010, 2:00am:
Had you let me go on much longer, I am positive of what I would have said. I would have called you, phone pinned against my right ear, and said (while you sat on the other end, by turns baffled and bored):
"I will leave you like an atom bomb. We are bound together like protons and neutrons. And I know you'd never break that bond. Either we stay together or the whole world's gone."
That never happened.
Instead, on a humid July night, you and I walked a dirt road as the stars wheeled around us and the crickets sang and our brains bubbled like champagne. We both knew that the road only led to a lake but we were both thinking about moving to the city and so we both began to imagine that we would find high-rises and marquees at the road's end. You know as well as I do that the best part of this night is indescribable. We were both stumbling but not because of intoxication, I don't think. Beauty that had always been vague and unimpressive was now soaring through our bloodstreams and fusing my hand to your waist, because I didn't want to fall and because I saw you as the radiant source of this beauty and I wanted to touch you like a statue of Buddha or a crystal ball. But really, this is not what happened. These are words and words are just refined grunting and I don't want to grunt anymore. So when I realized that I couldn't form sentences, even simple ones like: "You're beautiful" or "I would lay down in traffic to save a hair on your head from falling out", and I said "Sorry... can't speak...", you merely said "Good" and we stopped walking and you kissed me. I wasn't thinking about what to say next, I wasn't thinking of myself as a falling atom bomb, I wasn't thinking about you thinking about me thinking about you, because time was standing still and I was thinking of you.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Sleeping with Demons
"Straight and True" album dissection, Part 3: SLEEPING WITH DEMONS
You can buy this song here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/straight-and-true/id370407821
The chorus of "Sleeping with Demons" was written by Dan O'Day, lead singer of the River City Rebels. I played bass guitar for the Rebels from Sept. 2008 - Sept. 2009. If any of you recall my previous blog entry which detailed my NYC ennui, then you should know that the Rebels were what broke me out of my torpor and, indirectly, made today's version of The Flood possible. I will elaborate.
The River City Rebels had always loomed somewhat large on my musical radar. When a band from Los Angeles or Seattle gets themselves a nice record contract, it is no big surprise or even a cause for celebration. Bands from these cities, where the music industry is ever-present and the potential of playing in front of a scout is very real, are signed all the time. (This scenario is, obviously, taking place before online networking became prevalent and made location obsolete.) Anyway, these metropolitan bands know how to write for a bigwig's ears, they know how to preen and strut for a bigwig's eye, and they know how to talk sweetly to a bigwig's ego. But when a band from, say, Vermont gets signed to a relatively big independent label, it is a different matter entirely. 5,000 kids languishing in jam spaces all over the State, futilely performing take after take of a song that nobody but their Mothers will hear, perk up their ears. Hope surges through the communities of disenfranchised and exhausted musicians. Demos are re-recorded with a renewed and ferocious vigor. This is, I imagine, what happened when the River City Rebels got signed to Victory Records in 2000. I dimly remember something similar happening to me. I was just starting my first band in the summer of 2000, and the Rebels signing to one of the bigger independent labels of the day suggested an auspicious atmosphere for such an endeavor. I got to see them opening for some of my favorite bands. They would bring big acts right to Vermont, and (on a few occassions) right to WARREN, my town of approximately 1,700 people. Because of them, I believe I encountered music with a more hopeful eye than someone in a similar backwoods environment may have. While other rural rockstars-to-be were sleeping with the demons of obscurity and isolation, I believed that my own place in the punk rock pantheon was something more than a pipe dream.
Cut to NYC. As I wrote in my blog entitled "The Beginning", I had somehow ended up waiting tables and flirting with the idea of abandoning music altogether. The absolute tedium of my job and the ceaseless scramble for rent was threatening to extinguish everything about my life that was artistically satisfying or even marginally enjoyable. In other words, I was absolutely fucking sick of everything that stood in between music and I. Enter Dan O'Day, tatooed, half-drunk, and looking like a slightly worn New York Dolls action figure. I had heard from my close friend Gavin Compton, ex-manager, roadie and Official Truck Stop Fight Starter, something of their travails since they last lived in Vermont. Their first three albums, which had adhered to a more or less generic punk rock format, were the ones that I had been acquainted with in my younger days. Apparently, the year that I went away to college in Montreal, they released an album that broke with the tenets of punk rock in a pretty drastic way. "Hate to be Loved", their fourth effort, was a glam influenced record that ended up garnering them a fair amount of attention. I later learned what a shot of adrenalin this was to everyone in the band. Slash, of Guns n' Roses fame (did I need to clarify that?), wore their t-shirt on stage and spoke about them in Rolling Stone magazine. They were playing to large crowds. They were, I'm assuming, almost drowning in semi- to highly attractive women. They felt the present inexorably marching toward a future filled with stardom and respect. Then something happened. Some people are of the opinion that what killed the Rebels momentum was Dan O'Day calling Tony Brummel, head of Victory Records, and telling him that his recent signings were shit. After all, he did promptly drop them from the label after this phone call, he kept the rights to their first four albums, and (obviously) he refrained from even the slightest advertisement of their music. Others think that it was the stalled release of their follow-up effort, "Keepsake of Luck", that finally burnt the bands wick to it's end. After miraculously securing an 80,000 dollar budget for the recording of said album, a legal battle with the producers led to a year-and-a-half delay of it's release. Once you hear this album, you will realize why this waiting period would be particularly catastrophic: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/keepsake-of-luck/id266625134
It is a remarkable fusion of the punk rock energy that got them signed in the first place and a vastly more mature and melodic musical palate. To know that your band is capable of such music, and to know that you might never be able to reap the album's benefits, could certainly slow the train of good energy and optimism that is crucial to any bands success. But whatever the reason, they had been stranded in obscurity for about four years at the time that I re-rencountered them. Subsequent tours had seen attendance steadily declining, and the band had even toyed with the idea of non-existence. So when Dan walked into my place of employment and asked me if I would like to join them on tour, mine was not the only sense of hope that needed rejuvenation. I joined the Rebels with the idea that my fading dreams of glory could be grafted onto their own dreams of rockstardom, and that together we could stop sleeping with the demons of self-doubt and lost youth and awake to fame and fortune.
Now cut to Lebanon, NH. I had just moved into their 3-bedroom apartment for a quick 3-week preparation for tour. We were learning 25+ songs at breakneck speed, and the days filled with live music blaring in our living room were a welcome relief from the drudgery of my city life. One day, before we left to embark upon our month-and-a-half tour of the USA, Dan came to me with a song.
"Patrick you little bitch," he said "I've been trying to write a verse for this for about four years now. I've never been able to do it. See if you can come up with anything".
In his underwear, with a scarf, a Florida Marlins hat and a Ziggy Stardust shirt on (just to give you a full picture of the scene), he sang this for me: "Sleeping with demons in the still of the night/ With the radio on/ Will break the heart of this man/ This cold hearted man".
A very simple chorus, but I saw it as a challenge. I took it with me on tour. I worked on it while rolling through Cleveland, OH. I sat in the van outside of a Tacoma, WA venue and strummed it on a battered old acoustic guitar. I sat on a couch, profoundly intoxicated, in Pasadena, CA and pushed out mad streams of lyrics that would eventually be thrown away. I hadn't made any progress by the end of the tour, and was still scratching away at it while sitting at a hotel room desk in Indianapolis, where I had gone to spend my winter break. Nothing in particular was sticking, but I wasn't too worried about it. When the proper subject matter and melody came, it would be apparent. All I had to do was wait.
Most of the time, songs that you write don't "come true" in any real sense of the phrase. They are invented scenarios. What's more, they are idealizations of your life and of your mind, and a perfect rendering of how you would act and how you would think if you weren't constantly thinking about your shitty job and your hangnails. However, "Sleeping with Demons" has proved to be a prophetic song for me.
I eventually got the proper subject matter for this song in about February of '09. I was living with the Rebels in their apartment in Lebanon, NH, and working on writing their next album with them. I could not shake the need to complete "Sleeping with Demons", though. So, one night, I was driving around with my roommate and his friend. They were looking for some sort of illegal substance, and I was lying down across the backseat watching the powerlines shoot by. I thought that I was writing about them. I imagined them being secretly in love, making plans to quit their jobs and run away to the big city with each other, where "they've got diners open all night/ And they've got dresses so frilly and white". In an absolute torrent of creative activity, I finished the song before we got back to the house. I recorded it sparsely, just a few vocal layers and acoustic guitar, and played it back. Something about it absolutely glowed. I had never been so satisfied with a song I had written, and it seemed like I had finally broken away from my two default settings (trite cliche or pretentious wordiness) and created something original. But, I was in the Rebels. There was an album to be made. Maybe "Sleeping with Demons" would have to sit on the shelf for a long, long time.
But here is where the prophecy comes into play. I began playing it out at open mic events around Lebanon. People responded to this song like crazy. I can truly say that it is the genesis of the "Straight and True" album, in that the cheers it drew from the thin but enthusiastic bar crowds made me long for my own band. As I said, the Rebels are responsible for the current version of The Flood in that they outlined for me exactly what I did not want to do: play bass in the corner of the stage and stifle my burning need to mash words and sounds together. The same demons of obscurity and isolation that the Rebels had helped me forget as a young country boy began to resurface. I realized that what had been so significant to me about the Rebels initial success, way back in 2000, was the idea that I could do it too. I needed to have my own success, experience my own crushing defeat, and render all of these emotions artistically on my own. It was pointless to try to graft my dreams onto those of the Rebels. So I began to construct the rest of the album. "Lonely Wyoming" was born, "Sweet Janeen" was born, "Passionate Man" came raging forth. And, like "Sleeping with Demons" describes, I eventually rode "through the backroads at night" and arrived at my childhood home. I was going to start my own band, I told myself. So I did. And now that I am actually making the move back to NYC, this song makes me think that my mind knows what needs to happen even if everyday Patrick doesn't. My mind set out what was to occur months and months before it happened, documenting my need to escape before I consciously recognized it. Only now am I realizing this song's prescience. Because, to further the notion of "Sleeping with Demons" as prophecy, a girl has entered the picture. Neither of us have seen enough of this big old world, so I'm going to shine my headlights through her window. We will feel the car purr 'til the warm city lights shine on us.
So, to finish, thank you Mr. O'Day. For this chorus, for a year of solid rock n' roll apprenticeship, and for eventually leading me to The Flood.
You can buy this song here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/straight-and-true/id370407821
The chorus of "Sleeping with Demons" was written by Dan O'Day, lead singer of the River City Rebels. I played bass guitar for the Rebels from Sept. 2008 - Sept. 2009. If any of you recall my previous blog entry which detailed my NYC ennui, then you should know that the Rebels were what broke me out of my torpor and, indirectly, made today's version of The Flood possible. I will elaborate.
The River City Rebels had always loomed somewhat large on my musical radar. When a band from Los Angeles or Seattle gets themselves a nice record contract, it is no big surprise or even a cause for celebration. Bands from these cities, where the music industry is ever-present and the potential of playing in front of a scout is very real, are signed all the time. (This scenario is, obviously, taking place before online networking became prevalent and made location obsolete.) Anyway, these metropolitan bands know how to write for a bigwig's ears, they know how to preen and strut for a bigwig's eye, and they know how to talk sweetly to a bigwig's ego. But when a band from, say, Vermont gets signed to a relatively big independent label, it is a different matter entirely. 5,000 kids languishing in jam spaces all over the State, futilely performing take after take of a song that nobody but their Mothers will hear, perk up their ears. Hope surges through the communities of disenfranchised and exhausted musicians. Demos are re-recorded with a renewed and ferocious vigor. This is, I imagine, what happened when the River City Rebels got signed to Victory Records in 2000. I dimly remember something similar happening to me. I was just starting my first band in the summer of 2000, and the Rebels signing to one of the bigger independent labels of the day suggested an auspicious atmosphere for such an endeavor. I got to see them opening for some of my favorite bands. They would bring big acts right to Vermont, and (on a few occassions) right to WARREN, my town of approximately 1,700 people. Because of them, I believe I encountered music with a more hopeful eye than someone in a similar backwoods environment may have. While other rural rockstars-to-be were sleeping with the demons of obscurity and isolation, I believed that my own place in the punk rock pantheon was something more than a pipe dream.
Cut to NYC. As I wrote in my blog entitled "The Beginning", I had somehow ended up waiting tables and flirting with the idea of abandoning music altogether. The absolute tedium of my job and the ceaseless scramble for rent was threatening to extinguish everything about my life that was artistically satisfying or even marginally enjoyable. In other words, I was absolutely fucking sick of everything that stood in between music and I. Enter Dan O'Day, tatooed, half-drunk, and looking like a slightly worn New York Dolls action figure. I had heard from my close friend Gavin Compton, ex-manager, roadie and Official Truck Stop Fight Starter, something of their travails since they last lived in Vermont. Their first three albums, which had adhered to a more or less generic punk rock format, were the ones that I had been acquainted with in my younger days. Apparently, the year that I went away to college in Montreal, they released an album that broke with the tenets of punk rock in a pretty drastic way. "Hate to be Loved", their fourth effort, was a glam influenced record that ended up garnering them a fair amount of attention. I later learned what a shot of adrenalin this was to everyone in the band. Slash, of Guns n' Roses fame (did I need to clarify that?), wore their t-shirt on stage and spoke about them in Rolling Stone magazine. They were playing to large crowds. They were, I'm assuming, almost drowning in semi- to highly attractive women. They felt the present inexorably marching toward a future filled with stardom and respect. Then something happened. Some people are of the opinion that what killed the Rebels momentum was Dan O'Day calling Tony Brummel, head of Victory Records, and telling him that his recent signings were shit. After all, he did promptly drop them from the label after this phone call, he kept the rights to their first four albums, and (obviously) he refrained from even the slightest advertisement of their music. Others think that it was the stalled release of their follow-up effort, "Keepsake of Luck", that finally burnt the bands wick to it's end. After miraculously securing an 80,000 dollar budget for the recording of said album, a legal battle with the producers led to a year-and-a-half delay of it's release. Once you hear this album, you will realize why this waiting period would be particularly catastrophic: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/keepsake-of-luck/id266625134
It is a remarkable fusion of the punk rock energy that got them signed in the first place and a vastly more mature and melodic musical palate. To know that your band is capable of such music, and to know that you might never be able to reap the album's benefits, could certainly slow the train of good energy and optimism that is crucial to any bands success. But whatever the reason, they had been stranded in obscurity for about four years at the time that I re-rencountered them. Subsequent tours had seen attendance steadily declining, and the band had even toyed with the idea of non-existence. So when Dan walked into my place of employment and asked me if I would like to join them on tour, mine was not the only sense of hope that needed rejuvenation. I joined the Rebels with the idea that my fading dreams of glory could be grafted onto their own dreams of rockstardom, and that together we could stop sleeping with the demons of self-doubt and lost youth and awake to fame and fortune.
Now cut to Lebanon, NH. I had just moved into their 3-bedroom apartment for a quick 3-week preparation for tour. We were learning 25+ songs at breakneck speed, and the days filled with live music blaring in our living room were a welcome relief from the drudgery of my city life. One day, before we left to embark upon our month-and-a-half tour of the USA, Dan came to me with a song.
"Patrick you little bitch," he said "I've been trying to write a verse for this for about four years now. I've never been able to do it. See if you can come up with anything".
In his underwear, with a scarf, a Florida Marlins hat and a Ziggy Stardust shirt on (just to give you a full picture of the scene), he sang this for me: "Sleeping with demons in the still of the night/ With the radio on/ Will break the heart of this man/ This cold hearted man".
A very simple chorus, but I saw it as a challenge. I took it with me on tour. I worked on it while rolling through Cleveland, OH. I sat in the van outside of a Tacoma, WA venue and strummed it on a battered old acoustic guitar. I sat on a couch, profoundly intoxicated, in Pasadena, CA and pushed out mad streams of lyrics that would eventually be thrown away. I hadn't made any progress by the end of the tour, and was still scratching away at it while sitting at a hotel room desk in Indianapolis, where I had gone to spend my winter break. Nothing in particular was sticking, but I wasn't too worried about it. When the proper subject matter and melody came, it would be apparent. All I had to do was wait.
Most of the time, songs that you write don't "come true" in any real sense of the phrase. They are invented scenarios. What's more, they are idealizations of your life and of your mind, and a perfect rendering of how you would act and how you would think if you weren't constantly thinking about your shitty job and your hangnails. However, "Sleeping with Demons" has proved to be a prophetic song for me.
I eventually got the proper subject matter for this song in about February of '09. I was living with the Rebels in their apartment in Lebanon, NH, and working on writing their next album with them. I could not shake the need to complete "Sleeping with Demons", though. So, one night, I was driving around with my roommate and his friend. They were looking for some sort of illegal substance, and I was lying down across the backseat watching the powerlines shoot by. I thought that I was writing about them. I imagined them being secretly in love, making plans to quit their jobs and run away to the big city with each other, where "they've got diners open all night/ And they've got dresses so frilly and white". In an absolute torrent of creative activity, I finished the song before we got back to the house. I recorded it sparsely, just a few vocal layers and acoustic guitar, and played it back. Something about it absolutely glowed. I had never been so satisfied with a song I had written, and it seemed like I had finally broken away from my two default settings (trite cliche or pretentious wordiness) and created something original. But, I was in the Rebels. There was an album to be made. Maybe "Sleeping with Demons" would have to sit on the shelf for a long, long time.
But here is where the prophecy comes into play. I began playing it out at open mic events around Lebanon. People responded to this song like crazy. I can truly say that it is the genesis of the "Straight and True" album, in that the cheers it drew from the thin but enthusiastic bar crowds made me long for my own band. As I said, the Rebels are responsible for the current version of The Flood in that they outlined for me exactly what I did not want to do: play bass in the corner of the stage and stifle my burning need to mash words and sounds together. The same demons of obscurity and isolation that the Rebels had helped me forget as a young country boy began to resurface. I realized that what had been so significant to me about the Rebels initial success, way back in 2000, was the idea that I could do it too. I needed to have my own success, experience my own crushing defeat, and render all of these emotions artistically on my own. It was pointless to try to graft my dreams onto those of the Rebels. So I began to construct the rest of the album. "Lonely Wyoming" was born, "Sweet Janeen" was born, "Passionate Man" came raging forth. And, like "Sleeping with Demons" describes, I eventually rode "through the backroads at night" and arrived at my childhood home. I was going to start my own band, I told myself. So I did. And now that I am actually making the move back to NYC, this song makes me think that my mind knows what needs to happen even if everyday Patrick doesn't. My mind set out what was to occur months and months before it happened, documenting my need to escape before I consciously recognized it. Only now am I realizing this song's prescience. Because, to further the notion of "Sleeping with Demons" as prophecy, a girl has entered the picture. Neither of us have seen enough of this big old world, so I'm going to shine my headlights through her window. We will feel the car purr 'til the warm city lights shine on us.
So, to finish, thank you Mr. O'Day. For this chorus, for a year of solid rock n' roll apprenticeship, and for eventually leading me to The Flood.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Straight and True
"Straight and True" album dissection, Part 2: STRAIGHT AND TRUE
You can buy this song here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/straight-and-true/id370407821
Part One: Geometry
Everything that we find beautiful about our lives can be reduced to geometry. We realize that we are surrounded by the rolling semicircles and the jutting triangles of mountains, and we realize that this is beautiful. We realize that the human body is comprised of subtle arcs that are both practical and aesthetically sound, and we realize that this is beautiful. There is even a geometry of the invisible, where we imagine our lives as a straight line headed toward heaven or fame or some other ineffable fate. We attempt to follow this invisible line because we realize that this straight and true life would be beautiful.
This is why the theme of this blog is the crooked, the wayward or the errant. When we see the symmetry of a landscape disrupted by a flood, changed from geometric perfection into roiling waters and chaos, we realize that this is ugly. When we see protruding bones and bent frames in photographs of the Polish death camps or of Stalinist Russia, we realize that this is ugly. And when the straight lines of our lives veer off, 90 degrees toward tragedy or ruin, we become bitter and crooked at heart and we realize that this can be an ugly life.
So we seek what is straight and true, and if our lives are bent beyond recognition then we look to the the clear angles and varied shapes of art. It becomes an invaluable tool for reminding us that the methods and principles of geometry remain in tact, even if our lives have been reduced to only lopsided shapes and wavy lines. How many people would testify that their lives have been saved by a song, changed by a novel or irreperably altered by a painting on a wall? Anyone who hasn't experienced this is either superhuman or living in a state of extreme crookedness. Which leads me to my next point.
What happens to a culture when its artistic output, this tool that has the capacity to inspire uprightness and symmetry of the soul, is itself crooked? What happens when an entire culture is reading books and singing songs that are all out of proportion, all crude and uninspired and geometrically unsound? What happens when a culture has no refuge in the clear angles of art because art itself has become the domain of crooked minds? Such a culture realizes exactly what songs they are singing, they realize exactly what narratives they are using as models and paradigms, but they do not realize that this is ugly.
Part Two: Billboard
I am going to list some choice selections from the Billboard Hot 100, focusing on the time period of 2008-2010.
January 5th-March 8th, 2008: "Low" by Flo Rida: I am under the impression that wearing big furry boots while furiously dancing in a nightclub would be highly uncomfortable. But even beyond Flo Rida's questionable wardrobe choices for the female character in this song (she also dons, at one point, "baggy sweapants"... sexy), I want to discuss the syntax. Although I'm sure most people would argue that relatively few of us are actually dissecting the linguistics of Flo Rida, I would counter that... we kind of are. Through endless repetition (and God knows how many times I heard this song when it was popular) I am convinced that the absurd, quasi-gibberish in songs like this becomes a part of how we think. When we are in our car and find ourselves singing it, we actually let things like "Did I think I seen shorty get low?" and "Imma say that I prefer them no clothes" pass our lips. I'm sorry to be a downer, but I think that this is bad for us. Ok, it's a fun song. But TWO MONTHS AT NUMBER ONE???
July 5th-August 16th: "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry: Most of my problems with this song lay in it's barely covert homophobia. Katy Perry got drunk and kissed a girl. It's not what good girls do, not how they should behave. She hopes her boyfriend doesn't mind. She just wants to make some poor lesbian her "experimental game". Does anyone else see how belittling this is? OMG EWWWWWW GROSSSS I TOTALLY KISSED THAT GIRL SHE WAS KINDA HOT I MEAN IM TOTALLY NOT A LESBIAN BUT IM DRUNK AND JUST WANTED TO SEE HOW BEING A DYKE FELT. Ugh. Again, how many times did we hear this song when it was huge? How can this idiotic mentality NOT be affecting our culture when we are literally surrounded by it? Oh, and don't worry, she has some Flo Rida-esque grammatical quirks as well: "I'm curious for you"... You're curious for her, Katy Perry? As in, she's not curious, so you're being curious in lieu of her absent curiosity? Orrrrrrrrrrr, did you mean "I'm curious about you?" Time to pick up a copy of The Elements of Style, Katy Perry. One more jab at her, while I'm on it. I wanted to mention that I have heard Katy Perry being touted as one of the promising female singer-songwriters of our generation. Ah, yes. Joni Mitchell. Patti Smith. Both in a direct lineage to the auto-tune drenched, soulless club-bangers of Katy Perry.
April 18th-October 10th, 2009: "Boom Boom Pow/I Gotta Feeling" by The Black Eyed Peas: I actually think both of these songs are very catchy. Even though I hate Fergie. Seriously, she has a song with the lyrics "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket". I wept just typing that. However, I will give someone 100 dollars if they can write me a one page synopsis on what the song "Boom Boom Pow" is about. I am relatively confident that no one would succeed at this, because it is the only song I have ever heard that is literally about NOTHING. Which is fine. But I wish they had just sung gibberish lyrics instead. It would amount to the same thing, only I wouldn't have to hear people walking around calling each other "2000 and late". And, on a more serious note, there would be a much clearer division in music. People would know that this was gibberish, and the real words would be left for people with something to say. Otherwise, people are going to forget that songs have the capacity to express emotion and pain and joy in a meaningful and eloquent way. Do you think that's an exaggeration? These two songs topped the charts for ALMOST HALF OF A YEAR!!! Plenty of time for everybody to forget that this is just pop, fun for a drunken night but essentially meaningless and a waste of time. As for "I Gotta Feeling"... watch the official video. That party is an exact replication of what I envision Hell to look like. Eternal partying. Eternal auto-tune. Eternal Fergie.
November 28th-December 26th, 2009: "Empire State of Mind" by Jay Z feat. Alicia Keys: Just a few words about this song. First of all, I am pretty sure that everyone in the world knows about New York City. It's an awesome place. Lots of singers have written about it. Sinatra. Lou Reed. Dylan. I don't think anybody will forget about it's presence in the foreseeable future. So was it really necessary to write yet another NYC anthem? Write an anthem about Omaha, Nebraska. Anchorage, Alaska. Warren, Vermont. This song comes across like someone trying to tell me about this great new band they found called The Beatles. Let's hear it for The Beatles. They're a great band. I am a great artist for recognizing their greatness. And of course, this song sold millions because Jay Z knew that mentioning NYC in a song would make every New Yorker instantly jizz themselves over it. Cheap marketing technique. And, to top it off, some more bad syntax: "Concrete jungle WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OF". How did this make it past the ears of all the engineers and record execs? Amazing.
May 29th-June 12th, 2010: "OMG" by Usher feat. will.i.am: Um... this song is called "OMG".
Part Three: Straight and True
So this is what the song "Straight and True" is about. We have fallen on hard times, but I've been delivered. I wanna make the world shiver.
You can buy this song here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/straight-and-true/id370407821
Part One: Geometry
Everything that we find beautiful about our lives can be reduced to geometry. We realize that we are surrounded by the rolling semicircles and the jutting triangles of mountains, and we realize that this is beautiful. We realize that the human body is comprised of subtle arcs that are both practical and aesthetically sound, and we realize that this is beautiful. There is even a geometry of the invisible, where we imagine our lives as a straight line headed toward heaven or fame or some other ineffable fate. We attempt to follow this invisible line because we realize that this straight and true life would be beautiful.
This is why the theme of this blog is the crooked, the wayward or the errant. When we see the symmetry of a landscape disrupted by a flood, changed from geometric perfection into roiling waters and chaos, we realize that this is ugly. When we see protruding bones and bent frames in photographs of the Polish death camps or of Stalinist Russia, we realize that this is ugly. And when the straight lines of our lives veer off, 90 degrees toward tragedy or ruin, we become bitter and crooked at heart and we realize that this can be an ugly life.
So we seek what is straight and true, and if our lives are bent beyond recognition then we look to the the clear angles and varied shapes of art. It becomes an invaluable tool for reminding us that the methods and principles of geometry remain in tact, even if our lives have been reduced to only lopsided shapes and wavy lines. How many people would testify that their lives have been saved by a song, changed by a novel or irreperably altered by a painting on a wall? Anyone who hasn't experienced this is either superhuman or living in a state of extreme crookedness. Which leads me to my next point.
What happens to a culture when its artistic output, this tool that has the capacity to inspire uprightness and symmetry of the soul, is itself crooked? What happens when an entire culture is reading books and singing songs that are all out of proportion, all crude and uninspired and geometrically unsound? What happens when a culture has no refuge in the clear angles of art because art itself has become the domain of crooked minds? Such a culture realizes exactly what songs they are singing, they realize exactly what narratives they are using as models and paradigms, but they do not realize that this is ugly.
Part Two: Billboard
I am going to list some choice selections from the Billboard Hot 100, focusing on the time period of 2008-2010.
January 5th-March 8th, 2008: "Low" by Flo Rida: I am under the impression that wearing big furry boots while furiously dancing in a nightclub would be highly uncomfortable. But even beyond Flo Rida's questionable wardrobe choices for the female character in this song (she also dons, at one point, "baggy sweapants"... sexy), I want to discuss the syntax. Although I'm sure most people would argue that relatively few of us are actually dissecting the linguistics of Flo Rida, I would counter that... we kind of are. Through endless repetition (and God knows how many times I heard this song when it was popular) I am convinced that the absurd, quasi-gibberish in songs like this becomes a part of how we think. When we are in our car and find ourselves singing it, we actually let things like "Did I think I seen shorty get low?" and "Imma say that I prefer them no clothes" pass our lips. I'm sorry to be a downer, but I think that this is bad for us. Ok, it's a fun song. But TWO MONTHS AT NUMBER ONE???
July 5th-August 16th: "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry: Most of my problems with this song lay in it's barely covert homophobia. Katy Perry got drunk and kissed a girl. It's not what good girls do, not how they should behave. She hopes her boyfriend doesn't mind. She just wants to make some poor lesbian her "experimental game". Does anyone else see how belittling this is? OMG EWWWWWW GROSSSS I TOTALLY KISSED THAT GIRL SHE WAS KINDA HOT I MEAN IM TOTALLY NOT A LESBIAN BUT IM DRUNK AND JUST WANTED TO SEE HOW BEING A DYKE FELT. Ugh. Again, how many times did we hear this song when it was huge? How can this idiotic mentality NOT be affecting our culture when we are literally surrounded by it? Oh, and don't worry, she has some Flo Rida-esque grammatical quirks as well: "I'm curious for you"... You're curious for her, Katy Perry? As in, she's not curious, so you're being curious in lieu of her absent curiosity? Orrrrrrrrrrr, did you mean "I'm curious about you?" Time to pick up a copy of The Elements of Style, Katy Perry. One more jab at her, while I'm on it. I wanted to mention that I have heard Katy Perry being touted as one of the promising female singer-songwriters of our generation. Ah, yes. Joni Mitchell. Patti Smith. Both in a direct lineage to the auto-tune drenched, soulless club-bangers of Katy Perry.
April 18th-October 10th, 2009: "Boom Boom Pow/I Gotta Feeling" by The Black Eyed Peas: I actually think both of these songs are very catchy. Even though I hate Fergie. Seriously, she has a song with the lyrics "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket". I wept just typing that. However, I will give someone 100 dollars if they can write me a one page synopsis on what the song "Boom Boom Pow" is about. I am relatively confident that no one would succeed at this, because it is the only song I have ever heard that is literally about NOTHING. Which is fine. But I wish they had just sung gibberish lyrics instead. It would amount to the same thing, only I wouldn't have to hear people walking around calling each other "2000 and late". And, on a more serious note, there would be a much clearer division in music. People would know that this was gibberish, and the real words would be left for people with something to say. Otherwise, people are going to forget that songs have the capacity to express emotion and pain and joy in a meaningful and eloquent way. Do you think that's an exaggeration? These two songs topped the charts for ALMOST HALF OF A YEAR!!! Plenty of time for everybody to forget that this is just pop, fun for a drunken night but essentially meaningless and a waste of time. As for "I Gotta Feeling"... watch the official video. That party is an exact replication of what I envision Hell to look like. Eternal partying. Eternal auto-tune. Eternal Fergie.
November 28th-December 26th, 2009: "Empire State of Mind" by Jay Z feat. Alicia Keys: Just a few words about this song. First of all, I am pretty sure that everyone in the world knows about New York City. It's an awesome place. Lots of singers have written about it. Sinatra. Lou Reed. Dylan. I don't think anybody will forget about it's presence in the foreseeable future. So was it really necessary to write yet another NYC anthem? Write an anthem about Omaha, Nebraska. Anchorage, Alaska. Warren, Vermont. This song comes across like someone trying to tell me about this great new band they found called The Beatles. Let's hear it for The Beatles. They're a great band. I am a great artist for recognizing their greatness. And of course, this song sold millions because Jay Z knew that mentioning NYC in a song would make every New Yorker instantly jizz themselves over it. Cheap marketing technique. And, to top it off, some more bad syntax: "Concrete jungle WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OF". How did this make it past the ears of all the engineers and record execs? Amazing.
May 29th-June 12th, 2010: "OMG" by Usher feat. will.i.am: Um... this song is called "OMG".
Part Three: Straight and True
So this is what the song "Straight and True" is about. We have fallen on hard times, but I've been delivered. I wanna make the world shiver.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Caedmon's Dream
"Straight and True" album dissection, Part 1: CAEDMON'S DREAM
You can buy this song here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/straight-and-true/id370407821
Caedmon was an illiterate shepherd who lived in the 7th century AD. Right away, this sounds like perfect fodder for a pop/rock song, doesn't it? But there was more to Caedmon than his 9-5 job. Unlike the other shepherds, content with growing rambunctious off of honey wine and slurring songs around a campfire, Caedmon was perpetually restless. Cursed with a voice like a bullfrog and an inability to remember lyrics, he would go off and sleep with the animals as his co-workers threw their hymns to the sky. It was very vague, this restlessness, but it was persistent and made Caedmon constantly on the lookout for grand revelations and epiphanies. This went on for years. His hair thinned, he grew a paunch from eating inordinate amounts of goat-based dairy products, and he largely stopped caring about the source of this restless feeling. His flock meandered in the same pattern every day, and he would liken his thoughts to these animals: born, wandering, and dying with no particular goal having been reached.
One night, like many others, he went to sleep while the others sang hymns to God by the fire. Crickets were singing. The moon was humming in a register that only a half-asleep human ear can detect. And something began to happen. With this organic symphony ringing in his dozing ears, he opened his eyes and saw letters, then whole sentences, and finally a complete poem being inscribed in the sky. Caedmon cleared his throat. Assuming that whoever was behind this dream-revelation forgot that he was illiterate, he waited for a holy voiceover to fill him in on the poem's contents. Seconds later, roaring into song, a voice began to intone what he assumed was the poem that was emblazoned on the heavens. Over and over, until the sun began to peer up from the hills, this divine melody was sung for Caedmon as he lay sleeping in the grass.
Caedmon awoke with this song stuck in his head. Attempting to rid his mind of the by now obnoxious melody, he went through his daily routines. Morning ablutions. Stale crackers. A large mound of goat cheese. But when he got to his flock, he grew dizzy and short of breath. Unlike other mornings, when the animals were sporadically placed around the pasture, they seemed to be standing in two perpendicular lines. They were all staring at him. Goading them to move, hollering in tones that he figured sheep would understand, he became increasingly creeped out by their fixed gazes. This is when he decided to climb a tree to call for help, despite the fact that his co-workers were most likely nursing intense mead hangovers. This day had positive and negative aspects, for Caedmon. Unfortunately, what he saw when he climbed the tree gave him such a shock that he tumbled from the branches and fractured his arm. Fortunately, though, what he saw also convinced him to ignore his shattered limb and to run and tell the Monks of his dream the night before. For the sheep had formed themselves in the shape of the Cross.
The rest is, quite literally, history. The Monks assured Caedmon, somewhat jealously, that he had recieved numerous signs from God. He took his monastic vows, became the poet laureate of the monastery, and this illiterate shepherd with the bullfrog voice became more like a saint. Furthermore, he ended up creating a song that outlasted all of his co-worker's drunken campfire hymns. He left the world one of the earliest examples of English language poetry. This poem is the very same one he recieved in his dream that night.
In other words, I wrote this song in order to describe the genesis of my own fascination with songwriting. I think of it as something that can wrench me from the tedium of daily life, that can afford me communion with meaning and significance, and that has the potential to inspire other people. These are the underlying principles of my attempt to bring The Flood into the public eye, though eventual riches and superstardom will be welcomed as added bonuses. I figured this was a good song to open up the "Straight and True" album with: to lay my reasons for writing the damn thing on the table from the get-go, and then leave the listener to determine whether or not the album lives up to these aspirations.
Thanks for reading, and be on the lookout for the next installation of the "Straight and True" album dissection: the title track, STRAIGHT AND TRUE.
You can buy this song here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/straight-and-true/id370407821
Caedmon was an illiterate shepherd who lived in the 7th century AD. Right away, this sounds like perfect fodder for a pop/rock song, doesn't it? But there was more to Caedmon than his 9-5 job. Unlike the other shepherds, content with growing rambunctious off of honey wine and slurring songs around a campfire, Caedmon was perpetually restless. Cursed with a voice like a bullfrog and an inability to remember lyrics, he would go off and sleep with the animals as his co-workers threw their hymns to the sky. It was very vague, this restlessness, but it was persistent and made Caedmon constantly on the lookout for grand revelations and epiphanies. This went on for years. His hair thinned, he grew a paunch from eating inordinate amounts of goat-based dairy products, and he largely stopped caring about the source of this restless feeling. His flock meandered in the same pattern every day, and he would liken his thoughts to these animals: born, wandering, and dying with no particular goal having been reached.
One night, like many others, he went to sleep while the others sang hymns to God by the fire. Crickets were singing. The moon was humming in a register that only a half-asleep human ear can detect. And something began to happen. With this organic symphony ringing in his dozing ears, he opened his eyes and saw letters, then whole sentences, and finally a complete poem being inscribed in the sky. Caedmon cleared his throat. Assuming that whoever was behind this dream-revelation forgot that he was illiterate, he waited for a holy voiceover to fill him in on the poem's contents. Seconds later, roaring into song, a voice began to intone what he assumed was the poem that was emblazoned on the heavens. Over and over, until the sun began to peer up from the hills, this divine melody was sung for Caedmon as he lay sleeping in the grass.
Caedmon awoke with this song stuck in his head. Attempting to rid his mind of the by now obnoxious melody, he went through his daily routines. Morning ablutions. Stale crackers. A large mound of goat cheese. But when he got to his flock, he grew dizzy and short of breath. Unlike other mornings, when the animals were sporadically placed around the pasture, they seemed to be standing in two perpendicular lines. They were all staring at him. Goading them to move, hollering in tones that he figured sheep would understand, he became increasingly creeped out by their fixed gazes. This is when he decided to climb a tree to call for help, despite the fact that his co-workers were most likely nursing intense mead hangovers. This day had positive and negative aspects, for Caedmon. Unfortunately, what he saw when he climbed the tree gave him such a shock that he tumbled from the branches and fractured his arm. Fortunately, though, what he saw also convinced him to ignore his shattered limb and to run and tell the Monks of his dream the night before. For the sheep had formed themselves in the shape of the Cross.
The rest is, quite literally, history. The Monks assured Caedmon, somewhat jealously, that he had recieved numerous signs from God. He took his monastic vows, became the poet laureate of the monastery, and this illiterate shepherd with the bullfrog voice became more like a saint. Furthermore, he ended up creating a song that outlasted all of his co-worker's drunken campfire hymns. He left the world one of the earliest examples of English language poetry. This poem is the very same one he recieved in his dream that night.
In other words, I wrote this song in order to describe the genesis of my own fascination with songwriting. I think of it as something that can wrench me from the tedium of daily life, that can afford me communion with meaning and significance, and that has the potential to inspire other people. These are the underlying principles of my attempt to bring The Flood into the public eye, though eventual riches and superstardom will be welcomed as added bonuses. I figured this was a good song to open up the "Straight and True" album with: to lay my reasons for writing the damn thing on the table from the get-go, and then leave the listener to determine whether or not the album lives up to these aspirations.
Thanks for reading, and be on the lookout for the next installation of the "Straight and True" album dissection: the title track, STRAIGHT AND TRUE.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Our Gift to You
I’m sure that you’re all extremely excited when presented with the opportunity to read our blog and discover our secrets. As you should be. We have lots of them and they are juicy. And how could we deprive you of full access to our souls, you who came to all of our shows, bought our t-shirts and CDs, and danced with us for weekends on end? You have all been so generous with your money and support that, besides furnishing you with many (hopefully) enjoyable evenings, we are going to give you something extra: our wisdom. Sound like a raw deal? Understandable. I, admittedly, suffer from a rare disease called “PBR-itis”. This makes it very hard to form complete sentences when I am onstage. So I understand if you thought this blog was going to be less than eloquent. Let’s see if I can be any more clear.
Think of yourself as my wife. All of you imagine that we have entered into holy matrimony. Tied the knot. Done deal. I could do one of two things. The first option is to rest on my laurels and completely ignore you. The struggle is over, you’re a fan of The Flood and you will be a fan for life because we’re fucking amazing and that’s just how it is. I could never buy you Valentine’s Day presents, never say “I love you”, and neglect you in the bedroom. You’re already my wife and I have you under my spell. Meanwhile, you grow incredibly lonely and begin to dream of the grocery store clerk. Your mind begins to wander. Our holy union begins to dissipate because I am lazy and do not recognize that affection is, by nature, fleeting.
Or, I could try to spice things up. I could cover our bed with rose pedals one night, just to show you that I’m still unpredictable. I could leave you little notes that say “<3” all over the house. In the tupperware. On your vanity mirror. You get it. The only way to make affection stay is to nurture it. To prove that it is warranted, that it will be reciprocated, and that I want to stay in your life forever.
This is why I’m introducing a special series of Flood Blogs. I am going to take apart our “Straight and True” album, song by song, and attempt to explain why it exists, how it came to exist, and the assorted events surrounding its birth. I hope to display the true power of this album with my wizard-like exegetical skills, and this will be my gift for your loyalty and attentiveness. Sound like another raw deal? Understandable. Nevertheless…
The first song will be Caedmon’s Dream, which is also the very first song on “Straight and True”. Stay tuned.
Think of yourself as my wife. All of you imagine that we have entered into holy matrimony. Tied the knot. Done deal. I could do one of two things. The first option is to rest on my laurels and completely ignore you. The struggle is over, you’re a fan of The Flood and you will be a fan for life because we’re fucking amazing and that’s just how it is. I could never buy you Valentine’s Day presents, never say “I love you”, and neglect you in the bedroom. You’re already my wife and I have you under my spell. Meanwhile, you grow incredibly lonely and begin to dream of the grocery store clerk. Your mind begins to wander. Our holy union begins to dissipate because I am lazy and do not recognize that affection is, by nature, fleeting.
Or, I could try to spice things up. I could cover our bed with rose pedals one night, just to show you that I’m still unpredictable. I could leave you little notes that say “<3” all over the house. In the tupperware. On your vanity mirror. You get it. The only way to make affection stay is to nurture it. To prove that it is warranted, that it will be reciprocated, and that I want to stay in your life forever.
This is why I’m introducing a special series of Flood Blogs. I am going to take apart our “Straight and True” album, song by song, and attempt to explain why it exists, how it came to exist, and the assorted events surrounding its birth. I hope to display the true power of this album with my wizard-like exegetical skills, and this will be my gift for your loyalty and attentiveness. Sound like another raw deal? Understandable. Nevertheless…
The first song will be Caedmon’s Dream, which is also the very first song on “Straight and True”. Stay tuned.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Beginning
I want to give you some idea of how The Flood started. Before I had two fine young gentlemen to help me kick the project into the desired gear, it was just me. Living in a railroad apartment in Brooklyn. Waiting on fussy millionaires and egg white obsessed NYU students. Drinking. Essentially, wasting my time. I had spent a whole year wasting my time. Instead of writing, which I had all but given up on as a viable career choice, I was watching Law and Order: SVU with my girlfriend and working myself into a fine powder. I could very well have kept my dusty guitar in my closet, kept my pen in my desk and kept my thoughts to myself. If I had been a more attentive boyfriend. But, thankfully, I found myself girlfriendless after a year of domestic torpor. And now that there was a female-sized hole in my daily routine, I began to look around for something to fill it. Alcohol wasn't quite what I was looking for. Too typical of a post-girlfriend crutch. Social life? I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And didn't have a rat-tail or a mustache. And didn't listen to dissonant electro/dance/pop. And enjoyed reading thinkers other than Derrida. There goes that option. So, I started to write again. It began to flow much easier than I thought. While I certainly wasn't composing Abbey Road, I was amazed at the sense of validation that these songs gave me. I spent about 3 to 4 months writing the 12 songs that would become "Lilac", the first album to be released under the moniker of The Flood. This process turned me from a cog in the giant, nerve-wracking, soul-sapping machine that is the New York City service industry into... well, still that, but one with plans to disengage myself from the whole sordid affair. Thank the Lord that you weren't one of the customers that experienced my rapidly declining attention to proper service and restaurant decorum. As I would scrawl lyrics on breakfast tickets or sing gibberish melodies into my phone's voice notes in the bathroom, dozens of hungry New Yorkers would wait for their orders to be taken. And wait. And wait. I had never been so fully immersed in my private consciousness, never so unaware that there was a world of unhappy, disgruntled people swarming around me as I set down my bathroom compositions. This is the true beginning of The Flood: me, ostrich-like, hiding my head from chaos.
I could look at this turning point in one of two ways. It could have been an absolute blessing that I ended up truly addicted to this near catatonic creative state, narcotized by the supreme bliss involved in creating something symmetrical and meaningful. This is only if The Flood takes off and provides me with anything more than a hobby. If the world doesn't perk up it's ears after a while, then it will turn this blessing into a full-scale tragedy. Because I have fully given myself over to the demon, at this point. I can't imagine songwriting as anything other than the axis around which my life will rotate. What's more, even if I do imagine a different lifestyle and attempt to engage with it, I will end up just as I did in my restaurant days. I can see myself in an office bathroom, bags under my eyes, singing more gibberish melodies into my phone and writing verses on Post-It notes.
So, my final point. Do you want to turn me into a corporate automaton? Do you want to be involved in crushing my dreams to smithereens? Do you want popular music to be devoid of copious Shakespeare, Socrates, and Petrarch references? If the answer is no, then go here: www.cdbaby.com/cd/Flood3
This blog, ladies and gentlemen, has constituted the unveiling of my new invention. I call it guilt-trip marketing. Buy!
Patrick Brownson
I could look at this turning point in one of two ways. It could have been an absolute blessing that I ended up truly addicted to this near catatonic creative state, narcotized by the supreme bliss involved in creating something symmetrical and meaningful. This is only if The Flood takes off and provides me with anything more than a hobby. If the world doesn't perk up it's ears after a while, then it will turn this blessing into a full-scale tragedy. Because I have fully given myself over to the demon, at this point. I can't imagine songwriting as anything other than the axis around which my life will rotate. What's more, even if I do imagine a different lifestyle and attempt to engage with it, I will end up just as I did in my restaurant days. I can see myself in an office bathroom, bags under my eyes, singing more gibberish melodies into my phone and writing verses on Post-It notes.
So, my final point. Do you want to turn me into a corporate automaton? Do you want to be involved in crushing my dreams to smithereens? Do you want popular music to be devoid of copious Shakespeare, Socrates, and Petrarch references? If the answer is no, then go here: www.cdbaby.com/cd/Flood3
This blog, ladies and gentlemen, has constituted the unveiling of my new invention. I call it guilt-trip marketing. Buy!
Patrick Brownson
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