A storm hits the city and the lights go out before I can prepare... [020]

Stuck in my head: "False Hope"
Laura Marling
Short Movie

~^v*v^~

No, this won't be a gear entry - I'll spare you this time.

However, this is a follow-up on a fb post:

there's a track i wrote a long while ago that never got proper development/arrangement. it's sort of a quiet thing that turns huge, and it sorta reminds me of something hum might have done if matt talbott were significantly more desperate yet resolute.

the first audio record i have of it dates back to 2011, in an email to Andy.

"Interesting chords in 'Anouka'. I like it. You've always been good at using interesting, extended, kind of chords, not just the same old major/minor triads."

i had attempted to play a little of it last week at Lauren's, but i realized i had forgotten it. it didn't bother me initially because i thought i would remember it as soon as i sat down to play it.

nope. shit. panic.

kudos to my fingers, though, because i managed to figure it the hell out and scare myself half to death. christ, i need to play more often...

i've learned a lot since i wrote it... like how i write songs about people who never really existed.

It genuinely freaked me out to think that I might have forgotten a song, especially one that I'd demoed several times over the years. I let out an audible sigh of relief once I figured it out again, and in the correct voicing. What's more, I may have even found a spot or two that could be improved as we resume the creative process.

The thing that really bugs me, though, is how many of these tracks went ignored, undeveloped, without arrangement... though for the life of me, I never could figure out why that was the case. I know that we were focused on the album tracks for a long while because we were playing out quite a bit, and there was always a sense of dissatisfaction with some personnel seemingly being unable to get over their musical indoctrination*...

* So, what that basically means is that musicians are super conservative (and I don't mean that in a political sense) and don't like change, don't like changing habits, and don't like new music, new styles, or updates to their technique or outlook. Want proof? How old is the violin? The "gib-sun" lester polsfuss? The Fender Stratocaster?! Mufuckas hate change, and that's something I have to fight almost every day. Nobody's gives a shit what I was listening to when I was in college, and there's always new music, or a new way to expand the way you look at your craft.

The funny thing is that while there was always this pressure to churn out more material, I did it with aplomb. There was always another song, another idea, another chord structure, another riff... so what was the problem?

One concern was that the final version of Under a Concrete Sky isn't as wonderful as I would have hoped, and for myriad reasons. The lead guitarist at the time never really understood the material, and I think it's possible we overwhelmed our producer, and those are hard pills to swallow. Even now, the urge to re-record and re-release that record is quite strong. Those songs deserved better than they got, and trying to "fix" old material is an easy way to get stuck and ignore new shit.

Personnel changes also have a lot to do with it. I think Munki once said it best about the "shit batch" (I like that - I've long needed a way to refer to those clowns), "They just didn't want to play the hard songs."

Well... what happens when you're writing tracks what you consider thoughtful, pensive, and perhaps slightly complex? See my previous statement about change: I never felt good about writing "dumb" music, and I always wanted to be a better musician, better songwriter, better everything because growth was important to me. How do you convince pissbeer-drinking pop-punk-pricks to study up on jazz principles so you can apply them to rock music?

Look, I'm not special, okay? I know that. My sense of self-confidence isn't so inflated that I think my shit doesn't stink. Keep that in mind. Rather, it's just that I want more from art, and I didn't want to wake up one day with a head full of grey hair, pop a pissbeer, tie on my chuckers with duct tape holding them together, and play the same three chords on a shit Teisco like a lot of folks do. Nostalgia is addictive and a very thorough silent killer; I never wanted to fall preey to the nostalgia. I wanted to know that there would always be a sense of adventure, of wonder, of exploration... I wanted to make the kind of music that I wish I could find on my record collection shelf.

"I’m not going to write 'Bang your head against the stage' forever."
-James Hetfield, Rolling Stone, 1993.

Now that I'm set to embark on a new adventure, there's a freedom in knowing that maybe some of these tracks can be fleshed out and see their full potential. No, not all of them are good, and some will surely never leave the demo stage, but they all deserve a chance to be examined for what they are and be judged on their merits rather than by someone's inability to play them.

Take your simple and hackeyed approach elsewhere. I'm not interested in continuing to support fragile sensibilities while being told that I'm egotistical and out of control. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play music that makes me excited, all the while your revolution was canned and sold to you.

Oh... and fuck kurt cobain.