Archive for January, 2010
Eno, Albums, Cool Dudes
Andrew Dubber linked to this series of interviews of Eno with Paul Morley appearing in the Guardian. The great thing about Eno is that he seems so smart. There’s none of this affectation or pose to him that you might see with a typical recording artist. No fluff. No ill-considered knee-jerk opinions on something. He seems like someone a smart person that’s not trying to fit a stereotype could have an intelligent conversation with.
The funny thing about people and about masters imparting lessons is that it’s all impossible and besides the point, of course. It’s not because Eno practiced a certain way of doing things or had a specific strategy in mind. It’s because he has impeccable taste and great judgement. And those things are very hard to teach. The problem with reading self-help books or self-help blogs or whatever is that ultimately it simply comes down to being right and who is right most of the time. Eno is right most of the time. Another guy that jumps to mind is David Geffen. Also someone that is right most of the time.
But that’s neither hither nor yon, as my English teacher used to say. The thing that I’ve been thinking about and that Eno points to and that Dubber linked to is the following snippet:
“I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn’t last, and now it’s running out. I don’t particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.”
It’s interesting to think of it that way. Because even though we’re all in 2010 and even though so many people are talking about the death of the album as the default format for a collection of songs. I still find myself working on a new “album”. And maybe it’s sort of back to the points that I made yesterday — that is I need to produce things within certain conventions in order to register my work with the cognoscenti that have the power to provide enhanced distribution to it.
They Want You To Be Poor
As I think about the outlook for musicians and our relentless quest for fame and celebrity, it strikes me that the music industry establishment has both an explicit vested interest and an unspoken tacit encouragement in having artists be poor and without resources.
Photo Shoot
Me and Chris Cassidy did a photo shoot this weekend in Brooklyn. We did one a year ago for the Pain record and someone said I looked like a European DJ in them. These ones felt a distance better to me. A bit more playful and relaxed. This shot might be the cover of Singer/Songwriter, the new thing I’m working on with Nancy Hess.
First we started off in Cass’s building on Billyburg which has a number of great angles, shots, and pieces of architecture. It’s a historic building that houses a lot of artists and filmmakers.
Then we walked over to this Hasidic supermarket where I strolled the aisles and caught the ire and attention of a few of the shoppers.
Then on to a deli because I wanted a shot of me sipping a soda in front of a classic New York bodega. Then on to lunch at Diner next to Marlow and Sons. We had a good time and were rapping most of the time and then sneaking pics every once in awhile. Good stuff.
Magic and Music Making
In December, I embarked on a demo project with Matt Ray. I had the seeds of many many songs. I’d documented a few of them upstate by myself on my Tascam Digital 8 Track. And I had 6 from a project I called ‘The Hi-Lo Country’ back in 2008. So about 8 upstate and 6 somewhere else and then I have about 12 other tunes and then maybe a few sitting on a hard drive somewhere. And the goal was to present the producer, Mr. Paul Brill, with a catalogue of about 25-30 songs from which he would pick 7-8 if you assume that “Life Is Hard”, “Valentine’s Day” and maybe “Everyone is from Somewhere” are already on the record or I’d like them to be.
So Matt and I have been getting together in Matt’s apartment and studio in Williamsburg over the last month. It’s been one of the best musical experiences of my life.
Should It Feel Harder or Easier?
I firmly believe that starting anything new is a very hard process. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and focus and luck. Especially luck. Because even if you’re incredibly smart and interested in the subject matter, if you’re applying yourself in the wrong arena or the wrong market, then you’re still likely to fail.
Perhaps the hardest part, especially for more senior people that are used to being in charge of something, is figuring out how to take what looks like a nice plan and make it something real. Something real typically means finding someone willing to pay for something and presenting whatever it is that you do in such a way that they exchange money for it. That’s actually really really hard. Even for smart people.
And the question that I wonder aloud sometimes is whether that process should feel harder or easier as you go along. If you’re growing and doing better, how should your day-to-day feel? Because there are always challenges and always new things to do.
I suppose that, if you’re successful, replicating the same thing, making that same sale over time, should feel easier. Hopefully, you’re getting better at it and you’re understanding what people want and are willing to pay for and how what you’re selling is different from what other people are selling. And as you learn and adjust that core process becomes easier.
But then other people see that it’s easy and they start crowding into your market and then you have to stay on your toes and continue to innovate and continue to tinker with whatever it is that you’re selling so that it evolves and becomes different. And that makes it hard or challenging again.
So, as I think about it or write about it, it seems maybe it’s the wrong question. Since anything that works is bound to get harder as you’re forced to innovate. And maybe the question is whether the work is interesting and challenging and whether it feels hard or easy depending on how engaged you are in the process and how good the team is with whom you’re working on the problem.
Still, in the back of my mind, I guess my intuition is that things should feel easier as you get better at them. And that if they’re feeling harder. If the core stuff that you’re doing feels like more of a drag, feels more taxing, spiritually or intellectually, that should be something to think about and to consider and upon which you perhaps should give some pause.
Working in a Vacuum
I’m working with my friend and producer Nancy Hess on two new songs right now. The mini-single/EP/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is called “Singer/Songwriter”. There are two songs. One is called “Singer” and the other is called “Songwriter”. We’re maybe 2/3 of the way through the first tune.
It’s a 7 minute aggressive dance song. It’s about escapism and fantasy and about romanticizing delinquincy and all these fables we tell ourselves about running away from our problems and how everything will be good if we can just and, of course, as Gus McCrae says in Lonesome Dove, “life in San Francisco is still just life”.
So this is a somewhat new stylistic direction from the last officially recorded and released thing we did which was the debut record produced by Paul Brill and in a genre that I call “landscape pop” which is in the vein of folk-rock. This is pretty much straight-ahead electronic dance music with the points of emphasis and differentiation being my voice and my singing and a little bit of acoustic guitar. But the whole thing is pretty aggressive and dark and messed up.
Part of the experiment is that I am trying to resist the temptation to send the songs around to a bunch of people before it’s done. That’s what I usually do. I start floating rough mixes to people and it’s really just insecurity. It’s me needing/wanting to hear back “Wow this is great!”. For this thing, I don’t want anyone to hear the songs until they’re completely finished. Until they’re ready to start hitting the blogs and getting pushed by Team Clermont (assuming they want to work on the project) and until the thing is completely done. Until then, I don’t want people to hear a lick.
Why? I guess because I’d like to see what happens if me and Nancy just completely trust our own judgement and intuition and proceed apace and continue to work and tinker on it until the two of us feel it’s finally and completely done.
But the flipside of that is that insecurity inside of me begins speaking with a somewhat louder and more persistent voice. The outside voice. It says, “What if this thing is terrible?” and, “What if nobody likes it?” and “What if people just think it’s bad dance music and not anything particularly interesting?” Those are some loud voices. But part of this whole endeavor is to see if I can shut out those voices and just relax and think and use my own judgement and Nancy’s and if we can build something beautiful that we love without needing feedback or reassurance from anyone else.
Again, the drawback is that there is a potential that we could put in so much time into this thing and so much effort and then release it out into the world and hear nothing back or hear negative things back or feel like we failed in some way. And, you know, you can feel the same way about anything, I suppose. But, again, this is slightly and subtly different.
Should be interesting.
