‘Someone Great’ on Audio Muffin
We recorded a cover of ‘Someone Great’ from our show at Rockwood a few months ago. Frank over at Audio Muffin, who had a nice review of PIARS when it came out. When I mentioned that we’d be covering the tune, Frank asked for a copy. So I gave Audio Muffin an exclusive for a week on the cover.
Here’s what he had to say about it:
Someone Great brings The Flying Change to an orchestral 13-piece band. Each member of the band adds their own rhythm and titillating flourish. If anyone has video of this please leave a link in the comments – it sounds epic!
Thanks for the kind words, Frank! Check out our cover of ‘Someone Great’ on Audio Muffin when you have a chance.
Nothing Beats Being Right
Do you ever have a strange feeling reading these marketing blogs? Seth Godin, Derek Sivers, the cartoonist guy that’s friends with Seth Godin. It’s a not entirely new breed of self-help phenomenon. Very often they’re doling out little pieces of wisdom. Little nuggets. I read them a lot. Then there are the guys like Timothy Ferris that wrote the “4 Hour Work Week.” It’s fun to read these guys.
This isn’t a novel thought. Just that there doesn’t seem to be any direct correlation between, say, the web traffic that Seth Godin gets and the number of solved problems in the world. Actually, that may not entirely be true. But I just find it a strange and disconcerting thing. All these dudes doling out advice. And the reason they’re giving advice is because they’ve “made it”. They’ve written some best-selling books. They’ve started some cool new companies.
And the premise is that if if you can just ingest these lessons. If you can take them to heart and really live them then, maybe slowly but surely, you can remodel your DNA after these gurus and then be successful or rich or happy or whatever. And people do indeed crave that assurance. That if they just make a few switches here and there and internalize the thousands of lessons being.
I’m either a skeptic or a determinist or just a bummer. But as much as I enjoy reading these guys and think about what they write, I am still skeptical about the power of their words, or anyone’s words, to really change things or change behavior. But then, I’m doing the same thing.
And I doubt if you asked them they’d say the point was to “change people’s lives”. Rather, they’re more likely just in the business of spreading good ideas.
Nevertheless, it’s always struck me that there’s no comparison to just being right. There are many paths to success. And many ways to achieve your goals. And if you read Seth Godin’s blog or the Bible or any other weighty tome that has a lot of little nuggets of wisdom, you’ll most likely find that they contradict each other, and that they’re often helpful but in very specific circumstances. And that’s okay.
But there are no books to help you emulate Jack Welch or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. At least, I don’t really believe in them. I believe that certain people have good taste and the discipline to pursue it and those people succeed. And if they’re good writers they write a book about it or a blog about it. And the people reading that book will most likely not have good taste and, aside from hiring the author to make all their decisions for them, won’t be able to implement a lot of the rules consistently enough to make a difference.
But tell me if I’m being an idiot or a downer unnecessarily. It just strikes me that nothing beats being right.
Picking 8 from 28
Last night Matt and I finished up our demo sessions. We put down 13 songs. I have about 8 or 9 songs on my Tascam 8 Track hard drive which I now have with me in the apartment that I’d done upstate. And 6 songs from a thing I called ‘The Hi-Lo Country’ back in 2008. So it’s looking like about 28 songs from which we will choose 8.
This is going to be an interesting process.
I want the record to be up tempo and have some rhythm and momentum. But of course, without a drummer and a lot of my own percussive skills, the songs all end up coming out sounding like acoustic folks songs. Part of it will be getting Paul and myself and the band to stretch the limits of our imagination around the possibilities of the music. And the other part will be allowing the stated intention of the record to settle into whatever the actual result ends up being.
Matt and I were saying we should have a seeded tournament. A “Song Off” where top seeds and sure picks go up against lesser opponents and maybe we get a few people involved in this song off and ultimately winnow down the list in a different fashion.
I know that a few songs that I really like might not make it on the record. And a few that I had only just written might make it. And that’s how these things go. Certain songs kind of offer themselves up for imagination. And other ones feel more momentuous when you have the germ of an idea but somehow can’t seem to coalesce into something that feels like a complete whole.
Nevertheless, it’s nice to have the well to draw from and it’s nice to know that there are options. Songwriting is so interesting because, for me, it’s all about the quick jab. The quick punch. The fist. The pound on the table. Not a fugue. Not a concerto. But an expression or a gesture that feels, by necessity, incomplete. The incompleteness of songs and song lyrics lend them their beauty and their mystery and the power of these phrases and these musical moments lies in their stated intention and their unstated mystery.
For the sessions with Matt, the running time for 13 songs is 40 minutes. Average song length is right around 2:50. That’s just how I do it. I am terrified of repeating something too often and having it be boring. I’d rather have it be short and pithy and leave you wistful and nostalgic for a moment that just ended.
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.
