Apologies

It’s been almost a week, but it feels like an eternity since I last posted. Part of the reason is that I’ve put a new band together (this is band #4 in 3 years for those keeping track). I’ve been writing material for a record titled Just Like Happiness for close to 4 months now. I spent the last month working with a drummer and hammering out the arrangements and as of this week we have a bassist for the sessions. Final rehearsals and recording are slated to happen over the next month, so suffice it to say I’ve spent most of my free time ’shedding instead of writing. Sorry :(

I do have several VERY good blog ideas, I promise! Maybe I’ll keep this a weekly thing so it’s easier to maintain.

Let’s see what happens…

Dear Audrey Ference,

Let me start off by saying I’m a huge fan of the L magazine and your articles in particular stand out from the others. Amanda Park Taylor is pretty cool but a bit preachy. Mike Conklin sounds like a tool but he’s into Pavement so I guess he’s alright. You however carry an effortless charm that flatters when it has to and sweetens the blow if there’s no way around it. I like that you sound like a Savage Love fan without regurgitating advice. Lately your column has been a good substitute since our buddy Dan seems to be on a bit of a warpath. Maybe they switched him off Xanax or something.

To be honest though, this post isn’t about your influences, your employer, or any specific article. It’s about YOU. Will you go out with me? I realize this may be a bit creepy coming up in a blog and all, but I can’t help being smitten by your personality when a new issue becomes available every couple of weeks. I think we could find something to talk about. You write for the L, so I’m assuming we could discuss music for hours. Was there a point when Steve Malkmus scored the soundtrack of your life? Are jam bands a guilty pleasure for you? Are you a little sick of hearing about Vampire Weekend all the time? Or how about books? What’s your favorite Vonnegut novel? (Please don’t respond if you don’t have a favorite Vonnegut novel) Any chance you’re an internet geek? I’m currently obsessed with entries for various large and obscure fish on Wikipedia. I used to be pretty into the Tristan da Cunha, but there’s only so much you can read the same set of entries, amIright?

I’m 24, employed full-time and disease-free. I can also provide references from previous dates and female friends that I am a considerate and pleasant person, although I do get carried away pretty easily and tend to go off on tangents. I like bike dates but it’s not really the season for that. Maybe we can grab a bite sometime? I’ve always wanted to try that Moroccan place on 3rd Ave around 11th street. Let me know via comment or email. And please don’t be weirded out by the public request, no one reads this blog anyway.

Your pal,
Justyn

Some navel gazing

I’m not really a photography person. I went through a picture-snapping phase that lasted approximately two (2) disposable cameras. So because of obsessive listening to music, I’ve come to regard listening to certain records as the equivalent of looking through a scrapbook or photo album. For instance, I know I bought Song X around the summer of 2001, when I had just discovered Ornette Coleman and free jazz but had not yet figured out that Pat Metheny kinda blows. Same thing with Dream Theater and senior year of high school, or early 90s country and childhood. There are certain sounds that I associate entirely with a period of my life and hearing something of that sound makes me think more about the time and place that I loved that sound without pretension. It works best with music I haven’t listened to since.

Since I started writing music in earnest, I’ve been able to rely on older recordings in that same capacity. Thank god because around the same time I started going through more music than I had ever thought possible. I still do - I haven’t listened to the same song twice in a week. So since I no longer have the failsafe solution of sonic photo albums from my record collection, I get the benefit of my own material to remind me of who I was. I don’t look back often enough, as a lot of the older stuff leaves me embarassed. But in the case of the much older stuff, I’m able to look past it and get a more complete picture of my life than I did when I relied on obsessive record collecting. For one thing, having written the music and lyrics I’m able to put myself into a much clearer understanding of my state of mind. Also it’s reassuring to listen to work I thought was elementary some time ago and not even care about its ability level. Looking back, it’s having the memories that matters the most.

Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ. Hang the DJ!

I took off to Washington, DC for the long weekend and ended up being stranded when my bus was sold out. They don’t joke around with those reservations, I tell you what.

Usually visits home entail picking out several CDs for the trip. I quickly analyze my listening habits from the past week (mostly country and classic soul lately, with an end of the week fixation on the Clash and Social D), then I think about the weekend’s activities. If I’m expecting a lot of driving alone I bring some records I can get lost in and sing along with at the top of my lungs. If I’ll be driving with friends I need the best of my finds from the past couple of months along with a quick burn of my most recent work. If I’m anticipating a lot of time spent playing guitar I throw in a couple of albums with songs that I want to learn, which are their own mess of rules and considerations.

If I’m in the car with my family, which is most of the time on these visits, I end up hearing the radio. I stopped listening to the radio myself as a teenager when I was fed up with hearing the same 6 songs all day every day. You’d think in 100 years of recorded music it would be harder to find space to repeat a song on a playlist than to sneak it in multiple times an hour. What scares me is they wouldn’t be doing it if their listeners weren’t letting them get away with it.

It’s a shame the way radio is ending its long and refined history as the place to go if you give a shit about Train. It wasn’t very long ago that I could still find local shows, live DJs, interesting station programming, and the occasional song to fall in love with. I remember being 12 years old and staying up half the night listening to my radio. I suppose kids get their fix from blogs now. Or YouTube. Or maybe appreciating music without a polished image is obselete.

As a musician, I can’t help but overanalyze a lot of the crap that plays. Maybe the reason so many jackasses think they can mug their way into the music industry is because the jackasses on the radio take it so EASY! Anyone can write a song that’s radio-worthy. You string some platitudes together, maybe spice them up with some poetic-sounding words you remember from a high school English class, back it up with a simple progression (more than 3 chords get hard to orchestrate), and sing it like it means anything. Chances are people will only be listening for some key words and how passionate (read: over the top) the singer is.

But I’m not really bitter about it. Radio is there for background music at malls and offices. For people who want something in they can come in and out of. And I guess it’s nice to know that when you’re getting your teeth drilled at the dentist’s office the worst pain happened when you sat through that goddamn Matchbox 20 song in the waiting room. Heyo!

“Spanish Pipedream” by John Prine

She was a level headed dancer
On the road to alcohol
And I was just a soldier
On my way to Montreal
Well, she pressed her chest against me
About the time the jukebox broke
Yeah, she gave me a peck on the back of my neck
And these are the words she spoke

Blow up your TV
Throw away your paper
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus
On your own

Well, I sat there at the table
And I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady
Had something up her sleeve
Well she danced around the barroom
And she did the hootchy-coo
Yeah, she sang her song all night long
Telling me what to do

Blow up your TV
Throw away your paper
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus
On your own

Well, I was young and hungry
And about to leave that place
When just as I was leaving
She looked me in the face
I said, “You must know the answer”
She said, “No, but I’ll give it a try”
And to this very day we’ve been living our way
And here is the reason why

We blew up our TV
Threw away our paper
Went to the country
Built us a home
Had a lot of children
Fed ‘em on peaches
They all found Jesus
On their own

Excellent song! I love the juxtaposition of wide-eyed idealism in the chorus and sarcastic skepticism in the verses. Prine fits in a trademark blink-and-you-miss-it one-liner in the second verse with the “topless lady had something up her sleeve” line. The story in the song is ridiculous and dead serious at the same time, and I think Prine wants it to come off that way. A wonderfully complicated song on simple themes from a master at describing the staggering complexity of simple lives, and the ending chorus leaves you feeling just plain swell. I’ve been singing this to myself on my way to work.

This is the second track on his 1974 self-titled album. As you all should know, track twos are fairly underrated, right behind track eights. Track ones are overrated as hell but good ones get the job done. Track threes and sixes tend to be appraised just right. I’m not usually a fan of track fours or nines. Good three-star albums have a great second to last track that’s epic and feels like an ending before the actual ending. Good four-star albums have little to no filler. Good five-star albums blow your mind and leave you unaware of what the rules were to begin with. We can’t get along if we don’t know the rules, right? So that’s it, there’s never an excuse for a bad album again. Muahaha!

Holy crap you guys! It’s the first real snow of the season! Unfortunately it’s coming in the middle of February when I’m ready for this winter business to be over once and for all. One thing you can always count on about the weather in NYC - you can’t count on it at all.

It was recently brought to my attention that the Napster digital store allows US customers free streaming without charging membership fees. There are some exceptions of course. You’re limited to 3 free streams per track, some tracks only allow 30 second samples for free, and the catalogue leaves a bit to be desired. The membership costs are $12.95 a month, which I’m considering since most of my day job involves listening to music and staring blankly at spreadsheets. I still haven’t hit any significant limits in the free clause and I’ve even ended up buying a few of the albums on CD. It’s the liner notes that got me, and no one does them better than Rhino. Let’s take a moment to appreciate those purveyors of miniature textbooks and the wonderful service they’ve done to the listening community.

Now that that’s finished, back to the task at hand. Those of you that know me personally know I’ve had a longstanding feud with most new music. When I was 22 I went for the better part of a year refusing to listen to anything made after 1979. I’ve calmed down a bit since then, I don’t refuse to listen to recent music but I don’t actively seek it out. When I do check out a more recent release it’s usually something obscure and probably older sounding. I thought Coffinberry’s God Dam Dogs was the best album of 2007 but I’m probably the only one.

However, this free streaming thing once again has me checking out new stuff. I’m a little worried since 2007 had me hiding behind my record collection. Seriously, did all the music critics have kids? How else do you explain so many uninteresting records scoring so high? 2007 - the year your kid sister ruled the charts.

But this band called Times New Viking has been getting some good press by the few writers left I can still respect and I figured they’re worth a shot. The pre-listen assessment seemed pretty solid. They’re from Columbus, Ohio, they get all-around GBV/Pavement comparisons, and the hipster kids on message boards can’t decide whether they should hate them or not. Jackpot! I love them already. And so I listen…

They open strong. It’s loud and skronky, which I like. They pick on Yo La Tengo at some point, which is cool I guess. They lose steam pretty quickly and all the shortie tracks don’t make me think they’re overflowing with ideas so much as they can’t really finish writing a song. I LOVE the aesthetic, though it sounds more Coachwhips than GBV. They finish well, although I can’t remember anything too specific about the record other than the sound of it all. The lo-fi stuff sometimes needs a few listens to sink in and the fact that they’ve been making records since 2005 makes me want to dig a bit deeper into their catalogue.

FINAL ASSESSMENT: Interesting enough. I probably won’t buy the record, maybe I’ll check out one of their earlier ones and see if I like the band any better. I wouldn’t mind seeing them live, maybe at Maxwell’s on a Sunday with a power pop band from Jersey and an art-punk band from Pratt. (Note: not an actual concert, but it should be)

Smosh

I don’t have tv access in my new place so I’ve been spending some quality time on YouTube. It’s great and never fails to entertain, provided you’re really into NES speed runs, clips of nature documentary close-calls, great moments in hijacked TV broadcasts, and scenes from daytime soap operas that reference Mike Patton. I never said I was cool.

Anyway, while cruisin’ the ‘Tube the other day, I found clips of a comedy duo called Smosh. These guys are a riot! They’re a couple of kids with a camera, some cheap outfits and a great sense for the absurdly funny. They’ve got a talent for so-dumb-they’re-smart laughs that register with you immediately, but the more you watch their work the more you realize they pay close attention to detail and produce full and well-paced sketches. They seem raised on that whole State/Kids in the Hall aesthetic of Monty Python but spazzier, which is A-OK with me. Plus they’re only like 19!

Smosh has been around for a couple of years and they’re already getting millions of views and press recognition. With Flight of the Conchords and Human Giant making it OK to be young and ridiculous again, maybe they’ve got a chance to blow up. I linked to some of my favorite sketches below. Check them out now before they’re famous!

Cat Soup:

Transformers Rap:

Ian’s Birthday:

First Entry / PKD

Greetings folks! My name is Justyn, this is my blog. I like a lot of things. I don’t like listing them. Let’s figure them out as we go along, shall we?

What I will get into on this debut entry is the work of Philip K. Dick. Up until a few months ago, he was one of those writers who I was aware of but never investigated. I can’t remember what finally prompted me, I remember at the time I was rediscovering Sonic Youth’s 1987 masterpiece album Sister, which was reputedly heavily PKD-influenced. I was also reading Grant Morrison’s very excellent Invisibles series of comics, which also cited PKD’s wildly imaginative dystopias and meditations of the authenticity of reality as a jumping off point for Morrison’s own visions of the psychedelic occult. I found some summaries of PKD’s life (thanks Wikipedia!) and the stories of his obsession with designer realities and labyrinthine government control had me hooked. I’m a nut for paranoid anti-utopias, what can I say?

I rushed out and bought the first novel I could find, which was the Hugo Award-winning Man in the High Castle. To be perfectly frank, it took me a while before it sank in. The stories are remarkably slow-paced for having been written by a methamphetamine addict. In fact, there’s very little pacing at all; rather PKD introduces a set of 10 or so characters and shuffles between their minds over a span of several days. I had to adjust to the vibe, and when I did I still wasn’t sure what I was looking for. The writing style is very plain and unglorified, although easy to understand.

Without spoiling the twist of the book, I learned that this is in fact one of its strengths. PKD is a master of lulling you into a cold complacency. The world described is fantastic, but the characters are regular folks just trying to make ends meet. Not a very exciting premise, huh? Well, by putting you into the rhythm of these people, one of the immediate lessons is that progress and forced advancement benefit no one but the people pushing it. While that’s a somewhat unfair assertion in the case of High Castle (after all, there is the whole re-legalization of slavery thing), the characters focused on tend not to be more or less better off than if the novel’s parallel history didn’t occur and the 1950s progressed as we know them today. It’s this element that I really loved about Dick’s writing. So much has been written about his use of a story within a story, or unknown conflicts among upper echelons of already shadowy organizations and how they affect the public, or people concealing their identities and the like. Maybe these elements will register with me if I’ll read a few more of his books. To me, he doesn’t get enough credit for being an excellent writer of people.

To close, here is a BBC documentary on the man. I found this on YouTube this morning. There’s a lot of cheese-tastic camera tricks and heavily emoted readings of passages, but there’s a lot of good points made and interviews with friends, noteable fellow authors, and 4 of his 5 wives. The years towards the end of his life were particularly disturbing as his obsession with religion and heavy drug use pushed him into a mental state that was part imaginative visionary, part unpredictable schizophrenic. On the one hand, he gave us VALIS. On the other, he married an 18 year old girl and baptized their son with Ovaltine. Philip K. Dick, may your paranoid soul finally be resting in peace.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6: