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| ::A Real Blog:: [04/05/05] | |
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Alright. Let's be honest. I haven't written in my so-called blog for about 2 months, and I'm feeling like I owe it to you good folks who keep coming back here, ostensibly for some sort of entertainment, to deliver the goods on some level ...
Problem is, I got nothin'.
But what I DO have is a recommendation: What ya'll should by all rights be doing if you wanna read an entertaining blog is, go over to my good friend and musical compatriot Scott Cooper's Blog . You will not be disappointed. More wit and humour than you can shake multiple sticks at, AND the guy updates the thing regularly! ... imagine that.
No go on, git on over there to Scotty's Blog page ... nothin' to see here folks ... rob
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| ::My silly little problem:: [02/07/05] | |
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You're all really gonna think I'm cracked once you read this, but I swear to you it's true and I'm not pulling some goofy "oh, I'm some kind of tortured artiste"-kinda-bullshit pose-thing, but this is the deal:
I'm having a really hard time listening to music these days. I mean, I can't just sit down and devote all of my attention to JUST listening anymore. This might not seem like a big hairy deal at first appraisal, but you don't understand: I used to be a headphone listener. I used to be the kinda guy that if I was listening to music in a room with people and a good part of the song was coming up I would waive my arms about and shush people, and if someone talked, I'd have to rewind the part and play it again, or maybe if I was alone realized I wasn't giving it my FULL attention I would rewind the part to make sure I'd REALLY heard it ... y'know: let it wash over me with all the intricacies and nuances of tone and texture.
But I just can't seem to do it these days and it's got me worried. I'll give you an example: I'll buy a CD (sounds crazy already, don't it?) and bring it home and be all excited (we're fine so far) and get to my room and peel off the plastic and load 'er into the hi-fi and I start listening and reading the liner notes (we're still fine) and then it happens: I start to think of other stuff and, among that other stuff are thoughts like "hmm ... this doesn't sounds as good as it sounded when I heard it the other day at _______'s house", or "shit, this totally killed me when the credits rolled in that film and now ... hmm ... kinda hungry ... maybe I should eat some cereal ... "
It's really worrisome ... and what makes it worse is that it seems like the only way I've been able to enjoy music lately is if I'm not really paying direct attention to it. Like maybe if I'm in a store and there's something on in the background (used clothing stores are ALWAYS the best ... I hear music in a used clothing store and think "jeesus, this is the coolest stuff I've EVER heard", then I ask the slouchy dude at the counter what it is, buy it later that week, throw it in the hi-fi and ... nothing ... "what the hell was i thinking?" is about as far as it gets.)
Wanna know something even sillier? And I swear to you this has actually happened to me REPEATEDLY over the last few months: I hear a record coming from my roommate's room casually over the course of a few days (while I'm doing other stuff, of course) and it kinda hits me like: "Holy hell, this is really good --what is this?". I ask her what it is, proceed to borrow the CD, and try in vain to devote some attention to it over the next few weeks on my own, and inevitably, as soon as I throw on the headphones, or sit down to just listen, it's like I can't really hear the music the same way ... so I give her the CD back saying: "Well, it just didn't hit me"... and here comes the kicker: two or three days later she's playing this GREAT stuff... yup, you guessed it, it's the SAME damn CD!! I've done this several times in a row with the same CD!! ... I swear to you I've tried to listen to Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief" in that manner for about 6 months without any success ... now please understand, this is not to say that I don't like it ... it's just that I can't really listen to it properly to even begin to form an opinion.
Anyway, I hope I can lick this soon ... any of you ever had this happen?
Maybe I burned my attention span out working on my last record? Who knows ... About the only stuff I've actually been able to listen to is the stuff I've been going on about in these very pages (see below) ... maybe that's part of why I get so excited about it.
rob
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| ::Links:: [01/21/05] | |
| Thought
I'd pass along a few things I'm into these days, 'cause that's the point
of this whole Blog exercise right?
1)Mike Alviano: He's so damn good. His songs are so simple and beautiful and genuine and unpretentious. Go listen to the song "This Is Life". You can play it from his website: www.mikealviano.com . We're gonna play a few shows together over the next few months, so come listen to him play. 2)Failure: (See last Blog entry). Criminally overlooked late 90s band. Their album "Fantastic Planet" is stellar, and I would argue, has had a HUGE influence on "modern" sounding rock music, both in terms of production and songwriting. Funny, the shit was released in 1996, which means it was recorded in '95 ... still sounds good, and "new" to me. Check out the song: "The Nurse Who Loved Me"... classic ... you can get it from any most of the download sites ... A Perfect Circle have done a cover of it on their new Cd, which is worth listening to once you're heard the definitive original version. 3) Check this photography site out: www.newenglandruins.com ... beautiful and creepy eh? rob
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| ::Someone over at Google has a sense of humour:: [01/21/05] | |
| Ok,
get this: so I'm trying to locate this now-defunct band who's CDs are no
longer available 'cause i wanna download some mp3s and see if I still
like them. The band is called FAILURE. So I do the usual and
type it into the trusty search engine and what do I find #1 at the top
of the Google list?:
"BIOGRAPHY
OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH!!"
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| ::Where Does The Time Go?:: [01/19/05] | |
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thought it particularly relevant to bring this up at this juncture in my
blog writing career ... the start of a new year ... no blog entry since
11/16/04 ... that was more than a month ago .... and what the hell have
i been doing in that time?? ... well ...
I know this seems like the kinda nicety that one would normally reserve when speaking to someone who(m?) one has nothing in common but the weather, but: Where does the time go? I was talking to the woman who does the admin work for my auto mechanic--she's about 45yrs old, and I asked her: "Does time keep seemingly accelerating as you get older or does it sorta level off at some point?...like maybe around 38 or something. She said: "Nope, just keeps going faster and faster." No wonder really old people seem to move so slow. It's not that they're moving slowly, it's that everything else is moving so fast that they're just trying to steady themselves and keep their bearings. rob
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| ::Back in Black:: [10/19/04] |
| I'm back. Sorry about
the long lapse in blog writing. I was busy finishing the double E.P.
To be honest, I just didn't have the time ... it was a "finish the cd"
vs "write frequently in the blog" kinda decision...the CD
won-out. Anyways, the real issue was actually that there
wasn't much to write about that I thought any of you would find
interesting---I mean, I didn't do anything but work on the record
for the last couple of months ... what was i gonna write? "Wow, you
guys should hear this guitar sound we got, we used this universal audio
1176 compressor set to compress at a 8:1 ratio, and we had the threshold
set at -15db and golly gee it sounded good..."--not really happening
...
So, instead, without further ado(sic?), I
bring you: So there you go. Hopefully at some
point soon, I'll get back out into the world and do some stuff so I'll
have something more interesting to write about for your blog-reading
pleasure than recording ...
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| ::THE Word:: [07/06/04] |
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Well it happened. I wrote a song
with the word baby in it. The word I swore I'd never use.
The word I used to make fun of other songwriters for the mere fact
that they would include such a word in a song. Well it's
done. It was the right word. It made sense. It rhymed
for chrissakes.
I mean, I always used to say when I
was an angry young man, that I'd never write a love song. So
much for that. It looked good on paper:
"Groundbreaking songwriter, redefines genre by conspicuous
avoidance of the 'love' topic". Brilliant.
I'm still holding out on the
fire/desire rhyme. I figure if I can get through another decade
without using that, I'll have the whole thing licked.
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| ::Nia@C'est What Closing??!!:: [06/16/04] |
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Wow. 2 days of blog writing and 2
days in a row of something close to my heart to write about.
Hopefully there'll be a respite for a day or so, so I can write about my
breakfast or something and give you all a break from the passionate
ranting ... here goes ...
Many of you have probably already heard the news of the imminent closing of one of Toronto's premiere music venues: Nia at C'est What. The basic story is: the landlords are tripling the rent to the tune of an extra $60,000.00 per year in order for the club to renew its lease. I can't even begin to tell you how much this bums me out. I've toured a bunch and played lots of different venues of all different sizes and very few of them, of any size, compare with Nia. It's a very delicate balance that allows for a magical night to happen for a musician, and probably an even more delicate balance in order for it to happen for an audience member ... and I've had religious experiences there as both. I think it comes down to the fact that at Nia somebody (Crispin Giles) cares enough to make it sound good and when it sounds that good people listen ... and when people listen, people are often entertained ... and there's some sort of exchange .. and everybody wins. This is important shit! If a club like Nia closes, it brings the quality of the musical experience in the whole city down because it forces musicians to find other venues to play, many of which do not hold music in high regard. So then people get used to seeing music in bad sounding rooms where people, not surprisingly, are often less than enthralled with the music and it's a downward spiral from there. Very, very sad. I certainly understand a landlord's right to charge what he/she thinks the market will bear for a property, but I can't imagine that tripling the rent on short notice can be seen as fair business practice by any stretch of the imagination. Is there no rent control for this type of property?? Is there some other reason that the landlord would like to be rid of Nia as a tenant? I can't imagine why. Anyway, if any of you would like to
find out more and/or help the cause, go to: www.cestwhat.com/savelivemusic.asp
or send e-mail to: savelivemusic@cestwhat.com
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