Category music philosophy and self reflection

July started out in a dubious fashion when work at Roy’s started to trickle out
I did have an interview with an E-bay store (which hasn’t panned yet)and haven’t worked in about a week or so
Meanwhile, the guys from the metal band dowstairs asked me if I would start recording tracks with them
It was a bit of a task to learn their material
Mostly because the principal guitar player was a bit off on his transitions between his riffs
Add to that the good ole metal tradition of trying to fit as many different riffs into a measure as possible
Pretty soon you have a soup of riffs that are undistinguishable from the next and once you finally understand the riff you’re listening to, it changes into something else
I finally got him to let me dissect each riff one by one until I learned the pattern o...

I had an informal audition for a band yesterday
It is not real clear yet if I am in but things went well
I have a week to work on the material and feel optimistic
It is very pop so I don’t have to concentrate too much on technique
It seems my biggest challenge is going to be to restrain myself from overplaying
Maybe I will take a few passes around the material for a few hours before I go to my mom’s house
They’ve got a giant TV and it willl be fun to watch the Mav’s game
It will be a fun time with the family on a nice Sunday

In continuation of my recent quest to root out the outdated sensebilities, a certain one has become more apparet to me
It will not be enough to just explore more types of music or even participate in them
I need to go even further and question my basic identity which has been as a musician
All of my aspirations and fantasies have revolved around people admiring me for all of my talents as someone who could play really well and be enteraining while doing it
But all along, I had this smoldering need to be more than that
There was a need to create music that attempted to defy traditions and contribute to the advancement of music as an art form
I didn’t necessarily need to be hugely important
But I at least needed to give a shit about being important
All of this was well and good, but there wa...

A vast majority of my musical identity has been formed around a very central concept
All of my energy went into making my personal musical ambition come true
Although I had made certain that no one was going to make me compromise my vision
This would lead me to quit every “band” I have ever been in
But I stuck it out and hoped that I could find someone who would share my vision and yet be equal in ability
It was a condensed version of the standard rock n’ roll fairytale which was the “us against the world” mentality

All the while, there was an example being set right in front of me that I refused to acknowledge

After leaving my last band in 04, I was determined to find a new way of approaching my music and came up with the PyroPlasticFlow concept which evolved from a duo to a solo project ...

Last night’s gig at Club Underground was a total fiasco but a valuable lesson nonetheless
First the gory details
I had set up on the drum riser and then pulled down the video screen to hide the clutter
I was pretty cavalier about it and set up just the skeleton of my configuration (no wiring of the electronics)
My last few gigs have made me a bit cocky because the newer setup was less complicated Once it came time to set up, I had noticed that changeover was taking a bit of time and Ether came up and hinted at it by asking if he could help
After getting set up, the video projector wasn’t cooperating so I just panicked and did the set without it
My anxiety got the best of me as I resolved to stick to the basics, do a short set and get off stage
The result was a less than stellar show in my ...

As I was waxing poetically to myself about my youth, I had to ask myself a question
What happened to my supposed open mind?

Flash back to 1990
I have just landed a really slummy yet centrally located house dubbed “The Hash Palace”
Not because it was a drug dealer’s house but because the bass player from the band Hash Palace lived there
I say centrally located because it was THE party house of the early Deep Ellum scene in Dallas Tx, but it was also a 5 minute walk away from Ellum

Deep Ellum’s newly emerging bars were lenient on the artisitic clientelle and allowed me pretty much unfetterd access to not having to pay cover
This meant that all the great bands playing in the early days were available to me because of my reluctance to pay cover for music I might hate
I watched a lot of crappy ...

I am more than willing to write many paragraphs chronicling my acceptance of my flaws and failures but I also need to have the same acceptance when people show their admiration and friendship
Although we all know it is shallow on the surface to count the number of people who wished me a happy birthday on Facebook today but it was also a chance to excercise my positive acceptance muscles
Not only that, but to enjoy the positive energy being sent to me

Looking back, many of my recent years have been spent with such an overriding hostility that I couldn’t get over my general mistrust of people enough to feel secure when someone paid me a compliment or showed admiration of something I did
My answer was usually either self depracating or arrogant

I have decided that it is neccessary to accept w...

The concept of confrontational art is made up entirely of gray areas
The central concept of confrontational art is the intention to force people to look at something they would rather not because it would infringe on the comfortable bubble they have built around themselves
Some artists have become accidental confrontational artists simply because what they had to say was so incredibly different from “normal” society
Normally, those thought could be written off as the reactions of an outsider or crazy person
It is only when those ideas are produced by someone who articulates things in an original and different way that they achieve lasting importance
Literature, science and philosophy were the offenders in the pre-modern world with peopleliterally getting killed for their ideas
It wasn’t un...

The past few months of artistic acceleration and evolution have caused a new concept to form in my head
It is the concept of the 21st Century Musician
My first attempts at become a more evolved musician started right around the turn of the century when I joined Autonomy
I had begun to develop a multi-media approach with my TV show and the video loops that I played on TVs on the stage
This coupled with the Ground Zero video gig gave me plenty of opportunities to learn how the visual nature of multi-media affects an audience
I had only begun to think about electronics, having played around with William’s Zoom drum machine and tinkering with an Alesis drum brain
However, I was weak in those areas
Although, playing songs like “Ignite” and “We Have it All” did give me plenty of growth when it c...

I love mistakes
Especially in music
I get to say to myself “they just fucked up there” to myself (and anyone around me) whilst listening to the track
Some examples are-
-The intro to “On With the Show” on the 1st Motley Crue album (Mick Mars doesn’t completely synch up when double tracking the guitar part)
-The beginning of “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones (Charlie Watts is trying to find the beat and hesitates for a sec, covering it up by making his hi-hat washy)
And countless other flubs like stray voices when recording instrument tracks or slight mistakes in technique
I know lots of other music-philes that share the same love and it becomes like an episode of MST 3k
Rock music is full of such mistakes but I find that electronic music is lacking in such a human element
Obviously, the ...