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My space is your space

Times have certainly changed...and you know you're getting old when you say those words. Getting turned on to new music used to be achieved through word of mouth, or maybe a Rolling Stone article, or possibly the rare chance encounter with a live band at the local bar. However, the NEW and IMPROVED way of expanding one's musical horizons, one step beyond the soon-to -be-obsolete institution of band websites, is MySpace. I have to admit, I'm relative late-comer to the MySpace phenom, given the whole child-seeking, sociopathic, "no really, I'm a fifteen year old boy from Spokane" edge to it all. And the idea of a personal (non-band) page still kind of creeps me out. But what an amazingly cool thing to be able to skip from artist to artist, linking here and there, listening to all this great original material, being TURNED ON to more music in five minutes than I did in my entire senior year of high school. And the coolest thing of all is getting to hear what my friends have been doing musically these days. Beechwood, Mini Jacket, NSI, Ron Noyes Band, Scalawag, Grayson Capps, Tim Hall, Michael Crane, and through all of that discovering Jon Nolan, the Vipers, Cliff Murphy, the Molenes, and countless others. All of this good stuff has inspired me to crawl out from underneath my imaginary pile of whale vomit, dust off a few ditties, and join the cyber-space pre-apocalyptic revolution...that is, until some weird guy from Jersey named "Uncle Ricky" wants me disclose personal bathing habits.

I wrote a song today

I wrote a song today. What a strange and wonderful gift it was to be able to write a complete song in less than ten minutes. This is coming from someone who can literally take years to finish a song, more often than not abandoning the work in progress to the scrap heap of half-songs, a useless pile of decent melodies, vague lyrics, and missing bridges. What was different today? Was it the coffee I had this morning? Don't think. Accept the gift. Move on. Write some more half songs. Eat a cookie.

Open apology to all of the musicians I've known

Music is something that I can't ignore. It has brought me happiness, excitement, depression, peace, exasperation, friendship, identity, release, confusion, any many other indescribable thoughts and emotions. Music is the way that I interpret the word creativity. Sometimes I want to give away all of my instruments, burn my crates of beer-soaked microphone cables, and pick up writing, or pottery, or some other solitary form of expression. But making music, at least the way that I like to make it, requires other people. It needs interaction and conversation. It thrives on good company and flounders in solitude. The problem is that I have continually proved to be a pain in the ass to my fellow musicians. I have always allowed my moods to screw up friendships, music or no music. Bands have come and gone, time has passed, and many things have been forgotten. But regrets have a way of resurfacing. What I would like to say is this: I am sorry for all of the stupid things I have done and said. I'm sorry for letting my ego become a reason. I'm sorry for allowing too much time to pass. I am not sorry for disliking Bela Fleck, and I will never apologize for liking early R.E.M. So what good will these words do? Words never really do much, but at this point it's the best I can offer. Better yet, let's jam....

Lenny was a buffalo

Lenny stumbled over to the Southwest Plain. Sometimes the reservations let you in at night, after all of the tourists are gone. They brought out the drums, and the amps and guitars, rocked it out loud underneath a big New Mexico sky, after all of the tourists are gone. They passed around the big blue jug, wheels started spinning in the back of his mind, opened up a river of mud and a ribbon of light. Thought he was a raven, he was a buffalo.

What can we aspire to above the life of a frog? A frog is not a dog, a dog is never a frog, a wart never grows but merely shows up. A frog in a kennel, a dog in a bog, a snake with a chin, a fish with a grin. Pay me my money down you damn reptile.

Like the insidious and inevitable allure of a well placed potato chip commercial, a non-blogging entity succumbs to the primordial urge to communicate beyond the line of vision. I blog, therefore I blog.