Everything to everyone.

I guess they liked us. the Stranger has included our scintillating dialogue about "scenes and sub-scenes" in their new podcast All Things to All People, hosted by the undeniable Sean Nelson. Unfortunately, they edited out my favorite bit about a psychedelic music festival in St. Petersburg, but maybe we'll expose that in the next one. (Yes, they've asked us back.) Here's the link, cease-and-desist be damned: All Things to All People

Additionally, I have the Ur-cold. I think I need to start pestering Ernest to post again, though he seems to be angry at the internette these days. We'll get to the bottom of it. Meantime, cough cough blog whinge what's on TV snore.

CDL

Unsurprisingly, it's cold, damp, and lonely in my cave. But all my stuff's there, so...

Also, I got busy. Ernest and I recorded a conversation about bands playing elsewhere for a new podcast over at Seattleton's hippest tabloid: the Stranger. I have no idea if they'll use it, but we had fun researching it, and I came across some pretty astounding new acts. I'm still operating under an agreement with my attorneys that I won't post links of any kind until this nasty business is settled, but you should listen to the podcast. And if you are as patient a listener as you are a looker-for-er (and by that I mean VERY), look around these here internettes for Sick Cobbler's set from 2/6/06. You're welcome.

N.E.Waze. Onwards and upwards.

Of Opinions and Assholes

Last night I braved the disappointment of leaving my house and rolled down the hill to the Red Room to see an old friend's new band, For Cravers. It was a reunion of sorts, as almost everyone there was someone I knew when I got to town (from Ohiowadaho, for new readers). The opening band was a barely existent duo; forgettable songs sung by a ignorable guitarist and regrettable bassist. They and their table of overly-supportive friends quickly trickled out in such a way that I became convinced that they were never actually there.

Sadly, this meant that by the time For Cravers got loud and proud, all who remained were, again, friends of the band. This is when I split into two of my warring audience personalities: the Experiencer, who got momentarily lost in beautifully counterintuitive, interlocked guitar lines and resonant throb of the tight low end and the buzzzzzzzzzzzz of foodless beer; and the Observer, who got trapped in the absurdity of friends playing songs for friends as we all spend money on the privilege of being in a "scene". Do we really need the infrastructure for anything other than the fantasy of a rock world that doesn't seem to exist anymore? In its purest form, music moves the maker first, then moves out into the world through vibrations or ones and zeros. The rest is dressing, right?

Well, no. Standing in a dimly lit room full of people being moved by the same vibrations, whether they dig them or not, is a visceral experience that will always be worth having. (Same way that theatre won't really be dead as long as people still want to tell stories to each other in the dark.) Plus, the possibility of meeting and maybe even touching a person who believes in music the same way you do keeps a lonely guy like me coming back, even if only occasionally, even if only to oblige dear friends still finding their following.

But what hit me hardest all night was the realization that I seem to have lost (among so many other things) much of my enthusiasm, and my concomitant capacity for forming opinions worth sharing. If opinions are indeed like assholes, then I suppose it's no surprise that lately I've tended to ignore the existence of both of mine, just out of common courtesy. But even now, every once in a while there's an opinion that smells almost... good.

OK, so. I'm going back in my cave for a while.

So... what?

Everyone has dealt with losing something. And though there's a pretty broad continuum of loss (a loved one, a car, a rare LP, a MySpace account...) it seems that I can only grieve at full force, regardless of the severity or mundanity of the loss.

But then again, having just lost 6+ years of writing with no hope of recovery (long story involving the RIAA and an iMac thrown into the river), I think I'm justified in grieving every bit as much as I did when my girlfriend and my car became my ex-girlfriend and ex-car within days of each other (was 2006 good for anyone?). I bet (though don't hope to settle the bet) that facing a loss on the scale of parents/health/home would bestow upon me the perspective I obviously lack, recalibrate my capacity for grief, and leave me a wiser person.

But none of my tens of readers come here for wisdom. It seems that most of them came because I once posted a sketchy link to an mp3 of King Crimson playing Lizard live in '95 at the Santa Fe Station Casino in Vegas. But now they don't come at all. Because there's nothing here.

So to my previous tens of readers, apologies, but I'm just another victim of the New Cold War. Blogger will be holding my bits until I can get set up with new whistles and bells. And to any new readers, hello, and additional apologies. Blog writing is like pretending to whistle during an imaginary hurricane, and yet here's just another pretentious toot.

Still, over the next few months I'll be posting as frequently as possible through the haze of self-medication in an effort to reclaim and refine any voice I ever had, and of course to continue the noble and useless work of applying hype-bytes to bands I still can't believe no one has heard of. Maybe I'll be able to find some archival posts written and emailed from various desk-prisons. Or maybe I'll just start linking to my daily favorite from the torrent of blog entries I read in an effort to feel like I'm accomplishing something with all this disposable internet time.

I'm clearly not in the best mood, but I can almost see a better one from here. Stay posted, or get gone. It's your stolen WIFI, after all.

so go fuck myself.

you "heard" me.