Keith Handy 1.999

My problem with “sucks”

A quick rant to a group of people that aren’t reading this anyway:

When you hang out with a group of people, physically or virtually, and you finally realize what it is about the group that bothers you, good luck expressing or resolving it. Maybe it was impossible to understand from your perspective, but I’m completely serious when I say I can’t carry on a conversation with people that use the word “sucks” as often as you. It’s not a language issue, it’s a “way of looking at life” issue. If you’re sitting in a studio, trying to record a guitar part, and you botch up take 7 and say “that sucked”, that’s fine. But if you swing the word “sucks” around like a machine gun to wipe out entire songs, albums, and artists who actually put some effort into their work, without you putting any effort into explaining why, or even having the humility to acknowledge that your opinion is subjective, it only makes your armchair righteousness look all the more pathetic.

In short, if you haven’t tried to cut your own, then none of us give a shit what you think of ours. People who have tried, appreciate what other artists do even at their low points — not in blind worship, but out of respect for the guts it takes to keep going when you’re not sure where you’re going. (Maybe this doesn’t occur to you from the comfort of your computer chair, but there are no blueprints for this stuff, people; anybody who does know where they’re going, isn’t being creative.)

Some of you have very openly admitted (boasted?) that you have no desire to leave any mark on the world beyond the butt-shaped indentation on your couch, because you’re “not going to be here after you die anyway”. The same lot of you is struggling with depression. Have you considered that maybe if you did care about your impact in the world, your time on this planet might be more fulfilling, and, oh, I don’t know, happier?

Here is what I will concede. You and I are in a room. A song is playing. I don’t like the song. You do like the song. Instead of me saying, “you are wrong, the song sucks, you should learn to hate it”, I will admit that I am the one who isn’t appreciating it, and that your experience is genuine, and it’s too bad I’m not “there” with you. I can tell you how I’m perceiving the song, what I associate it with, what bugs, irritates, drives me nuts about it, and what I would do differently if it were my song — but I have no right to imply that you should be ashamed to like it. I will instead acknowledge that the song clashes with the way I see and hear life, I have a weak connection with or relationship to it, and it isn’t a good fit for the wavelength I’m on. (In general, I find that experienced musicians are more likely than naïve musicians or non-musicians to treat other people’s opinions with this kind of respect.)

Here is how 99% of the internet apparently understands subjectivity:

1. Your opinion is subjective.
2. My opinion is objective.

We could go so much farther as a global community of music and art appreciators if more of us had the motivation to grow past that mindset… and by “so much farther”, I mean not stuck in this one stupid pile of mud day in and day out.

Those of you who get what I’m saying, no need to pass the rant itself around; just try to set a good example. Maybe it will rub off on a few people here and there.

My first tera

My first tera…

Hooray!

Pieces parts

Some “blogging music”, maestro:

Thank you, sir. I doubt many of you happen to know the 1998 version of TFBD forwards and backwards, but this is the backing track from Scratched Off, Called Off — or, on earlier versions, Listed Black — right off the old worn-out tape, before I’ve had much of a chance to revitalize it. One recurring regret is that I tended to have “too much fun” with the sequencer back then (circa 1994) — lots of experimenting with ridiculous polyrhythms and other “mathy” ideas, just because I could — often at the expense of the overall aesthetic. In the case of this song, though, I think the arrangement works perfectly. You can clearly hear that there’s space in the sound where the vocals would go. It’s also refreshing to have music that isn’t emotionally overwhelming; it’s just a sonic backbone for a degrading dialogue between three jerks.

The overdubbed instruments on the original tape, i.e. the guitars (and that short REAL CLARINET OMG phrase at 1:16), were all apparently bounced together with the sequenced drums/bass/keys onto a single stereo pair, to open as many tracks as possible for vocal work — so if I’m not totally happy with the guitar tone as it is, tough titties.

Some early observations on the movie project (still in the “scavenger hunt” phase):

1. It doesn’t matter that I can’t see the entire movie in my head at once. All I need to see is the next thing I’m going to do. This much is easy. Each time I do the next thing, I can see a little further in my mind, and keep following where it leads me.

2. While props and costumes accumulate, and parts of the puzzle are coming together, the project is alive. While something sits at one end of the room, untouched for days on end, the eyes stop seeing it, and the project slips into a coma.

3. Visuals don’t hide music or detract from its flaws; they either resonate with it — magnifying and compounding what it already has — or just don’t go with it. If the music is kinda stupid, then the visual has to be kinda stupid. “Music visualization” is somewhat of a misnomer. We can’t see music, so there’s no such thing as one absolute correct visual to go with it. We can, however, see whether or not something fits the music. So while the music can’t dictate the visuals outright — even generative visuals rely on an algorithm that was developed independently of the music that drives it — the music can act as a test for whatever image we present to it. Sometimes just hearing the music helps to tell us, “this image is almost right, but needs to be fluffier/darker/grainer etc.”

4. I’ve long believed visuals could serve as a sweetener, to help some people swallow my more difficult musical pills — or at least as a distraction, so that people might let down their guards and let in some music that falls outside their usual comfort zone in some way. (Notice that people who complain loudly about certain radio stations never seem to mind when the same music appears in the soundtrack of a movie they’re enjoying.) What didn’t occur to me is that I’d be helping myself to experience this old music in a fresh and vital way, just by having a few tangible props to look at while tweaking the mixes.

Investments

Here are a few of the acquisitions that I’ve funded so far with my “stimulus incentive” rebate…

…just so you don’t think I’m spending it frivolously.

No, I’m not going through an “Elton John” phase, but it’s a good guess, and it’s sort of in the right direction…

Thanks to Sassy for the tip regarding ostrich fringe. (That was October? Christ, someone light a fire under my ass, please!)

Subliminal messages are for the birds

I’m not that far from having a refurbed Leave of Absence vol. 1 for all y’all. (Refurbing volume 2 was one of my side projects last year, so I’m sort of working backwards.) I finally resolved a certain gray-area type copyright issue. The new mix of the offending song (Julie) will be missing part of its original vocal, and in its place will be, uh… something kinda weird. The backing track is generic enough to not even be an issue. I’ll probably list the title of the new mix as Julie Minus Julie. I love odd, cryptic titles like that.

Anyway…

Remixing, in and of itself, should never take terribly long. It’s when something crosses the line from “remixing” to “reworking” that we get sucked into a wormhole, and suddenly it’s ten years later.

Fortunately, Friend in the Room (above) was a relatively straightforward hour-or-two remix, starting with the nearly ready-to-go tracks I’d previously copied over from the old Windows 98 computer. I put some essential stuff like EQ on some tracks, and cut out some hiss between lines on the vocal track. Interestingly, all these years later, I’m hearing not just hiss on that track, but also a bird chirping loudly in the background. It’s likely that I had my window open while recording it, but I don’t remember hearing it while making the original mix. I considered that it might have been a squeaky reel of tape being picked up by the mic, since I was always in the same room with the Fostex, but it sounds too distinctively bird-like. You might be able to hear a bit of it in the middle verse (listen at the end of the line “I never could say”, and the next few lines following it).

If I’d already known it was on there, I wouldn’t think it was any big deal. It’s the fact that the bird planted his easter egg in my song and I didn’t even discover it until a decade later — that’s what impresses me.

Anyway, having both volumes of Leave of Absence in nice, tidy, finalized (for now) form will put a nice, big, guidepost-y dent in my mission to sort out my entire back catalog and make it all available in one convenient online musicfolio. (This will be my new word for “discography”, since it really has nothing to do with discs. I may also start using “collection” in lieu of “album”, but we’ll see about that one.)

Clever ending. Blah blah blah.

R.I.P. Emily Junior

It’s never fun to lose a fuzzy buddy.

She just couldn’t make it through another surgery. Think a happy thought for her the next time you eat noodles. She loved them noodles.