I hate to do this, but after yet again another arguement over music I find I have no choice but to make some things clear. Sorry to sound pretenious, not my intention.
1. If you can't sing you're not a singer.
2. Just because you can dance does not make you a musician.
3. Just because you know how to edit audio, does not make you a songwriter.
4. Stealing other people's music should be a crime. Artists create art with a certain creative impulse in mind. To take someone else's art and present as your own with a few things added or changed is a crime to the original intent of the original artist's intent.
5. Lyrics have nothing to do with music at all. If you're good at rhythming words than go be a creative writing major at a community college. Music is called music for a reason.
6. There is more meaning to music than something to dance to. Do you think people danced to Gregorian Chant? A little clue they didn't. Music is art and is made to create an emotional response, which at times may be dancing, but is not strictly limited to it. If music doesn't make you think then it's not very good music. Good music inspires people.
7. You wouldn't trust an illiterate person's book review, so why does everyone who knows nothing about music take it upon themself to feel righteous and dignified when insulting and criticizing someone else's musical taste they don't like? I've studied music for a very, very long time, and have been playing music for even longer, and I would never tell someone their opinion on music is wrong, yet a lot of people have no problem telling me I'm wrong when it comes to music. I don't get it. I wrote my first concerto when I was 17, I'm not musically stupid. I'm not afraid or sorry to say it, but Kanye West is an idiot and not a musician, nor is lil' wayne and all these idiots who make up the so-called "popular music" today. There is a very big difference between being an entertainer and a musician. A musician is an artist and an entertainer is not. A DJ is not a musician, he maybe an entertainer, but if you don't play a bloody instrument then you're not a musician. The idea of non-musicians making music is absurd. As soon as one composes and plays music you enter the realm of being a musician. I'm tired of this daydream fantasy of people who don't want to work hard to achieve a skill so they play fucking guitar hero and think they know music. Am I the only one left in this world that believes that sampling someone else's music and claiming it as your own is not artisic and is not musically inclined? I wrote a lot of music, and the first thing to know about writing music is it is very hard. It is not easy to write music, so insted of using pro-tools and cutting and pasting someone else's songs, write your own damn music. What happened to creative outlets? Are we so desensitized by society that people don't know how to be creative anymore? It makes me sick to my stomach to look around at the profession I have chosen and see nothing but marketed hacks and uncreative weasals. The problem with digitally created electronic music whether it be rap or techno or whatever is, those kinds of music have no soul. There is no organic element to it at all, it is ridiculous to call it art because there is no primal creative element you either take someone else's creation and mess with it or you cut and paste computer programs to come up with 'beats' for you. If there is a primal creative element please someone show me an example and prove me wrong, but I don't see it or should I say I don't hear it.
Let's face it, a lot of music today sucks and is just terrible and seems uninspired. Oh where of where is the Mahvavishnu Orchestra when needed.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
A Man More Intelligent And Insighful Than Myself.
I've been talking alot of music with people lately, especially since the show I played last friday at The Elbo Room. Some of the talk has been technical as far as equipment and mechanics, but much of it has been musical philosophy. Why do I like the music I do, why do I play the music I do. Why is certain music popular more than others, what are people are listening to in music.
Much of my musical philosophy is based on my musical heroes and influences. People who know me, notice that whenever I talk about music I mention the name Robert Fripp quite often. Robert Fripp is kind of like the center to my musical philosophy. I think the man is genius, and is a very true and geniune artist and human being. Robert Fripp actually walked past me this last August at The Park West in Chicago, and I don't really count it as meeting him I was next to him and felt just such a benevolence of his being. With that said, I thought I'd post two videos of Fripp speaking. To most people they probably don't care what Fripp has to say, but I think even to non-musicians Fripp can be insightful and he's a great philosophical thinker/speaker. The first video talks about Fripp's career in the late 70's and he talks about playing with David Bowie and Blondie and is pretty interesting. The second video is from the mid 80's and is Fripp discussing musical philosophy, but not in the sense of judging what music is good like most people do, but the relationship of music to people and understanding music. I think it's very thought provoking and is where I derive my philosophy as far as a musician and artist comes from. More musician focused, but still insightful.
Much of my musical philosophy is based on my musical heroes and influences. People who know me, notice that whenever I talk about music I mention the name Robert Fripp quite often. Robert Fripp is kind of like the center to my musical philosophy. I think the man is genius, and is a very true and geniune artist and human being. Robert Fripp actually walked past me this last August at The Park West in Chicago, and I don't really count it as meeting him I was next to him and felt just such a benevolence of his being. With that said, I thought I'd post two videos of Fripp speaking. To most people they probably don't care what Fripp has to say, but I think even to non-musicians Fripp can be insightful and he's a great philosophical thinker/speaker. The first video talks about Fripp's career in the late 70's and he talks about playing with David Bowie and Blondie and is pretty interesting. The second video is from the mid 80's and is Fripp discussing musical philosophy, but not in the sense of judging what music is good like most people do, but the relationship of music to people and understanding music. I think it's very thought provoking and is where I derive my philosophy as far as a musician and artist comes from. More musician focused, but still insightful.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
One Of A Kind: My Tribute to BB
Today is a sad day in the world of William Covert. My favorite drummer, and quite honestly my favorite musician has retired from performing live music. Bill Bruford whose professional music career started in 1968 is hanging up playing live. Growing up and listening to all the bands Bill played with whether it be Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, UK, Earthworks, Chris Botti, I always thought one day I would get the chance to see him perform live and that dream will now never be fulfilled. Bill Bruford is the most important influence on me as a musician and an artist. I did my senior thesis in college on the drumming style of Bill Bruford and how he's changed drumming not only in rock and pop music, but also in jazz and electronic music, but I could go on all day about that.
My tribute to Bill is just some of my favorite live photos of him playing and a video of one of my favorite live drum solos of his, which is unique in that fact that it's entirely on electronic drums and Bill was one of the first musicians ever to use sampling and sequencing technology and though the video is from the 80's I find it's still ahead of its time in terms of the use of electronic drums as a melodic instrument.
My tribute to Bill is just some of my favorite live photos of him playing and a video of one of my favorite live drum solos of his, which is unique in that fact that it's entirely on electronic drums and Bill was one of the first musicians ever to use sampling and sequencing technology and though the video is from the 80's I find it's still ahead of its time in terms of the use of electronic drums as a melodic instrument.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Hair
I feel like a teenager again. I just turned 24 less than a week ago, and I've never had much if any upper body hair my whole life. For the first time in my life I have chest hair, like literally. The amount of hair on my chest has increased like tenfold in the past two days, what is going on! Not only that, I use to also be able to go about 4 or 5 days without having to shave, because my facial just doesn't grow very fast or thick, but I noticed very recently that's starting to change. I feel like I'm going through some body changes that should have happened to me several years ago. I still have baby teeth though, so as long as I have those I don't think I can feel too old, ha.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The Howler (An Ode To Allen Ginsberg)
Here is the angel of the world's desire
Placed on trial
To hide in shrouded alley sihouettes
With cigarette coiled
To stike at passing voices
Dark and suspect
Here is the howling ire
Here is the sacred face of rendevous
In subway sour
Whose grand delusions prey like intellect
In lunatic minds
Intent and focused on
The long thin matches
To light the howling fire...
No, no, no, not me,
Burn, I don't wanna burn.....
- Adrian Belew
Placed on trial
To hide in shrouded alley sihouettes
With cigarette coiled
To stike at passing voices
Dark and suspect
Here is the howling ire
Here is the sacred face of rendevous
In subway sour
Whose grand delusions prey like intellect
In lunatic minds
Intent and focused on
The long thin matches
To light the howling fire...
No, no, no, not me,
Burn, I don't wanna burn.....
- Adrian Belew
I've Had It Up To Here With Your Morals
Too many people live their lives as an illusion in the land of confusion.
The political right and left in this country are both leagues of idiots.
when will people realize and understand that humans are animals. There are no morals. Morals are not real they are a myth like the yeti or his north american cousin the sasquatch.
To really have freedom we must get rid of this belief of judging by morality and basically judgement in general. It kills me that in Christianity the who idea is you are judged when you die, so you better be good. What a stupid idea. It's like santa claus for adults.
If as a society we really want to end discrimination, end class warfare, and bring equality to everyone, then stop judging people and get rid of this holier than thou belief system.
I also think that this bailout situation is getting way out of control.
I have come up with a better solution.
You take all the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring them home, followed by closing military bases in Germany, The Middle East, Japan, The Philiphines, and South Korea. Then you cut the military budget in half. Now you just cut a lot of spending and will be able to save a lot more money. You then take the money you're saving from a slashed military budget and use that money to bailout out the country, but you bailout the country through ideas and not just wheel barrows full of money creating out of thin air. The majority of that bailout money should go towards education. You want to really fix the country than really focus on educating people. The gov't needs to spend around $500,000,000 to buy up toxic assests from banks, which would then make the banks solvent again and good to go. The rest of that bailout money should be pumped into education, and building more schools which creates jobs and helps the infrastructure of the country. It's a long term solution we need and is exactly what we won't do.
The political right and left in this country are both leagues of idiots.
when will people realize and understand that humans are animals. There are no morals. Morals are not real they are a myth like the yeti or his north american cousin the sasquatch.
To really have freedom we must get rid of this belief of judging by morality and basically judgement in general. It kills me that in Christianity the who idea is you are judged when you die, so you better be good. What a stupid idea. It's like santa claus for adults.
If as a society we really want to end discrimination, end class warfare, and bring equality to everyone, then stop judging people and get rid of this holier than thou belief system.
I also think that this bailout situation is getting way out of control.
I have come up with a better solution.
You take all the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring them home, followed by closing military bases in Germany, The Middle East, Japan, The Philiphines, and South Korea. Then you cut the military budget in half. Now you just cut a lot of spending and will be able to save a lot more money. You then take the money you're saving from a slashed military budget and use that money to bailout out the country, but you bailout the country through ideas and not just wheel barrows full of money creating out of thin air. The majority of that bailout money should go towards education. You want to really fix the country than really focus on educating people. The gov't needs to spend around $500,000,000 to buy up toxic assests from banks, which would then make the banks solvent again and good to go. The rest of that bailout money should be pumped into education, and building more schools which creates jobs and helps the infrastructure of the country. It's a long term solution we need and is exactly what we won't do.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Indie Music, Beer, & Lawyers: The Weekend that was my Birthday
Rock 'N' Roll at the Elbo Room, drunken debauchery in Lincoln Park, photo session on Division St, are just the main points to how I spent this weekend in Chicago for my birthday.
Friday night I played my first show with my newest band Ben Joyce and The Savage Young. The gig was at The Elbom Room on Lincoln Ave opening for the group aptly named A Band Called Catch. Going into Friday night I wasn't thinking about the gig too much, and really didn't expect much of it. I had played at the Elbom Room previously before, and it's the typical rocker/indie bar like The Subterrean or the Double Door. We were the opening act and only playing 40 min, so I wasn't expecting much money or many people there yet to watch us, but i was totally wrong.
Ben Joyce has quickly become my favorite person to play a show with. Ben brought about 30 people to the show and there were about 100 people in The Elbo Room by the time we started playing and it was so packed people were wall to wall after we were done i couldn't move around in the crowd and it was almost impossible trying to get our stuff off the stage. It was pandamonium, it was the kind of crowd you'd expect at CBGB's in 1977 or something. It was Rock 'N' Roll at its purest and most raw form, and the energy was amazing. I am so proud of our performance as a band, especially it being our first gig together. The highlight for me was the last song we played, which was a cover of The Police's classic "Next To You" which is probably my favorite song of The Police. We recorded our set, and listening to it the next day, I think my drums on "Next To You" is the best drum track I've ever recorded and listening to myself, which I usually hate to do because I'm more own biggest critical, I was blown away by my drumming. I don't mean to sound full of myself, I was blown away because I usually think I could have done way better, but It was maybe the first time I heard myself playing and thought that was damn good and better than I thought when we played the show the night before.
So the gig Friday night went unbelieveably well, and is something I'm really proud of, and we got paid way more than I thought we would, and is the best pay day I've had for a quite a while and reminded me that of yeah you can actually make a lot of money playing music.
Friday and Saturday Nights I went out with friends of mine in Lincoln Park. Friday night was the cause to get annihiliated was my band's performance which put me on cloud 9. We went to 3 different bars that I remember, and I dropped a total of three glasses throughout the night, and somehow I ended up crashing at my friend's by Clark and Fullerton in Lincoln Park, but my van ended up being parked two blocks from Wrigley Field, how this happen is still blurry, but it's all good now.
Saturday night we went out celebrating my birthday which was actually Sunday. I realized a few things after going out Saturday night. I am not a lawyer. One of my best friends is going to law school, and I've pondered the idea from time to time especially because I plan at somepoint in my life in getting involved in politics, so logically it would seem to make sense to go to law school. We went out to the bar and met up with some of my friend's friends from law school. I just don't really get along with law students. I don't want to make any assumptions or try to make stereotypes, but there is just something about lawyers that rubs me the wrong way. I was trying to be polite and talk to this guy who was a law student and he's making fun of me because i was wearing really tight jeans and blue/yellow shoes, while he's wearing a cardigan sweater and to me resmbled a guy who would be named Prescot and spend his summers sailing somewhere wishing one day to be able to suck Mitt Romney's cock. He's going on about how great John Roberts is and just sounding like the typical non-free thinking idiot. Or as John Malkevich would say "he's an idiot in a league of idiots."
It's just crazy how many people have a holier than thou mentality, and it drives me up the wall. Having a law degree doesn't mean anything. Having any degree doesn't mean anything. Getting an education is only useful if you use it. Just getting a degree and hopefully an education doesn't mean anything, it's all about how you use it. I wish more people understood that. I feel more of an urge now than ever to get involved in politics, maybe it's the Thomas Jefferson and Harvey Milk in me.
Me and a hipster friend of mine spent a good chunk of time Saturday night at bars discussing and observing members of what we call the non-thinking culture(religous people, die-hard capitalist consumers, nationalists, people driven only by money, elitists, bigots, conformists). This is the culture that makes up most of America, which is sad, but i think will hopefully change or eventually our species is doomed at some point in the future.
My hipster friend and I eventually got tired of hanging out with law students and we ended up at a Golden Nugget until 6 a.m. discussing politics and environmental concerns. After tiring of talking about green technology for hours, we decided to hit up an after hours bar, which was insane. It was literally an urban jungle in this place. I don't mean that in any kind of racial way at all, it was about all young white people in there. What I mean about urban jungle is, you get all these people who probably in every day life are and seem normal. You then put these people in an environment which allows them to drop their inhibitions, and they literally go wild. It is amazing what alcohol, multi-colored bright lights, and crappy dance music with too much bass will make people do. In a way though I think it's good for people to be more animalistic, but I think way too often people take it way too far in their wildness and still don't at the end of the day realize we are just animals who have the same needs as other animals. Morals aren't real and are a manmade delusion, the sooner people realize that the better off we are as for as social progression.
I also was involved in a photo shoot this weekend, which was a lot of fun and the first one I'd been involved with in a couple years. In and all it was a quite memerable weekend.
Friday night I played my first show with my newest band Ben Joyce and The Savage Young. The gig was at The Elbom Room on Lincoln Ave opening for the group aptly named A Band Called Catch. Going into Friday night I wasn't thinking about the gig too much, and really didn't expect much of it. I had played at the Elbom Room previously before, and it's the typical rocker/indie bar like The Subterrean or the Double Door. We were the opening act and only playing 40 min, so I wasn't expecting much money or many people there yet to watch us, but i was totally wrong.
Ben Joyce has quickly become my favorite person to play a show with. Ben brought about 30 people to the show and there were about 100 people in The Elbo Room by the time we started playing and it was so packed people were wall to wall after we were done i couldn't move around in the crowd and it was almost impossible trying to get our stuff off the stage. It was pandamonium, it was the kind of crowd you'd expect at CBGB's in 1977 or something. It was Rock 'N' Roll at its purest and most raw form, and the energy was amazing. I am so proud of our performance as a band, especially it being our first gig together. The highlight for me was the last song we played, which was a cover of The Police's classic "Next To You" which is probably my favorite song of The Police. We recorded our set, and listening to it the next day, I think my drums on "Next To You" is the best drum track I've ever recorded and listening to myself, which I usually hate to do because I'm more own biggest critical, I was blown away by my drumming. I don't mean to sound full of myself, I was blown away because I usually think I could have done way better, but It was maybe the first time I heard myself playing and thought that was damn good and better than I thought when we played the show the night before.
So the gig Friday night went unbelieveably well, and is something I'm really proud of, and we got paid way more than I thought we would, and is the best pay day I've had for a quite a while and reminded me that of yeah you can actually make a lot of money playing music.
Friday and Saturday Nights I went out with friends of mine in Lincoln Park. Friday night was the cause to get annihiliated was my band's performance which put me on cloud 9. We went to 3 different bars that I remember, and I dropped a total of three glasses throughout the night, and somehow I ended up crashing at my friend's by Clark and Fullerton in Lincoln Park, but my van ended up being parked two blocks from Wrigley Field, how this happen is still blurry, but it's all good now.
Saturday night we went out celebrating my birthday which was actually Sunday. I realized a few things after going out Saturday night. I am not a lawyer. One of my best friends is going to law school, and I've pondered the idea from time to time especially because I plan at somepoint in my life in getting involved in politics, so logically it would seem to make sense to go to law school. We went out to the bar and met up with some of my friend's friends from law school. I just don't really get along with law students. I don't want to make any assumptions or try to make stereotypes, but there is just something about lawyers that rubs me the wrong way. I was trying to be polite and talk to this guy who was a law student and he's making fun of me because i was wearing really tight jeans and blue/yellow shoes, while he's wearing a cardigan sweater and to me resmbled a guy who would be named Prescot and spend his summers sailing somewhere wishing one day to be able to suck Mitt Romney's cock. He's going on about how great John Roberts is and just sounding like the typical non-free thinking idiot. Or as John Malkevich would say "he's an idiot in a league of idiots."
It's just crazy how many people have a holier than thou mentality, and it drives me up the wall. Having a law degree doesn't mean anything. Having any degree doesn't mean anything. Getting an education is only useful if you use it. Just getting a degree and hopefully an education doesn't mean anything, it's all about how you use it. I wish more people understood that. I feel more of an urge now than ever to get involved in politics, maybe it's the Thomas Jefferson and Harvey Milk in me.
Me and a hipster friend of mine spent a good chunk of time Saturday night at bars discussing and observing members of what we call the non-thinking culture(religous people, die-hard capitalist consumers, nationalists, people driven only by money, elitists, bigots, conformists). This is the culture that makes up most of America, which is sad, but i think will hopefully change or eventually our species is doomed at some point in the future.
My hipster friend and I eventually got tired of hanging out with law students and we ended up at a Golden Nugget until 6 a.m. discussing politics and environmental concerns. After tiring of talking about green technology for hours, we decided to hit up an after hours bar, which was insane. It was literally an urban jungle in this place. I don't mean that in any kind of racial way at all, it was about all young white people in there. What I mean about urban jungle is, you get all these people who probably in every day life are and seem normal. You then put these people in an environment which allows them to drop their inhibitions, and they literally go wild. It is amazing what alcohol, multi-colored bright lights, and crappy dance music with too much bass will make people do. In a way though I think it's good for people to be more animalistic, but I think way too often people take it way too far in their wildness and still don't at the end of the day realize we are just animals who have the same needs as other animals. Morals aren't real and are a manmade delusion, the sooner people realize that the better off we are as for as social progression.
I also was involved in a photo shoot this weekend, which was a lot of fun and the first one I'd been involved with in a couple years. In and all it was a quite memerable weekend.
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