Calvin Hairstyle: Hell's Gels

Here's what I hate about my blog right now

(Edit from the future: here is the post I wrote explaining why I was going on hiatus--both to record, and to retool.  If you really wanna hear the exciting details, chronicled by me in blog form, click below on the heading and take the jump)

I've abandoned my blog!

But the good news is that it's because I'm actually finishing songs in the "studio."  I will post a few of them as soon as they're done.  Right now I'm about 90% done with the first 15 songs, but I'm 100% done with none. 

I will throw this little tidbit out there.  In my last post I observed that sometimes mental blocks are the result of some associated physical discomfort with some part of the workspace.  i.e.--a ride cymbal that jabs you in the kidneys, an overcrowded workspace, a mic that shocks you. 

I was thinking last night that I think that these mental blocks can also result from some unnoticed, unattended to mental discomfort associated with the song/project.  Example--if you're working on a song that has a bad working title, or a lyric that makes you uncomfortable or embarrassed to even look at.  So it's a good idea to keep the workspace tidy, and also to keep your rough drafts tidy and don't be afraid to edit out all the bad brainstorms if they're so bad they depress you out of the will to keep revising. 

That is all.  Back to the lab again, yo, this this whole rhapsody he better go capture this moment and hope it don't pass him--you better lose yourself....

It is time.

Calvin Hairstyle--Live and Alive

That's my latest live album title.  Like it?  No?  Yeah, me neither.

Here's a quick vid from the first show (and if the other vid gets restored to youtube, somebody holler if you happen to notice):

Here's me playing a solo as if my right shoe were nailed to the floor:

This week 10 years ago in Indie Show history

When I was looking through old notebooks in prep for my 40 day songwriting binge, I found my old notebook from when I hosted the Indie Show on KLSU. 

I will definitely relate more of my college radio experience to you guys through this recurring segment.  For now, the basics.

Yes, KLSU was so corporate in the 90s that we actually had to have an "indie show".  We were lucky to have that much.  The mid-late 90s were the Hootie and the Blowfish playing doldrums for KLSU, despite the best efforts of some really cool music directors and dj's during that time.  Eventually, KLSU got it's groove back, and became relevant once again.  During my time, though, the indie show was all we had for traditional "college rock" on our "college station." 

There will be plenty more stories to come on this subject.  For now, here's my playlist for the last week of Feb, 1999. 

Frosted Ambasador--#3
Archers of Loaf--Harnessed in Slums
Flin Flon--Shuffleboard

And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead...Claire de Lune
Neutral Milk Hotel--Two Headed Boy/The Fool
The Vaselines--Dying For It

Enon--Rubber Car
Lunchbox--Just Because
Dub Narcotic Sound System--Super Dub Narcotic

Home--Burden
K. McCarty--Sorry Entertainer (Daniel Johnston)
Galaxie 500--4th of July

Microphones--Moon Moon Moon
Belle & Sebastian--Stars of Track & Field
Guided By Voices--Smothered in Hugs

The Crabs--Market Size
Marshmallow Coast--Masked Potato Light
Sick Bees--N.O.E.

Cat Power--Back of Your Head
His Name is Alive--Chances Are We Are Mad
Beat Happening--Run Down the Stairs
Palace Bros--Come a Little Dog

Bedhead--Haywire
Satan's Pilgrims--Ghoulash
Spoon--Don't Buy the Realistic

(painful, self-propelled monologues/streams of consciousness at each line break)

40 songs in 40 days VI

Well, carnival season is over, and if the facebook pics I've been tagged in are any indication, I really got my money's worth this year.  I got everybody's money's worth this year. 

Now is the time of year for me to harness the nebulous guilt that normally just loiters in air pockets outside my major organs, and channel that energy towards something productive.  (I said "my major organs")  Starting in 2004, I've been making myself write and record 40 completed songs between Mardi Gras and Easter every year.  Which is technically more than 40 days, but you get the point. 

My problem, like most songwriters, has always been with finishing songs.  If I don't give myself an arbitrary deadline, there's no gittin' 'er done.  So that's one benefit to this whole deal.  I think the absurd volume helps me out, too.

Sometime before '04 when I started doing this, I read something about an experiment in this pottery class that was divided into two groups---one would be graded according to the quality of the one piece they'd put all their time into, and the other group would be graded strictly on the quantity of pieces they could produce.  The moral of the story was, the quantity group had learned so much from the "bad" pieces they made, they were able to make higher quality projects than the group that labored over the one piece. 

In my experiences, some of the songs I've been happiest about writing have been the handful that came to me all at once, in a few minutes.  I love hearing about how some of my favorite songs were written on the spot, or thrown together to fill up a b-side, or to kill unexpected studio time that was paid for.  "Wild Thing", "La Bamba", "Push It", "Heart Shaped Box", "Sweet Child O' Mine"--just a few songs I remember reading were conceived wholly on the spot.  Maybe the chords for "Sweet Child" were written out later, but the riff was Slash's spontaneous joke.   And "La Bamba" was a folk song, reinvented spontaneously.  But you get my point.  There's something about intuitively writing in the flow that cannot be denied.  Much psychological research supports the idea that the unfettered subconscious is capable of much more when it can perform in rhythm, than when the self critical eye tries to control the process. 

Then there's the other side of the coin.  Paul Simon's famous quote, "Great songs aren't written, they're rewritten."  You can find just as many anecdotes about songwriters not finding the perfect bridge to a song for 20 years, until it all just clicks one day when they're raking leaves or something.

With 40 songs in 40 days, I get the best of both worlds.  I write so many songs that the weight of each song is minimized so much that there's no point in getting held up agonizing over a certain decision.  The revisions come intermittently whenever I'm in the mood, which happens a lot more during a concentrated span of writing.  What usually ends up happening each year is that out of 40 songs, 2 or 3 of them accidentally turn out to be awesome mega-hits that cannot be denied.  Monkeys at a typewriter stuff.  Maybe another 7-10 are fully formed concepts that just need to be revised over the course of the 40 days.  Another handful are songs that have good ideas, they're just have to stay on the backburner, and get gotten to at some later date.  And it's great when I'm in a revisin' mood to go back to the ol' bag o' tricks and finish a few good songs without having to start from scratch.  I've had a bunch of songs that I hated, that totally worked once I changed one pronoun. Sometimes it takes major surgery, or fixing different verses up with different choruses--like a suburban key party.  I digress. 

Then there are usually 20 songs or so a year that are unquestionably horrible.  They're of no use to anyone, and I'm embarrassed that I ever took the time to finish them.  I'm embarrassed they ever even spent one second living in my consciousness.  And there they are, committed to hard disk, impossible to deny.  And I think that's the whole key, for me at least--to not let these thoughts, or the fear of them stifle creativity.  This is easier than it sounds. 

Over the next 40 days, I'm going to kick things into high gear.  I'm not sure how it will affect the songs I'm doing on this blog, but I'm guessing positively.  What I lack in real time recorded songs, I will make up for in posting some old songs from 40songs past.  Maybe we can do discussion driven stuff to songs I'm not doing anything with (and not too embarrassed to post). There will be a lot more musical content soon.  Plus, some new features that should be exciting and give you guys something more to follow and discuss on here.

When the 40 days (ish) are over, I will share the highlights with you.  I really look forward to it.  Also, if I meet my goal, I'm buying myself a next generation gaming system---I haven't decided which.   But I already kind of cheated and started laying down some tracks, and it's already off to a great start.  I will have a lot more to keep you posted about, and hopefully my mind can start to get into creative mode and not the mentally doughy feeling I've had for the last few months.  Wish me luck!

"Customer Service"

The pop gem is finally complete.  I coulda had it done sooner, but there are two things that I'm not very good at that stood in my way:

1.  not procrastinating
2.  playing the drums

Just to catch you up to speed--a little over two weeks ago, I asked my audience to give me a subject for Calvin's pop gem.  All I had in mind was that it was going to be about a girl.  I was going to think up a bunch of questions to try and get a picture of what I should write it about.  Thankfully, Alex had a plot in mind that was complete the way it was. 

• "The girl works at the coffee shop, and the narrator nurses the idea that the girl loves him because she is always nice to him and knows his order, even though in his heart he realizes that it is her job to be nice to him and know his order because that's how coffee shops get schleps like himself to come in every day and spend that much on coffee.

  The middle section could be when he encounters her at a bar or some public place and tries to strike up a conversation and she doesn't know who he is (being out of context) and even when she does, she kinda blows him off to talk to her friends. needless to say, his heart is broken

  ending: he goes into the coffee shop after staying away a week and she says, I'm so sorry I didn't recognize you the other night yadda yadda and the spell is once again cast"

So whoomp here it is.  It's called "Customer Service".  It's in the key of A.  There's a key change during the bridge.  There are backup vocals.  Length--3:30.  Pop. Gem. 

Download Customer Service

(if you listen closely, in the background you can hear Chris Paul tear his groin, and the Hornets blow a 17 pt. lead to the Blazers)

Lyrics after the jump

Frozen Bears album listed as 115th best of '08. Suck it, Vampire Weekend.

I apologize to my online buddies who've seen me use that joke (pretty much Tina Fey's joke) at least thrice now.

And I have nothing against The Vampires on Weekend, who clocked in on this list at 125, just like to joke about the hard and fast validity of these things.

But check it out--Chuck Eddy, Actual Rock Critic and former music editor at Village Voice (in better times), gave us props on his blog on Rhapsody:

110. Noekk – The Minstrel’s Curse (Prophecy) reviewed here

111. Toby Keith – That Don’t Make Me A Bad Guy (Show Dog Nashville) reviewed here

112. Dornenreich – In Luft Geritzt (Prophecy)

113. Early Man – Beware The Circling Fin (The End EP)

114. Rebecca Lynn Howard – No Rules (Saguaro Road) reviewed here

115. Frozen Bears – Hey, That’s a Good Looking Sportcoat! (Frozen Bears EP) reviewed here

116. The Reds – Fugitives From The Laughing House (Tarock) reviewed here

117. Matana Roberts – The Chicago Project (Central Control)

118. Amaseffer – Exodus: Slaves For Life (Inside Out/SPV) reviewed here

119. Keith Anderson – C’Mon! (Columbia)

120. Solange Knowles – Sol-Angel And The Hadley St. Dreams (Geffen) reviewed here 

121. Ayreon – 01011001 (Inside Out/SPV) reviewed here

122. The Boxmasters – The Boxmasters (Vanguard) reviewed here

123. Alan Jackson – Good Time (Arista Nashville) reviewed here

124. Opeth – Watershed (Roadrunner) reviewed here

125. Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend (XL)

You can snag this critically acclaimed disc on CDBaby real cheap and worth every bitter tasting penny.  

To celebrate, I will subject you to this video, which my cohort Adam Waller just put together.  It's the leadoff track of the album, and one of my favorite songs to ever be involved with.  Check it:

The Pop Gem

Alright.  I'll be doing a post game analysis of song #2 at some point, but let's just move on for now. 

The next thing we've got to do is write Calvin's pop gem.  I want the PG to be based on something very specific.  I may only vaguely allude to it in the song, but I need to sing it with the conviction that it is based on a detailed backstory. 

I also want this one to be about a girl in some way.  I will definitely be writing more pop gems in the future, and these may be more topical, but right now, I want this one to start off being about a girl. 

Some questions to get the ball rolling.  What are some specifics about this girl?  Where does she work?  Why does Calv like her so much?   What's one defining characteristic about her? 

Then there's the event--what event involving this girl would inspire Calvin to write a song about it?  Is there some action this girl took that upset Calvin?  Confused him?  Inspired him?   What did this girl DO that Calv needs to write about?  I want to eventually work towards something very specific here. 

More questions to come, but let's see if we can get the ball rolling with that. 

Coming to Swallow Our Souls (Beautiful Blood)

Well, hold the phone and pass the horseradish--Calvin finished song number 2, everybody! 

Just to take you back to this song's roots, here's a link to the Rorshach blots and brainstorming session that inspired this one.

Download Calvin Hairstyle -- Coming To Swallow Our Souls (Beautiful Blood)

Analysis coming soon.  Thanks for helping and listening, gang.