What We Do When We're On Vacation
Ube is happy we're talking a little time off from playing, as he sustained quite a self induced beating at our last show. I don't want us to stop moving though. My old band (yeah, that one) fell into that trap A LOT. In five years together we wrote about 40 songs, which isn't much. We only wrote one song in 1995. By the end it was like "We've got a show... better jam. Once.", or "Time to write something. Guess we'll have to jam again". It's not that jamming in that band was so awful, because it wasn't. We were just really lazy, and should have pushed ourselves to write more.
Writing for that band was difficult though. Quite a bit of it was done by me, which a lot of people are surprised to learn. As was the case for all of my bands in the 90s (except the one with C & LG, which was a side project for all three of us), I had a very clear, focused, exact idea of how I wanted things to sound. It must sound like this, and only this. Yet I was torn by the fact that I wanted everything to sound fresh all the time, to not write the same song over and over. Tough to have it both ways.
I can only speak for myself when I talk about the purpose and meaning of that band, but for me there was a clear agenda: provide for people the same kind of power that I experienced at my first few punk shows in Halifax. In my opinion, punk rock in this city was at a low point in the early 90s, compared to where it had been a few years earlier. I wanted no part of any musical progress whatsoever. The progression of punk rock, as I saw it, is what killed the music I loved when I was a teenager, and robbed younger people of the chance to experience such an awesome thing. I wanted our band to be a solution to this. Whether or not we succeeded is open for speculation. So is the wisdom of that entire mandate.
The trouble with recreating something old is that it doesn't leave you with a lot of tools to work with when writing. That didn't bother me then, because I liked the security of working within a tight framework. These kinds of chords, only. This kind of beat, only. This kind of lyric, only. When trying to come up with a new song, I did not have a long list of musical ideas to choose from... which I figured was good for two reasons: it meant less thinking for me, and it wouldn't insult the audience by introducing things into punk rock songs that had no place being there. "The bands that inspire me never did that, so I'm not going to, either".
This doctrine really ended up biting us in the ass though, in my opinion. Out of the blue, we were offered the chance to do a split 12" album with a band from the United States. We had just released a demo tape, and had next to nothing in the creative tank. The offer wasn't going to be there forever, so we had to get moving - but the tight focus of songwriting and desire to make every song different made it really hard to pump out good songs, fast. We had room for 15 songs and ended up rerecording inferior versions of 9 songs from our tape. Of the six new ones we were able to bang out (I wrote them all except for lyrics on one, which our singer wrote), most disappeared from our setlist very quickly. Maybe one was any good, and a couple were downright embarrassing. I think the year-drought happened around this time.
When we did the album on our own in 1996/97, my approach to songwriting was about the same, but you can hear different sounds creeping in. The distance between the present and the "glory days" was growing. The desire to make each song different was starting to win. There was a lot more discordance in the music, a reflection of what I was getting into by that point. Our final split 7" was the best example of this. We were at our creative peak then, without a doubt. If you listen to that record and the first couple of Be Bad songs where I wrote music (ask me in person, if you care), the gap is not that wide.
What does all of this have to do with the New Band and our vacation? I guess it serves to outline what I've learned in the past and how I want to put it into effect today. New Band doesn't have to take a vacation, and shouldn't. I feel a lot more satisfied if we're constantly at work. I want our jams to be necessary and happen often. This band does not face the same problems Old Band did. Our musical setup satisfies my need to work within tight constraints. I've learned from experience that being too focused creatively will make me frustrated by writer's block, or result in musical sameness or awfulness. Many have tried (mine included) but VERY FEW bands can get away with all of their songs sounding the same, and not sucking. I won't allow my bands to suck for this reason. There is not much I wouldn't try in GS or BB as far as musical experimentation goes. This is a 180 degree turn from where I was a decade ago.
GS jammed two new ones last night. I'm stoked.
Writing for that band was difficult though. Quite a bit of it was done by me, which a lot of people are surprised to learn. As was the case for all of my bands in the 90s (except the one with C & LG, which was a side project for all three of us), I had a very clear, focused, exact idea of how I wanted things to sound. It must sound like this, and only this. Yet I was torn by the fact that I wanted everything to sound fresh all the time, to not write the same song over and over. Tough to have it both ways.
I can only speak for myself when I talk about the purpose and meaning of that band, but for me there was a clear agenda: provide for people the same kind of power that I experienced at my first few punk shows in Halifax. In my opinion, punk rock in this city was at a low point in the early 90s, compared to where it had been a few years earlier. I wanted no part of any musical progress whatsoever. The progression of punk rock, as I saw it, is what killed the music I loved when I was a teenager, and robbed younger people of the chance to experience such an awesome thing. I wanted our band to be a solution to this. Whether or not we succeeded is open for speculation. So is the wisdom of that entire mandate.
The trouble with recreating something old is that it doesn't leave you with a lot of tools to work with when writing. That didn't bother me then, because I liked the security of working within a tight framework. These kinds of chords, only. This kind of beat, only. This kind of lyric, only. When trying to come up with a new song, I did not have a long list of musical ideas to choose from... which I figured was good for two reasons: it meant less thinking for me, and it wouldn't insult the audience by introducing things into punk rock songs that had no place being there. "The bands that inspire me never did that, so I'm not going to, either".
This doctrine really ended up biting us in the ass though, in my opinion. Out of the blue, we were offered the chance to do a split 12" album with a band from the United States. We had just released a demo tape, and had next to nothing in the creative tank. The offer wasn't going to be there forever, so we had to get moving - but the tight focus of songwriting and desire to make every song different made it really hard to pump out good songs, fast. We had room for 15 songs and ended up rerecording inferior versions of 9 songs from our tape. Of the six new ones we were able to bang out (I wrote them all except for lyrics on one, which our singer wrote), most disappeared from our setlist very quickly. Maybe one was any good, and a couple were downright embarrassing. I think the year-drought happened around this time.
When we did the album on our own in 1996/97, my approach to songwriting was about the same, but you can hear different sounds creeping in. The distance between the present and the "glory days" was growing. The desire to make each song different was starting to win. There was a lot more discordance in the music, a reflection of what I was getting into by that point. Our final split 7" was the best example of this. We were at our creative peak then, without a doubt. If you listen to that record and the first couple of Be Bad songs where I wrote music (ask me in person, if you care), the gap is not that wide.
What does all of this have to do with the New Band and our vacation? I guess it serves to outline what I've learned in the past and how I want to put it into effect today. New Band doesn't have to take a vacation, and shouldn't. I feel a lot more satisfied if we're constantly at work. I want our jams to be necessary and happen often. This band does not face the same problems Old Band did. Our musical setup satisfies my need to work within tight constraints. I've learned from experience that being too focused creatively will make me frustrated by writer's block, or result in musical sameness or awfulness. Many have tried (mine included) but VERY FEW bands can get away with all of their songs sounding the same, and not sucking. I won't allow my bands to suck for this reason. There is not much I wouldn't try in GS or BB as far as musical experimentation goes. This is a 180 degree turn from where I was a decade ago.
GS jammed two new ones last night. I'm stoked.
posted by the baron ash von foolishness at 11:54 AM
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