Fran Lebowitz is a witless crank who likes to smoke

I was driving down to the studio the other night listening to one of those shows on NPR where they interview an author in front of a live audience - it was probably City Arts and Lectures, and Fran was on, being her normal crumudgeonly self. During Q&A, the NYC smoking ban came up, and she launched into this anit-Bloombergian diatribe, denouncing all us Nazi anti-smoking zealots and our Range Rovers (I drive a '99 Saturn, thanks for asking) and how we've enforced our idiotic lust for breathable air onto all the poor downtrodden smokers, the last great browbeaten, marginalized minority (after the Great American Sportsman).

You know what, Franbo? You want to sit around and rip off Dorothy Parker and inhale carcinogenic airborne particluates, be my guest. Just do it within the confines of you own posh digs. Me, I like to go out and knock back a few and talk to my friends and carry on and NOT go home with my clothes smelling like they've been in the crack of a chimney-sweep's ass all day. I remember one trip to Brooklyn to do some tracking at Seizure's Palace; after the session, we walked over to the Gate and had a grand time sampling the local microbeer and ogling some lass's rip-cord. By the time we got home, I smelled like Satan's dishrag.

See, Franikins, you have the right to smoke. You have the right to smear your haunches with Nutella, sing Sondheim through a bullhorn and sell tickets. I have the right not to be enrobed in the resulting exhaust of either activity.

Lindsay Mac plays some cello like a mofo

Last night I went to Eddie's to see Gerlinda play - as always, she rocked it. It's amazing what that girl can do with her voice and a few chords. 

It was a songwriter's night, and everybody was very entertaining and competent, but this one women surprised the crowd with what could have been just a cute gimmick. A palpable thrum passed through the audience when she started her first song.

Lindsay Mac plays cello like a guitar, or maybe more like an acoustic bass. She slaps, strums and plucks with abandon while singing in a playful, singular voice. "Quirky" comes to mind. With just a few songs, she reminded me of Kate Bush, Jane Siberry, Ani DiFranco, Charlie Haden, and Chris Wood. Her songwriting can be a bit too twee (my wife's word), but there's no denying her talent. She'll go far.

Song of myself - Remix

[note: I started writing this post over a week ago, and I've been too busy house / job hunting and working to finish it. It may not even make any sense anymore. And yet...]


Not really.

Attempting to write a body of songs on a deadline has taught me a few things about myself, and perhaps this will ultimately be the value of this experiment.

I've been a musician as long as I can remember, starting with singing in church and school when I was six or seven. I've played in all kinds of bands, from synth-funk to glam-noise to metal to industrial to avant-garde experimental to acid jazz to plain-old guitar pop.

In all cases, I was either an instrumentalist / sideman or a co-writer working with a lyricist. I only wrote a full song with lyrics about once a year.

My favorite role is the "cool sounds guy," which is pretty much what I do with my current band, weaklazyliar. I do all the tasty keyboard stuff: electric piano grooves, Moog lead lines and noise beds, B3 flourishes. The songs are written by Gerlinda, the guitarist / singer, and Chris, the bassist. They bake the cake, and I get to put flowers and swirly bits on it.

This little 30 Day thing has been my attempt to become a prolific baker; to build the frame and make the thing. I do this all the time with instrumental stuff - it's like therapy to pile up sounds and grooves and try to make a coherent composition out of it all. It's different, though, when words come into play - you are now communicating on a different, less abstract level. It takes real skill and (more importantly) confidence to do it right. You have to feel something that needs to be said; it's similar to the drive a writer feels to put words on a page and tell stories. I don't have it. I'm a competent writer, from a word-on-page stanpoint, and I've written some short fiction and a very little poetry, but I lack that urge that real writers have.

I do have other undeniable drives. I pick up a guitar early every day. They lay around my bedroom like fallen trees, leaning against the bed and the desk and the pile of coats. I can spend hours and hours in the studio layering keyboard sounds and samples and beats and random found audio. I like noise. Noise is good.

I suppose I will keep writing songs, and trying to finish them, but the deadline for completion is today, and I never really got past song two. So there's that.

But hey, I did get a job offer today. And I might put a bid on house later in the week. Failure begets success.

Or something.

Posting from the Blogger Widget

May I take this opportunity to thank the fine people at Google for finally hooking up us Mac peeps (and yes, I know how lame that sounds). I'm test driving the Google Blogger widget, which lets you (meaning me) write quickie posts from the Dashboard. It may prove to be useless, but we'll see how it works. 

30 Day Rock Fiasco, continued...

Methinks a change of strategy is in order.
To this point, I've been working in my typical piecemeal, pomo fashion, as follows:

• guitar and / or keyboard chunklets are collected and catalogued
• lyrical bits are written in a notebook and later matched up with said chunklets
• drums are recorded to a click track to be married up with said lyrics and chunklets
• sessions are assembled and massaged ad nauseum

Now, if I didn't have a job and a family and all the other bourgeouis trappings, I would be able to live at the studio and do this and in about, oh...say 30 days, I'd have a finished record of some kind. This method has actually worked rather well for my electronic stuff, but tracks take months or sometimes years to coalesce. I have active sessions right now that started in 2004.

The songs that were started this way will be finished this way. I think I will, from this point (or as the suits say, going forward), work thusly:

• I will write vocal melodies and guitar parts together, mostly
• lyrics will follow naturally, one hopes
• I will then arrange the "song" and record it to a click in its most essential form
• drums will be added as needed, either via Mitch or electronically
• the thing will then be quickie-mixed and called done, in all its 24-bit lo-fi glory

I have two weeks from today.

Amen, brother...

This video charts the evolution of possibly the most famous break of all time (other than possible JB's "Funky Drummer" loop), touching on issues of cultural appropriation, copyright law, and the far-reaching impact of the idea of "intellectual property."