Caitlin...
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Day 315 | Sunday, November 8 | 2009
New and Temporary Wheels...I am assuming a lot, however, to think that people know me, want, or expect anything out of me now but that's how it has felt for a while now. As time passes by, it gets less and less and I feel like I can create music again and I have become a lot more comfortable with it. It was just so suffocating (in a way) to be part of the band that I was in because I felt a lot of pretense of how things were supposed to be...
I am hoping that my time off has served me enough to be comfortable with my own voice and my own style without having the constant feeling of subordination.
Either way, I have agreed for real this time to play and I am going to have to do it one way or another. I just hope that these inner voices don't get the best of me and make me helpless, hopeless, and lost.
In other news...
My dad came to Athens today and was able to fix my car -- at least to the point that it started and he drove it back to Cincinnati to the mechanic's. I am going to drive his truck for the next week in return. My dad, what a guy.
Later: I realize now that I was distorted in thinking that I was under a 'constant feeling of subordination' while in the band. That is just not true. If it was ever anything like that, it was only a very rare and fleeting feeling of subordination -- and it only came from one of the four (or sometimes five) members of the band. The only other times it happened was when money was discussed and I don't even want to elaborate on that. It's not worth it.
Also, I was a little off in saying that there were always pretenses in playing in Southeast Engine. That is not true either. I would venture to guess thought hat every band has some level of pretense (sometimes this is functional) operating at hand. Things get to a point in the politics of a band where people are expected to behave according to a certain power structure and it was that subject to which I was referring. It doesn't necessarily make anyone good or bad; it was merely a factor that contributed to my departure.
Day 270 | Thursday, September 24 | 2009
Perfect Day...Today was a really good day. I took Caitlin out for dinner at Casa Nueva and then surprised her with tickets to see Yo la Tengo at Stuart's Opera House.
I have never seen a music show quite like this -- the stage presence and energy exuded by the players was very zen-like. It was as if the players never felt like the music was ever really out of their control. The guitarist played like a mad man -- he was hurling and slinging his guitar around the stage like a dog stripping a bone raw. His solos and inflections were truly possessed. I am so glad I got to see this show -- it goes up there among the best shows I have ever seen for sure. Caitlin and I went with our good friend Rob and it was the perfect end to a perfect day.
Earlier on I recorded this song using my the video feed on my computer. I put some hackneyed effects on it to make it look antiquated but I don't care. The song is Nuestro Juramento by Julio Jaramillo and here are the lyrics:
Nuestro Juramento
No puedo verte triste porque me mata tu carita de pena; mi dulce amor, me duele tanto el llanto que tu derramas que se llena de angustia mi corazón.
I cannot see you sad because it kills meYour little face (full) of sorrow, my sweet love.It pains me so much, the tears that you spill,That my heart fills up with anguish.
Yo sufro lo indecible si tu entristeces, no quiero que la duda te haga llorar, hemos jurado amarnos hasta la muerte y si los muertos aman, despues de muertos amarnos más.
I suffer unspeakably if you sadden,I do not want doubt to make you cry.We have vowed to love each other until deathAnd if the dead (can) love,After dying, to love each other more.
Si yo muero primero, es tu promesa, sobre de mi cadaver dejar caer todo el llanto que brote de tu tristeza y que todos se enteren de tu querer.
If I die first, it is your promise,Over my cadaver let fallAll the tears that spring from your sadnessAnd let everyone hear of your love.
Si tu mueres primero, yo te prometo, escribiré la historia de nuestro amor con toda el alma llena de sentimiento; la escribire con sangre, con tinta sangre del corazón
If you die first, I promise you,I will write the story of our loveWith my whole spirit filled with emotion;I will write it with blood,With the tinted blood of the heart.Day 246 | Wednesday, September 2 | 2009
Hooper Ridge Road...With the second installment in the series that I like to call September Sunrise, here comes a photo on one of my favorite roads in Athens County. Located between Amesville and Trimble, Hooper Ridge Road is a path the winds and stretches through some of the more striking bucolic panoramas of this region. If you are ever in the area, I suggest taking a joy ride down this lovely way. Also, be on the lookout for a really interesting house that Caitlin and I like to call Copernicus Court. It's a weird structure -- has shag bark that makes up the exterior, extra wide windows, and the whole thing looks like a strange castle (the top of the house has battlements etched out as if it were trying to defend an assault from the Duke of Nelsonville).
Anyway, it was a nice ride early this morning.
Yesterday was not very productive at all. Today will be all about getting things done. In addition to getting a couple things in the mail that needed to be sent, I spent most of the day yesterday listening to a band called The Dovers. I had originally heard of The Dovers from my friend Evan who had sent me a link to their transcendental song What Am I Going To Do several months ago. He had found out about The Dovers because Bradford Cox from a band called Atlas Sound had sampled What Am I Going To Do on a song of his called Walkabout. Anyway, The Dovers are a pop band that formed in the early 60s in California, were heavily influenced by The Beatles (and doo wop), and sadly had little or no commercial success. What's so pleasant about The Dovers though is that they are one of those bands whose music hits you like a discovered treasure buried deep within the abyss of lost time. It sounds like too many things at once and hits you like a rush -- a little bit of Beatles for sure, some early Motown hints in the drumming, and the bass and vocal harmonies sound like they are straight out of something off of Stax Records soul albums. I scoured the Internet looking for a place to procure one of their recordings and soon found out that this is a nearly impossible task. All I could find was an LP for sale through Google Shopping for $45. With the recommendation of Evan though, I was later able to find a place where I could download The Dovers album We Are Not Just Anyone in its entirety -- which is here, through Cassette Cathedral. Just follow the directions and download the zip file and it should be good to go. If not, at least here is the song (with lyrics) that stood out to me upon first glance:
What Am I Gonna Do - The Dovers
Chorus
Baby, what am I going to do
Baby, what am I going to do
With you, with you
1) Oh now I heard you say, 'bout a girl who took my love away
Now (that?) she left me all alone I've no one to call my own
Chorus
2) (We?) had everything there for my love to be
But all she ever wanted was to be set free
Chorus
Bridge
Well just what do I have to do
To get your sweet lovin' from you
Do I have to die once or twice
To keep you for the rest, the rest of my life, all of my life
3) If you were seventeen I'd still feel the same way
Well there's nothing in this world that will make me change my way
Chorus
Día 137 | Sábado, 16 de Mayo | 2009
Saraguro...
Today we arrived in Saraguro. The indigenous people of Saraguro have been around since pre-Colombian times. I believe that they were originally from Bolivia but were forced to migrate north due to Incan conquerors but I could be mistaken. Anyway, when we got here, we ate our packed lunches and then went on about a two hour hike in the mountains. Mercedes (pictured above) was our guide for the hike and she led the way through the mountains. For the most part, the hike was pretty steep. There were a lot of parts that were narrow too -- it was scary to look down and see a pretty much vertical drop off that extended 200 meters down the mountain! None of us had any problems in the end though, not to worry. The hike was gorgeous -- the panoramas were beautiful, we saw a lot of flora and fauna, and Mercedes told us some interesting information about the trail. The trail is about 500 years old or so and extends for several miles. There are several look-out points along the trail. These lookouts were used to communicate in several ways, including to warn the village from incoming invaders.
We were lucky that today was such a nice and sunny day -- we were able to see for a long distance and the saturated blue sky made all of our visual surroundings so crisp.
Later on today we were fed traditional food -- soup, rice, chicken and fruit. After our dinner, some of the Saraguros played some of the traditional music, too. The music was jovial and festive and it was enjoyable to get up and dance some of the moves that we had previously learned in our Andean Literature course. After the Saraguros played for awhile, I went up on stage and played music (half at the invitation of the Saraguros themselves and half at the coercion of my program mates). I played a Woody Guthrie song and a traditional American folk song and it went over well.
After that, we danced until it was about 11:30.
Day 57 | Wednesday, February 25 | 2009
Tabletop...It's been an up and down day. Up in the sense that dinner with Leslie, Evan, and Caitlin was really great. Down because of feeling discouraged in the face of all of the seemingly never-ending schoolwork that I have to finish. A 7 page paper in Spanish, a 6-8 page paper for Media Studies, and another 2 or so page paper for Spanish is all due on Monday. On top of that, I need to prepare at least one more composition for Saturday, which I am not feeling too good about.
Today I had an interview with a journalist from Speakeasy Magazine. They are an online magazine (www.speakeasymag.com) and wanted to talk to me about the show on Saturday. The interviewer asked me questions about Nostra Nova and song-writing. One of the questions, he asked me what it was that, in my opinion, made Nostra Nova such a good record, or why people felt the record was good. I was kind of dumbfounded, mainly because it is not really that easy to explain the Nostra Nova album in one breath. Here is a letter that I wrote to a friend of mine that might say things better. These are the things I should have said in the interview:
"....If nothing else, Nostra Nova was something that proved to be somewhat of a small wonder. Ever since its release, people have approached me (less often now) to tell me how 'amazing' the record is, asked me about the writing process, or miscellaneous things about promotion and the indie-music world. I remain mystified by these people, mainly because I do not have the answers to their questions. I do believe, however, that Nostra Nova was mostly a work of magic, definitely not as much as that of the Greats (that is, most of our recording artists/heroes of the 60s, 70s and modern times). It was a moment of intense personal and artistic revelation for me -- pure feeling -- something of mystery in explanation or dissection.
Looking back on it now, though, I find that what came out on that record was astonishing in a number of ways. Nostra Nova was so poorly organized that its first (and maybe greatest) achievement is that anything ever materialized. None of those musicians on the record regularly practised the music together, there was very little communicated planning, and throughout the recording process there was never a set order or idea that proved that the band on the album ever existed in a concrete plane of reality. All of this was and remains an organizational nightmare but to hear the sound of one's own voice, one's mallet, a bow across a set of strings, the guitars, and the organs -- the mere attendance of each one in a set space and time -- is a miracle. The way that it all came together to defy these limitations is indeed amazing. The real success of Nostra Nova is its beautiful possibility despite everything else.
The second great achievement of Nostra Nova is its sounds. Sure there are commonplace and modern musical arrangements on the album but the sounds we captured -- the maelstrom of percussion and the doomsday saxophone on 'The Butlers and the Maids,' the triumphant and soaring organs and chorale on 'El Vuelo de la Paloma,' the sparkling timbre of the Tibetan prayer chime solo in 'Dusty Wing Spirit,' the fairy-like arpeggios in 'Voices from the Top of the Mountain,' the descent-into-the-underworld-like swirl of vocals (I am still amazed I was able to hit that high A) and the thick thud of the upright bass in 'Things I've Learned From Bells' -- all of these sounds give a vital ingredient and birth to a vision of rich imagination (something I hold very dear in our achievement). There are little worlds inside each of the songs on Nostra Nova, all of them governed by the voices of their own instruments. To me, this is the ultimate goal of creating.
The third greatest achievement was something totally uncontrollable and perhaps even more mysterious -- its affect on the listener. People have told me -- you have told me -- about how much the album has meant to them. If Nostra Nova can communicate equally effectively in one way to a person like Bradley Hathaway and then in another way to a guy like Andrew Lamplela, then I consider the record already a resounding success in and of itself...."
We'll see what the people from SpeakEasy have to say. I hope I don't sound like the babbling buffoon that I normally am. The show on Saturday should be different. I don't think that what I am playing is impressive at all. I doesn't really matter that much.
Day 34 | Tuesday, February 3 | 2009
Red Tea...Today has been pretty productive though I still feel discouraged. I just wasn't made to be motivated in this frigid existence. I rode my bike into town today and that was invigorating and made me feel alive but I still feel bogged down by everything. Today I worked on a recording for Alex -- he wrote a song for Stacy and her son Ser (sp?) -- and it is almost finished. I'm going to give this recording to Christine who, in turn, will give it to Stacy in time for her birthday this Saturday.
I had my first tutoring session today and it went well. My student's focus is in Music Theory -- a pretty fundamental level -- so I tested the waters to see where I was at too. It all seemed to go pretty well. Most of her questions were surrounding scale notation and identification and scale degree concerns. Most of the time spent was a run through key signatures, staff notation, and devices that could help her memorize some of the order of sharps and flats.
Tonight should be a lot of fun -- Caitlin and I are going to vegan cooking (happens every Tuesday night and Friday afternoon) and I don't have a whole lot of homework although I should really try to make a lot of headway on some projects that will be relevant in the near future.
Here goes nothin.
Day 22 | Thursday, January 22 | 2009
Caitlin...I feel like I am slowly going crazy. I don't know if I even want consolation but I just want to vent on my frustrations. I am lucky for the ones that love me and the ones I love.
I am writing this as I am sitting in my Documentary Genres class. We are watching a film called Valley Town about a small town in Pennsylvania dealing with the effects of mechanization on its local economy.
Tonight, Caitlin will play open mic at the Donkey and I am excited to see her! She is such a talented musician and writer. I can't wait!
LATER: Caitlin was great! My mood, too, is significantly better. My tongue, though, is hurting because of my lack of vitamins. Every time I try to incorporate a multi-vitamin into my daily diet this always happens. I go for about a week with regularly taking the vitamins then I forget to take them for a couple of days. The result? My tongue gets sore and develops little abrasions. And they hurt!
Day 19 | Monday, January 19 | 2009
Royal...Today I have been thinking about music and song writing. Whenever I think about these things it makes me feel overwhelmed. I used to write songs and music pretty easily but in the past couple of years it seems to be more complicated.
It has been a pretty good day over all. I have not gotten very much done but I think every thing will be okay.
I don't feel like writing very much today. There is snow outside.
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