So lately things have been going reasonably well… last night Mike and I sat down and worked out some musical ideas for his upcoming production of “The Adding Machine”… wherever Mike finds to put the play on, you should come see it… it should be running the last two weekends in July, and it’s a fascinating play…
Prior to that, I spent a wonderful weekend doing what I love most, playing music for audiences… first, Saturday night, Fist of Kong and The Defenestration Unit played an unprecedented combined performance, wherein FOK started off playing, and midway through, was joined by the remaining members of TDU for a nice lengthy improv based on “Space is the Place”… though I seriously overestimated the amount of time we spent on stage, resulting in the two bands playing for a total of an hour as opposed to an hour apiece, it was still a great show, and I think maybe the shortened play-time was a good thing, as one hour of nonstop free improv is easier to take than two… and we didn’t stop… not until it was over… so at some point, I expect us to release a single-track, one-hour CD of the event… it really was a great show…
The following day (Sunday), TDU played during the afternoon at a benefit for the Houston Pet Placement League over at Helios… that was a great time… Million Year Dance played before us, so I got to catch some of their set… not a fan of their lead singer, but the music was pretty cool… we got up and did our thing, and it too was pretty good… the sound was good there, which is always nice, especially when it’s just a room and a single small PA.. fortunately that was all we needed… it wasn’t quite as great a show as the previous night, but there was only really one moment where I felt like I was lost and didn’t know what to do or what was going on, and for spontaneous free improv, even modal and vamp-based, that’s really not bad… they can’t all be 100% doubt-free shows…
Linus is also doing very well… we’ve got two shows coming up, one July 15th, and one August 5th… we’re rehearsing for them now, and doing pretty well… we’ve got just a few more songs to record before we’re largely wrapped up with recording… for now, at least.. I think we have to do live “everyone-in-the-room” versions of “Hawg” and “Enchirito”, and then studio versions of “She Bad, She Thowed” and “Waiting for the Axe”… I THINK we’ll be done then.. and then comes the trick of figuring out what to do with this large surplus of recorded material… my personal vote is to release a double-CD of everything… given our rep for excess, it feels like Linus would be the perfect band to finally release a double album… I like double albums… they lack focus and all, but I think the tradeoff is that you get variety, and a sneak-peek into the stuff a band would normally not air to the world… you get the warts-and-all look at a band, and you get to hear not only the stuff they’ve decided is the best and most representative and finely honed music they have to offer, but also the stuff that fell between the cracks, the experiments, the flirtations with other musical genres, etc. etc… the stuff that makes a band more interesting and three-dimensional… lord knows, I gained a LOT of respect for the Beatles after I heard the White Album, and I always felt that Exile on Main Street was the best Rolling Stones album ever… while most double albums really AREN’T the very best a band has to offer, they’re usually the most interesting album a band has to offer, because of the variety and inclusiveness that the double-album format encourages… so anyway, that’s my hope… other ideas are to do what most bands would do, and slough off all but the very best stuff, and release a normal album of the very best stuff, or another decent idea, split the stuff into two albums and release them a year apart, so we don’t have another three or four year delay between albums… who knows… I’m still voting for the double-CD idea, but really anything that gets most if not all of the material we’ve got in the can released will make me happy… I may like some songs more than others, but I honestly can’t imagine never releasing that stuff…
Speaking of, I still have two recently-recorded solo albums just taking up space on my desk that I haven’t figured out what to do with them yet… that’s typical of me.. in my last blog I wrote about how what I really suck at is self-promotion, and here’s an excellent example… Charlie Naked has a drone CD called “Factory Drones”, and the Victor Dog (Charlie Naked/Charlie Horshack) has “This is a Bum Trip”, and while I’m well on my way to coming up with good cover art for both (just need a few more photographs to work with), I have no idea what to do then… “Factory Drones” is literally just four drones of differing lengths and varying methods of conception, so obviously that’s going to have a really limited sphere of appeal… there are labels for that sort of thing, I just have to find them and not get my hopes up too much… the other thing is probably a lot more salable, but it’s also not as remarkable (in that it’s just singer/songwriter stuff put to more interesting studio music) or uncommon, and I’m still not completely sold on needing to release it to the general public… even if I was, I’m just still not 100% how to, or in what way, through what venues, etc… I wish I had a manager or someone handling this crap for me… I love making music.. once I’m done making it though, I’d rather not mess with it anymore…
Anyway, that’s that… talk to you all later…
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