toss your pedals in the pool, indie boy.

I failed my jazz experiment. most splendidly.

You see I'm a rock n roller who has a dash of bashfulness and dissuasion when it comes to large crowds, but when a modern band puts out an album worth listening to, something that motivates me whether in lyric or in musical structure and melody, my whole world lights up. Rather, it shines a new light on the book shelf of my life, my memories and demons and regrets, the few I harbor. I am moody, very moody, so when I listen to albums, I must be moved song to song, variations in the songs and genre, ideas desires, sacredness and profanity, are absolute necessities.
Which is why 2008 was such a bad year in my understanding for music. Only a few survived my list, and Shinedown and Lifehouse were on the top, mostly by themselves. One could say that music school makes you jaded, I believe you are converted and suddenly you can't stand musical defecation, pathetic indie boys, and dumb mountain men who spend albums devoting songs to friends and deer and billygoats.

To all you indie artists, I dare you, for one tour and one recording session, to leave your Line6 Delay and Reverb in your mothers basement in a nice box and see what you're really worth when you're plugged directly into an amp head and that sound is getting blasted at 100 db.
You're fans will hate you, your producer (you have a producer, right?) will hate you, you'll hate yourself and all the fast food joints you worked for that superfulous gear, but you might actually get better and learn to play your damn instrument. Leave the effects to the keyboards.

So yes, 2008 was a bad year for the album, for the guitar, for most of the industry really. Although the hit singles formula used last year was spectacular in it's success. Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl" and the like have set off a huge spree of triplet feel power pop/hip hop songs that haven't been heard since the eighties, so obviously it sells... good job finding a dry spot on the titanic.

all that pissing and moaning to say that lifehouse and shinedown put out really good works. I am most happy with lifehouse, because of the huge turn around they pulled in the face of their label. Their previous release was such pathetic ear candy I almost cried learning and singing one of their songs to an ex girlfriend who literally demanded I play the song before I left for college. Really, the song made no sense, no coherent chord formula, no coherent train of thought. and the album just got worse from there.
Not so with their newest release. Yes, pop music in it's truest sense, but well produce. And written with conviction and experience that I can actually believe and understand, or at least attempt to understand, connect with the author.

Shinedown? the sound of madness. just listen to it. Modern rock more or less is lacking in originality and soul, but this band is balls to the wall in ferocity and a sound so strong you cannot ignore it for long. A great way have they travelled from the days of "Us and Them."

I have already listened to another band releasing an album in June, I wont name them here, or even after their release, but it's been a long time since a new release has inspired me to play guitar, this album puts the fire under the tires.

I have high hopes for Wilco, and must check with some others on releases this year.


On to happy news. I have started playing guitar again, and should be up to an hour long routine in about 7 weeks. I have high hopes of returning to a 3 or 4 hour practice routine, daily. I don't know that I will be able to return to my marathon sessions, but a boy can dream, right?
My grip strenght has improved by over 140% in the last 2 weeks, I can perform my daily tasks without much inhibition or limitation. I can even use my playstion 2 now, which is a great relief and favorite pastime when I'm not reading, playing, annoying sara, getting drug all over cleveland by sara, or sleeping.

Oh, and I can type longer now as well. yay.

make love, make art, make friends, not nukes.

balue like jalazz

or other attempts to fill in the gaps of experiencing life by writing it in a softback book...

for those following my healing progress, I am almost done with my splint treatment. I have been under the supervision of a musculoskeletal surgeon named Dr. Balis who has been of great help and careful warning. I am in Occupational Therapy and will be through my treatment within a month or so. This is good news, and I am thankful that I will not be facing surgery and a year of long and tedious recovery.

My hopes of going professional as a musician have been laid to rest. At least for now. My body, in the current condition that it is in, cannot sustain the rigorous exercise of continual playing. I will be rebuilding my muscle mass in an attempt to gain better stamina in playing, and perhaps beat the odds that I am not biologically made to do what I really enjoy.

So in preparation of starting a regular guitar practice session, I have wiped my itunes clean, and am rebuilding my library with strictly jazz material. The only exception is the Beatles, and that's because they earned it and I cannot live without that music.

Jazz? what jazz? who jazz? why jazz? does anyone play jazz anymore?
I guess I can sum it up in this: I went to a contemporary music school in Hollywood only to discover that all you ever really need to learn to play is contained in the many styles of jazz. The chord changes, the melodies, the scales, the grooves are all encompassing of any other style I should want to play.

In some ways I'm turning into an Elitist of artist taste, as some would say. Really, I'm just tired of all the "Industry Bullshit" as the disenfranchised like myself go on and on about. So to Hell with all the pop fluff, I don't really care anymore because chances are that I will not be able to fulfill the regular duties of a performing professional musician. I'm going to surround myself with the sounds of as much jazz as I can stand, which sometimes isn't much. I have a hard time sitting through Chic Corea, and I really think he ruined "Marathon Man" by doing the soundtrack.

So watch out public libraries, I'm raiding your jazz collections in the name of personal vanity.

Passive Observation

I am not even sure which end to start from. It's 5:57 a.m. eastern, and I have already been up for over an hour. This must be what it is like to be a morning person, coming wide awake at ungodly hours of the morning, without the pain and the grogginess.

I pull off my ice packs and sigh deeply, which is code for " I hope I can type today, I hope my tendons don't give out before I even have time to form a thought and explain it."

You see, I've come to understand that if I speak, it must be with purpose, because the fool shouting in the dark does it very alone. But upon this new requirement of getting up on my soapbox, I begin to see I have a million question, about 400,000 suggestions, and only a handful of people that I could ever bounce these ideas off of.

What the blogging world doesn't need is another expose on the confused state of a twenty something who found his reality very upside down in this world. So maybe I'll just start by interpreting the life that I see.

I think I've been beat into submission from my tendinitis issues, like having the dross removed from the top, except the dross is very much needed, the element called passion. This tendinitis has robbed me of almost everything I truly loved, which isn't much, but two of those things are playing music and writing. When I mean play music, I mean practice my instrument for 6 to 8 hours a day, and when I mean writing, I mean consistently writing for almost two hours long hand on yellow legal pads.

I just began the art of making a pot of coffee.

I don't sleep heavily anymore, so I am familiar with waking up around 4 or 5, but I usually fall back asleep. I don't do mornings well. Often the noise of the birds in the stillness of the pre-dawn gray is astounding, the wall of sounds of nature and survival and evolution.
The morning choir was rather silent this morning, either the early spring is making for a lite attendance, or maybe it's Sunday and even the birds like to sleep in on the weekends.

The coffee is done dripping. I must go and partake of my eight 'o'clock brew.

oh k, back to where I was, bragging about my ability to isolate myself from people and practice art forms nobody cares to think about.

The long life of my 22 years, soon to be 23, I have been fortunate to find a few things that bring me serenity, full satisfaction. I don't believe most people find it, certainly many come close, but the vicious circle of our culture prevents many from fully grasping such an overall fulfillment.
At the precipice I was pulled back, in one swift morning I felt my left arm completely change, from agile and taught, to inflamed and fatigued, and then my right arm followed suit.

It was difficult, has been, difficult, rather. From being active in my life, I am left in splints, in a corner in a southern suburb of Cleveland simply observing the world go to hell on cnn, on the drudgereport, on the sidelines of bbc world report. It's is no less than maddening not being able to work, to drive, to open a jar, to use a pen, to play my guitar.

I live in a world of bored observation and I will be happy to go back to work and to school and go about my life and world without disability.

I'll go with saying this in my weeks of passive observation. If the news bothers you, it's time for a history lesson, a vison beyond your self conceived vision of nationality culture and time, a deep breath and the ability to let go. Everything that is happening has happened before, has turned out worse and humanity will go on, live your life and love the ones you hold dear and stand upon your true morals when man and government infringe upon your right to exist and so exist in a realm of reality. Turn on, tune in, drop out.