Tom King of the Outsiders passed away a few weeks ago. When the news flew through my personal blogotwitterfacebookosphere, some rusty wires in my brain sparked, and I suddenly remembered that I had once opened for Tom King.
Thing is, I barely remember the details. I'm gonna guess that it was around 1991 because that coincides with the release of the Outsiders' "30 Years Live" album. I can't remember the venue for the life of me. Part of me is convinced it was The Sahara Club in East Cleveland, but it also might have been JB's Down Under near Kent State. Either way, I was playing guitar with my first "real" band Cartoon Freeze Tag, and we probably got the gig because we were the ultimate college cover band at the time and always managed to draw a good crowd.
I'm pretty sure the night was billed as "Tom King and the Outsiders." At the time, all I really knew about them was they were 60s rock royalty, and me being every bit the obnoxious, self-absorbed twenty-something musician I had no idea why I should have been impressed. I had never heard their famous single "Time Won't Let Me." And why would I? My grasp of "classic rock" began and ended with ZEPPELIN, MAAAN. I admit that I didn't have much respect for these Old Guys and the older crowd that pressed right up to the edge of the stage to watch them.
I don't remember the set. I didn't know the songs. I do remember Tom King coming out to begin the set and thanking the audience for their "patience." I put that word in quotes because that's kind of how he delivered it -- pointedly. And I realized that he was probably talking about our set. I think our singer was a little miffed at that.
Looking back now, it's pretty funny. The Outsiders were -- and probably still are -- the Most Famous People We'd Ever Meet, and they had to wait for us to finish our set of R.E.M. and Pink Floyd covers.
But anyway, beware laughing too long at Old Guys, lest one day you become an Old Guy with the curse of perspective. (p.s. actually this happens whether you laugh or not.)
I've never owned a vehicle with a CD player, so I listen to radio. (It's not that I'm a Luddite, I just don't care enough get a decent stereo.) On my way to rehearse with Kirby Krackle last weekend, I found an FM station that played only 60s and 70s tunes. Turns out there's a ton variety in those two decades alone, especially if you ignore the Beatles. I tuned in just as Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Where The Action Is" started playing.
Man, what an incredible time to live through. Back when rock and roll was new and big and weird, as life-changing as television or the internet would eventually be, before corporate efficiency turned it into a profit center. That's the world the Outsiders inhabited and were a part of. Sorry Tom, I get it now!
What's my equivalent, MTV? Grunge? Maybe the web, in the early days of blogs? They don't feel like they even come close. At the moment they feel like offshoots, evolutionary branches that end with MTV Cribs, Nickleback and Gawker, respectively.
But maybe for a little while they felt as important, and as dumb as it sounds, I find I really, really long for those moments. Something nascent and positively charged, a groundswell that was going to shake up everything, something you can feel coming, hope on the wind.
This week, work on the new Kirby Krackle album kicked into overdrive. We're doubling up on weekly rehearsals to prepare for a breakneck-paced studio session in June, aiming to get the record done just ahead of the San Diego Comic-Con.
This will be the first KK project I've actually played on, so I feel compelled to bring my A-game. No "oh, I'll just rehearse along with the album and meet you at the gig" this time around.
In the meantime, Kyle is developing a talent for homebrewing that may rival his gift for composing head-bobbingly catchy major-chord nerd rock. (Shown above: a sampling of "Not Martha IPA.")
Yeah, this is occurring right alongside work on the new Explone record. Between those projects, and the still-secret songwriting project (still going! Every Wednesday!) I fully expect the creative part of my brain to be worn down to the nub like a pencil eraser by summer.
See that console? That's a 1970's Trident A-Range, rumored to have been used by Lennon and Sinatra for various projects. And, as of two weeks ago, my bass tracks for the new Explone EP, Telescope and Satellite.
Behold! The power of black and white to make one look totally competent!
Here's Patrick in front of a wall of gear and blinking lights:
This is what I love about music hubs like Seattle, every studio has a history. And sometimes so does the gear. AVAST! is also home to "Lenny," a modded API Legacy console, once owned by Lenny Kravitz. My backing vocals went through that one. There's another API that used to tour with Heart as a monitor mixer. We didn't use that one. Tons of famous PNW artists have recorded here -- Death Cab, The Shins, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes -- but I think its real cachet comes from being the place where Soundgarden recorded their breakout album Badmotorfinger.
It's hard not to hope for a little of that magic to rub off on you.
Exciting as that may be, the majority of time spent in-studio looks a lot like this:
That's us listening to probably four or five different takes of the same song at 11pm, trying to decide what parts to keep. This is also probably ten hours in, the first six of those spent setting up microphones and getting good guitar and drum tones. There's a lot of hanging around and listening. It still manages to be a blast while slowly destroying your sanity.
Man, keeping this video thing going is harder than I thought.
Here's one from the same session with Mike and Dennis a little over a month ago. I think we rehearsed it -- once? And based on that bug-eyed fish-gasping-on-the-dock look on my face, it's pretty obvious I need to get some cardio back into my "workout" "regimen." Eh, these should get better over time.
After posting the last video a few readers mentioned my guitar was cropped out of the shot, which makes it hard to see what chords I'm playing. I'm afraid this video suffers the same affliction. There's a guitar there somewhere, I swear! But I'm wondering if I should do an occasional "how to play" video with close-ups of my fret hand?
Greg Laswell, Take A Bow Following a Twitter tip, I started to Google "Greg Laswell" and the third auto-completed result was "greg laswell married." Yeah, after hearing "Take Everything" a few times I was ready to marry him, too. The songwriting is knife-sharp but it's the arrangements that hold my fascination. Taking notes on this one.
The Solvents, Forgive Yr Blood I don't understand how this happens. How does a local band -- a critically-acclaimed, blogger-beloved, KEXP-endorsed touring band, no less -- exist for years right under my nose and I'm only finding out about them now? There's something here that reminds me of how I felt after listening to R.E.M.'s Reckoning, where you just don't get it at first, but you listen again, and again, and by the fourth or fifth spin you realize just how effortlessly good it all is but you don't really know why.
Pete Yorn, Pete Yorn I have this pet theory that PY records are like the classic Star Trek movies, every other release is awesome and the ones in between -- not so much. I've come to enjoy all of PY's releases, eventually, but this one feels a little bit like leftovers from Back And Fourth. (That said, I have yet to hear Break Up.) I suspect this one will grow on me with repeated listenings.
Andrew Norsworthy, Big Picture Blues When I moved here in 2003, Andrew was one of the first Seattle musicians I stumbled across online. I didn't know at the time that his former band, Crystal Radio, had also included Pat and Josh from Explone, or that Andrew had sung on the first Explone record. Strange times!
Anyway, Andrew is a talented guitarist and probably the most gifted lyricist I've ever met. His album is free at Bandcamp. You should grab it.
Explone (shown mid-rehearsal above!) are headed into Avast! studio in a few weeks to start recording the follow-up to Dreamers/Lovers, released last June. So far it's shaping up to be a 6-song EP. Patrick has also been working with Thor Radford (who created the cool video for "St. Yesterday") on a new video for "Complicated." We have a mailing list if you're interested in all things Explone-y.
My unnamed, secret songwriting project may still be a secret but is no longer unnamed. Not only have we chosen a name, but secured the .com domain, Twitter, Gmail and Facebook usernames! What? Music? Oh, right. We're currently recording demos of the songs written so far. And we're going to play an incognito show at an undisclosed location in the next few weeks and see if anyone visibly cringes when they hear the songs. (And in true cart-before-horse fashion, I'm already dreaming up videos and t-shirt designs.)
Over the past 12 months, I've watched a handful of bands and solo artists attempt -- and fail -- to fund recording projects through online crowdfunding services like Kickstarter and RocketHub.
I've obviously got nothing against these sites or crowdfunding in general, but man, how disappointing and demoralizing to discover the hard way that maybe not many people are that into subsidizing your Thing.
In the case of Kickstarter, fall short and all the money is refunded. You get nothing. So there's no chance to say "wait, we'll just do a three-song EP instead!" Too late!
To be clear, I'm not blaming the services for failed projects. They're just tools. I'd rather see more tools that allow cool stuff to be created. And there's a lot of really great stuff being funded out there; recently I contributed to the Glif and the Helen Earth Band's tour van fundraiser.
I understand that having fans contribute to your cause is a great way to keep them excited and interested in your art.
But after seeing a few worthy bands fail to meet the crowdfunding bar, I have to wonder: whatever happened to just, you know, saving up your own money?
