moving to tumblr!

I can't resist, it looks so nice! :) Check it out here from now on:

http://goodbyeoldpaint.tumblr.com

exciting weather

What if I drink all night, in my room
in my nest
to say this the best:
My favorite people are the cat and you.
You both have big red heart tags.

I could trip on these guitar cords
coiling round my water glass
by my bed,
the hourglass I never said I had.
I’ll keep myself busy
with my books and art newsletters;
I hope you have exciting weather
and I hope you know you bring out the klutz in me
but
you’re my antibiotic cream.

I’m building my fortress
(but you and the cat get through)
out of martini glasses,
which we laugh at, we do
because they’re shallow and fragile
but I’m an old warrior, anticipating blows
I still have to throw
everything I have at the dark,
when it’s over, when you’re not
what I thought you were.

Wild-eyed and dirty
I’m peering from the brush
with a slender cigarette and the shakiest of heels
of desire and beliefs and my stubborn pipedreams
which you kindle,
into fire,
and say “Go!”

successful people, stop complaining

You people are pathetic. If someone is snapping pictures with their camera phone at one of your shows, you should be honored.

Shame on you, Carrie Brownstein!!!! To think I've been following your own goddamn blog.

Excerpts from "Are cellphones ruining the concert experience?" (Dallas Morning News)

What if you gave a concert and the crowd refused to watch?

"It's extraordinarily irritating," says Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame. "All these people holding up these horrid little squares of bright light."

"It's like they're not even there," says jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. "It's like, 'Why don't you put that away and listen to the music?' "

"It drives me crazy," says singer Steve Earle. "They have their use, but there's definitely a price to pay."

As a performer, it's frustrating to look out and see a sea of cellphones instead of faces," says Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein. "There's definitely a problem where people are so busy documenting the moment that they forget to just live in the moment."

"Everyone has this strange archiving addiction now. It's like they're trying to pin a butterfly to a corkboard," says Canadian singer Feist. "To me, a gig isn't supposed to be for posterity," she says. "It's supposed to be a bunch of people tossed together in a room, making a mood, and then it's over. You can't see the world through a viewfinder."

"I see people calling their friends and saying, 'Hey! Guess where I am? I'm at the Roger Waters show,' just so somebody somewhere can be impressed by them," says Mr. Waters. "It's about them showing off." [Is he not showing off right now, by using himself as an example?]

"It's a personal choice. We shouldn't say 'you can't have a cellphone,'" says Ms. Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney. "But it's frustrating," she says. "There's a generational gap where people no longer know how to experience life without technology."

Thank god some musicians are intelligent:

"My bottom line is communication," says English rocker Billy Bragg. "If they want to capture a photo of me and send it to a friend who can't be at the gig, I don't have a problem with that."

"Do you want people to be strapped to their seats, with their eyes pinned open and a jolt of electricity if their mind should stray?" says Police drummer Stewart Copeland.
"Cellphones don't bother me," he says. "An audience that's so excited it's shooting the band with its cellphones is an audience that's throbbing with the pulse of the band."

one of my favorite billie holiday songs

the 60s are over. i know, i don't like it either.

Okay, I am one of the world's biggest fans of The Kinks, and I love The Who and early Stones, etc etc, The Supremes and many more, but I feel that someone needs to put their foot down now against all these bands that sound like the 60s. With band members no older than 23. I can't handle it, and I'm only 28, so imagine the clear right to outrage my dad's generation has. When I first got past my punk and post-hardcore phase, and discovered to my sheer delight that there were bands popping up everywhere that were Kinks-influenced, I was all for it! There was no going back! Here was melody and nostalgia and just plain good songwriting, etc.

But now, three or four years in, I'm a little tired of it. We need to move on now and stop glorifying our parents' music scenes. I mean, it's even a little embarrassing - they all fought against and rejected the stuff their parents were listening. Are our parents cooler than we are? Our generation needs to find its own sound again, and I'm referring to rock music, I suppose, since we have arguably contributed hiphop and electronic music, which are both genres that in my opinion come in extremes - they consist of either incredibly bad stuff or incredibly good stuff. And yes, we brought the world grunge, but that was still a throw back to punk rock and not totally out of the blue.

Think about The Pixies and how they really didn't sound like anything that had come before them. Think about Kate Bush. Radiohead. At The Drive-In. Bjork. 60s-inspired indie pop and 60s/70s-inspired psychedelic rock needs to take a little rest for awhile. Come on kids, no more retro.

Promising:
St. Vincent
The Mae-shi
Bat For Lashes
Nortec Collective

...I'll get back to this.

immortalized...

...in my grouchiness on Music Is My Boyfriend. Down with the band name trends!

ouch!

-Gaping Void's Hugh McCleod

trying to "make it"

Okay, so I'm too old now, I've come to accept this. And I've given in and gotten a real job (which frankly, has made me a lot happier, not to mention since this new one is 9 to 5 so it actually gives me more time to work on music), but does that really mean I have to quit trying? I have two musician friends who have actually pretty much quit this past year, and I'm appalled, and disheartened, but not enough to let it suck me in. In fact, I don't think I know how to stop. Isn't it supposed to be something that just comes out of you anyway? And I don't just mean the songs; I mean the desire to share them with others. I suppose that as long as I have a band that does occasionally play shows, I might just be okay with that. Given the current state of the music industry, it's impossible to expect any label to show interest unless you're regularly bringing in a crowd, (my feeble cries of that lovely phrase "artist development" would certainly fall on deaf ears nowadays), so there's hardly a point. Besides, in the world of indie rock, if you're regularly bringing in a crowd, you probably don't need a label.

Sure, I may slack off sometimes and work more on writing stories than songs, but I always seem to come back to it. And because I kept looking for musicians all this time, I do now have two who are not only good musicians but also pretty cool guys. And I have my cd I recorded, so I'll be damned if I'm not going to send it out. At the very least, it has bumped up the number of plays on our various profiles. I have an ex-boyfriend who thought that if he got a decent job, he was giving up on trying to make it as a musician (although he would've said Artist, with a capital A, which makes me sick), even though he wasn't even trying very hard to make it as a musician. And I have a friend whose boyfriend is struggling with finally getting a full time job, because he believes it means giving up on being a writer. People, who is telling you these things? Full time does not mean 24/7. You go home and you eat, and you chill for a bit, and then...you work on your music/art/writing. All night if you need to - that's what coffee's for. Then you work on it on the weekend. It's not rocket science.

For me, it even gives that extra sense of urgency. That tension that helps me create. When I worked crappy retail jobs and had my random portions of the day off during the week, I tended to do nothing.

But of course, there's also the fear that if we're comfortable because of our (slightly) fatter paychecks, then we won't have enough misery to write about. I have to laugh at this, because, honestly, we "Artists" couldn't avoid misery if we tried.