Good morning- er, late afternoon. I've woken up and am mobile after a forced hour of sleeping in. I've been getting up at 9am for practice so attmpting to sleep in until noon just doesn't work for my internal clock anymore. Listening to Ben Folds, thinking about how special every single thing about this band is feeling nowadays. I've landed. Landed where? well, where I'm supposed to be, of course.
The reason why I've been getting up so relativly early these days is because Alex and I have begun recording our live demo. This is new territory for me (but not for him, luckily). As I watch him turn my computer study room into a miniature motown with microphones, amps, guitars, and headphones everywhere I can't help but ask questions. He doesn't mind, which is the nice thing about Alex. One of my main questions is: if we're not really live (i.e.- we're recording on seperate tracks and channels and aren't in front of anyone) why is it called a live demo? His answer was more or less that it's live because it's not polished off, it's got flaws in it and it's only to record what one could expect from us live. We've recorded two songs entirely now and have the drums down for a third track. I think we're shooting for five songs since, in my opinion, odd numbers compell people to choose favorites which would mean they'll listen more carefully to choose theirs from the demo. This may, however, be the little kid logic that I revert to sometimes and don't realize it. Either way, I'll write details here when everything's settled and done and let you know how you can get a copy of our demo (live or otherwise).
I also spent yesterday drawing up posters and images to promote us with. In light of Alex protesting (rightly so) that it was a bit lazy to revert to circus imagery I've decided that it's time to dip into my Fabulous Closet of Repeating Anxieties and pillage for imagery therein. What I came up with was the Vietnam war. Before I sound sacriligious or offensive, allow me to try and give a brief explanation of why I feel I have a right to use such things in my art. First of all, no one owns war: every single bit of war influences and reaches far outside those in the actual battle, even for generations afterward. My father is a Vietnam Veteran who, while wounded there in combat, went on to stay in the Marines in other capacities and served until his retirement when I was two years old. The majority of how I view my father is affected by Vietnam. Everything from his injured leg limiting his movement (recently alleviated a bit with hip replacement) to his views of my classmates in grade school who wanted to be soldiers, to his ever-present red hat with the Marines logo on it has to do with Vietnam. It changed my father and unless I have a time machine I'll never know a pre-war version of him. I feel I inherited his anxiety that kicks in when the baseboard heater clicks like a landmine trigger; I feel there's a part of me that will always be connected to the war because, combined with being born so late in my father's life, it's both a wall and a window into his life. It's the one thing I know for certain about him. So I went into that anxiety and poked around a bit and took pictures with a timer until I improvised a pose that struck me. I showed it to Alex and he provided a reference photograph and this was the resulting product:
I'm proud of it. We're having bumper stickers made up of it. Partly in the hopes that this will end up plastered all over everything in the Greater Portland area like Boombazi stickers on stop signs. As for the "war paint" on my face in the picture, I'll have to explain that in another blog sometime- it's part cat, part native american ancestry frustration, but it can wait to be explained more than that.
Tonight is more or less a day off for us. I'm having a small get together and there are fireworks at the Clam Festival later. We're not recording, but we're taking promotional pictures at the carnival set up downtown. I guess as long as Alex and I are together there will always be band things to do, but I love that so I don't mind at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment