Crawling back into bed would have been more cozy. I had some tea, which was nice bit of warmth in the morning, but for some reason I threw on my jacket and shoveled our walk paths. It was nice to stop, take a breather, and enjoy a scene like you see above.
Later in the day I got in my daily run. This was day #25, at least a mile a day since November 23rd. The roads were trashed still, so todays run wasn’t a breeze, but if running has taught me anything it’s that crummy conditions don’t last forever. In a few days this crummy run won’t even register, but getting it done was still a piece of the foundation to where I wanna go in 2021.
The delivery, the snark, the attitude – god, I love this so much.
I love that in a second, in just a few thumb-swipes on social media, you can come across a video so well done that you’re saying the lines to yourself while you’re making coffee.
“Logistics? You want me to write… logistics?”
“Oh, you still have prisons!”
Like, growing up with Star Wars, Ghost Busters, Air Plane – there’s just random movie quotes that we all know from our years of watching movies. Then of course Key & Peele (“I said bisssshhhhhh”), or “it is you!” Then Vine, and videos like this; the videos get shorter, but the quotes are just as strong.
Randomly discovered this video with bassist Juan Alderete from a recent email blast from Abelton (for this post). Jaun played in The Mars Volta, and started a website at one point called Pedals and Effects, because he hated pedal review websites.
He just… made his own.
He bought a domain name and started doing it like he wanted.
Such a theme in life, right?
Don’t like your job, find a new one. Don’t like the music you hear, start a band. Don’t like podcasts that are out there, go make one.
You don’t need permission.
“Do you think people would like this sort of music? “Should I start this podcast about weird horror movies?” “If I made more of these, do you think people would buy them?”
Stop asking for permission and make your shit.
Can you walk around like Jaun here everyday and hang out with the dude from Nine Inch Nails? No, but I’m sure 20 years ago neither could Jaun.
Heavy, poppy, catchy – hell yes, I love this. Discovered by random on the Bandcamp front page, on the “Selling Right Now” scroller. Click, click, bang. Fell in love, listened to it twice, and had to buy it.
The last album that came my way via a DSP algorithm was VOWWS‘ ‘Under The World,’ back in 2018. For real, two years since and Apple Music nor Spotify has really surfaced anything for me.
These days I just go to Bandcamp, pick a genre that I’m interested in at the moment, then look for album art that intrigues me. It’s how I found these amazing albums:
If you’ve been listening to music for years, and buy albums, you know shit that looks good most of the time sounds good. It’s how DJs source music from local shops – finding shit that looks cool is a great place to start. And now with Bandcamp, it’s even easier.
Compare with this Spotify playlist, one of the biggest for “Dark Ambient,” with almost 7,000 followers.
It may has well be a fucking Google Sheet. No artwork, no branding, no vibes.
Same with Apple Music. Sure, it’s got the cool Apple playlist branding, and while it has album art, you have to use binoculars to really tell what looks good.
Of course, this is all a ploy to get you to hit play. Just trust them, and don’t worry about that album art, I guess.
All that said, nothing is black and white. I still use Apple Music for streaming a playlist on my runs. I also stream NTS radio via Apple Music, and some DJ sets via the MixCloud app.
There are so many ways to listen and consume music. Bandcamp, though, is the closest we got right now to the local record shop, and the feeling of digging through the used CD bins (my favorite).
Above I just outlined how I dig, and maybe you have better luck than me with the big streaming services. So keep digging, friends. Support artists and musicians when you can and buy their music.
“There’s grit to running fast. Every now and again you’re gonna feel good and just let it rip – great! But you gotta bring it back. You gotta rest. Trot. Shuffle. Walk.
See, just as you seek to get that fast pace, search for that slow shuffle, too. You want to be in control at all points during your run. How can you be in control when you’re running fast if you can’t do it when shuffling along?”
If you want to learn how to play guitar, you have to get good at picking it up everyday. Dream someday of writing for an audience of 1000s? Better get good at writing for 10 people today.
I’ve been running for almost 4.5 years, and this is the first where I racked up 1,000 miles. It took a lot of shitty, slow, gross feeling runs. Expecting each run to be a joyous flowery affair isn’t reasonable, just as expecting each guitar lesson to feel amazing doesn’t make sense either.
Finding the grit to keep going when it doesn’t feel good is the hard work, and everybody has to find their own path on that journey.
The first thing I said when I contacted Porche was ”hey I’m the photographer on assignment to photograph you for TIME and I truly understand if you want a Black woman photographing you” She stopped me and said, ”Baby, God chose you so let’s do this”
Putting this here, linking to it, filing it here because it hit me today, this Tweet. This block of photography and text, flowing through my time line.
In our work, where we’re at, our circles, our circumstances – yeah, I don’t believe it’s an almighty fatherly figure who held me in his hands and dropped me off in Pennsylvania 44 years ago, but…
I’m here. You’re here. Let’s do this.
It’s so easy to forget the art and the magic and the grace and the power we have in each day, every interaction, every email, everything. I look at the circumstances I’m in, we’re all in, and realize while there’s so much further I want to go, I must remain grateful with where I’m at.
Let’s do this.
My to-do list is long, there’s incomplete projects, things unfinished; let’s do this. Maybe not just out of obligation, but perhaps it’s these foundational moments that are seemingly trivial are going to lead to great things.
I had no idea learning how to play bass in 1991 would get me here, today. That a hobby I took up 29 years ago would land me the clients I have, the career that I have, the everything that I have. It’s good, it’s bad, it’s ugly, but it’s where I’m at.
Long walks on gloomy days, evenings folding laundry, or staring at the ceiling, here’s a four song mix to accompany your journey. This one features Moss Moist Moth, Alphaxone, weglowski, and Sana Obruent, guarding you with a layer of comforting sound and static.
More of these Goodnight, Metal Friend mixes can be found here on Mixcloud.
As I remarked on Twitter, it’s hard enough to rank athletes who deal in hard fast numbers like wins and points. Like, sports stars have a record of Championships, and even the one with the most is still debated as being the “best ever.”
Ranking sure makes bands, labels, management and the entire music machine happy (who doesn’t want to say they were an outlets number one album in 2020?), but I think the discussion of what albums just simply mattered in a certain year is important, too.
This post inspired by a lovely Tweet storm by Vince Edwards:
Watching the Marc Rebillet stream & I'm frustrated with metal artists' resistance to promoting themselves online. Will the genre fall behind due to bands just not wanting to work w/ youtube/twitch? Feels like the majority of metal is artists that can't be bothered to tweet.
He’s talking about this live-streams that Marc Rebillet did today, on his way to one million subscribers on YouTube.
It’s easy to be a band and figure, okay, we want to do a live stream, so we have to just do a live performance and set up lots of cameras, and…
Well, yes, you CAN do that, but that’s a huge undertaking!
You can also just open up a live stream and talk about horror movies, or sports, or whatever.
Like, now is the time to connect and interact. Bands are competing with the The Madalorian and freaking COVID-19, like… do something.
I always think about all the shows I’ve gone to over the past 30 (?!?!) years – it’s the people. The people you meet at the show, in between sets, after the show in the parking lot, all that… that’s a part of the live show experience.
You can re-create that from your fucking porch with a decent WIFI signal and an iPhone.
Do you have to become a Loop Daddy? Nope. Do you have play guitar and videos games at the same time?
