Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
>> made my points in the post above yours, Scott.   

Your post had slipped in when I tried to post mine, then I had to go. 


I'm not hearing much disagreement, except that the wildness of the
1967 music scene in SF and London was far more out there than the
neatly packaged Beatle boots and 'cuts and cool, but very poppish songs
from those first albums.  As for style-setting, the fashion industry,
like the recording industry were already poised to jointly exploit a
phenomenon like the Beatles.  

But this doesn't speak to the authenticity of their musical
expression.  I do agree that by '65/'66 and "Day Tripper," "In My
Life," "Norwegian Wood" or, even "Help" [which Lennon had wanted to
record in a slower more serious vein] marked a shift. The authentic,
more inspired, voice of the group was indeed emerging. And, again, I
think that Dylan going electric and the Beatles finding their own
distinctive voice allowed an array of musicians by 1967-1970 to bypass
a similar, heavily pop-oriented induction phase. That was the point of
the post and what I think the guy from Simple Minds was trying to say. 
That kind of access to the public is not there now.  The old-style
marketers were indeed flummoxed, but they gladly kept the pipelines
filled with hot selling vinyl. And,in their state of confusion, they
didn't interfere with artistic content nearly as much.

I do hope you're right that the internet will allowing less centrally
controlled ways for a group like TLXN to make it.   

 
  

    
thanks everyone who watched us perform yesterday.  that was good fun
and nice to have faces with names.  let me just clarify that the
restaurant i work at is far from posh, but maybe not for adam!  i've
worked in one restaurant or another for 16 years.  i sure don't want to
do it forever.
it's a good living, though.  

my parents were both raised catholic.  they made a deliberate choice
not to raise us in the same fashion so became unitarian.  every few
months as a teenager michael and i attended weekend-long youth
conferences which were a blast!  lots of hippie kids and freaks.  if
you remember in 'the electric kool-aid acid test' kesey and crew
totally took over a unitarian youth conference.  turning on kids and
even some of the adult supervisors.  my experiences at these events
instilled a strong spirituality in me, for sure.  not to mention first
blow-jobs and everything else that happens when 100 teenagers are let
loose in a church for a weekend.  

gabriel explained our writing process well.  not everything written
makes it into the set.  it seems the strongest material comes out of
collaberations between gabriel and i.  i really enjoy writing words and
melodies over his chords.  the song 'odyssey' was the first of those. 
we generally record anything we play at rehearsal and song ideas can
come out of free form jamming as well.

can i still have a fish taco?  
  

    
i prefer the crab enchiladas.
  

    
Now you're talking.
  

    
Greetings, Adam, Brett, and Gabriel.  Another boomer here (age 53) who
saw your guys perform on Saturday.  I just want to tell you that I
loved it.  I'm very impressed with you.  Keep up the good work!
  

    
Beautiful, guys.  Thanks.

Can each of you remember a moment or two from being in the audience at 
somebody else's show that was revelatory to you, i.e. that blew your mind 
and expanded your notions of what live performance and/or the universe can 
be?
  

    
The second time I saw Broken Social Scene, at Bimbo's, about 3 years
ago.  I had seen them a few months before at the Great American and
knew it was for real.  I bought 5 tickets and took the whole (pre-Adam)
band.  Absolutely devastating moments of beauty and celebration, their
mind-fuck collective in all it disastrous glory, 8 or 10 people
strong, with their victory horns blowing the skin off my face.  That
show is still alive.

Bjork on the pier about 4 years ago.  I'll accept the skepticism that
comes along with my psilocybin memories,  but goddam is she didn't
emotionally rearrange a few of us that night.

Radiohead, Neil Young, Grateful Dead, Stereolab, Helio Sequence, BRMC,
Taj Mahal, Arcade Fire, and hundreds more have have profound impacts
on me through their performances.
  

    
Thanks for the kind words, <gerry>. Hope to see you at one of our
upcoming bay area shows. Saturday was a whole lot of fun.

Seeing Sonic Youth at the Fillmore last summer was about as powerful
and meaningful a music experience as I've ever had. Especially the
20-minute "Expressway to Yr. Skull" encore. We got there hours early to
be in front of the stage and it was well worth it. What other acts
that have been around for 25+ years can go entire tours without playing
more than a handful of songs that aren't on their most recent record
and not get complaints? Sonic Youth is like a fine wine getting better
with age.

I also remember being 18 years old and getting handed front-row
(literally against the stage) for Roger Waters' 1999 comeback tour.
Snowy White was Gilmour-esque on guitar and hearing those songs sung by
the guy who wrote them was really special.

When I was a big Phish fan I saw that band at such diverse locations
as Madison Square Garden in NYC, American Airlines Arena in Miami,
Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA and even back home at
Starlake Amphitheatre in Pittsburgh. I get a lot of shit from friends
from even mentioning that I like some of Phish's music, but I had many,
many transcendent experiences watching them do group
improvisation...especially seeing them do a devastatingly dark (king
crimson meets "echoes") hour-long free-form jam on top of a 200-ft
control tower on an Airforce base in Maine. Watching them in that
moment at 2am on an August night in 2003, I saw it as our generation's
"live at pompeii."

But one thing that the guys in TLXN have in common is a profound love
for what The Helio Sequence does in concert. How enthusiastic, talented
and connected those two guys are onstage can't really be described in
words.
  

    
Wonderful memories and marvelous writing, guys, thanks.

So I just found out that Brett and Michael (the keyboard player) are 
brothers.  Does that ever get dicey?
  

    
They razz each other constantly, but I wouldn't hesitate to say that
the Chulada brothers are each others' best friends. 
  

    
Ah, that's great.

Well, I was hoping to get some questions from TLxN fans at large on the 
Internet via inkwell@well.com, but I haven't gotten any yet.  So you will 
have to answer a series of questions from the following imaginary Internet 
fans.  I'm sorry if some of these questions are rude or personal -- I 
take no responsibility for alternate personae.



Dear TLxN:

Gabe mentioned psilocybin up there.  Would you say that drugs have had any 
effect on your music, positive or negative?

-- Alberto Gonzales,
Washington D.C.


Dear TLxN:

Most people who don't play in buzzworthy rock bands imagine that a bunch 
of good-looking young guys who do play in a buzzworthy rock band might 
get a lot of attention from women on the road.  Is this true, or is it 
just projection?

Mike Jagger,
Chlamydia, WI


Dear TLxN:

What books or authors have had a huge effect on your music and/or your 
lives?  By the way, I saw you guys at the Well party.  Nice work getting 
those Baby Boomer senior citizens on their feet and dancing!

Carlo Marx,
San Miguel de Allende
Mexico
  

    
Actually, don't answer Alberto's question about drugs.  It's not the right
venue for it.  So here's another.

Dear TLxN:

If you could give a 12-year-old who just got his or her first guitar a 
piece of advice, what would it be?

Syd Barrett
Truth or Consequences, NM
  

    
Take drugs.  
  

    
Guys... here's a little collage from the Sunday WELL show for ya...
http://tinyurl.com/yns6qo

I really enjoyed the set.  You reminded me both of the Grateful Dead
and Dada, my favorite of the mid-90's harmony rock bands.

Be back later after I've read the topic.
  

    
Saturday, I mean.
  

    
That's great, Glenn!
  

    
The guys who get the most attention from women on the road are the
frontmen, and they're both taken. But the drummer has the most fun
anyway.

The books that have most affected my drumming aren't books about
music: they're "Wild Boys" and "The Job" by W.S. Burroughs and "The
Most Beautiful Woman in Town" and "Women" by Bukowski. I like the
freedom, intelligence and insanity of Burroughs and the honesty, excess
and urban aspects of Bukowski. He's so "street" he's part of the
pavement. And I love the sexuality of both authors, even though I can
really only identify with that of Bukowski.

All the traits I described in the books I mentioned are what I try to
convey in my playing.

And I would tell a 12-year old picking up his first guitar to listen
to as much music as possible and read as many books about music as
possible. Find out what music inspired their favorite musicians, what
inspired THAT music, etc etc as far back as possible and listen to all
of it. 

And read "Please Kill Me," "Mansion on the Hill," and everything
Lester Bangs ever wrote.
  

    
The section of The Wild Boys where the "vulgar queer" Joselito shaves his
chest hairs on a balcony while singing ("shot shows hairs sprinkling soup
and dusting an omelet like fine herbs") is one of the funniest things ever 
written, if not for everyone.  I've never gotten into Bukowski as much as 
most latter-day Beatnoids, but so many smart kids like him I must be 
missing something.
  

    
On a similar note, most of the band passed around Jerzy Kosinski's
books in the tour van last year and his writing moved us in a huge way,
especially "the Painted Bird." Since Gabriel turned me on to "Being
There" in the van I've gone through all of Kosinski's fascinating,
startling books and they've really inspired me. To what extent he has
shaped our music, I can't be sure.
  

    
"Being There" is also a fine movie.

So what are your plans for the future?  Any recording sessions on the 
horizon?
  

    
i've seen so many shows that have transported me, each with a
different tone.  it's 'the chill factor' that i use to measure my music
show enjoyment.  if you have at least one chill at a show, then it
qualifies as being quite good.  then there's the extended chill show
where you can be buzzing for over a minute.  now that's a great show! 
you can get the same buzz at a cafe bluegrass performance as you can at
a flaming lips spectacle.  broken social scene, whether you've heard
them or not, will give you chills.  they dole it out like condoms at
the castro street fair.  

steve created a faux person and asked about drugs and their effect on
music, then said it wasn't the venue.  that's a huge topic!  but if
it's inappropriate for whatever reason then that's ok, too.  i'm sure
we all know the answers to that question anyway.

women on the road.  adam would do alright if we didn't have to split
reno and redding after the show!  michael had his chance in redding but
blew it.  but to his credit he did make out "big-time" at the sf show.
 "can i bring you a beer or water from backstage?" was his line.
being a front-man means gazing into the room as much as possible. 
hawking the energy of the room.  you know who's listening and how,
who's not buying it, and sometimes there's the girl who is hawking
back.  this always steps up the energy of performance, and afterward
you can flirt a little bit without breaking an agreement with yer girl
back home.  the promoter in redding offered to get adam and michael
laid, very hospitable up there in swingin' redding town.  these are all
fairly new experiences for me and i'd like them to continue and get
more intense.  

that was a nice little collage of our show, thanks! 
  

    
plans for the future/recording

we went into a recording studio in the same building we rehearse,
secret studios, a couple of days after tour.  basically we recorded all
the songs we had been playing night after night.  we'll take that back
to our space and over-dub vox, guitars, whatever needs to be patched
up, then use it as a demo to try and get label support to put out a
competitive full length album.  some of the songs are on the previous
ep's but have changed so much since then that we'll consider recording
them again.  i'd like to tour a lot and release an album every year or
so.  it would be great to do this full time , i think everybody wants
that at least.  i'd love for it to blow up.  i think we could have a
nice little run.  at least a basis to pursue other interests in the
industry.  we've all been wanting this for a long time, i'm sure.  yuki
especially, he deserves it.  that guy can play circles around all of
us.  
  

    
Brett said it well. Our plan right now is to develop followings in
many different markets and find a nice little label to help us put out
our debut full-length album, which we just recorded some demos for. 
  

    
>> chills.  
they dole it out like condoms at the castro street fair


Hey Brett.  If this isn't the start of a great song.... 
  

    
Indeed!

Let's note that readers on the Web, old fans or those just discovering The
Love X Nowhere, are welcome to record their thoughts in e-mail messages and
send them to inkwell@well.com for us to post here.