Reading Poetry and Street Music Festival

It’s good to be ambitious. Ambition is one of the first steps in success. You can rarely have any type of sustainable success without the ambition to do what it takes to get there.

However, having too little ambition is just as dangerous as having not enough. Having too much ambition leads to failure – at least by the standards that you have set forth. I do this all of the time, knowing that I will fall short of my goals, but also understanding that setting the bar higher will have a better yield than if the bar were to be too low.

And this is fine …as long as this is out of the public eye. Prior to releasing my album, Deconstructing the Temporal Lobe, I was rather naïve to what all was involved in the CD releasing process. As a result, I was wrong with nearly every estimate that I gave people for a CD release date. I wanted recording to pressing to be in little more than a month. Well, it was something like 4-5 months, and even that was pushing some limits.

Being wrong like that, in addition to being embarrassing, can also ruin your public image and your credibility. Since that, I have, on occasion, made such a blunder as to project a time frame for my second album. It builds hype, but when those times come and pass, hype dies and so does your credibility. But I think I’m getting better. I’ve been a lot more conscious as to what I say in regards to anything uncertain. Ask me today when the second album will be out and I’ll flat out tell you that I need to make time to get into the studio and need to pull together funds as well. There isn’t a projected date because I haven’t scheduled my studio time yet. It’s pretty simple. I haven’t even planned the album out yet. These things are mildly important…

So what got me thinking of this was the 1^st annual Reading Poetry and Street Music Festival. The day-long event in downtown Reading was an effort to build community and to celebrate art, in conjunction with the global initiative, 100,000 poets for change. The festival was a great initiative and great to be a part of. In terms of exposure, it was rather weak, about the same exposure that I would get at an open mic. But that’s not what it was about. It was about building the city and celebrating poetry and music. And that’s what it did.

However, this post is about being over-ambitious. Though the festival was a great effort by many, it was incredibly over-ambitious. We’re talking 75 artists on 3 stages, street vendors, and part of a main street closed. For the first year of a volunteer-only funded project, that’s absolutely insane. That sounds more like the goal of an event that has been going on for 5-10 years.

Their main problem was going too big. All of their bases were covered, but on a small scale, not to the scale that the event was built to. It caused a compromise in things like publicity and technical planning. Publicity was rough, but thankfully everything worked out technically and it was a nice day, not rainy like the original forecast.

In being so ambitious, they also didn’t get to adequately qualify the artists. With something bigger like this, where everyone needs to do their part, I think it is even more important that some sort of contractual agreement be made between the event and the artist. I made a point to collect contact info in case of any issues, but other artists just straight up didn’t show. That speaks poorly for everyone. The only times I have been running late for a gig, I have made contact with someone at the venue so that I could get in and set up right away. I’ve never missed a gig.

These types of issues (no-shows, late acts, acts that went over their time limit) resulted in everything being about an hour behind schedule by the time I got there (from my other gig that morning). Which is to be expected …but could have been avoided.

As far as performer quality, most everything was decent from what I could see or hear. I enjoyed the 2 acts before me. Actually, the act right before me was a small band that had joined up with a drum circle for some on-the-spot collaboration. That’s what this was about. It was neat.

But when I first got to my stage I was nearly scared off by the act that was up. Some cross-dressing guy in a tight black dress and heels …with a whip …who was whipping people in the audience, singing about child abuse and the like. Yes, there is a fine line between art and perversion, but regardless of where you want to draw that line, a “family-friendly,” community event should not involve something like that.

Sometimes coming up short of your expectations is where you need to be. It helps you to learn. Sure, the attendance could have been better, acts could have been better organized, and the event could have been better publicized. I don't think anyone ever expected things to go down seamlessly. Really, you shouldn't. I’m excited for where this will go in the future. It’s part of a big effort to revive a city that needs some help. I hate cities, but if I'm going to live this close to one, I'd like to see it through that the city move in this direction. Reading won’t roll over in one day, but these are great endeavors and big steps forward. It’s great to see something so boldly ambitious.

Inaccessibility

It’s about inaccessibility. Not that your music can’t be easily obtained, but that you produce product that can’t easily be reproduced. Be it your live show, your technicality, or your obscurity, you need something that people can’t reproduce.

Once the masses can reproduce what you do, you can bet that someone can and will do it better. At that point, you’re expendable. Try to generate hype for something that’s expendable. It’s a tough sell. High school bands rarely make it. They’re expendable.

You need something unique. As far as a performance goes, Lady Gaga has something that you can’t match. That’s how she’s surviving; obscurity. With her music, I’d listen to my friend, Natalie Ness, do Gaga covers any day of the week over Gaga herself. If Lady Gaga didn’t have the shock factor – something unique – what would keep her from dying out? Nothing. She would be passed by.

Which is where most of today’s music lies. It has no intrinsic value or sustainability. It has celebrity-fashioned hype with no means of being unique. Yet so many still want to be on the radio and to fill the tabloids? The only future in that is a quick shot at fame followed by the long sobering journey back to being mortal.

The future of sustainable music is inaccessibility. Today is not a day to want to be on the radio if you want any remnants of your work around years down the road. 50 years from now, I won’t be listening to Justin Bieber. He's big because he's young and has a good voice. Once he's done being young, he'll just be another nice voice. Justin Bieber will be dead. However, I will still be listening to Mr. Bungle. They’ve long since passed already, but none come close to emulating what they do. They’ll be smaller cult followings, but with as much music as is being released in today’s age, your best bet is with a cult following. The masses will move on. They always do anymore. It will be people who know that you’ve got something inaccessible who will carry your name.

Likewise, 50 years from now, people will still be listening to Trace Bundy. At the very least, I will. He’s technicality that is unmatched. People still listen to and study Django Reinhardt, over 50 years after his death for the same reasons. You haven’t heard of him, but that’s because you probably don’t care enough to dig that deep. His music is studied because it has a level of inaccessibility that keeps the novice away and fascinates those willing to look. Do what he did with as few fingers as he had. Go ahead and try. You’ll be drawn in too, because it’s something no one else can offer (so few, in fact, that I can only find good clips of covers where people are using all of their fingers... Imagine this guy playing this song with only 2 fingers on his left hand.)

 So many are looking for their “big break” and Hollywood fame. Have something unique that other's can't do and you're untouchable. Do something like put a kalimba on your  guitar ...and then play the guitar and the kalimba simultaneously ...really well.

The outlet won't have to be crazy percussive fingerstyle/kalimba hybrid stuff. But it will have to be as inaccessible and hard to reproduce. That's what it will take.

Flood

If you’re in the northeast US, you’ve probably encountered some instance of severe weather over the past two weeks. First, there was the earthquake. Nothing catastrophic, but an interesting twist to an otherwise typical day. Then, we had a hurricane. This was preceded in some areas by tornadoes and followed by flooding and mass-power outages. Now, most recently, we’ve got this crazy never-ending rain. It’s still calm compared to other floods that have happened across the country in the past few years, but none of these things are typical of the northeast.

Now I’m up on a hill, so flooding hasn’t affected me too much. A little water in the basement, but nothing crazy. It did, however, get me thinking about flood. Which brings me to a story; a guitar story, of course.

The setting is Summit Grove camp. It’s a good place. I’ve been going there for like 10 years. This is roughly as long as I’ve been playing guitar, so it’s pretty reasonable to say that I’ve almost always had a guitar at camp when I’ve been there. Up until recently, I’ve always taken my Jasmine (by Takamine) to camp. It made a good “camp guitar.”

So this particular year, as it often does at camp, it stormed. It was pretty nuts too; lightning, buildings struck by lightning, trees falling over, flooding, etc. It was a camp storm the way they were intended.

This particular year was also at a time before I had really “discovered” music. Ken Mueller is really who is to credit for that, but I hadn’t met him yet. So nearly all of the music I owned and listened to was contemporary Christian music. Sure, it’s got a good message when it's actually saying something, but it’s usually pretty terrible as far as music goes. It’s rather unfortunate.

So there was this storm with flash flooding and the works. At the time, I was into Jars of Clay and this one song, Flood. It seemed perfect for the situation, so a friend and I got our guitars out and played. And wailed away on those guitars. And people sang. And I may have even sung at that point. It was in the element. Perfectly. One of the most powerful jams I’ve ever had.

Weeks later, when looking back at the event, recalling how awesome it was, I picked up my guitar to notice something out of place. It was a rather extreme warp around the soundhole – the worst I’ve seen to date.

Kids, don’t play guitar in the rain.

Anathallo

This is a post from last week that I never got to post due to the whole lack of power thing...

On my way to work this morning, I opted for some Anathallo. They’d probably best be described as Orchestral Indie Pop. Yeah, something like that.

They’re somewhat of a toned down Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s. Their instrumentation varies song to song, occasionally incorporating horns, auxiliary percussion, and strings. They’re solid compositions and their albums flow beautifully.

They played a B-Sides at Messiah eons ago; my freshman year. I knew little about them. Scratch that, I knew nothing about them. But that’s the case with most B-Sides bands. You discover them there, on the spot, with no idea of what may be coming your way. So I was there, young and naïve of the capabilities of music, listening. It’s pop-like, but it’s so intricately woven together that you watch in awe, absorbing the experience.

It’s great when that happens.

So I started to listen to them after that, obtained (What? I was a broke college kid…) some of their music, and began including them in recommendations to others.

In all of this, I ended up playing them on our college radio station, WVMM.

I played them a few times; every few weeks. Though one time, in particular, sticks out.

After playing some Anathallo, my roommate/co-host, Ryan, and I were surprised to have two guys come breaking into the station. With limited access to the station, it was always surprising when anyone came in, let alone when someone came into the station and then into the actual soundroom where our show was being broadcast from.

Thankfully another song was on and we weren’t talking live. The guys burst into the room, hugged both Ryan and I, and then thanked us for playing the song. Sure our show was one of the best radio shows that the school has ever seen, but this was a first.

Listening to Anathallo on my way to work got me thinking about this. And radio. And how rare of a response that was that we experience. I’ve heard plenty of people get all worked up over their “favorite song” on the radio when it comes on, but that is a fleeting emotion. By the next week, someone elses barely palatable crap will be the new sensation. None of it lasts. No one would walk into a radio station and thank the dj for playing a song, regardless of how close to the station they were. Take note that these guys that I’m talking about didn’t even know Ryan or I.

It was weird and I think it freaked me out, but looking back on it, I’m realizing how this helps to illustrate why radio is dead. Everything is built on hits with shelf lives of weeks. Some of the only radio stations with any merit to them are those with talk shows or ones that play the classics. Not today's top 40. They play nothing of substance. That’s how you can have a little teeny-bopper giddy over a different song every week. They’re not real fans and the only reason they think they like the music is because that’s what they’re spoon fed to believe.

Anathallo has soul. They evoke emotion that can’t be understood in a club. That’s what the guys in the radio station reacted to. You don’t see others react like that because nothing on top 40 radio has life behind it. Adele seems to be the exception, but everyone else is so enamored by their celebrity status that they’re missing what music is about. Anathallo has never made it big, released big hits, or even had much radio play. But they get what music is about. And so did the guys in the radio station.

Lights Out

I’m starting to feel a bit Amish. When it gets dark out, the options are candles, going to bed, or a flashlight. That’s right, a flashlight. I’m progressive Amish.

And there’s no AC either. Windows are open and the climate is maintained by the great outdoors. The sounds are of birds chirping and squirrels romping around. Mostly, it’s quiet and dark.

Those of you not along the east coast of the US probably have no idea what I’m talking about. Remember that post I did a few days ago, Natural Disasters? Yeah, well today (Wednesday) is day 4 without electricity. It’s challenging, but also refreshing.

There’s no facebook or twitter or reverbnation at home. There’s no television. No internet either.

There’s no pedalboard. No amps. No electric guitars.

Sure, we take electricity for granted. Lights are great. It’s challenging getting ready for work in the dark. It sucks pretty bad at times. But once you don’t have it, you realize all of the noise in your life.

I mean, I even had electricity when I went to Africa. There’s no need to escape it because it is. Electricity has become such an integral part of our lives that we don’t understand the idea of it not existing. You can’t know about electricity and not strive towards it.

But not having it and being helpless to change that gives you new perspective on life.

Like I said, no noise. So my main options over the past few days have been to do something active (climb), or to play guitar.

Not that these aren’t already my primary activities, but playing guitar is now something done in silence. I’m used to playing with some sort of background noise. I “practice” and write while watching tv or something of the like. It keeps it interesting and helps to be able to practice for hours on end.

But practicing in silence… it’s much more intentional. You hear more of what you’re doing and can correct it accordingly. You’re not distracted.

And I don’t mean this so much for guitar. I’ve played guitar for 10 years now. I’m thinking of this more in terms of when I sat down to play cello a bit. An instrument that has, so far, completely dominated me. But in complete silence you can concentrate better; just enough so that you can measure your progress by ten minute increments rather than by days, weeks, or years.

I think there will be some interesting things to come.

==Update==

I got power Thursday evening. Obviously it's hard to post stuff online without electricity...