Peak live music

What do you do when you stop caring about something you used to love?

I moved to Salem, MA and basically stopped actively seeking live music. I still see live music - say, when my girlfriend and I go out to brunch and a jazz band happens to be performing there, or when a once-in-a-lifetime performance in the city happens - but for years I would spend hundreds of dollars almost every month trying to see as many bands as possible. There were so many possibilities, even in “our music scene is dying” Boston - I would frequent Great Scott and Harper’s Ferry/Brighton Music Hall and The Middle East and (begrudgingly) TT the Bear’s (just kidding, RIP).

I don’t think it’s because I’m getting older. I don’t think it’s even because bands aren’t impressing me anymore. I still listen to recorded music constantly and find new bands via blogs and Apple Music and friends’ posts.

I do think saturation has something to do with it. Software is eating the world and the Internet is eating media, and both of these things are eating our ability to be surprised. The barrier to entry for anyone to become a musician is virtually gone, and it’s really easy for anyone with a slight ego to fight for your attention. The barrier to entry to start a blog or generate commentary on said music is also gone, so with every million bands that form, there are 100 million people ready to comment on said bands.

So you have tons of musicians out there, striving to outdo each other with better performances and more inventive production in order to satisfy the even more so-called critics. The caliber of the average musician is so much higher as a result - and every musician is looking to surprise you, the listener-critic, constantly. Every night holds hundreds of amazing shows competing for your time & attention - secret exclusive shows, bizarre live rigs, intense theatrics, warm acoustic sets - all of which are constantly trying to compete for your interest. It’s all amazing…until it’s all the same to you.

And so I’ve become desensitized to the ability to be surprised by live music.

I’ve been meaning to write about being a musician on the North Shore of MA and how live performance here is different than, say, Brooklyn or Cambridge or other major cities with credible music scenes. I wanted to write about the fact that there is a small but lively group of musicians hopping up and down the shore, playing long & extremely entertaining sets in front of small, passionate North Shore crowds at quaint restaurants and bars. I wanted to write about the scene being smaller, thus allowing me to have a shot of regularly performing with a tight-knit group of collaborators.

None of that has actually happened, and that’s on me. But when you struggle to be surprised by anyone else performing, how can you expect to be inspired to surprise others with your own performance?

Goal: by April, have a live acoustic/looper set prepared and book a show. Try it out.

On Maker Overload

Following up on this, which was dead on. In the words of indie darling Courtney Barnett, sometimes I (want to) sit and think, and sometimes I just (want to) sit.

I’m a product manager, which means I spend virtually every weekday (and some weekends) doing two things: solving problems and making things happen to ship good, need-fulfilling products. Anyone who does product management can obviously break this up into many more buckets of duties, glorify it, debate its role in larger business culture, whatever - but that’s essentially what we do.

Sometimes I think I want to build something on my own - I wouldn’t be surprised if most PMs also get this urge. Thanks to a handful of tools that now exist, virtually anyone with Internet access and some spare time can build anything in a matter of hours or days. There’s a lot of people who create their own products on their own these days, using free or cheap existing tools, then publish them on sites like Product Hunt and write about them on Medium. When I read all these posts about “makers” making “products,” I react in a few ways.

First, curiosity, then a little bit of envy.

I love that we now have technology and platforms available for anyone to turn some idea into a packaged product in a matter of hours. Some of the problems people have solved are incredibly niche - I would never have thought of them. Sometimes I wish I had.

Then, jealousy-fueled anxiety.

Why aren’t I identifying those problems? Why can’t I be making those things? What do those people have that I don’t? What do I need in order to build amazing profitable things myself? WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE??!!?!!?!!!

Then, a ramble.

Hours and hours on Product Hunt. More things made by more people. Curiosity and anxiety on subsequent repeat.

Then, I’m tired.

I burned myself out worrying about other people’s problems instead of solving my own or those problems which I care about.

Why did I do that?

We used to have information overload. Then people rebranded this as \#content in an attempt to legitimize it. Now, if the content wasn’t enough, we’re in maker overload. New startups and new people announcing new products being announced almost every hour on the hour. Call it a lovechild of social media and freelancer culture, both powered by the good ol’ Internet - now everyone can have their own voice, so there’s millions more voices, all yelling incessantly over each other for top placement on your Twitter feed. All so you try the hot new products they each built on their own.

What is the impact of all those new products? Sure, it’s huge in aggregate - if anything this is proven by how much pundits are talking about Product Hunt. But what value does each individual new solution to a problem have in the scheme of things?

Product management is really all about solving (the right) problems and enabling the people around you to solve them. Some of the “products” I come across solve problems that aren’t relevant to me at all, but because everyone is posting and writing and tweeting and retweeting about them I run into them anyway. Some of these products don’t solve any problem at all - they generate a problem of their own and attempt to solve it, even if the average person didn’t even need to recognize that as a problem in the first place. Some of those products are really just repackaging the exact same #content that other products already contain, only presented in a slightly different way. Just this year there were 50 products launched, all featured on Product Hunt, that repackage existing tools and content that already wasn’t too hard to find with a bit of Googling. Some of them are totally redundant with each other.

I’m not saying this is inherently a problem - after all, competition makes the world go ’round. But is this really what makers want to be known for?

Maybe so, or more likely those makers are just trying to make some money or followers. This isn’t new - companies have been making redundant products for the sake of staying competitive a long time - but now that the Internet has enabled for a product to get noticed and hyped in a matter of hours, there’s too much noise to be continuously making products that don’t matter in the scheme of things. It only adds to the information overload, except under the guise of something meant to solve a problem - so people who read about this product (especially those who religiously follow communities like Product Hunt) are inclined to take them more seriously than your standard clickbait. When they do, the maker gets noticed for a day, then just like clickbait, it usually gets lost in the ether of the Internet. Some makers then keep trying to optimize their offering and market fit until something sticks.

Perhaps “maker culture” in tech has also gone the way of the pop music industry.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m not suggesting that people stop building things for my own sake. Eventually you might happen across a brilliant solution to a truly challenging problem. Making things to satisfy urges or curiosities, make money, or to grow a personal brand is not inherently problematic - it does, however, create envy within others who aren’t sure they have those same needs. Especially when some of the most “popular” of those products made are redundant with each other or debated incessantly as to whether or not they’re dead.

I thought building my own things was what I should be doing with my life, but it turns out all the product overload is toxic for me. I get into a vicious cycle of anxiety and regret and forced ideation around problem spaces that really don’t need solutions at that moment. I don’t personally build things constantly to satisfy some inner need, but I also don’t want to build a career out of making things that follow trends.

I solve problems all day, some of which are incredibly rewarding (like those that make my fiancée happy) and some of which are incredibly dull or frustrating (solved typically between the hours of 9am and 5pm, but even those are sometimes challenging and/or rewarding). In a world where an app can launch and die in a matter, and much of the writing about said app is about whether or not it’s actually dead, I don’t want to come home every day and keep doing the same thing - it only stresses me out more. My catharsis is writing songs or posts (like this). Sometimes I want to just watch something mindless or live vicariously through someone else.

And that’s probably why I go on Product Hunt for hours on end. Now I understand the appeal of reality television.

I came into 2016 thinking that I wanted to launch a product, and now that I’m understanding myself better in 2016, the less I feel a need to do that. I have a day job, I better satisfy my curiosities via music and writing, and I don’t have any immediately-obvious solutions to problems I care about. It’s more important to me to be with the people I love and be reflecting and thinking about those problems I do want to solve. If you think you need to be launching products for the sake of launching products, take a minute to think about the merits of doing so. Don’t be a maker just because everyone else is.

You Won’t Be Successful, Unless This Medium Post Is

You’ve probably seen a ton of #content appearing on your various social media feeds lately offering inspirational stories, Life Hacks and general tips that might make you a better person. It might not, but at least it’s yet another new thing to try at some point in your miserable life-in-need-of-constant-stimulation-and-improvement.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

You clicked on this post because I wrote a highly-targeted, urgent, actionable title that caught your eye. I got you with a trope. You idiot.

I, however, am an influencer. And I would like to influence you. Did you know that the following people employed tactics to lead successful lives?

• Steve Jobs
  
• Mark Zuckerberg
  
• Oprah Winfrey
  
• Sheryl Sandberg
  
• Richard Branson
  
• Howard Schultz
  
• Warren Buffett
  
• George Soros
  
• Barack Obama
  
• Most of the other writers on Medium

You probably did learn this by reading or hearing about it somewhere else. But I don’t care about that. I want you to think of me and this post next time you think about any of those famous, successful people. I want you to consume my #content and subscribe to my #newsletter and buy my endorsed #products, so I will inject myself into your life wherever and however I can. You will thank me for whatever Life Hack or tactic or change you made to your life, and consuming all that I spew is the first step.

So, to recap:

You are basically a massive failure until you follow all the points I lay out below.

1. Like and recommend this post and all my other Medium posts.

You might have read dozens, even hundreds of tips, posts, articles or even novels about what you can do to improve your life. But before recommending any of those, recommend my juicy content first.

2. Tell all your friends and followers to also like and recommend all my Medium posts.

Write your own content on Medium where you link to this article and generally reference my wise words and/or expertise on a field I totally have credibility writing about.

But what about the other social networks, you might ask? Yeah, share this post there too. It’s just more content for your friends and followers to digest. But it’s content YOU endorsed.

3. Follow me on every possible social media network & channel on which you can find me.

If you’re not on a network…well, get on it, dammit. I may or may not have profiles on the following sites:

• Facebook
  
• Twitter
  
• Instagram
  
• LinkedIn
  
• YouTube
  
• Google+
  
• Vine
  
• Periscope
  
• Foursquare
  
• SoundCloud
  
• Spotify
  
• Dribble
  
• Behance
  
• Product Hunt
  
• Medium
  
• Github
  
• various Slack channels
  
• Etsy
  
• Ello

When in doubt, assume I have a profile there. Follow and watch me as I grow my following of minions!

4. Click on every paid advertisement you see that has my name and/or face on it.

I’m not just talking about the sponsored posts on BuzzFeed, Medium, etc. that I clearly paid for to get your attention; I’m also talking about Facebook ads. I even have an in at Forbes who hooked me up with advertising there - you know the 3 second ad you see every time you open up a Forbes article? You might start to see me there. Click on me there. I’ll make some money and burn my image into your brain some more.

I also have some sponsored content on ESPN. I don’t even like sports.

But I LOVE developing my brand shamelessly.

5. Subscribe to my newsletter (because of course I have one) and read it, every single time you receive it, to completion.

Because I know how much you love and value every single email in your fucking inbox. You might already be subscribed to the newsletters of various other writers, marketers and influencers - so what’s another?

Also make sure to click every link in the email several times.

Me, me, me. This is all about me, and not at all about you or your inbox or your attention span.

6. Praise my success with me.

Once this post and my various social profiles reach a certain amount of attention, I will write about it. I will convey to the world how I did it, how you helped me, and what my next steps are going to be.

Then, you can read that and repeat the 6 steps I’ve laid out in this post.

Did you like what you just read? Have you not followed me yet on all my social media channels? If not, it is the single most important thing you can do as a living, breathing adult. Click on this link and this link and that link, and maybe this link too.

Content content content content content content content content content content content content content content content.

Special thanks to all the other digital marketers and social media people who made this satire possible! Sorry, I got frustrated this week with #content. This is not representative of ALL inspirational writing, just a li’l joke about that writing which is dishonest, contrived and/or pandering for the sake of marketability.

Also, sorry that I have to make that clear as to not inadvertently offend anyone.

On “pop writing”

I’m gonna repeat the chorus, and I’m gonna sing it ’til I’m blue in the face

This is a note in response to various posts written on Medium in the last few weeks: one of which was effectively a ripoff another, one of which brought up the fairly obvious point that top content producers (by means of likes & shares, not quality, which is subjective) might simply rip each other off, and a final one which brought to light the inherent problem with all of this.

The problem described isn’t specific to Medium: virtually all written nonfiction on the Internet that gets clicked on by the masses is specifically meant to get clicked on by the masses. A great subset of writers on Medium are no different. Original, interesting writing gets shoved into obscurity while the majority of readers see these repetitive listicles, hollow advice columns and “thought pieces” about Startups, Wanderlust and Life Hacking - because that’s what people appear to want to read. The numbers show it.

I’m fine with that, sure, in small doses. These days, you need some positive motivation to deal with the shitstorm mess that is modern reality. But after a while, as Ben Belser suggests, it gets old. Thousands of “influencers” circlejerking on hearts and fuzzies to promote themselves without giving a shit about what they’re actually saying, robbing the Internet of its soul.

I realized something the other day: Isn’t this basically the same as pop music?

Hundreds of thousands of songwriters, composers and performers over generations, mostly working within the same general realm of tonality, mostly attempting to portray the same general emotions and ideas, oftentimes even ripping each other off for the sake of marketability. There are millions of blog posts, ironically enough, about how to do this.

Think about it: all of the most popular songs in the US right now can be confined to a tiny number of styles (hip hop, synth pop, country, with a few rock hits and retro throwbacks). Almost all of these songs are about the following: love, sex, drugs, partying, loneliness, angst. Many even feature the same ideas (emotional or musical) or even the same artists (looking at you, Tay Swift). There are incredibly few exceptions to this rule in the past 15 years - nu metal was an incredibly dumb angry fad, but even Limp Bizkit’s lyrics largely stayed within the confines of the aforementioned 6 topics.

How is this any different from going on Medium one morning and seeing virtually the exact same blog posts you saw 2 weeks prior? The posts are obviously not the same - maybe a different author, a different sponsor, a different tip to make you fitter, happier, more productive - but they’re largely interchangeable. Sometimes they are even virtually the same. Like pop music.

So I’ve started to call the majority of what Medium feeds me something else: pop writing. Marketable, interchangeable writing to satisfy the masses. Blogs (at least the most popular ones on Medium) are no longer personal or honest or catering to a particular interest - their sole purpose is to maximize the marketability of the writer’s brand. Not unlike any top 40 artist, CamMi Pham (whose writing and general vibe mostly infuriate me) has a carefully curated personal brand, which draws elements from positivity-pumping wellness and advice writing (and sometimes, directly from other writers). She’s trying to be the Tay Swift of your Medium feed. This fine - millions of people love Taylor Swift, and thousands of people love CamMi Pham’s deliberate, speech-like writing on learning and unlearning and bettering oneself.

You want to figure out how her written brand works? It’s pretty simple, actually.

Come up with a really fucking edgy, attention-grabbing title.

Start with some one-sentence paragraphs.

Write increasingly powerful and emotional statements in those paragraphs.

Maybe a sentence implying initial self-doubt.

Then throw out a big initial thesis.

Usually in bold or headline style.

Then repeat that thesis verbatim, followed by a supporting reason.

The repeat that thesis verbatim again, with further reasons.

What about this other reason? No need to worry, because here’s that thesis again. With another supporting reason.

And that is the thesis, verbatim once more.

Pure, unadulterated crap.

King Crimson (which most people probably know, sadly, from when Kanye West sampled them) have this great song called “Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With” which is basically a brilliant exercise in hollow meta-songwriting. Most of the lyrics discuss the structure of the song itself:

And when I have some words
this is the way I’ll sing
through a distortion box
to make them menacing

It makes for a great commentary on the cookie-cutter nature of pop music construction - there are tropes that one can follow to clearly evoke some kind of emotional response, so we exploit them for maximum feeling. Adrian Belew (the singer) clearly describes the section of the song, what emotion must be evoked within it, and how he intends to portray that emotion; by the time he’s in the second chorus, he’s made it clear the song itself has no meaning: “I’ll brew another pot / of ambiguity.” The bridge, “you have to be happy with what you have to be happy with,” just reinforces that - it’s a nothing statement, weirdly urgent but pointless, endlessly repeating like the advice pieces on my Medium top feed.

(Ironically, that song was written music-first, and the lyrics were thrown in last minute as placeholder. Do you think Adrian Belew cares about what I think the song means? He’s not even making pop music.)

Like how pop music leverages chord progressions and romantic/lonely/excited feelings, Pop Writing leverages the nurturing nature of self-help, the inspiring nature of startup culture & life disruption, pandering political fluff and a few other obvious topics. Let’s call them “subgenres.” Each subgenre, and some artists within that subgenre, have particular conventions that are proven to be more effective than others. It’s already obvious that clickbait article titles is a common theme among all subgenres of pop writing. Some others: pick an icon and find an obscure fact about him or her; pick a bad quality about yourself and gradually turn it good; pander to the founders of an amazing product; respond to that pandering by shitting on said product; give advice to the most blogged-about professionals.

Like how pop music is hard to pigeonhole by conventions but easy to pick out, pop writing is hard to pigeonhole by topic to easy to pick out. One can easily pick up on the writing style of a blogger and exploit it for their own gain. Just pick a topic (even if it’s been beaten to death), read a few popular articles on that topic and pick up on the sentence and paragraph structure. Write a few test-drive articles to hone your skill, and then start marketing your brand. You’re basically doing what Taylor Swift did when she decided she wanted to move into pop music - developing your brand to reach a new audience.

If that’s what you feel like doing with your spare time, weirdo.

Medium is going the way of the music industry, but that’s fine.

Nothing should stop CamMi Pham from writing like she does. Medium definitely shouldn’t stop her. That’s the free market blogging economy at work. Instead, let’s just call it what it is: happy, cookie-cutter, highly targeted pop blogging that will gain her new followers. The market demands it.

The problem seems to ultimately lie in the writer’s convictions. Yann Girard might be more genuine in his writing, but he might not be. Someone writing about a life tip they just discovered might genuinely be so excited about it that they’re compelled to share it with the world. S/he might also be plagiarizing someone else. Who knows?

Maybe the problem ultimately lies in the newfound stigma for content marketing and “social influencers” - people who are paid to get clicks and followers, and thus the honesty of their writing is instantly called into question. Maybe these people could rebrand themselves to appear more honest. CamMi Pham is unapologetic - she admits to being a total fraud and attempts to justify it (within her standard writing convention, of course). Yes, she might be encouraging young writers to steal ideas from others and develop a contrived style of writing that eschews honesty for marketability - but again, if that’s what people want to read, then more power to the writers.

For those who don’t like it: welcome to the beginnings of literary snobbery. Three immediate suggestions for you:

1. If you don’t like pop writing, simply don’t read it. Just as I usually avoid the Top 40 like the plague, stop reading the Top Posts on Medium and find writing you like via other means: use Medium’s tags, start curating who you follow, or look elsewhere entirely.

2. If you think Medium isn’t listening and want to help out writers you care about, start your own subculture. Radio failed to capture many niche music genres and scenes, so music blogs popped up to try and promote music in those niches. Maybe fans of certain types of writing will subscribe to a blog or network that heavily caters to a certain niche of fiction or nonfiction. There doesn’t need to be one blogging platform.

3. If you do genuinely have some honest advice or learnings to share with the world, do so genuinely. Please refrain from marketing tropes, because people can see through that shit. Tell the world what you know, how you feel about it, and if you pulled it from somewhere else, be honest about it. I love reading Jason Fried’s posts for this reason - he’s honest, witty and daring and has legitimate reason & experience to pull off all three.

   I’m going to tag this post and hope it gets some likes and shares (which, by the way, you should do if you think it’s useful). It probably won’t, though, because I’m not a digital influencer with 500+ followers on Medium.

Yet.

Because I’ll keep trying.

Maybe I should read one of those “Top 10 Ways to Find Success on Medium” posts for help.

Earthside reinvigorated prog & reminded me of my roots

Music that challenged me in 2015, part two

As part of my reflection on the music that inspired me in 2015, I started writing a bit about those albums and songs that will largely be overlooked by Big Music - but are still ambitious, challenging and exceedingly interesting. In this post, I’ll discuss the first progressive metal album I’ve listened to in years, Earthside’s A Dream In Static, and why this album is particularly important to me.

Why do you listen to music? Most people seem to just to get through their sad, meaningless existence - whether that means mellowing out to a pleasant acoustic ditty or raging to a club banger or some good punk rock. But regardless of what genre or why, you put music on in the background to feel something.

TLDR: If you want to not just feel something, but feel it with a level of intensity you might not have before while listening to music, you should listen to A Dream in Static by Earthside.

I grew up listening to mostly angry music. My parents didn’t push this upon me - in fact, they didn’t really make me angry at all or neglect me or listen to any angry music themselves - all I had was radio and my MTV. I distinctly remember the first time I saw the video for Eve 6’s “Inside Out” and having the silly cathartic moment that every young boy feels when he first witnesses ANGST. I started headbanging. I was then running around my parents’ living room, not dancing, but slamming my feet into the ground, punching the air in miserable joy. I wasn’t a sad or angry kid, but I think this (and a few other songs) stuck with me in such a way that dark and angry music resonated with me more so than any other.

When I first heard Tool’s “Schism” in 2001, I had a similar standout moment - the video, but more importantly the music, shocked me. Rock music could not only let me express my (misplaced) anger, but also make me feel awe, dread, all those existential feelings I had never experienced to that point at the ripe young age of 12. It was shortly after this that I learned that Tool was of a group of largely uncategorizable heavy bands, but usually pigeonholed into the genre of “progressive metal” - an overly generalized term for bands who skirt the norms of time & key signature, focus on big topics & bigger sound, and have small but extremely rabid fanbases. I became one of those rabid fans - first of Tool, then of Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, Ayreon, Opeth and various others. I shared this with my dad who then exposed me to Yes, Pink Floyd and King Crimson, and I became obsessed. I HAD to learn everything about every song, how they all connected, what bizarre alternate realities the songs existed within, how the time signatures within a song related to the purpose of the song itself.

In 2004 I picked up bass guitar and, shortly thereafter, joined a band in high school bent on making powerfully emotive and complex music to try and channel this fascination into something productive. But because we were nerdy teens from suburban Connecticut, we didn’t have a whole lot of actual hardship to channel into powerfully emotive music. Plus, none of us were confident in our ability to write lyrics - so we made dark, edgy, self-indulgent instrumentals with silly names like “Mariachi Massacre” and “The Greatest Wall.” But it was a hell of a lot of fun - and we made some fairly cool music for a bunch of weird teenagers from Connecticut.

Then I went to college, started drinking, got a girlfriend, and landed my first internship - which happened to be in both the music & tech industry. I was around tons of other musical tastes and quickly got tired of the pretentiousness of prog metal. It just wasn’t vibing anymore, man. So I quit that band in late 2008 and tried my hand at some other stuff: a Talking Heads cover band, playing lead guitar in a stoner rock band, trying my hand at writing alone and with other people. To my old band, I said that I didn’t want to write music like that anymore and could not endure the impossible uphill battle that is trying to achieve noteworthiness as a prog metal musician. My tech career was more lucrative and important.

In 2014, that band publicly became Earthside.

I remember a few years earlier when Jamie (Earthside guitarist and one of my closest friends to this day) sent me a rough cut of “The Closest I’ve Come,” a sprawling instrumental track that I had learned a few years prior when they asked me to fill in on bass for a show. They had finally locked down a permanent bassist in Ryan Griffin and tightened up the composition to the point where it was release-ready. I remember being impressed by my former comrades - an appropriate development of the initial sound we had established as Bushwhack, more focused, “cinematic” and, most importantly, nuanced. There is a specific breakdown roughly 6 minutes into the song in which all instruments abruptly pause - except for a quiet, ominous arpeggiating keyboard line that wisps you out of riffs and into a floating sensation. The guitar levitates with you, occasionally supplementing the keyboards with subtle harmonic feedback. It’s as if you’re being slowly pulled upward toward the cosmos - until drums, bass and guitars suddenly shatter a glass ceiling above you and push you back down to the ground with the most brutal rhythm of the song thus far.

To say that this was representative of the scope of the album they were working on is a gross understatement. Jamie had mentioned they were toying with the idea of guest vocalists, researching string quartets and small orchestras to record with and some producer in Sweden I hadn’t heard of. I largely disregarded all of this - where did they have the money to pull all that off? I certainly didn’t, and I was the one with the lucrative tech career.

But after over almost 7 years of hard work, Earthside finally released a true debut - an 8-track, hour-plus-long catharsis of a debut. It’s sometimes a difficult listen: it’s brutal, it’s morose, it’s jagged and it’s exceedingly triumphant, sometimes all in one track. It begins with the aforementioned “The Closest I’ve Come” as a hint of the journey this album takes, which in the band’s words encapsulates “everything we are as human beings” - which isn’t wrong.

See, the thing with A Dream in Static is that, while it occasionally uses prog-metal clichés in its song titles and lyrics (eg. all the self-actualization stuff, the song title “Entering the Light”), it makes the rare achievement of actually embodying those emotions and ideas in full. “Entering the Light” makes you feel like you’re actually marching toward said light, and then when all instruments are distant except for a quiet string harmony, you feel as if you’ve finally made it - only to discover you’re back where you started, marching again. I haven’t heard another rock song (let alone an instrumental!) that made me contemplate my own mortality like this in years. The scale of this album is enormous, and that’s ignoring the fact that these are still my nerdy friends from high school. Every single performance of every single idea is executed flawlessly - technically near-perfect but still human at its core.

Let’s talk about the 10-minute “single,” “Mob Mentality” - if any song attempts to represent the absurd mess of the state of our country right now, this could be the song that does it. (Ironically, it was recorded in Sweden.) I know this song is deeply personal to Jamie, as he wrote it both as a senior college thesis and as a means to deal with his own confusion of his life’s next steps, in a world where influencers are complicating your own worldview more than ever. Who has any idea what the hell is going on in their own lives and what’s going to happen next? And better yet, how is the persistent influence of others making that anxiety any less overwhelming? The sheer scale that the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Lajon Witherspoon’s [^4] performances bring to this workout of a piece is daunting, but also intensely relatable and satisfying.

There are three key breaks in the piece that make the song work. The first, a deliberate breath of curious air; the second, a sudden dip into playful terror as Lajon sings “and I pray for you to see / I’ve been sheltered by my bliss”. The last break of note occurs with only about 40 seconds remaining, after the song’s final climax has already been hit - it’s the song’s “Oh shit!” moment as the band takes you back to the original melodic idea that began this ride.

Oh, and this is the second track on the album.

There is no particular secret sauce to a progressive rock or metal record; some songwriters devise a complex storyline or overarching concept which may be explored lyrically or within the musical structure itself. However, much of “prog” has fallen into one of two traps: it either falls back on past tropes and stereotypes and, in the process, loses originality and/or emotional weight; or it gets so tightly fused into other genres of music that it’s barely noticeable (read: the first two Coheed & Cambria albums, which I still find excellent). When I was playing prog metal in Bushwhack, we were intensely aware of those tropes - as well as tropes in other styles of music - and tried to turn them upside down and meld them together into odd results. Over time it became less about fun genre-shifting for our own amusement and more about actively trying to bring complex (yet sometimes competing) ideas and finding some kind of emotional synergy. I’m happy that this band continued down this path.

“Skyline” (track 5) probably contains this year’s most awe-inspiring musical idea. As the band explains, about seven minutes in, the song follows 3 rhythmically competing lines (on piano, drums and lead guitar) for nearly a minute, winding around each other like synchronized birds in flight. Then suddenly they all meet and come into rhythmic unison in one of the most joyful, cathartic, nearly orgasmic musical expressions of cosmic scale I’ve heard. Even before this moment, this song dazzles: the song begins with a sudden thud after the quiet march of previous track “Entering the Light” and, after a brief introductory theme, breaks into my 2nd favorite bass line of the year (sorry guys - “King Kunta” wins this one).

Structurally, this album is half vocal tracks and half instrumentals, but each track contains at least one satisfying surprise. The title track, which features Tesseract’s Daniel Tompkins on lead vocals, seems unassuming at first - until its first chorus. I have not heard a more intensely joyful vocal performance in prog than Daniel’s in this song. “Ungrounding” is the one instrumental I haven’t mentioned yet, and while it seems fairly straightforward technical metal at first, there are two elements of this track that once again demonstrate the mastery of composition this band has. First: Frank (keyboardist)’s melodic line - out of context, it honestly sounds like it was lifted from a trance or hip hop track. It’s this fast-moving airy synth that almost works an attempted homage to Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop”. But once placed against the rhythmic complexity of “Ungrounding”, it takes on a whole new character that embraces chaos - what was once intended to put its listeners into a trance has now run amok.

Second: What the first half of “Ungrounding” does to inspire chaos, the second half does to make sense of it. There are feelings of grief, rage and outright fatigue (paired with a downtempo, down-octave version of the original synth melody). I remember first listening to this song and not expecting much beyond the first minute or two, but the second half pulls you back in with force - a testament to Earthside’s ability to truly capture attention and tap into the deepest reaches of your psyche.

The album closes with “Contemplation of the Beautiful,” a nearly-12-minute brooding funeral march; one could argue that it refers to the previous 7 tracks just as much as its subject’s waning sense of self. A Dream in Static does encompass everything we are as human, from the wonder of birth to inevitable death. Its ability to traverse tough, complex emotional ground with focus & grace, and it’s affected the music I find inspiring and even how I approach writing music. It tells a story through music more vividly than most concept albums I’ve heard and has reinvigorated my interest in metal & prog, and I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone who genuinely wants to feel their emotions heightened by sound.

But more importantly, my friends made this record. Friends whom I have a history with making music and I left to pursue my own path. Part of me wants to be jealous, to question my decisions to pursue tech and solo songwriting; but a much bigger part of me is proud and amazed at these guys. They gave me a reason to once again appreciate my musical foundations and our time together as a band. If anyone reads this and happens to have a friend in a band, I encourage you to give that band an honest listen - they might just surprise you with something great.

In Defense of Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz

Music that challenged me in 2015, part one

I haven’t written a “favorite albums” list in a few years, mostly because I realized that mine were virtually identical to most of those my friends would write up. That’s one of the unfortunate downsides of having friends in the music industry: if a band gets enough hype to be in a Top 10 list, everyone’s talking about that band.

2015 was one of the first years in a while, though, in which a lot of the buzzed-about music was downright ambitious: while there was plenty of crap for the masses to party/drone to, there were also plenty of musicians who stopped giving a fuck about playing nice and made cool, interesting, challenging music. Cases in point: Kendrick Lamar, Bjork’s Vulnicura, “Hotline Bling” and Titus Andronicus’ 90-minute manic depression rock opera, just to start.

I felt inspired by all this and had one of the more prolific years of writing music I’ve ever had. Some of the music I found most challenging and inspiring, though, was reviled, dismissed, or missed entirely by mainstream music journalism. I’d like to spend some time reflecting on the hidden genius of those songs and albums.* 

Let’s start with a doozy: Miley Cyrus and her Dead Petz, released via SoundCloud & VMA surprise in August.

I don’t dance much, but two songs this year made me start dancing more than any other: “King Kunta,” for obvious reasons, and Miley Cyrus’ “Slab of Butter (Scorpion).”

Don’t ask me why. I can’t explain it. But that damn bouncy synth texture paired with a fuzz bass made for my downtempo jam of 2015, and I’m not mad about it. I’m only mad when it ends, and then after 45 seconds of Miley talking about how drunk she is, the beat comes back in the form of a fun diss track called “I Forgive Yiew” (sic, but who cares? Miley sure doesn’t). The slow bounce continues for another 3 minutes, and it’s kind of glorious.

The next song, “I Get So Scared,” haunted the shit out of me when I first heard it. It still does, which is a weird thing to digest given that this is BASICALLY HANNAH MONTANA telling me that “they say love grows / but I’ve only seen it die.” After that happens, I find mellow euphoria in “Lighter,” a highly underrated 80s throwback.

People HATED this album. I don’t. It’s weird and sprawling and usually inappropriate, but every time I come back to it, I find another nugget of something charming, dark or downright beautiful. “I Get So Scared” is one of those nuggets.

Sure, it starts with the silly “Dooo It!”, but immediately after you get 2 solid ballads in “Karen Don’t Be Sad” and “The Floyd Song.” For every stupid track on this album, you get multiple gems. Sure, “Milky Milky Milk” is probably a song about lactating, but it has one of the coolest beats of the year. Sure, Miley cries when singing about Pablow her dead blowfish, but you can’t fault her for expressing some real emotion in a song. The 6-song run of “Cyrus Skies” to “Lighter” is pretty fantastic, and could make for an excellent psych-pop EP in itself.

I do think Miley brought some of the bad rap and flat-out dismissal upon herself - the “complete, full-metal DGAF” approach to album structure and focus, plus the fact that she made this album outside of her recording contract, lends the album to be taken both less seriously and more like it’s trying be taken seriously. Most of the negative or apathetic critical reaction has been based on the assumption that this album should be interpreted as higher-concept than it probably should be. And to those critics, it disappoints as a high-concept pet project.

But why should we treat Dead Petz as anything beyond what it is at face value? It’s a long, sprawling collection of songs covering several topics, some of which are very silly. Nobody gave Prince any flack about that when 1999 came out and contained a song about vinegar strokes and another one with 2 uncomfortable minutes of orgasm sounds. Why should Miley Cyrus be dismissed for calling a song “Bang Me Box” when Nicki Minaj can release a song glorifying her own ass, or a song about a girl who makes crack cocaine became one of the top hits of the year? (Oh and remember when a song about shooting up a school became a pop hit? Great job, music industry.) Dead Petz doesn’t need to be anything more than it is, and critics shouldn’t dismiss it because it doesn’t reach their impossibly high standards of long, ambitious works that break political or spiritual ground. It’s as if critics are no longer willing to let their subjects just unwind and not be taken too seriously.

If anything, this album disappoints me because it makes me wonder how it would have been accepted if a few throwaway tracks were removed and it was a bit more polished. If “Fuckin’ Fucked Up” (which should not be treated as anything more than an interlude) was removed from the track listing and was attached to “BB Talk” as a prelude, would people use it as an excuse to dismiss the album? “Something About Space Dude” is effectively a coda to “The Floyd Song” - what if Miley positioned these two separate tracks as a single 8-minute space rock epic, like what JT did with some of his solo material?

For those who want to give this album a second chance but can’t deal with the full 23 tracks, I propose a revised Dead Petz track listing, which is only an hour long:

1. Dooo It! <— only because nothing else really works as an opener
   
2. Karen, Don’t Be Sad
   
3. The Floyd Song (Sunrise) w/ optional coda: Something About Space Dude
   
4. Space Boots
   
5. BB Talk
   
6. Milky Milky Milk
   
7. Cyrus Skies
   
8. Slab of Butter (Scorpion) w/ optional coda: I’m So Drunk
   
9. Lighter
   
10. I Get So Scared
    
11. I Forgive Yiew
    
12. 1 Sun
    
13. Pablow The Blowfish
    
14. Miley Tibetan Bowlzzz (bonus track)

It’s really hard to take Miley Cyrus seriously, and that’s okay. Bizarrely enough, the thing that convinced me to have respect for her is the album in which she takes herself the least seriously. You should give this album a chance if you didn’t yet this year.

—-
Oh, and lastly, I put out an EP too, but it’s probably not on anyone’s best-of lists because I barely promoted it. Check it out, though! It’s fun.

Task managers are tough

Task managers are tough

Wunderlist, Trello, Todoist, OmniFocus. 2do. Things. I have to imagine that most smartphone users haven’t even heard of these apps. That’s probably why there’s such an apparent subculture around each one. The average person will never break into the most beloved apps, and those who do will defend it to no end.

So why don’t so many people, who presumably have things they need to do in their lives, use one of these tools? For all the people that do try a project management tool, why do so many underutilize them?

Everyone has a smartphone, and most of them probably use stock functionality (read: Reminders & Calendar) to keep track of their daily lives on that smartphone. However, Reminders rarely has accountability - what if you forget to set a reminder time? What if you miss the location-specific notification by the time you’ve left? What if some to-dos are dependent on others and you can’t check them off the list until some other thing you neglected gets done?

Are the to-dos I’m getting reminded about even a good use of my time right now?
What about the big important complicated things I want to do?
How do I even break those things down into the little to-dos to put in my list?
What does that mean to me in the big picture?

The average person doesn’t want to (and almost certainly can’t) think through all that stuff, even though they potentially have implications on their daily lives.

This conundrum, in the workplace, is basically why project and product managers exist. Product managers help to figure out the right things to focus on and why; project managers make sure they happen so you, Mr. Stakeholder Guy don’t have to worry about all the little details.

Personal assistant apps exist, even virtual ones, to remind you of upcoming meetings and tasks - so why haven’t we developed a “personal product manager” that takes your big goals in life and helps you break them down and focus on the most achievable pieces of said goal?

I think about the big things that I want to eventually do in my life - get married, build a company, buy a house, be a notable musician, other things - there’s a ton of knowledge of what to do to make those things happen on the Internet. But parsing all that information is a nightmare - you’re basically relegated to Google searching or starting with blogs/resources you trust and vetting the content endlessly until you end up with a series of tasks, which may or may not be in order, prioritized or even possible. Then, you have friends and/or family as a resource, which may contradict your online findings (or even each other). I don’t even want to think about the difference between my dad’s opinion on starting a business compared to my previous employer.

Productivity apps can’t do this thinking; it’s not what they’re designed to do. 2do, one of my favorites, requires a whole lot of task creation and organization in order to be truly useful. and People have said that about Evernote, too. Trello is great for visualizing projects in a board format, but it doesn’t tell you what should populate that board and what of that stuff needs to get done in order to make BIG AMAZING GOAL X happen. (That’s probably why they’ve started collecting and sharing sample boards for various use cases.) The thought process around focusing the idea into discrete pieces hasn’t been productized for personal lives.

I wonder if this is why productivity apps aren’t ubiquitous - because they exist to humor the details of lives instead of boiling them down to what’s important.

The compulsive process

The compulsive process

Every day when I get home from work, I walk in the door, kiss my girlfriend Alicia and start organizing things. If it’s Monday, I take the trash and recycling out to the street and line up all our bins neatly in a row. Otherwise I put my keys on the hook, my wallet & sunglasses in a tray next to said hook, pick up the small pile of bags, jackets and/or shoes that Alicia leaves by the door and put each item in its respective closet or corner; then as she starts cooking I tidy up the non-junk mail we received that day, throw the rest into recycling, wash my coffee mug out in the sink, wash her mug out, review the state of the dishwasher. Next I’m washing dishes as she uses them to cook our dinner; it looks like a Charlie Chaplin assembly line if we have the right background music playing.

We eat. Sometimes in front of the TV, sometimes at our brand-new first-owned dining table. I compulsively pick up the dishes to go wash them, sometimes regrettably before she’s even done eating her dinner. The dishwasher is full, so I might as well run it. The laundry hamper is full, and I’m getting low on t-shirts to wear to work - should probably do a load.

By the time I start relaxing, it’s either too late to play any music (might wake up the neighbors) or I burnt myself out just tidying up the place. But for me, having control over my house grants me the calm I need to relax & think creatively. It’s not obsessive-compulsive (maybe it is? Who knows/cares); but it’s a mental exercise that keeps me proud of what I’ve got around me. Most of us go through days (even weekends) without thinking much at all - at work, at social events (which take less thought than the decision whether to even go), even when trying to write something (yeah, that’s a stab at lazy blogging conventions, so what?).

For a long time I tried to force creativity, dedicating whole evenings in front of a MIDI keyboard trying to compose - but instead of writing any great melodies, I ended up lazily repeating the same riff I’d written years prior over and over for 3 hours with nothing new or different. My head was in the wrong space during those forced moments; obsessively organizing my home life seems to correct that. I’ve learned to love the process, even though it’s sort of compulsive by now.

Also, Alicia loves not having to do dishes or laundry, so win-win.

NYC and back (permanently)

I realized that the happiest people in New York City are bartenders. They are decently paid, have flexible hours, can usually find work right near home, and pride themselves on being a friendly savior to those who so desperately need their service at the end of another punishing day. Those people, pretty much every other resident of NYC, is either miserable, tired or both. Even the rich ones.

NYC is great if you can embrace chaos, the kind of chaos where as soon as you leave your house you’re wondering how long it’ll take before you get hit in the face by something or someone, metaphorically or physically. It’s terrifyingly unpredictable and we found it difficult (at best) to enjoy much of anything, let alone exercising any free will or creativity. We went to dance parties because peer pressure. We went to dinner because we needed to get out of our (admittedly well-decorated) railroad car of an apartment. I performed in NYC…playing bass behind a house DJ (my friend Rich, he’s actually a really good house producer) shoved into a corner because the club needed to make room for more people to dance - far from my ideal gig.

Sometime in April Alicia was really worked up about some job prospect and I told her:

“You know, you don’t NEED to look for jobs in New York, in case something cool comes up somewhere else.”

The joy on her face when she looked up was something I hadn’t seen in months. We started rattling off companies, positions, cities…suddenly MA was back in the cards.

She started tearing up. For me, being close to family was nice but not a priority; for her, it was the reassurance that everything could turn out OK. If we found a place just north of Boston, we could work in and outside the city and be 30 minutes or less from parents, siblings, best friends. A work opportunity came up. Then 2 friends got engaged, another pregnant - Alicia suddenly had photography gigs. Only 1 of those, as a glorified intern shooter, actually panned out.

In June I got a job offer through some weird circumstances, with the caveat that I’d have to work on-site in Boston. The timing worked, and we were out by July. We looked around for a place for a bit; with very little effort we found a HUGE duplex right near Salem Common. 2 minutes to walk to a huge park; walk 2 minutes in the other direction and you’re at a cute little beach. It’s not even far from the city compared to how far away everything is from Ridgewood, Queens.

So we came here, and we’re both happy again.

So what’s Salem like for a bunch of young creative professionals?

I never thought it would affect me that much, but the prevalence of nature has really started to inspire both of us. We both love going outside again - I’ve got my Zoom H4 unpacked and for the first time in almost 2 years I’m excited to record the sounds around me. Alicia’s started to take pictures just for the sake of taking pictures. We’re eating healthy. (We can afford to again, thanks Market Basket.) We have space in our apartment to fully realize our creative ideas without stepping all over each other.

How is it in town? You know how everyone says that Bostonians are mean, sort of like New Yorkers but with a harsher accent and a perverse love of their sports team? Salem residents couldn’t be further from that stereotype - everyone is amazingly nice, humble, inviting. I really think that part of the inspiration of all Brooklyn musicians is their interactions with the city’s chaotic meanness (which coincidentally is what’s causing the homogenization of Brooklyn music, since the chaos is becoming so materialistic and almost predictable); in Salem, we’re being inspired by the town’s whimsy and warmth.

So instead of starting a blog and not touching it for months, we’ll have more to post as a result.

Exploiting the hour commute

Exploiting the hour commute

Every weekday morning I commute from Salem Common to Boston’s Back Bay, which takes roughly 1 hour and 5 minutes. This involves: a 10-minute walk; a 26-to-33-minute ride on the MBTA Commuter Rail, Newburyport/Rockport line; a zero-to-20-minute-wait for an Orange line subway train, depending on the presence of a disabled train or mechanical failure or track fire or signal problem or good old rushed idiots crossing the yellow line; then a 10-15 minute Orange line subway ride into Back Bay Station. And I still haven’t gotten to my desk yet. A lot of sitting, a lot of waiting.

I initially didn’t really care about that — most NYC subway rides are pretty long if you live in the outer boroughs — but after starting my new gig at Wayfair, I got bummed pretty quickly about the amount of time wasted sitting and waiting. Plus, anyone who knows anything about the MBTA subway & commuter rail systems knows that they are frustrating at best, and at worst completely non-functioning and apathetic to public need.

But I didn’t want to move any closer to the city; there was a reason we decided to live one block from the water in a relatively sleepy town. So I pushed myself to make the best of the situation and have ended up pleasantly surprised with the results.

1. I started reading during the waiting and standing parts. While in NYC I started reading more on Medium, saving articles to Pocket, and generally feeling more informed about the world thanks to lots of time spent on subways between Queens and Manhattan. When I realized I would be spending ~10 hours of each week commuting, I had a perfect excuse to start reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. It took me two months, but I finished it.
   
2. I started writing (or continue reading) during the sitting-down parts. I wasn’t really able to start centralizing my thoughts for Tone Deaf & Color Blind, or a few of the other ideas I’ve had (details tba) until I had 2 hours of free time each day during my commuting. (Finishing Infinite Jest also helped give me some inspiration to write, so thanks MBTA for giving me the time to finish that.)
   
3. Optional: brought a Nintendo 3DS for the ride. Nintendo’s best games for the 3DS are objectively more immersive than virtually any game in the iOS app store. (The only real exceptions here are iOS ports of previous releases, like the Final Fantasy games.) Instead of mindlessly catapulting birds at pigs, try dipping into the compelling story of Bravely Default — which really messes with you about halfway through — or solving some surprisingly complex puzzles in Hyrule as Link. I finished games I had left half-finished for months.