Live Blog

So i will return to posting journals about shows, the lastest tour in particular, but i have been sort of fuming about something lately and just feel now is as good a time as any to deviate from my format (who knows, i may deviate forever more…) and utilize this as a real journal of sorts, not just polite commentary. this is all sounding like a precursor to a rant, which it is, and not a very well organized one at that, but it’s something i deem important enough to share with friends and strangers a like through cyberspace.

i would like to make it abundantly clear that i consider what i (and bengt and many other musicians i know) strive to make is ART. Music as a category of art has become a very confusing thing. it has a mass-marketing, consumer driven, catering to the lowest common denominator association that many other art forms are more free from. and while music can be many contradictory things all at once—intricate and mind-numbingly catchy, great to a have a drink/have sex to and to pick through its deeper symbols, heartfelt and tongue-in-cheek—none of these qualties in and of themselves should detract from the artisitc value of a thoughtfully produced piece. and there is plenty of music out there that is decidedly NOT art and this is not a distinction i’m making based on skill or genre, but on the most basic fact of what a musician’s goal is in his/her work.

to make my emotions clearer i think i’ll use an example from the visiual art world, one that bengt and i discussed and an art form that i’ve grown a much greater appreciation for. i’ve begun to feel a great kinship with photographers. why you might ask? for one, i feel as artists they come up against some of the same struggles as serious musicians do in terms of getting recognition, which i will elaborate more on in a moment. second, photography, and i think music, has at its heart the task of playing with the real—taking known objects/sounds, utilizing familiar symbols/words— and giving the viewer/listener back something wholey different, either subtly or in something drastically fantasical or campy or any number of variations. and within these variations one can ally themselves with any number of camps, including “pop.” yes, there is definitely “pop” photography, i’m decidedly not the authority on this but if you think on it i’m sure you can come up with many examples of photographs that fit the same mass-marketing categories as “pop” music. and yes, “pop” is technically an art form, i suppose, but just go with me on this one…

so, let’s say you are a photographer, one that considers what he/she does to be fine art. and there is someone else you know who is also a photographer, you are both well trained technically speaking, use very similar equipment, have a similar education background. this other photographer, just for fun, decides that he wants to start taking pictures of dogs dressed as firemen. and then he wants to make it into a calendar and start selling this calendar to his mom and her churchlady friends. and this calendar starts to pick up steam and becomes wildly successful. meanwhile, you toil away on your own projects, ones that are geared toward finding deeper meaning and are more appropriate for a gallery setting and garner little attention except for in small circles. now, i’m not going to insinuate that you should be angry with the other photographer for his success—you both knowingly chose different paths and with known, wildly different potential results. but i do think you would resent being directly compared to one another or would be frustrated that pictures of canines being humilated through the use of firehoses and over-sized human clothing would be what many have as their first point of reference as to what photography IS.

with all that being said, i resent my artform being defined by musicians who—through what i am sure was a painstaking process and comes from a source of great technical knowledge—presents products such as “boom boom pow” or live shows whose sole purpose is to make people want to drink, fight, and fuck. there is a place in this world for that music, just as there is a place in this world for calendars of dog-firemen, but it is not under the umbrella of art. and i think that musicians in these camps would willingly admit to that fact.

i am not attempting to klutz-ily get up on a high horse and say what i do is OFFCIALLY art. but it is the hope of producing art that is my thought-process and my end goal. so, when i invite you to come out to a performance or ask for your support through purchasing a CD, it is not the same as asking you whether or not you want to come to a party or for you to put money towards my own self-interested “hobby.” i’m asking you to support a passion, one that is not geared towards simple attention-getting or making people want to dance and be happy (though those are both welcome side-effects) but one that i hope eventually has a deeper impact, either on a select number of individuals or on a larger scale. i’m asking you to support my art, not to buy my product. please understand the difference and please tell everyone you know…