Rock Report - July 29, 2012

Les Fat Jones have seemed dormant to the outside world (read: the 40 people who are aware of us) but we have been busy making moves. And by making moves, I mean making movies. We spent Sunday on the beach and streets of the city, as well as in our rehearsal space, shooting a video for the song Modernista. Even more than our previous efforts, this is a DIY job, with help from several willing and talented friends.
Having secured the raw footage, we now move to the stage of editing and adding special effects (yup) and plan on having a finished product by the end of August.

Some lessons from the shoot:
Most people are surprisingly unresponsive to somebody wearing weird costumes in the street.
Barceloneta is still gross.
Playing to a click track is hard.
Acting is hard.
Filming is hard.
Goofing off with your friends on a sunny Sunday rules.

Coming soon...

Success = Fail

Alone, you record an album of delicate mournful tunes in a cabin in the woods. It is released to virtually universal acclaim. You become a pop culture figure, mixing it up with celebrities. When it comes time to do your follow up, you explode the notion of isolation that has surrounded you by recording with a full band of percussion, horns and strings, yet still constructing gentle atmospheric songs. The hype grows, and now you're winning awards and touring stadiums. The fact that you've done all this seemingly without compromising your artistic vision is a remarkable feat. Congratulations.
This has been the trajectory of Justin Vernon, the man behind the moniker Bon Iver, who played in Barcelona last night. And it led to a dilemma for the concert. Songs built on subtle soundscapes, be it a single accoustic guitar or several fluttering saxaphones, lose their intimacy in front of thousands. I don't begrudge an artist I like their success, but when on one side of me stood a girl texting through the entire set, and on the other, a full-on sorority party, complete with hands waving in the air, whooping and grinding WHETHER THERE WAS MUSIC PLAYING OR NOT, I found myself wishing he'd stayed a little more secret, a little more special. Only for the song re: stacks did the crowd SHUT THE FUCK UP and pay attention to what was actually happening on stage. I haven't hated an audience that much since a drooling pack of morons talked all the way through The Sixth Sense in Kansas City. I clearly was not alone, as people were audibly shushing during the show, but it only had the effect of dividing us into jerks and scolds.
So while the musicians were incredibly tight, the music impeccably played, the lights and set impressive, and Vernon likable and chatty onstage, the show ended up being a triumph for the band, but a failure for me.

Unemployment

Given the distinct lack of the trappings of adulthood in my life, I had pretty much figured that, much like home ownership, a mid-life crisis was something that would remain out of reach. But this summer I pulled a Lester Burnham did away with the one tangible piece of evidence that somebody on the planet considered me a responsible grownup: I quit my job.
I've spent the last 4 years as the director of studies at Business First, the language school where I taught. After growing frustration and stagnation at work, I decided that the title and business card weren't worth the unhappiness that came with them, and handed in my notice. Today was my last day.
Although I have officially joined the 25% of working-age adults without a job, fear not. I have work lined up for the fall that will allow me to continue to enjoy the subsistence lifestyle to which I have become accustomed while giving me more time to focus on my personal endeavors. There are exciting developments lined up that I will address here as they come to fruition or fail spectacularly.
In the meantime, I'm celebrating my new found joblessness with a Bon Iver concert and international travel.

Sayonara!

School of Rock

I have spent my adult life doing two things: avoiding responsibility and judging the shortcomings of others making music and teaching. Like peanuts and bubble gum, this very particular set of skills (skills I have acquired over a very long career) united today in a salty sweet mix of passable competence as I gave a songwriting class to a group of moderately interested teenagers.
My friend, writer Sion Dayson, has been here from Paris for the month of July leading a creative writing workshop for privileged American teens. Over the past weeks, she has had them studying fiction and poetry while leading them around a city she barely knows. Encouraged to bring in guest speakers, she asked if I would be interested in talking to them about the songwriting process, as several of them had expressed an interest in that. And so I found myself facing seven impassive fifteen-year-olds, armed only with a cd, a laptop and ever increasing misgivings.
My usual interaction with teenagers is as a tutor with one or occasionally two kids in their house, often their room. The dynamic is markedly different from a classroom in July, far from their friends and families, exhausted from a month of class and trips. Also, I teach English. There is a right answer, and a wrong answer, and I didn't make it up. Sometimes the reason for the answer is illogical or unknown, but it's there, verifiable. Explaining the creative process is another matter completely. Especially since a large part of my creative process takes place in traffic. I get around the city by bike, and often use these stretches to work on lyrics or melodies that have been bumping around in my head. Combine that with my explosive impatience with cars and pedestrians, and you get a man speeding through the streets with little regard for the rules of the road, alternately singing and swearing.
I decided that was as good a place as any to start, and brought in some songs from both 2 Skinnee J's and Les Fat Jones to listen to and explain a little about the work that went into them. I gave some biographical information, discussed the genesis of particular ideas, the elaboration that goes into developing lyrics and the communal editing and arranging process that I've experienced in bands. And I played them some music.
"Is today Thursday?" asked one girl as a song finished, its dying notes still ringing in the air.
I think they liked me.

Lights, Camera...

Hi. Remember me? I write stuff and you read it? Sound familiar? Sorry it's been ages since I kept up my end of the bargain. You probably think it's because it's summer, and I've been working to close out the school year since I'm quitting my job at the end of the month cuz my boss was driving me so crazy that I decided that returning to teaching would be preferable to spending another year behind a desk writing reports I don't care about for the HR department of companies that don't care about them either, then going to the beach in my time off to turn browner and discretely check out the breasts of the women lying around me and also drinking beer at night. Well, some of those things might be true (spoiler alert: they all are) but I've found time in that busy schedule to make my Skype acting debut. My buddy Joel Frost made this short and I'm in it briefly. I can only hope that my portrayal of Noah Green captured some of the noble grace and quiet dignity of Noah Green.

Next year, I'm winning all the MTV movie awards.