So that happened.
I don't mind being this age, but rather, I'm shocked. I really don't feel like I've been alive that long. Perhaps my terrible maths skills have infected the entire world and we're all just wrong on this one.
Stuff that's happened as I begin my fifth decade: Les Fat Jones were rated one of the top ten local independent releases of 2012 by local music mag Mondo Sonoro. (Slow clap.) In the coming year, we plan to record again with a different Catalan indie luminary. We've entered a battle of the bands where people will need to vote for us. Once voting begins, expect constant harassment from me.
Questular has landed a new client. Woo hoo! It's a company with fancy properties all over Europe. As Creative Editor in charge of content, I was hoping this meant jet-setting around, exploring them all, but no such luck. Instead, I will spend the next few weeks parsing emails and pouring over Google street view. I like to think there's a certain glamour in that. (I also like to think there's glamour in teaching English so my definition is clearly self serving.) Rather, much work and little money lies in my immediate future, but hopefully, internet millionairedom lies somewhere beyond. (knock on ALL the wood!)
Will 2013 be the year we finally see some new 2 Skinnee J's music? Watch this space.
Finally, I took up dancing. As in, I signed up for dance classes. Man. I figured I'm a musician, I've been dancing for fun my whole life, I'm black for Christ's sake. This will be a piece of cake. Yeah. It's a big piece of terror cake with frustration icing. I spend the entire class staring at my feet and counting while self-consciously sweating on whichever poor woman has been partnered with me. Good times.
And that's middle age so far. Apparently adolescence is not quite over yet.
Let me begin at the end. I confess - guilty as charged.
I was meant to fly back from New York, catching a connecting flight in Montreal. However, my flight out of Laguardia was delayed, meaning I would miss the second one. I was afraid the Air Canada would put me on a plane to Amsterdam or Frankfurt with a third flight home, but instead, they put me on a direct flight to Barcelona landing almost an hour earlier than originally planned. Yay, right? Well, they switched carriers and I ended up on American Airlines which doesn't have touch screens on each seat, meaning I was stuck watching the crappy movie they chose (Tower Heist) on a screen in the middle of the cabin. What is this? the 90's? I demand that while stuffing my face with plastic wrapped cheese ravioli I be entitled to choose which crappy movie I stare at blankly.
Anyway, the awesome intercontinental caper that was my August was capped by a 2 Skinnee J's show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Having had so much fun in May, we decided to take advantage of my time in Brooklyn to do it again. Really, it was an excuse to hang out with each other once more, and a splendid time was had by all.
Opening for us were the Wau Wau Sisters, a singing acrobatic comedy burlesque show, if you have to label them, and I highly recommend checking them out if you ever get the chance. I'd caught their act a couple of years ago, so I knew what to expect, but it was hilarious watching the audience reaction go from confused to amused to OMFG I can't believe that shit as the two performers gradually ramped up the spectacle, culminating in a trapeze show that rocked the house.
There is talk of new music and further shows, and threats of no further shows without new music. We'll see how productive a part time band that stretches from the Pacific to the Mediterranean can be.
In the meantime, it's back to reality. Laundry and groceries followed by getting into shape after a month of gluttony and GETTING A JOB all lie in my immediate future.
My bags are packed and I'm about to embark on my transcontinental unemployment celebration (ie: vacation) so I'm not sure how much I'll be updating this.
Have a good month everybody, and if you're in New York on the 24th, drop by.
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.
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.
Can you believe it's been a month since the 2 Skinnee J's tour ended? A month! On the one hand, I can hardly believe it. On the other hand, I can totally believe it. (He's a complicated man, and no-one understands him but his woman.) Remember how much fun it was? No? Then you should probably refresh your memory with some pictures. Where? you ask. How about here. Lance Rockworthy sent this link to me yesterday. Photos from the Pre Apocalypse 2012 Now and Forever tour (emphasis on forever) taken by a real photographer. Enjoy.
I spent the weekend in a town with no cell phone coverage or internet. (Apparently, those places still exist!) Fortunately, it did have television, so I didn't miss out on a tradition I've established in recent years: watching the Eurovision Song Contest finals.
Every year, European countries like Azerbaijan and Israel send the best pop star they can muster to lip synch their way to international fame and fortune. The contest's most famous winners, Abba, and the most awesome winners, Lordy, are not representative of the kind of songs featured. Generally,
it is the music you would expect to hear in a Croatian night club. The spectacle looks like the brainchild of some beauty pageant organizer who spent week doing a mountain of cocaine while watching Xanadu on repeat.
This year did not disappoint. Although a little heavy on the ballads at first, it got going with some truly wretched dance music and ice-capades caliber choreography.
But right near the end, after the singing Russian grannies and the contorting Swede (she won), I was introduced to my nemesis: Jedward. Irish twins who have made a living (make that a killing) singing on various European television competitions, they came out JACKING OUR STYLE.
Who the hell do these snot-nosed little upstarts think they are? You do not step to 2 Skinnee J's like that and get away with it. It is not enough that these rip off artists finished 19th out of 24. For daring to challenge the J's, they must pay the ultimate price. Spread the word. If those punks ever cross 2 Skinnee J's path, they are going down. It's on!
I'm very excited about this. All hip hop bands need some rivals, and I think some post adolescent boy band is probably our speed.
Another post about the tour? You did one yesterday! - you
Well, if this tour proved anything, it's that flogging that horse sometimes beats some life back into the old beast, so milk it, baby. In yesterday's post, I wrote about what happened on the tour without any real editorializing, and what is this world without me getting to editorialize? (A lot better off, probably.)
The main take-away lesson from this whole thing is that friends rock. I know you don't come here for Hallmark platitudes, but the enduring power of friendship merits some unironic hugs. The J's all walked away from the smoking wreckage of a band a decade ago with our deep feelings for each other intact. It's allowed us to come together again to do this with genuine excitement about spending time cramped in an RV traveling up I95. So many reunions seem to be driven by money or the urge to relive past glories (more on that in a moment). Those motivations were certainly present in our decision, but the just chance to get to hang out together was truly the primary benefit. These are old friendships that have weathered fights and firings. I don't take that survival rate lightly.
It is impossible to know the dynamics at play in a group of people you have never been part of, nor understand the personal drive of artists you've never even met. Nevertheless, when people who have been publicly feuding for years suddenly have a change of heart at the first opportunity to pack a stadium, one suspects that they may not be so overjoyed at the sight of each other, but rather are dependent on one another for their own needs. The cliche of performers past their prime needing validation from an adoring public is no less true for being one. In my case, nostalgia was in fact a slight deterrent from doing it once more. I mean, we haven't written a song together in 10 years! I feared that revisiting Sing Earthboy Sing yet again might be wearing out our welcome. Thanks to everyone who came for proving me so so wrong. It is gratifying to be confronted with undeniable evidence that an old creation still resonates with so many people.
There is a general tendency to see the past with rose colored glasses, but man, did we have fun in our twenties! We got to experience a life that is uncommon and exciting. There is a danger in this. At some point you have to make the conscious decision to grow up, and when your youth is that appealing, it's that much more difficult to let it go. Now, I really enjoy my life, and I've had lots of fun in my thirties too, but the process has involved making personal choices to walk away from some tantalizing opportunities that I ultimately understood were not right in the long run. (Just the fact the I now take "the long run" into consideration shows an inevitable progress towards maturity. I'll make it there one day!)
There, I'm done. My next post will (probably) be about something else. In true Catalan form I'm taking advantage of the long weekend to escape the city (in my case, for the Spanish equivalent of Kansas) so next week will hopefully bring pictures of funny signs, terrible haircuts, or whatever other reason you might check this place for.
How much rock and roll is too much rock and roll? One of life's great questions which will not be answered here, because all I can say for sure is not this much. Nope, this much rock and roll is just fine. The month of May was so rocktacular that someone should write a song about it.
First up, Les Fat Jones.
In the summer of 2004, brother Eli and I spent countless nights (probably nine or ten, which I am apparently unable to count to) shaking our tail-feathers to indie hits at Razzmatazz, a giant factory turned club in Barcelona. It was the era of Bloc Party and the Rapture, and dancing til dawn was always in the cards. Other than a few concerts recently, I hadn't been to the place in years, but the memory of the summer of clubbing kept the Razz flame burning, albeit softly, in my heart. It was therefore something of a personal victory that Les Fat Jones got to play a show there on Saturday 5th May. We had a new banner! Victor jumped! People came and were rocked. Our album is still available for free download, so grab a copy and learn the words for our next show. June holds our first out of town gig, so yay.
Then...
On Tuesday 8th May I embarked on the 2 Skinnee J's Pre-Apocolypse Now and Forever Tour. (We are absolutely nothing at all if not hyperbolic.)
The days leading up to my departure were hectic. Working in education (I use both the words "working" and "education" lightly) gives me lots of vacation time. However, it's at specific points during the year, and one month before the end of term is not one of those points. Nevertheless, my boss had reluctantly acquiesced to my pleas for time off and I wanted to leave everything in order during my absence. A mere ten minutes before I was due to leave, a teacher called to quit, effective immediately. (The level of professionalism in the foreign language teaching world matches that of the New York Jets, and the results are often the same too.) I scrambled to find a bunch of contacts so that my boss could deal with it and hopped in a taxi. I had a plane to catch. (See above re: professionalism)
Two flights, a German layover and a Sherlock Holmes movie later (Robert Downy Jr. should have an award named after him for most charismatic actor in a shitty movie. see also: Iron Man 2), I touched down in Miami the next day just as the rest of 2SJ were arriving from New York.
Our last reunion was in 2010 and, as fun as it was, I pretty much figured it would be the final one. The format, semi-acoustic with a Q&A session, was one step removed from dinner theater, and it appeared we had effectively ridden our horses off into the sunset.
It is no doubt a sign of our advancing years that it took a cruise to pull us out of retirement. (Also, retirement from music means getting a job...) 311 invited us to play their second Caribbean boat bash, and in a move that is probably surprising to nobody, we accepted. ("Music? Sea and sun? Buffet? Uh, no thanks. I'm too tied to my nine-to-five." - no musician ever.)
Since playing together involved rehearsing for the first time in a couple of years, flying me in from Europe, and getting everybody to Florida and back, it was decided that we would add some dates up the east coast. And thus, a tour was born: 4 days on a cruise with 3 shows, and six more from NC to NYC.
On the day of our arrival in Miami, we rehearsed as a full unit for the first and only time. Fortunately, I have muscle memory for those songs and after a couple of takes, it was like riding a slightly wobbly bike.
On the 10th, along with a couple thousand of 311's most devoted fans, we boarded the ship and set sail (or rather set giant fucking smoke stack) for the Bahamas. I'd never been on a cruise before. It's like a giant floating resort, half hotel, half mall, that does it's best never to remind you that you are at sea.
As we pulled away from the mainland, people gathered on the upper deck for the first 311 concert. Unfortunately, so did angry clouds that began chucking lightning down as the band took the stage and the show was topped after 30 minutes because:
The next morning we got to the island, which was nothing more than a strip of beach and a restaurant. The ship sat offshore, launching little ferries of passengers to the beach. It was all very sci-fi, if science fiction involved reggae, weed and a lot of tattoos.
The Imperial Starship floated in orbit near the tiny sand planet...
Over the next three days, between grazing like sheep at the various all-you-can-eat restaurants (I typically had four meals: breakfast, lunch, pastrami and dinner) we played three shows. The outfits, designed and made by Joy Lewis, were awesome and not as hot as they look. They did shrink over the course of the tour, which is sad. I had been planning on keeping the black one and starting my career as a superhero, but Uncomfortable Sausage Man doesn't seem particularly imposing.
Shut up, crime!
Video Keytard B.A. prepared video projections for the whole set which were so cool, they would have been distracting if they were not behind me.
The whole experience on the boat was an opportunity to reconnect not only with each other, but also with some bands we had played with in the past. This culminated in a collective tribute to MCA during our final show. Although the Beastie Boys didn't invent rap, they certainly introduced it to a lot of white people, and it's probably a safe bet that this cruise wouldn't have existed without him, so he really deserved much more than our butchering of a classic.
We arrived back in Miami on Monday morning, and got on a plane to fly to Raleigh NC. The flight was uneventful except for the part where we were STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. At one point, thousands of feet up in the air, there was a flash, a loud bang, and the plane banked to the left and started descending rapidly, before recovering. I don't know how long the whole episode lasted, but my thought process was: underwear bomber? malfunction? lightning? everything seems to be ok. i guess we'll live. As we exited the plane, we overheard the crew talking, confirming that we were STRUCK BY LIGHTNING, something that had never happened to them before.
The shows up the coast were all great. The rooms were packed, the crowds were psyched and our spirits never lagged.
The opening bands were awesome. The first, Sound of Urchin, an old school new york band, augmented their lineup with a bunch of teenage guitarists from The House of Rock, whose energy and exuberance won the crowd over every night.
The second was Royal Teeth from New Orleans, a melodic band where everybody gets a drum. They played every show with talent and enthusiasm. I don't doubt that big things lie in their future. Plus the singer looks like Joel!
The backstage at the Norva Theater remains nicer than your house. (I know I've never seen your house, but does it have a piano, leather furniture, a pool table, ping pong and a jacuzzi? It does? I'll be right over.) The 9:30 club never disappoints. We saw our old friends the Almighty Senators in Baltimore. All great things. The super talented Ashly Covington, whose hands have probably sold you something at some point, took tons of pictures which you can see here.
The only sad moment was pulling into New York knowing I had only 24 hours before getting on a plane back to Barcelona. Which I did. And took a cab straight back to work. Still, endorphins trump jet-lag, and I'm going to be high off this for a while.
Remember when apparently all of America was one giant Humbert Humbert salivating over the Olsen twins? Like sexualizing children who had played a BABY (!) on a sitcom wasn't a motive for marching everybody straight to space jail where not even Guy Pearce could save them? Then remember when the twins turned into eighteen-year-old Helena Bonham Carters and the world shrugged. Then Heath Ledger died in one of their apartements and people vaguely remembered that they had lusted after this girl when she was a BABY, before shamefully ignoring her (and her twin) again?
I ask this because I watched Martha Marcie May Marlene the other week, starring their younger (heh-heh, slobber, drool) sister. Have you seen it? Did you like it? Did you think she was a good actress? Did she awaken your inner pedophile like her sisters once did? What about the ending? I liked the ending. Did you? More importantly, after watching it, I thought that maybe I have the attributes to start a cult: I'm black and Jewish with a Biblical name born on Christmas to a single mom. I'm sure I could convince someone of my guru potential. True, I am lacking the rape-y bits and the desire or ability to grow or produce anything by myself, but maybe those are learned skills.
Then I remembered that I am in a cult. Although it previously seemed to have been put to rest like so many Hale Bop enthusiasts, once it has a hold on you, like Thetans, it doesn't let go. So watch our recruitment video. It could save your life.
Remember when you found out I was blogging again? (No? It was yesterday! Check your Facebook.) Your first question was "Has time tempered him? Age wizened him? Love softened him?" (I know: three questions. See yesterday re: your birthright.) You naturally wondered if the acerbic wit that almost brought a smile to your face on maybe a couple of occasions would continue to provoke near reactions in you from time to time. (Sorry, I read your diary.)
Fear not. The same impotent rage that drove me in October fuels me today. Especially today, when I saw this:
Oh good.
If what was missing from your life was the mind-blowing talent of The Black Eyed Peas without the (Sesame) street charisma of Will.i.am or the transgendered charm of Fergie, well buddy, your life is now complete.
I could never express the inanity and atrocity that is the Black Eyes Peas as well as this article, so instead I will share with you my own personal experience of them, which is kind of like being liberated after 15 years in anonymous captivity only to find out the first chick you did it with once you were freed was your own daughter, so you cut out your tongue just to never have to speak of it again.
Sometime prior to the turn of the millennium, my band 2 Skinnee J's had the honor of playing at Red Rocks in Colorado. An outdoor venue nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains perhaps most famous for the setting of the U2 concert/album/film Under a Blood Red Sky, it really is a magical place. We were psyched to play there and it was fun to watch the other bands. It was a reggae festival, so who knows why the fuck we were on the bill, but good vibes bro. One band that played after us was another live hip hop band, a multi-culti collection of skaters and backpackers fronted by three MCs (sans trannie) called the Black Eyed Peas. They had had a song on a soundtrack that sounded a little like A Tribe Called Quest lite, and I was curious to see their show.
They fucking rocked. For realz. The band was tight while the rappers worked the crowd like a three-headed break-dancing hydra. It was truly awesome.
To put this in a greater context let me give you a little history lessonrant like an grumpy senior citizen explain: artistically, it sucked being in a live rap band in the late 90s. A decade earlier, hip hop had been the most exciting music around. Rock was still a couple of years away from shedding the spandex and eyeliner, and electronic music was, well, electronic music. I vividly remember the first time I heard Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions and De La Soul. It isn't an exaggeration to say those bands changed my life. A few years later I was living in Brooklyn, rapping with a bunch of guys who, like me, had fallen in love with the art form after growing up on the new wave, punk and rock of the 80's. In our minds, we were fusing the music of our youth into an exciting blend of beat-based, hooky awesomeness. It turns out, in everybody else's, we were like Limp Bizkit, but pussies. Nu metal had come along and shit the bed for any band that wanted to rap and play guitar, and everybody was getting stained by the mess.
This made it extra exciting to be part of any gig that showed us in the same light we saw ourselves. The Roots, Cibo Matto, Native Tongues: these were the bills we were amped to play. The fact that we did get to play them was satisfying on many levels. And that day near Denver, the Black Eyed Peas were a part of that.
They then went on to become simultaneously the worst and the biggest band in the world, celebrating the same kind of idiocy, if not the aggression, that we so dutifully spent the 90s disdaining.
The poo cherry on the puke sundae was when I discovered a couple of years ago that a friend of mine, one of my favorite artists from those days who we played with a lot, had become a producer of theirs. (And other equally terrible music) It was like finding out your favorite uncle has been bombing abortion clinics.
So fuck Taboo spinning whatever David Guetta b-sides he sees fit for drunk Scandinavians next week at Sutton. One Black Eyed Pea is still too many Black Eyes Peas.
