The PMX Subspace Communication Station

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Singing Strings

Good lord, what a rant! It seems the real problem is mostly doing too much shit that you don't want to do but must do in order to enhance survival. Job, dishes, taking out the garbage, showering, paying bills, eating and sleeping. Vacuuming. Driving in traffic. You get the idea. The things you need to do but that you know are really wasting what little time you actually have on this planet.

The problem is that when energy is expended in one endeavor that ain't music, music ain't being writ. And we live for music - our lives are a song. I'm not simply being a sentimental ass here. I had this feeling the other night while trying to go off to sleep. I felt that emotions are simply vibrations. Why else do we call them "feelings?" and imagine them taking place in our bodies? A feeling is normally something tactile, yet we use it to describe something that we take for granted as mental. But it's not, is it? A broken heart doesn't simply feel mental. It makes you feel physically ill, doesn't it? How about the pounding, racing heart that accompanies new love? The flush in the cheeks? The sweaty palms?

Maybe feelings are actual tactile sensations - feelings - that get interpreted in this more mental way. I thought about vibrations because when laying in bed, that's how it felt. Okay, the truth is I lay there and thought of Alex, my new husband, and how much I truly adore this man and how I have adored him for so long, and I was overcome with this intense physical sensation (not THAT one - another one) that felt like a low vibration in my chest. It completely filled me. I'm serious! Anyway, before you vomit, consider this. Why do people absolutely love music? Because it makes them feel things. It bypasses reason and goes straight to the emotions. Did a song ever make you cry? Laugh? Smile? Pissed off?

Now consider this. At the forefront of physics in the race to define the Theory of Everything - the theory that would tie together quantum mechanics with astrophysics, there is "string theory." (Never heard of it? For shame! Catch up - go here: http://superstringtheory.com ). In a nutshell, they think that a small looping string that vibrates at different frequencies is the fundamental particle - the thing that makes up all matter. We are all made of strings.

So everything we know and can imagine in this universe can be stripped down to this one vibrating string. Now vibrating at this frequency, and now that. Happy, sad, angry, content, ecstatic, frightened, surprised, enamoured, shy, excited. Vibrations of strings. Music is life, perhaps. Maybe it's what we're all made of and what we all long to return to.

So then, here I go.

posted by Amy Jacob
11/01/2002 12:54:00 AM Got something to say about it? Go on then.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

 

Emigrating to Excellence

I just spent half an hour responding to an email sent to me from some Minneapolis band looking for a gig. I don't know how my name has gotten around, but I'm somehow on some booking lists. That's what I get for booking my own band. Whatever. They seemed cool and I liked the mp3 I snatched from their site so I gave them the low down on NJ -- though I'm not much help booking right now since we aren't playing out. Anyhow, I thought I'd continue some of what I started thinking about that didn't really belong in the email.

The scene sucks in New Jersey right now and I don't care, though it would be nice to be able to see good performances closer to home. But it's not like I live in Idaho. Personally, I have very little patience for most "indie rock" these days. Independent music, great, I love the idea. But as far as the genre, bands and clubs it's a scene that usually fosters impatience and frustration and a sense that I've wasted time and money, rather than joy and excitement. In New Jersey, Maxwell's is the only thing left and frankly, that's more a New York outpost anyhow. Uncle Joe's, while it is often a fun hang, is often musically irrelevant - usually the bands playing there are about half as good as any random band playing in Williamsburg on the same night. See Tris McCall's piece on NJ vs. Brooklyn in the latest Jersey Beat for more good thoughts on this. But even in Williamsburg you're likely to see bands re-hashing rock formulas without any real originality. In fact, the bands that are more original tend to garner less notice. Some of the noise rock out of Providence is nicely original (Arab On Radar). But now I'm getting more than 150 miles from here...

What does all this mean? The scene for itself is not important. I know, I'm echoing Amy a bit here. Organizations often try to perpetuate themselves beyond their original purpose. This kind of applies to scenes as well, in as much as scenes are very loose organizations. People like each other, they want to keep getting together, so they keep doing the same things even when the artistic value becomes a secondary consideration. This is not good. For a scene to be good, the music has to be good. For a music scene to really be notable in the broader world the music has to be really noteworthy. This doesn't happen as a result of everyone pulling together and networking. This happens as a result of people pushing themselves to create great music. Then there's no guarantee. Call me a snob. Call me an iconoclast. I don't care. The stuff I've heard in the past couple of years that seems groundbreaking has come from two labels: Kranky (indie rock of sorts) and Warp (electronica). This is the stuff that is most forward looking. Then there's Saddle Creek, which has put Nebraska on the map with The Faint and Bright Eyes. That music isn't groundbreaking, but it's at least a new great version of previously well-trod ground. Who cares that The Faint are touring with No Doubt and their songs are behind every VH1/MTV production of late? Good for them. The last record gets better every time I listen to it. Nevertheless, I'm still not blown away with it the same way I was with Boards Of Canada's "Geogaddi," Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s "Lift Your Skinny Fists...," Radiohead's "Amnesiac," or Failure's "Fantastic Planet." A list of bands that sort of works its way back in time over the past 4-5 years. If you play music, you should measure yourself against whatever you think is the best. If you don't think you can possibly achieve something as good, it doesn't mean you should stop, but don't think you deserve an audience.

Call me an expatriot. I've emigrated to the country of excellent music. Here we value excellence and artistry, in all of its forms, over posing, attitude, style, and even earnest hard work if it's not connected to excellence. Quality is job one, baby. That's my vision for today. Time to go work on the roof.

posted by Alex
10/30/2002 01:31:00 PM Got something to say about it? Go on then.

 

D R A F T Y

I'm glad. We just spent a good 4 hours in the subspace communication station together, the mechanics and me. We went through every last kernel of hope and decided which ones would be best put to seed. We divvied up responsibilities and came up with a follow-up plan. The best news of all is that it seems we all still want the same or at least similar things from this. That means we can still work together. The last hurdle is trying to figure out how we work together using a medium that lends itself more to working alone. It's a hurdle that's damn well stumped us for many a month. But we're looking past it now and perhaps we've found a way.

D R A F T

We're all very concerned about the current state of music. It's a big reason we don't go out anymore and we haven't leapt back into the foray of gigdom. We miss it. We miss you and all of our friends, but the harsh truth is and has always been we don't listen to, write or perform music to be a part of a community. The community serves the music - the music does not serve the community. We could join a church or a club if we just wanted to do social activities with friends. We can host picnics and softball games for that. However pretentious it might actually be, we listen to music because it makes us glad to be alive. We write and perform music because we feel it's an important contribution to the whole of humanity. And it's a contribution we can make.

D R A F

Anyone who knows us knows that we don't take this lightly. Some think we don't take it lightly enough, and maybe they are right. But whatever the case, I'll be damned if I ever get out there and make noise just to have something to do. There are far too many people doing that already.

D R A

There's a stubborn and depressing lack of fresh ideas in the music world pmx have inhabited in these long 6 years. Alternative music might have created a creative climate where anything goes, and so none of us really know where to go with any of it. We've lost our way. The vision has gone out of focus. We have determinedly ignored certain boundaries and where in the past that had given us good results, now it has simply left us ungrounded. It also spawned horrific popular genres such as "metal-rap." That's what we get for ignoring the rules. We create fertile ground for such ugly weeds to populate.

D R

I think a lot of the boundary breaking encouraged by the early days of alternative rock progressed from liberating to misleading. Somewhere in the process we lost our core identities. It's like we became so enamored of the slang we forgot how to speak the language. We forgot that it was the language that provided us with the means to speak our minds and let the world know the contents of our hearts. The slang provided more accuate expresions, but it was always based on a language with rules.

D

The backlash seems to be the onslaught of retro-rehashed garage garbage rock that's become central to today's "music for smart masses." Even the indie-rock world has finally been duped by dopey young bands who are making their mark trying to emulate rock stars they were too young

There's too much shit to wade through as it is and we know that if we do not come back with something important to contribute, then there's no sense in coming back at all.

I SAID DRAFT DAMMIT

posted by Amy Jacob
10/30/2002 02:46:00 AM Got something to say about it? Go on then.

Monday, October 28, 2002

 

We're back in the studio. So far, so good. So good so far.

posted by Amy Jacob
10/28/2002 08:27:00 PM Got something to say about it? Go on then.

 

Woke up this morning from not dreaming. This is Alex. One of the other two prosolarmechanics. Mike hasn't blogged in yet. I suppose I don't need to acknowledge myself; it's at the top of the blog already. Yesterday, I woke up dreaming about vintage sears bicycles and madonna. Today I just had a headache. Spent three days building a roof on my garage. it's not done yet. Although very rewarding and quite enjoyable, it has kept me out of the studio in the evening due to excessive tiredness. I like this blog idea. Think I'll write more later and when I have something to say. Right now, I'm just watching myself type.

posted by Alex
10/28/2002 10:50:00 AM Got something to say about it? Go on then.

 

Of all the things in the world that sometimes make me sad, I feel the saddest when I stop and realize that I will likely never live to see such stunning views of my own power. If you follow that link it will take you to a place at the NASA website called "astronomy picture of the day" and today's picture is a view of an odd earth formation in the sahara desert from space. If I could I would give almost every cent of my tax dollar to NASA. I don't know if I'd leave a penny for public schools, road care, medicare. I think understanding the universe is more important.

I suppose it's a very good thing there aren't too many people who think like I do in this country.

This is still a test.

It seems that although the blog is imperfect, it is actually working now. The real test remains - will I have anything to say worth posting? Will anyone give a damn? Does it even matter?

I thought this might be an easy extension of the mechanic's log, which is the now 5 year chronicle of (mainly) my life as a prosolar mechanic. The problem is that I don't have the time to care for it as I once did. I finished graduate school, got a job, a house, got married. You know. I have a life. So I thought that if I had a nice and easy way to add to it, I might be more inclined to take care of it. Sort of like keeping the fish food next to the fish bowl. Of course, if there aren't any fish in the bowl then you're just going through the motions. And I don't want to go through the motions anymore.

I spend most of my day thinking, and throughout the day I have a great many thoughts I want to share. Problem is having them when faced with such consuming procedures such as blogging or dealing with html code, whatever. Sometimes pen and paper are still just more natural. But then at one point in human history I'm sure that took getting used to as well.

Remember, this is still just a test.

posted by Amy Jacob
10/28/2002 02:03:00 AM Got something to say about it? Go on then.