Monthly Archives: April 2009

Scott’s Musical Journey Begins

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We still got "it."

We still got "it."

Tuesday night my bro Scott began his spring break visit to Chicago by joining me and Amy and friends at Fitzgerald’s open mike night.  It’s an interesting evening–everyone there seemed to know each other and play on each others’ tunes, making it more of a hoot than  a traditional open mike.  Still, we basically brought it.  Scott played a couple new songs.  Eric Z was there, and Stacey sang with me and Eric.  I did “Johnny Without June” and the Boss’ “Tougher Than the Rest.”

Wednesday we recorded demos for seven of Scott’s songs–six new and one from Goner.  One song might get built up and appear on an official CD of some sort in Scott’s future.  Meanwhile, I hope that either today or tomorrow we could record a quick cover and/or Zapruder Point nugget all quick-like, and I can post the results here.  So stay tuned…

Warner Brother

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“Even back in the 1980s (“my” day), when greed ostensibly was good, there was still a sense that the best and the brightest didn’t go to Wall Street. Lots of people did want to go, of course — there was a palpable thrill in the air when the investment banks came to recruit on campus — but I never had the impression that anyone was under the illusion that what was on offer was anything other than filthy lucre. You took it or you left it. But you didn’t go to Wall Street under cover of greatness. The whole culture hadn’t yet normalized the value system of men like the reptilian antihero Gordon Gekko. Tom Wolfe’s Masters of the Universe were hardly meant to be admired.”

–Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, from her New York Times blog.

Notes on a Re-Launch

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As a pimply adolescent, sometimes I’d be overtaken with an urge to tear all my posters down. I regretted the act almost immediately, and if I hadn’t destroyed the posters outright, they’d be back up within a week. I did this maybe three times throughout high school. The reason I bring this up is because I think a high-tech version of that urge lives on vis-a-vis my “online presence.”

I started a website in 2002/2003 in order to “promote” the re-birth of Zapruder Point as a three-piece rock band. Even with that crude smear of static pages, I sensed that the easy part in maintaining a website was in keeping content fresh. Before I learned how to post a song up, I promised myself to keep word flowing–news, gigs, recording, PROCESS. Since I considered myself a writer, it should be easy. Right?

Fair enough, and I did manage to basically keep my promise for two or three years. But then along came MySpace. Everyone was on MySpace, and it was such an irresistibly one-stop-shop for music and pictures that it threw into question the need for a “proper” website. So my posting slacked off for a few months, and then it slowed down to a trickle with the ascension of Facebook. Throw in the foolish notion that I had the time to completely redesign what you see here WITHOUT the help of WordPress…and there was nothing. Nothing but some PayPal buttons and a “see you soon” note. I was at a total standstill.

Recently my gal Amy put up a blog to chronicle her creative endeavors and inspirations. (She trucks in cuteness. You should check it out.) I was skeptical at first—she already had a Facebook account and a store on Etsy. What did she need a blog for? But as I read her posts, I started to get it. And I became a little envious, missing the ad-free, way-over-140-characters rambling you can do on your own site. And with other bloggers, too, my experience as an end-user had changed. Facebook and MySpace became heavily-sponsored, funhouse worlds I visited to kill time and have a laugh. By contrast, my combined RSS feed (via Google Reader) was where I went to read up on people and projects I cared about.

So with all that in mind, I’m back. Maybe the posters will stay up longer this time. I certainly hope so.

At Fitzgerald’s Tuesday 4/7

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Just wanted to let you know that my brother Scott is going to be visiting next week, and since we’re both entertainers, we’ll be taking our act to Fizgerald’s open mike night this coming Tuesday in Berwyn. I’ve gotten a semi-firm confirmation that Eric Z and Stacey Earley will be signing up to perform, as well. I encourage YOU to do the same, or just to drop by, say hi, and take in the tunes and that inimitable Fitzgerald’s atmosphere. Signup at 8:00, open mike at 9:00. And I understand it’s going to be in the “big room,” though I may be wrong there.

Directions:
http://www.fitzgeraldsnightclub.com/map.html

Breathing in Digital Dust

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(Click here to visit Rotary Ten on Bandcamp.)

So a few years ago, my old friend and bandmate Greg gave me a box of cassettes to sort through. Some of these were “official” releases by our old band, Rotary Ten, and some were board recordings of live stuff…and radio interviews…and practice space recordings…and acoustic sketches… It was a heavy box.

I took the box home and found some software that would convert all that tape to AIF (uncompressed) format relatively quickly. I got to work, with the aim of surprising Greg and Scott (my brother, also in the band) with a ridiculously exhaustive “Rotary Ten Box Set” just in time for the holidays. I didn’t really take the time to mix or polish the stuff, just cut the audio files into tracks and grouped them chronologically by cassette release. The result was an 8-disc monstrosity, including three double-disc versions of cassettes that were initially, at their longest, 8 songs.

Like most creative folks, I find my early work to be pretty embarrassing. So needless to say, I had to take a years-long breather from listening to any of it again. But I remembered being intrigued by the arc of our progress, as songwriters and performers. And, surprisingly, I found myself more into the poorly-executed, super-early stuff from late high school / early college than I was into the post-grad stuff.

Before any of us were legal, while we still lived with our parents (at least during breaks), we just wanted to sound like R.E.M., and our romantic heartache had a sweet, sad tint to it. We attempted a jangly sound in spite of not having a guitarist, and we leaned on traditional song structure, with plenty of vocal harmonies and a fairly clean approach.

But things changed after college, and though there is no doubt we learned to sing and play better, there’s a sort of claustrophobic, imploding quality to the stuff we were writing. Grunge was in full swing that year (1993-94), and I think in general it was acceptable to be as loud and negative as possible. But while we mainly trucked in we-get-it angst, we got very good at it during that grueling upstate winter, and the live tapes from the period bear this out.

All of this is just one member’s opinion, of course. But slowly I’ve been compiling two succinct/distinct discs. One compiles the best of the early, sweeter Rotary Ten (with drummer Brian Schulenberg). The other compiles the best of the later, angrier Rotary Ten (with drummer Chris Solt). Stylistically, there is overlap in each direction (“I Am in a Coma” is not a happy song, and “Furious” has some of the jangle of the early stuff), but I’m pretty pleased with the outcome.

Plus, from a sonic standpoint, I’ve taken the opportunity to discover that Garageband CAN be used to “master” songs–just basic leveling out and EQ-ing, but the difference is, so far, amazing.

Still, however compiled, remixed, or re-contextualized, I can’t seriously imagine anyone who wasn’t there at the time being interested in this stuff. If you’re one of those people, cool. If not, you’ll have a chance to preview before you buy, as is the going practice here on the site. Stay tuned….