COLDPLAY

"If you love me why don't you let me know?"

As a child I was afraid of the city. Convinced that nothing small could survive when everything else was so big, I felt anxious. I remember thinking that driving over the bridge was like driving into a sleeping body, and that when an earthquake struck the body would collapse around me. I was a tiny kid.

Yesterday while walking up Market Street, a tiny woman cut me off and threw her hands towards my face, not intending to do more than scare me. I think she was fronting. She reminded me of that temporary fear of the massiveness of the city, and I saw that I wasn't concerned with the size, but with the lack of control.

When the 1989 quake struck I was playing Super Nintendo in Oakland. I was six. In one of my earliest memories, a thin tree shakes as unnaturally as the paned door I watched it through. I can still see the highest branches reaching down to the ground. I never really played video games after that.

Download "Violet Hill" by Coldplay.

Coldplay's WEBSITE.
Coldplay on WIKIPEDIA.

BRILLIANT RED LIGHTS

This is what it looks like when I'm doing what I want.

The greatest feeling I have known is feeling listened to. I mostly mean this non-musically. I relish those moments friends and strangers just pay attention. It goes both ways, I enjoy listening to my friends, sort of fascinating over their ideas and words.

The process of working backwards is understated in music history. My band is called Brilliant Red Lights—you can find an MP3 of our newest material at the bottom of this post. We just reinvigorated our personal web domain, www.brilliantredlights.com. On that domain are more than 70 downloadable links. These links download most of the songs, sounds, interviews, and demos we've created in over seven years together. In two clicks you could be downloading all sixty recordings in one file, or just and album, or just a song.

For my band, this is a grand example of working backwards. In 2002, we self-packaged our self-recorded music and handed out copies at shows. The idea was that people were busy and over stimulated, therefore we should offer something excellent sounding that could be easily obtained. To accommodate the maximum possible number of situations, we gave our music to anyone that asked and many that didn't. We had nothing to worry about, we just wanted to be listened to.

Having circled around many of the narcissisms and optimisms and breakthroughs and letdowns that writing songs has to offer, I can reassert my initial thought: the greatest feeling I have known is feeling listened to.

So, we posted all our music for free online. It felt liberating to set our webpage live last Tuesday, April 1. We let a few people know, and put up new music so our old fans and friends had a reason to check in. The response has been moving: in under five days we've serviced 500 individual downloads, all in all over 11 gigabytes of our band's music. These numbers include 150 copies of our new EP, and 75 copies of our last album. Even approximating conservatively, that's over 2,000 Brilliant Red Lights songs (at least 400 a day).

I can't mention these numbers with hurling a huge "thank you" out to anyone that's listened in. I also mean to encourage other musicians to remember what really feels good about making and distributing music. This experiment in sharing is so exciting and inspiring. To quote myself: it's undeniable.

"Tender Colors" video made by me.

Click to download "Tender Colors" by Brilliant Red Lights.

BRILLIANT RED LIGHTS' WEBSITE