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.
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.
I went to South By Southwest for eight days and seven nights. It was wonderful and semi-dangerous. Like the bible, it was biblical. It started like this.
That was the last good cup of tar I'd see for days. During those days, my life was compressed to fit into these two folders, as it were.
I brought five shirts, five pairs of socks and underwear, a sweatshirt and pants. I also brought my computer, one book, a drawing tablet and a notebook, no magazines, and eight camcorders (more on that later). That white bag is from Japan. Thanks Jason. I love having ideas on airplanes. I spend so much time feeling like I'm getting somewhere; on an airplane, I know I'm getting somewhere. I left at 7 a.m. I learned that before lunch, when surrounded by 15 year-olds on an airplane, the best thing to do is order a vodka soda (I had a coupon for a free drink courtesy of my manager). They won't say anything at the time, but you know that later on the girls will be dreaming about you riding a motorcycle or having lots of friends on MySpace or something. The guys will just be dreaming about becoming someone like you. This is the first thing you see in the Austin airport. She's probably someone of historical importance, but to me she is just an enormous stern woman.This was the first picture I took in downtown Austin. Foreshadow-y, I know. The city whispers loud. On behalf of Pure Digital Technologies—the company that flew me to SXSW and paid for my food and transportation and housing—I had to oversee a booth at a party thrown by Adobe, the software company. Adobe bought a bunch of my company's camcorders and I repped the product. Adobe also had two bands play behind a half-pipe. And all the drinks were free. Pure Digital isn't uptight or anything, but it was tough to ignore the fact that the bar hosting the party, The Dirty Dog, got it's name for the photo booth in which women notoriously reveal themselves, often in pairs. Then they sign the photos, as though their semi-nakedness makes them celebrities. Between my iPhone and iPhoto, these two pics happenstance-ed-ly warped away into alternate realities of light and color. I tried everything: undoing edits and reloading the originals, but nothing worked. Feel free to ask me why this mutation occurred. I have many theories. This is what six strange hours in Austin can look like—if you're lucky. That last photo is The Don Juan from Juan In A Million. It's a breakfast taco that costs $3 and keeps you full all day. In Austin's gorgeous convention center, about 100,000 Legos tempted adults back into a blissful, morally-balanced child-like state. Elsewhere, alcohol tempted adults into morally-unsound child-like states. I think meat is better in Texas. The pictured BBQ was from Iron Works, and it was good. The best BBQ I had was at a catered video shoot for the Swedish pop princess Robyn, which I went to my second-to-last day in Austin (my camera broke that day and ate all my pictures). The premise of the shoot involved Robyn playing strip poker with a bunch of attractive actors (male and female). You can't go wrong knocking on a bright pink door. This mess wasn't very photogenic: it was called the "coronary." Somehow my cohort Brett Forman put this inside of his body without instantly becoming Marlon Brando just after filming Apocalypse Now. This is my friend Sunny (from the band Stiletto Formal).looking like a mannequin rather than real-live cellist.Then there's Kyle (also from the band Stiletto Formal). His ridiculous Meg Ryan haircut only looked good in this action photo. There's Jimmy. Merriam Webster has a word for this: Awwwwwwwwww. This picture preceded a genuinely great moment of recognition. I hadn't seen Kim Robinson in ages. He lives in Baltimore, but we were neighbors in Sacramento. Dude knew his shit. He loved to make an event out of sitting down and listening to songs, which is a rare and unpretentious tendency. The first thing he said to me in Austin (with a big smile on his face): "I told you not to wait in line!"
Autolux: one of the few bands left that out-references the reference points. Chaotic. Rupturing. Sublime. Attractive. I saw lots of good bands in Austin (RX Bandits, Grand Ole Party, N.E.R.D, Maps And Atlases, The Whigs, Duffy, and Audrye Sessions come to mind), but my camera can't really handle dark rooms full of moving bodies. Also, there's rarely a unique story to a photo of a band performing on stage, unless it's Rage Against The Machine outside of the Democratic National Convention or something. If you really squint you can see the man, the myth, and much of the legend. Mr. Foreman and I both decided to attend the festival a week before it began. He found us a nice studio apartment to sublet for a hell of a lot cheaper than any hotel (or motel). The proprietor of said apartment looked just like Zach Galifianakas, the comedian. Mr. F also procured free Chipotle coupons and an assortment of gnarly hangovers. And, between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m. he Photoshop-ed the following visual narrative about his (but also our) stay in Austin:First, he appears. Then he attacks! Then he accepts and befriends! Meanwhile, back in unedited reality... Here's Travis, who always looks eerily like Johnny Cash (if Mr. Cash had an iPhone). Forget about Lou Reed performing with Moby. Forget about R.E.M sitting next to your best friend. Forget about Vampire Weekend walking down the street like giant indie-rock Godzilla's eating less-hyped bands like grapes: This is the best photo of SXSW. Mr. Foreman and Michael Knox made me laugh my ass off for hundreds of hours straight. Had this happened, I wonder if I could expense it?More genuine excitement from Mr. Robinson. I wish you could see me. I was ear-to-ear at this, the N.E.R.D. show. Who wants to go to Glow In The Dark tour with me?So this entire festival is about promoting things: bands, labels, magazines, the people that promote bands, labels and magazines, vodka, iced tea, gum, eye drops. You name it, someone wants you to be aware of it. But no one grabbed my attention quite like this crew of pre-teens. I guess I can't remember what they were hawking, but at least they made an impression.This is the largest free burrito I've ever seen, much less consumed.I wouldn't wear this, but I agree with many aspects of it. Leaving the store that sold this shirt, Mr. Foreman and saw an incredible building in the distance. I took notice of these two window washers and began ranting about how mankind had yet to develop affordable robot technology for cleaning windows on tall-ass buildings. I'm pretty sure Mr. Foreman's response was something like, "I am soooo full." Then I looked closer. I was sure I could see through the building all the way up. I've never seen a thirty-storey building with a thirty-storey lobby, so I really didn't believe it. Then we went in (I had to use a nice bathroom, anyways). Sure enough the inside revealed two buildings with a towering lobby space. The elevators looked straight out of Blade Runner. This next picture is inside the building.Worst band name of SXSW: On the hit TV show Lost, this is what is called a "reveal." Where you start by looking at something totally awesome, like a polar bear skeleton in Tunisia or Evangeline Lily. Then you learn something important about the larger arc of the show. In this case the reveal began with 400 "Two Free Tacos" Jack In The Box coupons, which I took all of and passed out to all my touring (read: poor) friends. Then, when I daftly pan away for the reveal... ...You see the loneliest man at SXSW: Vampire Weekend's bored merch dude. Ha! But seriously, V. Weekend were unremarkable.
This girl (Justine Ezarik) is obsessed with The Flip camcorder, the product I hawked. I gave her a pink one. She has the Apple logo tattooed on her shoulder. I wonder if she's a shareholder.It's true: I drank a V8.
I dig this photo. I'm wearing Mr. Knox's $180 Spy sunglasses, that he got for free while I was being introduced to the guy that invented Guitar Hero. I guess the point is I'm jealous. Expensive sunglasses look great on me, it should say that on my wikipedia page. But Mr. Knox lost his suitcase in Dallas so it was better he conned his way into some free belongings than my spoiled ass. I don't have a photo of this (yet), but I modeled Ray-Ban's for a potential ad they want to do with "real people." I gave them a money shot: I was wearing my "sunglasses" shirt (see that pic with all the 10 year-old girls), and they put four pairs of sunglasses on my face and body. Matt Pinfield for Direct TV. This is Ryan from Audrye Sessions pretending to be defiantly carving the Van Halen logo into his desk. Already thinking about his acting career in terms of high school melodrama, which is a good call. Cute! This was taken at the RX Bandits showcase. RX Bandits rules. During one breakdown, the singer said, "music exists without the industry," which was provocative, but does SXSW exist without the industry? Meanwhile, I found these aviators sunglasses at the beginning of my second-to-last night in Austin, but the elements prevailed and they were destroyed between 1 and 3 a.m. Not unlike much of downtown Austin. A cab driver told me come Monday, you'd never know it happened. I'm glad I have the proof.
The Greater Mekong... is also home to striped rabbits, bright pink millipedes laced with cyanide and a rat that was believed to have become extinct 11 million years ago.
"If you love me why don't you let me know?"
