From the “About” Page on my other site…
Glass Animal (mems Kalpana, Ben Flash and his Boyish Good Looks, ex-ANOTHER)
I decided that if I wasn’t going to go all-out and make music for a living, I was going to make music strictly as a hobby. I cannot stand beginning projects and leaving them hanging or not really doing the best I can with them. Which is good news for you; it means a lot more free perks, whole records for free, basically a no-risk lifetime of fandom! Holy shit dude, you just hit the jackpot.
My wife and I are moving shortly from our comfortable home in Brooklyn to a new place in Philadelphia where I will study Music Therapy as a graduate student. I have seen the life of the traveling career musician, and I fully believe that my new route is way preferable, and much more rewarding. I will be working a lot on guitar, piano and voice, which can only make my future records better. Pow, Pow, you hit the jackpot twice.
I’m sitting up listening to jazz. I have just completed a really tedious overhaul of this very website. My internet connection is about to blow it for the third time in a row.
I am working on some new material, and I suppose this is a good place to tell you about it. There’s a song about stages of my life at 16, then 19, then 22, which is definitely the most autobiographical thing I have ever written. There’s one about a drunken car accident. There’s one really sticky-sweet new one about what it means to be close to somebody. There’s a bunch that I plan to donate to the Boyish Good Looks because the lyrics are so horrible and must be rewritten. And there’s a bunch that I have forgotten about, but I have a lot of notes, so I’ll remember.
There’s a lot of guitar songs, because I have been playing a lot of guitar. Every time I pick up the thing, I try to put my hands in a shape that I have never used on a guitar, which is resulting in a lot of new ideas. I’m learning about music theory as it pertains to chords for the first time, which has been pretty mind-blowing. I bought that collection of 100 essential classical music pieces from iTunes, though I have barely scratched the surface of it. And I have fallen head over heels for the Mae Shi.
I also have an MPC 1000 now, which is a sampler machine for beginning hip-hop guys. I used that in ANOTHER, and it is the answer to the biggest question I have had with my music: where the hell are my beats going to come from?
I really should thank Jessica Beechler and James Fullwood for making terrific music cassettes for me when we were 16. It was all their own music, and it was a really big deal. Whenever I think about it really hard, there are fiery paths that lead from where I am now to what I learned then.
And now, onward. With huge thanks for your attention,
Mm
