Ambivilant Feelings

I find myself, more often than not, gushing a torrential outpouring of words. My thought process exists in complete sentences, so much so, that when I dream, I can not only read, but write as well. For me to admit that a topic is hard to talk about, is to say a lot.

Recently, I have been giving up hope on the written word. On communicating at all, really. I used to store so much on my communication abilities, of being able to explain anything, to persuade any view point, to talk to any person, that I naively thought only time would heal all wounds.

This isn’t really a blog to say that I’ve completely returned to the land of optimism. No, not when so many people pervert language and meaning. This is more of a check in blog, a blog to say that I’m still here, still having a good life, even if I don’t communicate as much.

My wife is the most important person in my life. She, more than anyone else, has taught me the importance of the quiet moment — the moments we share without talking, without interacting, sharing the same space, the same activity, the same energy.

Inside of this quietness, I’ve actually found a little bit more understand. I’ve found out that I’m an arrogant, pig-head asshole, but I’m working to change that. Maybe that’s why I haven’t written lately. The internet, more so than a regular journal, captures all of my indolence and arrogance. My post from over a year ago strike me as childish: the rants of a person I remember, but maybe not so well anymore. No so eagerly do I fight for causes. Not so blindly do I stick to viewpoints. I still have them, but I’m more likely to ridicule them than push them on others.

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Recently, the band has been doing some really incredible stuff. My impatience makes me think I’m running in place, when those around me are amazed at how fast it is going. In my own personal mythology, I was supposed to have been famous by 18, to have been dead by 26. At the age of 26 now, I am famous to my friends and family and that’s good enough. What I realized that I actually wanted, was to entertain. That’s what all the push for fame was about, to ensure a crowd every time I ascend the stage.

I claim that I want to pay rent by playing music, or writing, or whatever, but that’s because the stresses and dangers of the road, the starvation of the artist, the cravings for the spotlight, the breaking of my humility, the moment of illumination in the crowd’s collective face as we finally recognize the humanity in each other.

Walking Corpse Syndrome, the band I’m currently in, is turning a corner. We are having our CD release party this Sat. One in Deer Lodge and one in Missoula. I’ve contacted the papers and think that they might be doing a story on the band. More than anything, without even knowing what they’ll write, I feel gratitude. Metal is definitely a hard sell, and for them to return my pesterings, well, I feel very very grateful.

I’m no longer that kid that expected fame to be handed to me on a platter. I’m grateful for that, too. He was sort of a puke.

Random stuff and what not

I’ve been meaning to write a lot of posts lately, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.

I’ve been meaning to write about homeless people–specifically the scavengers of society. A couple weeks ago my wife and I saw a dude really sorting out the garbage, looking for stuff to recycle. Now, I know this a white person thing to think, but I couldn’t help feel proud that i was doing something. Here was this person making choices to support himself by digging through trash for recyclables. Not only was he weening trash from hitting the landfill, he was working for a living. Much better than drunkenly asking for change on the street. He was self sufficient (or at least to my deluded mind). We did, however, decide to shred every piece of paper before tossing it.

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I’ve also been meaning to write a post about the band. I feel I can write here, rather than on the website, since the website should be reserved for more official matters. We’re looking at booking for the studio for mid-March. We have the final round of the battle-of-the-bands on March 6th. Apparently, the winner gets $1000 cash, recording time, fliers, and a clothes certificate.

As all the other bands have observed either in their websites or in person: the metal/heavy bands made it to the finals more than likely on the sole strength of having the same set of metalheads voting our scene in. While this is awesome, as we will actually get paid for playing a show, our group of metalheads are not big enough to vote one band to win.

The competitive part of me really wants to win this shin-dig, just like I’ve wanted to win every game or contest I’ve entered. The other part of me realizes that if one metal band wins, the potential for scene jealously and fracture is an all-too-real possibility.

I suppose the best way to look at this would be that the metal scene is getting strong enough to vote our own into the finals of the contest. We’ll use this platform to try to expand the scene, maybe hook some people in that wouldn’t have ordinarily seen us.

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My mom’s kidney’s are failing/have failed. Basically they don’t work well enough anymore. Though I’ve known about this for a while, I have yet to write a permanent post about it. My mom, who reads this blog, wonders why. I guess I don’t know. It’s sort of a hard thing to write about. Writing is a means by which I can organize and elucidate my thoughts. My thoughts on this are relatively blank, as if the reality hasn’t sunk in or perhaps sunk in a while ago.

My mother, more than most people in my life, has always taught me to be self-sufficient. I learned how to cook and prepare food at about ages 6 or 7, to do laundry at 10, to get myself to school starting in the 1st grade. Her fear was that she wouldn’t be around forever.

I don’t believe in such a thing as an idealized childhood. To try to insulate a child from the hardships in this world delays any mechanisms to cope with hardships later on. My parents raised me how they thought best, and since I’m not a complete fuck up, I think they did a pretty good job.

They don’t know why her kidneys are failing. I’ve had lots of armchair doctors tell me to tell her what to do, whether it’s change her diet, exercise more, blah blah blah. They usually quit asking me about after I snap at them and ask how many years of med school they went through to diagnose a patient without even examining her.

I guess that I have fear too. Since they don’t know what caused it, the thing could genetic. Her siblings haven’t gotten it yet, but that doesn’t mean much since she’s the oldest. Maybe I could get it. I guess that’s what all fear comes down to, right? This could happen to me.

Me and the wife will be heading down to Denver when she gets her transplant to help take care of her and make sure she gets her medicine.

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I guess that’s really all for now.

Urban Blight

On West Broadway, an old building is about to be demolished. Originally it housed the Missoula City Water Works, or something like that. Covered in ivy and spray paint, the windows broken out, this building will be replaced by a Safeway or St. Patricks. Or perhaps it escaped its death sentence and I haven’t heard about it yet. Regardless, the sheds by it have been taken down. Even the parking lot across the street has vomited great chunks of asphalt.

I originally had a dream to buy that building. I would turn the offices into dorm rooms, and the large garage into a gallary/concert hall. Downstairs would be rented practice spaces. We’d have a communal kitchen, communal bathrooms, communal everything really. Anything to keep rent cheap and make it easier for the progressive art community to thrive in this gentrified city.

A lot of metal/progressive musicians in this town harbor dreams of some sort of concert venue. Some all ages place where the owner actually makes their money from the crowd and not the band. None of this band having to pay for security or sound or alcohol deposits. Just a place where the people can come and rock out without fear of retribution. I’ve only been to a few such clubs in my life.

It’s not that I mind progress that much. I love watching new construction. I adore skyscrapers and am thrilled with the tall buildings going up over town. When a city becomes dense enough, the added cost of driving can encourage more people to use public transportation. I personally live close enough to work to walk, but I would enjoy being able to take a bus when and where I want. Unfortunately, our buses don’t really run the times that I need them the most (i.e. at night and on the weekends).

I do mind progress when it happens to me. Recently our apartment building was sold. We were corralled into a new lease before notified that we will suffer construction all winter. They’re not really fixing anything, just added that colored metal siding to make the building look good. What slumlord would buy a building just to make it look more better on the outside? You would want a return on your investment, not just a continuation of the status quo.

My building, I realized, is being converted into condos. The whole city is being converted into condos. And in this rush to make money, these scum suckers are buying up most of Missoula and converting our apartments into condos. Why would anybody rent when they can buy? I’ll tell you why: because right now, buying costs way more than renting. Yes, I realize that’s the reason you’re converting my apartment into a condo, but I hope to Invisible Deity that this town explodes with condos and then suffers such a horrible slump that all these assholes lose their money. Not only lose their money, but lose their homes, cars, and all else and are forced to find a place to live in this overpriced market.

A city needs some kind of Urban Blight, or at least some section of town where the refuse can live. The North and West side are all but gentrified now. East Missoula has had a building boom. Even the Roosevelt area is getting fancy new housing. What’s the point of increasing the value of this property if it forces out the bottom tier from the city? And honestly where are we going to go? Further and further outside of the city, where the cost of gas will defray any savings in rent.

So, my generation is the one pushing to live closer to the city center. My reasons include being able to walk to work. Originally, it included the cheaper rent, but not so much anymore.

One of the workers, when asked by my wife, admitted that our apartments are being made into condos. This was after they cut down all the trees. I don’t know if I want to demand to be let out of the lease, to call fraud so that I can look for another place to live (some place where Lambros is not my slumlord), but I don’t think that I want to. I honestly just want to set up house someplace that I can call my own. Eventually it will be someplace where I can sound proof a room and have band practice. But that day is a long way off.

Finger-full

I don’t really know how to express what I feel about the show last Friday. It was utterly amazing. Eddie from Blessiddoom did such a kick-ass job putting the show together. There were more kids there than I’d ever seen at one of our metal shows. It took us a little longer than normal to set up, so we were a little late hitting the stage. That’s ok, since we only had 30 minutes worth of music.

Since it was our first show, I wore a suit and tie. Afterwards, some of the kids told me they thought I was lost. They were about to say, “Dude, the after school programs ended a couple hours ago.” LOL! I guess I’m finally getting old enough to mistaken for an adult. Well, goddamn about time! huh.

Anyway, when people saw that two drummers were setting up at the same time, they started talking. And when we started playing, they started moshing. After the first song, I asked how they were doing. Some cheered and some flipped me off. I said fuck you right back and got them chanting after me. Bill started the next song perfectly. I couldn’t have asked for better timing.

My cord popped out of my guitar a couple of times and I dropped my pick, but kept going like a champ. I forgot about the scarecrow I brought on stage until the end of the show. And by then, Chyme had already molested pretty bad. I hate getting sloppy seconds.

The energy of that show was amazing. Unlike anything I have ever really felt before. The closest I’ve come is our two Kalispell shows and our first Higgin’s Hall show when Kimo was running the club. The crowd was absolutely amazing. I think that a changing of the guard is starting to come. We’ve been playing around long enough that metal might be coming back into style.

All in all, it was a great way to sing my last show. We had thought that no one would come and we’d be playing to an empty house again. I want to be optimistic, but have to be careful as well. I remember Prokaryon’s first show as a full band. We played an open mic night at the Other Side. Even though we only played for a few people, mostly the owner and other open mic players, they first dragged their chairs close to the stage and then got up to dance. That experience poisoned some members of our band, since most shows never go that good.

Still, I could not have asked for such a good show for my last time singing. I hoped that my voice would carry through the entire show and it made it fairly well. My wife filmed some shaky video that I’ll get around to sticking on youtube.com or some place unaffiliated with the band. I don’t want it linked to the band because we will have a new permanent singer starting with our next show. He practiced with us for the first time yesterday (he was playing guitar before) and his voice is soooo much better than mine. His tonality is amazing. Screams, singing, he can do it all without so much as a hoarse voice afterwards.

Before I was sad that my voice gave out on me. I was desperate to make lemonade out of the situation. I just had to hear his voice, that’s all. I’m no longer worried about the future of Walking Corpse Syndrome. Yay!

Voiceless

I was eleven years old when I snuck into our basement to start watching MTV. Puberty was just beginning to set in and I liked the flesh show on The Grind. But this was back in 1993, when MTV used to play videos, so I’d watch. Salt n Peppa were shooping it up. I’m sure there was some other stuff, but I don’t remember so much. The video I remember was Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box.” It changed the way I looked at the world. The imagery, color saturation, the way the band dressed, the way Kurt Cobain screamed, the growl and whine of his guitar was unlike anything I had experienced in my Ace of Base and DC Talk CDs. It was a scene out of my darkest nightmares, the strongest passions of fear and retribution that crawled in my guts. But rather than cowering from people’s condemnation, Kurt flaunted his insecurties and gained true strength from it.

Of course, at 25 I know that things weren’t all as easy as that. It really sucked that Kurt killed himself: a course I thought I was bound to follow for so many years. But I made different choices, and I’ve got a slightly different outlook on life.

Still, it was Nirvana that inspired me to pick up a guitar two years later and write songs. To this day, the only tab book I ever bought was for Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”

I’m not a complete music freak. I’d consider myself more of a general artist than anything. I go from writing to music to some minor art projects to complement both. During high school, though I played in most any school related music project, I never got into an independent band. I was tempted many times, and some friends and I jammed once in a while. Speech and drama ate up most of my life back then. I had wanted to be an actor. I went to the state championships all four years in three different events. For two of those years, I wrote my own piece. I went to college to become an actor, but soon had different plans.

Acting didn’t offer me enough creative control. I always had to watch what I wore, what I said, and how I acted in case I offended some director or some member of the inner circle. Let’s face it: in real life, I’m mostly crass and I often don’t know when to hold my tongue. Or at least I didn’t back then. I had a teacher who discourage any freshmen from auditioning for plays, and then when confronted about it denied all the charges. I hated being a monkey on a string. Or in economic terms, I hated being part of the large supply of actors in this community. Then I realized that even when not in a play, I was always writing music. So I gave up acting and pursued music in my free time.

My first show I ever played was with a band I formed called “All the King’s Horses” (ATKH). We played a total of four shows before the drummer decided that we weren’t drawing enough of a crowd and left for greener pastures. I tried to find another drummer, but finding drummers in Missoula at that time was like finding a yellow lab on a leash. Anyway, I drifted around fairly dejected for a while, vowing to someday resurrect ATKH, but along came an offer to play for a celtic punk band called “Ceol Rapporrie.” I think it means “music bandits.” I could be spelling it wrong. I had never listened to much Celtic punk, and they tapped me for a bass player. After a while, I had so much fun with the group. I played four or five shows with them, including a St. Paddy’s day show. My future wife actually came to our last show. I sometimes forget that.

I can’t remember why Ceol Rapporrie broke up, but I continued to work with one of the guitarists on her own musical projects. She had recently been asked to audition for a metal band and didn’t feel that she passed muster, or something like that. She gave me a call and asked if I wanted to audition. I went to Wes’ apartment, screamed my throat sore, and was welcomed into the band. It was the first of many sore throats.

In ATKH, I had tried to “sing.” People would approach after the set and say, “Good music. Horrible singing.” I didn’t let it get me too down. I just worked on it during my own time. So, when I became the singer (I refused to play guitar since I wanted to run around on stage, besides, it’s hard to sing and play at the same time) I was ecstatic. I took full advantage to not stay in one place. The stuff I did on stage… I thought it was funny at the time, but apparently it’s become fairly infamous.

Anyway, the sore throats came more frequently. I tried warming up more. I researched which foods to eat and which to avoid. I tried on multiple occasions to buy singing lessons, but couldn’t find anyone to teach me.

The summer of 2005 hit me with a one-two-three punch. One: I had a long cold during July. It was during this time that I realized that warmer weather frequently brought out strep throat, a condition I’d had about twice a year since I was twelve (later I found out it was tonsilitus). I didn’t wait until my throat was healed before I sang again. I will forever remember that one practice was the best my screaming ever sounded. I thought I had reached a new plateau. Instead, I had reached a pinnacle. A couple weeks later we played a festival in Marysville, about an hour outside of Helena. Fire season was in full effect. Screaming into the smoke for an hour further strained an already weakened voice. AS was my custom at the time, I thought I did the right thing by nursing it with Coca Cola (caffeine is a no no!) A week after that, we played a bar show in Great Falls. Our gimmick involving playing Care Bears along with our set failed when our Goodwill VCR broke down. The static channels picked up Seinfeld, which is a bad thing to play to a bar full of people. The worse thing? My voice also failed. I could barely squeak out a melody, much less scream. That show was the most humiliated I have ever been, but I finished and then beat the hell out of that VCR.

A couple months of vocal rest didn’t help my throat. I got married, honeymooned in Europe, came back, and the throat was still sore. I finally scraped together enough money to see the doctor. Turns out that cold I had back in July never fully recovered. That doctor then informed me of tonsilitus.

My throat got better. I screamed less at first, and built more into it. We played shows again with renewed vigor. For a while our crowds got bigger, and then dropped off. In June, my throat gave out on me again. This time, I had insurance and went to a specialized doctor. He recommended getting the tonsils cut out. I went under the knife last July. Recovery was supposed to happen within a couple of weeks. In fact, my younger brother-in-law underwent the same surgery a few months earlier. He fully recovered in two or three weeks. Six weeks later my throat was still sore. The Missoula Independent profiled my attempts to gain a singing voice again. I played a very rough Metal Mania show and haven’t played a show since.

Now, with a new band, Walking Corpse Syndrome, we have a new singer. However, he joined only a couple weeks ago and isn’t all the way caught up on the songs. A friend of mine was in a pinch for a show (a band canceled without telling him) so I agreed to have WCS play the show. So, this is the last show that I will sing.

It’s been hard to make this decision. I’ve always wanted to sing more than I wanted to play guitar. But, if my voice can’t heal after nearly a year past the surgery, then it probably won’t ever heal enough to sing. I’ve switched over to guitar and have rediscovered my love for the instrument. Still, it’ll be hard to watch someone else writing the lyrics and pumping up the crowd.

…Paper, Scissors?

As you may or may not know from clinking the links to the right, I am the singer of a “metal” band. Metal, being a more “extreme” sub-genre of rock, has many many sub- sub-genres: power metal, death metal, black metal, numetal, alternative metal, etc. Prokaryon has always been in the alternative metal realm, more because we are “heavy” but not interested in “death” and also because we don’t “change tempo” or “time signature” “too much.”

Prokaryon was born in the Fall of 2003. You can surf our website if you want more details, but before Prokaryon, I was in a few other bands, the only other one that really attempted anything was a band I “fronted” call All the King’s Horses. All I have left of that band is a live recording at Jay’s Upstairs that wasn’t properly converted to digital audio from ADAT so it sounds “really really slow” or even “stoned.” We only played four shows before our drummer decided we weren’t drawing enough of a crowd and our bass player decided that he was too schizo to live.

Prokaryon played a lot of shows–not as many shows as other bands in the area. Hell, the Reptile Dysfunction could play circles around us, playing four shows in one weekend. But as far as metal bands, we did all right. We’d average one or two shows a month in the times that my throat wasn’t “effing up on me.”

We did a “little bit” of touring, going to Ronan, Kalispell, Helena, Butte, Bozeman, Great Falls, Laurel, and Billings. Our best shows were in Kalispell. Those kids knew what a show should be like. However, about half of the rest of the time, the shows were sub-par. I joke with my wife about my favorite metal dance: it involves standing in one place with your arms crossed and glaring at the band. Extra points if you tap your feet or bob your head. Though moshing can be fun to watch, as well, I finally understand why most people don’t do it. Moshing takes too much energy, and after a certain age, you don’t want to spill your beer.

But can I really blame the audience for refusing to interact, much less show up, when they hear the same sh!t they’ve always heard? At what point did rock (and metal with all the cascading subgenres) become more about keeping the faith than pushing the envelope? In my years of playing shows I heard much too often bands getting blasted for trying something different. H?ll, I even heard people get bashed for liking something other than metal. Years ago, I hung out with some punks, and it was a big coming out of the closet for most of them to admit that they liked country!! Though: (cough) only Johnny Cash. He was the original baddass. Then it almost became a contest to see who could have the weirdest closet musical fetish. We went through hip-hop, 80s pop, celtic music, 90s pop, country, 50 cent, big band, 00s pop, Sean Paul, Christina Agulara, etc. One of my favorite moments was cruising town with my friend in his SAAB. He has a tri-hawk. I have black eyeliner with matching fishnets. He’s more than likely a little bit drunk. I’m still a st00pid straight edge kid. And we’re both singing at the top of our lungs to Lords of Acid “Marijuana in your Brain“.

That was all before I joined Prokaryon and truly entered the metal scene. For the past few years now, I have worked my a$$ down into pencil nubs just to “try” to get people to come to the shows, much less get them to have fun at the shows. While the two main reasons will always remain the same as to which shows get the most people. In no particular order:

1) the more hot girls you can guaruntee, the more people will show up.

2)the more cheap booze you can pump, the more people will like the music.

Unfortuanatly, metal in Montana is slightly lacking in both of those commodities. We may have had an abundance in years past, but alas, no more. However, a third, important consideration is the music itself. I have noticed that hip-hop draws the greatest crowds in this country. I believe this is due in part to the inventiveness of the genre. Like disco before it, hip-hop encourages inventiveness over all else. Like punk, anyone can do hip-hop. Unlike most genres, talent is supremely rewarded.

Now, I’m sure the hip-hop scene works a lot like the metal scene, where it’s gotten corporatized and everything, but I have been to some “huge” shows of underground hip-hop. I’ve seen no name nobodies achieve overnight success because they can break a new beat.

I am supremely jealous of that. I would love to do that, to join that, to be that. However, I still want the high intensity of metal.

I will have my cake “and” eat it too.

Just keep tuned to Prokaryon in the future. We’ve already started working on some sh!t.