the MH Post

I've thought about this, about posting this, thousands of times. Probably quite literally - two or three times a day, even now, and so over the last say, 5 years esp., = roughly 5,000x.

And every single time I have thought about it, I've also wondered if I would have the whateverwithal to do it, but as I type this, I think I'm finally there...

So the "MH" in the title of this post is Mental Health, and it's telling because that's even how I labeled the doc on my computer, MH Post, almost like it was code not only for things I don't wanna talk about, but for things I don't even wanna see in myself. Which I guess, brings me to why I am talking about it & about my own experience with it over the last decade esp...

why doing:

First, it's not about me per se, and I'm actually not putting it out there for the hug-mojis (truly appreciated as those are). I'm actually doing really fine now these last few years, for a lot of reasons. Truly.

But I know that there are a lot of people out there who are struggling, who continue to, struggles similar to these, to mine. I can see it (or think that I can) in some of the people I meet or already know, in family or in friends, in other people in music etc.. But I also know that I miss the signs too, or miss spotting the extent of it all, as w/ one of my brothers who we lost during the pandemic due in part to exactly these same sort of struggles. At the same time, and I can't tell for sure, I have a feeling that maybe people that meet or know me have no idea what's going behind the visor, that I've had similar problems (I really, if I'm honest, have no idea at all how I come across - it could be that my deals are completely self-evident - maybe none of us do..?).

So if my sharing some of this can help anyone at all, and possibly go in some small measure towards removing even just a little/more of the stigma around all this, then this feels like my one chance and avenue to put some good, something positive, out there in the world.

And sure, I’ve done benefit shows etc. for various causes, which is doing good in the world. And I know one could say that even just making & releasing music is doing good - and I agree in general on the vital value of art. But I also know that there's some vestigial part of me, sad as it sounds, that still likes when people say&write nice things about the music or clap at shows - baby happy! And I want to be able to do something good that doesn't involve, in short, charles-applause as payment.

why now:

And so only doing it now, not really as part of an album rollout, but partly because due to that album rollout, this is the probably-brief period in which I might have the most eyes on it, where it might do that most good (and partly because I'm only now working up the courage to do so). So using the opportunity with whatever attention is shone this way in the brief period of prep for the album release, to be able to say, 'this has happened to me too. You're not the only one, even as I know it can feel like that'.

so in my case...

root causes:

In my case, the stresses that led here were compound, a combination of poor choices playing out (both in career-life in general (music, music-as-career, band stuff) and this album-recording specifically), in combination w/ personality, personal history, my own over-packed set of internal Tourister baggage etc..

I know the myeloma drugs, esp. the steroids I was on for the first year or two of treatment, def. did not help (in hindsight, I also think I may have been more freaked, denially so, about that whole thing, in a way that I didn't actually feel day-to-day at the time. I was pretty upbeat about it all then - and now - it just didn't really affect me. In fact it made me almost happy to go into treatment every Friday because it meant I had an out on having to work on the record&music! You know your career/life choices are not going well, or that you've fallen into doing it all wrong, when the day spent doing cancer stuff is the one you look fwd to each week - ha.

After years of the stress of the album-making going badly, and working that around the at-home parenting (i.e. working too late into the night), things reached something of a give-point. It's oddly hard for me to remember exactly when, I think because all of this progresses so incrementally or at least did in my case. But I know the 2017-2018 school year was key - that's the year our youngest-of-three started pre-k, which meant that for the first time since 2008, I had the house to myself and a fairly consistent & solid 5-hour day, 5 days a week to work (just a quick aside about the album (so about me), the bulk of the final music you'll hear on it is from school years, fall 2017 to spring 2019). But what I hadn't counted on in having the house to myself, was a profound depression rolling in like a clumsy scene change in a school play. Or maybe it was having home to myself, and knowing the babies were quickly becoming not-babies and were already gone into the schooling-industrial complex, to never fully come back, that allowed a pot that had been simmering to boil over.

So to the point above, in my case, for years, how I spent my allotted time & efforts was in making music, one ridiculous record actually, and that served both as an escape from, and a cause of, a veritable tasting menu of mental/emotional health issues (depression, self-loathing, self-harm, ending-it-ideation, etc.).

the particulars:

It started fairly small and harder for me to spot at the time. For a couple years, I went nowhere that wasn't the four-block loop running from our house to our children's grade school and back again..pretty literally, 360-some days/year.

Later it became returning home to hours on the couch after the school drop-offs, often crying out the morning. Tellingly, I fell into the habit of 'rewarding' myself with one episode of the Twilight Zone (orig. series, I'm not an animal) before setting up mic's to record or whatever. I'd google "Twilight Zone Episodes" to check the original air-date of each and find one that corresponded with that day's date (there were five TZ seasons, so there's usually one that lines up, or close enough, esp. during the school-year since tv shows generally didn't air in the summers back then). And I'd reflect on all the say, October 4ths that had happened since, most of which I was alive for, what I'd done with them etc. (Oct. 4th, 1963 being the classic "Steel" episode, by-the-by).

After watching, I also took to reading up on that day's episode (Wikipedia or IMDB) and to find that almost all of the actors, many of whom for which that ep. of Twilight Zone was career apogee, were dead was of course not surprising. But somehow learning that many/most of them died decades after that zenith, many/most right near Hollywood, only made things worse as I pictured them waiting by the phone for another 40 years, for the call from their agent that another/better offer had come in. Keeping at it, like a Bissell on a wrens record - ha. I'm sure it wasn't like that, that they each had full rich lives (god, I hope) but that's how it played to me due to - and that sad routine as well as anything shows - where my thinking was at then.

At the worst of it, I was engaging in what I guess I can only bring myself to half-name as 'ending-it ideation’, and I enjoyed the sweets of self-harm (when life comes to shove I’m apparently given to self-punching, like the office scene from Fight Club except I don’t leave with a full severance package and a computer).

the whole thing in one bonkers paragraph:

At some point, sort of at the tail-end of the worst of it (so maybe around 2019 when work on the album was finally finishing..?), someone asked what the album was about. I just came across my answer the other day, looking for something else, and it encapsulates my complete panicked mania at the time, why it was all so hard and took so long, the toll it took mental health-wise, financially etc.:

It's also not a bad new band-bio...

"..if your goal (dear listener) was to ridiculously try to make the absolute best thing you could do, in your whole life, a recording in this case, and better than everyone else making them (that you've been positioned to unwittingly compete with for attention/money/etc.), and you didn’t start until your late-40s and it took into your mid-50s to finish…like a novel…and pursued against most current stylistic standards…and did it at-home, on pro-sumer gear, completely by yourself but simulating the interaction of a whole band that wasn't there, playing a song that never happened, in a magical room that doesn't exist, (except in the speakers), piece by dumb piece...and having to undo most of every single week's progress because it wasn’t actually working musically...filling hundreds-to-thousands of gigabytes of hard-drive space with failed versions en route, because you knew going in (and confirm over & over along the way) that you’re not talented - not really - and instead rely on plain dumb mule work...and that that comic amount of labor is making you miss your children growing up right in front of you, even as you're the at-home parent, but an exhausted & therefore lousy one much of the time due all of this, because you’re busy trying to make crappy rhymes in your head or re-do the chord progression to the songs ABOUT missing those children growing up, while they’re actually climbing the playground right in front of you as two-years-olds (now ten-) or whatever...the all-or-nothing just as you’ve always done…and taking the ext. hard drive & headphones on every single family vacation for 10 years to “get precious work done”...all while making no money on any of this, year in&out, and while still incurring pretty real med-expenses as your spouse foots the bill for your hobby-goal (and everything else)...but with that classic music industry carrot of an eventual payday that always comes "right after THIS round of work…no, really"…while packing on a good 25-30 lbs. due all that sitting at the recording desk...all of which leads you down a mental health decline that humiliatingly culminates in the last couple years w/ self-harm, and for the first time, actual ending-it ideation on the couch...

…would you do it? Would you keep at it to the end?

Well...would ya, punk?

haa…that’s what the record’s about."

(that's supposed to be a Dirty Harry quote/joke at the end).

but i'm fine now..

I should restate that I'm doing fine now, great even, increasingly over the last four years or so.

Part of that is due to work stuff (i.e. the record done and that no longer governing my life in the same way) and part is getting out of what might be somewhat unkindly but not inaccurately called a bad relationship. And part is no doubt the lack of steroids. Seriously, young people...the drugs.

But part is that much of the way back for me coincided with the start of lockdown in the beginning of the pandemic. So even as so many people had the hardest time of their lives, between isolation and losing loved ones, and while we had both of those too, my world during those first three months was completely reset into a recurring Groundhog's Day of routine and repetition, very quickly an increasingly happy one, of getting the children on&off Zoom classrooms etc., all going to bed at the same time (i.e. me not staying up late for precious 'work'), that completely recalibrated everything for me, or at least started that process.

outro:

So there it is. Now you know. When we meet, you'll know, and it may be in the back of your mind. If so I hope it's because life is, or can be, exceedingly difficult and you've felt that too (just hopefully in not-too-terrible ways) and you recognize in me, another just like you and that we're all in this together.

I think I'll hand off the closing words to John Richards, the KEXP person who many of you prob. know, and his ever-message which I think about often, 'you are not alone'.

And you aren't.

the "Week I've Waited For For About 20 Years" post

Hey, welcome to the "Week I've Waited For For About 20 Years" post - ha. Nothing major here quite yet, in this post/tweet per se, but here's what's coming up this week:

This Friday, I'll be announcing the new 'band'/project (and so new social media(s)/website), new label, new record and 1st single, along with a bunch of nifty related goods&projects etc. all of which I'm sorta bamboozled are actually happening, but of which I'm very - and increasingly - psyched.

And the vinyl of that first single (b/w two b-sides no less) will be available to pre-order Friday as well. Bonkers, I know. This also happens to be the next official Bandcamp Friday, and after all these years of watching from sidelines, I've gotta admit that I'm more than a little happy to be participating.

In the meantime, I'll be posting a few related things Tues-Thurs. this week (mental health stuff, finally addressing the band break-up a cool two years later (albeit fairly briefly), a couple other things), not so much as part of any album rollout but more while I briefly have folks' attention.

Assuming that's of limited interest (which it prob. should be..ha), see you Friday...

And thanks as always,

charles.

Meadowlands-20th-Anniversary-Stuff-You-Prob.-Didn't-Know #6: She Sends Kissesoterica

1. Exemplifies sabotaged-first-chorus and non-repeating-chorus principle (see last week's meadowlands-stuff-you-didn't-know-or-honestly-,-care-about post #5)

2. The chorus, geekily and non-interestingly, prob. my only that modulates to harmonic minor (D harm. min. in this case, relative to the F maj. the song's mostly in (see Bridge below))

3. The title is derived from a typo of the orig. title, She IS Kisses, by one of the other band geeks, when we were making an early version of it & other songs for a demo cassette for various labels, in the year or two preceding starting the meadowlands (so c. '97/'98). I preferred the 'Sends' to the "Is" and so wrote the final lyrics more around that.

4. Relatedly, I was also more than happy to change that orig. working title because it came too close to giving away what I modeled the chorus on (have I mentioned how I hate choruses yet)..."she is...as sweet as Tupelo Honey..". There, now like me, you'll never be able to not hear that when the chorus goes by.

5. The 'accordion' sound on intro & early v's is actually a dated-even-then guitar synth. Ok, technically it was actually my regular guitar with a late-'80s/early-'90s guitar synth set-up, a Roland GM-70 if I remember right, that a friend had perma-leant me. It had a hex pickup (so basically a pickup w/ a separate readable output for each of the six stings, hence 'hex') that mounted iffily under the strings by the bridge; that connected to an equally awkwardly-guitar-mounted rectangular interface thing that had four knobs to enable controlling four main assignable parameters per poorly-chosen patch.

That in turn ran a separate cable (so in addtion to one's regular guitar cable going to pedals/amp) to a large & archaic single-standard-19"-rack-size voltage-to-midi converter box thing. And that in turn could be patched into a synth, in this case, one of Kevin's also-even-dated-then '80s synth modules.  You can see that here: https://www.joness.com/gr300/GM-70.htm

In hindsight, I wish I hadn't tried to get the Springsteen 2nd album effect (not only my favorite of his, my favorite period) and instead had gone for a different, weirder more unique sound that took it out of the nostalgic trap but gave it the same effect.

6. Similarly, the harp sound that takes over for the first (inst.) chorus is the same guitar-synth set-up, this time driving a dated '80s harp patch, which again, if I remember right, is the sound I wrote that arpeggio part on. Possibly easily played on an actual harp (I wouldn't know), more fiendishly problematic on a guitar, especially while singing, especially if you're me.

7. The Bridge, like some of my other dumb bespoke bridges, is an unlikely 20 measures long (it's really that it's sorta three times around the 8-chord block, the 2nd/middle time it's cut in half to 4 measures ("I fired replies back gun by gun"). With a crap-load of chords & couple modulations. You know, just like how the Beatles are always talking about how some song or another "then goes to the middle twenty" - ha. It also modulates first to the IV key (so Bb Maj.), then to G Maj. (basically the old parallel, as opposed to 'relative', major/minor chestnut), then sorta sneakily back to Bb major although it's intentional vague, finally borrowing a V chord (C) to get us back to F Maj. and the way home.

8. Speaking of, there's lyrical sorta near-palindrome in the bridge that I had a twinge of misplaced pride every time I sang (ha) - "our shore-town knockdown sure / was fun"

9. The very last two-part harmony was me trying to Bowie, prob. Five Years specifically, which I don't think people spot but I do a lot (ha).

10. Speaking of Springsteen & his 2nd album esp., while this, like most of the songs on the meadowlands is 'not' autobiographical (another geeked up topic for me), it was my first try to reconcile writing a song based in/near the south Jersey shore town I grew up in, Ocean City in this case, w/ a feeling that had prevented me from doing that previously - chiefly, that Springsteen had done it first & almost certainly better. My liberation finally to do so came from hearing the pre-Hold-Steady Lifter Puller album and thinking, 'oh yeah, one CAN write about this stuff..'

Serves one. Enjoy.

Meadowlands-20th-Anniversary-Stuff-You-Prob.-Didn't-Know #5: the avoidance of choruses

Have I mentioned how I hate choruses or at least hate writing them? Or really, it's that, with the way the band worked since the '90s - i.e. finishing songs after they're recorded rather than assembling in-person beforehand and then recording 'that' - I guess I came to hate hearing the same dumb section go by hundreds upon hundreds of times (song depending) while I worked on it. So as with these other posts, it probably didn't register that most songs have either no chorus, or at least no first chorus...almost...

Also, I'm sorta defining a Chorus (abbr. 'C') as being:

A. that section of the song that the verses build to (way to define something by what it's not, charles);

A-and-a-half: since the '60s is almost never the first section in a song (so as opposed to "[brrrrnnnnnng]....it's been a Hard Day's Night..."

B. tends to repeat at least a few times in the song, i.e. is the same mel. & chord progression & use the same lyrics every time

C. tends to use/shout out the song title

1. Gilt House: technically DOES have a chorus ("and i'm nowhere near" etc.), or at least a second section - we'll count it

2. Happy: it is one enormous verse over & over, chorus finally enters (with only the orig. chorus' back-up voc. now serving as main melody) at 4:09, then done.

3. Kisses: 1st C. is instrumental, 2ndx I put the ld. vocal waaay in the background sorta to the L. None of the remaining C's have the same words, my standard m.o.

4. Exhausted: breaks my own dumb rule A-and-a-half above, opening with the C but it's essentially instrumental with just the b.u. voc. On the remaining C's I replaced the vocal melody on the main 1st lines with a baritone guitar just playing it, in part 'cause I hated the words to that line: "[but]..I-I'll never give up [this boy is exhausted]" etc.

5. Hopeless:  the C to this one, for better and worse, is my writing/doing and I was so psyched at the time of having done those guitar parts, esp. the constantly-cycling '3 quarter note against 4/4 time' hemiola one on the R, that I just wanted to hear them by themselves. So..1st C is instrumental.

6. Pastor/Nun: C. presented properly, per recording tradition

7. Thirteen Grand: this one also has proper 1st C but Greg, after the fact, chose to title this one Thirteen Grand, diff. than what he's singing &naming after a line in another song, which I continue to applaud.

8. Boys, Who Will: 'will' that is play the C first (unlike my defining rule A-and-a-half above) but it is instrumental, so we're right on course/chorus. Goes a step further in that C2 is ALSO instrumental (keeping 'em wanting more. Or even any...ha)

9. Ex-Grrrr: this has choruses and first C is intact but follows the breaking-of-rule-B rule, i.e. words are different every C

10. Per Second squared: even setting aside all the variations on this, at one time the whole thing was sung, with a proper (if terrible) melody etc., in the end I asked Greg to sing the C mel. which is reverbed and pushed to the back as essentially the back-ups now. But it still sounds 'chorus-y' to me, so..

11. Choose Sides: none of the C's have the same words

12. 13 Million Months of Work: none of the C's have the same words

13. Not What You Planned: as in the opener, there's a chorus, two of them in fact even given the song's brevity, so we go out of this world as we came in, with tradition.

Meadowlands-20th-Anniversary-Crap-You-Didn't-Know #4: the release date: wasn't Sept. 9th

[pasting this in from my reply to someone 'cause I gotta run out to a doctor's appt.]

It's essentially hair-splitting and meaningless re: the release date for a record for which we initially only pressed a thousand or two copies (?) w/ Absolutely Kosher, and even those, only on cd (it was 2003 after all, the iTunes store was only a couple months old, streaming was nearly a decade away and vinyl was still pre-resurrection). And I'd have to look back at a 20-year-old calendar, but in short, back then, for whatever reason (prob. some hold-over from industry-marketing of 78's or something), release dates were always on Tuesdays. But I wanted it to be on a Friday in part because at that time, if you were lucky enough to get a 'news' mention, on say a pitchfork etc., on a Friday, the piece would often hang around on the front page through that weekend, earning bonus miles.

And because we were initially talking just a few thousand copies, Cory/AbKosh, didn't especially care, but he did need to officially follow the then-standard protocol of a Tuesday release date, at least on paper, if only to draw a clear commonly-followed line in the sand that no one would be able to make it available for sale it early, in theory effectively pitting one retailer against another.

So it was actually the friday before or after that, I think after, which makes it..the 12th? Happy anniversary!

The other way of counting the release date is from the record release party/show, which I can't find online looking quickly, but was weeks later, at the Mercury Lounge with Palomar.

Meadowlands-20th-Anniversary-Crap-You-Didn't-Know #3: the twelfth-and-a-half song.

Coming out of 13 Months In 6 Minutes, there's this other song that briefly pops up, settles in & immediately begins fading out. It doesn't have a name and there's obv. no start ID/track number. And sorta like the accidental radio-preacher recording (yesterday's story) at the start of Per Second Second, the drums that come in to seemingly play along with this song were what was actually already there, on the tape almost a minute after the end of the basic tracks of 13 Months, the remnant of some other song's take that was tried and (mostly) discarded. Listening now, it sounds like it might've been an alt. take of Ex-Grille Confection.

When I'd have this one up on blocks to work on, & I'd be writing/recording guitars or bass or whatever, the ADAT tape would reach the end of the song, sometimes I'd continue playing, working out whatever part I was doing at the time & this orphaned drum track would come in and start playing. Over time, I began to play along with it & eventually gravitated to playing the chorus to an older song I'd never recorded along with it each time it came around.

Eventually having decided to create a new 'song' by adding this old chorus over the drums, the difficulty was in connecting them (the 13 Months song end & this drums-only 'song' w/ the new/old chorus). They're almost a minute apart & are at different tempos. And because this was ADAT not computer (see meadowlands trivia post #1 from the other day if you're feeling too awake & non-drowsy), there's no click track, no way to visually see the pending orphaned drum-entry on a screen or to cut/paste/move it earlier.

So I spent a good amount of time moving between writing a 2nd section (that comes first, the two oblique guitar parts (the one goes up, the other down & the eventual vocals double those)) & figuring out an arrangement that worked connecting the two songs, while navigating the tempo difference. That was actually the hard part. Recording one guitar straight through to act as the breadcrumbs took a LOT of tries (ha) but at least it was closed-ended work, i.e. it was clear when it finally lined up & worked. The whole thing, as I remember took me a week. Jesus.

The post-mortem: so listening just now, you hear the two-part guitar come in at 5:39, play its figure 1x in tempo w/ the 13 Months song, then play it a 2nd time (at 5:46) but beginning to speed up to meet the oncoming faster train of the eventual drums-only song. At 5:50 there's a third time through, now w/ a later-added rhythm guitar fading in to create the illusion that this was all 'supposed' to happen, joined by tambourine (I also added after to patch the hole to the drums-only, furthering the dumb illusion).

That's one verse down (ha...are you filled again with regret that you've read this far?). At 5:55, 2nd x through the verse, now w/ vocals & at 6:11 the micro-chorus starts as those drums finally settle in for the missing song/take and everything immediately moves to fade-out.

Exeunt omnes.

Of all the ridiculous work I did on the record, this is one of the things of which I'm hilariously most proud. And because I never printed them, and because someone was asking yesterday, here are most of the words to that whole connector-y song:

Maybe that's enough / there may be faster guns / maybe I give up //

Maybe money isn't coming / maybe last ditches are done /

Maybe married counts as running / then ready?, let's run together... //

the last line, I just can't remember & can't tell. Might be "I'm going back in time"

Tomorrow, shorter, promise.

Meadowlands 20th-anniversary behind-the-scenes trivia story #2:

That preacher dialogue that comes in at the very end of Ex-Girl Collection and connects into Per Second Second, mostly out of the left speaker, is actually not a sample dropped in there as you might assume (which was super common in say, the '90s, less so by the time this record was finished).

It's technically not at the end of Ex-Grille Confection, it actually exists at the beginning of Per Second Second and that was one of the few songs that I didn't use my same amp set-up on (more on that trivia later), but instead, mic'd up a Marshall half-stack in the basement, possibly with a guitar wireless unit (tough to recall, it's pushing 25 years at this point).

And because we were living back in Secaucus at the time, on Huber St. near one of the fenced-off swampy areas that hosted a number of radio transmitters for NYC-area stations*, ...(*and one in a very long list of environmental factors I used to wonder about, whether it had contributing to my developing myeloma. But it's an impure modern world and it could've been a lot of things - ha.)...in writing & tracking the guitars on that song, my guitar/amp/mic combo just picked that up, on a Sunday if I remember right, an actual sermon being delivered & broadcast live, so I hit record and captured it.

The sorta crazier part is that that portion of the sermon is roughly as follows: "mary went to the tomb of Jesus...just to be there / but how when she went early, she found something strange had happened.../ the stone was rolled away - and by the way, by the way...god did not have to roll that stone away for Jesus to come out"

And then it goes straight into Per Second Second which is, while somewhat of a throw-away song lyrically, essentially about this dream i had where I was shot and died, Jesus pulls up in a very tricked-out late-model convertible to 'gather me home', that sorta thing.

I don't think anyone's ever noticed or at least pointed it out to me, but at the time I was completely bamboozled at the timing & coincidence of it all, and thinking about it again now, still sorta am.

meadowlands 20th anniversary story time: the erase the meadowlands master tapes story

It's funny, for a long time I'd had in mind the notion of doing a long post, or series of posts, on dumb trivia you prob. didn't know about the meadowlands album ('you' being the dozen+ readers in theory) and pictured myself trotting out amusing anecdotes about this song or that. But then I've been so busy this past calendar year (regular life + going back to set up release of this next album now) that I completely forgot about it until today!

There are a few stories I don't think I've old-man'd about, so I'll post a few more shorties tomorrow, the apparent 20th anniversary of the album (actually even that's its own trivia-the album release date was not actually Sept. 9th - ha). This one though, that "erasing the meadowlands' master tapes" story, is 'true' w/ an asterisk (the * being that it's only mostly true due to the album being made on ADAT's) and is both long AND boring (ha)...

I've prob. prattled on about it before but it's relevant here because of the nature of ADAT's & the positively ancient form of ADAT's back-up/archiving. For the members of the audience not in bands in the '90s, ADATs being this sorta revolution that happened in home recording straight through the decade, for better & worse - better 'cause it brought high-quality multi-track recording, in this case early digital, to home studios at relatively budget prices (I think we paid $2000 for our first 8-track ADAT in '93?) And also better 'cause it was modular so you could connect one to another ($2000-budgets allowing) and thereby grow to 16- or 24-track, which is what we did.

But worse in that it was both digital AND tape, a VHS tape, in fact. So picture every VHS movie you had (or your parents had, younger set) & how if you rewound it to rewatch a scene like even twice, it began to get glitchy in spots. Glitchy when you're watching Trading Places is an annoyance, glitchy when you're depending on perfect reads to sync one machine to another was disastrous.

So the workaround was that I had to make digital copies of every tape as I went, 'cause they were constantly, over the four years making the record (1999-2003), being eaten. Since there were 3 ADATs playing in sync at all times (8 tracks per machine, totaling 24 sync'd tracks), that meant every "tape" was actually 3 tapes (i.e. one 8-track VHS tape per ADAT, if that all makes sense so far (regretting you clicked on Capt. Geek Answers No One's Actual Question yet?)).

Soooo...there were a few 'takes' of each song tracked winter/spring of 1999, I think filling 3 'tapes'-worth total - but remember that's actually 9 tapes total (one per ADAT). Then w/ back-up copies of each, and copies of those copies as they failed, you quickly ended up with a literal bookcase of glorified VHS tapes, all labeled things like "Dig. cc of Dig. cc #1, Tape 1, T-T8" etc. (trans.: 'digital copy of Digital Copy #1 of recording-session Tape #1, tracks 1 through 8). And all that capping out at about 30- or 40-some VHS tapes total.

So that's meadowlands 4-year recording on ADAT and only relevant here because with erasing them, the sheer number of all those digital back-up copies and the nature of ADAT recording is the alluded-to asterisk above.

In the last year of working on that record, I rarely left the house except to go to work, because I was as paranoid as a right-wing blogger that there was gonna be a fire or theft or God-act (you should've seen me on this next album). So,at a certain point, fueled by a resentment at choices I'd made in life that lead to me work on a record for 4 years and THEN turn 40 (ha), of music in gen. & the album specifically, I decided I wanted to erase the master tapes at our 'hey, the album's done' party (summer '03).

(Just an aside, the desire to erase everything was 'not' to prevent going back to keep on working on them, in spite of what we may have joked at the time (i don't actually remember). The album was done, done finally-not perfect, either musically or sonically but that is never the point (or at least never mine, even if it was within my ability,which it isn't). The record was done in that top-to-bottom it finally felt right (to me) and so it was...perfect (ha). (an aside to the aside, I'm very proud of the record even as I have only ever listened to it, i think, twice?, since finishing.))

Anyway, so I dragged two of the ADAT machines (entire VCR's essentially) into work at the ad agency I was an admin asst. at then, in a backpack weighing in at a cool 40+ lbs. (hilariously, the post-911 beefed-up security in our bldg. wouldn't let me leave w/ them for a half-hour). But it only registered once I got to the party & set up that the thing is, ADAT's are 'digital' but they're not computers, they're still tape. So shy of holding them over a 3rd subway rail, there is no 'command-delete' per se. There's only 'erase', which is really just recording - in real time - with no signal going in, which erases what was previous on there. So w/ each tape running 45 minutes, it meant that w/ two machines, over the course of a 6-hour party, I only made it through like, I don't know, 10 tapes?

Plus, erasing tape in real time as a means of wowing your friends is...underwhelming. With no signal going into the machines (so that they erase what's already on there as they 'record'), there are no flashing lights etc., essentially nothing's happening. So many of our friends, most of whom aren't musicians, understandably did not quite get what was even going on: "wait, you're recording the party?". "I can't hear anything". "why is your album so quiet" etc. (ha). But that did cover, technically the "orig" 9 or 12 tapes (session tapes one through three, each comprised of three sync'd ADAT vhs tapes. Jesus). It's also where I began to think about the notion of 'originals vs copies', but I'll come back to that in a bit.

The rest of the digital back-up tape copies I had to, exceedingly uninterestingly (like picture this long post but as a whole lived weekend) erase at home.

And that concludes the least interesting post in Facebook history. A couple blessedly shorter anecdotes tomorrow, then album announcement week of Oct. 6th.

Need a last-minute holiday wrens-themed gift...?

…You’re in luck ‘cause I’ve got more pre-new-album/project post-band housecleaning crossed with last-minute shopping for almost no one:...

The  now-kaput full-wrens record (to which my own pending album is half or more), when it was still gonna come out under the wrens name, was going to be called ‘the Wildwoods’. Ooo…giant show-finale spoiler revealed!

I’d wanted it to be both south Jersey-themed, where we were all from (Ocean City, NJ in my case), and ideally plural, ‘cause this was back when I thought that this album’s “concept” was that it was going to be a ‘sequel’ to the meadowlands, which as I’ve said before now, seems hilarious - what record that follows another ISN’T essentially a sequel?

Anyway, I registered & then held onto the "wildwoodsalbum-dot-com" (and additionally .net & .org) domains for over 12 years now, in anticipation of a release because in 2010, that’s what one often did - set up a separate website themed solely on the new album bla bla (see say, Radiohead et al). There’s obv. no need to now, just in general internet-wise, but also specifically here - my record will not be called The Wildwoods. I don’t have much actual connection to the town and have only been there a handful of times. 

And I always forget about all of this until the domain’s annual auto-renewal reminds me.

I had debated about auctioning this off to recoup some of the money it cost me over the years - that’s about $100/year (it’s currently $132.64 annually) since 2010 so totaling north of $1,200 - but I’m really trying to put as much of the hideous band-implosion of the last three years behind me as simply as possible. And it also isn’t about the money spent per se and the notion of trying to monetize every little part of all this seems gross. If it actually makes someone happy to own it, that would make me happy.

So in short, I’m ditching these. If you are the one person in the solar system who needs an almost literally last-minute gift for someone that bought one particular indie rock album 19 years ago, and who would be excited to unwrap an abstraction like a domain name, probably handwritten on a piece of paper at this point, under the tree on Sunday...message me or reply saying you want it and it’s yours - domains! for the deep-sixed wrens album!  - and we’ll figure out how to sign it all over.

And thanks as always & happiest holidays there,

charles

Coming 2023 to an internet near you...

Howdy, 

So I had tweeted about the ‘good story I have for you later’ which has continued to unfold up through even the last few weeks, even days. I know that’s dumbly cryptic but I just can’t get specific at the moment and, the more time that goes by, I ultimately may not even. But in reply to someone about that, I sorta gave a micro-update, so thought I’d throw a more real one out there - partially ‘cause I really haven’t this past year (for reasons below), and partially to cap off the year itself, but also partially to cap off what may be twitter, or whatever Twitter, Class of ’23 devolves to. And partially ‘cause the release of this record’s finally getting underway in January (! more below) and I continue to be ever grateful (and surprised) that anyone’s following along here, awaiting muzak.

With everything that transpired last year in what may be the dumbest public-y culmination of a protracted three-year band implosion ever; along w/ how that story was framed...

    ...and w/ all of that coming right on the heels of just about 10 years straight work on this dumb record itself, the related mental health..um, challenges with all that, the myeloma/cancer stuff etc.;..

    …and I guess that that’s also, crucially for me & in the biggest picture, after having been in bands for over 40 years, always putting music first, first above everything, for most of that time, as many of us do with work or school, things we feel we have to do or don’t have options not to...

    ...and after working for over 30 of those years within/as the wrens - really, culminating in this dumb record - towards this very goal of releasing an album on a super great & super well-known record label (that ‘well-known’ part counting for a lot in the non-corporate non-salary/promotion/raise/corner office/work-for-a-company-your-parents-recognize way that is life for most musicians)...

…after all that, by this time last year, I had finally lost any last momentum and was just thinking - finally! - of walking away, both from this record & from music altogether (also finally!). I did end up muddling through having the drums on the record, the one thing on my songs I hadn’t played, replaced by various friends last fall&winter (that muddling was at my end only, at their end each of those friends knocked their takes out of parks, and I can’t wait to go into more detail after the new year & give out the record-saving drumming credits that are so well-deserved here).

Anyway, by last winter I had sorta stopped working on it, or at least productively in any way, which was a first, and honestly, maybe surprisingly, pretty wonderful. This past summer was the best in I-don’t-know-how-long. I now play soccer again for the first time since Reagan was newly in office.

What’s changed now is that, while it’s not worth diving too deeply into my own personal whatever here, or not yet, in the last month or two, I've found myself starting to thaw out of that, out of the music/band depression I guess, and to think that maybe I AM gonna/will be/should be working on music one way or another after all. Part of that is just practically, what else am I going to do, begin climbing a corporate ladder at an age when most people are climbing off one (ha)? And part of that is no doubt, just the positive & healing effects of the passage of time itself.

Either way, last month I found myself going back to final-mix the re-drummed remaining ‘bigger’ songs of the album (some of the smaller ones are still mixed from years ago) and it suddenly seeming, I don’t know…fun? Happy-ifying? It’s honestly going great. Around the domestic schedules, I’m averaging about one per week or two (most of them are incredibly, stupidly complicated). So one was done over thanksgiving, the outro to one last week or so, working on another now, prob. into Christmas etc. And again, I just can’t say enough how GREAT the re-done drums came out on all of these, in some cases turning songs I’d merely tolerated for years (ha) into favorites.

But all this is also attributable to a few things that have come up in the past few months and others that have changed over this last year-and-a-half (and longer). And one of those long-term changes is that I’ve also come to re-think & question how & especially why I’d even be bothering to do this at this point. And I’ve come to think that maybe what it is that I’m throwing the towel in on, after all this time (also finally), is not making music per se but just the idea of ‘making it’, in a music-industry sense, whatever that even means anymore. And honestly, turning 59 next month, that just sorta sits right.

Relatedly, I was also waiting to hear back on a couple of record-release things from Sub Pop, which I happily did Saturday, and so I’m now, again sorta newly, not just super re-psyched about music in general but about this album & the release-plans themselves (and a quick hat tip to the folks there who have been years-patient and ultimately & very understanding in all of this.

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

UPDATE: LATER TODAY: To clarify, only ‘cause it’s come up - I’m actually *not* going to be releasing my songs for this next wrens album with Sub Pop, who we had originally signed with low those many years ago.

After mulling it over (..and over, while also sorta hiding from it all) this past year or so, in the end, because of how everything went down, I just didn’t feel comfortable remaining on Sub Pop with the other former-wrens, and so asked Sub Pop to be let out of my contract, and very graciously this past weekend, they agreed. For which I am very appreciative.

So in the wrap-up above, I wanted to give them that appreciative ‘thank you’ outside the context of some big (read: dramatic) ‘hey, I’m leaving Sub Pop’ announcement, mostly because I didn’t want it to read as being strained or insincere or just diplomatic or something. I really am very grateful. 

And I wanted to do that also without getting all into what’s next label/release-wise, about which I’m super excited & which we’ll announce after the new year. Ok, back to the original post…

————————————————————————————————————————————————

I’ll be able to shout more about the particulars after the new year. So yeah, while it’s still my songs from the same long-pending wrens album etc. etc., that’s particulars like, oh…a new project name, new social media acct’s/website/etc., album name, some really exciting (ok, possibly to me only) release plans, oh yeah..A RELEASE DATE (not a typo, thank you) etc., that sorta thing, which I’ve been looking forward to & working towards for..heck, decades.

But that’s for later, after the new year. I guess for now all this is just to say that the world is confounding, for all of us, life can be surprising and surprisingly difficult. Just at my end, with all that in mind and a good bit of that behind me, I’m newly excited about music in general, about making music, and about releasing this music in particular, again, for the first time in a looooong time. Not that music, or at least mine, is the most important thing but I figure it’s why you’re reading this. Heck, I'm sorta newly excited about life (ha). I hope things seem similarly positive with you there...

Please have a great & safe end-o'-the-year & holidays and now, by popular demand, back to the dad jokes...

charles

Short solo set for Elk City's record release show @ Mama Tried, 10/27/22

Post- ‘post-final-solo-show-solo-show’, I’m very psyched to be playing an opening set for Elk City’s record release show (that new record, Above the Water came out Friday). I'll be doing a shortish set, and in the spirit (pun) of pending halloween - and if I can get some rehearsing poop together today - may skew towards covers. We’ll see.

Also playing is Love, Burns; Bob van Pelt; Renée (of Elk City) will be making art in real time* along w/ the very awesome John Adam Fahey a/k/a K00K all hosted by Hoboken’s own, the hilarious Jack Silbert. It’s a whole thing and I'm honored to be invited.

(*if you haven’t seen Renée's art work, she’s great and has been prob. the most incredibly productive person through the pandemic that I know).

All that is this Thursday, the 27th, at Mama Tried in Brooklyn. Show starts around 7:00 (I think I'm playing around then) and it’s free(!).

I first ‘met' Elk City, or at least Renée & Ray, back when they were still known as the Melting Hopefuls. It was 1993, we (wrens) had signed our first recording contract (Grass Records), which came with what seemed then (and honestly, still seems now) to be an ambitiously, even comically, large recording advance of $2,000. At mostly my behest, we chose the Just Enough Rope To… option of spending that money on then-state-of-the-art recording equipment to continue our d.i.y./home-recording...um...vision quest of self-discovery. For 1993, that meant an ADAT 8-track digital S-VHS tape recorder.

Sonically iffy, functionally hideous but at the time, musically liberating (15 tracks!).

We eagerly took our windfall to Victor’s House of Music in Ridgewood, NJ (not the location on Rt. 17 that is now a Guitar Center but back when it was in that strip mall multiple-store-fronts outfit on Ridgewood Rd. or whatever). We were with the salesperson, dotting the final i's on our obsolete-as-you-drive-it-home package-purchase, when down the hall, going into another demo studio/room with their own salesperson, I saw what was clearly another band (clear because they looked…well, cool, like a cool band, whereas we looked, I don’t know, like mall employees ambition-ing into shift-management positions).

I asked our salesperson who they were - “Oh that’s the Melting Hopefuls. They’re also buying a bunch of recording equipment and are awesome”..etc. etc.

So ‘met’ is in quotes above because we didn’t meet per se, I saw them at the end of a hallway, made vague nervous eye contact and left it at that until years later when Ray & I attended one of the awesome Tape Op recording conventions together and we’ve all remained friends since.

They’ve gone through a lot of changes & iterations since then but Elk City for the last bunch of years has evolved into a veritable indie rock-ish super group w/ Sean Eden (Luna), Richard Baluyut (Versus) and Chris Robertson (Feed). And this new record is, to me, the most ‘band sounding’ record of theirs yet (and the guitar work is fantastic). It’s awesome, seek it out, play loudly, see you hopefully Thursday.

And thanks as always,

charles

Post-Final-Solo-Show Solo Show

I know that I said that the solo show this past May (w/ Empty Country & Field Mouse) was my last before trotting out a new project/band/album/etc. but I’m doing a shortish one this Sunday, 9/18/22, as part of an awesome group show along w/ various friends’ bands, all in honoring our friend (and NJ legend) Tris McCall, who’ll also be performing solo.

This in turn, all part of the New Colossus Festival’s ongoing Summer Sunday outdoor series at 18th Ward Brewery in Williamsburg (300 Richardson St, Brooklyn, across the street from Brooklyn Steel).

My apologies that this is all sorta last-minute: this was planned months ago, then I bowed out for health stuff a few weeks ago, now I'm back in as of this past week (and thanks to everyone involved for putting up w/ all the back&forth hassles).

The lineup’s stellar & featuring:

One of my favorite bands, Overlord

Nicole Yun, she of the wonderful Eternal Summers, who's readying her own very awesome solo album (I heard it a week or two ago and dagnabbit - those songs & vocals!)

And a rare appearance by the band of the best songwriter who lives in our house*, my spouse Rachel’s band, Palomar

And Mike Flannery & His Feelings, who I don’t know but am listening to as I type this in a late effort to catch up

And Tris.

And me.

The show is outdoors, free and all-ages so will also mark the first time that our three youngsters have seen mommy and/or daddy perform live in any way. I don’t know what they’ll think but I’m not sure they really think of either of us as musicians, all prob. for the best - ha.

Set times below:

1pm Mike Flannery & His Feelings

2pm Tris McCall

3pm Overlord

4pm Charles Bissell

430pm Nicole Yun

530pm Palomar

Cool poster is by @mint.fishing (on the Instagram)

*(not an exaggeration or false modesty, just is)

Cool poster is by @mint.fishing (on the Instagram)

5/15/22 Sidewalk Record Sale (now with pedals!)

In this new divorce-y post-band phase, in an effort to out-with-the-old (as well as just simply clean out our basement and maybe offset some of the expenses of the last 10+ years a bit), I’ll be selling a bunch of guitar pedals here this weekend:

This is a recurring, and very awesome, sidewalk record sale hosted by friend, Greg Vegas, as well as one of our fave local go-to stores, True Love Always (very coincidentally named after another friend's, John Lindaman’s, awesome band!). I’ll be selling a whole lot of cheapies (Tube Screamer knock-offs, say) in the $20-$30 and then a few pricier items - I’ll update this post tomorrow morning with a detailed list - but everything is VERY negotiable. Come on by and say hi if you’re anywhere near Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn…

Sale is Sunday, 12:00-5:00 although I’ll prob. be there more like 1:00-4:00, at True Love Always, 191 Windsor Pl. (right off Prospect Park West) and a block off the 15th St./Prospect Park stop on the F & G trains...

Final Solo Show 5/6/22 - Knitting Factory (Brooklyn)

Howdy,

It’s been a pan-while, officially at least, and I hope you’re doing well. Just writing to say that I’m doing a solo show, a final one of these, this Friday, at the Knitting Factory here in Brooklyn, along with the mightily awesome Empty Country and equally awesome Field Mouse. Pretty sure I'm playing first, or I should be, so hopefully see you there on the early side.

That’s Friday, May 6th, at the Knitting Factory, Brooklyn

Doors are at 7:00pm

Show starts 7:30pm

Tickets: Here

This show was originally set up last summer, then postponed due to COVID to the winter, then postponed again and now, suddenly it's here. And unless I’m forgetting something (likely) this is the first solo show I’ve done in 2 1/2 years (?), since that round of three Wrenses Alien shows w/ Cymbals Eat Guitars at the end of 2019...? All of which means both that I haven't practiced in 2 1/2 years now(…!) and that being that Empty Country is Joe from Cymbals Eat Guitars' new project, just saying that there just might be one last trotting out of a few meadowlands chestnuts in a full-group context...you know, maybe..

As far as it being the last of this type of solo thing...I’ve been doing these, these solo-sets-with-loop pedals, of older wrens songs & songs from this pending wrens record (along w/ a rotation of like the same four cover songs - ha) for the last 15+ years. They’d been a way of doing something slightly different & outside of the band context (while still doing wrens songs and not having to mount a whole solo thing proper); a way to keep some level of activity going wrens-wise while the making-of-the-record ground on from bad to sadness and back again over 10 years etc. And as I think about it, solo shows were also sort of a way to not have to say ‘no’, something I admittedly have some trouble with, to offers for the band to play since about 2010, even if they were sorta a distant-second-place consolation prize.

Now because of how things have played out band-implosion-wise over the last couple of years, and since last fall in particular, these songs & album will now come out as a new project/new name etc. (this is getting close to a whole update thing, but I’ll save that for after this show) and so this is the last ‘charles from the wrens’ solo show. From here on it’ll be, if it happens at all, a new full-band thing, which if two of our three youngsters have their way, would be billed as ‘Telemuffin’ or ‘Bagel Anew’…ha (I’m leaning slightly less carb-heavy).

So up next, after this show, an update on what & when this album/project will be and a putting the wrens years to rest…

And thanks as always,

charles

(show flyer by Zoë Browne)