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Tag: making music

article 2019-04-29 124625_5.html

June 25, 2005
Spent an hour on the phone with the infamous producer/singer/songwriter Zeke Zaskin, talking about the new album we are recording. I’m telling him about all the music I’m digging and what I want the new CD to sound like.

After an hour or so, Zeke tells me ‘well after everything you’ve said, we’re still at the same place we always are, that same comfortable yet uncomfortable Fishy place, which is where you’re standing there between wanting to create three different musical styles on one album, modern rock which is what you always make, pop and hip-hop, and experimental, which is what you listen to and like the most. Six months ago you said you wanted to make an album that sounds like metallica and now you say you want to make an album like gwen stefani.’ ‘o.k. I hear ya. I know I know. so what do we do?’ ‘I really feel like we need to hone in on what you want to make first before we go any further. You need to find that one unifying theme for this album and then just run with it once you find it and not try to fit everything in all at once.’

‘you know man, I say, ‘How can I sit here and say that I listen to all this popular rock music like the doves, and Foo fighters, and Audioslave, and bloc party and modest mouse and killers and all that but that I can’t even listen to more than thirty seconds a song because its so predictable and boring and the music that I love like beck and jay z and the game and gwen and Rufus is driving me crazy because I like it so much, and then I turn around and create another modern rock album of my own. it makes no sense. I have to find a way to start making my own music sound like the music I actually enjoy listening to. I’m so sick of rock.’ ‘well then stop making rock music.’

‘well then you need to build your songs in a different way. why not send over the roughs to me and if we have to we’ll strip away all the drum parts and bass parts and guitars and we’ll build them from scratch with electronic hip hop drums and bass and just scratch the guitars.’

‘Well I don’t know if the guys are going to be into that. look guys we erased all of your parts and we’re now a hip hop band.’ ‘well yes that’s a concern. You know Fishy its two different kinds of animals. With rock it’s a monstrous sound. its this huge wall of heavy guitars and drums and cymbals and bass guitar. And with hip hop it’s the opposite. Its all sparseness and just a killer beat.’ ‘yeah I know. well we’ve already got a huge wall of drums and bass and guitars built up on these songs. Look, if we can’t make it a hip hop album at this point because we’ve already laid down a foundation of a modern rock album, at least we can take the elements of the arrangement and production that we like from hip hop and pop, that it brings to music. we can arrange the shit from a hip hop perspective.’

‘well like I said, you can send me the shit and let me check it out and I’ll co-produce it, and where these songs are at now if it appears that the album wants to be a dog, we can just finish it, call it a dog, and listen to it say bow wow. or it might be that we want to scrap it all and place some wings on it and call it a duck and get it to quack. Its going to be up to you brother.’

‘dude can I quote you on that?’

‘zeke zaskin makes another appearance in the diaries? certainly. Feel free.’

Man isn’t it so true how we always just steal the shit from the black musicians. Since music first went pop and rock in the early twentieth century, we’ve been taking from the black folk. Al Jolson painting himself in black face. little Richard and chuck berry and fats domino invented rock and roll. and American jazz, the first great original American art form, that was all black cats forging that new territory. And then Elvis made his career from singing all the black songs and the Beatles and Stones just trying to cop the black music they loved, singing all the black songs, and zeppelin ripping off all the black blues songs they worshipped, and then Eric Clapton and all those guitar cats taking whatever they could from Jimi, and in the seventies they hit their stride basically defining an entire decade and sound called dance music/disco with sly and the family stone and g Clinton and P Funk, and of course the jacksons and Motown invented modern pop music, and al green and Marvin gaye and stevie and the temps and Curtis showed us what it could be like if we actually put some soul into our pop…  and then rap hit and blew everyone away and saved aerosmiths career, shit I don’t think they even had a career anymore until that duet with run dmc, and now its all everyone just trying to sound like the hip hop cats. Its just always been about what the American black cats are doing.

But you know, there’s a reason for it. the black music has just always sounded better, been hotter, cooler, hipper, more cutting edge. And we white folk always trying to grab onto it and put our spin on it… trying to get a little taste. Me I can’t get enough black music.

Current spin: Gorilaz, demon days. interesting but predictable. Destiny’s child, destiny fulfilled. Great production but predicatble. I’m sure it will sell well. Ficserspooner, odyssey. We were compared to them in a recent review. I see no similarity. A girl called Eddy. I like this CD a lot. So much music out there. no way to keep up. still completely obsessed with HOLLABACK GIRL by Gwen Stephani. Which is my favorite song of all time currently. Right up there with crazy in love as one of the all time great pop songs. Can a song get any better than that?

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Uncategorized Labels: making it in the music industry, making music, producer, recording an album, transcendence diaries, writing music, zeke zaskin

article 2019-04-29 124625_13.html

June 16, 2005
The most horrifying experience today. I was visiting Brown Bear to see his new little baby. yes the party all night and three days onward Brown Bear is now a father. God have mercy on his new daughter. I was on the back porch smoking a most delightful Cuban partagas series #4 the bear had just given me, and was interrupted by a phone call. Midway through the call Brown Bear calls to me, bro dinner is ready. I turn to him, bro not now. and I go back to my call. He tells me later at dinner ‘dude I don’t know what you were speaking about but you had the most dire look of pain on your face I have ever seen.’

So I begin to tell him of one of the most harrowing telephone conversations I have ever had thus far in my short but adventurous life. I will not prose this because I have already spent too much time thinking about it. turns out that the Ferret recently spoke with Cleopatra about our little shared business venture, a fledgling spinoff of another company we had started a few years earlier. In our youth and inexperience we gave Ferret 5% ownership in the company, not understanding what 5% of a company could mean. a year or so later I told both of them that I changed my mind. I had been crunching numbers and it turned out that five percent of a large company could be quite a fortune. I could see from the current business model that we were soon going to become a large business. the problem with large businesses is that through you may be earning large bank on the books, in reality you may not be doing so well. all the money needs to be put back into the company. So you may show a profit of say half a mil. but you may have spent it all on capital reinvestment and loan payoffs. But that five percent owner may still want his five percent and that’s twenty-five grand a year right there if you stay at the same place.

Well my decision to take the shares back didn’t go over well with Ferret and Cleo at the time just didn’t understand what I was saying. she now regrets that decision more than any other for so many reasons. Ferret has been most unpleasant to us over the years never lifting a finger to help in the business or even pay much attention to it except to ask every year, where’s my money? and now that we are about to sell this little spinoff for a very small amount of money just so Cleo and I can get out of business with one another, Ferret is most concerned with his share of that pie. It turns out he is offering both of us to buy him out. but not for what his shares are worth but for double because he sees there is a premium for the shares that will yield the buyer with the majority shares in the company.

Now because Cleo and I cannot see eye to eye on things yet and still unfortunately we are constantly arguing and have even taken as I have written about earlier to taking up our own individual attorneys to battle each other to the despicable demise of all of our life’s earnings. Uncannily we still speak as friends on the phone all the time but over certain business matters we just cannot get it together. so I say to Ferret casually, well you wouldn’t sell your shares to her would you? “at this point I will sell them to whoever gives me the money first,” he tells me. “but if you sell your shares to her she will gain majority control of this company and could vote on all sorts of matters that I will have no say in. in fact you know as well as I that she has every intention of taking almost all of the proceeds of the impending sale and leaving me with very little.” “I know. so why don’t you buy them.” “I’ve already told you, I don’t want to buy them for double what they are worth if we are going to sell in two weeks. it would be foolish.” “well then she might.” “well if she buys those shares you know the scenario is going to be the company is going to sell, she’s going to walk away with just under a million bucks, your going to walk with a hundred thou and I’m going to get next to nothing for a company I started. Bro you know I founded this company. This is my baby. you can’t sell me out. you would sell me out after fifteen years of friendship knowing what would happen?” “Look man, at one time we had a friendship, but this isn’t about friendship. This is about money. and I have to start thinking about myself.”

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Uncategorized business, Labels: avatar course, making music, Relationships, running a business, transcendence diaries, working with family, working with friends, working with your girlfriend

article 2019-04-29 124625_14.html

June 15, 2005
In the recording studio in Miami to continue working on tracks for the new albums with the guys. still working on two albums at once. The official new one, now being called ‘all your heroes always become villains,’ and ‘Girls.’ About twenty-five songs in all. we are completing drums and bass and my rhythm guitars. Then the files will be copied to DVDs to give to Rockaway and  Vancouver and they will be free to add as many guitar and keyboard tracks as they want to in their spare time at their home studios or wherever they are in the world. the way we are doing it now is everyone is free to go crazy and lay down as much as they want to however they want to. they will layer the shit out of the tracks with ideas. They will send the new DVDs to me. I will listen and make notes. Then the new new DVDs will be sent to Fred at the dungeon to edit and choose  the tracks that he likes out of everything they laid down. I will begin completing my lyrics for the songs and fleshing out all of the different vocal parts I want to add. I will then fly back down here to work out the vocals with trophy wife and zeke who will sing backups with me and the other guys and we will work in zekes studio on vocals because he is great at tracking vocals. And then those new dvds go back to Fred to clean up more and edit more and begin mixing. Then the new edited DVDs will go out to Kamran in San fran and pouchon in New York to grab bits and pieces that they like and start fucking with the sound of everything that has been laid down. Then back to Fred to mix some more. We have never recorded this way before but it is not only possible but preferable now in this new age of recording technology. A very free and creative approach to creating music. very different than the ‘five guys in a garage’ approach we took for nothing is cohesive. eventually someone will be chosen to mix it all together and make finished product out of it. the tracks will then fly to G2 in Chile to chill with for a few weeks to begin designing artwork ideas for the CD, and then onto someone else in a different city to master and then a different city to manufacture. Eventually the distributor in Colorado gets the finished cds in big crates at their warehouse and then begins shipping them all over the country to stores and the Internet to sell. This is the way music is being created and sold in the year 2005. for now I can chill and just wait to hear what the other guys lay down.

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Uncategorized Labels: in the recording studio, making music, Recording, transcendence diaries, vocals, writing songs

article 2019-04-29 124624_8.html

February 20, 2005
I’m traveling right now for a few days. I miss New York and new Yorkers. I find it hard to not be in big metropolitan cities. Or in just totally remote places like rural Vermont or Colorado etc… either or… but when I am in regular suburban America, I find it very difficult on my insides.

Current screening: bottle rocket. The first Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson film. before Rushmore, before royal tennenbaums, before life aquatic with Steve Zisou. You can see the beginning of what would eventually be greatness. art creates art. Art inspires art. I had never thought about this before. in it, but never outside of it enough to think about it. one day in 2002 Beth Ann told me that she used the rise and shine album a lot to paint to. that it inspired her in a certain way, that as a painter and not a musician herself that music had a profound effect on her work; her painting was always slightly altered depending on what she was listening to at the time.

I told her that I was working on a new album, what would eventually be sleep with you, but that I didn’t know what it was yet or what it was about; but I shared with her how I go to the store and buy lots of picture and photo books when I am working on a new album. I keep stacks of photo books or painting books all over the house and bring a backpack full of them to the studio to inspire me. for rise and shine I carried around a lot of books of Picasso and van Gogh books and would flip through them all day and night to stay open and fresh and excited and inspired about the album and the possibilities of art. “and that would help you? that would help your music? looking at the paintings in the books,’ she asked. ‘yeah. A lot. makes me create better music, staring at the pictures…’

‘what kind of painting books are you looking at now?’ she asked. ‘Well now I’m more into photo books… I’m really into these erotica photography books actually…’ ‘you mean naked women?’ ‘Not exactly… but sometimes yeah. Even more than that. all sorts of different things… lots of books of girls… mostly black and whites… bondage, sexual without being overtly sexual… like that… fetish stuff… nudes… yeah…’ ‘how is it affecting your work? Compared to the Picasso books?’ ‘well its bringing about a whole different kind of music… its a lot more rock… and all the songs seem to be about girls, or sex, or love, or drugs… I don’t know yet…’ Beth Ann let out a big sigh, a happy sigh, and we kept walking… she put her arm around the king and asked, ‘I love that.’ ‘what?’ ‘just how art inspires art like that… how the art of one artist inspires another artist and how circular it is… how the fields cross… how I paint to music and how Fishy composes music flipping through painting books…’

so this is where bottle rocket comes into the story I guess. Not really bottle rocket, because I can’t say I’m loving it yet. I think as with a lot of things I’m kind of the opposite of most people when it comes to Wes’s work. Whereas a lot of film lovers prefer his early movies (like with woody Allen as well), everyone talking about bottle rocket or Rushmore and a lot of them not really digging royal tennenbaums and even fewer getting life aquatic from what I can tell… I prefer his work in the order from the top down, life aquatic to me is a masterpiece, something that will last forever in the hearts and minds of humankind; it’s a van Gogh. More a Picasso, because I have always liked Picasso more myself… but for me its juice, watching his movies, its not me the person sitting enjoying the film… its that… but not just that… its me the artist studying the film, being inspired by the film, taking notes, getting ideas, having ah-hahs about my own art… admiring it as one does a fine painting in a gallery or a fine wine… and through that experience…. more art… more ideas… more possibilities… more potential.. the world stays open… and my art keeps coming… eternal sunshine of the spotless mind had that same effect on me. I think in the long run, in the bigger picture, I will look back in years to come and understand that that one movie inspired countless songs and full albums even… the mental and emotional impact it had on me was unfathomable.

Current spin: kings of convenience. BUY IT. I love it. soft and romantic. Reminds me of Donovan and Simon and Garfunkel.

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Uncategorized Bottle Rocket, king of convenience, Labels: books, making music, New York City, photo books, Picasso, transcendence diaries, traveling, Vincent Van Gough

article 2019-04-29 124623_27.html

August 2, 2004
Last screening: some kind of monster. Metallica movie. Almost like an acid trip for elementary school kids. You’re just on this trip with the guys. through their ups and downs. Through the recording and the ego trips and the therapy and all. nothing really too hairy; knowing a bit about being in a rock band ourselves we found that it comes across like someone stripped all the good parts out of it and just left the really normal mainstream TV type stuff. too bad because a real documentary about the guys would be great. Something with all the juicy parts left in would have been much better. But this is like watching your parents fight at dinner. Real white glove. All the guys including their therapist and producer bob rock, come off like such pussies, But you have to appreciate that. appreciate where they are, and what they were trying to do by dealing with their problems in a constructive manner, rather than a destructive way. You do walk away with this profound appreciation for the music that they make, and for them as musicians. I have never been a metallica fan. I don’t own any albums and when their music has come on the radio over the last twenty years I have always run to turn it off. Beav always used to listen to it in his room and I would always scream to him to shut his door. We’d have music wars between our two bedrooms. My Prince and U2 albums versus his metallica and yngwie malmstein albums. I can’t call up the other guys in the band and say c’mon lets go check out the new metallica movie. They’re just not going to be into it. they look at me like I’m crazy. but you know, I’m digging into it now. going somewhere else. totally different musically. Lars is just a fucking monster on his instrument.

I’m telling the guys, ‘this fucking band is spending months perfecting each song. Working it all out, creating fucking operatic masterpieces, and we’re still strumming chords on our guitars. We have to learn from them. there’s something to this.”

Called the guys and we talked for a few hours about the new album we are recording. And how the hell are we going to get all that together into one cohesive package…. we want to find a way to bring it all together. Because half the songs are totally over the top heavy rock — which is going to be a real shock to fans and we know that – and then some of them are the more old style that we have been doing lately, more brit pop I guess. Like pure brit pop. I am trying to get there. to that purity. You know how flaming lips gets there sometimes? Where the song is just out there. just pure song. And of course I am dying to let it all go and create something completely orchestral, more noise oriented, and atmospheric…. but everyone around me is still like ‘ please no, not now…’ But I have this very strong urge to make some heavy music like I’ve never made before. Just to really go all the way into it. I’m like “guys if we could mix this whole linkin park, rage against the machine, Foo fighters, metallica thing I’ve been into [that’s the prob though is that the guys aren’t into that sound yet… at all… only me] with the music that we normally make… with our whole modern rock/brit pop thing…” and they’re all like ‘dude what the hell are you talking about? We don’t make music like that! we don’t even listen to music like that!”  but luckily Infinito does listen to music like that. so its cool. and Bloopy is going through a big nirvana phase now. so they’re into it. Me and Bloopy talking about all of us and we’re all in such different places musically. Vancouver is going through a Billy Joel and cardigans phase so that’s just totally out there for us now and for what’s going on in modern music. and rockaway is just starting to get into the whole Jet hives thing. but that sound is already totally overplayed and its cool but you don’t want to actually make music like that NOW.  So I don’t have an interest in making it myself, even though I dig it. but I don’t see any reason for us to explore it. as a fan I would love to hear Rufus wainright phoenix and Caetano Veloso meets u2 Radiohead and coldplay meets metallica linkin park and Foo fighters. That would be sick. Like Broadway meets Britpop meets Metal. That would be it. that’s what the new CD is going to sound like if its possible.

I don’t want people to always be down on us because we change our sound so much. I worry about that. I worry about our three fans not knowing who we are or what we are all about because every album changes so much. But I don’t think we can do anything about it. we’re all just so eclectic with our tastes constantly changing all the time. I for one get super-bored with any one style of music for too long. that’s why I don’t like concerts too much; I just get too bored too easily. Hopefully the fans will be able to keep up with it and actually appreciate where we’re at and what we’re trying to do as artists.

Current spin: St. Anger, metallica. I love it. I’m like an addict right now to this sound. I just never knew how to get into it. I never understood this music before. I’m starting to understand it. just always turned me off because of the overt lack of melody and harmony. All rhythm and grunting… but I get it now. also Saliva, back into the system. survival of the sickest is a great track. good polished neo-grunge.

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Uncategorized Labels: ego trips, making music, Metallica, Metallica movie, music making process, nothing is cohesive, Some kind of monster, transcendence diaries

A private little world for me… a private little world for you. The online journals and musings of singer-songwriter author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

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