My fancy dancy firewire audio interface crapped out on me recently.  This coincided with my 11 year old nephew picking up the bass guitar and wanting to record for the first time.  What to do…

In the bottom of my closet lay the answer:  my old Tascam 424 MKIII which had been gathering dust for about 5 years.  My brother had found another 4 track at a garage sale for around $20 recently so in this way the stars had aligned themselves and put us on course to the post office with our analog magnetic tapes in hand.  Snail mail and cassettes.  In 2010.  Whodathunkit.

So far it’s worked out nicely.  This old workhorse is maxed out by my drum kit.  All six channels are filled with percussive delights, all going to one track.  There is a lot of prep work involved because whatever I put down is there for good, no going back and fixing anything unless I want to replay the whole tune.  This is a really fun way to work and very much more enjoyable than screwing around with my computer.  Turn it on, music goes in, turn it off.

The setup is simple.  Track one is the backing track, usually a recording of a song we are trying to learn.  Track 2 is me.  Track 3 is the boy.  Track 4 is my brother.  I put down the backing and myself and mail it off to Tejas.

No doubt one of these days they’ll mail one back.

This has been KISS week around here for some reason.  I guess I’m in a mood.

Number one on the list happens to be the new Wal-mart exclusive by the above, Sonic Boom.  It’s not bad.  Another three disc set ala the Journey box from last year.  The new album is decent, the album of rerecordings seems unnecessary but also par for the course, and the DVD will probably be watched once and never spoken of again.  Tommy Thayer sounds a lot like Ace Frehley on guitar and Eric Singer could be Peter Criss on vocals, but his drumming has always been a bit too good for this band.  Peter is sloppy as hell and that’s a good thing.  You can hear the early days of rock in his playing and that is something I enjoy.  Singer is a great drummer but to my ears has just never quite gelled with the attitude of the band.  He’s more Eric Carr than Peter Criss, and that’s fine, but it just makes me miss Peter.  Which is the case with the whole album.  Hearing KISS with Thayer and Singer doing their Space Ace and Catman impressions made me seek out the real deal, which leads me to number two…

Frehley recently released a solo album, Anomaly, and it shits on Sonic Boom from great height.  You either like his vocals or you don’t, and I do, but even without that small detail it’s a fantastic rock album.  And it sounds like a damn rock album, which is rare these days.  It’s bigger than life and will kick you in the face.  I love it.

Last on the KISS side is Criss’s 2007 album, One for All, which I keep wanting to call All for One, making Google’s job that much harder.  It’s an interesting record.  For one, it sounds like it was recorded in someone’s bedroom and maybe it was.  It’s a very quiet, intimate collection of tunes.  I’d say 80% of the album is worth a listen, with the main problems being some strange harmonies and flat vocals on some tunes.  I like it though.  Clearly, it’s a personal record made for his own enjoyment.  I respect that.  It really fits well with the mid-70s singer/songwriter albums.  It has that very laid back feel.  The last 60 seconds of the album is a jam between Peter and Ace.  It’s a great way to go out, but, yes, way too short.

On loan from a friend is Paramore’s new one, Brand New Eyes.  I like it, but it is VERY slick.  To the point that the personality of the band is almost smothered.  It’s a shame because it’s good, but could be so much better without the strange American Idol sheen that makes everything sound the same these days.

Speaking of which, that’s something that hit me on a roadtrip this weekend.  I have stopped listening to songs just as songs these days and find myself focusing on small details in the production…  the vocal reverb, the way the snare sounds, etc.  It’s one way to stay interested when you hear the same 15 songs over and over on classic rock stations.  The interesting thing is that every song from earlier eras, maybe up to the mid-80s sounds completely different.  Not the tunes themselves but the way they were recorded.  There was no one recipe that equalled “hit” back then and it really shows.  All the songs sound great but they have their own unique sonic personality.

Sadly that is something lost on modern country and pop radio.

After Bioshock, I picked God of War up again.  It had been a year or so.  It’s almost over, but, wow, what a truly fantastic game.

Last night I finally completed Bioshock.  My last save before I started playing again last week was from November of last year, and my initial saves were from its release in August 2007.  Amazing how having a kid puts things on the backburner…

I knew I would eventually return, though, because this game is amazing.  It is one of a handful of games I would put against a great film or novel as an equal.  There are far too few games that, at their best, are as powerful as this one.  The story peaked in Ryan’s office, even though there were a few hours of gameplay left at that point.  That moment is the one that hit me hardest and will stay with me.  Incredible.

I’ll go back again, to see the one or two things I neglected the first go around.  I already miss it.

I start things all the time.  I get enthusiastic for a month or so, and then it drops off.  When I was in school, my life was making comics and playing drums.  I really thought I would make a go at one or the other but I convinced myself that the starving artist life was not suitable for me.  I still believe that, actually.  So I went to grad school and got a good steady job, along with the wife, kids, etc.

I love my life.  And I know in my heart that those choices were the right ones for me.  Especially after watching my dad sweat every month about how we were going to pay the light bill.  He always did, but I didn’t want that kind of uncertainty.  I sought and have a steady paycheck and enjoy what I do.  I can’t ask for more than that I guess.

But I do want more.  I still have the desire to create things.  It shifts from music to comics and back again, but it is always there.  The desire is ALWAYS there.  But I lost the willingness to actually make stuff years ago.  My story ideas are no good.  I don’t have time.  Blah blah blah.  It’s just excuses.  Friends have written scripts for me.  They lie unfinished.  Friends have provided opportunities for me to contribute to various things musically, but I don’t pursue them.  It’s something in me.  Or not in me, anymore.

I was reminded of this when I read this interview this week:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/steve-bissette,30751/

It’s a very interesting discussion with a man who left his art behind.  His website still offers his past work for sale, but it feels more like a museum than a going concern.  Sad.  Until I read this response from Eddie Campbell, an artist who knows him well:

Steve has so many cockeyed justifications for not finishing his epic Tyrant, the biography of a dinosaur (he got four issues of the 24 page comic out in three years), that if you sit through a session of listening to them you will lose the will to live. The orders for his first issue were around 24,000 if I remember correctly. Steve thought it was a catastrophe and got out of the business. My orders started at 8,500 and I did well for seven years after that. If i tell him that, he will come up with ten advantages I had that he never had. But the simple fact is that if Steve had continued to work on Tyrant for half an hour every day while making a living doing other things, he would have had a completed project years ago and publishers would have fought and still be fighting each other to have a part of it. But he would have to finish it first, because no publisher would commission it with an advance payment. None of them would hope to live so long. And if done according to my suggestion, It would be a magnificent piece of work and a tribute to his talent and vision.
That really struck me.  No excuse is adequate.  If you really want to get something out there, you will do what it takes to make it happen.  Even if it means working a full time job and squeezing in a few minutes a day for that dream project.  That is something anyone can do.  Stephen King said in On Writing that if you can write a page a day you’ll have finished your novel in a year.  It is more than possible, it is probable.  But you have to work.

I am 34 years old.  When I sit down to draw now I feel as though I am 5, because I have lost all the skills I ever had (rudimentary as they were).  I have to get past that though.  I don’t know if I ever will, but I have to work through the awful stuff that I will output for a while to get back to the good stuff.  I have to work through the awkwardness to feel confident again.

I have to work.

Trying out a new site, hopefully updated regularly:

Tales of the Psychic Wars

Now playing:

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (Wii)
Various Wiiware games (Shining Force anyone?)

Gathering dust:

Fable 2 (360)
God of War (PS2)
Zack and Wiki (Wii)
No More Heroes (Wii)
House of the Dead Overkill (Wii)
Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
Ico (PS2)
Bioshock (360)
Overlord (360)

Thick layer of dust:

Metroid Prime (Gamecube)
Eternal Darkness (Gamecube)
Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn)
Snatcher (Sega CD)