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| Greenville's Official Band April 19th, 2006 -- I don't want to tour. The idea has always been unappealing to me. You leave your family, friends, and city behind so you can go play a series of concerts for people in other cities. To me that sounds like the job of a traveling salesman. However, I came up with an idea -- I want the Wind-Ups to be GREENVILLE'S OFFICIAL BAND. Think about it . . . Greenville has some 250,000 people in and around the city. If one person out of ten bought an album of ours every year and came out and saw a concert once a year, we could easily have a career based just out of Greenville. That would be awesome. I've actually been working on a song about Greenville. I grew up here, went to school here, my family is here, and I work here. I love Greenville, and I think I'm pretty in tune with what us Greenvillians are all about. Would that mean that our music would appeal only to people in Greenville? Not necessarily, but if we swore that we'd never play outside of Greenville, that we didn't care if no one else in any other city ever heard us, part of me thinks that it would make my fellow city-mates give us a second look that we might not otherwise get. Eh? ****************** In recording news, we're going into the studio this Friday to meet with the producer and talk about this whole thing. I'll give you an update after that. Keith |
| Perceptions April 11th, 2006 -- I don't really listen to a ton of music. I'm not one of those people who has music playing constantly, and, in fact, there's no music around me right now. The only sounds I hear are the keys clicking on the keyboard, a few birds, the hum of our computer fan spinning, and a Nelly song being played by the stereo next door. So, like I said, no music. Don't get me wrong, though, I love music. But I think of someone who loves artwork. That person, if he really loves art, isn't going to buy enough pieces of art that he can cover every last inch of his walls and ceilings, and then even his floors, and makes artwork permeate every aspect of his life so he ends up using the Mona Lisa as toilet paper, Rembrandt paintings for his shower curtain, and Michelangelo statues holding up his coffee table. That cheapens the art, makes it common and vulgar. In the same way, music is too special to me to allow it to just be in the background while I do other things. In fact, if I had music playing right now, I wouldn't even perceive it as music, it would just be noise. When I listen to music I have to listen to it. I sometimes wonder if this "noise" perception I have is what non-musicians hear when they listen to music, that music isn't a collection of notes and rhythms working together, syncing and contrasting, where tones sounded simultaneously either fall in line harmonically and enforce a certain sound, or clash against each other and flutter and fight with one another to create harmonies both interesting and nasty, where the rhythms of those notes can either act as a simplistic backbone to the underlying pulse, or they can fight their way into new and crazy variations on the subdivisions of that beat. I wonder if they just hear different kinds of noise, some of it nice, some of it discordant, and they judge it by how well it fits as sonic wallpaper to their lives. I heard Victor Wooten, who I have enormous respect for as a musician, say that when he listens to music while he's washing dishes or cleaning out a closet, he listens to New Age Music. Yes, as in Yanni-and-Pan-Flute-with-synthesizer-swells music. I thought "doesn't he know that music sucks?" But I'm starting to understand where he's coming from. If you're a musician, you can't listen to complicated music and do something else at the same time. The idea of using classical music as background music or as music to go to sleep to is, to me, unconscionable. I would more easily go to sleep to the sound of Saving Private Ryan, The Blair Witch Project, or Mary Kate and Ashley's How the West Was Fun than to be able to sleep with Mozart 40 playing in the background. I have a hard time listening to Mozart and driving, much less being able to read a book or a newspaper. And that's why, ultimately, I think I don't listen to music very much. I just don't have time for it. When I was in high school I would rent CDs from the library, take them home and, while everyone was out of the house, while my friends were going and hanging out with eachother, and while multiple TV shows were going by unseen on cable, I would pop a CD of Brahms or Beethoven or The Police or Stravinsky or Edgar Meyer into our stereo in the kitchen, lie down on the linoleum, look at the ceiling, and just listen. Actually, come to think of it, I should really do that more often. Of course, we don't have a kitchen right now, so I should go finish it, and then I can listen to some music. Keith |
| Let's All Hate the People We'll Never Meet April 4th, 2006 -- I probably wouldn't call myself a Republican. Most everyone else, though, would call me a Republican. I don't know what I am. I'm a conservative, I believe we should have a small government, low taxes, our laws should be governed by the idea of "leave me alone", and anything that a private company can do better than the government, a private company should do. Also, amazingly, I think anything the government can do better than a private company, the government should do. I also think we should have a smaller military, that we shouldn't be in countries we don't need to be, and that education should be left up to local governments and only the poorer people should have their education paid for by the government. As far as gun control, abortion, gay rights, vouchers, etc. goes, I have my views, but I don't think any of them should be imposed at the national level unless there is an overwhelming consensus among all of the states in the nation. Of course, if there was an overwhelming consensus, then there wouldn't be a need for a national imposition, but that's another matter. I think Roe v. Wade was a terrible decision, but I think it was a terrible decision on the legal grounds and a bad decision on the moral grounds, and if there was a reverse Roe v. Wade, where abortion was made illegal in all cases nationwide, I would think it would be a terrible decision on the legal grounds and a good decision on the moral grounds. Also, Nickelback sucks. So, I'm really probably more of a Libertarian than a Republican, but I'd be a Republican if it weren't for the super-sized military thing and the fact that we have one of the least conservative Republican administrations when it comes to fiscal constraint. Which is where my irk from the "other side" really comes from. Democrats hate this administration. They hate it in the same way that Republicans hated the previous administration. Which is funny, since Bush is one of the more liberal Republicans in a while and Clinton was one of the more conservative Democrats. I would probably say that, in many ways, Clinton was much more conservative than Bush. So why all the hatred? I was one of the Clinton haters. He was elected president when I was in early high school and his term ended about the time I (was supposed to have) finished college. I honestly thought, with every molecule in my body, that he spelled the end for the republic. Civil War, depression, World Wars, unfriendly empires, none of the them compared to the threat America faced from "The Man from Hope". Looking back, I'm wondering what the big deal was. Free trade with Mexico! Oh no! V-Chips! The horror! Balanced budgets! What could be worse! A wife who doesn't bake cookies! Ahhhh! I get the exact same vibe when it comes to liberal views towards Bush when I read things like this. It's about how the "erotic thriller" isn't doing as well as it used to back in those oh-so-liberal glory days of the Reagan and Bush I administrations. Get this quote from the director of Basic Instinct and Showgirls: Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States . . . Look at the people at the top [of the government]. We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values. And Christianity and sex have never been good friends.Well, his movies aren't banned, so I guess they're . . . not erotic? So what's he worried about? Maybe he has a different definition for "banned" that means, I don't know, "not banned". It's like "flammable" and "inflammable", I guess. But, it's such a funny idea that your movie being a flop can't possibly be due to it being a black hole of cinematic suckdom, it must be . . . THE GUVMENT'S FAWLT! The problem with blaming the government for anything in America is that we the American people are the government. So be a man, Paul Verhoeven, acclaimed director of Starship Troopers and Hollow Man, and call the world idiots for not wanting to a see a nearly fifty year-old woman naked. ***************** In Wind-Ups news (yes, there's actually some news!), we've found someone who is able and willing to record us, a combination of states which I've found to be ideal. More to follow very soon. Keith |
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