Denver Blog

Well now... here we are: the night before Day one of recording. My band, Blinding Flashes of Light, and I are about to start making a new record. We're loading in tonight to get tones and levels, and then we'll start recording songs tomorrow morning... recording basic tracks (drums, bass, rhythm guitar, keys). There's a cold front moving into the area, after a strangely warm, mid-November fluke. I don't see this as a coincidence. We're getting back to what I like to call "band weather" -- crisp fall days and windy, cold nights. Late fall is the perfect time for making a new record. Yup. The timing is impeccable.

Most of us have either played and/or been invited to one of those songwriter shows. You see them all the time. You know the ones... three or four songwriters pick a venue, invite their friends and fans and voila: a heartwarming show ensues. Lives are changed. Tears are shed. Etc. But we all know the truth. More often than not, if you put that many songwriters on a stage, it's an utter snoozefest. Total wrist slitter. Pass the Prozac.

I just heard that flossing your teeth reduces your risk of heart disease.

Think about that.

Holy shit. FLOSSING YOUR TEETH REDUCES YOUR RISK OF HEART DISEASE.

When did this happen? It kind of sounded like a joke to me... but I looked it up. It's true.

I'm not writing about this to raise awareness... (Although, now you know!) I'm writing about this because it's the first data point on my newly-minted WHEEL OF INEXPLICABLE CONNECTIONS. I just made that up, but I think I might start using it... the WOIC.

A friend recently asked, "Which comes first the lyrics or the music." It's a question you hear a lot. It's kind of like asking a photographer, "Which comes first, the lens or the camera body?" Or asking a painter, "Which comes first, yellow or blue?"

A friend gave me a Mr. T talking key chain years ago. At the time, I didn't realize that it contained a nearly endless source of wisdom, tough love and thoughtful, nuanced advice for one's life. It just sat in a drawer, waiting. The other day, I pulled it out and tentatively pushed a button. It spoke to me. I had received my first message. It said: "Quit your jibber-jabber!"

I quickly put the talking key chain down. I'll admit, my first reaction was a painful mixture of confusion, hurt and even a little anger. (This is a normal reaction to raw, universal truth.) But the more I thought about it, the more Mr. T's message sunk in, the more it made sense. It's about talking less and doing more. It's about the value of action over the value of words. That's some deep shit, mang.

Let's be honest: Most records are painfully self-aware pieces of trash. They're uninspired, navel-gazing, banal, cliche-ridden, ego-stroking buckets of awful. Yes, occasionally you run across a record that is utterly brilliant. But most sound mediocre-to-good-enough for a few days until our eye catches a shiny object across the room and -- whoosh! -- there goes another disc into the wasteland of our cherished CD collections.