Things are changing, day by day

Edit: Wow, I found an old pho­to I took in 2004 of the CD in Trolley’s CD play­er.

Thumbnail: Float On

Modest Mouse used to be the best kept indie rock secret. Then they let Gravity Rides Everything be used in a Nissan com­mer­cial. Then they did Saturday Night Live. Then they did The O.C. (Really, Modest Mouse? REALLY?). Then they appeared on Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour, and now I won­der if they were just sell­outs doing it for the mon­ey to begin with.

But before all that hap­pened, or per­haps as it hap­pened, they came out with Float On.

This was the song of 2004. It defined the year for me. I was pick­ing myself up off the floor after a tor­rid rela­tion­ship, and set­tling down alone, find­ing my own lit­tle bit of peace.

That was six years ago, and I’m back there again. I had an odd moment of seren­i­ty as I left the stair­case to the Tai Chi stu­dio tonight, and walked into the frigid, calm air. Sort of like I had no hope, but that did­n’t mat­ter because I did­n’t need hope; I had my hands, my sens­es, my wits, and my cam­era, and that was good enough.

I’m sure the fact that I’ve start­ing work­ing from home four days out of the week has some­thing to do with it. I can work on projects with my music loud, and my pjs on. I don’t get inter­rupt­ed, so my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is great.

Okay, so I’ve been avoid­ing any movies or TV shows with dat­ing or romance. I’m stick­ing strict­ly to Babylon 5 and The Sopranos. It’s been work­ing, because I’ve been feel­ing bet­ter about myself and my cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Thinking: “Maybe I’m a nice secret right now”.

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  1. Thats a good way to put it… “I’m a nice secret”

    I feel this way at times too..

    But mine is more like.. ‘fuck you if you don’t want me or don’t want to get to know me more.. your loss kid.. Don’t under­es­ti­mate me.. You’ve seen about 10%’

    Cause me and you have so many supris­es and tricks up our sleeve.. so many awe­some lit­tle secrets and almost the full deck of cards in our hands

    Me and you are Win !! ohhh yeaaah­h­hh :)

    PS I remem­ber the first time you showed me that song… In the loblaws park­ing lot where you played: The Artist In the Ambulance… fol­lowed by: The World At Large.. and then final­ly: Float On…

    and I remem­ber it was the BEST SONG EVER… even bet­ter if you lis­ten to The World At Large first… EV-ER-Y-TIME

    • I know what you mean. I don’t like to reveal all of myself at once. Which is crazy, because I haven’t been with some­one long enough to do every­thing I’ve want­ed. Not even close. I think it’d take at least two decades for some­one to com­plete­ly know me, and expe­ri­ence all the roman­tic ideas in my head.

      I remem­ber that night, and how impor­tant that order is; Modest Mouse did too cause those were next to each oth­er on the album. I also intro­duced you to Iron and Wine that time too, when Sam does the cov­er of Such Great Heights, and you said, “Too slow”.

      • Ohhhh yeah.… that such great heights cov­er… When I heard it I thought it was some ama­teur and it came off as being pret­ty pre­ten­tious..

        And now Iron and Wine is like my top 3.. haha­ha

        This entry about Modest Mouse reminds me of death cab… and when their music start­ed to play on all these ran­dom com­mer­cials and they were fea­tured on The OC like every week… *yack*

        That’s when I stopped lis­ten­ing but I still love their old­er stuff…

        You’ve intro­duced me to so much great music.. and its the music that’s dri­ven me to these realms of emo­tions that I’ve nev­er reached (maybe once or twice) through oth­er means.. Its this music that teach­es me, that allows me a means of releasing..Thank you.. youre like my drug deal­er.. except youre sell­ing me the right noise to fit my mood:D

        It all start­ed with the postal ser­vice-the dis­trict sleeps alone tonight!

  2. I have to add that being a musi­cian is not an easy enough gig that you would NOT want to be on OC and make more mon­ey and get to play the big­ger venues and NOT be in debt to your run­ning crew and your slimey pro­duc­ers and the venues they booked you into, and to enable to you con­tin­ue your life as a musi­cian which oth­er­wise might end in a heart­beat, and rather enable you to still sup­port your­self and not become a slimey pro­duc­er your­self instead. Neither sell­ing out, nor avoid­ing it, is as easy as you think.

    • I have to dis­agree with you there, though maybe it’s seman­tics.

      Being a musi­cian is easy. Just look at how many peo­ple there are per­form­ing their own music on YouTube, peo­ple with­out record con­tracts or labels to back them, and yet I’d say they’re def­i­nite­ly musi­cians, doing their own thing.

      On the oth­er hand, mak­ing music as a liv­ing is hard. You don’t need a record deal, or a pro­duc­er, or a venue to per­form in, unless you’re try­ing to make mon­ey from it. That’s the entire con­cept behind “indie” (i.e. inde­pen­dent from major com­mer­cial labels or pro­duc­ers) music. Artists can sub­sist on much less than mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­trasts and guest spots on the OC. What’s dif­fer­ent is lifestyle they want, and whether they make enough mon­ey to sup­port that lifestyle. As a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, I’m per­fect­ly con­tent with doing lots of unpaid work, and spend­ing mon­ey on pho­to gear with­out any return on my invest­ment. That’s not to say I would­n’t accept a well-pay­ing gig as a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er, but at that point, I would be doing it for a dif­fer­ent rea­son, and it cer­tain­ly would­n’t be for the love of it. That’s what I expect from stu­dio com­posers who write com­mer­cial jin­gles, not indie rock bands.

      It all comes down to whether you like mak­ing music for the sake of it, or mak­ing music for the mon­ey. Two very dif­fer­ent roads.

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