Tuesday, August 12, 2008

"New" CD


Recorded last summer in an illegal loft in Flatbush and now available via CDBaby, my album Blinking has been out for a few months now. You can buy it at the CD Baby site: www.cdbaby.com/matteverett

Of course an album is rarely new to its creator. I've noticed that some music biographies will narrate events like this:

"What happened? Well, then they went into the studio and recorded ten new songs."

Fun though the studio may be, this isn't really how things happen. Somewhere in there, through a sometimes lengthy and torturous process (especially for neighbors and loved ones), songs were actually written. The studio is generally a pleasant afterthought, a dreamy idyll compared to what has come before, this business of coming up with stuff, a business mostly incompatible with the tiresome necessities of drinking, dating, having drug problems, etc. It seems like there should be an interesting way to write about this process of writing, rewriting, rearranging, growing and changing opinions, etc. Otherwise we really have no idea why "Armed Forces" sounds so different from "My Aim Is True."

Of course, if you can more or less live in the studio that changes things a little. The detailed accounts of the Beatles' sessions in Abbey Road are endlessly fascinating. Well, to us music nerds they are, anyway.


Blinking has gotten some airplay on the Pipeline radio show that airs every Tuesday night, 8-10 PM E.S.T. on WMBR 88.1 (http://oscillations.org/pipeline/whats-pipeline) and on the Psyche van het Folk program of Radio Centraal out of Antwerp (read the corresponding lukewarm review at psychevanhetfolk.homestead.com). Possibly elsewhere I don't know about. Most importantly to me thus far, George Parsons has written it a nice review that will be appearing in the next issue of his estimable Dream magazine: http://www.dreamgeo.com/ This site has lots of reviews, interesting links, and the magazines themselves are filled with more of the same plus stories, cartoons, and interviews, most of which come around to being about dreams.

Dictionosaurus of Received Ideas

Alternate title "Dictionosaurusopedia," but that's getting into Mary Poppins territory, methinks. The idea is to include everything, sensical and otherwise. There was more to it than that but the drinks made clear what is now unclear. Moving right along...
A more achievable project might be an updated version of Flaubert's Dictionary of Platitudes, a compendium of "idees recues" [excuse please, don't know how to insert Frenchy accent marks in this mode] of Flaubert's time, having to do with the trendy things to know about, and more importantly, the trendy ways to feel about them: what to view with horror, what to sneer at, what to regard with irony or detachment. A collection of literary, emotional, and stylistic cliches.
Some examples:
Not a problem - Say this to make people feel that there may have been a problem. Can also be used when someone is doing you a favor, to distract them from this fact.
Going forward - When explaining plans for the future (as opposed to plans for the past) use this expression to make it perfectly clear that you are aware of the linear, forward motion of time. Gives an impression of competence.
Firemen - Always heroic.
Cancer patients - Always brave.

Flaubert did this better, but you get the idea.