Monday, July 27, 2009

Reserving the Right to Make Mistakes



(speaking of mistakes, bear with me- blogger has apparently decided that me using anything like line breaks or indentations is not allowed. sorry.)




Reserving the right to make mistakes is one of the biggest principles I hold dear. Sincerely, I really mean that. Because no one on this planet can claim infallibility or perfection. And the fact that we still strive to be something larger than the random moments we string together is honey on the tongue to me.





In that process, however, sometimes mistakes get made. Mistakes made in such spectacular and ambitious gestures that there hasn't been a scale invented yet to measure it. Not even by the Canadians, and they use the metric system. But in the hubris of those mistakes, sometimes, we also get moments of unimaginable beauty. Contrary, messy and complicated these moments may be, but a real beauty to behold nonetheless.





And I love these moments because they are quite often the most sincere and real that you'll ever get. And honestly? I'm often relieved to see that someone has the balls to fail on such spectacular scales. That someone is willing to fail in the name of taking life, art and everything in between farther, man.






Which brings me to tonights subject: The Sandinista! Project.




It's a track by track tribute album devoted to Sandinista! by the Clash. Why Sandinista!, you ask. Why indeed?






First off, let me say that at least the Clash were willing to fail. The closest U2 ever came was climbing out of a lemon. Which is not to say that U2 has never taken risks. Just never as blinkeringly straighforward as the Clash. That they've succeeded may be the Clash's biggest success... Because somebody learned their lessons well. But I digress.






Sandinista! was neither the revolutionary album that London Calling was nor was it the pop radio rope-a- dope that became Combat Rock. No. Sandinista! is the problematic record in an otherwise brilliant back catalog full of classic albums. In three lp's (that means six sides of vinyl, do the math), the Clash managed to not only make no decisions at all, they managed to make all the decisions at once. The album veers wildly from their love of dub and reggae to motown and rockabilly. Refusing to make a soul record or a dub record or a straight ahead rock record, they instead opted to make all of the records at once. One can imagine the band playing as fast as the engineers could put the tapes on reel, pausing only every once in a while to get St. Joe Strummer out of his "spliff bunker."






Plainly said, the album is a big hot sticky mess. And problematic for almost all of its fans. It's that friend who laughs out to loud at all the wrong jokes. You don't know why you love it, but you do.

Which is why someone actually had the gall to put together a track by track tribute album for it.


In it's own way, this should be a helluva hot sticky mess.




And I'm gonna review it, break it down, track by track to see how it stacks up. And I hope you're here to see it. Because, I think, the only way to do this proper is by reviewing it against the original article, track by track.

So here's the plan, Stan. Six sides of six songs each. I'm going to review side 1, track versus track. Then side 2 and so on.





It'll be my own little Sandinista Project. But nowhere near as beautiful as the original objects.
Be well. Take care of each other.

-e.m.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

rudi, a message to you (a personal note)

Actually, this message goes out to Cody more than anyone because he's been the first to call shenenigans on me.

So... yeah. Not a lot of updateage going on here as of late. So first off, apologies to anyone and everyone who has stopped by as of late to check in and see new material. I can see that you're out there. Thanks for stopping by. I hope to have a lot of new material up in the beginning of August if not sooner.

Truthfully, however, life has been busy as Tyler and I have worked pretty diligently to get a rough draft of our novel done. The work for me was pretty intense as I wrote myself into a corner or two and failed to discuss it with anyone. The moment I did, Tyler set me straight and work began again in earnest.

And so it happents that the stone has been lifted from the quarry. Now, Tyler will chisel it into some sort of magnificent statue. I, most likely, will just draw funny mustaches and anatomically incorrect doodles. So, fingers crossed, we'll have a draft to submit to all the right people very soon. The day will come, soon enough, that we'll all be begging you to buy a copy of it. It will be called This is Not a Love Song. I think it's gonna be hhhaawwwt. We hope you dig it.

Since finishing my portion of the roughie, I've also started writing a new piece. It's short and I hope to find a home for it. More details on that will be forthcoming soon enough, one way or the other. Who knows, I might even let you read it, yeah?

Also, work should begin on Pike St.'s Radio Silence. Yes. It's been two years since I worked on it in earnest. See a few paragraphs ago. The part about writing a novel. But yeah, here's hoping that Raf and I can get back in there soon and turn the mutha out. As I've recently stopped smoking, it's been a real trip finding out where my new voice is.

As for Ronin Rock?

I hope to have new posts up soon detailing the greatness that I've seen lately. Namely, No Doubt's re-introduction to America and Third Eye Blind reigning supreme at the Sunshine. Probably a few stray thoughts about the passing of MJ and possibly, maybe, I hope, a guest blogger or two.

Finally, one last reason (or rationalization) as to why the long silence. Finishing the rough draft of the album has been a great experience. I've literally grown to a place where I just feel better when I'm writing. Looking at this year's output on music, in itself, has been a great experiment. To see where my ability is in terms of writing music journalism, to see where my failing's and my successes are... It's been fun.

But it dawned on me over the last few shows that I've seen that I can offer better writing if I take it in a more personal direction and adhere just a little less to the parameters of typical music journalism. This is a shift that I think will take a little getting used to and I didn't want to just jump into it as I was finishing a much larger body of work. So please, come back, check it out, lemmeno what you think.

Thanks for reading.

Tripping the night fantastic-
e.m.pennington