Chaz here. It's the last day of March, just after four o'clock in the AM. After almost twenty days of not posting, I've decided to make this blog OFFICIAL and hit it with a follow-up post.
So what has happened in a span that translated to roughly a day a hundred years since Christ was born? Well, I've been on the grind/grizzly/hustle/clock hard. Haaaaaard. Spring break was spent writing the new record by means of playing Mortal Kombat with Patrick "Kid Icarus" Swanson and taking pictures of myself praying.
But that was only one week on the month. Perhaps March as a whole warrants a one-paragraph replay, so here we go. The month began winning my third SinSin Off-the-Head gameshow battle, mastered the footage from the final CBGB's show, then spring break, I returned to get interviewed for a profile in the Washington Square News, headline my first show ever at Knitting Factory, spent a day with the NYU Health Center in fear I had done serious damage to my vocal chords only to discover my warm up ritual for the past nine years is terrible for the muscles around my throat (10-12 glasses of cold water? BAD! Warm/room-temperature water? GOOD! Who knew?) which caused my voice to go through gravel-ridden portions on stage, won the inaugural Cafe Brama Hip Hop Ain't Dead NYU battle, rocked a Zulu Nation benefit in front of Large Professor, and got to do a serious in-class presentation on the score of a softcore grindhouse skinflick in my Chinese Martial Arts Cinema class. Busy me.
That's the Cliff's Notes version of my life. Allow me to now get to some specifics on this new record. Recording officially began last week with Neil Gong's production on a song female evangelical Christian rock fans. All that remains is for Bethany Basile to lay down her contribution, and it's knocked out the box. Neil is crazy talented, and I feel we both know how to bring the absolute best out of each other.
I would like to point out that this blog* is not going to be some sort of look-at-me namedrop fest. This project (the album, as once one's blog becomes a project they are either a respected and entertaining journalist or the type of person I would emigrate to avoid), as usual, is a snapshot of my life and where I am at the time. I want to not only utilize the skills of those I have access to, but make something special with those around me before we all scatter as my social radar tends to every year around this time. Also, I care enough about my friends to give them some serious Google love**, so we all can get famous together.
Without revealing too much about the final product, and the album is so far from completion now I wouldn't be able to anyway, but the tone so far is rather bleak***. "Lapland," my last and "happy" record was written and recorded reflecting my life and the world at the conclusion of my Freshman year of college. I don't think my circumstances since then have been particular unique considering what everyone goes through during that 18-21 span of their lives, but this album is going to reflect what's happened through that period up to now, as well as reflect the times we're in now.
Don't get it twisted, I'm not depressed and I far from hate my life. I'm not pulling a Morrisey. The writing is still through a grin, but the humor is darker and considering the bouts both I as a person and the music industry in general has gone through since May, 2005, we're operating on a MUCH different playing field.
For instance, Tower Records closed last December. Think about that for a second. The LAST straight-up music chain in the country CLOSED. As someone who lived and fell in love with music during the biggest industry boom period ('99-'00) when everyone went platinum and there was a MUSIC store on EVERY block, this disturbs me. Espicially the fact that Tower, the closest thing to a "moral chain store" fell. Our generation is really at a cut off point. I remember passing notes in junior high/high school and wondering if those have all been replaced by text messaging by now. When was the last time you memorized a phone number? I hate to come off potentially Amish, but it's just that this is happening SO fast, it's almost intimidating.
Did I mention I'm a practicioner of Hip-Hop? Seriously, this hits us. Hard. Last month, sandboxautomatic.com announced that they would be discontinuing selling vinyl, and last year saw the release of only ONE rap record that went platinum. (T.I. - "King")
Do you mean to tell me the genre that once held nine of the top ten selling albums of the year during the industry's peak now can't produce a single album to sell HALF as much as Dane Cook?
DANE FRICKIN' COOK?!
So that's where I'm coming from. I'm a twenty-year-old Catholic Minneapolitian living in the birthplace of what he truly loves in a time when the most successful of his peers can't outsell a comedian who, by all evidence, hasn't written an actual joke in his life. I live in a dorm, am a junior majoring in cinema studies, buys albums, and flourishes when surrounded by the energy of others. Pleased to meet you.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading. Next time, I'll order us a pizza. On me.
paz,
chaz
*There's that word again. I really detest writing it as I feel like both a pretentious twenty-something studio apartment between-jobs coffee fuels up-talking acting major AND a 13-year-old gIrL aT tHe sAmE tImE - and not in a good way.
**Consensual.
***NOT Bleek, but perhaps Amil?
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