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Thursday, February 04, 2010 Lots of Musical Happenings! I've been remiss in keeping the blog updated lately, but that hasn't been for lack of musical happenings. While in hibernation, I've been redesigning DawnXianaMoon.com, which will have a totally new look and feel. Introducing: color! I know, it's a wild concept. In the next few weeks, I'll be doing a photo shoot for the new album's cover art, playing solo concerts in Lansing and Albion, Michigan (see Gigs for details), giving a talk at Michigan State University, recording a podcast for Chicago Acoustic Underground, and playing a showcase they're sponsoring at the Viaduct Theatre, which will feature three bands, art, hors d'oeuvres, and a magician. There's also a music video in the works for Strong that we'll be shooting in the spring (unfortunately, it's much too cold in Chicago to shoot outdoors right now). So to anyone who hasn't been keeping up to date on the Facebook fan page, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth just yet! Labels: concerts ^ Top | 1:14 AM | | | 
Friday, December 25, 2009 Merry Christmas! "The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other." - Johnny Carson  Merry Christmas everyone! Labels: holidays ^ Top | 3:57 PM | | |
Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Yes, Facebook is ubiquitous these days. And like many musicians now, I have a fan page.  All of my Facebook peeps will get a little Christmas present on Friday, so if we're not connected on FB yet, let's be friends!In a related-but-unrelated note: for everyone who's braving the roads, rails, and skies right now, I wish you safe travels. I'll be heading out to Michigan myself tomorrow. Merry Christmas! ^ Top | 7:30 PM | | |
Tuesday, December 08, 2009 Christmas Lights! It's starting to feel like Christmas - I'm listening to Over the Rhine's Snow Angels  as I type, and today it snowed. I'm writing Christmas cards and finally put up decorations in my apartment, and I’ve started to see Christmas lights appearing everywhere. There seem to be more of them this year. Perhaps it’s an antidote to our economic instability?Last year I was using websites to try to track down light displays, but this year I’ve already stumbled across two enormous ones just driving around the city. For those of you in Chicago: there are fantastic light displays on Ashland Ave. somewhere around Irving Park (I was driving by, so I wasn't paying attention to the exact cross street) and Logan Blvd. and Washtenaw (the nearest major cross street is California).  Every year I spend time tracking down lights, so these were a fantastic find. The Lincoln Park Zoo also does a light display, and it's fun because you can walk around and see zoo animals in the process. And there's a wonderful cafe nearby that's good for warming up after walking around in the cold.  ^ Top | 10:58 PM | | |
Thursday, November 26, 2009 Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your turkey! And for the adventurous or vegetarian, a special drink in honor of the holiday (yes, it is real - Conan O'Brien's staff ahem, loved it):  Cakewrecks also has some fabulous Thanksgiving disasters. My personal favorite is Cthulhu with a headdress. Labels: holidays, Thanksgiving ^ Top | 11:32 PM | | |
Thursday, October 29, 2009 It's done! After 70-80 hours at Uptown Recording (recording and mixing) and Gravity Studios (mastering), the music is done! I can't wait to let you all hear it. It's a little scary to be essentially finished with the album after so long - I've been planning this project for years. And now that it's done, I feel a bit like Inigo Montoya: "It's very strange. I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life." ("Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.") No more tweaking the songs. Or changing the track order. Or anything else. Doug at Gravity compared it to sending a kid off to college: at some point, you have to let go and trust that you did a good job. Of course, there's still a lot of work to do before the album will be truly done: I still need to do a photo shoot, design the album art, get the CDs pressed, and redesign this website. So there's plenty to do even though it feels like a chapter has closed. But it's done! Labels: music industry, recording ^ Top | 11:44 PM | | |
Saturday, October 17, 2009 Conceptual Art and Craft Denis Dutton, philosophy of art professor at the University of Canterbury, writes an interesting piece about conceptual art and its place in society. Clearly, he values craftsmanship: We ought, then, to stop kidding ourselves that painstakingly developed artistic technique is passé, a value left over from our grandparents’ culture. Evidence is all around us. Even when we have lost contact with the social or religious ideas behind the arts of bygone civilizations, we are still able, as with the great bronzes or temples of Greece or ancient China, to respond directly to craftsmanship. The direct response to skill is what makes it possible to find beauty in many tribal arts even though we often know nothing about the beliefs of the people who created them. There is no place on earth where superlative technique in music and dance is not regarded as beautiful. However, he stops short of condemning the likes of Jeff Koons, whose oeuvre consists of concepts executed by others. I won't. I've seen an exhibition by Koons, whom I consider rather lazy from an artistic standpoint, but I'd mistakenly assumed that he did create much of his work, albeit with a large team. In Koons's work, I admit that there are a few interesting ideas and the pieces overall are made with some skill. (I will here discount the pornography that was included in his exhibition at the MCA - and I'm not exaggerating, there were nude photos of him having sex with his former wife, a porn star, complete with genitalia. You could not have considered this "artistic nude" by any stretch of the imagination. Porn is self-funding - it does not need to be subsidized by art museums.) However, Dutton mentions that Koons actually commissioned his famous porcelain Michael Jackson from an Italian manufacturer. In another Koons work, vacuum cleaners in Plexiglas cases, I'm fairly convinced that the designer who created the vacuums should get at least partial credit for the piece - after all, vacuum cleaners have to be designed by someone, or usually a team of someones who specialize in industrial design - and thus perhaps a share of the $11,801,000 sale price. (Yes, you read that number correctly.) If we were talking about snippets of music rather than vacuum cleaners, Koons would owe a significant portion of royalties. Copyright law has an overwhelming number of issues I won't go into here, but if you make millions using someone else's work, some compensation is not outrageous. While I dislike visual art that is too representative and technique isn't everything, it does seem like craftsmanship is mattering less and less in the art world, even if Dutton does not think this will be a lasting stage. For that matter, I wonder if craft is mattering less and less in the musical world. Little pop music could be considered finely crafted, lyrics in particular. Most musicians in the pop/rock realm have little training and less technique. Training doesn't necessarily make you a good artist, but ideally training will give you enough technique so that you have the freedom to express yourself more fully. I'll be the first to admit that my own technique often falls short - but if you recognize the gap between the art you want to make and the art you do make, and you keep creating, keep trying, your art gets better. Ira Glass says that it took many years of trying, years of being a professional and still continuing to hone his craft, before his storytelling was anywhere near what he would consider good. I'm obsessing over recording quality and track order on my new album, but realistically most of the music is probably going to be turned into MP3s and listened to on iPod headphones or laptop speakers in a track order that bears little resemblance to mine. I know this. But I can't help myself from spending hours mixing and fine-tuning musical details that few people would ever notice. Because to me, it matters. Even if it doesn't to anyone else. Labels: aesthetics, music industry ^ Top | 1:49 AM | | |
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