This year we’ll chronicle the efforts of two young/old Mid-Atlantic musicians as they stave off complacency amidst overloaded milieu, facing bravely the post-post-post rock of a new decade, eschewing nostalgia, yet exploiting it, searching for that personal connection, posing where necessary, and being true to their school. Dave Crozier is one entrant, he from New Jersey, raised on punk, living and dying by the Guitar, buying a house and becoming domestic. Your esteemed blogger, the unreformed bachelor, fighting to keep a chunk of meat in the fridge, cleaning the house now and then, your own Catbirdman, in other words me – I am the other entrant. Together, Mr. Crozier and I will write 12 songs – one a month – and demo them, and share them with the wide world web here on Subanimal Sounds.
January is already in the books, and were it not for my lackadaisical bachelor ways, the songs would have been posted weeks ago. But I had a Natty Boh or three to drink, and a friend or two to see, and I had to sleep as well, and, well, let’s just be grateful they’re here at last. So without further ado, here are the January songs…
Dave Crozier starts off with a greeting to a former, or would-be lover, a fanciful desert mirage named Vera. He chose to play to his strength: taking on a dubious narrator’s voice, telling deluded tales of skewed romance. The narrator is never to be trusted in a Crozier song, and often times the narrative is told second hand, or seen from a distorted reflection. In this case, our protagonist reveals how often he has listened to a cassette recording made by the titular Vera, wearing it out as he wore out his heart. “You can’t put the contents of your life on a cassette,” the narrator moans, yet he must believe you can, or at least he searched over and over for the bottom line as he oxidized that C-90 that Vera gave him years back. Out of necessity, the singer writes in the present, but what ends up in the forefront are the contents of what has been lost over the course of many years. Loss is key to this song, I think. The singer saw a different future, which became the lost past, yet he won’t let go. A nice start for Mr. Crozier, a misty snapshot, a sketch of lost connections. Can’t wait to see what February holds.
Mr. Catbirdman’s January song is called “Lesser Lights – see the lyrics here. In a nutshell the song is about what lasts and what doesn’t last, and what doesn’t last outlasts that which does. These efforts we make, the flashes and sparks, the rises and falls of celebrities, some known the world over (for now), some worshipped in nooks, unseen by others, and all of us trying to be heroic and bright. Me, I write songs. But who cares? Who will care a hundred years from now? No matter, it doesn’t stop me from writing. Nor should it.
A quick, unfocused post tonight.
Lesser lights are laid out like luminaries
Here on the Subanimal Sounds blog you will witness the brave and limitless wrestling match with the abyss, as two songwriters bash it out each month, stabbing vainly in the dark, trying to write songs. Catbirdman is one player; Mr. Crozier is another. The challenge has gone out: to write one song each month. For January, there are no rules. Just write it and let it stand. Prove you can do it. By the end of the month there will be audial proof, and it will show up here on this blog. Catbirdman has a head start; the January song is written already. It’s called “Lesser Lights.” Soon I will post the lyrics, and in the meantime I call to Mr. Crozier: leave the Bank behind, just for a moment; follow the real reason you get up and get out — write that song.
On this Tuesday night, on the back of my weekly call with the Catbirds’ business manager, I’m pondering the overlap between business and dreams. “If you build it they will come” isn’t always a sound marketing strategy, but it’s the only one worth leaning on when you’re laying the foundation. This track by Voxtrot looks at “the queer life” versus “the real life;” the former a foray into fancy and unbridled wandering, and the latter a grounded, legitimized, and accepted facade. The queer life looms behind the real life, like the subconscious, in its immeasurable way, driving the world of the conscious. What we are is what we know and what we can see. But what drives us is what we want to be.
I’ve been sitting on an interview with Baby Teeth from August 6 of this past summer. Eventually I’ll post it here on Subanimal Sounds. Baby Teeth are an earnest but scary group of guys from Chicago, and when you get to know them they’re not so scary. Abraham Levitan is the leader, a cool-mannered, if gawky, outsider with a self-proclaimed history of obsession, if you can believe his lyrics. He started with the great girl groups of the 1960s, and found inspiration in various pockets of showbiz from there on. Abraham always has a half-smile bordering on a full-on guffaw. He means it, and isn’t bothered with the window dressing. Pitchfork reviewed Baby Teeth’s 2009 album, Hustle Beach, and in so doing quickly devolved into label-mongering and contemplating the meaning of the term “guilty pleasure.” What’s guilty about a pleasure? You either like it or you don’t. I do. Abraham sings it. I believe it.
Once or twice a week, I pass through the “Miracle on 34th Street” – the boundless bombast of garish lights that floods the one block between my house and my favorite watering hole, Rocket to Venus. They sell hot sausages there, three for $5. There are Christmas trees made of hubcaps, and one made of old vinyl records. there’s a Natty Boh logo in lights. There are gawkers galore. Tonight we wish you “Season’s Greetings” from Baltimore, USA, with hopes of more substantial tidings to come. To usher in these greetings, we have a stellar track from Baltimore’s finest, Beach House, and one from Baltimore’s most obscure group, the Catbirds.