sweet dudes and ladies (part 1)

as i was showering today, i started thinking about music and a question that i heard in an interview with adam horowitz. i will try to answer the question directly and at a later date go into an in depth review of my musical progression. if you'll take a moment with me, like driving, ive found that writing is best done with a soundtrack, so if you'll hold on just one moment. and there we go. now we may begin.

to the original question, friends. it has something to do with a shift in prespective. a monument in time, if you will, around which everything else in the past revolves. the interviewer gave an example of a man he had met once who when telling stories about the past, always time-stamped his thoughts with it either being 'before the riots', or 'after the riots'. the question to adam horowitz was if there a similar moment that has shaped his musical life. at least, thats to the best of my memory what was going on. this of course got me to thinking about moments in my own life that have shaped the one constant throughout all of my remembered existance, music. as the water began to run cold and i hurried to wash the rest of the soap out of my hair, the most single defining moment that popped into my head wasnt my discovery of punk rock, hardcore, picking up a guitar for the first time or even when i wrote my first song, it was me in the computer lab late one night at sam houston state university, xanga creeping and found a picture on a friend of a friend's xanga of a band that id never heard or even heard of, but just from the one picture of these sweet dudes and ladies in mid song, drawing the beauty of the heavens down and sharing them with we, mere mortals. we, humble purveyors of mediocrity. we, the unwashed masses. it was more than a picture, it was a love affair with my eyes. it spoke of all the energy and simplicity that id been on a search for my entire life, tho i may not have known it. and also dear readers, i did not fully realize what this picture ment. unlike columbus thinking hed sailed clear around the world and found a shorter way to india, (however wrong he may have been) i had no idea what this land that i was looking at was supposed to be. some magical land, full of strange wonders and excitements. knowing only that i didnt know what it was that i needed, but i needed it, and this was the place to find it. this was my first reaction to a picture of the band 'defiance, ohio'. very shortly after that, i found some of their music online and consumated my relationship with this band. a love affair that i belive, sparked a change in the way i looked at music and all of its ins and outs. a change that you can draw lines from my actions, decisions, and the music i make itself even now, straight back to that one glorious evening. the simplicity of accoustic instruments, the raw passion shown in their faces and heard in their voices. the intelligent simplicity of the lyrics. another musical world was opened to me that evening, and ive never been the same since.

there is much about this transformation that i still don't fully understand. it's much easier shown than spoken. its not that 'diy' was new to me. i knew what house shows were. it's much deeper than that. the combination of the anger and power of punk mixed with the singability and relation to whoever may be listening of folk music was what ultimately blew my mind. singing about loving a cause but hating the others that stand beside you, and being scared to dance at a show infront of other people were things i'd never heard sung before. things that i could relate to on a very personal level but to some extent thought i was alone in feeling. had i really thought about it, i would have known that i wasn't alone, but it felt good to finally have someone sing this to me. also, a huge part of it was that these were ordinary people. there was no real way to idolize these people when you saw how human they really were. what drew me to punk in the first place was that i knew i could do it. i learned how to play guitar to the ramones. it was fun, fast and simple. this was fun, fast, and simple, but also real in a new way. i could pick up my acoustic guitar and bang out three chords without having to go thru the hassle of band practice. dont get me wrong, i would still much rather play with other people, but now, were the people not avaliable, i could still have my punk rock.

but this is not where my love of music began, sirs and ladies. for that we will have to go back to one of my earliest memories that ive ever been able to recover, johnny cash singing about a ring of fire. but that will have to wait untill next time.

thank you dear readers