Letter #3
Hello to all, I hope everyone is doing well. Lately I have been thinking a lot about the state of music/art on the whole, specifically in and around New York City. I don’t know if it’s me or if I’m being pretentious (well, I know I am pretentious but maybe not in this case) but it is all feeling very sterile. Like the same things are being hashed and rehashed with the expectation of receiving the same praise as when it was done the first time. Candidly, I am somewhat guilty of that myself given I just put out what is more or less an indie rock revival record in 2023, and the indie rock revival has come, gone, come back, and gone again. Maybe that’s the natural cycle of things and you have to push through the boring bits to break new ground. Or maybe I’m consciously participating in “the scene” for the first time and this is just what it feels like, and that’s what makes you want to write something new, exciting, etc.
I remember being in school and having a discussion about people who are pioneers and people who are practitioners, but each of them being equally important to one another. You need someone to think of a new idea to keep things moving, but you also need other people to popularize it in order for your idea to catch on. Sonny Rollins needed Hank Mobley, Bruce Springsteen needed Southside Johnny, Coke Pepsi blah blah blah. Point being it feels like I’ve seen the ebb and flow of what’s happening right now and I think it’s about time for a shift. The trick is to figure out where you’re going ahead of time or getting everyone to follow along with you. The argument that there is an audience for everything in these modern times also persists, given how people consume media. Rather than work to cultivate an audience you can seek the demand that already exists for whatever it is that you’re doing, and hope that it’s large enough to sustain you. But whatever, who cares, we came here to rock and roll and that’s what we will do.
In the way of updates, I can share that we were supposed to play The Hart Bar in Bushwick on May 12th, but I got sick as a dog and my sweet Gabe broke his thumb so we unfortunately had to cancel. After that we have no gigs booked for the time being because good Lord is it difficult to find a show these days and I could not for the life of me say why. We are also hitting the studio to record some new singles in early June, but I think that’s supposed to be a secret so don’t tell anybody.
Until next time…
