Because the other band geeks' involvement has changed over the last 30 years (as they continue on in real trad. careers) and more & more I’ve been doing the albums and stuff (most of the 4 years making the meadowlands & then business stuff the years immediately after), I’ve stopped using the pronoun “we” and just relaxed into an easier & more accurate “I” just reflecting what things had evolved to. But now, with this next record, that’s become again, as it was a long time ago, no longer accurate - I’d like you to welcome (back) our newest productively recording band member, Kevin! (ha)…
Started a “here’s what I did in the last 10 years” post but almost everything that came to mind initially was from the previous decade. So typically hilariously late, here’s my 2000-2010 nutshell:
I had my first non-teaching-music office job - and so, my first health insurance!, regular payroll check, etc. - which was awesome…
It was half of 20 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper bought the band a copy of the Meadowlands. Probably for one of his more mature friends and hopefully w/ a discretely included gift receipt.
Meaning yeah, the Meadowlands came out exactly 10 years ago today, on Sept. 9th, 2003, which also means that our 'most recent' release pre-dates things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Democrats in the White House, heck Bush's 2nd term, the show Lost, 6 albums and 3 EP's by Okkervil River, the Dinosaur Jr. reunion, some actual dinosaurs, the careers of Justin Bieber and Katy Perry COMBINED and the over 8400 separate and unique indie music micro-genres that gestated and died a quick bloggy death since...you get the idea. But putting it in any of those terms does feel like saying it came out in the '70s. (choose your own century)...[READ ON]
fashionably late to our own unfashionable…
…party, here’s a link for one of the list pieces that Pitchfork ran a week or so back celebrating their 15-year anniversary...
With this, the coldest day in August that I can remember, another sign of the End of Days is made manifest in our webby store – Meadowlands, in vinyl, the record, the actual album…is back in stock! ..
About halfway through the four-year Gallipoli that was making the Meadowlands, we moved from Ft. Lee, NJ back to yet another house in Secaucus, our third there. On the first full weekend in the new place, I was home by myself cleaning up in the yard, trying to hide from neighbors that a band had moved in next door, the kiss of suburban death.
One of those neighbors, the one directly next door, came over from his yard, introduced himself as Dan and asked the general niceties you do when you meet someone who’s renting (us) the house next to the house that you own (him), raised children in, have a real stake in etc. and need to take a measure of the person the fates have cast in the role of new neighbor and adjust the new threat-to-peace-of-mind level accordingly.
Now I admit...
Decennially means every 10 years, which isn’t accurate, I just wanted to type it...
Again, we don't have a press page and have always been iffy about putting up a whole page of flattering press (also too lazy to go ahead and write that press ourselves). But we were so knocked out that some people had put the Meadowlands on their lists of favorite albums of the decade that that we went ahead and broke our own little convention here and then again here when someone pointed out that we'd hilariously missed Pitchfork...
One of the stranger (but occasionally cooler) aspects about being a long-lived but less-than-prolific band that makes it to near-2010 (and with a slow-but-working internet connection) is that online, your older albums never die, they just continue to pop up here & there like that person from accounts payable you made out with at last year’s office holiday party. Or say, the undead. Not necessarily out to do harm or even embarrass, but making things kinda weird just by being there.
And people send you links to see it happen...
One of the niftier things that happens on the county-wide web is that some folks have – on their own, mind you – made videos for songs of ours. I guess that happens for every band, but we still think we’re special. It’s a mid-life hormonal thing. Like our hot flashes.
But this is a video for the song Per Second Second from the Meadowlands that a young man named John Liang made a couple years back with his company Discreet Films.
By that time though, our website was a semi-abandoned electronic shipwreck, and we were entering the shadowy waters of another ‘self-questioning period’. With snacks.
