"Who did you listen to growing up, how have your musical tastes changed as you've entered "adulthood", and who are you listening to these days?"
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My entire life changed the moment Victoria Lindsay accidentally pressed "play" on her Sony boombox in my 6th grade classroom. Mrs. Borkon had invited us to bring in music we liked, as part of a class project, which we were to wait until the appropriate moment to play for each other. Victoria was across the room with another group, and I had never spoken much with her. I think one day she complimented the Christian Dior shirt my mom picked up for me at a thrift shop, and I assumed it was sarcasm so I told her to "shut up." She was confused, but let it slide, and maybe we didn't say another word to each other until her finger slipped and sent the opening line to Green Day's "Basketcase" into the grade school air.
I was stunned. My body was frozen. I could do nothing but retrace the last 15 seconds of my life, failing to compare it to anything I'd known before. In retrospect, maybe it compares to the first hit of a drug by someone prone to addiction, or that moment Hollywood teaches us to covet when looking across a room and locking eyes with some other lovestruck damn fool. And I was sure lovestruck - lucky that my rapport with the teacher was pretty good, I made my nervous way over the stained floorboards to where Victoria was giggling at her innocent mistake. "What ... WAS that?" I asked. She showed me the album cover, which I studied for as long as she'd let me. Class resumed, somehow I found myself back in my seat, behind my busted desk, in my same old classroom. But with very new ears.
The next memory I have that's similarly vivid is watching Elaine Schwartz dance on a table, in that same small town class room, to a song by the Offspring. The album "Smash" had somehow made its way into my still-very-limited consciousness within a week or two of my musical awakening, and in a matter of hours I had memorized all the words and chords to such epic societal essays as "Bad Habit" and "Genocide." My mother was dating a poet named David, a wonderful man with the misfortune of daylighting as a lawyer, with whom I'm lucky still to be in touch. David introduced me, via special edition compact disc, to the greatest hits of one Jimi Hendrix. I use no hyperbole when I tell you, this consumed me entirely. The notes on that recording, two copies of which I played in my Discman until they wouldn't play anymore, shaped my first years as a teenager like a glacier blazing through the innocent landscape in my sheltered little world. I learned to play guitar by listening to Jimi and his bassist Noel (from whom, I derived my chosen first and last name) and drum set, of course, from Mr. Mitch Mitchell. The Band Of Gypsys, and Jimi's solo works, were my third taste of real music, but they were my first experience with true love.
Over the next few years I became intimately familiar with the sounds and emotions of many contemporary artists: Soul Asylum, the Counting Crows, Live, Matchbox Twenty, Seven Mary Three, Beck, No Doubt, Pearl Jam, and many more I'd have to fight with myself to remember by name now (of course I'd stop the conversation and start singing along, maybe even dancing, if they started playing over any retail store intercom or restaurant speaker system). I did a little historical research, too, and let a few more true classics into my heart: the Eagles, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, J. Geils Band, U2, Ozzy Osbourne, and a few scattered others.
Since entering and exiting my twenties, I've found that I don't need to hear those old recordings very often. They're a part of me, they're imprinted into my DNA and different bits and pieces of them resurface in my heart and mind often without warning. And now, I'm excited to say, new treasures have made themselves known to me - one day in college, I happened upon the ultra-terrestrial journey known as Spiritualized, somehow I'm lucky enough to have been raised in a world where Tom Waits exists, and much to my great celebration, it's still legal to listen to Conor Oberst without a prescription. I won't even get started on Leonard Cohen, whose discography is more an audio Kama Sutra than anything else. And if you've ever eaten a chunk of fresh apple with brie cheese, then washed it down cranberry lemonade, you may know the joy of a Bob Schneider record. My bread and butter, through many of my normal days and nights, consists in the veins and arteries of Wilco, Lucinda Williams, Son Volt, Emmylou Harris, Grant Lee Phillips, Kelly McFarling, Golden Smog, Loudon Wainwright, Lyle Lovett, Ryan Adams, Avett Brothers, Uncle Tupelo, Cary Hudson, Kris Kristofferson, and of course, John Prine.
Some seemingly anomalous behavior from my ears as related through my heart -- I'm a sucker for Owl City, She & Him, and the Deftones. There are more, but for instance, nobody needs to know that I like Mandy Moore. The ones that took even me by surprise were the groups I didn't understand for a long time, and then one day, suddenly loved: Nirvana, the Rolling Stones, and Radiohead, to name a few. And finally, if there's one last wish I can earn, whenever my life finally fades, I'd like for the late Townes Van Zandt to sing me through it. Oh God, and Eva Cassidy. I hope since passing away, they've met and she's tending to his latest scrapes from the playground.
"What are your five desert island albums?"
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(1) Tom Waits - Real Gone
(2) Bob Schneider - Underneath The Onion Trees
(3) Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
(4) John Prine - Fair and Square
(5) New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed, Too
"I saw "This is the End" recently, and laughed so hard, I felt like I was going to pass out. Any other movies that I need to see?"
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Oh man. I haven't seen that yet, maybe I should. Uh, movies. Yes. You've probably seen School of Rock? That movie kills me. What about Peaceful Warrior? My friend Kai chose that for "movie night" back when I was living in the mid-west, and everyone in the room seemed to get just a whole lot of good energy from it. I imagine you're no stranger to "A Mighty Wind?" I have a feeling if I watched that again, I'd really laugh my ass off. The first time, I think I was too concerned with laughing to prove that I got it. Which was silly, because I watched it alone. OH. And "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." Fantastic. My favorite movie of all time is "No Country For Old Men."
"Food you can't live without?"
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I eat pizza every day. The doctors say it will kill me. They don't say that to me, though, because I don't have health insurance. Haha. They're saying that to the other people, who are paying them to talk. I eat the pizza for the same reason I don't have health insurance -- I'm poor. Here in New York City, I can get a slice of pizza on almost any street corner for $1, which is pretty much the best news I've ever heard. I also eat bagels, breakfast wraps, and pretty much any other food that I can find in the $1 range. If I had my choice of any food ever, I think I'd pick crepes with lemon juice and sugar on them, or maybe a nice warm gyro sandwich. But there are whole days that I just eat one thing all day -- in fact, I'm that way with music, too. I'll often put one song on repeat for 30 or 40 times through, and just really sink into it. One week last winter I ate only sourdough rolls. They were delicious.
"Tell me how your shows are different now from when you were touring with Union Pulse."
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The biggest difference, I think, in playing solo is that I have both the freedom and the responsibility to shape the sound entirely on my own. There is nothing into which I can retreat and relax, that will simply continue and be my fallback if I decide to take a sip of water or scratch my butt. There are no points of counter-balance against which to launch any kind of complicated harmonic fight scene choreography, or for that matter, cumulative lovemaking progressions. Instead, I'm telling a story as the sole narrator, suddenly after having handcuffed myself to a Round Robin open mic for years. To be fair to the robins which were most often around, I had generally scripted each plot pretty completely and allowed for only a slight margin of deviance. I was playing with dolls, all the while bickering oh so pleasantly with myself about whether I wanted to lead the dolls or let the dolls lead me. Finally, I am the doll - I'm the mannequin, the puppet, the action figure, the painting in progress. And what I've found is really quite surprising: I never once need to know who the puppet master is.
"Will you let me take you to a Mets game next summer?"
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I would absolutely LOVE to go to a Mets game! I meant to tell you, the other day I thought of you when I saw a man (who must live near me, as I've since seen him a few more times) walking his very cute mutt -- a shaggy off-white thing with fur in place of eyes and a Harlem sort of strut -- upon which the man had placed a Mets baseball cap. The cap seems to migrate from one of their skulls to the other, and back, depending on some factor to which I'm not attuned. Maybe the stock market, this is New York City after all.
James will be promoting the release of his new record by touring the country over the next few months. He will be touring with Chicago singer-songwriter, Troy Petty. Make sure to check him out !!
Today's five newgazzi tracks feature two songs from the new record, a song from that original demo that I love, a song that James hand picked himself, and one song from Troy Petty. Enjoy !!
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