Simple Math 2015: Simple Math Is Dead; Long Live The Gospel According To Saint Me
Veruca Salt - The Gospel According To Saint Me
In October, a catastrophic hard drive failure cost me my entire iTunes library ā more than 85,000 songs collected over just shy of two decades. (Really! I started building my digital library way back in 1996, with live Husker Du bootlegs acquired from online trading communities and handfuls of punk and ska rarities downloaded off of sketchy FTP servers.) It doesnāt seem recoverable, not without a small fortune, and very possibly not with one either. I havenāt quite decided if I intend to try and rebuild or not. The real value of the collection was the stuff that canāt be found online anymore (or ever); the parts I could replace are the parts that it might not be worth replacing rather than just resigning myself to streaming from now on instead of ownership. Fortunately, my life has been far too busy to spend time worrying about, or even contemplating, what to do.Ā
Not that iTunes would have been much use for my tallying this yearās Simple Math anyway ā over the last few years, itās largely become an archive of non-digitally-accessible tracks and a repository of star ratings, something to track what Iāve listened to and whether Iāve liked it, but not how muchĀ Iāve listened to it. And the one thing it was most useful for ā keeping track of which albums I listened to over the course of the year ā fell by the wayside when I ceased to add albums to my library post-crash. Meanwhile, my Spotify āYear In Musicā feature didnāt, so far as I can tell, include anything I played offline, and certainly doesnāt include anything I loaded onto my account locally. And my Last.fm, by dint of not scrobbling Spotify plays on mobile, is essentially useless in providing any kind of accurate stats about my listening this year.Ā
Even if I were able to get accurate stats, Iām not entirely sure what Iād find ā this year has been one of change and upheaval, and my listening habits have been as chaotic as the rest of my life. The latter half of 2015 saw theĀ bittersweet end of PropertyOfZack; a relocation from the urban hum of New York City to suburban south Florida; a farewell to six years of steady employment and a hello to a whole lot of question marks;Ā and, six weeks ago, the birth of the most beautiful baby boy in the whole world*. Heck, truth be told, Iāve probably listened to more lullabies ā played via Lionelās sleep machine, by way of a decade-old iPod ā in the last month than music the rest of the year combined.
The bottom line is that, after a four year run, the yearly tabulation post Iāve been dubbing Simple Math is, for all practical purposes, dead.
That said, Makeup For The Silence has, from the start, been about music and storytelling and the places where those intersect. And if 2015 is the year I stop quantifying the music side of the equation, it is also the perfect year to shine a light on the storytelling Iāve done. While 2015 marked theĀ endĀ ofĀ PropertyOfZack, it also saw me making my presence felt more than ever at Alternative Press, as well as opening up new doors at Myspace and the Broward-Palm Beach and Miami New Times. And though things are currently a little to busy to focus on pitching elsewhere, Iām hoping that 2016 sees my writing finding its way into even more new spaces.Ā
But it wasnāt just my reach that grew this year ā I think Iām more proud of the writing I did in 2015 than any year prior. So, instead of recapping my musical stats, I thought Iād instead share some of the highlightsĀ of my year behind the keyboard. Welcome to The Gospel According To Saint Me. Itās gonna get loud; itās gonna get heavy.
It Just Isnāt Like The Old Days Anymore ā Mayday Parade [Alternative Press Magazine 328 / November 2015]
My first cover story for a national publication would have been the highlight of my year in anyĀ year. Mayday Parade, pop-punkās ultimate play-it-safe band, bucked all expectations by growing darker and more daring at the exact time when most career-minded bands would have dialed back on the Risk-O-Meter. I suppose the jury is still out commercially ā though itās hard to imagine the bandās camp wasnāt disappointed by the precipitous fall-off in album-over-album sales, the bandās first in three outings ā but Black LinesĀ is an artistic triumph, and I think I did justice to the story of the albumās genesis.
Sting, Bon Jovi And More Help Celebrate 80 Years Of Overtown Legend Sam Moore [Miami New Times]
Writing for the New Times might not come with the paycheck or the prestige of other publications, but the access itās granted me to big-name artists from across the pop spectrum is priceless. This year I had the good fortune to chat with everyone from piano-pop legend Ben Folds, to Emily Haines of Canadian indie heavyweights Metric, to up-and-coming tropical house DJ Bakermat. But none topped interviewing Sam Moore, one half of Sam & Dave, the voices behind āSoul Man,ā āHold On, Iām Comināā and a dozen more hits that defined the sound of Memphis Soul at the turn of the ā70s. I donāt really have a bucket list, but if I did, chatting with a member of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame would have been near the top.Ā
Crawling Towards the Sun: The Hush Soundās Bob Morris Starts Again, Again [PropertyofZack]
Itās easy to forget that 90% of the hot new buzz bands youāll have served to you on a platter this year will be the ones flipping the metaphorical, and often literal, burgers a decade from now ā talent (and, often, fanbase) be damned. Morris is back with a new project, Le Swish, but heās also got a new outlook on life and some new ideas on where and how music should fit into it. His story isnāt unique, but you might think it was for how rarely it gets told.
SXSW Wrap-Up: These Things Happened. These Things Mattered. [PropertyOfZack]
South By South West is a strange chimaera, a beast of many looks that serves many masters, but it often only gets photographed from its āgoodā side. Truth is, thereās a lot more than happens at the industryās yearly bacchanal than the anointment of next big things and the grousing of never-will-bes. There are other stories to be told and, while theyāre not sexy,Ā theyāre frighteningly easy to find. But when the hype-makers are the ones charged with creating the official record, they develop a nasty habit of only recording whatās hyped. SXSW is so much more than anyone seems to talk about, and it deserves better treatment. With what will be a 3-month-old son, Iāll be missing out on SXSW 2016, but you can be sure my heart will be there, in all the corners the cool kids arenāt.
Andrew W.K. Isnāt Partying Hard Anymore, Heās Got Too Much Else Going OnĀ [Myspace]
Conversing with Andrew W.K. was everything I could have imagined it would be; the man is a whip-smart deep thinker and a master of introspection, and better yet, he uses his powers for good. It felt almost criminal to have to edit down Wilkes-Krierās soliloquies on art, feeling and life into interview-sized snippets.
Start Today: Bad Religion [PropertyofZack]
Bad Religion arenāt only foundational figures in SoCal punk and stalwarts of the current scene, theyāre a remarkably consistent machine thatās churned out excellent album after excellent album for more than 30 years. That voluminous output makes their catalog as intimidating as it is deep, and made them the perfect candidates with which to launch our Start Today feature.
Matisyahu Spent The Past Five Years Discovering His True Self [Broward-Palm Beach & Miami New Times]
When your bizarre musical schtick is just a reflection of your unusual real life, what becomes of your career when that life drastically changes? Itās a question to which Matisyahuās fanbase is still working out the answer, even if the man himself seems more certain than ever of who heās supposed to be.
10 Things You Should Know About Phoebe Ryan [Myspace]
Pop singer/songwriter Ryanās star is on the rise, but with only an EP to her name to date, it doesnāt seem that anyone has really plumbed her backstory yet. Thereās nothing groundbreaking in our conversation, just some fun and revealing anecdotes that I havenāt seen told elsewhere ā and really, isnāt that what this is supposed to be about? Sometimes the workaday pieces are the ones youāre happiest with.
Matter Of Time: A Chroma Q&A With Cartelās Will Pugh [PropertyOfZack]
I first saw Cartel live in 2004, opening for Brandtson and the Rocket Summer in support of their debut EP. The full length they were writing at the time, Chroma, would top my very first Yearly Top Ten list in 2005.Ā Iāve interviewed Will before, but sitting down with him before the band played that album in full, on occasion of its 10 year anniversary, felt especially significant. What followed was a marvelously candid discussion of not just the albumās stratospheric rise, but the bandās slow and steady descent over the decade that followed ā one thatās landed them at a true career crossroads today.
Links to everything else I wrote this year after the cut.
