#chris ott

Huntertones Bring the Funk to Music Haven

Brooklyn brass band heads upstate

Huntertones

7 p.m. Thursday, July 25

Music Haven

Central Park, Schenectady, NY Free to the public

www.musichavenstage.org

(Rain site—Proctors)

SCHENECTADY, N.Y.—JULY 8, 2019—Brooklyn’s brassy Huntertones—making their Music Haven debut 7 p.m. Thursday, July 25—formed at Ohio State University in Columbus and hosted their first shows at a house on, you guessed it,…

I appeared on my favorite music podcast (and my favorite podcast period), Chris Ott’s Shallow Rewards, to discuss how the critical narrative of the 1990s has distorted the reality of how the era’s music, “alternative” and otherwise, functioned, flourished, and failed. There are substantial digressions about the overall state of arts criticism and journalism in there, too. Nobody does a better job than Chris of editing a podcast for maximum impact -- honestly, it’s not even close. Moreover his work has been a huge inspiration and influence for me, and it was an honor to be a guest. Please listen!

Download part one

A few weeks ago I played a show, during which I sang and sometimes played guitar. After it I had a conversation with an intense guy over the idea of writing and releasing music. And a few months before that I had a quite similar interaction with an obviously talented and super-sharp budding artist about just doing art / releasing a part of you out there. 

The thing is after ten plus years writing and recording and releasing music I’m still struggling with the word “artist”, which is really what I am when I am doing these things. 

And part of the failure at getting my point across (just doing something and putting it out there is fun and helps you hone your skills, learn what you’re good at, what works and doesn’t) is generational. As Chris Ott states in his essay Period-Correct Pop: 

[DJDS’s] Jerome [LOL]’s ten years younger than me, and this kind of psychic rift — protecting the developing Self by inventing a more concrete, invincible persona to absorb psychological assault — is common to his age. This is the reason Claire Boucher records as Grimes, and why so many young artists feel like changing names or forming new bands with each record. You want the control of a new narrative, the satisfaction of boxing up an imperfect old one — you want a clean slate, like the Asian Art Name tradition — but on the Internet everyone knows you tried to sail a chicken coop down the Mississippi. As paraphrased by Martin Scorsese in Robert Redford’s flawless period piece Quiz Show, “The public has a very short memory, but corporations never forget.” Neither does the Internet. 

The paralyzing idea that whatever you do must be perfect on your first try has always existed, but the internet-fueled fear of being judged and quickly and definitively dismissed is making the healthy and necessary try & error phase look like it’s disappearing. 

Another thing that explains why I ultimately felt like I was of absolutely no help at all, and maybe just ended up reinforcing the above-stated debilitating feeling, is that I failed to mention a crucial information -that you have to write / draw like no one’s watching. As David Foster Wallace wrote in his essay “The Nature of the Fun”:

writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers everywhere share and respond to, feel. Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable. This process is complicated and confusing and scary, and also hard work, but it turns out to be the best fun there is.

I am not sure whether this can be understood if it has not been felt or just glimpsed, but I feel that it is a most precious piece of advice. Create a space, through anonymity or pseudonym, that enables you to grow and make the mistakes every artist needs to make. Take a long hard look at yourself and write. Put your stuff out. Tape it on walls, leave it sitting around, upload it. Not for feedback, but because it is rewarding in itself and fun.