James Noll's Blog, page 4
May 8, 2013
DIY
It all started with music.
In 1990, I joined my first band, The Talk. Okay, actually, my first band was technically called Crunchy Yellow Cauliflower, and it was just me and my friend Jamie writing silly songs in my room. With titles like “Moldy Reindeer” and “I Like Mustard,” there is a reason we lasted two practices and then quit. The Talk was a cover band that I joined in college, and it was comprised of guys a little older than me. I played a few shows with them before I quit. After that I played drums for a series of projects that went nowhere. I finally joined what I consider my first "real" band in 1994: Clark's Ditch. A year later I formed a side band with some friends from work: BEEF JERKY. Later on, I played in The Sharpshooters and The Minus Men before finally starting my career as a teacher.
While these bands were all different in styles of music and approaches and goals, they were similar in one way: Everything, from finding practice spaces, promoting and performing live shows, schlepping equipment organizing tours, writing songs, to scheduling recording time, pressing and distributing our music, and designing, buying, distributing merchandise (like t-shirts, stickers, posters, etc . . .), was done by us. In the music world, this is not only respected, it is Expected. In fact, any band that doesn’t do these kinds of things at some point in its career (usually at the start) is frowned upon, seen as not having “paid its dues,” and therefore unworthy of respect.
During this period of my life, I worked as a bartender, and I remember seeing these kinds of bands roll up to the restaurant where I worked. Invariably they were driving a nice van with some kind of trailer in tow. In addition to the band members, three or four “roadies” (usually friends of the band) filed out and proceeded to set up the equipment, which consisted of freshly bought guitars from Guitar Center, brand new amps in perfect condition, and drum sets with double kick drums, a minimum of four toms, and a sea of perfectly polished cymbals.
They usually sucked.
In comparison, other bands arrived in a single, beaten up old car or two. They lugged their own gear: amps with peeling skins and dented grills, guitars that were scratched up and worn, and the smallest amount of drums possible—usually three shells, a snare, and three dinged up and dingy cymbals (including a hi-hat). Nobody else arrived with them, nobody helped. They did all of the lifting and setting up and breaking down on their own.
They were usually awesome.
The metaphor doesn’t exactly apply to each and every band, each and every creative enterrise, but works in a general sense. I’ve always wondered, too, why every single artistic endeavor works this way. Indie filmmakers are seen as intellectual artists, purveyors of cinema, where mainstream directors, like Michael Bay, are seen as lug-headed hacks, purveyors of crap. Indie musicians are seen as arbiters of taste; successful singers (like Beyonce or Britanny Spears) are mocked for their crass commercialization. Graphic artists are cool only until they “sell out” and produce illustrations for some kind of corporate ad.
But this has very rarely been the case with literature.
Maybe it started way back in the 18th Century with Dryden’s mocking of the Grub Street hacks, but whatever the beginnings, the idea of a writer publishing and marketing his or her own work has been met with—at best—snide derision. Of course there is a good reason for this. With the current self-publishing “revolution,” there are many examples of horrible writing; novels filled with punctuation errors, poor formatting, poorly developed characters. Every medium suffers this kind of incompetence, but it is only writing and publishing is it used as an argument against DIY.
As a business strategy, it is at best faulty. Can you imagine if everybody with a business idea had to send queries out to agents who would approve or disapprove of the idea based on some kind of subjective preference? There would be no business, at least not the way we understand it today. What gatekeeper would have approved of the personal computer (too expensive, not enough of a current market), the smart phone (we already have too many types of phones—the market is saturated), steam powered boats (you want to start a fire under the decks of a wooden vessel? Too risky. Wind powered boats are what people are used to), cars (horses are cheaper and perform the same task), television (the market is glutted with radios that basically do the same thing)?
I have, admittedly, not purchased any DIY books, mainly because I have yet to get over my own prejudices on the subject. I tend to gravitate toward books that have the power of the big publishing houses behind it. However, I am more likely these days to consider something self published. The difference is that while I will buy a book by Neil Gaiman or Joe Hill or other authors published by major publishing houses based on reviews and word of mouth, I’d actually need to meet the self-published author in-person, talk to them about their work, maybe read a chapter or a story, before I consider buying it.
Ultimately, though, it should be the work itself that is judged, not the method with which it was published or distributed.
In 1990, I joined my first band, The Talk. Okay, actually, my first band was technically called Crunchy Yellow Cauliflower, and it was just me and my friend Jamie writing silly songs in my room. With titles like “Moldy Reindeer” and “I Like Mustard,” there is a reason we lasted two practices and then quit. The Talk was a cover band that I joined in college, and it was comprised of guys a little older than me. I played a few shows with them before I quit. After that I played drums for a series of projects that went nowhere. I finally joined what I consider my first "real" band in 1994: Clark's Ditch. A year later I formed a side band with some friends from work: BEEF JERKY. Later on, I played in The Sharpshooters and The Minus Men before finally starting my career as a teacher.
While these bands were all different in styles of music and approaches and goals, they were similar in one way: Everything, from finding practice spaces, promoting and performing live shows, schlepping equipment organizing tours, writing songs, to scheduling recording time, pressing and distributing our music, and designing, buying, distributing merchandise (like t-shirts, stickers, posters, etc . . .), was done by us. In the music world, this is not only respected, it is Expected. In fact, any band that doesn’t do these kinds of things at some point in its career (usually at the start) is frowned upon, seen as not having “paid its dues,” and therefore unworthy of respect.
During this period of my life, I worked as a bartender, and I remember seeing these kinds of bands roll up to the restaurant where I worked. Invariably they were driving a nice van with some kind of trailer in tow. In addition to the band members, three or four “roadies” (usually friends of the band) filed out and proceeded to set up the equipment, which consisted of freshly bought guitars from Guitar Center, brand new amps in perfect condition, and drum sets with double kick drums, a minimum of four toms, and a sea of perfectly polished cymbals.
They usually sucked.
In comparison, other bands arrived in a single, beaten up old car or two. They lugged their own gear: amps with peeling skins and dented grills, guitars that were scratched up and worn, and the smallest amount of drums possible—usually three shells, a snare, and three dinged up and dingy cymbals (including a hi-hat). Nobody else arrived with them, nobody helped. They did all of the lifting and setting up and breaking down on their own.
They were usually awesome.
The metaphor doesn’t exactly apply to each and every band, each and every creative enterrise, but works in a general sense. I’ve always wondered, too, why every single artistic endeavor works this way. Indie filmmakers are seen as intellectual artists, purveyors of cinema, where mainstream directors, like Michael Bay, are seen as lug-headed hacks, purveyors of crap. Indie musicians are seen as arbiters of taste; successful singers (like Beyonce or Britanny Spears) are mocked for their crass commercialization. Graphic artists are cool only until they “sell out” and produce illustrations for some kind of corporate ad.
But this has very rarely been the case with literature.
Maybe it started way back in the 18th Century with Dryden’s mocking of the Grub Street hacks, but whatever the beginnings, the idea of a writer publishing and marketing his or her own work has been met with—at best—snide derision. Of course there is a good reason for this. With the current self-publishing “revolution,” there are many examples of horrible writing; novels filled with punctuation errors, poor formatting, poorly developed characters. Every medium suffers this kind of incompetence, but it is only writing and publishing is it used as an argument against DIY.
As a business strategy, it is at best faulty. Can you imagine if everybody with a business idea had to send queries out to agents who would approve or disapprove of the idea based on some kind of subjective preference? There would be no business, at least not the way we understand it today. What gatekeeper would have approved of the personal computer (too expensive, not enough of a current market), the smart phone (we already have too many types of phones—the market is saturated), steam powered boats (you want to start a fire under the decks of a wooden vessel? Too risky. Wind powered boats are what people are used to), cars (horses are cheaper and perform the same task), television (the market is glutted with radios that basically do the same thing)?
I have, admittedly, not purchased any DIY books, mainly because I have yet to get over my own prejudices on the subject. I tend to gravitate toward books that have the power of the big publishing houses behind it. However, I am more likely these days to consider something self published. The difference is that while I will buy a book by Neil Gaiman or Joe Hill or other authors published by major publishing houses based on reviews and word of mouth, I’d actually need to meet the self-published author in-person, talk to them about their work, maybe read a chapter or a story, before I consider buying it.
Ultimately, though, it should be the work itself that is judged, not the method with which it was published or distributed.
May 7, 2013
Steps for exhaustion:
To prepare for the weekend recording:
1. Practice new material through Thursday.
2. New heads on toms/tune hand percussion.
3. New strings for guit.
4. Back up Pro Tools files on portable HD.
5. Break down and load up drums.
6. Drive to studio Friday night.
7. Unload, set up in studio.
8. Record at least one song for sounds and levels.
9. Return Saturday Morning at 10.
10. 10-12-- record drums and percussion.
11. 12-1-- guitars
12. 1-2-- bass
12. 2-4-- vocals
13. 4-5-- extras
14. Break down, load up, drive home, unload, set up again.
15. Collapse.
1. Practice new material through Thursday.
2. New heads on toms/tune hand percussion.
3. New strings for guit.
4. Back up Pro Tools files on portable HD.
5. Break down and load up drums.
6. Drive to studio Friday night.
7. Unload, set up in studio.
8. Record at least one song for sounds and levels.
9. Return Saturday Morning at 10.
10. 10-12-- record drums and percussion.
11. 12-1-- guitars
12. 1-2-- bass
12. 2-4-- vocals
13. 4-5-- extras
14. Break down, load up, drive home, unload, set up again.
15. Collapse.
May 5, 2013
New art for the next collection
As I start the process of putting the new Science Fiction collection together, it dawned on me how exhausting and exhilarating creating a multi-media extravaganza can be. By multi-media, I mean that each story and novel is illustrated and has a theme song. For those that are used in the PULP EDU Project, I create educational video, audio, research papers, and graphics that my students can use to study topics as diverse as psychology, chemistry, literary analysis, and history.
I just had a Skype meeting with the artist (Grant Ervin), and we spoke about "Here You Will Be Safe," and "Savages," the most adventure-based stories so far in the collection. While those are going to be interesting for him to illustrate, he's also excited about illustrating "Like This?" and "Milly Anne," two stories which are about mental illness and autism (schizophrenia/ASPD and Asperger's, respectively). Since those stories aren't really action based, he's going to use cool POVs and odd angles to emphasize the themes. And on top of all that, I get to go into the studio on Saturday to record music for three of the works of fiction (two short stories and a novel), and mix two more songs. Fun stuff!
I just had a Skype meeting with the artist (Grant Ervin), and we spoke about "Here You Will Be Safe," and "Savages," the most adventure-based stories so far in the collection. While those are going to be interesting for him to illustrate, he's also excited about illustrating "Like This?" and "Milly Anne," two stories which are about mental illness and autism (schizophrenia/ASPD and Asperger's, respectively). Since those stories aren't really action based, he's going to use cool POVs and odd angles to emphasize the themes. And on top of all that, I get to go into the studio on Saturday to record music for three of the works of fiction (two short stories and a novel), and mix two more songs. Fun stuff!
