:: Music As Social Agitation Records::

:: Monday, May 09, 2005 ::

i don't know if i should post this, but it (however truly real/significant it is) is starting to bug me a lot. i will try and clarifiy it better soon, but here is what i rambled to a friend via email to central america today:

"today we play at belvedere park on the banks of the arkansas river, which is a lot bigger here than it is colorado where it almost killed me a few years ago. i wonder how long it took that water there in colorado that we were near when the accident happened to travel all the way here. perhaps, there is a stick or something tumbling in the current that just arrived in little rock, after traveling the last 3 years down stream and we will remeet it today... i am having an artistic crisis. it would seem that there is some famous band that started in bellingham who has a lead singer that i am trying to copy and sound exactly like. this KILLLLLSS me. i hate it so much, helen. so much. for the record, if i am any sort of rip off artist, i am a built to spill (theres nothing wrong with love era) ripp off. it was driving home from the hospital where my step father had just passed away at four am with the windows down singing llong to that album that i "found" my voice. which is simply to say that after ten years of singing horribly along to nearly every song i heard, especially while crying myself to sleep to the 92.5 KLSY easy soft favorites, that the singing part start to well, work? i guess... regardless i have been singing nearly like this since then. argh. and now people pass off my music and don't give the songwriting a chance becuase i am OBVIOUSLY trying to ride the gibbard coat tail into stardom. this is an assumption, but after six years of touring as an musician from bellingham, washington and noticing certain patterns in certain reactions to my music, i know this to be true at least some of the time. and it fucking kills me. if any of it is ben gibbard related, it is that we listened to the same artists and loved the same music while growing into our own songwriting (something i have talked to him about)... what to do, helen? despite my strong, strong allegiance to artistic sincerity and love for art that is the most unfiltered, unaltered, unperverted coming from wherever through the human artist channel and out into the world, i am seriously considering concertedly singing different, altering things in order to not sound like some dude who is famous. perverting it on purpose, sacrificing the sincerity of it in order that the song, thing to be communicated, is more approachable for a certain cohort of people hearing it. hmmm..."

:: brs 12:18 PM [+] ::
...

Comments:

Matt, I love **YOUR** voice. And I have never EVER even had the thought cross my mind that You and Gibbard share similarities. Please ignore those people with those thoughts and continue to sing the way you do naturally. Please! Although, experimenting can be good- but I don't think so under these certain circumstances. Not from anger.

# posted by  Anonymous : 3:58 PM

 

dont change cause of some famous person or becoming famous person.
fame is a joke and i dont even know who this gibbard guy is,
others might not either.

its all about what you said (and this is why i dig you) .. your insides--and making them come outside--in music.

fuck the other shit. people who love music shouldnt care that one artist reminds them of another, they should like the songs for what they are.


anyways--my 2 cents
c

# posted by  Anonymous : 4:07 PM

 

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