Shock Value

My friend JJ sent me a CD. It's a compilation of the demos we recorded when we were playing together in a band called Shock Value.

Good ol' JJ. If you're out there buddy, here's a big "thanks man" from me to you. Just in time for the holidays and everything.

Hearing these songs after a lotta years, I can't honestly say we were a great band or anything... it's pretty apparent why the whole rock star thing never happened for that group.

But there's also some cool stuff, too. With the music and songwriting, we were trying to do something a bit more ambitious than a lotta other bands gigging around at the time who were just playing Pearl Jam covers. Fuck those guys... even if we did cover Pearl Jam once or twice.

The recording is hissy and scratchy. We were probably the last generation of bands recording shit on analog. We were also probably from the last generation of bands ever to try to get our shit out there without a web presence, and songs cut on a Mac with Garage Band.

Do bands still pass out flyers? I'm not talking about label street teams, I'm talking bands. I've passed out flyers.

This CD -- what it lacks in musicality and recording quality, it more than makes up in memories. I vividly recall cutting all of these tracks, and playing them a bajllion times in front of empty rooms. Every once in a while we'd get in front of good-sized crowd and the shit would just ignite. It didn't happen much -- just often enough to keep me chasing that dragon for years.

When I came out to H'wood to make the film career happen, I made the conscious decision to leave music behind. I couldn't split my efforts. It was 100% or nothin', either music or film. And it's working out. I think mostly because I'm a better writer and producer than I ever was a bass player. :-P

Still, though... a part of me never left music behind. It's strange that NOW, at THIS stage in my life, I'm working as a music supervisor on a feature. You can take the dude off the stage, but you can't take the... that doesn't really make sense, forget it.

Come the day I have some disposable income, I'll probably pull together a basement set-up, record shit and stick it on the internets a la Liam Lynch and MC Lars.

Ultimately, the music thing paved the way for what I'm doing now. Most important, I spent years getting together with a bunch of people to create a single piece of work -- in this case, a song. Collaborative art for the sake of commerce. And film is that as well, just on a much bigger scale.

Which is why I totally understood from day one getting and applying notes to scripts, getting ideas from everyone, being one piece of the equation. When I started out working as a PA and grip, it was no big deal to haul around, set-up and breakdown equipment. It's what we did for every show.

Sometimes I run into writers and directors who get huffy about taking notes, or even listening to other ideas. They have the auteur thing in mind, where they imagine themselves going into a little room and spinning gold like Rumplestiltzkin and it's the job of everyone else in the world to fall down in worship of the genius and that's it.

Fuck those morons, it's obvious they never played in a band.

If music did anything for me, I learned how to take a dream and turn it into a goal. For most people, going to Hollywood and trying to start a career in the entertainment industry is this airy-fairy dream. Sometimes people come out and give it a shot, and run right back home. This is because they're still in dream land. They're disappointed when they get off the plane and someone isn't standing there with a Rich and Famous contract for them to sign.

Please.

The difference, of course, is goals involve work. Long hours of unending toil. Running up the side of that hill again and again and again and again and a-fucking-gain.

On a side note, I'm totally all about Guitar Hero and Rock Band as party games. But, at the same time, I wonder how many fewer people we'll have in the world who pick up a real instrument and learn how to play. Are high scores on these games a replacement for playing guitar? Or a gateway?

Not to say I was ever a bass maestro. But I honestly feel that, for all the bullshit and heartache that went along with it, my life is better overall for having played in bands. While a lot of other people just fucked around, I was going to band practice, playing shows and hustling CDs.

These days, I'm going to development meetings, giving pitches and hustling scripts. Different court, same game.

Good times.