Goldmine

My good buddy Dave is living in Boston these days, so I don't get to see him as often as I'd like. Still, his family is in Buffalo, so when a holiday rolls around, he always makes the effort to squeeze in at least an hour or two for us to catch up. We used to hang out at Higher Grounds, the only independent coffee shop in the suburbs...until it closed and became a furniture store. So this time it was Anderson's, the local ice cream parlor. It was great to see both him and his wife. Somehow I ended up just telling these long winding stories about the last few months of my apparently eventful life. It had been a few months since we talked, and I hadn't realized just how much has happened during that time. I did my best to condense it into a few short stories, which they did seem to be really entertained by.

Another highlight of seeing Dave is that he always brings me a big bag of experimental music. You see, one of his buddies in Boston is a DJ for a radio station, and the guy constantly gets CD's submitted to him by artists hoping to get air time. A lot of the stuff he gets is really avant-garde, out there material that wouldn't fit with his show. So he asked Dave, "would you want a pile of CD's with music that is just too weird to be played on an indie radio show?" And Dave said, "No , but I know someone who would..."

Every time I get a pile of this music it's like Christmas and my birthday multiplied by magic. One of my biggest joys is discovering new artists, especially ones that play experimental, ambient and just straight up noisy crazy ridiculous audio nonsense. These albums are just a goldmine of that stuff...one mans rejected music is anothers treasure. Not only that, but as a big fan of the "do it yourself" mindset, I love seeing the handmade packaging and the gorgeous artwork that these albums always come packaged in. My favorite so far from this latest batch is a guy who plays improvisations using a stereo DJ mixer. Nothing hooked up to it at all, it's just the mixer. He found a way to get screeching, squeaking noises from the thing, and recorded an entire album of it. Why, you may ask yourself, would anyone bother to not only spend time doing such a thing, but then make an album and release it? Because, of course, someone like me will find it, listen to it and love it. I am a huge, huge fan of music as art, and I'm just a total sucker for stuff like this. It also encourages me to keep working on my own projects, in the hopes that somewhere out there, someone will stumble across my album and genuinely enjoy it. I'll actually be selling my albums for the first time at the end of July when I play at Squeaky Wheel...big step for me, but I'm totally excited. If even one person picks up a CD of mine and likes it...that would blow my mind...the very concept is awesomely surreal.