"...they're just afriad to Change."

Enough of a developement has happened that I can post an update to the world of followers I have so they can see where my adventure are headed. Or in other words; some shit went down and I can tell you all about it. Take which-ever one you like.

So when I last wrote I was still in the process of finding a new residency; I may have found something. A gentleman who owns a condo has a room open for $500/month, all bills payed. We've talked and he sounds cool, when I head down to Austin this week I'm going to meet up with him and hopefully everything works out and I'll have a roof over my head. It's the condo owner and another roommate, which is good in that it'll force me to be social and get to know where I'm living.

In bigger and (fingers crossed) better news: I may have found a new group to perform with. They are called Aqua Jones (http://facebook.com/aquajonesmusic and http://www.reverbnation.com/aquajones). They did a craigslist ad, not too long after contacting I recieved a call from their guitarist, Brent Merchant, and had a nice conversation about what they're aiming for as total sound and what they're looking for as a potential band mate. This is where it gets good: They own bass equipment from their former bassist, so all I have to do is get down there and audition while I'm down in Austin figuring out living situations (which should be done quickly), and not have to worry about bringing down my own equipment until the actual move around labor day weekend.

I'm scared, excited, anxious and ready all at once. This is a good sounding group and I hope I'm able to bring it full on. They've already have an nicely sized based audience and have toured to some big name gigs, they have a lot of potential ahead of them but are just needing a body to help them move forward. I'm not even kidding myself, this is something I've been looking forward to for a while; a talented group where I can't get away with bringing a half-assed game to. Where I have to keep on my toes and stay fresh to not only fill in, but also bring a presence to an already functioning unit.

I'm learning how to keep an open mind and be every mindful of the events that happen to and around me so that I never miss an opportunity to expand, learn and grow. I'm always thankful of what opportunities I have had, and ones that I will learn in the near future. Never shut yourself off to a new way of thinking, and never limit yourself. In the words of Shannon Hoon: "When your deepest thoughts are broken keep on dreaming, 'cause when you stop dreaming it's time to die (and right now I don't want to die)."

Two seconds of breathing and then back to it.

I have been doing a horrible job with posting on here. I just have too much on my mind as of late to be on here trying to think up another essay to right. Needless to say, the realities of moving have been getting to me lately. It's excitement mixed in with fear, anxiety, tons of questions, and a little bit of gas, all based at the pit of my stomach. So many "what ifs" are floating around and making me nervous. Right now the mission is get this "where am I going to live" situation figured out.

The apartments I was looking at aren't open until October, even then, it's a question of is anyone going to move out? ...apparently those complexes were a good find, (go me!). But even then the plan was to live there a year in 1br then upgrade to a 2br/2 or 1ba later. So it's not like that option isn't there, just delayed a bit. So now I've been looking for someone offering a room, which is plentiful in Austin. Emails have been sent and some replies have come back.

This week is going to be a busy one: Headed down one last time to Winfield Friday-Sunday afternoon-ish, then head back to Wichita early if Dad and Michelle are coming over for dinner that night. Dentist appointment again on Monday (I'm really not a fan of them... just really too focused on "we don't want to leave you in pain." "...It's just a cleaning. Scrape and Clean!" They just scraped.) Then Austin bound Tuesday-Thursday to either sign an apartment or rent out a room with someone. I'm favoring living with someone because that's going to force me to get out and get acclimated to the environment. But I won't really know what I'm doing until the very last minute, until i get down there.

So that's about it in my book today, here's where I'm at until about the end of the month which is coming faster and faster... AAGH!

-Kevin

Limitless.

This is an interview with an artist whom I really like. He has motivated me to look at music and making music in new ways, and has also motivated me to go further than what I thought I could do with everything. To think beyond my own limitations that I put in front of myself. It's a trait we all tend to exhibit. Most of all, he's helped me learn that I shouldn't be too quick to discourage myself. Potential in what you love and believe in is limitless.




This is a blog my sister wrote that I read immediately afterwords. I hope these two things, if you actually can understand the interview, inspire you to stop reflecting on the past and help you better live in the moment.

Aimée Hain's Family Blog Post: I Like Originality

Not quite one of the typical blogs I've been producing lately, enjoy this "highlight reel" of a post.

Life Wasted.

The behind the story of the song "Life Wasted" by Pearl Jam. Cited via Wikipedia.org:

"The lyrics for "Life Wasted" were reportedly written about the death of Johnny Ramone and about the feelings one has after driving home from a funeral. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Vedder stated:

When you leave that funeral, that drive is as important as any single stretch of road you'll travel on. You've got a renewed appreciation for life. And I think that feeling can last through the day, through the week, but then things start getting back to normal and you start taking this living and breathing and eating thing for granted. I think that song is there to remind you, 'This is that feeling'....The truth is—I'm a little sensitive and this is a close, personal relationship. I'll just say it. Fuck it. Right up front. Half the record is based on the loss of the guy who turned out to be the best friend I ever had on the planet. And that was Johnny Ramone.^[1]" 

This song has been on repeat in my head a lot lately. I feel a lot of different emotions to this song, all stemming from about the same place. I always imagine someone driving, open air, all beat up (much like the Chili Peppers "Scar Tissue" video) just screaming these lyrics, blasting down the highway, onto something bigger, better... almost a new beginning. It's really kind of fitting that I'm brought back to the "Scar Tissue" video when I think of this song, that video had been explained as being a visual representation of where the band was at that time.

If you haven't seen it I'll paint a picture: the scenery is a highway based in the desert, in all different directions you see remains of a post apocalyptic world, charred debris; all weathered by the, not a cloud in the sky, sun. The band is driving through the "remains" in a beat up convertible, all dirtied up and covered by some form of cuts, bruises, bandages, and as the title would lead you to believe; scars. The story of the video is just of the band driving along looking for some form of life and re-piecing together some form of the former life. A visual limbo. At the time of the 1999 Californication release (and the time of  the video, of course) the band had just gotten their guitar player, John Frusciante, back who had been suffering from a heroin addiction in his time away, along with front man Anthony Keidis who had suffered a relapse of heroin usage. Up until the '99 release, the band had been falling apart at the seams and all signs pointed towards the band collapsing under the stress of it all. The video was made as a metaphor of that uncertain time; broken, beat, and scarred, they were now back on the road towards an unknown future.

I whenever the mental DJ plays "Life Wasted" again I'm taken back to a rush of feelings all from my time working at Baby Dolls for the three plus years I was there. That place, no matter how I may have portrayed it to family or friends, was just one big roller coaster with the On/Off leaver broken off years ago. There was absolutely nothing healthy about that atmosphere for me. I had "upper management" that absolutely despised me for no explainable reason. Really, nothing never was explained to me what I was doing wrong or what triggered all the negativity, but for some mystical reason I was always looked down on. I put A LOT of my time into making that place an echo of it's former self from ten years prior. I do mean "a lot," most of my friends referred to my time there as "being in a black hole for three years," (the interior walls were covered with mirrors, and because of that phone signal seemed to never come into, or, went out the of club. So there was no communication ever going out to friends, and because of that my list of people I would call friends was diminishing rather quickly.) At three years I had resigned, I actually set a record of being the first manager to just walk away and not be fired... if that isn't alarming in some form, I don't know what is. But the idea was to just walk away, wash my hands of it, and not to burn any bridge; I still had work friends that I would've like to be able to see every so often. I left in July of '10, not quite a year later I came back up to Topeka for NHRA Summer Nationals. At Dolls I had picked up a couple of friends that worked with the NHRA circuit, it was always a fun time when NHRA rolled into town; club was always very busy since it was just a mile north of the track. This year I went up to the track, met back up with the NHRA friends and eventually headed over to Dolls sister club, Club Orleans. It was that night, after I had walked in, that my former "upper management" walked in after my Dad and I. I had tried to give a polite head nod a couple of times to "upper management" but was ignored, both times. Dad and I left and stayed home Saturday with plans to head back up Sunday for finals. Saturday I received a text from a number I had deleted on my last day of work at Dolls, but instantly recognized. I remember thinking "Oh this should be good" when I saw the number. "Don't bother coming back to Orleans." My whole body became hot, I don't think a kind word could have been found within a mile of my thinking, just thoughts of so much negativity that I won't dare retype any of it here or anywhere. I think that a whole ten seconds had passed before I had sent my reply: "alrighty! ;)"  (the only insult I could think up, make it sound homoerotic.)

That was about the time the mental DJ started playing "Life Wasted" on heavy rotation. All I could think of was all my time I had... I guess at this point, just thrown away. All the years of stress and work to try and bring that place back to it's former glory it had been years prior. Learning the in's-and-out's of sales and marketing, promotions. Learning how to work an atmosphere, all the times I had thrown my voice out and risked my personal health to make myself and that place a little bit of revenue. Friends and family I had told "oh, I'm sorry, I'm busy working" to, and missed some major occasions because of. And I think most painful of all, missing out of time I could have spend with my grandfather in his last months, weeks, days, hours, minutes. All that time, really, just wasted at this point.

Those feelings have subsided a bit now, but every so often (such as now as I type this) it comes back and just leaves a burning feeling from the pit of my stomach, all the way up to about the middle of my chest. I think of all the animosity I felt on that Saturday, all that negativity that, again, I promise I'm not writing or expressing. But also mixed up with that hurt and animosity, I have this all encompassing, feeling of excitement and hope. Almost as if I'm looking outward and knowing that yes, I had messed up and ended up bloodied up, bruised, and scarred. But, there is still plenty of this highway in front of me, and after straying, I might as well not quit. It's best to just keep going forward. Lessons learned, I'm ready to go. "There's got to be some sign of life out there." A positive that I do take away from my time there is that I did make a few friends that I consider very close, and do wish to keep in touch with. I never know, I could run into them again. 

But in the mean time, with the song "Life Wasted" on continuous repeat, the top down, the bandages applied and scars healing, the message right now couldn't be more clear:

                  "I've have faced it; a life wasted. I'm never going back again.
                   I escaped it; a life wasted. I'm never going back again.
                   Having tasted; a life wasted. I'm never going back again."

Write A Song Out Of It.

Some time ago I wrote a small little collection of chords that formed a decent skeleton of a future tune.
An advantage of owning an iPhone is that not only do you have access to a very organized and 'nifty' Notes application, it also comes with a Voice Memo application. Talk about handy, the only way that I would ever switch is if any other phone comes with an application closely related, if not a 100% copy... that and it's ability to also play iTunes mp4's so Apple doesn't have a monopoly over the iTunes generation of music collectors (also known as 'suckers') but then again iTunes is property of Apple. ...that's another blog.
Back to the opening paragraph: I wrote something that sounded decent. Only two chords and two power chords, sounds good enough to be a verse. I tried piecing together a chorus or a bridge variation, but nothing has taken me as much as this verse structure has.After a while of playing what I had written I grabbed my iPhone and pulled up the Voice Memos (the 2011 version of the tape recorder) and played my guitar piece.
I can't really describe the feelings I was experiencing as I pieced together and played, I can only really describe what I was thinking about: That piece was actually written two weeks (give or take) before tonight over at my former projects rehearsal space. When I wrote it the singer/songwriter I was working with was sitting next to me intently listening to see if it had potential to add to his arsenal. After I had jammed it out and was in the middle of writing it down for future reference, he tried to give me some pointers as to "what he would do with it." "Your bass playing style is very fast. You're playing a lot of notes in the time that we're playing our chords. Try not to apply that same style to the guitar, give the chords sometime to ring out." At the time I took the suggestion with a grain of salt. I thought "that's how you would play it." So I wrote the rest of what I was doing down and closed my phone and didn't bring it up again.
I also thought back to a time several years ago right after the very first band I was with split up. Around the end of the venture our Guitarist/Singer, Ryan, was convinced that our group needed some outside help in the form of a manager. The group maybe had a show every month or so at the time we started working with the person we were looking to "hire on." She had gotten us a couple shows and was very intent on signing us to a contract to her "management firm." I still remember the night she brought over copies of the contract for us to read and eventually sign, it was so full of lawyer and contract lingo that I was having problems wrapping my head around. Just longer and longer nonsense, intentionally confusing, "hereunto" words that were making no since to the situation we were in, and to what aspirations all four of us were wanting to accomplish as a "group (dot dot dot) with (dot) a manager." At some point the question of "where did you get these?" was asked and answered with "I just copied it from online and replaced some titles and names." A copy and paste contract? ...that's a good idea. Jake and I stalled on signing our names on the "contract," which turned out to be a good idea (for another reason than the obvious one): Ryan had met with us less than a week after the "contract negotiation," and told us he was done. He told us that the fire that had motivated him to this point had given out, that he wasn't wanting to go on in the direction that we were headed. His love for the music just wasn't enough anymore. He apologized and then he left. I was very fresh with the group and had just purchased a new bass and sound system for the band, now I was looking at the equipment in Jake's basement asking myself "well, what do I do with this?" I was in the middle of packing when Jake came down and we just stood there, still in shell shock. I looked at him at some point and just said "I'm not done yet. There is no way. This isn't over." The group was done but I wasn't. It was maybe an hour before I got the call from the would be manager of the now former group to inquire about what we were doing. I shouldn't have told her, but I said that Jake and I weren't done and would start another project. I remember her very vividly saying "I'm in. Whatever you're doing I'm with you. You're my meal ticket."
That phrase really bothered me; we hadn't even figured out how we were going to go about replacing the void that was left, much less, when our next show was, and already I had a hand that I had to provide for. It wasn't too much longer after that phone call that I had called her and said that there was no way I would have her tag along. That, in turn, turned into a huge unnecessary fall out between us and her and, for some reason, her boyfriend. The experience left me scarred. After the huge fall out that ensued hours after I had called her back, a friend of mine who argued on my behalf to the would be manager's boyfriend, walked back with me into the bar we were at and held me as I broke down after the fight.
I was hurt. I had just lost a very close friend and almost all hope in his departure, I was trying to deal with the frustration of 'what am I going to do now?' And now, I had just had a show down with people that were counting on me to "be their meal ticket" with a skeleton of a group that had a void in it's line-up and no direction to go to in it's very immediate future; a very intense 24 hours. While he was with me in that very delicate time he told me, "Hold onto this feeling you have right now. This emotion, keep it with you and write a song out of it."
Years later, in the 2 minutes 30 seconds I had recorded that song structure all those memories came back to me in every vivid, excruciating detail. I stopped and listened to what I had just laid down. Whatever feeling I had from then, from Ryan's departure to the point of breaking down from the hurt I felt 24 hours later, has finally started to leave me and manifest itself into this skeleton of a song that is still being written. I can hear it in the song now. The other parts: the rhythm section, lead and harmonics are still floating around. I can hear them, but have yet to figure it out and write it all down. It has taken time for me to learn how to become a better songwriter, how to apply music theory into writing and actually use it, but I finally feel like I've been able to take that experience and all it's emotions and "write a song out of it."

The first entry... revisited... over and over.

I have O.C.D.. I don't think it's in the extreme stage of it, but I do tend to act a bit obsessive when it comes to making up a name for my blog. It was titled "It's all true" based on a quote from an author I like; but after titling that and sitting on it for 24 hours I came to the realization just how horrible it sounded. It wasn't me, its something that I think I literally never say, it was fake, it wasn't from the heart. It was something I searched for and just said "Oh! that's something," and just went with it. Then I wrote this long piece that made absolutely no since about how I wanted the phrase "it's all true" to remind you of my blog and make you come back to it over and over like a decent meme like McDonald's or something has.

For some reason, where it took me forever to come up with the title of the blog, it took me less than a quarter of the time to come up with the URL. It was just something ridiculous that worked. BlogBizzle (Bizzle being one of my many nickname's I've picked up throughout the years). So when thinking back to the title of my blog, just how important it was to me like titling a book or something, I realized the answer was right under my nose: BlogBizzle. Keep it simple, stupid.

So there it is.

Expect future posts of my daily life especially when I move to Austin around September of this year, plenty of pictures, and just random thoughts and projects I find myself in. I promise I'll do my best to make it interesting for you.

Thank you for reading.

in the meantime you've probably heard about this blog through my facebook page (facebook.com/playloud85).

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