Breaking news...!

So, the holiday just began, which means that we can start to get together some of the stuff we did last month. The "Pie Tunes"* project (as it will be known until a more respectable name presents itself) will include more video, pictures, and--eventually(!) some new songs for you to download and put on your Ipod. So get ready for that.

One fun part about being on holiday, as they say, is that I have found myself in my parents basement scrounging through old videos looking for gems. This search has, on my first night in town already yielded some very exciting stuff. Almost too much to list... but I will say this:

I found that much of the treasured footage from our first show ever was recorded over. :(

Never fear! It may be best that that show live in our memories only. In its place, however, is "making of" footage from our first album, Pleasantly Surprised! Steve Hunt helped us record it over another holiday vacation--this time in 1994.

Also discovered:

• Random footage of me and Jon Thwaits running around without shirts in the desert
  
• Me and Mat cruising around town in his old green bomber
  
• Mat's last show, recorded in his front room with a crazy "in-progress" version of Vader and a really great cut of 3 Candles--oh, and we try really hard to open with the theme song from the A-team. This show gets cut short.
  
• At said show, our 6th member is also present: The "Psychedeli-deck." just wait and see.
  

The problem is: all this great stuff is on Hi8 tapes, with no good way of transferring it over to the computer. hmmm..

*"pietunes" is a nonesense word my son Seth made up and can be used in much the same way as we OA-ers used to use the word "Danzig." Thanksgiving is a time for pie and, apparently, tunes. :)

what it is to me

Since the opening day of onlyanything.com not long ago I have, along with many of you, been re-examining events from my youth. But not just that, you see, for me Only Anything is a slice in a continuum; a fraction of a larger spectrum; a spectrum that is paramount in defining who I am, where I am now and probably where I will be in the future. Although just a fraction of the greater part of my life, the events of those years, even just between 1993 and 1995 have proved to be the frame upon which everything that followed is built. It wasn't just an excursion or an aside that, once finished with could be viewed as an isolated chapter in my life. It was a path taken that, for better or for worse, I could never return from.

I spent the evening listening to many songs I have written and recorded all since the functional end of OA. For the most part these are songs that I have not thought about for a while. When I start to analyze it, it's surprising just how many songs I have written. There are still unfinished song ideas from years ago that I have not given up on. Rose Reflection (see video a few posts back) is a case in point. I wrote this song towards the end of Only Anything's original hey-day. It was half finished and we didn't get around to working it all out. Just as things are now, I had a lot of songs floating around and not enough time to finish them. I never forgot about it and now more than 10 years later and thanks to the support of Jon Stone it sees its day in the sun. All the while it was unfinished not because I didn't care or my interests shifted but because I've been getting new song ideas and time is short. Jon pointed out to me tonight that I'm sitting on a whole lot of good demos that should get a chance to be heard. For my time and attention it's really a tug of war between working out new song ideas and finishing old ones. For me, getting what I think are good song ideas is not the hard part, the hard part is wrapping up all the loose ends and turning inspiration into a finished song. That being the case I still have a lot of finished songs which I have faith in.

To get things started I have posted 6 songs on myspace and will start rotating them with other finished demos I have. Some were recorded to 4 track cassette tapes and some with a bit more advanced devices but they are just rough demos most of them. I need to dig out some that I hope I still have and send them to Jon for safe keeping as I have a nasty habit of sweeping stuff under the rug once I've moved on to a newer idea. Together we will come up with a good way to preserve and present this material for posterity.

As I'm confessing these things, I'll go ahead and tell you some thoughts I had while listening to these songs tonight. I remembered the bands I've played in and the hopes that I had for all of them, invariably all of those groups have come to an end (with the exception of OA which we're keeping on life support). I have indeed had my eye on a pie in the sky, I have been thankful to feel passionately about music and for the pleasure I've gotten from making it but there are times when I have cursed my obsession, and I do recognize it now as an obsession which I fight against at times but it will never be killed. The lyrics to Rose Reflection which date back to 1996 are telling. It's about me thinking back to when I was in grade school and lived in a house on Rosewood st. Feeling sadness for that part of my life to be over and wanting to somehow preserve it. "and I am not just about to let it go".
"so long ago, back behind the brush and twisted ways", playing around the neighborhood as a kid you find magical secret passages off the beaten path.
The passage: "can't stop for anything, can't cry for anyone, amidst this summer scene, were we just having fun?" is then shifted in time to when I wrote the lyric and my acceptance that the band's days were numbered. I knew I wouldn't want to give it up just like I didn't want to give up being a kid. I wondered if everyone else in the band just looked at it as having fun when I knew and was afraid to admit that I had a huge emotional investment in it and couldn't let it go.

Think about that and the mood that the music brings to it as you listen to it and maybe the mystery of Jon Thwaits will unfold a little bit. Then go over to myspace and listen to Circus, written between 2002 and 2004. Only Anything was over and other less inspiring musical projects had come and gone and I was still searching. I didn't intend for the lyrics to be taken as relating to my life, you can tell the lyric is written as if it's talking about another person. I imagined some fictional female character that I was writing the song about, however the mood totally is autobiographical. As I was finishing the lyric, Marisa was hoping I would slant the feeling to a more optimistic note at the end of the song, I did. I ended up as the fictional female character and she ended up as the one offering encouraging words: "look to the sky, you'll be alright". This is one of my favorite's of my own songs. And on that note I'll leave you.

Jon Thwaits

OA in 08! part III (Too Much to Ask)

Here is the third and final acoustic jam from our last day jamming in Tucson: "Too Much to Ask"! We started a fourth, but didn't complete it. Perhaps i'll do a bonus shoot from Champaign to give a preview of our last tune "San Jose." For now, enjoy this!


Too much to ask from Only Anything on Vimeo.

OA in 08! part II (Watershed)

Here's the second in a series of acoustic jams filmed at the end of our weekend of rock. This is the tune I was talking about earlier--the one that has a bit of a country vibe. It still does and I'm ok with that.

What it doesn't have quite yet is a polished bridge. I miff the melody on that last "Everything is going to be alright" bit. But whatev. Jon's mandolin playing is sweet--he actually plays it, rather than just thump on it. Enjoy!


Watershed from Only Anything on Vimeo.

OA in 08! part I (Rose Reflection)

Well, the weekend of our rock-fest has come and gone. I think I speak for all involved when I say that it was a memorable occasion. Over the three (or so) sessions, we recorded (or began the recordings for) four new songs and used the collective talent of eight musicians!

Here's just a taste:


Rose Reflection from Only Anything on Vimeo.

Get excited for much more!