1)  I am planning to begin recording an instrumental album for release in the fall/winter of this year.  I’ll be posting my progress along the way, most likely in the form of audio.  While I enjoy songwriting – with lyrics – I really think it's time to focus myself on my strongest interest and talent, which is instrumental writing.  I’m looking forward to this project, and I'm hoping to include some of my very talented friends in the effort.

2)  I have to thank Marty Clark for turning me on to a band called Bad Books.  A group that’s come together to give American folk/indie/alt-rock a solid kick in the pants, I’m thoroughly impressed with their music.  To be clear, I’m actually much more impressed by their lyrical writing than their instrumental writing.  One of my favorite Bad Books songs is from their self-titled album, and it’s called Mesa, AZ. 

Existential dilemmas like heartbreak, loneliness, and doubting one’s purpose in life are all dead horses that have been repeatedly beaten in nearly every musical genre imaginable.  My personal musical favorites on these issues are Bob Dylan, John Lennon, or John Prine.  But while these themes are indeed widely covered, few musicians effectively capture the subtle humor and freeness that’s inherent in the seeming absurdity of heartbreak, loneliness, and purposelessness.  I’m not sure if it was intentional, but Kevin Devine (the Bad Books singer) really seems to channel Sartrean Existentialism in this song.  (A central theme in Sartrean Existentialism goes like this: “man exists without purpose, finds himself in the world and defines the meaning of his [own] existence."  While I’m no authority on the strengths or weaknesses of Sartre’s philosophy, I do think he wrote some very beautiful and thought-provoking stuff.)

From the opening verse, Devine establishes the absurdity of our hardships:  

        We passed 800 miles talking circles about living with loss
        You said your sense of humor’s always helped you get above & across
        Every hurdle, every chasm, every shocking & unspeakable blow
        Just proves the universe is chaos so you laugh to clear the lump from your throat

If the universe is chaos, then the extreme and cruel hardships (either physical or emotional) we face are meaningless.  Again, this seems very Sartrean.

Further along:

        You were hanging out the window, you said: “We’re just a beggar’s banquet in space”
        You were laughing at the moon, you were cursing it for wearing your face

If we’re purposeless, then we aren’t anything more than beggars in space, fumbling around with having to make purpose for ourselves.  The moon is cursed here, because we, like the moon, have no identity unless we define it for ourselves (on Sartre’s view) – and for the character in the song, an identity is still undefined, much like the moon.

Anyway – enough over-analyzing – I really enjoy this song, and I like the imagery it provokes in my mind.  Hope you like it too...