New stuff

I have an idea for an album title I really want to use:

Thousand Voices Exchange. Idk why, it just strikes me in a way. It is a book store in Glenwood that is either defunct or non-defunct, but it looks rundown as shit. It is sooo intriguing. Like, i want to explore it, but i don't want to because i'm afraid it will ruin the mystery of it.

There it is. ok, good.

Those other album names are just EP names I'm going to guess.

Human Fest 2 Times

Ok! We got a semi-official set list for Human Fest 2:

Human Fest 2

Or if you are too lazy to go and click the link:

Erik Thompson (Yours Truly): 1:00pm
Nathan Reeder: 1:30
Elsa Va: 2:00
Bonneville Dusky: 2:30
Unnamed Confederates: 3:15
It Really Is: 4:00
Tree: 4:45
Sons of San Arc: 5:30
Jon Jubilee: 6:15
The Gateway Drug: 7:00
Weathers Rest: 7:15
Omniscient Troubadours: 8:00
Love Grove: 9:00
The Alleles: 9:45
Ghosts of Guyana: 10:45
The Season of the Witch: 11:30
Dark Seas: 12:30am

Seems kind of weird Gateway Drug is only getting a 15 minute set while OT is getting a full hour. It's an injustice in my opinion, but who knows? It might be a clerical error.

So, I'm playing at 1pm when it will be excruciatingly hot out and no one will be paying attention cause they will all be skating or tubing. No problem, I sound better when no one will be listening anyways.

So.

I'm bored. Here are thoughts on the ever changing future of PDA...

Humanfest might be my last show for a long time, if not forever. I highly doubt forever, but you never know how these things are going to turn out. With (hopefully) employment and  a baby to take care of, getting gigs will be more hassle than ever. Unless I get this day job, then it might be a bit easier than anticipated. I definitely want to play at least a few times a year, but you know, I have terrible music and absolutely no ambition to do much of anything at all. 

This will probably just become a recording project. Wherein I just record and publish shit however I feel like. If something takes off, then whatever. Idc honestly. My audience is nil and will continue to be nil until the end of time. I'm the only person listening anymore, and even then I'm thinking, "Wow, I wrote this crap? Its crap!"

It is crap though.

But I feel like the songwriting is getting somewhat better. My words and lyrics are becoming not so cliched and stagnant. The scope of language is a magnificient thing, but we only use so little of it to convey such trite ideas: love, sex, longing, feeling good, sadness, revenge. It is hard to break out of that cycle in any meaningful way. Everything else becomes pretentious and impenetrable garbage, not through any fault of the writer, but because the audience has come to expect certain things from music... mainly songs that validate what you already think and feel. No one wants to listen to music that challenges their own beliefs-- that takes time and energy. Songs that sing, "I'm a hardworkin man/ I've paid my dues/ But my woman takes my money/ And spends it all on shoes" are going to be more popular than songs that express a desire to examine how your inability to confidently articulate your disappointment with life and your lover causes a cycle to perpetuate your present situation. How silence and self-loathing keeps this process in motion, and only direct, sympathetic conversation can actually change anything, instead of sitting and bitching and getting an excuse to hate people instead of yourself for 3 minutes and 20 seconds. 

That is the problem with a lot of music now a days I think, lack of self awareness. Everything happens to you, and that is the cause of your problems--- not the fact that you can't talk about it, or the fact that you are too chickenshit to change your station in life. It is eveyrone else hounding you. Bringing you down. It is really quite extraordinary that we are such an insular society, but we don't understand how the "self" works. This society is so up its own ass right now, we want everything now, all the advertising is directed specifically to the consumer, porn is as vast and plentiful as ever.. you can jerk it to literally anything, but we still don't understand why this world is failing. It is because, even though we are all connected and information is essentially free to everyone, we are more insular than ever. We care only about what we want and what we know, and we don't care what you know or what you want, because we have been trained to want only what we want. Confused? Me too. Everything is directed directly to you, so you believe you must be the deciding factor in taste and what is popular. So you seek out others who share the same ideals, you listen to the same music, watch the same shows, see the same movies and go to the same games. It creates this bubble of self-satisfation that deludes us into believing there are no other opinions, there is no "other" so whenever we encounter an oppositional belief, we go into defensive.

How could these people believe that? Our movies, music and television shows don't teach that, they don't allow that, and we are the majority! Democracy demands we are right. So we are right! That is why we look to celebrities whenever we need a spokesperson-- they are the faces of the movies and television we watch to affirm ourselves. They are the popular kids in high school that get thrust to the forefront whenever there is a tragedy, or whenever the body needs a head to express its ideas to powers greater than themselves-- because they are known. Celebrites are known, and even if they have no real experience on a subject, we look to them because we feel connected to them, somehow they understand us because they speak the words we want them to say. 

Where was I?

So, PDA. its future is up in the air right now.

Peace.

Human Fest 2 set list...

Wow I have not been thinking about this enough.. I really do not have a set list ready..

I know I'm going to probably play these songs for right now

Glory
Between Our Chemistry
Hole in my Head
Waiting for Malachai
Virus
Perfect Target
Faces
Hammer (new version)
Thinkin...
Song For Rhyleigh
Unsteady Hands

Maybe I had more songs than I realized... I don't even know how many songs I have in the works anymore...

I guess it all depends on how long my set is. Probably cut out Hammer, even the new version is weird and unwieldy. Definitely want to do thinkin.. if i can remember how it goes... faces is a maybe also. Perfect Target, I really like it, but it is also a weird song to play.

Going to have to think about this...

Damn. Cause I got some other new ones I want to try out, but they aren't even titled yet. I don't even remember which ones I'm still working on anymore.

Workings of an Idiot with nothing better to do

Here is a list of album titles I have in mind. In no particular order:

Self Satisfied Mutilation
Rat King, Everything Must Go
Mounting the Only Everest We Have
Sincere Apologies to the Going Away Party
Revenge of the Inexplicables
Permeate the Membrane!
Asinine Wall Hangings
Last of the Glenwood Bombardiers
Hey Buddy Ten O'Clock
Dart Lucky

I really like Permeate the Membrane! and Dart Lucky.

But first I will complete Sad Looking Rocket, and Subregion M will be an ongoing project, I will make EPs and what not during the process for that album.

Of course these are not indicative of what I will put out... these are just ideas for album titles, and hell I might even make some of them song titles in the near to distant future. Who Knows? Not me. I have absolutely no control over this.

Plans

None, but I do have an idea to make Sad Looking Rocket a bit more than an EP. I want to put up my more polished songs on the album. Like redone versions of: Between Our Chemistry, Glory, Waiting for Malachai, Hammer, and Gospel. 

Maybe. I have other songs I've been working on as well. Something that i might be able to turn into a actual physical copy that I could sell, or distribute around town. Probably not, though. I'm not sure what I still want to do with all of this.

Human Fest 2 might just well be my last show, ever. I hope not, but you know. Things are odd right now. I still want to make music, and I probably will for a long time. But getting gigs won't be my main objective until I can fully devote my time to it.

Maybe by then I will actually have a song worth listening to.

Nothing new.

I've been thinking, that whole story I did before, was kind of like that one twilight zone episode... which is also like that south park episode, and that simpsons episode... and like that futurama episode, or a lot of television and movies out there.

Maybe it isn't such fertile ground for creative exploration as once thought. Unless i can find some new way of expressing it... idk man, now I'm starting to wonder if all of my ideas are unconsciously stolen from stuff I absorbed in the past. How will I know? Except for this. I thought it was a pretty good idea, until I started to actually think about it.

Might as well forge ahead anyways... no one will listen to it.

Speed Bump.

Turns out chrome books don't have a decent audio editor, so now I am stuck with nothing to cut down my recordings with. This doesn't look good PDA fans. I might try to set up my computer somewhere within the house, but for now I cannot post any new music.

But, I will talk to you about some stuff I've been working on.

So, it was mentioned in my last post about a concept EP, which might as well be an LP for all you and/or I care, called Subregion M. I am not entirely sure what it will be about, but I can tell you that it might possibly be a reworking of my old concept album ideas... the ones I scrapped during the process of making Drastic. Yes, Drastic Wildlife Removal was originally intended to be a concept album. At the time, though, I didn't have the skills nor balls to make such a move, how little it would have mattered anyways, but still, it was too much for my limited experience to handle.

Originally, it was about a man who decides to kill himself by jumping off of a waterfall, poetic, right? And he would be rushed down, down, down into the depths of the ocean where he would encounter a sea colony filled with fish-like merpeople. They would take him in and teach him their ways, and he would discover a new life within himself. But, the people were dying, and that they needed a hero (usual crap, I know). Somehow (I didn't really think this out) he would find the cure was to destroy the colony and himself. Because he brought a blight to the colony, and the only way it could be restored was to start from scratch. The people were like, plants, too, so they would grow back or some shit. Like I said, not entirely thought out. See why I didn't follow through on that?

Anyways, I'm thinking now that I will make the colony a science experiment. Humans created the colony to study behavior and what not. This will take place in M, the 12th region that has been created. Each other region has either stagnated and died, or self destructed somehow-- disease or cannibalism. The same warning signs of self immolation start appearing in M, so the scientists decide to do something about it. They send one of their own down there to investigate. Well, he becomes a messiah of sorts, and he tries to help out, but eventually things get worse again, and ultimate destruction sets in.

Pretty desolate, huh? Well, I kind of wanted it to be about how nothing humans can create can be good, because in our hearts we are greedy, selfish creatures, and everything we create will be tainted by those traits. I was hoping it would touch upon life, religion, what it means to be human. All the big stuff. It will probably come off muddled and no one will know what I'm talking about, as with most of my ventures, and I'm not even sure if this idea can hold up an entire album's worth of songs. Well, I guess it doesn't really matter, I'm not under contract or anything. I can make this as long or as short as I want it to be. But, I want it to be substantial, something that someone will see and be like, damn, he had an idea there.

I'm not even sure how to write a straightfoward song. All my songs are random words that sounded good together.

Oh well, it won't be happening for a while anyways.

New EP Art

Yup. That is it.

Enjoy.

Next EP name: Subregion M.

It will be a concept EP. Just thought it up.