Monday, June 14, 2010

chickening out (one medium-sized blue tub of notebooks)

...
(Yes, I know that in my last post, I promised to unpack one bank box of political contents this time around, but I am postponing that post until my partner-in-politics completes a relevant and related video project. Please excuse the inconvenience? Whatever, you'll enjoy this post only slightly less for being off-topic...)

Today, I was planning to empty:

 one medium-sized blue tub of notebooks

In no particular order and without reading their contents, onto:

 one empty shelf

But look what I found that stopped such a simple plan from succeeding:

 box in a box!

That's just sneaky! Then I opened it:

whoa

Yup, that's a zip-top bag full of junior high school diary goodness, right on top. 

Damn it.

Underneath the diaries, I found one United Airlines Young Travelers Flight Kit (huh?) and a stack of essays, poems, and papers I'd written. Working chronologically backwards until I reached the bottom of the box and the late 80s, everything I read made me cringe, so I gave up, chickened out, hid the whole pile in the bank box labeled "sentimementalos," and called it a day.

Almost.

I had forgotten the part of my plan where I was going to move all the cds from the short shelves to that empty shelf, since the empty shelf is all stupid big and I don't have an immediate means of fixing it. So I did that, instead:

progress, salvaged

I even grouped them roughly alphabetically and labeled the stacks so I can find things easily. Now I can put the writings on the short shelves like I wanted to do. (But who has my copy of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy?)

This turn of events is for the best, because as I was checkers-ing stacks of cds, I remembered that one of the "two trunks of unknown contents" probably contains notebooks and journals as well, so today's box was going to be the first of a potentially multi-part adventure anyway.

part one

I'll get back to those cringe-worthy tales of teenage love lost some other day.

* * *

postscript

While I was working, I got it into my head to listen to The Twilight Project, a short-lived three-piece in which I played bass and sang and wrote songs for the first time, circa summer and fall 1999. Alec Harrington, who later went on to assume the identity of Dr. Go-Go, played guitar and sang and wrote the other half of the songs. John Butler, who played with Kung-Fu Sophie for a time, wailed on the fiddle and sang backups and generally provided unwavering optimism.

Either Alec or John sent the album files over, like, two years ago (the filedate suggests 9-24-08), and I never got around to listening to the album again. Until now.

Wow. You want to hear it? It's an almost painfully realistic snapshot of the sloppy shambling we perpetrated, and it takes me right back to 11 years ago. How much fun it was to make music with those guys! I can really hear the Grant Lee Buffalo influence in Alec's songwriting, the tentativeness of my first steps out into the spotlight post-Crushstory, and the joy of John's violinistic enthusiasm. For how much of a novice effort this was for we musicians, I can also hear real patience and passion in Vince's engineering and production, which is no surprise to me now.

I think it's funny that my songs are the songs with the extended jammy intros. A reaction to the tightly controlled three-minute powerpop tyranny I had just escaped, I suppose.

Anyway, leave me a note in the comments if you'd like to hear it.
 

4 comments:

TonicScale said...

I would love to hear it!!!

stevo

Peace...

jen scaffidi said...

I will leave a copy for you at PYOM Wednesday night!

Nurikabe said...

I have a feeling I've listened to The Twilight Project's album more times than you three have. Honestly, after Acryic's "You," it has more influence on me than any other Reno band ever has, and that album is one of my most beloved possessions.

jen scaffidi said...

Jon, that is incredibly sweet and kind. Thank you.