for now. we'll see.

i feel like going to college to study music, (or any other artistic avenue) has two purposes, neither of which are to create a musician. you are a musician, or you aren’t. you either have the talent or you don’t. anyone can learn to play the guitar, but not everyone can be a guitarist.

the first reason to study music in college is internal. formal training on your instrument, voice, music theory…it makes you a better and more well-rounded musician. you are pushed by your professors and your peers to go deeper into your creativity and to not be content. you hear things you may never have heard otherwise. you have experiences you may never have had. all of these things give you more to draw upon when you’re creating your own music. more inspiration.

listen to a band like oso closo and you can hear that they’ve had formal training. a thought bubble may not pop up above your head that says “they must’ve studied music in college” but you notice something. and it doesn’t matter if people can’t put their finger on the something, you just need to have it. if you don’t stand out and catch people off guard, you’ll never be more than just another band.

oso closo is as rock n roll as the next band, but they write music in a way that other untrained (for lack of a better word) bands probably wouldn’t think about. they take rock and throw in jazz time signatures and notes and chords that should be wrong, but theoretically aren’t. i’m not saying you can’t be original and off-kilter if you didn’t study music in college. i’m just saying that it’s an advantage when your goal should be to find a way to differentiate your sound.

the second reason to go to “rock school” is external. you make SO MANY contacts.

arguably more important than having the talent, is networking. you could be better than zeppelin, but if you can’t find the right people to support your music, no one will ever hear you. studying music in college or going to a school like berklee or this ACM@UCO…it’s all about making contacts. bands form in college. your instructors know people who also know people. and any one of these people you meet are potentially the person who will hear your music, fall in love, and invest their time, their talent, and their money (if you’re lucky) in your band. if you’re even luckier, they’ll tell everyone they know about you and those people will tell their friends, and so on. it’s like pay-it-forward. the music business is all about who you know, and unless you can sell water to a fish, going to college and taking a program like this is a really easy way to network.

do i think the only great bands are the ones who studied music in college? no. a rectangle is sometimes a square and sometimes it’s not. there are just as many great bands that have no formal training as there are great bands that do. i don’t think college is a prerequisite to being great, but i think it helps on both internal creativity and the external networking (especially the networking). if i had the talent, i’d study music in college. but i’m not a guitarist, i’m just someone who sometimes plays guitar.

of course it was set to debut wednesday but “because of the huge reaction” to that announcement, they pushed the debut to this afternoon. funny, since songs & albums are always released on tuesdays.

anyway.

the song’s called “light on” and it’s actually pretty good (forgive me, i was preparing for the worst). i say “pretty” good because there is that obvious attempt to make him sound daughtry-ish. or maybe that’s just the uber-professional production of the whole thing.

i can’t complain though. he won american idol and is actually getting to release a rock song…with a guitar solo no less. pretty psyched. i just hope the rest of the album is a liiiiiiiiittle less polished.

but, all said, i like the track. after more listens i’ll probably love it. and, despite my pickiness, this seems like a giant step in the right direction and should ease my fears when it comes to the album.

congrats, buddy!

bands mentioned: david cook

anyway, i don’t really have much time but i have two three things:

i think i’m going to like iTunes Genius. it made a pretty smashing playlist based on jeff buckley’s “hallelujah” this morning. BUT it won’t work for any of my local stuff. i guess the songs have to be in the iTunes library or something for the Genius program to work?

while Genius is pretty awesome, i don’t like the new album view in iTunes 8. i WOULD, but again, my taste in local and regional music means that most of my album artwork is blank because i’ve got to input it manually. that kind of sucks. i’m a visual person. i would LOVE to browse my music in cover flow or this new album view. hell, the artwork is why i’m not giving up on buying the actual cd until the bitter end. i’m not stuck in the dark ages, i know where the music industry is heading. and i like most everything about it. but i’m sad that we’re going to lose the artwork and the CD collections in our living rooms. the music is the most important thing, sure, but the album art is another form of expressing the music within. and i like displaying my albums proudly in my house. i judge you a little by your CD collection when i first enter your house, not gonna lie.

on a non-iTunes related note, this american idol stuff is over. thank god. the tulsa show was an anti-climatic end to the chaos and i’m glad that we and me and hopefully everyone else who likes music can finally focus on who dave cook really is. i’m excited for the record.

bands mentioned: jeff buckley & david cook

one. there is no choice. ticketmaster is the only option for most shows. we don’t buy ticketmaster tickets cause we WANT to but because we HAVE to.

two. ONE 99 CENT SONG DOWNLOAD CREDIT DOES NOT EQUAL THE $14 IN FEES THAT I JUST SPENT ON A $15 TICKET. you dumb idiots. give me an album’s worth of download credits and then we’ll talk.

(and don’t get me started on why willcall pickup is free but it costs $2.50 to download and print the ticket OURSELVES.)

i hate the music industry.

as i mentioned, the kick-off party was pretty awesome. but it was nothing compared to the real deal. take thursday night, multiply by 100, and then add copious amounts of ROCK. that was the dfest weekend.

i began friday night with a hefty dinner at hideaway. it killed two birds, my hangover waned and i was ready for heat, drinks, and rock n roll.

my dfest strategy was this: if you’re local and/or i’d seen you before, you took a backseat to a band i’d never heard of. it worked pretty well, but not at first.

i went to see two bands, love in october and the cringe that just disappointed me. love in october started late. they were all standing together, ready to go, but took the stage late…voluntarily (or maybe not, what do i know?).

but look, i know that it sucks to play the 7pm slot when the festival starts at 6. i know that you were hoping more people would show up. but don’t fuck up the schedule. my schedule. i would’ve left right then, but i’d run into some friends from when i worked at the bank and we were catching up.

anyway.

they finally started and weren’t any good live (i like the stuff i’ve heard on their myspace though). so i walked over to the continental to hear the cringe who were better, but didn’t stand out to me. maybe if i’d been able to catch more than two songs…

take two. 8-840 time slot. i went to the blue dome diner to see hey hollywood. they were really really good. take a listen. i do, however, wish they’d avoided the long period of dead time where the lead singer tuned only to play a slow song. nothing against slow songs. i’m a fan. but you’ve got forty minutes to impress everyone who walks in that door. IF you’re going to pull out a ballad or acoustic number, don’t spend three minutes tuning in front of it.

from hey hollywood i went to catch my buddies admiral twin. yes, i missed phantom planet, but i’d seen them a few months before and i’m kind of adverse to the crowds at the big outdoor stages. (yeah, it’s a problem i should probably get over. whatever.) when i saw phantom planet in march, they kicked the bravery’s ass and i was one of only a couple hundred (i doubt the turnout was more than 1,000) to witness it. it was one of those unexpectedly intimate shows that just…hits you. it’d be hard for their dfest set to beat that diamond ballroom show.

but anyway. admiral twin’s set was plagued with sound problems which seems to be something of a constant at dfest. (for all the bands, not just admiral twin.) despite the technical pickiness, they played well and had a pretty good crowd considering they were playing opposite phantom planet AND moe.

i left immediately after their last song to catch the end of phantom planet’s set at the new-main stage. unfortunately i missed them (WHAT was going on with all the bands ending early this year!?) but i was intercepted by my good buddy john estus who said “blank slate. now,” and drug me after him.

what handwritten, meticulously detailed list of bands-to-see? this is rock and roll, and i don’t want to be william miller at the beginning of almost famous.

at the blank slate was the ugly suit. (is that a proper sentence? no.) the ugly suit is from oklahoma city and i plan on seeing them again as soon as i can.

next. sounds under radio at the blue dome. another good pick. yay me. estus said the singer was trying too hard to be jeff buckley. i only heard that in one song. but hey, i’ve said it before, i little imitation is ok. he wasn’t ripping off buckley’s vocal style point blank, so i say point: sounds under radio.

then came apples in stereo. uh, i remembered i liked them a lot. did i mention i’d been drinking. it’s a good thing i don’t get paid to write this blog.

when apples in stereo finished, mollie, estus, and i ran over to see those reject boys. i mean, the all american rejects. i don’t think i’d seen these guys since they used to play curly’s to six people. oh yeah, we did book them once to play the state student council convention at my high school. this was back when AAR was just tyson, nick, and a drum machine. it was pop magic. i think i have a picture of it some where on my computer. maybe i’ll look for it later.

the rejects were good, but again, the sound problems were noticeable. AND THEY DIDN’T PLAY ‘TIL 140! i don’t remember exactly when they ended, but they had plenty of time to keep playing. what the hell. last year all the stages ran late and this year everyone’s cutting it short.

after the rejects, myself and an ever-changing band of crazies dawdled in the middle of detroit (avenue) and tried to communicate (as best as a bunch of drunkasses can) as to what we were going to do next. somehow we ended up at the redbull-sponsored afterparty.

(on a side-note: the dude working the door at the afterparty was totally one of the guys from that discovery channel show where those six-or-however-many tough guys went to live with tribes and compete in their indigenous games and stuff.)

the afterparty was fucking awesome and included lots of redbull vodkas (duh) and picture-taking and an impromptu dance party/singalong with the glister guys and other assorted okc friends. i also apparently missed brittani climbing into a cooler and eric losing his shirt in all the dancing excitement.

so that was day one.

day two began with mercy street at the old-main stage. then brit, jen, mollie, and i went to mcnellie’s for dinner to A) prep ourselves for the night ahead and B) to find out what the hell we all did the night before since we all pretty much went our separate ways, only intersecting sporadically before ending up together at the afterparty.

because of dinner i missed all but one song of vandevander’s but i know they’re awesome. you’ll be hearing more about them soon as their new EP, the great state of denial, will be released on august 8th (release show/DVD filming on the same day at the colony in tulsa). it’s the second EP in what’s going to be a fucking EPIC trilogy, so please please check it out.

after vandevander it was off to the new-main stage for the effects. i’ve seen these guys play since they were little high school kids but i’ve just recently got around to catching their shows again. they’ve grown SO MUCH and have really found their sound i think.

next. the fiddlebacks at mcnellie’s. funny story about the fiddlebacks, they’re really good but i can’t seem to remember them. brit saw them one night a few weeks ago at the colony and texted me: “i just saw the oddest assortment of people in a band at the colony.” all these guys from the most random bands (even a couple from the t-town wusscore scene) are playing together in this country-tinged southern rock outfit that kicks ass. it’s so weird. but i went out with brit a week or so later to see them and thought they were really awesome.

so. in my geeky, pre-dfest, listening spree, i like what i hear and make a note to see this band called the fiddlebacks. and brit and jen and i go to mcnellies on saturday night to see their set and it finally hit me. same band. fiddlebacks. colony. weird assortment of ex-wusscore-band members. ok. gotcha.

i’m sane. i swear.

from the fiddlebacks, we went to see PDA. i’m not a rap fan, but PDA is good. and he’s fun to watch. so if rap is your thing, check him out, he’s awesome. but get to his shows early ‘cause he apparently is a big draw (blank slate was at capacity).

yet again there was a problem with the PA and it actually cut out in the middle of a song. it took a few minutes to fix whatever the problem was and all was well from then on. also, points to PDA for not being a baby about it like some bands would’ve done.

next. back to mcnellie’s for taddy porter. i’d heard about them from my friend brandon of the time travelers and was super excited to finally see them live. and damn, it was a good thing i went straight there after PDA’s set because mcnellie’s was PACKED. i’ve never seen that many people in that room (not counting st. patrick’s day, for obvious reasons). taddy porter rocked everyone’s faces off and held the crowd the whole time. but the music wasn’t the most amazing thing about their set. they could’ve made a killing in merch sales, but what did they do? THEY GAVE THEIR EP AWAY.

finally a band that fucking gets it.

look, i know that merch money is likely the only way you’re getting your van and gear from town to town. gas sucks. the money sucks. it’s hard to tour right now. BUT if you’re going to play a gig like dfest (big, multi-venue festival) you’ve got to find a way to get perfect strangers to go see you instead of the other guy. and once you’ve got them there, you’ve got to find a way to make them remember your name the next day. it’s sensory overload at dfest and and even those of us who are actively trying to find bands we’ve never heard of have a hard time choosing who to see and remembering who we did see. but i guarantee you that everyone that saw taddy porter remembers their name because A) they blew our faces off and B) gave us something to remember them by. it doesn’t have to be a CD (though that’s the most effective option), but just remember that flyers and postcards and stickers etc. are thrown around like confetti at festivals and usually just end up in the trash.

and BONUS reason why you should take the initial financial hit and give your music away at these things: people will spread the word. i don’t know about the others, but i’ve been telling everyone i know how awesome taddy porter was.

taddy porter. taddy porter. taddy porter.

ok.

after taddy porter i thought i’d found my highlight of the weekend. theeeeen i went to see jonathan tyler & the northern lights.

“music, when done right, cannot be described.” - bob lefsetz

just click the link and listen to them. here, i’ll give it to you again. jonathan tyler & the northern lights. click it. listen. buy. go see them. love them. you will fall in love. i bought a stack of CDs from the bands that i saw and liked at dfest, but i haven’t listened to any except for jonathan tyler & the northern lights. hot trottin’ has been in my cd player, on my ipod, and my itunes since saturday night.

at 1am, i went back to mcnellie’s (again) to see glister. i like the guys, but i was still in this post-epiphanic (yes, it is. look it up.) haze and don’t remember much about them. but i’m going to see them and the feds in OKC at the end of the month, so i have another chance.

sometime during glister’s set i do remember being informed that the roots had gone on an hour-and-something late and that they were still playing. so i headed over there and met up with brittani and haden.

i’m not a big roots fan. i think the musicians in the band are great. (the guitarist and drummer especially. the former took over a song and it was the only time they ever really had my attention.) but, i don’t know. not my style i guess.

when the roots finally finished (at 230 or something in the morning) i guess word had spread about the redbull party because we had to wait for matt to arrive and escort us in. (thanks again, dude.) however, redbull afterparty part deux was more crowded and just not as fun. (plus the alcohol was running low, the redbull was kind of lukewarm…as was the food.)

so in the end, it was another awesome dfest weekend filled with rock, beer, rock, redbull, rock, sweat, and more rock.

# of bands loved: tons
# of bands hated: none really
# of redbulls consumed: 9
# of beers consumed: uh….
# of wine slushies consumed (not counting thursday): 1
# of cds bought: 4
# of cds given for free: 1 (taddy porter)
# of times sick: 0!
# of personal items lost: 0!
# of friends lost: 1 (no worries, we found mollie the next day.)

i’m ready to do it again.

bands mentioned: love in october, the cringe, hey hollywood, admiral twin, phantom planet, the ugly suit, sounds under radio, apples in stereo, the all american rejects, glister, mercy street, vandevander, the effects, the fiddlebacks, PDA, taddy porter, the time travelers, jonathan tyler & the northern lights, the feds, the roots.