During the opening reception for The Descent Of Man, I was approached by a man I didn’t know. He was a tall, well dressed, older man, and he was there with his family; a wife and two kids. Along with his wife, he came up to me and asked if I was the artist. I was. He went on to compliment me on the Family print, and it sounded like he wanted to buy it. And he kinda did, but not. He explained that they both really liked the print, but well, he had two children, and my print only had one. He wanted me to make him a version of the print “just like that one, but with two children”. I hesitated slightly, but I took his card and led him to believe that I would indeed create this print for him. And at that moment, I guess I was just flattered that he liked it enough to pay me for it, and I felt ok about doing a commissioned print. Hell, I’ve done commissions before and I have absolutely no problem with that, as long as the circumstances are right.

It didn’t take long for me to change my mind. As soon as I started to give it any thought, it felt wrong. See, despite the relatively generic depiction of the family, that image represents a pretty deep collection of negativity and sadness that clearly meant nothing to this man. Not only did it mean nothing, but he had no clue it existed. The only part of that print that means anything is the space between the child and each parent. Sure, it’s subtle, but it’s not that fuckin’ subtle. Not much of my work is, especially the stuff in this show. Now I felt insulted. He looked at that print that holds genuine meaning to me, and he saw a cute little family picture. It was a meaningless wall decoration that he would have bought from Walmart as long as it had two kids in it. No way could I make this print for him.

But, wait a minute… he was offering me money in exchange for my art. That’s good, right? That’s what I want, isn’t it? I’ve done tons of meaningless art in exchange for money for clients like Temple, Penn, rock bands, and whatever other random folks I’ve designed things for. There’s nothing wrong with “commercial art”. So I should be able to look at this as just another freelance job where I’m creating what the client wants in exchange for some cash. I have expenses after all. I have a kid, an apartment, an iPhone bill, internet, gas, food, PS3 games… tons of shit I need to pay for. I’m pretty poor, so it’s not exactly wise to turn down an honest dollar when the opportunity presents itself. He called me about a week and a half after the opening to check on the progress of the print. I told him I’d get back to him soon.

Well, eventually I did get back to him. I explained that I wouldn’t be able to make the print. Without getting too detailed, I told him that I’d given it a lot of thought and that I just wouldn’t feel right doing it. I told him that I would feel like a sell-out. I’m almost certain he had no clue what the frig I was talking about, but he was polite and accepted my decision. In the end I have my integrity intact, and a huge gap in my bank account.

Will all this street cred do a damn thing for me? Absolutely not.

• PLEASANT SURPRISE •

Darius Rucker
Learn To Live

The odds were pretty stacked against me digging a Country album, no matter who was singing it. But solid songwriting and a great voice made this a no-brainer for the Pleasant Surprise award.

• MOST IMPROVED •

Kanye West
808s & Heartbreak

As I said in my review of this album, Kanye had been a disappointment to me over the last couple of years. This record took him at least temporarily, in a new direction. I love when artists aren’t afraid to try something new.

• BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT •
Oh joy! We get two disappointing albums for this category instead of just one. Yay!

Erykah Badu
New Amerykah Part One

An occasionally wise lead singer once crooned “Fuck retro anything.” Well, I have to agree with him. Seriously, what the fuck was this record, and what the fuck happened to Erykah Badu? She totally went for that contrived retro bullshit that makes so many bands lame. Mama’s Gun came out way back in 2000 and still stands tall as a fabulous album all the way through. 2008 would mark 5 years since her last album; the kinda not great Worldwide Underground. This bitch better come out with a seriously great album if she wants to leave any kind of cool legacy behind. And she better not wait 5 years to do it.

Ashes Divide
Keep Telling Myself It’s Alright

Speaking of Maynard Keenan, Billy Howerdel better find him, and start kissing his ass. The reason Billy didn’t sing for A Perfect Circle is because he’s a horrible, boring, personality-less singer. Somehow this album even managed to make Josh Freese’s drums sound lifeless. What a disaster.

• SONG OF THE YEAR •

Far
Pony

Far broke up in 1999 after releasing their best album; Water & Solutions. There wasn’t much talk about the band until this awesome cover of a Ginuwine song appeared on myspace under the moniker Hot Little Pony. The band got back together in 2008 for some small tours, but so far, no new album is planned. Even if they never record another note, hearing Jonah Matranga sing these lyrics is ridiculous enough to make this song rock for a long long time.

• HONORABLE MENTIONS •

The Sound of Animals Fighting
The Ocean and the Sun

Technically, I guess this album would be classified as “progressive rock”, but a better description would be “some seriously wacky cool ass shit”. An amazing, original album done by dudes who are in other bands. Dig it.

Nine Inch Nails
The Slip

You can’t beat Nine Inch Nails. You just can’t. Sobriety has worked wonders for Trent Reznor. Since getting clean, he’s maintained the level of intensity and creativity that garnered endless complementary adjectives over the years. Now, prolific can be added to the list. The Slip is compact, heavy, danceable and kickass. It doesn’t exactly count towards the album, but the tour(s) in support of this album were the best the band has ever done.

Guns N’ Roses
Chinese Democracy

No Slash, no Duff, no Izzy. Who gives a shit!? This record is jam packed with really good songs. Yes, it took way too long. But it’s here now and it’s better than 99% of what get released every week. I think the long wait coupled with the lack of promotion and absence of any interviews, video, or anything at all from Axl made the release seem a bit anticlimactic. Sonically, albums don’t get much better than this one.

• ALBUM OF THE YEAR •

Metallica
Death Magnetic

The CD version of this release was marred by a horrible mix/mastering job based on a decision to participate in the Loudness Wars. Despite that fact, the album rules. We all waited a long long time for a kickass Metallica record, and we finally got it. Bang your head.

Sometimes I start to write a post days, or even weeks before it gets published to the site. Sometimes I’ll just type in a title for the post as a quick note to myself, reminding me what I wanted the post to be about. If it’s any indication as to what’s been on my mind, the draft title for this post has been “crushing loneliness bullshit”.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve adjusted to this new stage of my life. This post-relationship, post-family stage. I’m just not over it. I constantly feel lonely, guilty, and just all types of salty. I suppose the holiday season has worked to exaggerate these feelings. Darwin won’t be sleeping over with me on Christmas Eve, we won’t be waking up together on Christmas morning, and I have no Christmas tree to put his gifts under. Sure, I’ll get to see him that day, but it’s ruined. It’s just ruined. It isn’t the way it should be, and it really hurts. I imagine I’ll spend most of the day alone, playing my imaginary PS3 (that I’ve actually been considering trying to steal from a store), and I’ll probably have Christmas dinner by myself at a Chinese restaurant or huddled up with a Wawa grilled chicken sandwich as I wait for this fucked up year to end.

I feel pulled in so many directions. There’s pressure to do the right thing, when I have absolutely no clue what the right thing is. I thought I did the right thing already, so why doesn’t it feel better? Why don’t I feel satisfied or relieved as if a huge weight had been lifted? This sucks.

Hours upon hours of careful thought, introspection, and physical effort combined with at least $528 went into the opening of my current show. Unlike my last solo show in February 2005, I felt proud of the work, and wanted people to see it. To help that along, I used Myspace, Facebook, and Evite to create events, send invitations, and occasional reminders. I even sent out a mass text message the day of the event. Did it pay off? Welll…

The most common question I’ve gotten since the opening has been “How did it go?”. To be honest, I’m kind of unsure as to how to answer that. On one hand, the place seemed relatively full of people for good portions of the evening. Close friends, casual friends, old acquaintances, strangers, etc. There were several former/supposed friends who were invited and didn’t show, including some that even went as far as to RSVP that they would be attending. Anyway, as far attendance goes, sure, I guess I was satisfied with the overall number of bodies in the room. But how does one measure success with an event like this?

The other question I’ve gotten pretty often is “Did you sell anything?”. And the answer is no. This is the fourth show I’ve done (3 solo, 1 group), and it’s the first time I’ve been shut out, despite the fact that it’s clearly my best work. Apparently I’m in the minority in that thinking, because the public seems to think it’s overpriced dog shit. So, financially speaking, the show was a complete disaster. I spent nearly $600 to show my artwork to a bunch of people that were fine with only seeing that one time. Now, the show isn’t over. The work is still there, and will be until early January. Needless to say, I’m not overly hopeful that work will sell, certainly not enough to break even. Especially considering that the shop takes a 40% commission. Not only am I left in a hole financially, but now I’m going to be stuck with about 20 framed pieces of my own artwork. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that!? I certainly don’t want to decorate my stupid apartment with my own artwork. Whatever.

I also had a grand plan to document the entire process of creating the work, setting up the show, and the opening reception. As with most plans, it didn’t happen. I was left with very little footage, and far less usable footage. Using what I had, I put together a movie showing how some of the pieces came about, from original concept sketch to final print, along with some other random bits. If you watch it, select the “view in high quality” option, or it will probably look pretty shitty.

When I first heard “Through The Wire” in 2003, I fell in love with it. The song itself was great, but the fact that Kanye recorded the song with his jaw wired shut 2 weeks after having his whole face smashed in and surgically reconstructed made it just that much cooler in my eyes. It was a real slice of life. It was genuine, which is something that music (Hip Hop especially) is sorely lacking these days.

Since then, as sad as it is, Kanye has proved to be a disappointment to me. Sure, he’s had a few cool jams here and there, but much of the stuff was simply average, and his odd outbursts were a bit of a turn-off. Well, all that has changed. The sumbitch has outdone himself.

808s & Heartbreak comes after a year of losing his mother, breaking up with his fiancée, and generally struggling to deal with his relatively new, insane lifestyle. And it shows. I think it’s safe to say this is still very much a Hip Hop album at heart, but… it has heart. The overwhelming vibe of the album is quite sad. Like, real life sad. He tells tales of missed family events, overbearing women, and the broken heartedness that so many of us can relate to. Admittedly, I was turned off ahead of time when I heard that he used a heavy Auto-Tune effect on all the vocals, and it’s true. It’s on every single track. While I really do hate the effect and wish people would stop using it already, I have to say, it works. It grew on me really fast, and it fits. Although there’s still plenty of rapping on the album, there’s considerably more singing than you might expect to hear from Kanye, and again, it really works.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this album, and I highly recommend it, even if you haven’t been a Kanye West fan before.

Listen to: Say You Will

It’s just a little somethin’ somethin’.

I had a whole in-depth track-by-track review of the album written, but I scrapped it. When an album takes as long as this one, and gets talked about and over-analyzed as much as this one, it’s hard to get a clear perspective. The only way this album should be judged is by the sound it makes when you play it. Forget the years it took, the millions of dollars, the huge list of musicians come and gone, and the fact that Axl is the only original member of the band. Leave all that behind and listen to it for what it is; a Rock record.

Luckily for us, it happens to be a very good Rock record. Among many other things, detractors of this album (haters) will call it “overproduced”. I would call it “noticeably produced”. There is extreme attention to detail, and the album sounds great. It sounds like an album by one of the biggest bands in the history of music, not a garage band. It doesn’t have a single bit of that disgusting retro vibe that so many bands are trying to pull off these days, and it doesn’t suffer from the blatant overmastering that Death Magnetic or the newest Coheed and Cambria album suffer from, and thank god. I was really concerned that it would.

One of the most surprising things to me was just how different so many of the tracks were from one another. You get through at least the first five tracks, each with significantly distinct flavors. Right now my favorites are “Better”, “If The World”, “Scraped”, and “Sorry”. There are a couple that could be compared to Use Your Illusion era GnR, but for the most part these songs are a giant leap ahead for Axl and his new bandmates.

And if the comparison even needs to be made, this album kills anything Velvet Revolver has done.

If you wanna download it before buying it, here you go.

My last solo show was way back in February 2005. I took it on short notice, and I was severely under-prepared for it, which resulted in some pretty hefty disappointment. I’m working hard to avoid a repeat of that. I still have a ton of work to do before the opening, but I’m hopeful that it will get done.

THE DESCENT OF MAN is not about evolution.
In fact, it’s more like devolution; an emotional degeneration. It’s being unsure if you’ve hit rock bottom and can’t escape, or worse, still caught in the downward spiral.

Through the use of icons, images of anchors, sinking ships and traditional depictions of bad luck, this collection of work attempts to convey the hopelessness that manifests itself as ones entire world fails.

THE DESCENT OF MAN: Opening Reception

Saturday December 6, 2008
6-9 PM
Square Peg Artery & Salvage
108 S 20th Street Philadelphia, PA 19103
click for directions
The art will stay up for all of December.

My friend Kookeroo Kate had some tickets to see Nine Inch Nails at the lil House of Blues in Atlantic City. It’s a small club inside the Showboat Hotel & Casino. Needless to say I was pretty excited to see this, especially after seeing them at the big Wachovia Center with the full out-of-this-world production. This was described as a more intimate, stripped down performance. And man, was it ever! After scratching my head through the opening band Health (who I actually did not hate, like everyone else did), I was thrilled when NIN took to the bare stage.

The crowd surged forward quite a bit, which I expected, and at that moment it was time for me to make a decision. It’s actually something that’s crossed my mind a few times in recent months, especially after seeing Coheed and Cambria in NYC. Through my teen years and early twenties, I went to a ton of concerts and I spent most of my time rocking out right at the front of the stage, or spazzing my way through whatever wacky mosh pit or clusterfuck was in effect that night. In recent years, for whatever reason that just hasn’t been the case. Nowadays I hang back to get a clear view and keep peoples nasty sweat off of me. Sometimes I’ll even chill up in the balcony. Anyway, I made a choice to stay in the mix on this night. I decided that I would rock and roll my way straight to the front of the stage, regardless of how many tattooed meatheads stood in my way. I danced and yelled and sang along, throwing and absorbing elbow strikes all along the way. It one point during the set, one of my own songs actually sprang to my mind. In fact, it’s my masterpiece! Without question, the greatest song I’ve ever written or played. Obviously I’m talking about Ground n Pound! Everyone assumes this song is about an actual street fight or some bullshit like that, but if you pay attention to my amazing poetic lyrics, it becomes clear that the song was written about my love of experiencing shows in this way. Dig it:

if you’re lookin’ for a fight
you found one
you found a pit full of energy just like yours
flowing in circles, thrashing about
if you wanna get to the front
ground and pound

ground and pound

if you’re lookin’ for a fight
you found one
you’re full of sweat like the first time you got laid
pushing and pulling, screaming aloud
if your body’s not sore yet
ground and pound

ground and pound

Needless to say, NIN was awesome. They proved that they don’t need any outrageous stage production to be one of the most awesome bands ever. They plowed through an amazing set, and even brought out Peter Murphy to sing Reptile! How cool is that!? Being that close to the band reminded me of seeing them in 1994, which has always been a very fond memory. Every bulging vein, drop of sweat, broken guitar string, all clearly visible right before my eyes. I could actually hear the sound of Trent and Robin singing, from their mouths, not through the PA. And man, Robin Finck is 10 times more entertaining from up close. That dude makes some hilariously wild faces when he plays.

NIN SETLIST:
Pinion
Love Is Not Enough
Terrible Lie
1,000,000
Letting You
March of the Pigs
Piggy
The Frail
The Wretched
The Collector
Survivalism
Reptile (with Peter Murphy!)
Closer
Discipline
The Beginning of The End
Ghosts 31
Wish
Head Down
Gave Up
The Line Begins To Blur
Only
God Given
Down In It
Hurt
Starfuckers Inc.
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole

The NIN show was more than enough for one night, but I still had one more thing planned. I wanted to win some free money while in Atlantic City. Unfortunately, the casino at the Showboat sucked and didn’t have any live table games, just slots and computer bullshit. I needed some roulette. It wasn’t a problem since the good ol’ Trump Taj Mahal was right next door. So, we got to the Taj and located the roulette wheels. After waiting for Kate to get over her irrational fear of roulette tables, we started the gambling. I could go into detail about each bet that was placed, but who gives a fuck really. I got to the casino with $60 in my pocket, and I left with $200. About 30 seconds after leaving the casino, I found another $10 laying on the sidewalk. I picked that shit up and pocketed it without even breaking stride.

By the time I got home I was already pretty annoyed with this irritating and occasionally painful cough that I’ve had for a week now. I really didn’t sleep much in part because of that annoying hacking. Whatever! It was all cool aside from the retarded coughing.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I have so much on my mind, that forming a concise, focused blog entry seems impossible to do. With so much going on, and so many issues to deal with all the time, it could be easy to overlook some of these precious moments that I have with Darwin while he’s so young. Luckily I think I do a good job at keeping that perspective.

Since I’m a generally negative person, I spend plenty of time thinking about bad things, sad things, and just all around negative shit that I feel is sure to come my way. One of the most popular negativities in my brain is the idea that I won’t be able to have the close relationship with Darwin that I want so badly to have. It isn’t a complete fabrication of course; I get reminded fairly often that “things won’t always be this way”, referring to when he gets a little older and I’m no longer able to spend every day with him. Trust me when I tell you that I will be crushed when that day comes. I already shed tears just thinking about it. I want my relationship with Darwin to be as different from the relationship between my father and I as I can possibly make it.

Anyway, Darwin is awesome. At 15 months old he is running full speed through the house, park, mall, bookstore and anywhere else he’s let loose. He’s extremely curious about his surroundings, his favorite playthings are anything that he isn’t allowed to touch, and he has almost no fear or concern for his own well-being. As far as speaking goes, he regularly uses: mama, dada, baba, shoe, book, ball, and a few others. Unfortunately, the ear infections that plagued him through his early months have continued to be a problem. He’s now scheduled to have surgery to insert tubes into his ears in a couple of weeks. I’m told it’s a very common procedure, and that he should feel much better afterward. It’s a little worrisome, but I’m just anxious to have him be pain free since he’s spent most of his little life with these nagging ear infections on top of teething, constantly falling down, and all the other inherent hardships that come with learning how to function on planet Earth.