Rob's Receptacle: October 2012

Ladies come on let’s get in my ride

We’ll all jammy jam now on the inside

C’mon we’ll get on out of this place

Blast right off into outer space

Let it all go n’ leave the world behind

Just do your best it’ll pay off in kind

Buckle up now stay tuned for the show

Come on everybody yeah it’s time to go

Here we are now together in this place

Floatin around up in outer space

So what life’s not what you want it to be

Come on now baby and ride with me

Put aside the future, the present, and past

We’ll set out for adventure that’s sure to last

Check it out now, destination on screen

Warp speed wow everybody scream

Oh yeah, it’s a space adventure!

Transmission on, we are the space tzars,

buzzing past meteors and quasars,

At the speed of light, yeah you gotta brace,

Seat belts on and baby crank up the bass,

Zipping around yeah we’re feelin free

Gonna shake you on down to your knees

Shoot past stars beam out and back

Brace yourself now for the great impact

3-2-1-BLASTOFF! (GO!)

Buckle up seatbelts on

Zoom ba boom , and then we’re gone

Look to the left, Look to the right

Get ready for universal flight

Close your eyes, hold your breath

No time to regret no no no

you gotta keep goin’ on goin’ on goin’ on goin’ on

Is T3 a failed experiment? Was it really worth it? Does it continue to hold its own?

This time around it’s really much harder to compare to where we are in progress. Before we made the first album it was all new and exciting and writing new songs was progress all on its own. At 3 songs in I think we had Black Rob, Mystery Box, and I dunno, Jimmy maybe? They all blurred together and didn’t really come together that well till much later. But there was nothing before this, so the idea of an album was there, but not in the realm of reality yet. After that we for some reason had a real hard time getting around to writing new tunes and I don’t know why. We did Unemployed and Momma’s Boy pretty quick, but then seemingly stopped and just focused on the live show. Little bits and pieces of other things and rather than banking them for another album I was eager to release something if anything, resulting in the Feel Good EP. Maybe it was because time was not on our side as I was about to head back to school I dunno.

Things were slow the next year at first as well. We had the framework for Fowl Play 4 months before we officially wrote it out and then sat on things for a bit longer. Some time that fall things started to fall into place when we wrote Bovine Revolution. It wasn’t until soon after that I got my heart back into writing again and willing to go that far into new songs. Previously I was ready to call it a day and walk away from the project satisfied with what we had accomplished as I went on to other things in life. Instead, ideas started to come to me and lots of inspiration was well under way. I guess a lot of it stemmed from not wanting to be left with nothing to do while I sat around and looked for a crap job to start paying back my student loans. However, the more I poured into it and made the decision to not book shows, just write, proved fruitful as quickly we had Bovine, D.T.A, and Teef written and performed within a few months. As I browsed around at my hard drive a few weeks ago, I honestly remember things differently, but apparently we also started playing Like Like Letters and The Leafy Illusion as early as December of 2010 when we didn’t actually sit down with them until later the next spring. That’s pretty rare for us to pick something back up that we leave behind sadly. So many in my opinion good songs have been left behind that way. But when we do pick them up we end up with songs like Unemployed, Fowl Play, Aguas, and Derek’s Friend. Kinda hard to imagine the T3 catalog without those if you ask me.

So it was a hard hitting writing near year and I was ok with that. We played a few shows here and there, but didn’t do much or enough when we got most of them written and eventually released the album. And we don’t really play shows now either for a variety of reasons, so now it feels like that whole time making that album was a waste of time if only for the therapeutic value and feeling of accomplishment of not only doing it again, but feeling like it was a superior album to the original. At least I feel it is anyway, some people disagree with me and enjoy Your Music Is Bad better, but whatever, to each their own. Flash forward to now and we’re teetering on finishing up 3 songs right now: Hard Times for the Hamburglar, Like Butter, and Space Adventure. 3 very different sounding songs from what we’ve done in the past and very catchy and bouncy. I really like them, but my question is if anyone will ever hear them or we’ll ever get a chance to do anything with them. If I remember correctly none of these songs existed before at least January of this year and considering how infrequently we practice now and only for 2, maybe 3 hours at most a week when we do, they seem to have turned out pretty well. I try not to compare writing periods in terms of time however or at least I don’t want to. In these 10ish months that we’ve kind of sort of been writing we have 3 with ideas for a few more. For the last album we had the album completely written and recorded in that time. For the first album we had at least half or more written and that was with periods of time where we had no guitarist.

That’s not to say we’re doing a piss poor job either, because how we write now is honestly far different than in the past and we’re getting more and more involved and in-depth than ever before. It just begs the question if it’s worth it. I love making music and I love working with these guys to do so. It’s my outlet and what has been one of the few things keeping me sane since its incarnation over five years ago, but there are days when I wonder if it’s worth it anymore or if it’s past time to let it go. This question always creeps up after a particularly negative experience in band related terms, usually a consistent amount of not practicing or something, but it is something I’ve been thinking about for a number of months now as I see everyone’s life’s shifting around and becoming more involved, more permanent as I like to put it. More settled. Something I know that I’m not and won’t be for a long while, if ever. I’m not talking about relationshippy, but just an overall thing. I don’t picture myself in my same position in life for the rest of my life, no way. But at the same time I can’t picture what I would rather be doing either. It’s just sort of blank. Maybe that’s ok, but at the same time it makes it hard to continue to want to share a dream with people who don’t share the same thing anymore and are making other dreams a reality and this a minor priority if one at all.

These are the things I think about when I lay awake at night after a crappy day I suppose. I have ambitions of continuing making my own music with the mentality of if you want something done then do it yourself. Sadly I get frustrated at myself and my inability to not execute the full picture as I can with a group of other people. I have the idea, but lack the talent to pull them off on different instruments or the limitations of my own voice. When I feel particularly inspired however I find loopholes, like the drum machine program I purchased awhile back, but then again its not the same thereputic feeling when doing T3 tunes. Probably because its not a bunch of goofball weirdo music, but things I actually feel passionate about and come right around and say them instead of burying them underneath weird topics and faces. Maybe that’s why I don’t do much of my own music and just keep it on paper and in my head, its too scary to put out there. Because that’s not for other people, its for me. Its not to make people dance and have a good time, it’s the selfish I want to express this, I want to say this by and for me. I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually, but will probably just shelf it and feel good knowing that I did it for me.

Whatever the case may be, its still of worth to me that while I get frustrated with one avenue I have others to turn to and I rarely let myself sit still and not create something and that’s ok. If I ever stopped writing or singing or making videos or creating something, that’s when I’d actually become a sad and lonely person. That’s probably why I keep my to do list so long as well, but a plan’s a plan right?

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Hard Times For The Hamburglar

Space Adventure

Fixation? or Waiting Failure?