I was given strict instructions...

I need to write more. Tom Brokaw told me so. He was sitting in my living room last night, seven months, 1,800 miles, and a television screen away, and what he said, despite such distances, struck a chord. Perhaps blogging was not precisely what Mr. Brokaw had in mind when speaking to a roomful of aspiring journalists at the University of Southern California last March, but the blogosphere (located, as I understand it, right between the atmosphere and the Godosphere) does play a rapidly growing role in modern journalism, and I also see it as a pretty low-key way of getting myself to sit down and write more often. And since three or four people will actually read this, I can try to hold myself to some sort of standard while likely failing to do so.

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Briefly, to explain why I’d even think of writing here in the first place: my name is Ian, and I play guitar and sing backing vocals in Sonicate and, as of a few months ago, Capitol Jay, as well.
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Say what you will about Rolling Stone, but it still is a relevant magazine. As much as it has pained me to see Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, and, more recently, Kid Rock “gracing” its cover, the truth is, these are extremely popular, chart-topping acts, and giving them face time is the relevant thing for a pop-culture rag to do. And that’s important to remember-- Rolling Stone has been, is, and always will be a pop-culture magazine (yes, counter-culture can be pop). It’s no coincidence the likes of Britney Spears and Fall Out Boy (only after going platinum) get the cover story. Rolling Stone makes their money by reporting on what’s big in the music world at large, not by doing a feature on some indie band that could be next to break through (their non-cover feature on the Arcade Fire was bravely published after the success of Funeral, rave reviews for Neon Bible, and two years after they made the cover of Time magazine’s Canadian edition as “Canada’s most intriguing rock band”). They are relevant in the world of popular culture.

For me, though, what keeps Rolling Stone a relevant media is the attention and space devoted to national politics. I don’t give a shit about Kid Rock’s new album, but I do care an awful lot about the potential U.S. attack on Iran. I also care about being informed of the scam that is cost-plus contracting, pervasive throughout America’s rebuilding efforts in Iraq. Too many news media outlets ignore such stories, especially those with the support of corporate advertising and a large readership. It’s rarely more than a few pages an issue, but for a pop-culture rag, it ‘aint bad. While the majority of Rolling Stone’s music journalism is dictated by what the media and culture provide for at-large consumption, their political journalism steps around the bounds of contemporary mainstream political reporting, bringing home stories that, while often harder to swallow, speak greater volumes about the true state of the union. It is political relevancy and potency, under the guise of a pop-culture rag made relevant by its choice of popular topics.


Ian

It's in the Air? And it's not Love!

It's funny, in a way, how life works; I should not be here. The old saying goes 'children (or women, or those who are inferior to those in a place of power that presents itself as a placebo) should be seen and not heard', but this is false, for I should be neither heard nor seen.

I should not be here, but I am, and it's funny because not only am I not a member of any of the three Limerick Records bands, but I am also being forced to blog against my will.

C'est la vive.

My name is Paige, and sometimes I like to pretend I'm a lion tamer; on a more frequent basis, I sell the merchandise for Limerick Records. As we speak, I am being torn away from my NaNoWriMo, and I'm frivolously using words here instead of on that. That does not, however, mean I will be any less eloquent (or egotistical).

I'm here to talk about change.

Autumn is on my face and lips and breath and in my hair and words; summer is in my soul. Only a few weeks (days? months? lifetimes?) it was summer, when the world was warm and children blissfully wished that week after week it would never ever leave them, but in their hearts they knew that it was inevitable. Fall is just as much a part of our lives as blinking is, as breathing is, and laughing is, as being is, and 'fall' in this sentence is a synonym for 'change'

Change is a constant reminder that nothing is constant.

We all change, in our bodies and in our heads. As we age, we grow, and as we grow, we mature. Our looks change, our vocabularies change, our occupations change, our emotions change. Our philosophies change.

When I was young(er), I was nowhere near the person that I am today. The person that I am today is nowhere near the person that I will be ten years from now, or even ten hours from now. A person learns to accept change, be it the deterioration of the body or the strengthening of a relationship or the passing from long, lovely summer into crisp fall into the stillness that winter brings.

Also, and the main reason that I bring up change, the music industry changes. And when I say 'the music industry', I mean 'your music industry', because that's really what it's all about. If all this time and effort and love are not being poured into something tangible for you, why bother? Why bother adapting to what you want and you need and you find solace in?

Only a short while after Limerick Records announced its plans to be completely digital and completely cost optional, Radiohead proceeded to do the same with its latest LP 'In Rainbows'; if this ebb and flow of listening to what the people want isn't change, I don't know what is.

In conclusion, I wish that I could have just used all 500 of these past words on my novel, and it's almost winter. Damn.

<3 Paige

The Engine Sputters Ghosts

and the radio is on
and the radioman is speaking
and the radioman says
women were a curse
so men built Paramount
studios
and men built Columbia
studios
and men built
Los Angeles

it is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles

-Soul Coughing

So, it's late in the evening and I've been thinking about folk superstition while holding a guitar and failing spectacularly at finishing a song. Oh boy, multi-tasking. By the way my name is Willie and I'm the bassist/lead vocalist of Sonicate, and yes, this will be a depressing late night blog post. Boy howdy.

Anyway. While trying to complete the aforementioned song I started kicking around the idea of ghosts, and how western culture has taken a really interesting concept and flattened it into an easily dismissed caricature of its former self. The abstract concept of a ghost, namely an echo or piece of a person lingering on after their departure, contains some intriguing thoughts about the soul and the self. After all, echoes of every person abound throughout the world, not just sound but reflected light and action. Each one of us leaves a trail of shed skin and heat. What an echo really is, is just pieces of the past bouncing around in the present. Everyone leaves a trail of pieces, of ghosts lingering after themselves no matter where they go. Everything you do takes a little bit out of you. Some of you gets left behind. Your ghost. And each trail leads back to a moment in time when you struck the placid surface of life around you and caused a ripple outward. But if waves of heat can radiate away from their source, what about thought, intent? Indeed, thoughts come not in segments but in waves, each receding as the next crashes upon the shore. And thus at each moment in time a wave of intention emanates from each person forward and outward in their lives.

Ghosts linger. They hold on. It makes sense. After all, your ghost is you, in the past, being dragged into the present. You can understand why a ghost might be upset, stretched across moments until it rips apart and dissolves into aether. Some ghosts stay longer then others, thoughts that keep crashing in upon you, shed pieces clinging to you, echoes that persist. Some ghosts leave in a hurry. Some get trapped. Every time someone takes a picture of you your ghost is sucked into the camera, crushed flat onto a tiny piece of film, static and smiling. Every time you write your name your ghost hovers around the words, a remnant of a moment of you lingering by its own epitaph. There are people whose names are advertisements for baked goods or clothing, whose pictures exist to sell liquor and cell phones. People who live by being seen or heard. Pieces of these people will litter shelves and screens and minds long after they themselves pass on. These are people who have saddled and harnessed their ghosts, and make them work to pay rent. There are also people who think that a camera can steal a person's soul, and sometimes I believe them.

There are people who believe you can sell your soul, or give it away or lose it. I think you can only lose yourself. Because what is a soul after all, but you? What is your ghost? It's you. In different times and places, you. Because any piece of you is you. An echo, a reflection, a picture, it all points to one place. The only thing you can leave behind is yourself.

-Willie