That question is both honest and rhetorical.  It’s honest because I have been so out of touch with music in the past almost three years that I barely know when bands I like put out new albums.  It’s rhetorical because I honestly don’t give a shit after the major disappointments of bands I was in previously.

To me music has always been about one thing, music.  Not a difficult concept to understand I know but a seemingly difficult concept to actually practice for many.  Everyday you can go on any music related website and read an interview with dozens of bands that will say the same thing or something eerily similar.  But is it true?

Music is as much a priority to bands today as helping our teachers get proper pay is a priority to society.  They both seem like great ideas but no one that has the power to do so is doing anything about it.  In recently years I have started seeing guys wear pants that would make their sisters pissed once they figured out it was actually their jeans they were wearing.  Make up and hair that looks like my friend’s 2 year old daughter cut are becoming the trends.  Musicianship is taking a back seat to looks once again.  Jeez people didn’t we learn anything from hair metal?

And when they are all done with their hair spray and the hour it took to fit into their jeans is it time to pick up the instruments?  Nope.  Because now you have to pimp out your MySpace page (haha people still use that) and book a tour.  Yeah because you’ve been a band for 3 weeks and know 5 songs (one being an awful cover), so why not tour?  Listen if you can’t draw anything but your parents and friends to your local shows then you have no business going on a tour.  You are wasting your own time but more importantly you are wasting other peoples’ time.  You waste the booker’s time that has to book you and try to promote a band that no one knows.  You waste a venue’s time that has to actually open for said nobodies.  And you waste the people who actually come to show’s time because they probably won’t like you anyway.  Once you can start making good draws in your own home town area then you can start talking tour.  Until then leave it to the bands that actually do tours for a living and don’t also work full time at McDonalds.

Okay now that we look fucking awesome and have this sweet tour booked maybe it’s time we picked up our instruments and practiced.  So are we going to make songs the challenge the listener and refuses to fit any mold?  Are we going to write music that we ourselves enjoy and can be proud of?  Fuck no!  Where’s the money and chicks in that?  Let’s write the most mind numbing and simplistic drool you have ever heard.  It is so simple that you will be reminded of like 20 other songs that sound just like it.  But you know what?  Those guys made it big so we should too.

Man if I had a bullet and a gun for every stupid chugga breakdown that I hear a bunch of adolescents playing I would….have a lot of bodies to worry about I guess.  While the palm muted breakdown can have it’s time and place it is hardly music by itself.  Yet there are still bands that go out there and have “songs” riddled with them.  You know why?  Because it’s fucking easy to do, especially if you are in a dropped tuning.  Then you don’t even have to hold any strings down to accomplish the sound.

One of the best bands I have ever had the pleasure of sharing a stage with was the Glasses Otter out of Miami, then Orlando.  They had the right attitude when it came to music.  They wrote for themselves and didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought about it.  They played their shows in front of crowds that never understood them.  I remember just seeing stupid scene kids’ faces and believing they were thinking to themselves, “When are they going to do a breakdown?  I really need to mosh and show people how awesome I am.”  And despite sometimes the smaller crowds than they deserved they kept on keeping on.  I’m honored to have been buddies with them and to have done some shows together.  They were the epitome of what a band should be doing to me.

But then couple all this with the never ending bullshit parade that I dealt with in bands and that will drive anyone to say fuck it.  Having to constantly play politics instead of instruments is never what a band is suppose to be but that’s what it always turned into.  I take an idea and certain direction I want to go and try to find the right people to accomplish my goal.  Sure those people say they think the same things as you at first but it always ends the same.  They enter, they corrupt, they destroy.  My dreams, my creation is then dead.

Am I bitter?  You’re damn right I am.  Was I a bit of a music snob?  Probably, but I think you should be with your creations.  You want it to be the best that you can do.  I will always be my worst critic and I am the only one I am trying to impress.  I’m not playing for fans.  I’m not playing for record contracts or fame.  I am playing music to make music that I believe is good.  Nothing the fuck else.  And when you kill my creations your damn right I’m going to be bitter.

It was this constant disappointment in mankind that led to my exodus from the music world.  I didn’t want to hear any new music anymore.  I just wanted to listen to the stuff I knew and loved.  Those would never change on me.  While maybe the band may have changed those albums and songs will always remain the same.

I barely pick up my guitars anymore.  Some days they look lonely and I go and strum away for a little while.  Sometimes I even write some cool little things.

My friend Lane has been trying to convince me to join a band with him.  I’m constantly pushing away.  Because of my extreme lust for perfection in my mind I don’t want to do to his band what was done to my dreams.  I won’t take away his direction and drive.  I admit I had this moment where I wanted to do it again but it has passed.  I’m perfectly fine saying I’ll never play music again.

So I know a lot of stuff has come out in three years but I’ll just stick to my guns.  Tom Waits, Botch, Coalesce, Iron & Wine, Lucero, Isis (who just recently broke up) and the all mighty Godspeed You Black Emperor.  Who really needs new music when you have all them?