Why Bother!

Today, right now, as we speak, or read, my latest release is out there just waiting for you to go gaga over. Desperate Mothers and the Fabulous Perch, is now officially released and available, in both physical, and not so physical, mediums for the world to enjoy.

The question a few may ask, is why. Given how much music is put out there and the finite amount of time people have to listen, much less new stuff from someone they've never heard of, that's a perfect acceptable question.
I could be glib and say, "It's because I can," which is true, but beyond that it's also the nature of existence. Think of the metaphysical tree in the forest question, then put it in the real world and the answer is: if you have no presence where you can be found, then you do not exist. It doesn't matter how good or how bad your songs may be if no one can hear them.

For someone like me, who has dwelt in the house of anonymity, the desire to be heard is profound. It doesn't matter, as a philosophical proposition, how many people hear what I written and recorded; I do care and like any artist would like many to hear and enjoy what I do, but even if it's only a few, it is still verification of existence, of being an artist in this world.

It also means that all that work, even from long ago, still has value and still has a place.

That might seem an odd thing to say, but for a long time having any means to distribute your work outside of a label contract was high-near impossible. Recording was expensive and distribution out of reach for any regular musician. Even those of us who found our way into DIY production and were able to make high-quality recordings, it was still prohibitive to have them manufactured in a way that people would see as legitimate; think, vinyl, cassettes, CDs with actual artwork, etc. Any idea of what a run of 100 albums would have cost in 1985? Today, it's $1500-2000. That's not chump change. CD's are less expensive, about $300 or so, but CD's are uncool now whereas vinyl records have that cool factor, but getting someone to fork over 15+ dollars for a 40 minute record may not be as easy as you think.
Streaming may not pay much, assuming you have enough listeners and play to cross the magic threshold where you'll actually get paid, but you can be heard.

And that is the heart of the matter.

If you so desire, you can hear the album on Spotify, Apple Music or at mrprimitivemusic.com.

©2018 David William Pearce

Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch

Here now is the official unvarnished truth behind Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch, which will be released on Friday, Nov. 30th.

The album has taken a somewhat circuitous path to release for a variety of reasons, the formost being that at the time it was recorded, minus certain technical problems, it was prohibitively expensive to do so. But that was the nature of the business in the early 80's. The only people putting out proper releases were those who had a contract with a record label. I did not.

What I did have was a friend, Brian Waters, who liked my music, could play bass, and, most importantly, could get us into for real recording studios.

PearceArrow,

which we had recorded in 1980, while Brian was going to school at Auraria College in Denver, had been, for the most part successful: it had been recorded, mixed, copied to cassette, and one of its songs, You're Fine, was selected to be on a local album of up and comers. By 1982, buoyed by the idea that we could do this, Brian and I decided to record another album. I had written a number of songs and Brian had lined up studio time by hook and crook-mostly providing repair work on the studio's gear in exchange for recording time. I took a month's worth of leave-I was in the Navy at the time-and Brian gathered some musicians he knew to play on the record.

They were Brian,

Mark McCoin,

Howard Cano and Mr. Jones,

And yours truly,

We got together at Mark's house to rehearse: Brian on bass, Mark on drums, Mr. Jones on lead guitar, Howard on keys, and me on guitar. We then made our merry way to the studio to record. 

While writing, I had been focusing on the electric guitar mainly because I was tired of the acoustic and wanted to record a more rocking album. PearceArrow, I felt, was more folk-rock and I wanted to move on. The recording sessions were a touch frenetic due to the limited time available to us, but we got it all done in the 2 or 3 sessions we had. Brian was to then mix the songs down, add Howard's parts-he had to work when we were recording-and then we'd have a big party to celebrate.

Which we did.

And that was that.

There were a few problems, though. The biggest, was the Dolby on the masters was messed up, so that when you engaged the Dolby function, you got what is lovingly described as flutter and a disconcerting muddying of the tracks. They sounded great with the Dolby off so long as you didn't mind the tape hiss.

Major bummer and at the time there was nothing we could do about it.

I had a high-quality cassette version and that was that.

We talked about doing another album, but that never came to fruition, and the masters were lost after Brian died in 1991.

In 2016, I had by that point gotten back into writing and recording and I pulled out my cassette of Broken Hearts and wondered if there was anything there. I hadn't listed to it much in the intervening 34 years, but I still like the energy and I though the recordings were, for he most part, really good. I felt they weren't quite complete and there was the tape hiss problem. Fortunately, there were solutions now that weren't available in 1982, namely noise-cancelation programs. 

I decided to make digital copies of the songs and I added what I thought the songs lacked, whether it was an additional guitar, keyboard part, or vocals. I then ran the songs through a noise cancelation program and mastered the songs.

They still have a DIY quality, and the mistakes made when originally recorded are there if you listen for them, but all in all, I think it sounds good and is a fun album.

Song of the Week: Movie is basically a lyrically impressionistic song. My take on film noir, which I love and continue to watch to this day. You can hear it at mrprimitivemusic.com along with the other songs from the album.

©2018 David William Pearce

The Kids Are Alright...Or Are They?

Much is made over how easy it is to get your music out, to be your own man or woman or neither, and how you can do it because...because.
Never mind that it's not actually easy, doable certainly, well if all you want to do is sing into your phone and put it on FB or Instagram or YouTube, then yeah, it's easy.
The bigger problem is then what?
Mind you, there are many many people singing into their phones, or tablets, or laptops, assuming anybody under the age of 18 uses a laptop other than for school. You still have to have something that pops, and if you want to be something beyond the modern equivalent of a one hit wonder, more "content" and a verifiable fanbase that moves beyond "likes" and "emojis". Which isn't as easy as you might think.
That isn't necessarily a deterrent to creative types; as one, it's what you do, independent of anything else, but if you want more you have to feed the voracious "content" machine. It's how you make money these days. More content, more views, more ads, more money, more work, all the time.

Unsurprisingly, a number of "content" providers have found themselves the victims-I don't know if that's the right word as they chose to do this-of burnout, depression, and sadly, even suicide.

The truth, as some would say, is that until you reach a certain point in the hierarchy of fame, something few do, it's work, work, and more work. Putting out an album, touring, and then taking a break to decompress and create the next album, is no longer an option unless you're already very well known, think Taylor Swift, or someone like me who is happy to do his thing and there's no pressure to do anything more than that.

And I don't tour. I go out and sing for people locally, engage with like-minded songwriters, and am happy with that. I did that when I was younger, but that was in the misty past when you had no choice because without a label, making records or getting any real exposure was impossible.
Now, if you're Social Media savvy, you can get that exposure; sometimes very quickly, but that's only the beginning. I find it fascinating to read of artists signed to labels that have to go to performing school because they've never really performed in front of people and don'r know how to put on a show or how to engage with the audience.
Wow.
That's not actually surprising, but...

But being an artist, a creative type is never easy; never has been. It's always been a hustle and probably always will be. For all the sheen and hype being thrown at someone like Greta Van Fleet as the new saviors of Rock, they're still going to have to prove they more than a regurgitation of the classics, that they can be their own identifiable voice within a genre with many well known voices.

So do the kids have it easy, have it better than those of us who came up during the golden age of recorded music? No. It's still a hard road, but the twists and turns have changed.

Song of the Week: 

This week's song is Being Modern/Mad from Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch. It started out as 2 songs that we decided after recording them, that they should go together. I got the idea from bands like the Beatles and ZZ Top, where songs segued into one another without a break. The first part is about the imagery of love versus how it actually works, and the second part is about the ying/yang of longing for love after being burned by love.
You can hear it here at mrprimitivemusic.com.
Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch will be release on 11/30/18.

©2018 David William Pearce

There's Always Music

There are times, like now for instance, where it can feel like too much- too much anger, too much conflict, too much separation between us. Times when I put on the headphones and turn up the tunes. Music is my dope of choice when the world gets to be too much.
I've been doing this for most of my life. It's also why I make music. Believe or not, I don't find composition, recording, working out parts troublesome or problematic; to me, it's for the most part soothing, other than those times when I can't nail that guitar solo and it pisses me off!
But that doesn't happen very often.
It's also why I make the music I want, so that at times like these I got my own thing to sooth my troubled soul.
I also have my many, many lists of all the artists I've come to love and enjoy over the years, which are an off-shoot from all the cassettes I made in yon olden days to listen to in whatever vehicle I had at the time so as not to have to listen to the same sorry crap over and over on the radio.
That lists are de rigueur now on streaming services such as Spotify-where you can stream all released Mr Primitive albums😎-makes me smile.
The primal nature of music and rhythms do much to re-align my chi, even if I don't know what that means, remind me that we all dig our own thing but often enjoy the same things musically, be it Rock, Jazz, Rap, classical, or good old standards. It's also a way to make raking leaves and mowing grass more tolerable, and can make sports on TV far more palatable than many hours listening to the same turgid commentary from the same talking heads.
It's also a great place to retreat to when the inevitable talk of 2020 gets to be too much!

Song of the Week:

The Screamer from Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch, is a song about losing your mooring, even in a paradise such as Hawaii where it was written. It's drifting and wandering, searching for something that you can't really make out, and the reality of knowing that, but not being able to change it. As like a lot of the album, there were problems, later revealed, during the recording process, namely that some of the scratch vocal had bled through. To fix this, I added other background speaking voices to cover for this little mistake. The other part that I like to point to is Mark McCoin's percussion at the end of the song. He brought in a number of unusual items, a jack-in-the-box, for instance, and I think it adds very much to the tone of the track.
You can hear it at mrprimitivemusic.com.

©2018 David William Pearce

Is Anything Worse Than "It's Ok"?

For those who create, be it music, art, writing, criticism is always something keenly attuned to, no matter what the artist may say.
That said, the nature of criticism is always a point of acute self-flagellation.
Mostly, what we want is to be loved, not judged, but if we must be judged, then it should be with unadorned appreciation for the magnitude and glory of the work. Surely, everyone sees it for how wonderful it is.
At the other end of the spectrum is, quelle horreur, that your hard work is reduced to..."it's terrible, crumby, awful, the worst, crap, unlistenable, garbage, s**t..." You get the idea. For most of us sensitive types, this is a grave attack upon our person, which we either lash out at, "these people wouldn't know art if it bit them in the ass," to internalizing that they're right, it's terrible, and I'm wasting my time.
Some of these criticisms thoughtfully go on, ad nauseum, as to why the work in question is so bad, while others do not, but, as the artist-creator, we can often dismiss these criticisms as the moronic warblings of unsound and uncouth minds.
What do they know!
However, the most profound and perplexing comments are, "It's ok, I guess," "I didn't really listen that close," and "Meh".
Argh!
This is most unfortunate because there is little to nothing you can do other than whine about how unfair life is.
"How can you not see how absolutely wonderful this is?" we exclaim!
"It just doesn't do anything for me," they respond.
Gloom and depression follow.
After a period of being truly bummed out, we convince ourselves that this was an aberration and that that person is on the list that we keep in our febrile little minds.
HA!

Months later, we revisit the object of their lack of interest and decide it's not too bad and move on to our next masterpiece.

Speaking of masterpieces:
This weeks song, from the soon to be released, 11/30/18, album, Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch, 

is, Reading.
The song is another of my wanderings into the miasma of broken hearts, hence the album title, and the foolish things we tell ourselves after it's all said and done-which it never is.
You can hear it at mrprimitivemusic.com.

©2018 David William Pearce

Words and Music; Music and Words

It's the chicken and egg thing, except it's music and lyrics and what comes first and why the other part seems to take so long!
This is a personal mental defect that I will explain momentarily.
People are curious, other songwriters are curious, and it's a question often asked:
"What come first, the music or the lyrics?"
For me, the music has always come first in the generally organic way I write songs. I can only think of one occasion where I put music to words and that was in high school.
I'm far more fascinated by the sounds, the chords, and the emotion they elicit. From there, the structure of the music, and by that I mean does it follow a relatable musical pattern amiable to lyrics or is it free form or here and there, which lends itself more to being an instrumental, will be the push to put words to the music.
Seems pretty simple.
I've got music for 3 verses, a chorus, and a bridge; now it just needs some words to go along with it.
At one time, and that time was back in the go-go 80's, I would methodically works through songs: Come up with the music, record the music leaving an open track for the vocals, and then figure out something to say. Sometimes the words would come straight away, sometime it too a few days or maybe even a month if I decided to go outside, to work, or spend time with my girlfriend/wife, which I liked to do.

I don't do that now.

Some of that is because I have other things to do related to writing and music, like getting all these unreleased songs and records released. But mostly, it's because I don't do what I did back in the go-go 80's. I tend now to come up with blocks of music, anywhere from 8 to 16 musical ideas and from there I think about what kind of album they might become. This takes months; it just does.
I'm in the middle of that now. I have a bunch of songs for an album to be called either Primitive Desires or simply, Primitives. The main theme is community, the idea that humans have always progressed and succeeded when they work together, that they find more satisfaction with their lives when they're part of something greater than themselves.
Which isn't always so easy in our self-centric society these days.
And, you would think, the lyrics would be pouring out...
But I'm also recording final tracks for the Winter album, and there were a few tracks from Desperate Mothers, another legacy album I'll be releasing early next year that needed to be redone...
Someday.
Like right after I get the other legacy album released, Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch, which comes out 11/30/18.

Speaking of which...
This Weeks Song, from the above album, is called Broken Hearts and Confusion, it's a straight up rock song with heavy guitars, drums, and an anguished lyric about trying and failing to let a past love go. It's possible it's autobiographical, but I won't cop to that. Broken Hearts was the last group album I did with Brian Waters on bass-Brian also engineered an produced the original recording, Mark McCoin on drums, Mr. Jones on lead guitar, and Howard Cano on keyboards. I'm the singer and I did the other guitar tracks.
You can hear it here at mrprimitivemusic.com.

Next time we'll have fun talking about getting out an album of which the only reference material is a cassette tape.
From the go-go 80's.

©2018 David William Pearce

How Come It Sounds Different?

Good question.
This was asked of me by a good friend, Al, who wondered why the new songs, say from We Three and Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory) sound different from those on Apologia and Life Without Chickens.
The difference is 25 years and the recording equipment.
Here's a shot from the good old days, when Apologia was recorded:

As you can see, I had more hair. Beyond that, I had a 4-track cassette deck, an Effectron II effects rack, a Drumulator, and a Korg synthesizer. There was also the guitar.
Here's what I have now:

As you can see, I have a bit more stuff.
I had to replace the 4-track because the heads and motors were worn and the not so insignificant fact that Tascam doesn't support the 4-track cassette machines anymore. Haven't for some time. So I moved up to a 24-track digital Portastudio. It does fun things like mix and master, and it has built in effects, which the original did not have, but I don't actually use those much because I still have the outboard gear which continues to works after all these years.
The Drumulator died, or I should say it kept losing sounds until it was pointless to hold onto other than as a paperweight. I now have an Alesis drum machine and a Roland digital drum kit. They do the trick. There are also drum sounds on the big keyboard, which also has piano, organ, and strings. I have a lot of choices that I didn't have before, which allows me to fatten, thicken, enlarge the sound if I choose to. I also have more stuff, period. A GR-55 guitar synthesizer. Percussion.
Plus, I no longer have to record on the floor.
And some of it is the songs themselves. However hard you try, it's nearly impossible to recreate the music you made as a 25-year old when you're 30 years beyond that.

This Weeks Song, 

No Wonder from the album, Winter. The song is basically a laconic response to questions about the status of a relationship. At the time I was fascinated by how we were trying to redefine or re-imagine our relationships with one another as if we were any different from the generations before us. Musically, it's basically a jazz-rock kind of thing with a laid-back groove.
Some of you will note I put this up a while ago. After some thought and consideration, I decided it needed work. I redid the opening solo and cleaned up some of the groove.
As always you can hear it here at mrprimitivemusic.com.

©2018 David William Pearce