Our friends at Draw Us Lines interviewed Dan as part of their A Few Pints series.  They bought him a few drinks and spoke about the new album, the new season in the band, and next week’s Warhol show.

Draw Us Lines is an amazing music blog, and the kind of music blog you want to add to your RSS feed or bookmarks and check out often.  Why?  Because it’s a music blog written by folks who LOVE music, and their cup runneth over.  The types of folks who would make you put in their earphones just to share the newest thing on their iPod.  The types of folks who would turn up the stereo in the car to offer their latest jam.  The types of folks, who if you were Facebook friends would constantly be posting music opinions for your viewing pleasure.  The types of folks, who if they had your email, probably would add you to a homegrown list just because they couldn’t help themselves but to introduce new music to you.

In short, check out the GN,S interview, but if you love music, make sure you keep an eye on Draw Us Lines.

dear reader,

technically, obversity is not a word. what are your thanksgiving plans? do they involve football? (mine do, actually. believe it or not.)

thankfulness is one of those things that 1) i only notice when i really don’t have it and 2) i really need when i really don’t want it. i am stopping deliberately this morning to be very, very thankful, because i believe it’s right; but as is always the case, when i decide to be thankful i realize how truly good my life is. i’m not going to talk now about the specific circumstances for which i might be thankful or thankless these days, but i am going to share a bit of a new song.

i’ve talked, or typed, long-windedly here about my fetishization (also not a word!) of change–i want it, i need it in all forms, i never want it to stop. since there is now a whole lot o’ french spoken here and i am not particularly enamored of french, it’s been very helpful to cast the torrent of new words, phrases and wanton genderization (technically a word, but only if you are a linguist) in my brain as change. it’s new. i can express certain things, albeit just a few at this point, differently than i could before. in some cases, the francophonic (say it with me… not a word) lens lets in a little more light.

change! cultural mash-up! bilingualism! it’s fantastic, isn’t it?

except that for most of history, learning a new language is something one did most often because he or she was far from home, and probably didn’t get there happily. i submit a sad page from early american history involving some of that kind of relocation [say “‘cadien” with a fake french accent (unless you have a real one handy), and you’ll have a big clue].

from the chorus of a new song:

i’m gonna flow down south
and learn that prairie french
make some cajun friends
in the country’s mouth
so long a derangement
they’ll never find me out
when i write it down
in my new language

if my longing for change, newness, is so acute that i can desire true dislocation, as it were, then frankly i am missing something. to value what i have so little is truly thankless, and that’s the obverse: it’s my bizarre, slightly unstable propensity for launching the escape hatch into black space that feeds back somehow into an understanding that i must be really blessed.

ps: i am thankful for my family, my musical family, my job and my cats. i’m thankful for our apartment. i think i’m thankful for french. i am not thankful for nancy pelosi, but i am working on it.

pps: happy thanksgiving.

“The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl
And play games with each other in their sand-box world
And you can’t find it either in the no-talent fools
That run around gallant
And make all rules for the ones that got talent
And it ain’t in the ones that ain’t got any talent but think they do
And think they’re foolin’ you
The ones who jump on the wagon
Just for a while ’cause they know it’s in style
To get their kicks, get out of it quick
And make all kinds of money and chicks
And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin’, “Christ do I gotta be like that
Ain’t there no one here that knows where I’m at
Ain’t there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AIN’T REAL”

dear reader,

when i am songwriting, my ideals are healthiest; i am the most unbending, and the swiftest to raze. understand then, that the post you are about to read is not the official stance of good night, states.

the title of this post should probably read “last thoughts on ‘new’ music ‘marketing.’” actually, “‘last’ thoughts on ‘new’ ‘music’ ‘marketing,’” would be better, but at some point that line of thinking would lead me to title it just “thoughts,” and that just doesn’t jump out and grab you. more importantly, i need the reference. i’ve been reading the famous ode to woody a bit lately because, besides the fact that i think it’s some of dylan’s best work, it’s comforting to remember that many of our country’s great artists have almost certainly felt the way i do now.

besides (getting back to the title), i wish with all my heart that this were a eulogy to what we call “new music marketing,” that the misnomered nothingness were dead or at least seriously ill with poor prospects for recovery. i am convinced that many of its tactics are actually driving consumer habits farther from appreciation of real artistry, and may in fact ensure that we NEVER return to the patronage of the truly great. in short, i believe that we are building a new music industry in the perfect image of the old one.

for the sake of limiting the scope of this post to something readable (and writable!) in a single sitting, i’m going to focus my criticism on the democratization of NMM. there seems to be the assumption somewhere in the murky waters of NMM thinking that one of the problems with Big Record Labels is their centralization and dictation of consumer taste; the idea in the new model is to let people “participate,” or have some “interaction” with the music they listen to. the more direct the contact with the artist, the better. to a large extent, this is the direction of our culture in general. we are tired of the representative republic we inherited–drag the electoral college out into the street and guillotine the tyrant!–and would prefer to more directly govern our country of millions. industries seemingly subject to this same sentiment are doing everything they can to make consumers feel that they have similar direct control over their choices.

luckily, there is an incredible new tool available in this 21st century to help these industries: social networking media! like an ICBM of word-of-mouth advertising, obsessive use of electronic social networking by such a large portion of the population gives those seeking to reinvent the music industry a weapon of unparalleled power. want to feel involved in the process of your favorite artists? friend them! follow them on twitter! (maybe read their blogs!)

of course there is nothing wrong with these devices in and of themselves. no matter how insufferable i might find facebook, i am not trying to communicate to you, reader, that it is evil. what i am trying to say is that NMM’s use of electronic social networking media to sell you “relationship” with your favorite artist is pretty much the same as big labels finding a pretty teenager who can sort of sing and putting her in a short skirt and low top to sell CDs. the model is identical: find something that people want, and convince them that your product is that thing. in the latter example, the pitch was sex, and in the former, it’s community.

the new model is worse in part because the trojan horse is not a vice. community, relationship, consumer choice–they’re good things, right? sure they are. but like buying the record with the sex object on the cover, you don’t actually get any of the things you’re being sold when you read an artist’s blog because you seek community, relationship, or consumer choice. and what marketers (new or old–no real reason to distinguish) hope is that your unfulfilled need just causes you to consume more. i’m betting that they’re right.

and we have not yet arrived, dear reader, at the real tragedy. sex may be unrelated to artistry, but consumer choice is in its way diametrically opposed. an artist who does what his fans desire or demand ceases to be an artist. if NMM succeeds in convincing the consumer that their consumption of music is 1) a matter of equal relationship with the artists he or she patronizes, and 2) a matter of ultimate and direct choice, then eventually we will see another market of panders. it will be decentralized instead of centralized, and it will appear that there are no gate-keepers, but it will be filled with pimps and whores all the same. the future music industry–like the present one–will belong to the musicians who are the best at giving people what they want, and the marketers who are best at convincing those people that they want it.

that stuff ain’t real.

dear reader,

are you enjoying the fall air? our apartment is actually quite cold, since september is not the time for heat, and that’s made it an excellent week for hot food.

the weather and temperature have not conferred any special advantage, however, on my songwriting this week. the clear evenings and slow mornings seem promising, often, but i forget quickly how much timing (and precise timing, at that) is of the essence.

generally, things go something like this: inspiration strikes and i write some good songs, effortlessly; then, excited by the new material, i decide to write some more songs; lastly, with much effort and not much success, i give up on writing ’til the inspiration strikes again, and come away with a newly-minted resolution to respect the visitation of that inspiration.

(if i were a literary device, i would certainly be that of the untrustworthy narrator. how do i lose something that i’ve lost and subsequently found so many times prior? on one hand, such a propensity to weakness is something i strive against as i struggle to build continuity of consciousness that i do not feel as a fragmented person in a fragmented world. on the other, each new day brings its newness as strongly as it brings its misremembering. perhaps i should be thankful.)

inspiration: the unseen movement of an unknown, shorthand for what is probably a long list of misunderstood phenomena. all i can say is that it is fleeting.

“boldness has genius in it” comes to mind–perhaps on the subject of an impetus to strike while the proverbial iron is hot?–not only because of its content, but because its widely-attributed author, goethe, didn’t say it. some scottish guy, in a work published 1951, included the famous “translation” with some of his own writings on a similar subject. i suppose it’s possible that he deliberately fabricated the line, but i’d like to think its much more likely that he simply misremembered.

yes, fleeting: both inspiration and memory. maybe there’s only room in us for one.

or, hopefully, an ep or two worth of them.

dear reader,

having been somewhat burned in the songwriting department by the experience and schedule of 2008’s internet singles “experiment,” i’ve had some anxiety about the prospect of a new record in 2009. am i still “inspired”? if so, by what? is inspiration even real?

over the last two weeks my fears have been put to rest. partially, this can be attributed to the successful penning of lyrics for my last contribution to “in the impossible tension” (which joe and i have been doggedly recording); but, mostly i admit unabashedly that i am tremendously excited about the complete failure of western financial markets. i know full well how insensitive this is of me, and i don’t take the personal losses of millions of people lightly, but the silver lining of this dark cloud shines so very brightly.

a good friend of gn,s’s commented at one point that we were “an apocalyptic band.” i’m not sure whether that description applies to every aspect of what we do, but the more i turn the phrase over in my mind the more i realize how applicable it is to my songwriting. i predict the failure of everything earthly. i predict the end of me, you, the national [no! surely not!, in my best (which is not very good) eddie izzard], cheap gas (these are not necessarily listed chronologically), amazon.com, hezbollah, those fake keychain carabiners, CDs, thai food, and then, eventually, money itself.

again, tremendous excitement. some days it feels more like anger, and i think maybe we’ll start recording protest songs. but even that is just sideways excitement. all through 2006, 2007, and 2008 (some of the “short films” songs were penned before that), i wrote about dissolution, the end of the old, inside & out. it’s an eternal truth, though sometimes writ very small in temporal circumstances; now, the graffiti’s so big it’s all you can see.

seriously. huge. hedge funds are going to start failing left and right. adjustments will continue, prime rates will stay near 0% for quite some time, deflation will deepen and spread despite the rabid out-of-control inflationary efforts of the Bush ‘N’ Barack economic policy, the u.s. will end up owing more money to china than even i personally care to consider for very long, and we will all lose money. a lot of it. (i think at last count there was something like $500 trillion+ to be “adjusted”–that means LOST, folks!–worldwide, but that might be now replaced by a bigger statistic.)

the weight of this presses down on my heart so hard that it’s like an energy there is being compressed and focused. all things appear in great clarity. the urgency, the need to put pen to paper and hands to instrument is almost overwhelming at moments.

certainly, there is the temptation to feel guilty, but at it’s core this is not a situation of rejoicing at the losses of others–far from it, in fact. art exists beyond all reason as a struggling, defiant expression of all that is real and true but unrepresented in circumstances. i write songs because my body’s motions everyday outline a universe to which i belong only secondarily. my left hand receives wages for the work it does. my right hand writes a lyric about the absurdity and emptiness of currency itself.

and this is beautiful. i find it breathtaking.

so, new record in 2009? yes.

what else are we going to do with all the new songs?