8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

Ballad of the Blog

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Perhaps you’ve noticed that this blog is alive once more, after a long and mysterious absence. My newsletter came to a skidding halt about seven months ago, and the blog’s been eerily silent. The only place you could openly find me all this time was Twitter, which is simply embarrassing.

I wrote about this on Twitter last August with an optimistic tone that, in retrospect, was perhaps jumping the gun a little. Expanding on that thread, I’ll say that I was (and am) exhausted — just like many of you. As COVID-times dragged on and on and on and the vicious news cycle dragged on and on and on, the ennui gathered into mountains. There was nothing I wanted to write about. Nothing in my head, nothing inspiring, nothing exciting to document in the early morning hours. Even my journal, updated almost daily for years, went dark.

Luckily my professional life doesn’t rely on writing, so I had the luxury to stop and wait. Nevertheless, I knew that I was hardly alone in this stifled feeling. And, heeding the advice of those talented enough to write through this malaise, I knew the best strategy was to not stress out about my lack of motivation. The recommended move was actually to lean into it — do other things, find new hobbies, read lots of books, and occupy the brain with something other than the fact that the creative plumbing’s sprung a bad leak.

So, that’s what I did. I shifted focus to my spunky music label, 8D Industries. I learned to make tasty and fiery hot sauces (which became a gateway drug to vegan cooking). I got actively involved with marketing Caroline’s growing Kitten School channel. I spent a lot more time with family as I successfully and safely moved mom to a house next door during a pandemic. And I started getting involved in freelance podcast production.

Several months ago, I was hired to edit and co-produce Andrew Loog Oldham’s Sounds and Vision podcast, and the experience has been a delight. If you don’t know, Andrew is the original manager and producer for The Rolling Stones — as just one of his too-many-to-list-here historical music adventures — and he’s got stories for days. Check out the podcast if you’re even a little curious. It’s a lot of fun. I’d recommend the Elliot Easton (guitarist with The Cars) episode for a starter as it’s got lots of juicy behind-the-music-industry tales.

Meanwhile, the writing bug has finally returned over the last couple of months (along with the music bug, but that’s another story). As arbitrary as ‘the new year’ is as a signifier, it’s still a useful prompt to refresh. And that’s what I plan to do. On the immediate agenda: make some changes to the blog (currently in progress!), start blogging regularly again, and then, once firmly in the saddle, relaunch the newsletter. Voilà. Easier said than done, right? But I’m excited nonetheless, and that’s an accomplishment in and of itself.

I’ll finish this deep gaze into my navel with a few notes about the newsletter. 

First off, I’m retiring Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care. I consider Ringo its own series (in the television sense) and a moment-in-time capsule. I’ll call the relaunched newsletter something else (tbd). It’ll have a different format, but I’ll cover the same genre of topics. 

Also, the newsletter won’t be on Substack. I’m exploring a combination of Sendy and Newsletter Glue to host the newsletter on this site. This change potentially sets up a roadblock of discouragement as it’s complicated (oh jeez I’ve got to figure out what a VPS server is). But I want to learn newsletter self-hosting partly as a self-challenge and also to be able to teach others how it’s done. 

If you’re a Ringo subscriber your subscription will automatically transfer to the new entity once I’m ready to roll. You don’t have to do anything, unless you’d like to unsubscribe, which you can do at any time (including now if you’d like). If you’re not subscribed, go ahead and use the Substack sign-up form found in the sidebar of this site. I’ll add your address for the new incarnation of the newsletter upon launch.

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Another personal update: I released a song at midnight on January 1.

Grottoes is a long-imagined project, revealed as I finally step away from Q-Burns Abstract Message. Yes, the AUDIOTOTEMPOLE EP was always meant as a closing of the door. And Grottoes predates “Touchtones (1997),” the earliest reference on that EP. I tried and failed to start a band called Grotto in the early ’90s after the dissolution of my much-beloved (by us and some others) band Tick Tick Tock. There are too many other bands called Grotto nowadays, so Grottoes it is. It looks mightier written as text that way, so win-win.

The quiet first appearance of Grottoes was a remix for Brighton’s The Self-Help Group and the song “Temple OS” (a fine song in its own right, btw). That one was recorded in mid-2021, during my supposed creative lag, and is the last time I worked on something musical. I hoped this would spark other Grottoes tunes to serve as accompanying tracks for something called “Straw Belle.”

“Straw Belle” isn’t new. I started recording it maybe three or four years ago, and it’s a song that I revisited and tweaked periodically. I settled on a final version at some point in late 2019. I feel it’s one of the best things I’ve recorded. And I held it tight — only about four people have heard “Straw Belle” before today — under the assumption that I’d record a few more songs like it and release an EP. As you probably guessed, that never happened.

After encouragement during a catch-up phone chat with my friend Jeff (the bass player in even earlier attempts at bands), I realized that “Straw Belle” would never see the light of day if I attached it to the loose promise of ‘other songs like it.’ So I decided it should finally come out on its own, and, as this revelation came at the end of 2021, New Year’s Day seemed like a novel release date.

For your consideration, here’s “Straw Belle” by Grottoes. Artwork by Matthew Naquin. Secret assistance from The Imprisoned Wizard. Sounds like group homes, wavering spaces, pangs of crunch, tones from belief, e-bow symphonies. I hope you like it. Please tell the others if you do.

Addendum: The Orlando Weekly‘s Bao Le-Huu wrote about my musical shift to Grottoes and scared a few headline skimmers by declaring me dead.

Ballad of the Blog: Phase 3 or 4

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I’m thinking a lot about my responsibilities as a digital citizen and how I can better contribute to the ‘indie web.’ There are steps I want to take to lessen — and perhaps remove — my participation in ad-supported social media. Ideally, my internet output will happen through this blog, my newsletter, and — for direct engagement — email. A longer post is forthcoming about why I’ve come to this point, but tl;dr: I’ve had it with Facebook and its ilk.

One upside is that I’ll post here more often. 8sided.blog has been quieter than usual, mainly due to growing pains with the demands of the weekly deadline of the newsletter. I don’t think I’ve had a writing deadline since college, so that’s proved challenging. I also set myself up by mostly posting more extended essays on the blog. That set up an expectation for myself that anything that goes here should be meaty — a multi-paragraph screed on a newsworthy topic. That’s held me off when I don’t have anything lengthy to say. It’s time to drop those reservations.

I’m an avid reader of other personal blogs out there in the ‘indie web.’ One of my favorites is Warren Ellis’s, which he claims to use mostly to post status updates and catalog his music and movie purchases. He peppers short posts that are sometimes just a photo of the sky (’timestamp‘) with longer musings about his world and process. The blog is entertaining and serves as the backbone for Ellis’s weekly newsletter, Orbital Operations. Every time I read it, I think, “I’d like to do something like this.”

Of course, I’m not Warren Ellis (there can only be one! … oh wait), and I’m not going to embarrass myself through imitation. But his approach gives me a lot of ideas. I’ve always wanted a more personal flavor to this blog and some fun posts outside of essays on ‘music’s place in the 21st century.’ And, as I begin my exodus from social media, I’ll want to use this space to check in with the world. It’s my home base, after all — the hub of my digital world. So if you’re a regular reader or have this planted in your RSS reader, then, first off: thank you. And secondly: get ready for an increase in blogging action.

One goal is to regularly post my version of a daily ‘status update,’ compiling what’s on my mind alongside things I’m encountering with my eyes and ears. If you’re a fan of the meatier stuff, that will still happen on the regular. Stay tuned for phase 3 (or is it 4?) of this blog.

 

Choosing, Not Chosen

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Here’s an informative video that inspired a spirited conversation in my household:

I can understand the overwhelming temptation to appease and filter for THE ALGORITHM when you’re making a living off your YouTube and online efforts. But there’s a loss of voice, akin to the loss of agency that casual listening creates. Rather than choosing we’re being chosen.

There’s an SEO plug-in installed on my blog, and it tells me that I should optimize my titles and my content for traffic-catching metrics. I was paying attention to its demands for a while, changing snappy short titles to longer (less fun) ones that complied with SEO-recommended character limits. I was told to insert keywords into the content and always attach eye-catching featured images (I was never good at that aspect). I’d get stressed out when the plug-in told me that I wasn’t adhering to the internet’s mysterious ordinances.

But, here’s the thing: there are many blogs and newsletters that I love, and none of these follow the rules. Some of these authors have a voice that flies in the face of these rules — one-word titles, blog posts with only a few sentences, the minimalist of minimal site layouts. I frequent these outlets for the voice of the author, not any click-worthy title or high search rank. I fear that if we all follow the SEO or algorithmic guidelines, then these voices would disappear. Pleasing the SEO computer is trying to please everyone, and we all know the cliché about what happens when you try to please everyone. But it’s more than ending up not pleasing anybody — it’s about not connecting with your people, to not have a flag on the map of your territory, to be invisible from your tribe.

There are those who are going for mass and, according to their goals, choose to follow the rules. That’s cool. Derek Muller, in the video above, is doing so grudgingly but he’s in the machine where 5 million vs. 10 million views have a direct impact on his project’s budget. Veritasium is a channel with — at the least — staff and travel requirements, so there’s a good reason to keep the views and funding high.1And it’s a well-done science channel, worth your subscription in my opinion. But my needs — and the needs of the bloggers and channels I follow — are different. We’re looking for that longterm connection and an audience that’s on board because of our way of saying things. It’s not that Derek doesn’t want that — it’s evident from his video that his voice and point of view are essential and he’s struggling with maintaining these — but the success of his platform is affected by more important things. On the other hand, at this point, I measure my success by people enjoying what I do and, to paraphrase Seth Godin, missing me when I’ve gone quiet.

I’m thinking about the direction of this blog all of the time. I change my mind about it constantly. But what always sticks is that I want it to be fun for you and — most importantly, if I’m honest — fun for me. I’m using this to find my people, to have conversations, and make those connections. And I’m using it to find potential friends, collaborators, clients, and employers. An SEO plug-in’s suggestions won’t be much help there. I see these imposed guidelines as a detriment and I’m happy to resist. So expect the blog to get more personal, more specialized, and obtuse — my private-made-public playground. No holding back the freak flag.

My Every Day Album Discovery Routine

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I was recently asked, “what are you listening to these days?” I explained that I listen to a lot, and it’s because every day I aim to listen to an album I’ve never heard before

A couple of years ago I was writing a ‘best of’ list and came up short for my top ten favorite albums of that year. I realized I didn’t listen to a lot of new music and that made me feel stale. Of all people, especially in my line of work, I should be on top of what’s new. And one of my most enjoyed pastimes is discovering new music.

I made a pact to listen to an album a day, and one I had not heard before. It doesn’t have to be a ‘new’ album, just new to me. Bonus points if I’m not familiar with the album artist, too. I keep track of my progress by posting the day’s album on my Twitter feed. I’ll often add short commentary and post a link to an informative review or article about the work.

Digital streaming powers this process. Spotify is my personal choice, and the freedom I have to check out and discover new albums is exhilarating. It’s also addictive. And I know your next question: how do I find a new album a day?

I get my money’s worth out of my Spotify subscription fee as I’m using the service almost non-stop. Because of this, Spotify knows my taste well, and its suggestions are usually spot-on. My Discover Weekly playlist is fascinating every time it refreshes. You know the algorithm is doing its job when a song I loved a decade ago but haven’t thought of since pops up. And the Discover tab under Browse yields terrific album choices regularly.

However, I like getting outside of my comfort zone. Spotify’s choices reflect my taste as the algorithm sees it, and that’s cool. But I sometimes want to get outside of my perceived taste and find entirely new (to me) artists and sounds.

So, I pluck titles from the review pages of a few music websites. The ones I regularly visit:

  • The Quietus – I love that the music The Quietus reviews is all over the place. I never know what I’m going to hear.
  • Resident Advisor – Almost always in the electronic spectrum, RA’s album reviews are diverse and filled with treasures, and aren’t as dance floor focused as you might think.
  • Pitchfork – I know I’m not supposed to go here, but this is where I find what’s new in the broader sense. Relatively mainstream albums rub shoulders with underground gems, and I’m willing to sample it all.

I do have a few rules. I grab an album from the bottom of whichever review list I visit. The ones at the top might not be out yet, thus not available for digital streaming. I’ll give any album a chance for two or three songs. If an album doesn’t float my boat, I’m not going to listen to the whole thing. I move on and select a new album when a selection doesn’t satisfy or pique my interest. When I find an album that I’m into enough to finish, I’ll read the review to learn more about it. I’ll also do a quick search for the artist and album to see if there’s anything else I can glean. Then I’ll post it on my pages.

Know that when I post an album on Twitter, it’s mainly for my benefit. I’m keeping a running tab on what I’ve been checking out, and I like to look back to see what made a lasting impression on me. I’ll listen to those again someday, but only after I’ve digested something new. If you, the casual onlooker, consider my postings as recommendations and listen along then I’m flattered.

That’s the process. An album a day. I’ve missed days – in fact, I’ve missed a lot of days lately – as life and travel get in the way. But this has proven to be an enriching practice that I’d like to make into a daily routine. If you also love discovering music, then I’d recommend giving this schtick a try.

Side note: Here I am on Spotify. I don’t make my listening private, so you are welcome to see what I’m checking out in real time. I’m also proud of the playlists I put together and would love for you to give them a go.