Tag: Music

Myspace is Back!

They’re back! Yup, the New Myspace has been rebranded and re-launched. What? You didn’t know the old one was gone? Technically, it never was really gone, just forgotten about.

Myspace has rebranded itself as a social entertainment network. It focuses heavily on music and comes off as a cross between Tumblr and Pinterest. Myspace is currently in “beta” test. There is suppose to be connectivity with Facebook and Twitter, but as of this writing, the functionality was not working.

In order to sign up, you can request an invite here. Although, by the time this post goes live, you may be able to just sign up at www.myspace.com. Continue reading “Myspace is Back!”

The Method, Man

© Wu Tang Clan

Dan Mader’s recent post is pertinent here. In it, he goes all Wu Tang on our collective be-hinds, extolling the benefits of “the crew”, of having a cadre of peers with which to bounce ideas off of, collaborate with, borrow from, represent to, and party alongside till you’re hoarse and vacant. He has a point. Writers are horribly misanthropic for the most part, and that solitary nature can be toxic when left to its own unhealthy and addictive devices. I call it the writer’s paradox: we spend most of our time alone figuring out how to communicate with people. I mean, really. How utterly ludicrous is that?

So, I was trying to come up with this week’s post while in the type of mood Mussolini was probably in around the time those Italian partisans captured him and hung him on a meathook, only a much lower grade version, obviously, and was about to burn more bridges than all the desperate, self-hating trolls in and around Madison County by posting something pointlessly scattershot-angry to be read by pretty much anyone on the internet, which you don’t need me to say would have been astoundingly, mindbogglingly dumb, when I found myself in a conversation with our very own Mader and Brooks (which sounds like a Savile Row tailor shop, or maybe part of a law firm: Mader, Mader and Brooks) and they allowed me to rant for a while as they snuck occasional glances at each other, no doubt wondering how they were going to inform my loved ones, until I eventually ran out of steam and left an awkward, very pregnant silence. Not to mention the mother of all run-on sentences.

After which they suggested with exquisite, admirable patience that I tone down the outrage and frustration slightly, and instead of skewering my formless targets with sharpened words, I sweeten the whole deal with an extended metaphor. For which you, kind reader, will henceforth be the beneficiary. Continue reading “The Method, Man”

The little four track that could…

I’ve been writing and playing music for a long time. Half my life. The stuff I’m the most proud of is parceled up under the name The Flying Black Hats. When I was in my early twenties, my best friend Pat and I lived in the Mission in San Francisco. Neither of us wanted to play live anymore (we are old band mates). But we played and wrote music all the time. That was just what we did on weekends. We’d get some booze and write songs. We were introverted music nerds.

Continue reading “The little four track that could…”

Fans

I have done what could be considered “professional writing” in three contexts. I was a sportswriter/columnist in San Diego. I played in bands (we got paid, sometimes it was in beer, but still…). Now, I get paid for freelance writing and for my novels. As of this week, I can officially say novels (plural). I just published ‘The Biker’ on Kindle. And soon, I will tackle Createspace and Smashwords. So, the book just came out. And I have been thinking about building a “fan base”. The whole idea and the terminology makes me uncomfortable. Getting fans as a fiction writer is a tricky thing.

Continue reading “Fans”