Ladies and Gentlemen Nelson Motherfuckin' BRAGG!!
Yeah, he's th' one in the lower left with the glasses. Yeah, that's Brian Wilson. See, Nelson's in his band.
Yes! Nelson rocks. Let me tell you why. Not only is he an old musical colleague who made my band sound TITS in the early '90's, he has Succeeded. He went to LA a few years after me, must have been '97, '98. However, instead of trying to shove a fat man through th' eye of a needle like Yours Truly, he apparently had the sense to be open to things. Me, it was always my songs or th' highway. I never thought of working in any other capacity. Nelson fuckin' ended up doing percussion and vocals for Brian Wilson's Smile album and touring with the live show. God damn. Go to his MySpace page. He's got a new album out that's pretty Lightfootesque i.e. 60's inflected ambitio-pop. There's all these pictures of him hanging out with sundry musical legends and playing Glastonbury and shit.
Guy called me once in the late '90's to tell me he was in LA but I had my head too far up my ass with my careeer to follow up. I think it's fucking brilliant that Nelson has ended up kicking so much ass. And I never would have expected it- not that he isn't a gifted motherfucker but I've just known so many cockier, more arrogant, pushier, more self-confident dudes who are slingin' hammers now. Nothing against slingin' hammers. But it ain't playing fucking Glastonbury or playing with th' Negro Problem and all that.
I say good on you, dude. And you're so cool and so deserving that I can't even be jealous which is the greatest gift of all. It's not like when those fucking nipples The Supreme Dicks got signed to SubPop or when that asshole Charlie Clouser joined NiN. And you look like Peter Asher now- th' specs are happening. And your girlfriend probably looks like Jane. And you told me that fuckin' hilarious story of how this girl was giving you head once and when she was done you were like are you O.K.?
Dude, if you come to this post leave me a link or something- John did a boffo remaster of Th' Mr. Sherwood album and I'll throw it up for you since I was too much of a self-involved asshole to give you one last time you asked.
Hey, here's Nelson making my band Mr. Sherwood sound TITS in '92 when I was 26. What a cool band that was- I, of course, was the only one who realized it at the time. Actually, I think Nelson realized it. He's drumming and singing, Johnny Tomorrow is on electric guitar and vox, Paul Rocha is on acoustic 12-string and vox, and I'm on lead vox and bass:
"Blue All Over"
Woah! That's a fun song. It's so filigreed and so unapologetically, breezily complex. Haven't listened to any of this stuff in a coonz age. I have to dig all this old shit out. I've avoided it for so long because it always tended to make me sad the way it all came to nought. I'm getting closer to being out of that depressive tunnel at last, though. I could probably enjoy some of this stuff now- I've been an also-ran for long enough that it's sort of status quo, you know? And I've seen enough that I just can't get much of a boner over th' whole biz any more. I still get a boner out of doing good music, though. And I feel like I'm sort of just starting. It isn't as easy as it was before, you know? I haven't put pen to paper in months. I've been really musically busy but it's all for money. And not much at that.
I really need to write a song. Or at least dig one out of the vault and shake th' cobwebs off it. I want to do a rock album. I've got a dozen or more really good driving forward-looking rock songs that have just amassed in my head over the last ten years and I've never so much as demoed them because I've been so sick of rock.
At first I couldn't hang with it. Th' dismal failure. The dismal failure and the wasted time and the bad faith. Not at all. Jesus Christ was I sad. Shit like this, though, where fuckin' Nelson gets to do the Smile tour makes it easier. He's in that movie and everything, the asshole. What a fuckin' blast.
Rock on, dude. Tell Ringo I said hello.
posted by Bobby Lightfoot at 21:41
6 Comments:
Hey, Bobby. You are too cool. You rock. And other cliches.
But I mean them all.
... and you're a bigger man than me. I'm jealous of him, and I don't even know him.
I don't know why I never realized what a great phrase "ambtio-pop" is. I'm gonna steal it from you.
p.s. Great tune.
Okay, real comment to make up for the shameless shilling for a better blog than mine --
For you it's music, for me (perhaps sadly) it's comic books. At first I wanted to draw them (back when I was so young I didn't understand there was a writer), then I wanted to write them (when years of art classes in high school brought me up short against my own pencilling mediocrity). All through my childhood I came up with wretched comic book characters and wretched plot arcs for those characters to be involved in and created an entire complex universe populated by those characters, all of whom pretty much suck, at this remove.
Then in college, I somehow got into a clique of fellow comics fans who wanted to write and draw comics, and two of those guys are now very very successful in the field, and neither of them has much time for me now... in fact, one loathes me entirely (apparently because I once kinda half ass dated the girl who turned out years later to be his wife, before he was aware she existed), and the other is just, well, too busy for old friends who are probably just looking for a quick boost into the industry, anyway.
As with any industry that's hard to get into, once someone gets in, it seems like so often, their first instinct is to turn around and nail shut whatever window they got in by. I'm not putting that on the one guy, but I'm definitely saying it seems true of the other one.
Still, when even the one guy who loathes me does good work, I try to post something positive about it on my own blog. And he does do good work; he taught me an enormous amount about plotting and scripting, and he's got the shit. It's just, sometimes, as with any prolific creator, he really steps on his dick; I mean, BAD... and, well, he does his best work on other people's characters, which is fine when he's been hired to write other people's characters, but it doesn't excuse him creating an ongoing series full of other people's characters and barely reworked plots, with just enough cosmetic changes so he can't get sued... but never mind, never mind.
Anyway, it's cool that your old buddy is making it big and it's very cool that you're not jealous. I don't think I'm jealous of my old buddy, either... I just wish he hadn't grown up to be such a fucking tool.
Yeah, I know. I have a fucking genius for making anything at all about me. It's a gift.
God, I remember just jumping out of my skin at the greatness of this song. Yeah, complex, chewy, textured. Gorgeous.
Was Nelson your drummer at that showcase you guys played in NYC?
yeah, that guy. would that some of his pixie dust had rubbed off on that fateful day.
glad you dug that song. Th' compliment exchange rate, as everyone knows, puts the value of big brother compliments at 10X.
The Giants of the publishing world were there. Joey Gmerek from Hit & Run (Genesis, Gabriel and all that) and Michelle Yules from Famous/Paramount. And Sean Slade, ours and Radiohead's producer with some indie buddies.
They hated it. The Suits were like, "yeah, now you just have to get a buzz going in NYC". When they say that it means don't quit your day job. "Getting A Buzz" going in a huge, huge American city is well-nigh fucking pointless unless you have like three tits or some shit. I was scarred for years. It was awesome. Th' chick was like, "I don't hear a career-starting song".
I might still write one of them, but she'll always have a big mole on her yonester.
Yonester.
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