looking back at an uneven year.

i don’t tend to do “year in review” type things, but what the hell. since i’m not making a life-altering montage for the year-end video progress report like i did at the end of 2010, here is a brief look back at what this year was like for me, at least in terms of music and blog-related matters.

JANUARY

i write a random piece about the first go-betweens album, and lindy morrison — drummer in the go-betweens — leaves a comment. i proceed to fall over.

shortly after i manage to stand up again, the external cd burner for my digital mixer finally craps out on me, after almost 12 years of faithful service. a few days later, my cd printer dies as well. i manage to replace both essential tools without too much trouble (aside from the inconvenience of having to spend a good $1,000 i would much rather keep in my pocket). but after having two dymo discpainters in a row die on me, i make a note never to buy anything from defective dymo again, and invest in a different printer for my cd-related needs.

official solo cd #31 is released — MEDIUM-FI MUSIC FOR MENTALLY UNSTABLE YOUNG LOVERS. if ever an album title of mine was perfect for the music it represented, it’s this one. i don’t expect the album to get as positive a reception as the past several have, given how willfully schizophrenic it is even by my standards, but once again i’m wrong, with a few people telling me it’s one of their favourite things of mine they’ve heard. go figure.

FEBRUARY

AIN’T NO FRIEND

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for the first time ever, i manage to film myself recording a song and then edit the footage in such a way that the result is sort of a music video, where you get to watch me play and sing the song i’m playing and singing, in real-time. i’ll go on to get a lot better at it in short order, but the first attempt doesn’t turn out too bad, all things considered.

i discover, much to my surprise, that a dude in london, england has been playing my music on his podcast for quite some time. one of the happier unexpected side-effects of that brief period of time in early 2009 during which i was okay with the idea of entire albums of mine being up online in mp3 form.

i make a bunch of crude computer drawings to illustrate a heart-warming children’s book written by my friend joshua jesty, and sell a bunch of gear i don’t use anymore through the magic of kijiji. there will be a completely unexpected development that grows out of this in the next few months.

a companion album to MEDIUM-FI MUSIC is mostly finished, and slated for a projected release date sometime in april.

MARCH

OH, YOU PRETTY LITTLE NARCISSIST

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i find myself engaged in an unexpected romantic adventure with someone who was kind of “the one who got away”; we lost touch about seven years ago and i assumed i would never see her again. before i know it, i’m sleeping in her bed and we’re sort of seeing one another. it seems pretty great for a few weeks, and i feel like i’ve died and gone to some happy place. all my cynicism seems to flake off of me like dry skin. then the whole thing turns to complete shit, creating a blindingly fast transition from “cynical single johnny”, to “sappy romantic johnny”, to “more cynical than ever before and once-again-single johnny”. i throw out the entire almost-finished album i’ve been working on, and start writing/recording much more personal material that better reflects where my head is at now.

APRIL

as an april fool’s day joke, i claim i’m finished with music and will be releasing a final greatest hits album as a way of saying goodbye. as flagrantly ridiculous as the joke is, a few people kind of half-believe it, which is pretty funny (here i thought the “essay by bono” was a dead giveaway).

work on the next album continues through april and may, and i make the unusual (for me) decision to play a proper cd release show for once in my life. i also start rehearsing with a rhythm section for the first time in nearly a decade — dan, who i sold a microphone to, happens to be good friends with liam (the resident physician at dr. disc), they have a long-standing rapport as a rhythm section, and we figure it might be fun to try playing together as a trio. turns out it’s more than fun, and suddenly i kind of have a band, when it was the last thing i ever expected to happen with anyone after the last band i had dissolved in 2002.

JUNE

GIFT FOR A SPIDER (official solo cd #32) is released. it’s the first balls-to-bones breakup album i’ve made in almost ten years, and the most unguarded i’ve allowed myself to be in my music in a long time. again, i have a feeling not so many people will be into this album. again, i’m wrong, and it debuts at #1 on the CJAM charts, staying within the top 5 for a month solid. i think that’s a new record for me.

A FINE LINE BETWEEN FRIENDSHIP AND BAKED GOODS

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i play a show at mackenzie hall to give the album its official release. it’s another affair where everything is free and a lot of music is played, but it’s also quite a bit different from the first mackenzie hall show. instead of a one-man balancing act, things are roughly split between solo and band performances. there’s a good turnout, the audience is as receptive as i could hope for them to be (i get them to sing along during a song about trying to save a group of young girls from an evil fake nun), and just about every insane chance i spontaneously decide to take seems to pay off, culminating in an epic spoken word improv to end the evening.

JULY

i find myself in the odd position of not knowing what to do next musically…it seems the bitter breakup album took a little something out of me. thus begins an extended period of writing a lot of songs but not recording much of anything at all. in the meantime, i revisit and re-evaluate CREATIVE NIGHTMARES, realizing for the first time what an important album it was for me, and how much i’ve grown to like it.

the blog gets its third and (thus far) final makeover; it’s the simplest layout of them all, but it feels less cluttered and more pleasant to look at than either of the other themes. i first typed “vinyl” instead of “final”. make of that what you will.

AUGUST

i get older. again. and here i thought you could just start skipping those birthday things after a while. i still don’t know what to focus my musical energy on, and continue to write a lot without recording much of anything.

SEPTEMBER

i play a gig with liam and dan at an outdoor festival. it’s…not a fun time. i have such a negative experience that i start to think i had the right idea when i just said to hell with playing live in any capacity, and concentrated on writing and recording exclusively. i make a note never to play another show i don’t have complete control over, if i bother playing live again at all.

OCTOBER

i write one of those borderline think pieces i spit out every so often, this time about barbara payton, after reading a book about her life. to my amazement, the author of the book comments on the post and tells me i get it. i fall over once again. i go on to write a long email to ray carney that i’ve been marinating in my brain for about a decade, thanking him for writing cassavetes on cassavetes, which introduced me to the films of john cassavetes and remains one of the best and most fascinating books i’ve ever read. he responds the same day with an email that is almost as long as mine. i attach retractable wheels to my back so my trips to the floor will be more pleasant, and become a temporary human gurney.

after years of half-assed threats, i finally sit down to untangle the story of my self-imposed musical re-education.

my friend james opens his own record store and gives me my own section.

my protracted period of musical inactivity (at least in terms of recording anything of substance) finally comes to an end when i resolve to finish THE ANGLE OF BEST DISTANCE — a tangled beast of an album i’ve been picking away at here and there since 2007 — one way or another.

NOVEMBER

i get fed up with reading bullshit on facebook from people who call themselves my friends while failing to ever communicate with me in any meaningful way, and deactivate my page. the facebook vacation of 2011 begins. i go one better and completely gut my cbc radio 3 page, since deleting it outright doesn’t seem to be an option. feels like it’s time to jettison some dead weight.

my friend joshua jesty comes down from olmsted falls to play a show at taloola, and we meet in person for the very first time, after sending epic emails back and forth for a good three or four years. the turnout at taloola is pretty much nonexistent, which is disappointing, but somehow it makes for a better show, since the few of us who are there end up being a part of what’s happening in a way we probably wouldn’t if there was a large audience present.

DECEMBER

i pass 100,000 blog hits/views — not an earth-shattering number for some people, but mind-boggling for a small potato like me.

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and there you go. as always, if you really want to get a feel for what went down, you can trawl through the archives or check out this year’s video progress reports. but there are some of the more notable happenings.

for reasons that mostly went unmentioned here on the blog, my 2011 was kind of a piece of shit. i’m not at all sad to see it disappear in the rear view mirror. at least it was a good year from a musical perspective; while i didn’t put out as much material as i planned to, i’m happy with what did escape, and i managed to put a good dent in that ANGLE OF BEST DISTANCE beast as the year was winding down.

most of the music i heard and films i saw this year that really moved me or got me going in some way were not released in 2011, so i see no sense in trying to compile a “least crappy stuff of the year in my opinion” list. you don’t come here for that sort of thing anyway. you come here for the dirty words and innuendo. you know it’s true.

i will give you this much: the most moving thing i heard all year was this. the most abysmal things i heard this year, if not in my life, were this, and this, and especially this steaming chunk of ass vomit.

musical goals for 2012? why not.

my plan for ANGLE — and i think it’s a pretty realistic one, all things considered — is to have the whole thing finished and ready to go by the end of march. i’m well aware of the fact that i’ve been setting myself deadlines for this thing off and on throughout the entire life of this blog, but there’s a big difference this time; while in the past i was always working on other things at the same time and had a general attitude of “maybe i’ll get to it”, now there are no other distractions, the album has my undivided attention, and i feel the urgency. i need to finish this thing before it gets away from me. so i will.

i’d like to make an artistic and unorthodox music video…not another chopped-up-public-domain-film experiment (though i enjoy making those and don’t plan to stop anytime soon), but a real music video that’s a wholly original creation. if i can’t find someone who’s capable and interested in directing/filming something with me, with no ambition to get on television or drum up any attention, i’ll stop trying to find a collaborator and just do it myself.

i have been storing new songs and ideas that seem like they don’t belong to ANGLE (while not hesitating to send new material over there where it feels appropriate), and after that album is out of the way i think it might be time to do something that kind of redefines whatever my musical language is at this point. so after taking care of an album that is almost insanely ambitious in size and scope, i’d like to do something that refocuses the ambition and channels it into completely different crevices. i feel like ANGLE closes a chapter for me, and after that it’ll be time to go somewhere else. maybe that projeted collaborative album with josh will come to fruition at some point in the new year as well.

and i’d like to see if i can find a mastering engineer who might be able to work a little sonic magic on a few albums from the back catalogue like YOU’RE A NATION and STELLAR, where i’m unable to do a proper restoration job of my own. if i can find someone who can tame the clipping and carve out the low end mud on the former and clean up the latter a little, well…it sure would be nice to be able to hear that music sounding a little more refined, if only for my own enjoyment.

we’ll see what happens.

the last video progress report for the year should be along in a day or two.