Shortwave Dahlia dot org

Hey everybody!

I’m sitting here at work, getting all fired up listening to Killing Joke (whom I discovered in the Eighties thanks to—get this—Metallica…I have metal roots in spite of a lack of hair) and I’ve got something to say. Something reasonable? I hope so.

There is a glut of independent music, and it’s hard to stand out (harder than ever with the advent of digital publicity). With as much stuff as is out there, it’s easy to get so numbed out that you gloss over all of it. Us included.

So it’s time to get you all involved. I loathe the term “street team” – how major label of me – but I think we need one. We need you talking about us, whether it’s here, in your LJs, out there in the world wide wank…urm, web rather…and I think there are lots of ways to do it that we just need to capitalize on, and we can’t do it alone.

If you want graphics, banners, buttons, user icons, anything SD, post here. Tell us what you’d like and one of us is bound to be able to help. You want songs that you can share with other people? You want to interview one or all of us for your blog? Cool. You don’t even have to limit your activity to LJ. We have a Yahoo! Group as well. Hell, I think we have several groups on different sites (I lose track). Invite people to have a look/listen. You know what? Post here anyway. It’s not an announcement group—it’s a community! I don’t care if it’s to tell us how much you can’t stand “Call and Response”.

Show up to the shows. Leave the venues we book at with a distinct impression that we are worth having on their stages…they look at how much alcohol they sell and how many potential beerdrinkers walk through that door and pay the cover. It sounds cutthroat, and it honestly IS. But that’s what they’re watching out for, and if a band doesn’t deliver the people, they find themselves running out of venues to play.

I guess I’m fired up in part because of this: this band means more to me than ANY other musical venture I’ve ever been on (and I’ve been in several). Whether we should or not, we take the music we make very seriously and we consider playing it for you to be very sacred. On top of that, we have an incredible and loyal bunch of friends who do a fantastic job spreading the “gospel”.

Let’s get out there and make Shortwave Dahlia completely unavoidable.

xoxo

Jack

I just got my first taste of my old friend Tracy Prince’s newest band, Ginsu Wives, and you’re either gonna love ‘em or want to have them publicly executed!

Sure hope Neil’s has us back after they slam through town. lol

Jack 

Heya.

Now that we’ve all had about three months to live with this beastie, what do you think now?

It’s interesting how our views on art change the longer we’ve lived with it. I mean, it’s the case within the band…the relationships you have with your own songs change.

What’s it like for you? Any songs you’ve grown closer to the more you’ve listened to them? By the same token, has the spark faded for a particular song?

Love and gourami,
Jack

I got to the venue at around 7:30. I like to get there early, especially if it’s a place I’ve never played before, to get comfortable and familiar with a place. The bartender, Michelle, was very nice. She advised me that the bands got free Pabst Blue Ribbon—not quite ready at that point for the hipster Beer of Champions, I bought a beer and settled in. Wifey went to hang out with a friend from work. If you’ve never been to The Bucc, it’s a very small place. The “stage” as it was is situated in front of an old fireplace. I should have asked if it was a functioning fireplace—I meant to and forgot. There is no sound guy, but a small PA system sits on the fireplace and the mains are hung up on the wall. Mark showed up pretty soon after I got there, and Ethan and Shawna were not far behind him.Just before the Unstoppable Juggernaut guys (they’re a duo) got there, we went out and brought in our gear. The Juggernaut guys were very nice—they let us use a PA they brought with them, and we helped them bring their gear in. They had a lot of kit for two people and understandably it took a while for them to get things set up. As they were adjusting sound levels, the crowd started to show up and the guys in the Curtains arrived—I greeted Mike as he was the only one I knew personally.

Unstoppable Juggernaut went on first and…wow. They did some very interesting things, were very technical, very challenging. I couldn’t get into some of what they were doing (a mixture of math-rock, free jazz and Mike Patton-ish freakout) but it was further confirmation that there are some unique things going on in Memphis musically. It also solidified for me that this would be yet another diverse bill for the night.

Our set was challenging but for an entirely different reason. In terms of executing the songs, we did quite well…in fact, I think one of our best songs that night was one of the new ones (“A Novel Idea”). Unfortunately, we had a number of technical problems especially in the first third of the set that knocked us off a lot. In spite of this, we came out pretty well. The set was:

Call and Response
Vanity Tax
Chinese Whispers
Discontent
A Novel Idea
The Human Condition
Song For Vara
Automata
Loose Arrow
Survival

We finished, and the crowd fled. I’m not sure if it was because it was late, that most of the crowd was ours, or what. Of course, we did have some people in from WAY out of town (Illinois and Florida) so I totally understood them wanting to get to their hotel for a little rest. The Curtains went on at around 1:30 AM and were loud. Great, but loud—I was really happy to finally get to see them, even if my ears were really tired by that point. Mark gave Wifey a ride home and I hung out with Ethan and Shawna and talked to the gal working the door, Lyndsi. I’ve known her for a long time, and she used to date a good friend of mine who also showed up.

Everybody at The Bucc took good care of us and I think we put on a pretty decent show. It’s hard to say if we’d play there again, as I don’t know if we’d cater at all to their usual crowd, but it was a marvelous experience and I left tired but happy.

We got together at the venue at around 8:00 PM. Met Lee from Simon pretty early on, who was incredibly good to us. I traded him a copy of the EP for a t-shirt. Dana came to the show and got some pictures which I cannot wait to see. We ended up with a small crowd but there were indeed some familiar faces in the room. Since Ethan Grim brought his B.C. Rich Warlock, I used my Samick and Robert from Clouded Son loaned me his Vox amp (I have GOT to get one of those.)The set went off without a hitch for the most part. I thanked everyone for leaving prom early to come see us. I got to play second guitar on a few of the tracks (enjoying the axe most on “Song For Vara”). “Call and Response” was on-target as usual. I completely forgot the words to the new song, “A Novel Idea”, but the music itself sounded pretty good. I ad-libbed my way through it and had a good laugh after it was said and done. “Vanity Tax” was great, “Discontent” is always good and to me was even better Saturday night than it was in March. I think I tried to make a joke about Mary Hinkley and ended up saying something about Henry Winkler having shot his husband. We wrapped up with “Automata” which sort of left things on an edge—it’s not a closer like “Survival” is, that’s for certain. We got lots of compliments from the other bands for doing something different, and the sound guy said this performance smoked our last one.

The good part about opening is you can just stop and enjoy everyone else’s shows and we did just that. Seafood Hotline and Simon mine from heavier places, but both are remarkable at what they do. Seafood Hotline are a somewhat sick duo who honest-to-god recapture the fury and strangeness of indie-label Nirvana, and I loved the hell out of it. Joe from the Hotline is such a cool guy, he made mention of us throwing down in Murfreesboro sometime. I can see doing that sometime. Simon were hilarious and heavy, stoner rock with a sense of humor and some art-rock leanings. They also take established songs and completely nuke the arrangements (their version of the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK” is price of admission alone).

Altogether it was a good show. I’m already looking forward to May, and then to recording the album.

I’ve learned over the years that, if you don’t hear the music you want to hear, you must make it yourself. Inevitably, when you explain that you’re doing this because everything else you hear fails to satisfy, people will brand you an asshole. Especially when the things you hate are the things they gourmandize.There are a lot of artists who make music that I love. My life has been forever changed by the songs and words written by the likes of Martin Gore, Robert Smith, Ian Curtis…the list goes on for quite a long time, actually and includes some very common and popular names as well. Inevitably, though, Shortwave Dahlia exists in part because I decided a lot of popular music is unadventurous and trite. It exists because there are tons of people who merely accept what they hear on the radio as the only music that matters. I want to give these people another choice.

It exists to speak for and to the anxious and the awkward as well, because I am among them.

Shortwave Dahlia exists in the here and now as a trio because I got to a point where I did not want to go it alone. I’m a big believer in musical expression-as-brotherhood (or sisterhood, I’m flexible!), and I think this sort of expression means even more when it is in tandem with others. Mark Simmonds and Ethan Grim bring something into the equation that I cannot summon alone. The feeling of achievement one gets from making a song in a group, that wonder when you finish a spirited performance, it’s very fulfilling.

The record we are working on, we’ve decided, is to be called Keeping the One. It’s a Taoist concept involving the process of bringing balance to the self, and a lot of the music and thoughts we’ve been exploring lately have to do in one way or another with that very idea. Being in the middle of this adventure ourselves, there’s no way to know how things are going to turn out.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy it when it’s all said and done.

Best wishes,
Jack Alberson