TomFlannery.com

Ho Ho Ho…

New blog post. Sorry….but I can’t ignore this shit no matter what the season.

In a bit…

–tf

New blog post is up.

What can I say? I just love words.

Latest musical extravaganza moving along. I’ve got tons of notes and lyrics tossed about. Working whenever I have a spare moment. Hope to make it worth your while as I struggle to make it worth mine.

In a bit..

–tf

New blog post is up.

It gets worse….

In a bit…

tf

I just can’t get it out of my head. What these people did. And the apologists for them, and especially for one man, are everywhere. All of this cheapens basic humanity in a way. It taints us all somehow…because we allow priorities to get so out of whack in the first place…

And so….I felt I had to get more off my chest.

For those who give a shit….I thank you as always.

In a bit..

–tf

New blog post is up…

In a bit…

tf

This new project has consumed me. I fill page after page of a legal tablet with notes and scratches and ideas. And in the middle of all the words are songs….just needing to be plucked out and laid bare.

This is the process. This is my song cycle about teenagers. This is how it works. Fast…then slow….then speed limits are ignored. I sit with the guitar….I sit at the piano, searching for the one sound….that one note, that will twist my head around so I can play it again to ensure that it’s real. I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea that I’ll jot down. Hours later it seems like gibberish. But something woke me up. Fine tune the gibberish. Something must be there, or waking would have been pointless. Find it. It might never come this way again.

Nobody is here with me. Nobody sits on my every word. This is the last gasp of a prizefighter who knows his days in the ring are numbered. If I can’t make something special now, I never will. But it will be special, and you might miss it ’cause you’ve been ignoring my unorthodox career for years. Giving finely crafted records away. For free. I’ve been ignored by radio since 1998….ignored by producers since 2000, ignored by those I thought were my friends for even longer….none of them willing to work on my schedule….or to pay attention to the things I’ve been saying….tossing it off as the odd ramblings of some long-lost Woody Guthrie distant cousin…..fighting an unwinnable war with a cross pen, a legal tablet, and a Gibson Jumbo with the “this machine kills fascists” sticker on it. The kind of guy you’re happy to see but even more happy when he leaves. He’s not gonna lecture us on our duty as songwriter’s now, is he?

No, those days are over chaps. I won’t name names but there’s 2 people I can think of who feel the same way about things that I do. Just two. Many many others have slipped away into nightclub dream worlds, singing “I am the Walrus” and “Three Little Birds” for drunk college kids for free drinks and maybe a $100 check that won’t bounce if you cash it fast enough. Everybody wants to be a star….settle in Nashville or NYC and crank out radio friendly piffle for fat ladies who claim to have the ears of TV producers near and far. So yea….churn out a 3 minute piece of dross to play over some half-dead lady in a hospital bed dying of a disease that even Dr. House hasn’t figured out yet. Yea, that’s the ticket these days. Pucker up, swap your craft with a “co-writer” from Nebraska already under contract despite cranking out lyrics that might make the guy in charge of the B-side of Journey’s next single run for the hypodermic needle hidden in his pocket dictionary.  Can you imagine crafting a good melody and then being told you had to pass it along to a lyricist in Nebraska? I can see the perfect tree from my window. Now where is that rope? Ah yes…..preparations have been made in case I’m forced to hear it. The mutilation of the craft, overseen by the money person who can’t play a note. Nobody should have to whore themselves out like this. I should know, ’cause I’ve considered it many times. ‘Tis tempting in the same way that after dinner mint was to the fat guy in the Monty Python movie….who ate it and exploded.

We crave acceptance. From anybody. It’s appalling vanity really…but mistakes need to be made so mistakes can be recognized. I’ve made so many. I’m not gonna make ’em anymore. Until the next time. But still…I said it.

The truth is we are all fools at times. The only reason this is worth doing is because I’m doing it for myself. I want to complete it, then file it away….maybe stick it inside a tree trunk like Boo Radley did with the toys he collected. Just put it there for someone to find who might say….”maybe this will help me to understand myself.” A mixed up teen. Jimmy. It’s 2011. He’s 17 years old. What’s in store?

This is not music for you. This is music for me. I’ve invited you to come along for more than 12 years. For the most part, you’ve taken a pass. Fine with me. I don’t speak for everyone for sure. But I do speak for some. As I get older I move on much quicker. I can’t sell anything at this stage. My fingers are too bloody to make house calls, and my sales pitch boils down do a few D chords…..sustained…..the sound of conflict not yet controlled.

So yea….maybe I care a little. But not that much. The songs are what I fret about…..not the fat lady from Nashville who’ll suggest the b-side Journey re-write. I’ve had my fill of these ladies…..lecturing about what “sells” and what “people want to hear”. I have no idea what sells ’cause I steal everything…..and as for what people want to hear, I’m a songwriter. My job is to create something that I want to hear. I don’t give a shit about anybody else. I don’t write for your ears anymore than you pander to my ears when we finally meet in a bar. You go your way, and I’ll go mine. If I die broke……I’ll sleep well dead knowing I never sold myself short to some hack at a desk with a thesaurus.

I’d ask my friends to stay with me as I work on this project…..as it’s become the most important thing I’ve ever created. It will be special when it’s completed. It will be my crowning achievement….perhaps not too hard considering what’s come before it, but still…..shooting for mediocrity sucks. Like having sex with your clothes on.

This will explain this kid. Jimmy. Whatever happens to him. You’ll see bits in yourself. And you’ll wonder.

Was it really like that at 17?

Yes it was.

Doesn’t have a name yet. It’s a song cycle. Or a concept album. Or a musical. Or a rock opera with an acoustic guitar. Or just a batch of songs about being young, hormonal, and incredibly insecure (but with a kick-ass Ipod to help get you through the rough spots).

I tried to explain it all here. Haltingly…perhaps not very well…but so it goes.

Anyway, I’ll try to give some glimpses into the creative process as I move along.

Lyrics….ideas…..doodlings. Maybe some prose. Eventually flip videos of songs I think are ready to be heard. We shall see.

Come along for the ride. It’s more fun than doing it alone.

I’ve been fascinated by teenagers ever since I was a teenager….sitting alone in my room with rock and roll blasting wondering why everybody seemed fascinating except me. Lately, I’ve been writing and thinking about little else.

Two years ago I released a batch of songs called Pete Townshend’s Ghost. It was a quickie song cycle dealing with…well, a mixed up teen. Some songs worked (Suzie is still one of my personal favorites. I’m Still Me still sounds sufficiently pissed-off), some songs were good enough to work but I was going so fast I didn’t give them time to breathe. And some songs were dead on arrival. But all in all the entire thing got my juices flowing like nothing I’d worked on before. Or since.

I wanna be Pete Townshend’s ghost
wanna lay bare my soul
make it loud enough
just don’t wanna be young
before I get old

So yea….what I’m working on inside my head, and trying to explain with these keystrokes, is nothing new. But this is a new beginning. As I age I become more grandiose. And why not? If I don’t hear what I want to hear, I’m still cynical enough to think I can create the sounds myself. If that’s not the case, why bother? I didn’t spend all those Friday and Saturday nights alone in my room banging away on my $125 guitar to sit in front of a damn campfire and lead singalongs. I was gonna change the world. I was gonna lead a creaky Pete Townshend off the stage and pick up where he left off. Using the same volume levels.

Well…yea, ok. Kids believe in the Easter Bunny too.

Ok, so dreams die hard. But still, I’ve never once led a singalong in front of a campfire. To the contrary, there’s been a few nights when I played so furiously that specks of blood splashed around the sound-hole of my guitar….nights I remember even now with a sort of masochistic, maniacal glee. Observers (if there were any….come to think of it I may have been playing to the mirror) must have stepped back to avoid the carnage.

Rock and Roll has always been sacred to me….the kind of thing that doesn’t just inspire kids….but actually saves some of them. A specific song at a specific time can keep a kid off the ledge. Of that, I’m totally convinced. I don’t think any other form of music has that type of power. I don’t think you can listen to another type of song and say….”that’s me“. All this is why I’ve always ignored those who merely dabble in it….and focused on the ones (Townshend, Springsteen, Cobain) who understood its power and tried like hell to push it even further. Even if it killed them (like Cobain), or rendered them deaf as a post (Townshend).

It’s been said over and over that “rock is dead”. It’s not of course. Great young (and not so young) bands abound. “The Hold Steady”, “Lucero”, “Foo Fighters”, “Dropkick Murphys”, “The Gaslight Anthem”, “Pearl Jam”, “BoDeans”, “Los Lobos”, “Green Day”, “Old 97s”,”The Wonder Years”, “ACDC”. The list goes on and on. The fact that radio doesn’t play rock and roll anymore doesn’t mean that rock and roll doesn’t exist, anymore than the fact that the sun is out today means it’s not going to rain tomorrow. They’ll always be some snarling kid with low or no self-esteem who gets his hands on a guitar and has a mother who doesn’t mind the noise. Since the day Muddy Waters invented electricity, there’s always been at least one outlet for the tongue-tied.

And there’s nothing cliquey about rock. Since it was created and has been sustained by the kids on the fringes…the weirdos below everyone’s radar, there’s no in-bred snobbishness. The captain of the football team ain’t the one writing “Seems Like Teen Spirit”. And the captain of the Cheerleaders ain’t the one nurturing the oddball who is writing it. So yea, while “fitting in” drives the best rock and roll songs, it’s the kids who don’t writing them. I’m just not that interested in the well-adjusted I guess. They’re boring.

Anyway, back to me and my schemes.

Why would a 40 something armed only with a Gibson jumbo attempt to create NEPA’s version of Quadrophenia anyway? What is it about this teen stuff? Maybe it’s because my own daughter just turned 13…and seems as affected by music as her old man? To her…..music is serious stuff. The one at the concert with seats in the back who pushes her way to the front and ends up at the lip of the stage? That’s her. The worst form of punishment to inflict on her is to take away her Ipod. I don’t have the heart. Well, mostly I don’t have the heart.

But no…..this is for me. I told my daughter my plans and she said, “That’s good Daddy. Don’t get too weird. Can I have some money?”

I thought, “perfect”. I’m more proud of her than I could ever convey.

The nuts and bolts are this.

A story. About a kid. Maybe 20 songs. Some prose that leads into each one. I’ll record acoustic versions on my flip video and post them here as I go. The plan is to document the entire process as it takes place. False starts and all. When the songs are done…..we work on recording them officially (whatever this means….generally “official” means I need money but I’ll worry about that bit later). Then, if it holds together, and if it’s sorta coherent, I’ll start to break it down into chunks for the stage. A musical. Since I’ve no idea how to structure a musical I feel totally qualified to structure a musical. Rules are not only meant to be broken, but are best when I don’t even know what they are to begin with.

So that’s that. For now anyway. This could all change tomorrow. But for now I still think rock and roll is worth it.

So onward I go. Please check back. Every sordid detail will be published. I promise.

In a bit..

–tf

They’re falling like dominos.

New blog post up.

In a bit…

–tf

Ever get the feeling that Hannity and his fellow stormtroopers relax after a long day’s hate with some Tiananmen Square massacre and Operation Hummingbird videos?

So do I. And some other things too…

It’s scary out there.

More soon…

In a bit…

–tf