Partnering with Masterdisk studios in the new year has significantly increased the production values of the music we post here at Workbench. But I've been feeling bad for all those tunes that were jettisoned into public before the deal was made. So, in an effort to avoid behind-the-scenes jealousies, ribbing and jostling, and the occasional black eye, today we start a semi-regular program of plucking from internet obscurity those ancestors of the recent Workbench/Masterdisk golden-children (namely, our archive tracks) to be fortified and buffed to a sheen at the Masterdisk studios, and then paraded out before you to again try their luck in the spotlight. Such as it is. And so! Without further ado, I present to you, newly mastered by Scott Hull, in trim, fighting shape, the no-longer-sulking and rarin' to go "Reginald Earth". ("Reginald Earth" was first rolled out on October 13, 2009.)
I had a couple of advantages when I released my first solo album, Java St. Bagatelles, in 2006. I had been a member of the band The Billy Nayer Show -- who had established an audience over the course of a decade before I even joined. I had also written some record and concert reviews for a few years. I was armed with a few contacts in the press, some knowledge of how the reviews machine worked, and some folks that would give my album a shot based on my work with a band with a reserve of goodwill.
Even so, trying to get new, original music heard is not easy, especially when it's a lo-fi album of genre-defiant solo improvised acoustic guitar music. It's not easy to find listeners for regular songs, let alone stuff that most people think is weird. But I had some luck, and got some reviews, and sold a few -- and I do mean a few -- copies of the CD. More importantly, I met people, made friends and alliances, and heard some musicians I might not have heard had it not been for the release.
It wasn't all cotton candy and rainbows though. Around release time, I was soliciting writers for reviews, many of whom I had never spoken to before. One fellow accepted a review copy and soon wrote to tell me that he could not review my CD. On the upside, he thought that my playing didn't sound like anyone else, which is a fine compliment since there are a bazillion guitarists in the world. Nonetheless, coverage would not be forthcoming; he would not publish negative reviews. It was down to "the recording quality of some pieces, and playing errors that you chose to keep".
Playing errors?
OK, there's some rough playing on the record, sure. You could call some parts sloppy -- I've called it that myself -- but, to my mind, always to a musical end. But "errors"? I never heard that before. I never even thought that before.
Despite the horrific comment, this was clearly a well-intentioned guy. You can tell because he not only listened to the album, but he took the time and effort to give a response, which most people don't do. But good intentions or not, since then, "playing errors" has stuck in my mind: part gripe, part badge of honor, part metaphysical conundrum.
You can't know how people receive your work. You generally don't know if it's received at all. And if it is, it will be in as many different ways as there are people to hear it. My thinking is this: since you've got no control over it, it's not worth thinking much about. But it's nonetheless a compulsively considerable topic you have to train yourself to exert some discipline against. The choicest comments (naturally, the negative ones have more truck) slip into in a mental file dedicated to the doomed task of constructing a composite model of what my work looks and sounds like to other people. Stupid file. Despite its uselessness, it's still open -- but it gathers more dust as I get older and wiser and more jaded.
This week's track is called "Reginald Earth". Let me say, explicitly, that not only have I chosen to create this work precisely as it is, but that there are no errors contained in its compass, and that every note has been considered, is intentional, and has been examined with an electron microscope and laser microphone, tested through Reed-Solomon error correction code, shot into space and evaluated through a powerful telescope, and weighed with a postage meter.
Fine, I haven't done any of that. It's a piece of music that I worked on until it sounded right and finished. Actually, it's my favorite track out of the fourteen that were to comprise the Astral Law album. I hope you enjoy it. And if you don't, well, I don't want to hear about it. -- James Beaudreau
