Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Wet Hair

From the desk of Shawn Reed, record label mogul and organ player:

"A Sunday night 2am, post bleak show at a popular warehouse spot in town, something that seems defeating that I am maybe finally immune too for better or wrose, at least it wasn't a gig I performed at. A night of long discussions about going, staying, moving, traveling, confusion, mixed opportunities and limitations. Do I stay in Iowa City for another set of seasons for another year, I'm annoying myself with my flip flopping on the ideas of it. Do I move to New York, Portland, Austin? or do I stay? I'm fearful that miserable feelings related to this place will come back over and over again, but I worry that there is nothing else out there really that is any different even though I know there is. I keep staying because I am already set up, the total living space, cheap rent, practice space, silkscreen/art studio, storage all in one location and integrated into everyday reality no job just tapes, records, music, artwork, and plenty of financial limitations. Haunted in the house that I live in by the space itself, the time of it, the friends going, that major lost love harbored and dissolved in this place and house over years and now just a memory, the possessions themselves, the piles of tapes, records, amps, and artwork. The labor of love for life and all that it has to offer even the natural decay of it. A life dedicated to all that is creative in it more than to itself, to the constant push for prolific output and a never ending desire for more potential and opportunity. Imaginary momentum towards some unknown horizon, patience upon patience, waiting and working, worrying whether its in the making or the place. Like my father in his youth searching for something he never even knew what he was searching for like an instinct for something beyond the instinct. The feeling is limited, getting older in a Midwestern college town, near where I grew up, but with enough traveling and endless touring under my belt to know the road as well as anything. Changed by it for better or worse, addicted to the inspiration and humiliation of it. Endless horizons often ending at epic ocean views, amazing shows, the meeting of minds, and also broken vehicles, empty rooms, limitation, and harsh realitys.

I pluck away melodies on a bass guitar while I write this, something I have tried to write or sum up before but never could and still might not accomplish now. This one simple riff on a couple of strings speaks for more in my mind then I can even remotely speak for here in words. Sketching out ideas for new Wet Hair songs, bass parts to record onto four track tape to play over live. I'll probably stay in Iowa City another year just to do this band, Wet Hair. I've stayed here for years, to be in a band, to do another tour, to put out another record, to maintain forward momentum for the work that has already been done. Maybe there is nothing outside of me, nothing in me besides these creative instincts. Ryan is staying for his own reasons, stuck in his own confusion and financial limitations, much like my own. Wet Hair spawned out of a few generally miserable years of being lost. What was maintained in all that personal lost was a sense of direction in the spirit of creative act. I just want to see it through, to keep searching for the spirit in it, the potential in it and to realize that potential merging into the moment. I feel like we are getting closer to something, deeper, richer, more imaginative, something with more feeling. We work with spontaneity, years of playing and practicing together to the point of being almost uncritical or unknowing in the conception of songs. We just turn on the gear and start playing and what flows out before us is the result, we play it, practice it, hone it in until it takes the fully realized shape that we see before us, but it still lies outside our knowing our understanding, it just is a result. The visuals seem too much of the same way and just as much from the world, drawn from everything, anything and all experience. Wet Hair is changing it is always changing, we are getting better at it, being a two piece band, 4 hands, two minds. I had no idea when I started it solo in the basement by myself it would grow to involve Ryan so fully and sound like this now. A total change in approach and sound to what we were doing before Wet Hair, the maximal changed to minimal. The songs we are writing now, they are becoming more and more personal to me then ever before, they are just as spontaneous but more aware more critical of themselves, they are striving toward a harmony that I can't get to in words. They are getting closer to describing the ideas and feelings in me, less and more abstractly at the same time. They describe this labor of love that I feel in making the songs themselves, them being this conduit to the spontaneity of the experience of life itself. Wet Hair is just a journey, it's part of the journey, it took years and years to get to Wet Hair, and what lies beyond it I'm not sure, hopefully as much and more then what came before. The creative knowledge that grows from the experience, even in the repetition of things, the endless cycle, the natural decay even of a creative endeavor it speaks for itself. It's as much the process as it is the result. It's confusing to think of where audience comes into all of this, seems like to much for this already windy group of words so I'll think about that some other time.

I wonder if I will ever be done searching and wondering...ever be done playing in 'bands' working on 'projects' putting out 'records' going on 'tours'.... probably not, there is to much beauty even in the decay to stop looking for it, seems like I never even made the choice to express it, it just happens.

Playlist: Les Rallizes Dénudés - Romance of the Black Grief and But I Was Different over and over again, for some reason this seems relevant."

Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Wet Hair.



Irifi (Night People)
1. Blood Spirits
2. I Am The Jackal
3. Magnetic Youth
4. Could Want Nothing



















Wet Hair EP (Night People)
1. Forever Young Ever One
2. Machete
3. On The Lilys
4. The Hermitage



















Wet Hair CS (Night People)
1. Whitestrobe Void
2. Black Sand
3. Saturns Return
4. Cult Electric Annihilation



















The Beach (Night People)
1. Ordinary Lives
2. Mesmerized
3. Hey Chrome
4. Reprise
5. Crucifix In The Waves
6. Radio Machines
7. Gold Chains
















Dream (Not Not Fun)
1. Cult Electric Annihilation
2. Black Sand
3. Ordinary Lives
4. Radio Machines/Gold Chains



















Glass Fountain (Not Not Fun)
1. Mesmerized
2. Crucifix In The Waves
3. When The Right Time Comes
4. Cold City
5. Stepping Razor (To Heaven's Door)

1 comment:

Rey Rey said...

Big up & thanks for the Wet Hair zip and putting out there what's going on within and without. Thanks for bothering. Peace.