Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: The Mellotron Group

Well, I can vouch for the blank stares thing. Rather disheartening. Been a major obstacle in trying to work with other musicians.

Everything around me here in California's south valley is either very indie-chic or angst-drenched metal. I wonder what ever happened to finesse in music. Or maybe, I'm just that out of touch with frankly everything.

I get very particular about what I listen to and wish to play. The understandings in those songs are my companion through ... things... for lack of a better term. I just can't come to "get" indie-chic's fetish of everything gritty and "authentic," whatever that means to them cuz it certainly don't mean the same to me. I have nothing in common with the screaming and posturing of the metal crowd. But that's all there is.

I'd rather be immersed in the world of Workingman's Dead, or American Beauty, or of Led I, or Days of Future Passed because the musical vibe is so right, even if the lyrics are stupid. Mellotrons and pedal steels get me going. Clear intelligible drum parts with a bounce get me going. Electric guitars that sound like electric guitars not like fire alarms get me going. My friends look at me bug eyed, as if something were generally wrong with me.

Long way of saying all the 20 somethings around me are miles away from anything any of us here hold dear. So I sit at home with my transistor organ and my mellotron samples and learn licks that I'll probably not share with anyone around where I live. Kind of pathetic really.

-Sean