Music is my beach house
Music is my hometown
Music is my king size bed
Music’s where I meet my friends
Music is my hot hot bath
Music is my hot hot sex
Music is my back rub
My music is where I’d like you to touch

    -  CSS, “Music is my Hot, Hot Sex”

Sometimes I listen to that song, and my head explodes a little. In a good way.

So, for those of you just tuning in, or who haven’t been paying attention, I am in a band. I know, I know, it’s a total douche thing to say. “Dude, I’m in a fuckin’ BAND!” (and much throwing up of the horns. Not, like, vomiting horns. That would hurt. I mean like the hand gesture. Do Catholics throw up a halo?).

But it’s true. A while ago, a musically obsessed friend of mine got a group of his buddies together, each having a vague musical inkling, and formed a garage band. That played in his basement, because he had no garage. He was desperate to get us into full-on rock and/or roll status, mostly because his wife was clearly cheating on him with Collective Soul. True story.

I had grown up with a smidgeon of musical talent. My Dad was one of those people you want to smack who can effortlessly play any song he hears on his guitar, by ear, with no ability to read music. He would actually improvise Spanish guitar solos in the middle of playing Led Zepplin, so you can see what I mean. I never really had his ability (if it was genetic, I should point out he’s my step-father. So I didn’t get it in the blood.), and I never picked up the knack of finger-plucking. So I was a passable rhythm guitarist, and by “passable”, I mean that my friends were nice enough to not inform me of how much we all knew I sucked.

Other than that, I had played trumpet in high school, which doesn’t translate well to the rock milieu. Which I don’t know if anyone has ever referred to by those specific words, so in a way, I’m a pioneer. At least, according to my daughter’s definition, which is simply “doing something first”.

So, my music-obsessed friend made a suggestion. In much better language then I’m going to use here, he suggested I try bass guitar, because the field of bass players is strewn with half-assed guitarists who were never going to get any better.

Obviously, it was a perfect fit.

Now, I’m not that much better than I was at rhythm guitar, but the beauty of bass is that with the right song, you really don’t have to be. There’s a lot of camouflage in rock music. Provided the lead vocals and lead guitarist are decent, you tend not to notice bass fuck ups.

Shortly after that, that band broke up, because my music-obsessed friend was trying to use the band to heal his marriage, which, hey, nice try bud. But that ship had sailed, with “Gel” blaring loudly from the speakers.

And we formed a new band, which has morphed through a couple of iterations and names, and finally settled on “The Finger Guns” (Don’t click on the link, as there’s no page there yet. We just wanted to keep the domain.), which is all kinds of awesome, and once more I try to hide my bass inadequacy behind the lead guitarist, and the lead singer.

Of course, bear in mind that I am also the lead singer. Yeah, I’m a little confused on that one too.

We do have a little problem that I’m not sure how most bands overcome. Y’see, we’re a group of geek dudes who find toilet humour funny, and snicker at emo rock. So we’re finding it difficult to write original songs that aren’t flat out comedies. So far, we’ve written a song about his wife destroying Japan (“Matron of Honour”) and a thinly disguised bowling-metaphor-for-sex song (“Three Fingers Deep”). We’re working on songs about cannibalistic babies, and one simply called “Awesome Sauce”. And we improvise stuff about pubic hair and evil clowns.

Which begs the question: How the hell do guys write meaningful lyrics? Seriously? If I busted out a love song, about how beautiful and angelic my wife was, I would be laughed out of the room. And yet, rock stars write deep songs all the time. How do you stop the fucking giggles from ruining the song creation process?

And this isn’t idle speculation. Any input would be welcomed.

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On a side note, I’m thinking about trying a little experiment with my other domain, MrJones.ca. Since I’m basically abandoning that blog, I thought a nice way to get some use out of it was to make it a link blog. For photos or videos or podcasts on the go, using the Posterous service. Once I get it set up, it should update in my Twitter feed, on Facebook, and everywhere else. We’ll see how it works.

I thought I might shift this conversation over here, since it erupted in the lovely land of social blogging, but I get really conflicted about monetary compensation for artists of all kinds. It’s a really weird zone, and difficult to come to a clear decision on.

I like to look at movie stars as an easy example. Here are people who are, for all intents and purposes, pretending for a living. They’re doing the fancy equivalent of “Cops and Robbers”, and getting paid, in some cases, an obscene amount of money for it. To a somewhat similar extent, professional athletes are making millions for playing games.

Do I think what movie actors do is hard? Well, as someone who went to school for drama, I can attest that it’s not easy to be convincing in every role. But to compare what actors do to even the easiest of menial tasks is ridiculous. The job consists of pretending to be someone else, and to say things written for you. (Obviously these are gross generalizations, and don’t apply to all circumstances). In the writer’s strike last year, I came down on the side of the big studios, for the most part, because they were the ones putting all the money in, and therefore deserved the most money back. An actor doesn’t make a movie himself, and in fact, can only really be good in a limited window, either helped or hurt by the production values, director, crew, other actors…the list goes on…

So, in a way, I think an actor, even a huge A-List Hollywood star, should be paid based on how well his product sells. A commission system. They all make scale for the acting (or maybe a separate “A-List Scale”), and then a percentage of the profits. This would serve two purposes — it would make it easier to get movies made, because the upfront costs could go down significantly. And more importantly, it would give actors a real stake in their acting, letting them know that if they phone in the performance, the sales for the movie would reflect that, and their end paycheque would suffer.

For a studio to pay millions of dollars for a star, only to have the movie flop, seems fair to no one. But if an up-and-comer lucks into a choice role and really makes the movie his own (Napoleon Dynamite springs to mind), they should be rewarded for it.

This is also my thought on musicians — who admittedly tend to already follow that system with ticket sales and CD sales — and authors, who some think shouldn’t be making just a percentage. But come on — a percentage is the only way to really reward people for their effort!

Somewhere in there, I chose "webcomic" as the best target for me to focus on. Why? Because it's really the only way to exercise almost all of my interests simultaneously. I can script, I can draw, I can be funny, I can practice computer stuff, I can comment on the ludicrous and illogical world around me — I can do it all, and perhaps make some people laugh at the same time.

So, I wanted to update my blog accordingly, and keep a sort of progress report on here. You know, use a "web log" as an actual "LOG" for once. Stay tuned here, if you're interested at all. I plan on sharing each stage. At this point, I've looked over many webcomics, and even asked for help (including the talented Caroline of Draw Write Play), and have ventured into a really sweet local art store to update my supplies. I haven't seriously gone after my drawing for years — it was nice to pull out my old sketchbook and impress my 8-year-old.

Tomorrow, I plan to outline my obstacles, and come up with some logical solutions. But the process is part of the art, so I wanted to share it with any interested parties. Enjoy! 

Seeing as the last time I posted, I claimed that I would be posting more often due to my new "inspiration" at being a new dad again, one would expect that either a) I would live up to that claim and post more frequently, or b) retract myself and start again. Hey, who guessed "b"? You got it!

And so, in order to get the ball rolling, I thought I would write some quick thoughts, mini-blog style, and see if that gets the juices flowing. You know, just touch on some things that are rolling around in my brain, either from the news, the entertainment industry, or just logical gutter sweepings that need to be cleared in order to make room for serious blogs. Are you sitting comfortably? Then Let's begin!

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So, this is the first time I've gotten this far watching "American Idol". I can't say what the appeal is this time, other than to point out that, for me, things that you follow through their creation process have more personal attachment than things you simply purchase after the fact. Case in point – every single previous "Idol" winner, I have no interest in out of the box. In fact, it's usually their second album, with me really not being familiar with them actually being an "Idol" winner, which gets me interested. The only ex-Idol that I actually enjoy at all is Kelly Clarkson, and only because she went a little rock.

But I am watching Idol this time. And hence, I have a feeling I might actually care about one or two of the contestants enough to buy, or at least download, their music. I mean, I think it's a given that almost everyone who makes it to the top ten gets some kind of musical attention after the fact. They've proven that they are better than about 9,000 other people, and that means that, as long as they've been getting votes, logically, they should sell some records. If nothing else, I assume they publish a CD of these theme shows when completed, but since I've had no previous interest, I'm not sure.

What surprises me, though, is how bad people take getting eliminated at this point. Are they not clear on their situation? They've beaten almost everybody else that tried out. There are only a handful of people who could be considered to be "beating" them, and really, at this point, it's just a popularity contest with America (Can Canadians vote for "American Idol"? Or just "Canadian Idol"?), and if you get to the final 24, the judges obviously think you're good enough to be a recording artist.

So you don't win overall. You have proof – viable proof – that you are a great singer. Why so sad?

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The latest season of "Survivor" has impressed me with something. Not the "fans vs. favourites" angle, which clearly is suspect. I mean, isn't everyone who gets onto Survivor after the first season a "fan"? It's not like these people came dressed up as Rupert begging to be on the show. And "favourites"? Really? Sure, Yau Man and James and Ozzie – but Ami? Cirie? Who?

And I don't buy this whole attitude of: "The favourites have an edge from experience." Or at least, not at this point. By now, some of these "fans" have been on their island longer than some of the "favourites" on their seasons.

So what's so impressive? Simple: Tracy. She's actually using logical strategy. And as many times as contestants on "Survivor" use the word strategy, there has been precious little on display. Please, please don't get me started on Tod from China. No, Tracy is an interesting anomaly – she's not doing great on challenges, except for happening to be on the winning team some times. She's not particularly strong with alliances, having been dumped unceremoniously with Chet and Kathy, the "old people" in the "Fan" tribe. But she sees the situation ahead of her quite clearly.

When it seemed obvious that Chet would be voted out after not being able to swim, she banded with Crazy Caveman Joel to vote out Mary, Mikey's girl crush. The next elimination and even Joel couldn't overlook Chet's weakness – that and he clearly seemed to dislike him as a person. And what did Tracy do? She took shots at Joel's manhood, implying that he was Mikey's bitch, and would vote whichever way he was told, until Mikey didn't need him anymore. Joel mad. Joel see red. Joel SMASH! Joel no one's bitch! And thus, Mikey was eliminated.

Cut to last week. The tribes are shuffled, and Tracy and Joel and Chet, oh so conveniently get dumped in the same tribe with Ozzie, Amanda and Cirie (amongst others). When Chet invariably costs them another immunity challenge, one would assume that clever Amanda and straight-forward thinking Ozzie would dump Chet first, right? I mean, in typical "Survivor" fashion, Ozzie and Joel discuss how the only real choice is to get rid of Chet, followed by Cirie and Tracy. Everything looked like it was going to go that way. In all honesty, that was even the smart move.

Enter Tracy again, who doesn't go to Ozzie directly, but gets in the ear of Cirie. She convinces Cirie (rightly), that this "eliminate the weak" attitude will cost them Chet, sure, but that Cirie or herself might be next, and Joel is evil! She even goes so far as to suggest that as useless as Chet is, he's controllable! Wow! Great thinking for Cirie, who presents these ideas as her own to Ozzie – and which, unbelievably, completely convinces him to change his (and therefore, Amanda's) vote!

This is revolutionary to me – someone who rightly reads people, and can manipulate them correctly, without anyone guessing what she's up to. If any of the previous eliminated people were to show up on the jury (I know, they're not), they would believe the guilty parties, up until now, were Joel and Cirie! Way to slip under the radar, Tracy!

What can I say? I want her to win now. It would really show people what brains are really worth.

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The latest inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been revealed. Before I bitch about this, let me first just examine something here under the microscope: The name of this organization is, as I understand it, the "Rock and Roll" Hall of Fame. It was established to honour those who were important to Rock and Roll. And yet, I see that in order to stay current with the times, they've decided to induct rappers and pop stars. Um…why? What impact did Madonna have on rock, other than to show us how not to rock? Really, was Vogue a huge influencing factor on Dave Groehl, and we don't know about it? Did "Material Girl" have a similar impact to Elvis Presley? No, I'm not just slagging Madonna – I actually want to know! Where is the logic in including non-rock artists into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Doesn't that sort of devalue the opinion of this institution?

I mean, it's bad enough that the Sex Pistols referred to them as a "shit stain". That's got to hurt, especially when they were being inducted at the time. But when you start including Grand Master Flash and Madonna into something supposed to be about rock and roll, how do you expect to be taken seriously?

Please bear in mind that I'm not even trying to judge the music of these artists – I'm not saying that Madonna or Grand Master Flash aren't great musicians (I could, in Madonna's case, but I won't). I'm simply stating that it doesn't make sense to include people who aren't in this genre into the institution claiming to represent the genre! You don't see a lot of tennis stars inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and I defy you to argue that they should! Or, put another way, would you induct a folk group into a Rap Hall of Fame? I mean, they rhymed too, didn't they?