April 23rd, 2009 – Like many of you who were enjoying music before the rude awakening of the late 90′s boy-band, I had a garage band with my high school friends. We thought we rocked hard, and we even practiced in a garage to complete the cliche. My time was grunge, and we played our fair share of Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, and even some Doors. The running joke in our band was that, while I had the attitude and fashion (ugh), I could easily be shown as a fraud because I had meticulous hygiene.
About a decade ago, I lost the recordings we had made. As I got better at songwriting and engineering, my mental aural image of the CD got more and more grotesque over time. I was thoroughly embarrassed just thinking about it. I’d think, “We were so terrible that I could not show the CD to anyone, even if I found it”. But in the back of my mind, I still hoped that it wasn’t as bad as I had built it up to be over all these years. After all, it was really my first experience playing music in a band, writing songs, and recording our performances.
Well yesterday as I was cleaning out dozens of old boxes I had stored, I found the CD. As I loaded it up into iTunes, I swallowed hard and prepared myself for the worst. You know what? The worst never came. Sure, the songwriting was pretty rough and non-sensical. Sure, the performances were messy. Sure, our poorly maintained 4 track tape reels didn’t exactly record our music at the highest quality. But it wasn’t as bad as I had made it in my mind.
Honestly, I was kind of proud of what I was hearing. This is where it began; it was the start of the journey that lead me to today. I am no where near the level I want to be, and I’m sure ten years from now I will be look back and see the progression for what it is. As long as I’m constantly improving, not matter how small the difference, I’ll be content. Taking a moment to reflect on how far you’ve come means not having to be embarrassed of where you’ve been. I’ve embedded one of our songs below. I’m the one rocking out with the unnecessarily garish Yamaha DX7 solos.
When you go back and listen to older material you’ve worked on, do you cringe?
5 Comments, Comment or Ping
James Lewin
A lot of people struggle with the question of whether they should put something out there or not – like it’s going to come back to haunt us or something.
I find that the most interesting people, though, are often those that are not afraid of looking stupid. And the most interesting music often comes from people that are naive about music.
Anyway – that’s the way to rock the past!
Apr 23rd, 2009
Sebastien Orban
Some of my older things suck – ’cause I was a beginner.
But except for one things (a demo recorded for a teacher, awful !), I’m not ashame of what I’ve done most of the time. Not that bad
Apr 23rd, 2009
Sean
@James Lewin:
Reminds me of the interview on Tricky of Massive Attack you posted yesterday. I definitely agree with you and Tricky on that one. Sometimes when there is a lot of knowledge, it creates a self-edit which might kill a great idea before it’s fleshed out.
@Sebastien Orban: Post up links to your music! I’m interested in hearing everyone’s music!
Apr 23rd, 2009
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