Candied Apples and Razorblades

And these are the days when I'm really fucking glad that at the end of them- I get to be Glenda.

I learned the hard way that this blog is not a forum for me to vent my personal and private issues, because 1) nobody who reads this will care, other than those intolerably irritating gossip mongers who, due to their own lack of an interesting existence, enjoy discussing the negative aspects of others' lives for recreation (yes, you. If you think for just one second that I might be talking to you... I am ABSOLUTELY talking to you). 2) the people who actually care about me won't be finding out about things of this nature via Facebook and blogging.

But I want to write a leeeeeetle itty-bitty piece today about VENTING.

I just received a piece of information that I found... upsetting. Now granted, I'm only feeling this way because of my own immaturity, but FUCK it. To be fair, my reaction to said information is entirely reasonable and human, it's something that would be difficult for anyone to deal with in the moment. I am not a whiner by nature. I take after my Dad, and I do not live in Mamby-Pamby Land.  But for now, till I grow the hell up, rationalize it and move on... I'm a little... off. And since the usual amount of time it takes me to do such growing the hell up exceeds the limit for joining Team Lightning in the Maturity Olympics, it's a good damn thing that at the end of today, I get to go be Glenda fucking DANZIG.
I was sitting at my office. It was a very normal day. I wear frilly sundresses with scarves and high heels to work, make charming small talk at the elevators, and spend my days discussing things involving network engineering and account management (not that I pretend to understand any of it). I answer my phone with a cheerful, "Anonymous Financial..." And I do not, by ANY stretch of ANYBODY's twisted imagination, look or act like I sing in a horror punk band called Violent Age.

And so I'm sitting here in this condition, perfect corporate gloss-over, when I receive this missive (which- just to clarify so that none of these myopic idiots are given any fuel for the local gossip mill- involved my Pop in an indirect way). Ever since my Dad, my rock of wisdom and stability, died in December I've been on an emotional balance beam, trying to stay focused and centered without falling off. There are waiting arms to catch me on either side should I slip, but they are only so strong and when I fall, I fall HARD. So today, just as I felt for the first time in a couple weeks that my feet were flat on the beam and I am ready to walk forward, here comes this finger prodding me in my right shoulder, nudging me towards the big black abyss directly to the left of my little safety beam.
I walked out of the office and started making a beeline direct for the liquor store at the end of my block. Pop would NOT have been happy. This has been my long-time coping mechanism, and I don't think there's any need to guard that secret anymore. The whole world knows. Dad's greatest fear was me ruining my life with booze, and if anyone would understand that dilemma, he was it. So I buy this tiny half-pint of gin, tell myself that in this moment I am justified in seeking this sort of comfort, settle down in a park, bum a cigarette (eww menthol, GROSS, and I don't even smoke), and get ready to crack the bottle open when I swear to you he was sitting beside me. Great, I'm thinking. If my Dad could REALLY see me... storming out of my office, and then sitting down in my pretty dress to drink and smoke in the park. On company time. God, I'm so juvenile.
He and I then proceeded to have a brief theoretical conversation. See, my parents and I had that sort of relationship where we knew each other so well, that I could easily sit there and do this without being categorized as a schizoid. This actually happens a lot. I could hear him telling me what I already know about drinking. We also had an (also brief) exchange about the situation I'm facing. I know exactly what he would say, because he was a man of the highest integrity and his standards never flagged or fluctuated.
So I forsook the bottle. I mean, it's still in my purse. Tiny little thing, at least it'll save me from spending money on overpriced New York City drinks at my show tonight. Which brings me to the point- my show tonight.
Or OUR show, I should say. David Superbassist Alva and I started this Misfits band as an outlet for some personal fucking rage. He suffered almost the exact same loss I did in December. We both got our hearts ripped out by significant others, and THEN lost the strongest figure in our lives 10 days apart. My Dad, his Grandma. We met about a month later, and that was end of story. We've been causing DeathDestructionMurderMayhem ever since, and it's not always constructive. Actually we're fucking trainwrecks when we drink together. Don't ask me for stories. But whatever, rock'n'roll, right?
WRONG.
Neither of us want this, to be an overage/underdeveloped behavioural/emotional liability nightmare. And nothing helps like this Misfits band. That's why we fkin did it. I've written about this before:

http://marronsbrain.blogspot.com/2011_04_18_archive.html

I have a semi-"perfect" life. A solid handful of wonderful friends who are truly genuine people. A fantastic blessing of a "real" job (that my Dad was SOOOO thrilled about after my years of dead-end employment, such as waitressing, WAL*MART, selling pot, authorizing gas pumps,  and asking people if they want fries), with all of the freedom in the world to have a "real" life in the evenings (ballet, billiards, beers, bro's and bands). Joan Holloway by day, Glenda Danzig by night. I have built a life that is no longer just a drifting existence, but a complex infrastructure of many different elements and factors that must be maintained. So there is absolutely zero room for my erratic, childish emotions and "acting out" when I'm angry. Enter Glenda.


So here we are. I've got a fkin show tonight, and I'm gonna fkin PLAY it.

I am leaving my office. I am not going to drink anything during daylight hours. I am hyped up enough on some bad adrenaline that it would be a baaaaad idea anyway. And I am saving it ALL, every last concentrated acid black drop, to rip the SPINE outta some motherfuckers tonight. In Violent Age, I have the convenience of taking every fucking ounce and fiber of BLACK that lives on the inside and putting it into this little efficient Pandora's Box that I can open and close at will. And let me tell you, Pandora's Box is a fucking TRASH bin. There is nothing worthwhile in there, I think the base logic in the most hardcore of people (unrepentant murderers aside, please pardon) will tell us all that darkness isn't good. But you know what? I've got it. And in a past life, when I would release said darkness arbitrarily, it REALLY wasn't good. I haz a monster inside, and over the years it becomes harder and harder to wake. Not that it's awoken now... like I said, after losing my Pop it takes a loooooot to shake me internally. But it starts rolling around and snorting in its sleep every now and then, and I fear a situation like the one from the Hobbit... you know, when Bilbo Baggins comes sneaking in to the sleeping lair of Smaug the dragon, wakes him, and the dragon goes on to cause... DeathDestructionMurderMayhem.
I'll take it out on stage, thank you very much. Fuck you, DayDrinkingDepressionMorbidMisery. DeathDestructionMurderMayhem will live in me tonight, if only for a few short hours. I'm gonna be an asshole like I always am at Misfits shows, and it'll feel really good 'cause people like it. I like to eat raw steak on stage and throw it in people's faces, call my audience a bunch of faggots, kick leather-wearing dudes in the chest when they come too fuckin close to my stage, and sing songs about burning bodies hanging from poles.
Tomorrow I'm gonna be passed the fuck out.
And on Friday, I'll be once more in a lovely dress, smiling, updating monthly revenue reports and it's back to "Anonymous Financial, this is Gle- uh, err, Marron..."
Someday He'll extract the Razorblade from the Candy Apple. But today is not that day.
And tonight is CERTAINLY not that night. Catch ya later, suckas.
 

Keeping It Real.

I'm starting to look at the sort of gigs/venues I've been playing for the past year in much the same way a low self-esteem woman looks at her unemployed fat slob of an abusive boyfriend drooling in front of the TV and realizes she just might be able to do better.
Friday was ABSOLUTELY one of those awful gigs I wrote about a few months ago, and I didn't even fall flat drunk on my face. File under "Dues: Paid."
It was the venue's fault- my guys and I were, if I may be so bold, awesome. Between the four of us, we spent a lot of time hauling around a lot of cumbersome musical equipment (next hit single: The Heartwrenching Ballad of Davey's Acoustic Bass With No Case) over a lot of pavement to get ready for Friday, and man do I feel friggin' SPECIAL. There was a moment on Friday night when I stopped to breathe for a second... looked around me... and realized that I was actually on stage with four of the best musicians I know, all of whom came together to play this gig at this deplorable little venue with me. WHOA.
Yeah, so the venue screwed us. They put us up an hour late to milk every last dime out of our bar crowd, the price of entry was your first born, they didn't pay us, and there would have been a MAJOR improvement in the sound if we'd substituted a baby monitor for the PA system. Whatever. I think people understand what happened. These places get away with this kind of thing all the time. A lot of acts, singer/songwriter types especially, keep grinding it out in these joints, misguidedly believing that we should be grateful to any place that will allow us a moment on stage. Well you know what UC Lounge, and every other Lower East Side hell-hole that still exploits that idea of the long-gone "romance" it once had to lure impressionable musicians like Charlie the Unicorn into Candy Mountain, only to spit them back out with no kidney? SUCK IT.
However, I do not for one second believe that anyone who wants to play music should skip this part... it's necessary. There is a current trend in our culture that... well, to say that we are being led away from first-hand direct experience is a bit of an understatement. I would say that we are being programmed to experience reality in a flat, removed, two-dimensional manner... similar to that of the experience of watching television. Everyone is so eager to be endorsed by the System, so anxious to hurry up and become an image, an icon, a virtual-reality of themselves... to imprint themselves onto the masses via pictures, video footage and recorded sounds. Almost asking to exist by proxy in the minds of the collective conscious known as the public. There is no interaction. Everyone is vying to become the Ultimate Facebook Status. Catching my drift?
I myself am guilty as hell of this last part, much as I loathe to admit it. To be fair, I think New York has contributed to making me this way. I am working to amend that. I've always been an incredibly insecure individual, and our culture teaches us that the remedy for insecurity is not introspection and moral self-betterment contributing to a fundamentally positive image of one's character, but by piling on the narcissism and building taller and taller monuments to ourselves. I am here to confess that I've fallen for that trap hard, and would like to repent of that. I went on to my beast of a Facebook profile the other day, and set two albums full of vain and self-glorifying pictures to Private (well, my Mom can still see them) because, really- what's the point? Attention? To get people to come to my shows and listen to my music? Um, right. People look at pictures like that and say, "Wow, I bet she's an incredibly talented musician!" about as much as they look at images of Rupert Murdoch and assume that he spends his free time volunteering at homeless shelters. I'm still working up the guts to go in and physically remove some of those narcissistic images one by one from my mile-long roster of profile pictures. After this little revelation, I kind of don't want to look. Worst part is, I haven't really recorded much MUSIC. I've spent TONS of time in practice, writing, and playing out, but have committed almost nothing to record (a total self-contradiction, in that I have committed myself to record in an extensive visual archive, yet have held out on creating any concrete and quantified versions of my music under the seemingly noble pretense of maintaining the experiential, living, interactive element of it all, i.e. "keeping it real"). So an overabundance of images + lack of anything substantial to show =... uh... what does that equal? Exactly.
That's where the hard work comes in, and at least I have that. Back to the point, which is the transition of the reality of collective culture from direct and first hand to living everything as if it was scripted for screen. A musician at heart must endure the trials and tribulations of the early phases, or we'll never deserve to reap the benefits of being an autonomous creative creature free to dance between the gridlines of the Matrix. Before people have tour managers and roadies, labels and perks, music videos and covers of magazines, I believe it is important that they haul the equipment, get screwed over and leave unpaid (frequently), play to empty houses, understand that they are absolutely meaningless to the bars and venues (which I believe are like a micro-representation of the larger, even less caring Industry) and can recall the stench of stale urine and beer without trying. I also believe it's important to go through phases of self-assessment and self-doubt, much like I'm going through now. Looking at yourself honestly to make sure you're doing this the right way, for the right reasons. That you believe that you're not only worth looking at, but even more worth listening to. And most importantly of all, you accept that if you do not "make it", your life is not over- that just because I'm out here doing this right now, working as hard as I can and wishing with all my heart that someday I'll have the privilege of doing what I love for a living, that does not guarantee that it will happen. I'm learning that at the core, the love of playing has to be enough.
Yes, I am a believer in learning the hard way. That's why this blog is called the Musician's Grind, not The Aspiring Pop Star's Quest For a Fast-Track to Fame. But neither is it the Pathetic Noisemaker's Grueling Stations of the Cross. Damned if the Lower East Side becomes my Calvary.