I’ve Fallen Yet I Must Get Up
Posted on February 15th, 2012
Filed under: General,Music News — Karl Olson @ 2:38 am
Last Saturday, I fell down half a flight of stairs as I excitedly exited my parents’ house to drive to my show. It lacked any simulation of grace. I even managed to smash the lip off of one of the steps. I am still pretty sore from that tumble, but ultimately I made it out to the show.
My father drove me to the venue, and for the first time ever, he saw me perform live at an actual venue. I think the volume of the soundsystem was off putting for him, but it was cool that he saw how people had come to see me. One person even researched me having seen the flyer, and another had remembered me from the frontalot forum, and remarked that my performance reminded him of Andy Kaufman. That’s pretty high praise, and a sign that turning my stage-presence-ruining pain into a joke worked. A promoter with the venue even said I should come to said venue’s (much busier) hiphop night, and that I should get in on its end of show freestyle. I’m glad my dad was their to see those interactions. There is something reassuring about being praised by fans in front of family members.
That said, it’s after Valentine’s Day, and I’m still a bit sore. Time for a couple of Advil, and some rest with a heating pad.
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Speaking of Nostalgia
Posted on February 6th, 2012
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 5:48 pm
I have been sick with a roaring sinus infection for the past 5 or 6 days now. It totally sucks, because no matter how much rest I get, I seem to wake up feeling pretty out of it. It’s only viral right now as well, so there is no going to the doctors for antibiotics either. It’d do no good. The funny thing is, being sick is pretty much the same feeling whether I’m 8 or 28. Being layed is being layed up. Granted, there is a difference in being home sick and watching Nickelodeon and being home sick and having all of the world’s knowledge milliseconds away, but if either way I’m just lying down watching Hey Arnold!, the difference isn’t that great.
Though, these days, I’d rather be in school. I hate missing lectures, even when they are just the professor reading a pdf or powerpoint he posts online anyway. Being out for a day is one thing, but I just can’t enjoy the break how I used to. I mean, when you’re only in lecture 3 days a week anyway, I think I get a decent clip of leisure time in anyway except for when there is a big paper or project or test pending. When you’re this sick, I can’t even really get much work done on that anyway. Between feeling sick from the cold and feeling woozy from the cold meds, I can’t focus that well. I’m surprised at my coherence currently.
I’m taking a nap.
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1994
Posted on February 5th, 2012
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 2:45 am
I have a bit of a miserable head cold going. I shouldn’t be up at 2am as such, but yet I am. I’m listening to some songs from a turning point in my youth, and I’m wallowing in nostalgia. Right now I’m blasting Veruca Salt’s 25, I’m recalling the whole scene of listening to the album the songs from.
The CD/Cassette boombox that I’d specifically wanted for Christmas whirs gently while I listened blistering solos on cheap KOSS headphones. Lying in bed, I ponder what I’d have to do in class the next day. I’d probably blown off some homework, likely because it felt trivial, and the punishment for skipping more than 4 assignments seemed just as trivial. Specifically, being held in for the monthly bonus recess didn’t mean much when most of the class made a point to pick on me anyway. The separation wasn’t that hard on me, and only my very last teacher for the last of 6th grade inspired any achievement out of me.
Oddly though, it would be the music that listened to late into the night that bridged the gap between myself and the other students. I eventually brought my guitar to school, on which I had been dutifully learning various songs. I wasn’t more than half way through stumbling through “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or something like that before it was obvious to me that whatever the other students had thought of me for the past 2 years had evaporated. Any other weirdness I exuded was superseded by musical talent, what little there was at that point.
Thus, through out Junior High and High School, that was the icebreaker. If I didn’t bring my guitar on the first day of classes, it’d find it’s way to the campus eventually, and I’d play a few songs and make a few friends. Slowly but surely, I didn’t even need that. It was the stepping stone to creating my own confidence, because even with out a demonstration of skill, I knew I that I could do something cool. I learned to be assertive, friendly and outgoing, and I made a menagerie of radical friends because of it. I didn’t keep all of them, but they were all wonderful while I had them.
Truthfully, I miss the simple focus that came with listening to a CD. No browser 30 tabs open, no apps, just CD player, with at most 80 minutes of music, whirring gently. I suppose that’s any generation’s privilege – to miss the things they used to have, even with the imperfections that came with them. I’m sure some of the iPod generation will miss the single purpose and non-connected nature of the old mp3 players.
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Feel Recognizes Feel
Posted on February 2nd, 2012
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 2:47 am
I don’t know why I go out of my way to make obscure references and bad puns in my blog titles, but I do. I think I must think my fans (who I am now addressing in the 3rd person for no reason,) must want to be entertained. After all, I am a musician and writer, or at least that is the crux of this blog. Should I ever really do any indie software development on this blog, posts like these will contrast awkwardly with more technically minded work. I should probably start a separate blog at that point.
Anyway, my throat is raw – I think I’m some kind of sick. I cut lectures for extra sleep. I am trying to avoid the doctors, mainly because I’d have to learn how to use the school insurance system. I’m bureaucracy-adverse, so I would love to just sleep it off. However, homework calls me from pure recovery, so I should probably get some nyquil now and call it a day. At least I’ve pretended to work by posting this.
I’ll end on amusing piece of dialogue:
“What’s your school like?”
“What’s it like? I never really thought about it. It’s on top of this mountain, so it feels kind of isolated and lonely up there sometimes, even though that’s also why it has a pretty great view.”
Life is only stranger than fiction because life can give you the chills when it’s too close to fiction. Then, it’s like a forbidden wall between worlds was broached.
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Remixes and References
Posted on January 29th, 2012
Filed under: General,Music News — Karl Olson @ 8:48 pm
To make this count towards my requisite blogging, I will start with this obvious filler sentence. Also, I broke a key rule from the previous lecture about brevity in sentence structure. Also, while I’m taking about class, I should put a notebook in my backpack, so I can do the in class writing assignments.
Hmm, that’s three sentences. I wonder if my prof appreciates the explicitly meta writing style that I’m employing, or whether he finds cliche and overdone.
Anyway, I wrote some music, and yes, it is about the same stuff I’ve been blogging about for the last week. (I bet that is even more annoying to the professor.)
Ultraklystron vs. Juno – Focus (Remix-Cover)
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Blind-Sided
Posted on January 28th, 2012
Filed under: General,Reviews — Karl Olson @ 3:55 am
I figured that after dragging myself unexpectedly through the ringer this last week with Katawa Shoujo, watching a movie might be nice break. It’d be some light mental junk food to cleanse my palette. At least that’s what I thought the opportunity came up to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with Nursehella. I mean, it’s based off a fairly cartoony looking comic I hadn’t read, and it was directed by Edgar Wright (of Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame.)
See article title.
Yeah, instead I was treated to an amped up version of some of my own experiences with surreal fight scenes interspersed. I could spell that out, but the people who know me probably get it, and the people who don’t know me aren’t owed details. A lot of the plot points and best lines might as have been shuriken or piano wire. When they hadn’t been said/done to me, I’m the one who had said/done them. It almost violated the film’s sanctity. I figured that at worst, my critical side would’ve been picking apart the special effects, and best I would’ve just been enjoying the story. Instead, I was pretty much just indexing actions and lines against my own experiences past a certain point. It was unnatural.
I wish I’d read the comic. I might have saved a lot of good people some trouble since my life isn’t as warm as the film’s end. The things I can take from it are lessons I was already taking from the rest of this week’s self-inflicted emotional roller-coaster. The good endings come from doing things for me while still being considerate of the perspective and feelings of others, even when I can’t fully fathom that viewpoint. It’s a pretty odd set things to take to heart in someways.
Might as well watch Ano Natsu’s second episode and see if that’s a kick in the ribs too.
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“That’s ‘Cause Everything Is Black” – Lupe Fiasco
Posted on January 17th, 2012
Filed under: General,Reviews — Karl Olson @ 6:17 pm
So, assuming I can come up with a simple way of doing so, I am going to join in the big SOPA/PIPA/OPEN Protest with Reddit, Wikipedia, WordPress and everyone else on the internet.
This isn’t a political statement either (Baha’is are banned from participating in partisan politics after all,) it’s a simple application of the categorical imperative. If you can ban one type of speech from the internet because it threatens the livelihood or comfort of one group that is otherwise fully capable of protecting themselves, there is no philosophical reason that shouldn’t be applicable in any similar instance, and that seems intrinsically broken. The lack of due process in these laws only makes that worse as it’d be up to the accused to prove their innocence rather than the accuser to prove the guilt of the accused. The possibility for abuse seems close to limitless, and the odd splits between foreign and national websites seems entirely ignorant of how websites are hosted in the modern world. Thus, regardless of any ideology beyond reason and functionality, these seem like objectively negative and ill-conceived laws.
I should mention I say all of this in spite of the fact that people pirate my music constantly (and when no money changes hands, I don’t care much because I doubt I really lost a sale in that instance,) including for-profit Russian pay download sites that sell my music without paying me royalties. I would benefit in that one instance, even as an independent artist, from SOPA/PIPA/OPEN passing. Justice would be served if that site was shut down, and/or they were ordered to turn over any proceeds from selling music without my permission.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the internet would likely be so paranoid about linking to any content without explicit permission it’d grind to a halt. Getting my name out to people is difficult if the sites I post content to have to dramatically alter their operations to comply with these laws. Without a reliable way to promote myself across the internet, my ability to find my niche audience is dramatically injured.
Oh, and I know all the legislation acts in different ways, and there might even be enough exemptions that someone like me wouldn’t be affected in regards to my outward business. Alas, none of these laws can ever truly stop those who want to pirate media or counterfeit brand names, or rather, for them do so effectively might damage free speech in most instances. It’s a digital, democratized society, and we all have computers on our desk whose potential is effectively infinite in regards to creation and distribution, or at the very least, the only limit is the person behind the keyboard. It’s only going to be more intense as 3D printing gets cheaper and more precise. Want that that designer bracelet? Print it. Shoot, innovate on the existing design to make it more personal, cooler, better fitting and generally more useful. You can’t tell me that doesn’t sound radical yet exciting, and this is a world we are about to enter. Maybe there is even a market for selling branded designs for home recreation, but if there isn’t, that doesn’t mean the technology should be banned nor should it be ham-stringed by some kind of DRM-system that gets in the way of honest use.
To put it another way, I know the idea that I can sell music and perhaps one day even merchandise is a bit dated as we near an era of home replicators. However, I would never risk free expression on the off chance I make a buck off of it, and I certainly wouldn’t want such a thing to be law. Free expression is why I can write music, write blog posts, have interesting things to read online and so on.
Anyway, check in on Thursday for a decidedly fluffier and less weighty blog post.
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2 Days
Posted on January 16th, 2012
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 3:24 pm
After a jovial little exchange on facebook with my little brother about my music, I decided I’d total up the play time of everything I’ve been involved in musically. That means all of the content from my various alter-egos, all the remixes I’ve done for other artists through the years, the countless mash-ups I’ve made and all the content I’ve co-written/produced. The number spewed back by my mp3 software of choice, foobar2000, shocked even me. This is because I have apparently created over two days of music. That is a staggering figure to me, but when I realize that each of the 700+ audio files probably had an average of 6 hours of my labor poured into each one, I have probably spent somewhere around 175 days at 24 hours a day writing music. Sure, that’s spread out over the past 14 or 15 years, but that still insane.
Clearly, after I put my next album out along with Nursehella’s and Rai Kamishiro’s respective albums, I think I can take some time off.
Or I have to try to bring that 175 days up to 183, I.E.: over half a year.
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first world problems.
Posted on September 29th, 2011
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 12:40 pm
Passport and satellite radio stolen? First world problem.
Gotta wait 5 weeks or more to replace the passport? First world problem.
Kickstarter needs about 180 dollars a day at this rate to be funded on time? First world problem.
That said it would mean a lot to me if you could make this happen. It’s a bit of a domino effect thing. If Rai’s album is properly funded, she can then properly promote it (rather than needing a job to pay for replication and recording, which then gets in the way of promotion, which means less copies sold,) and since I did the instrumentals, production and mastering, part of the proceeds of her album sales go to me, and so help fund a CD release of my next album.
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Finales and New Beginnings
Posted on June 16th, 2011
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 3:22 am
Watching my little brother graduate from the same high school I was a founding member of was much more emotionally complex than expected. It drove home that the risk that was taken by going into a brand new school really was worthwhile. I was proud to see my brother graduate. I was nostalgic and proud of the professors who had stuck it out at the school and taught both me and my brother. I was proud of what I’d helped to create. I was somewhat sad to see that now my last deep connection to that place is gone. It also underlined something that has been true for a while now, but now with his graduation has much more clarity; my little brother is no longer a boy, but a young man, and one with a truly bright future ahead of him.
In a greater sense, it told me there was a bright future for the alma matter of my youth. As much as I slacked off there, and as ambivalent I have been at points about my time there and whether it had been worthwhile, it suddenly seemed obvious to me that yes, if not directly for me, for those who benefitted in my wake, yes, it was worth it. Besides, it did remind me, for the first time in a while, just how much I had benefitted from it, how good it was for me to have gone there, and how much care I’d really recieved from my teachers and the staff because I saw it reflected in those students. It reminded me of some of the great times I had there, and that really, I had been focusing in my recollections of place somewhat negatively for no reason. Those were good years.
While there are a number changes that all seem to becoming together at once for me, this clarified and underlines these are good things.
There is hope, and there always has been.