MIRRORBALL

First of all, we owe an apology for the lateness of this update.  We usually like to get a review up on Tuesdays, but we were on the road all day this past Tuesday before playing a show that evening, and that's part of what I want to talk about.

The show was great.  We played at a fairly large neighborhood bar in a cozy residential zone not far from downtown Indianapolis.  The place is called the Vollrath Tavern, and the venue rep's name is Elvis.  We got there and Dave asked him where the bathroom was.  He immediately fired back with "Men's or women's?"  I knew right away that this dude and this night were gonna be awesome.

It turned out that the venue was an original-music-only venue, and after getting called and threatened by BMI or ASCAP or some other such fascist organization, they actually enforced it.  When the first band played a cover song, they were immediately addressed by one of the workers and told they couldn't do that again.  Then when we played our set, we played a relatively new song of our own, and we had our sound shut down in the middle!  Someone in the audience swore that it was a cover of a Queen song.  We were apologized to and given a free shot for our trouble; plus it was a good laugh when we started the song from the middle to finish it.

But it kind of got me thinking, as a songwriter, is it good to write something that reminds someone of something else?  Obviously if it reminds him of something terrible, the answer is, "Go find a day job, clown."  But if it reminds him of something he likes, shouldn't this be taken as a compliment?  I think so.  While it is important to have a voice and sound of your own, when a person listens to you for the first time, he doesn't know what you sound like, so he can't very well compliment your new song as sounding like you.  It is notoriously difficult to describe music in and of itself without comparisons (try it sometime, and then you can come back and complain about my album reviews).  So if a new fan is ready to believe that something we wrote was written by Fredury Mercury and company, I'm willing to take that as a compliment by comparison.  It certainly means the crowd is listening, anyway!

and asking me if I keep all kinds of random stupid shit.  The kitchen sink sloshes and steams with discarded pasta water as we discuss the theory that all artistic types are packrats.  And I nod knowingly - I do, in fact, keep all kinds of random stupid shit, including plenty which passed their expiration date well before I was able to grow a beard (true story), hoping vainly that on one shiny incandescent day far into the future, the scattered pieces of my creative consciousness will spontaneously coalesce into a masterpiece.  But as any length of time spent pursuing the arts will teach you, those sorts of days never happen.

However, every once in a while, you get lucky.  Willis and I transformed a typical piece of castaway creativity into our very first co-written song.  We've both been in a creative funk lately and having something new to kick into the ears of the masses - a lilty and melodic gem entitled "Watching The Ceiling" - does a lot to restore some lost confidence.  It's that first goal after a seven-game drought where the defensemen share the name Clark Kent and the opposing goalies have water bottles filled with Kool-Aid.  Songwriting, as with everything else in life, is best explained in hockey metaphor.

So hang this one on your fridge, Grandma - there's a lot more to come.

P.S. - We're gonna name our next record "Pittsburgh Skyline", no matter what that other guy says.  Don't tell him I let you know, though!

Okay, so given that this will be the first 'rant' on a band's official website, you're all probably wondering about our thoughts on music.  With that in mind, let's talk about hockey.

One thing that a generous portion of the Cortez hockey fans with initials MW have always wondered is, "Why do the Pens always play lackluster hockey in Tampa Bay?"  The weather is certainly not conducive to a hockey atmosphere down there, but judging by Tampa Bay's record the past few years, that doesn't bother other teams so much.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say coaching.  I'm generally a Dan Bylsma fan overall, but one thing he does NOT have going for him is his demeanor.  He may be an intense and passionate coach in practice, but behind the bench it doesn't show through.  So in a town where hockey intensity is low (it's Tampa Bay, FL, of all places!), where maybe a bit of a 'ferocity injection' is needed from the coach, Bylsma can't deliver.  I say all this because we watched the Tampa Bay feed of last night's game, and they showed Guy Boucher talking to his team during the timeout near the end of the game, and holy crap you could pretty much see the fire in his eyes.  You NEED to be an intense coach to win in TB (Tortorella, anyone?).  Boucher is intense and on edge.  Bylsma is calm and in control.  And don't we all know that the best coaches can be both as needed? (Scotty Bowman comes to mind)

So going back to music, that is in a puck-shaped nutshell what Mirrorball is all about.  We want to be both.  We have our mellow songs to lay the groove, and we have our intense songs to push the pulse.  Now admittedly, as a 2-piece/occasional 3-piece, the mellow comes a bit easier than the intense, but no one ever accused Bob Dylan of being mellow.  Except maybe on that iffy Nashville Skyline album that Dave likes so much.