Monday, August 25, 2003 4:37 PM | Matthew Jeanes The passing of Wesley Willis has had more of an affect on me than I thought it would. No matter what you thought of his music or his place in the pop cultural pantheon, he was still a real person that I had the opportunity to meet once and knowing that he is now gone is strange. The world seemed somewhat more balanced when I knew Wesley Willis was in it, struggling with his diseases and forging ahead. So his idea of a Rock N Roll Superstardom and 'normal America's' view might not have converged, but Wesley was still an inspiring force to behold in spite of that. My old band Underwater was by sheer, freakish chance thrown on the same bill as Wesley Willis one night at the Echo Lounge and while I had always been curious to see him perform, I'd never had the opportunity. The unfortunate reality of the show was that the vast majority of the people there to gawk at Wesley left after a handful of same-sounding songs about the normal Wesley Willis subjects- food, rock stars and other celebrities, and events from his everyday. To most people there, wrapped in the comfort of ironically 'digging the crazy guy', the situation seemed to get more and more tense over time when it became clear that he wasn't going to 'snap out of it' and talk about how he'd come up with this zany character of Wesley Willis. Instead, he was just--as a lot of people are--a nice guy trying to make music to keep the demons at bay. He was an intimidating presence, and one that I wasn't sure how to take, but in the end that night, he was just a nice guy with a deep, boomy voice who was wondering when we'd all get paid. For most people in a position like his (does that even make sense to say?) life is just too hard, too much to bear, and it makes the trivial relationship squabbles that so many songwriters whine on about seem excrutiatingly trivial. Here was a man who had trouble fitting into clothes, was being berrated in his head by his schizophrenia, and he still found a way to write happy, matter of fact songs about how much this or that person rocked! It's easy to dismiss his work, and even easier to cling to it the way people in the art community flock to exhibits of 'outsider art'. What I think is a little harder is just appreciating the music for what it is, the way we appreciated simple songs when we were children. I would never misappropriate terms like 'genius' to describe Wesley Willis' work, but he was definitely on to something, and on to it in his own way that will never be duplicated. It's a great loss that he is gone, but I'm glad to know that he was able to make music that made him happy. It's time to pony up for that Best Of anthology I've always meant to get. Friday, August 22, 2003 11:41 AM | Matthew Jeanes The Artwork Debacle: And so it went that when I was looking to get ready to put the album together, a friend of mine named Phil posted a link to a graphic designer's site that had some really nice images on it that seemed to jive with what I had in mind for the design style of Fashion Victim. I contacted the guy out of the blue to just tell him that I liked his work, and that I wished I could afford him but I doubted that I could and that, I figured, would be that. To my surprise however, the designer wrote me back and said that he liked Larvae's music and wanted to work with us for a reduced fee if we could at least come up with a little cash to pay him. After talking this over with Nicolas, it seemed like everything was amazingly a go! I couldn't have been more excited. That probably explains why it all went so wrong. After I sent the designer a lengthy email detailing the major themes for the album, and sent him a link to rough mixes of the songs for the abum, I got back a message that seemed very on-point. When the email with the first draft arrived a week or so later, I was beyond excited to see it. Imagine my horror upon seeing this design for the first time and having an instant reaction of 'oh shit, this is not going to work.' I tried to bounce ideas off of people, and to see what others had to say about the design that was admittedly cool, but way, way too dark and violent looking for my tastes. After giving the design some thought, and because I am a designer too, I tried to offer some ideas for revisions that would pull the design in closer to something that would fit the album. These revisions (which were relatively minor) would put the design much closer to what I thought we needed. Nicolas disliked the art even more than I did, and thought that the design needed more drastic changes, but I had offered just a few ideas that I'd like to see that might get us close. After the designer tried to strangely rationalize the design elements we were questioning, he did set out to make the changes, but did so with a notice to us that the next draft would be the final version. What? I mean, if we had been unduly picky about everything, or had asked for a complete redesign I could have understood this position of frustration. As it was though, I felt like the designer wasn't really listening to my comments in the context of the themes of the album, and was instead assuming that we should like his work as it was. And I did! I thought it was a great design, a very well put-together and polished design that I would have been ecstatic to use... if I had made a gloomy death-metal album! So, after the first revisions, the deisgns were honestly still not quite there. Part of the problem in this situation was my attempt to be diplomatic. Rather than praising the things I liked about the design and sounding optimistic about the design working out in the end, I should have just been blunt and said 'dude, this is not it.' So, after making a few recommendations about changes that took me no more than an hour to do on my own in photoshop, the designer abruptly quit and said we didn't know what we wanted and he was no longer interested in trying to work with people who were not serious. Well, good riddance I guess. This whole album process has re-taught me the very important axiom: if you want it done right, do it your damn self! Thursday, August 14, 2003 12:40 PM | Matthew Jeanes The album is now finished. James will be handling the mastering shortly, then it will be packed up and shipped off with care to Nicolas in Berlin. I can't say I've ever had a more stressful time making a record. With technical glitches, scheduling headaches, starts and stops, and some debate over creative directions of things, the music is finally done and I've got one of those feelings of relief that the project is finally wrapped up. This is the first Larvae album and definitely the first time I've tried to put together an entire album of abstract, instrumental music, so in many ways making this record has been like a new experience even though I've been involved with recording 4 other albums. It's weird to be making an album and not have songs with lyrics and hooks to anchor your tracklist around. Usually, when working with more pop-styled music, a lot of how you arrange the songs depends on the vocals, the lyrical themes, and the flow of ideas. With this record, there are a ton of ideas, but they are so abstracted that it's much more difficult to know where songs should go, which songs to keep, etc. Fashion Victim will be out in October, and I hope people can enjoy it, understand it, and think about it a little. It's not a full-on concept album, but it is definitely tied together by a few key ideas. MP3s and a little >i>Fashion Vicitm microsite will be up soon.

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