All Your Bass… Nevermind

Well THAT was a real disappointment. Twenty-seven days into the new year and I haven’t a single album writeup to show for it!

I think the reason for that is I haven’t listened to any new albums lately, because nearly every waking hour is consumed with the 8 or so groups I’m currently playing for. Practices, get-togethers, gigs, and various clerical duties have pushed critical music listening entirely off the map, so it looks like I won’t be updating Album Du Jour until I can get my head back into some headphones and my thoughts back to “talking about albums” mode. Perhaps the inevitable release of Johnny Cash’s American VI will help bolster that! I’m so excited!

Still, the writing habit remains, so I’ve decided instead to focus my daily writing energy to chronicling closely my musical doings in a way that may appeal to non-musician types who are just curious about what a bassist who plays for several bands gets up to from day to day:

http://chrisonbass.wordpress.com

I’m planning on updating this thing on days when I’ve done musical things, which should be every day, if the last couple of months are any indication. I also plan on putting up general musings on the state of the music industry, the “live music” scene in Austin, and various thoughts I may come across that are worth documenting. Also, whenever one of my bands puts up some videos or songs, I can use that blog to link to them, since I’m always hesitant to promote my “art” on all those personal networking sites.

Album Du Jour is still, by no means, dead. I have decided that I will update this site whenever I have either listened to an album that I want to talk about, or have something vaguely journalistic to say about music that I have not been personally involved in. As I sit here and practice, of all things, the bass-line to a particular tune in a Nintendo game, I realize that there are far more ridiculous things going on in my life than listening to albums every day, so “Chris On Bass” is where you’ll find me for now. Hope to see you there!

The End Of Album Du Jour?

Happy New Year, friends!

As  you may have noticed, the Album Du Jour project I started last year was a rousing success! Not only was I able to (barely) keep up with the album-a-day-every-lovin’-day schedule, but I feel like I actually wrote some pretty classy stuff on occasion. Certainly my writing style has not improved as significantly as expected, but at least I proved to myself that I could actually do it, and that was something that sorely needed proving in my life.

However, the time I had devoted to writing about albums, especially towards the end, when I was writing mainly about albums I had just heard that day or the day before, was pretty taxing on my other activities. Despite labeling myself as something of a songwriter (having over 60 songs in copyright has given me such an inclination), in the year of 2009, I only wrote one song, and it’s not even a good one. I also started learning three languages simultaneously some time around 2007, and have not been able to devote myself to that cause in the least (otherwise this blog may have been simulcast in Japanese).

From what WordPress tells me though, my work has not been entirely in vain, as there are quite a few people reading this thing now, probably clicking around idly, or maybe you all are perusing my early entries that originally got something like 15-30 hits total up to this point. I don’t know, all I do know is that a lot of people have tuned into my Radiohead’s Kid A entry, for reasons I have yet to figure out (it’s not even a good writeup by my standards). Therefore, in the interest of maintaining my little slice of readership on the internet, I have decided to keep the project going, but in a slightly more modest format with respect to the other personal projects that need some attention.

I’m not entirely sure what I want to do from here on out; believe it or not, deciding on a post-Du Jour way of do things has been on my mind since about last February, yet I have not arrived at any conclusions. I am definitely going to keep a regular schedule of updates, probably somewhere in the middle of the week to free up the weekends for the 5 or so bands I’m currently occupying as resident bassist (ADJ had been quite the distraction in that regard). Still, not to confine my brief moments of spontaneous inspiration to stone or knock-off carbonite (this blog has not gone commercial enough to afford me the real stuff), I will make superfluous updates whenever I blessed well please, and you can’t really say anything about it, since history teaches me that the internet is bad about commenting anyway.

While this blog is going to maintain its focus on music, specifically albums, there are a few other ideas I have swimming around that are more “general music” ideas and may prove quite fun. I would also, during the course of going back through my initial 365 entries and making edits/rewrites and generally hating my writing, like to occasionally do a sort of retrospective/second thoughts article about certain albums that I have gained new insight about during the past year.

Most of all, now that the shackles of obligatory daily writing are cast off, I would like to see where I can take this whole writing thing in terms of potential monetary gain i.e. sponsorship, freelance writing, or even employment. A pipe dream, to be sure, but how many other fledgling amateur writers out there can boast a 1000+ word-a-day article written every day of an entire year about one topic?

Oh right, I did have one more thing to mention: since I started Album Du Jour, a few other writers have commented here and there about their own album-a-day blogs, so if any of my dear readers are hard-up for (near) daily album writing, they may refer to here and here, but not here, because he still hasn’t started that one up (it was my original idea for a title when I first got the notion to do an album a day).

Thanks again to everyone for reading, and I hope to continue seeing you guys around.