this year's card

While politicians both in the States and here in Japan spent a lot of time talking about “change,” I’ve been making some huge ones over the past several months. And they’ve mostly been for the better. Here’s a brief rundown of cool shit that went down in 2009:

• Since April, I’ve been essentially self-employed. That’s meant taking some part time gigs to pay bills while I tried to figure out what I was doing. The good news: I now know what I’m doing, and 2010 is going to be all about taking these various projects to the next level and building them into a business.
• There were also some kick ass events and visits from friends abroad. Japan hosted the 5th World Taido Championships in August. Thanks to everyone who traveled to Japan to build a better Taido. Thanks especially to those who bought me beer. We had a hell of a good time, and a not-bad competition. See you all again in Finland 2013.
• I took 5dan in Taido and certified as a Circular Strength Training instructor, both of which challenge me to learn much more all the time.
• Most importantly of all, in June, Noriko and I got married, and I’m ridiculously grateful for having her.

So that’s where things stand here on the cusp of the new year. It’s pretty exciting really. We’re planning some big stuff for the next twelve months, and I can’t wait to get started. Actually, I can wait. I can wait until we get back from the next few days of eating and sleeping and relaxing. But after that, I’ll be getting right back to work.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. We practiced consistently and tried to find good gigs, but something just wasn’t there.

Our vocalist and principal songwriter was Chase Jones. He also played guitar when necessary, but preferred having a lead guitarist to handle anything serious. When we recorded our demo CD (you can hear two songs below), I played all of the lead parts in addition to bass. Harold “H Cool” (though he didn’t get that nickname until later on) Johnson handled rhythm guitar (acoustic) and backing vocals. For the majority of the Child’s existence, drums were the domain of Rick Ortiz. There is very little of consequence to say about him.

Yes, I'm playing a pink bass.

Rounding out the lineup was usually a lead guitarist. Our first lead player was a guy whose name I can’t remember. That’s OK, because I can’t remember a single note he played either. He wasn’t exactly unskilled, but he was a bit aimless on the fretboard. I tried to help him out, but at the time, the closest I was able to come to constructive criticism was the following tidbit:

If a solo doesn’t go anywhere, it’s crap.

I remember that because, for years after, other members would remind me of how tactless I had been and how it had probably been a deciding factor in Bill’s (yeah, that’s what his name was - Bill…) leaving the band. I was OK with that and suggested my friend Mike Healy to fill the role. Mike is a much better player now - better than I am - but at the time, he just wasn’t ready to play lead in a band.

In between lead players, we cut a demo. To my knowledge, only two songs from that session survive. Here they are:

1. Behind-the-Closet-Door.mp3
2. Broken-Image.mp3

Eventually, we got Nate. Nate had been in one of Chase’s old band in their hometown, and moved up to Atlanta, in part to join Surrogate Child. He was a much better player than Bill had been, and came equipped with ideas, an edgier sound (which we had much desired), and even a couple of songs. Nate fit SC pretty well, and I had a lot of fun having a guitarist who could actually handle interesting parts.

Still something was missing. Probably several somethings.

In the end, we just lost momentum. I took a trip to Japan, and when I returned to Atlanta, there wasn’t a band left. No surprise really, but it was kind of sad all the same.

Chase and I continued to be good friends and tried for some time to start a new band. We were tentatively calling ourselves Snidely Whiplash and were attempting to recreate the entire Baader Mienhoff album in a live setting. We recruited Karen Schultz for a short time to play some bass and keyboards (I was playing guitar), and we searched high and low for a drummer. There was one guy named Keith that we really liked, but we could never get enough elements happening together at the same time to really call ourselves a band.

Today, I want to share this:

Where the 12 songs on 4.75 Inches were basically “rock,” “Pictures of You” would fall into the “soft rock classics” category. That is, of course, if it were actually a classic. Come to think of it, it’s not even really all that classy either.

I wrote this song in 2005, while I was living in Myogi, Japan. Myogi was a really small town (so small that it doesn’t even exist anymore), so I spent a lot of evenings hanging out at the Mister Donuts in nearby Tomioka. And that’s where I was when I got the idea for this song.

MisDo (as it’s called in Japan) has a monthly musical theme that is played in all of the stores nationwide, and that particular month, the theme was 80s schlock - or “soft rock classics.” I was sitting there, eating my old fashioned doughnuts and drinking my tenth or so cup of American coffee, thinking to myself that I could do better. So I pulled out the iBook and headphones and went to work with Garageband. Those built-in samples turned out to be just cheesy enough to make a really good backing track.

After writing out some quick lyrics, I went out to the car, where I recorded the vocals straight into the built-in mic on the computer. You can actually hear a couple of trucks driving by in the mix.

I actually rerecorded this song later, using a better mic and a few real instruments, but I’ve reserved that copy for the (eventual) followup to 4.75 Inches, 12 Centimeters of the Andy Fossett Soft Rock Classic.

Periodic table graphic from the TAFRS T-shirts.

Cover art for the first edition of 100 copies

Back in early 2003, I got this idea that I should record a rock album.

At the time, I had been doing a lot of jamming, especially with a couple of drummers, and playing a kind of punk/dance/jazz hybrid that people seemed to enjoy, but we never got our act together well enough to put a band together.

Maybe it was all a reaction to playing bass four or five hours a day for the preceding year, but I suddenly began getting the urge to shred and and play guitar solos and stuff. It probably also had a lot to do with having finally gotten my Klein Electric (a guitar I had dreamed about owning for years) a few months earlier. In any event, most of my creativity was being channeled into bass playing, so I ended up relearning all my old songs on the guitar.

So I figured I might as well record them.

All together, I sold and gave away about 150 copies of the actual disc. Since then, I’ve made the music available for download from iTunes, and you can listen to previews and get the tracks from there.

Here’s what I wrote in the original liner notes:

So. Here we are. Now what? I guess I should use this space to tell you a little bit about the compact disc you are probably either holding or listening to right now.

I want to say starting off that this isn’t really indicative of the kind of music I usually make. Nor is it my best effort at recording my music. Sorry.

The thing is, somewhere around spring of 2003, I just had this feeling that I wanted to make a rock album. At that point I hadn’t played music that could be called “rock” in a couple of years or more, so it was a strange thing to be using distortion boxes and playing guitar solos again. I think I just needed to get some musical closure on my college years before moving to Japan and becoming a teacher. So I took a bunch of old songs I had written through high school and college and started working out new arrangements and finishing lyrics. after a couple of weeks, I had narrowed eight years of writing down to these twelve songs.

Then it came time to record. in the general spirit of nostalgia for my teen years, I rebuilt the the studio in which I learned to record using all the old gear my father had bought when I was a child. The main recording gear consisted of a Musimatic 2200 console and a Fostex A-8 reel-to-reel machine dating from the early 80s. Two tracks of the recorder wouldn’t track properly, so I ended up with six useable tracks for recording. Almost everything on this disc was processed through Hafler and ART guitar preamps before hitting the desk. I mixed everything down to stereo cassette on an old Magnavox deck and ran it into my PC for final sequencing and burning to disc. it was a really labor-intensive way to record compared to the system I use now, but it felt appropriate to the nature of the project.

I should mention that I feel really strongly about using my Klein electric guitar, Analogman stomp boxes, and Kendrick amplification. These excellent instruments are made by excellent people. I haven’t been quite so lucky with finding the magic bass gear yet.

The performance: I did all the vocals (i’m really, truly sorry for that, by the way) and played all of the instruments, with the exception of drums which were handled by Craig Webster. Craig is a great drummer, and I feel awful that I couldn’t do his performance justice in the recording and mixing aspects of this disc. We did all of the drums in about a day and a half, and all Craig had to base his parts on was a click and some rough guitar sketches. After that I overdubbed the rest of the parts, sticking to first and second takes only. I think the mixing took more time than the recording overall.

The songs:

1. I Like Girls - I’ve always been about honesty and simplicity in song-writing, and I think this is a good example. I wrote the basic ideas for this song in a cafe in Yokohama and filled out the details based on my experiences with various girlfriends and trying to figure out just exactly what the hell I am looking for.
2. I Would Sell My Lungs - I wrote this song for Melo after her 21st birthday. What a disaster.
3. I’m Totally Stupid - I once had a crush on a girl who worked at a Japanese restaurant. the time came when I had no choice but to just come out with it, and all I could think to tell her was that I was totally stupid for her. it wasn’t my best approach, and she was seeing someone, but a few months later, I got a date with her anyway.
4. Very Nice Hat - A girl I used to know once knitted a hat for me, and it was very nice. This song is not about her, but it is about giving and sharing and other good stuff like that.
5. I Like Watching Chicks Play Tennis - Back to the honesty theme. I was at a bar one afternoon, and they were showing the Australian Open on the TV. I don’t usually watch TV, but I was powerless to avert my gaze. I can’t remember the names of the players who had me so fixated, but at that particular point in time, they were the two hottest women to ever live.
6. Bug - I wrote this in high school when I was learning about metafiction and post-structuralism.
7. Language Lessons - This song is just for Shiloh, ‘cause she asked for it.
8. Here Goes, and Anyway… - I have some great friends. They know who they are. (I just listened back to this song again, and the vocals absolutely suck. I’m really sorry about that - I guess I should have done one more take…)
9. Types of Inertia - As a physics student, I realized one day that the only thing keeping me with my girlfriend of the time was inertia. The result was my best effort attempt at a straightforward rock song.
10. The Particles of a Party Girl - When Craig was over tracking drums, there was a little bit of leftover tape at the end of the second day. What you hear is pretty much straight improv with a guitar overdub.
11. Susan is Nanking -Michael and I wrote this for Susan’s 21st birthday. Nanking was a code for certain girls we knew back then.
12. The End - This one is pretty self-explanatory, I guess.

So that’s it. That’s all there is. I hope you enjoy at least some small part of the music that found its way onto this disc. If not, you can always use it as a coaster or something. If you do enjoy it, make copies for all your friends. I promise not to sue.

Anyway, it was fun to record, and I still enjoy listening to the songs from time to time. None of them are great by any standards, but that was never the point.

Front and back covers (side-by-side) for the second edition

The President (and five other excellent beers) were provided by my friend Hannes. Thanks!

He’s recently begun offering an educational podcast on his blog, and I was quite honored to be featured on the first episode. Despite some issues with the audio quality (which I’m pretty certain came from my busted headset mic - sorry, Brian), we had a good talk about language learning and my recent How to Get a Job in Japan project. If you’re interested in either of those topics, or just want to hear how badly my English has deteriorated since moving back to Japan (and it’s sooooo obvious when I listen to myself trying to converse with somebody like Brian), you should definitely check it out at How to Learn Anything Podcast: Interview with Andy Fossett.

While there, make sure to read Brian’s other articles on how to get the most out of autodidacticism.

Thanks to my involvement with Taido, I have friends all over the world. Surprisingly enough, some of them like beer too. This past weekend, Japan hosted the 5th Taido world championships in Hiroshima, and one of the fringe benifits for me was getting to drink with all my European friends. A couple of them even brought me some beers to try out.

This can of Karhu comes courtesy of Jouni Lassi from Finland. Thanks, Jouni - you kicked ass in the tournament.

It’s got reindeer and stars on the can… it has to be good, right?

Check out the video for the details.