I have been meaning to write about this for a while, since one day this spring when the memories of this time of my life came crushing back to me. I've almost never talked about it in my adult life - not for any drama, not for any deep, dark secrets, but... perhaps out of habit. Out of muscle memory for the painful, pointless, adolescent embarrassment that the period coincided with. I can't say. I do think it's time to exorcise it, though, and to make it mine. So onward.

Despite growing up in Alaska, or perhaps because of it, my mother made every effort to raise her children with a musical education. Piano lessons began at around age eight, if I recall correctly. I think it was age eight, because trumpet began when they let you start playing in the band in elementary school, which was fourth grade, or age nine. And piano came first.

I loved piano, but there were a dearth of piano teachers in Fairbanks, and mine, though she was wonderful, was classically focused. Some of this was necessary, as a student learns the basics. I banged and pounded my way through Hanon's warm-up exercises and various etudes and simple piano pieces. I say "banged and pounded," since nuance and dynamics were not things that were of interest to me. This extended to school band, where I chose the trumpet, originally, simply by putting my lips to it and unleashing a godawful squaawk! and thinking "Yeah. This is the instrument for me."

The classical foundation was, of course, necessary, but I was much more interested in learning to play the synth parts of the various pop songs and the ricky, meaty ten finger chords from the piano ballads I heard on the radio. My piano teacher, Mrs. Wallace, resisted these urges. (Later, much later, my teacher would take a two-fold approach to a compromise - letting me play some cheesy piano ballad whose score I had picked up at the local music store, in exchange for consenting to play more classical fare. She's worked around my hopeless lack of dynamics by selecting musicians who fared well under my pounding fists - most notably the Russians such as Rachmaninoff, and some of the more contemporary classical composers such as Alberto Ginestera - a pounder's paradise if ever there were one on the keys.)

But, alas again, that was later. Much later. Nearly ten years later. In the intervening years, my urge to play other forms of music was almost completely unfulfilled, save for the occasional aforementioned pop music scores I'd find at Music Mart. These, however, only went so far when you had a full rehearsal docket of Brahms and Handel, as well as a practice card for band requiring five 30 minute practice sessions a week, to be signed off on by a parent, as well as classwork, and never mind playing doctor with the neighborhood girls. Not having someone to teach me and coach me through Lionel Ritchie's "Say You, Say Me" or Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is" made it even more impossible.

Years of frustration went by. Actually, I could do the math. From age 8 to age 13. Five years. No pop music issuing forth from my desperately modernist fingers. And then, somehow, my mother alighted on the solution.

The origins are murky, though of course, now, I realize that my mother probably always had this planned. She had, after all, set me on this musical path - she played the piano and sang in the choir and taught me all about everything from Ralph Von Williams to Bob Dylan before I made it to Kindergarten. By the time I was thirteen, though, I probably thought it was my idea to go to the University of Alaska Summer FIne Arts Camp, having gone through some fairly painful Alaskan-style summer camps, the stories of which are for another day. Wherever the idea came from, however, I can say with confidence that upon my first year of summer fine arts camp, my life was changed for good.

The memories of it are totally murky, and since they came rushing back to me this spring, I have been trying to piece them together. I went to the camp for four summers. I think. Maybe five. These were the summers of my adolescence, and there was so much change through the years that it's almost impossible to recall anything in a coherent series of events.

First, there were the musicians. Musicians from all over the state. This was something of a shock. There was band, of course, at your school, so you knew the other trumpet players you sat with and competed with for first chair, and the cute flautists and clarinetists that you had crushes on, born in exotic locations outside the state or raised by mysterious, disciplinarian parents who insisted their Korean, Sikh or Hatian offspring be the best. And there were adjudications, for piano, throughout the years previous - once or twice-annually affairs where all the piano students in the city of Fairbanks gathered at the public library to play on one of the three good pianos in the town - a Bosendorfer - while some out-of-state adjuticator passed judgement on your playing (curiously, this is where I finally learned about my lack of dynamic sense, and became acutely embarrassed by it, despite years of my teachers pleadings to learn pianissimo. Somehow the outside critique stung more). But aside from these, musicians in alaska were in a bubble. You got the sense there weren't many of them around.

So to arrive at Fine Arts Camp and discover trombonists and timpani players and harpists and jazz bassoonists - it really was eye opening. Reassuring. Overwhelming. Welcoming. Scary. Amazing.

I remember walking into one of my group piano classes (group piano class?? who knew there was such a thing!), and some precocious, snooty 14 year old I had never seen before (she was home schooled) was playing, perfectly, the theme song to a recent film, composed by an 80's one hit wonder I had liked (okay, okay, it was Lihmal's theme to "Never Ending Story"). Who was this person? Where did she come from? How did she manage to learn this song? Where did she even get the score from? She was one of many. Cool veterans of fine arts camp studiously scoring their own arrangements of new wave hits in advance arranging classes. Glockenspiel players! Glockenspiel!

Then there were the classes and the teachers. I remember learning what the 12 bar blues were and feeling forever changed. I didn't even like jazz, but just understanding such a basic, primal structure to so much music was incredibly powerful. Learning improvisation techniques - something so important to my thinking about music now, but heretofore completely unheard of. Improvise? You're kidding, right? You follow the score, you follow it exactly, and the if the piece is supposed to last 3:15 in the Glenn Gould version, then by god, you better be close to 3:15. But here, suddenly, were dozens of different teachers, styles and techniques. I took a classical malleted instruments class. Jazz improvisation - every year. Rock Piano (on Fender Rhodeses - my first introduction to such a heavenly instrument). I learned to play the harmonica. I expanded my trumpeting into jazz trumpet. I took my first guitar lesson - and hated it (guitar wouldn't hold appeal to me until I discovered the bliss of delay and fuzz). It was an unending smorgasborg of eye-opening musical magic. Marimbas. Vibraphones. Farfisas.

And then! And then! Let us not forget the name - this was Summer Fine Arts Camp, not Summer Music Camp. The music curriculum was just part of the fun. There were photography classes - I first learned to use a darkroom in my time here. For as much as my mother was a music buff, my father was a photography buff, and bought me my first Pentax K1000 when I was 11. It was here, though, that I truly began to understand the device's mechanics and the full process (I had always sent my film away previously). And print making classes - something I could never quite get the hang of, much to my consternation later in life. And Macintoshes! I first discovered the joy of Photoshop at Summer Fine Arts Camp. Painting. Figure drawing. Pastels (I loved pastels - I was such a pussy). There was so much.

And the other attendees... well, what can I say? Essentially every artist from 13 to 18 in the State of Alaska, all in one place. Along with innumerable student performances throughout the months, they had three student dances as well - social gatherings. The few times I've thought of Summer Fine Arts Camp through the years, this is the part that I almost always thought of. I made my first friends here that were anything like me. They changed my life. They gave me my life.

It was here, in the summer of 1985, that I first heard Peter Hook's haunting falsetto refrain that permeates New Order's "Temptation." I can still remember the first time I heard it, and I can still feel the reaction I had to it. I had heard nothing like it in my life. It's still a remarkable work, but then, in Alaska, it was unbelievable. Thinking back on it, it boggles my mind that this even happened - "Temptation" came out in 1982 or so, and somehow, in three years, it had found its way halfway across the world to Fairbanks, Alaska, to become a dance hit, unaided by the internet, New Music Express, radio airplay, MTV or even a halfway decent record store. I usually think of my friends at Fine Arts Camp as being older than me, and therefore "in the know," but it is really amazing how they found out about all this music so quickly. It was here I also learned about Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Tones on Tail (though not Bauhaus or Love and Rockets, which I had learned about in church, weirdly), and so much more. Billy Idol. The B52s. Roxy Music. Through my four or five years attending camp, the dances became, literally, the highlights of my year.

And it was here that a girl first ever told me she liked me. I still shudder at how terrifying and confusing it all was. I had had a crush on her for ages, but was a typical adolescent male, unable to think straight or see past my own nose. It was only when she explicitly, undeniably told me that she liked me that it started to click. It was not my first kiss, but it was the first I can ever remember. I doubt the girl, who went on to become a famous cheerleader in our district, even remembers it. I doubt she remembers me, but she changed my life.

So many memories blow by. I grew up at this camp, but time has blended the years together. Playing video games at the student union. Sitting in the seats of the giant concert hall (oh, man, what was it called? I will have to look it up. Oh, got it. The Charles W Davis Concert Hall), watching my flute playing crush practice in the symphony. Glowing with pride and embarrassment when she'd wave from the stage. Seeing my friend Dylan arrange and score New Order's "Elegia" and watching him conduct a string quartet as they played it. The choral practice room (oh man! I forgot! I sang in choirs there too! Church choirs. Jazz choirs. Doo wop. Everything I could get my hands on). Learning that the choral room was named after my father's godmother. The dances in the Great Hall. Learning the drum parts to Soft Cell's "Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go" that we just HAD to hear, in its entirety, at every dance. The dark rooms. The printmaking studio. Sitting out by the fountain, everyone trying to look cool, desperately wanting to meet everyone but too cool to admit it, or just too scared.

Years later, in college, I went home for the summer. I met a girl. I fell in love instantly. She went to another school, in another district. When I worked up the gumption to finally talk to her, she said, "I remember you. I was three years younger in Fine Arts Camp and I had the hugest crush on you." I met her at the campgrounds above the university. We walked down to the camp, which was in session. People remembered me, people remembered her. Their approval of me sealed my fate as an acceptable prospect for her to date for the summer. If the camp people thought you were okay, you were okay.

What amazes me now, thinking back, is how much of my life was influenced by this camp, and yet how little I think of it, and how I never pieced it together through the years. It just sits there, in the back of my mind, like your mother's care or the town you grew up in - something so intrinsic to your being that it's hard to even call it an influence. And it amazes me to think about all of this going on in Fairbanks, Alaska. When people ask me what it was like growing up there, I inevitably talk about the cold, the pain, the loneliness, the dark, the misery. But what were all these artists doing there? Hundreds of art students in a city of less than 30,000. How is it anyone in Alaska knew about the Smiths in 1986? Or the Cure, before Kiss Me? Who brought these things there? I don't think I'll ever know, but I do know that it was Summer FIne Arts Camp that brought them to me.

Current Music: "Feed This End" By The Mountain Goats from Hot Garden Stomp [Cassette]

I love the sensation of riding through all of London in a London Cab. Crossing the whole town, late at night, with no one else on the road, drunk in the back of a real London Cab. You've drunkenly babbled out the address of your hotel - you don't have to give the name, or the cross street, and no matter how obscure, and how slurred you say it, off they go, never asking a question about how to get there.

You head south, and things look unknown and vague. You were told that night that 28 Days Later was filmed in this part of town, and it looks it. Real london, not the center. People live here.

Then gradually things become more recognizable. This used to be around Camden Town, but I can start to pick things out by Kentish Town now. Then a quick turn and a route you don't know, and you're into the unknown again, eventually coming out somewhere on oxford street, and all of the sudden everything is familiar. There's the first Top Shop I ever went into. Your old late night drinking club is on the right. The Apple Store should be coming up now. Ahh yes, there it is. But you're staying in a new part of town, so again you plunge into the unknown. Only it's not the unknown, it's the parts of London you always see, but never can piece together. There's Marble Arch. That's weird, that doesn't seem to be on the way to your hotel, especially when the next thing you see is the London Eye, but somehow it all just works and makes sense. Big Ben, kids. Houses of parliament.

And then, like that, one last turn happens, and you're at your hotel. Blake's or Charlotte Street or St Martin's Lane or the Saunderson or wherever it is this time. A different one every time. What was the name of the one you stayed in with your sister? Eight Hundred dollars a night, with a private terrace and a king sized, dual temperature zone, moisture absorbing Tempurpedic bed that still ranks as the greatest bed you've ever slept in? But not this time. This time you've chosen an upscale suites style hotel, gorgeous but stupidly cheap on Orbitz for some reason, and you're on a budget these days. South Kensington. A new part of the city for you, but gorgeous as always.

London. Every time I go, I can see why Aug loves it. I don't even have to DO anything to love it. Just sit in pubs with his friends, do some karaoke, eat funny foods, hunt for british-only books, and con pharmacists into giving you codeine. There used to be an absinthe hunt, too, but that's over now. Gone the way of the dodo, thanks to the legalization of absinthe in America, courtesy of the Swiss embassy.

Just as well. Duty free's a pain to haul around the country for the rest of your vacation.

Also I am super into Tumblr now. Well, today. I figure I have to be if I'm going to move to New York, right? I've used it one day and my Tumbularity went to like

SO:

• LJ for the personal stuff


• Facebook for long blog posts about Kanye and Beef Jerky


• Barbarian Group for industry stuff


• Twitter for ADD


• Tumblr for pretty pictures, links, and random shit

And all of it compiled, along with Foursquare and Last.FM at Rickwebb.net

Current Music: "Carnt Sleep" by Saint Etienne, From Foxbase Alpha (2008 Deluxe Remaster)

Hey! I have been listening to music!

Jarvis - Angela (new single) - Great, catchy new single. I have faith for the new album. Should be fun. A bit more rocking, weirdly reminds me of late period Bikini Kill - is that strange? Strange, disjointed, fuzzy version of 50's rock. Me like.

Primal Scream - Beautiful Future - There's a new Primal Scream album coming out soon, and I went to iTunes to see if it was out, but it wasn't but somehow I missed a whole Primal Scream album in 2008? WTF? I don't know. Anyway, it's no XTRMNTR, but on the other hand it's not more of the Riot City Blues type of stuff. It's poppy, a little dancy... different. Maybe a bit buddled in places, but I love the singles - "Beautiful Future" is a great song. "Can't Go Back," which I first heard at their live show on this tour, is pretty great as well. Maybe not the best Primal Scream album, but the singles will add positively to their live show, and a few of these songs will probably stand the test of time.

Bonnie Prince Billy - Beware - There are so many BPB albums, and he puts them out at such a staggering pace. It's hard to keep up, you forget about some of them, but I managed to buy this one when it came out and it is AWESOME. I am so into it. Bigger, more epic and sweeping than most of his albums, produced in a slightly more bombastic style (more drums, more bass, more overdubs) and I love it. I hope he pulls a Leonard Cohen and does it for like 50 years or takes up a Vegas residency.

The Kills - Weedkiller EP - I could like 2 seconds of them at Coachella, enough to know that they weren't the Horrors, who I always confuse them with (and who were, even more confusingly, playing right before them). But these guys are more of a bluesy, Mr. Airplane Man, Delta Blues meets Brooklyn type of affair. I like this song, I haven't heard anything more by them and I have no idea if the rest is okay, but i like it. A sorta white stripes affair without Jack's lyrical genius.

Boy in Static - Candy Cigarette - Ex-Barbarian Alex Chen is back with his second album as Boy in Static, and I love love love it. I love how upbeat it is. I love how he's evolved his vocal stylings to be more confident, and forthright. I love the casiotone for the painfully alone-esque analog and digital instrumentation - violins and toy pianos and xylophones giving the album a much more organic feel than the last one. Nice job Alex!

The Church - Coffee Hounds EP - Um what? new Church? Um covering Hounds of Love? yes! Okay! AWESOME! I could listen to this twenty times. I probably will. The new original single? Okay too. Woo!

American Analog Set - Hard to Find: Singles and Unreleased - This "album" is awesome. I think of all the things I did this weekend, this went the furthest to killing my cold. This band was so underrated and so awesome. Can they come back? Did I hear something about that? Pretty please? Broken Social Scene totally doesn't need you.

Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years - Um... Weird. Um... Wtf. I dunno. I guess I'll go see them anyway because they're one of my favorite live shows, but this isn't doing it for me. Kinda funny, though. I guess it's good to see them breaking out of their mould. You know, their mould of immaculately crafted, interesting pop songs.

Various - Dark was the Night - an awesome 2 CD benefit compilation for the Red Hot people from 4AD featuring awesome artists like Beg Gibbard & Feist, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, The National, Yeasayer, Antony, the Arcade Fire - Seriously. It's intense stuff. Highly recommended. And BUY IT. It goes to charity, yo.

65daysofstatic - Escape from New York - Apparently this is a live album. I wasn't paying attention. But it sounds awesome. There is exactly one mistake and one slight out of tune guitar, but man this makes me want to see them in a club and not just opening up for the cure.

Royksopp - Junior - This album makes me super excited to see Royksopp again, and is a totally solid album. Like you can listen to it like ten times in a row and not get bored. LIttle bit more direct, driving, and less quirky than other Royksopp albums, but i think I like that about it. But, then, I liked "Human After All." Plus it has all your favorite scandanavian singers on it - Robyn, Lykke Li, the chick from the Knife (She is AWESOME on "This Must be It") and Anelli Drecker. Really you can't go wrong.

Doves - Kingdom of Rust - Awesome. A fine return to form, up there with The Last Broadcast - WAY better than Some Cities. Has a little spiritualized influence with the four-note repeating refrain in one song, and its just.. solid. Definitely needs more listens.

Bob Mould - Life and Times - I'm super loving the new Bob Mould records. If you liked District Line, you'll like this one. It's basically more of the same, a little bit more rocking, a little bit less sounding like one man in a studio. He does some of his most personal work on here - "I'm Sorry Baby, But You Can't Stand in my Light Anymore" is getting a lot of notice and it deserves it - and he's trying some interesting new vocal things, which is really awesome.

Wwax - Like it or Not - I don't know where I got this, but I don't like it. It reminds me of Bikini Kill meets Negativland, except for the bad barts of both. Okay, maybe a little Pretty Mary Sunshine, it's not terrible, but i just don't want to listen to it.

Various - Score! vol 3: David Chang, vol. 4: Georgia Hubley, The Covers - These are all awesome. One of the best things I did all year was sign up for these Merge Records 20th anniversary CDs and these are all great. Here we have Georgia Hubley from Yo La Tengo's favorites, David Chang, chef from Momofuko. Don't ask. We also have the covers album, which is wonderful - Les Savy Fav covering Superchunk, Broken Social Scene covering the Clean, Bright Eyes covering Magnetic Fields and a million more. It is awesome. YES.

Who Made Who - Three Recent remix singles - I am glad these guys are still awesome. Bought all the new recent singles (from late 2008 to now) to catch up and they are great. I love their dance rock not glam cool thing going on and I never get tired of listening to them.

TV On The Radio - Read Silence EP - I like these guys more and more as they go on, I don't quite know why. More complicated, less catchy, but super smart and super compelling. I am looking forward to the album.

Sonic Youth - Sacred Trickster single - A kim song, reminds me of some of the Kim songs on Goo. Not my favorite type of Sonic Youth, but it's driving and fast and fun and not insanely wanky (which I like, but some people don't). It's a good driving summer single. I'll probably be hearing more of it.

Brian Jonestown Massacre - Smoking Acid EP - noid and noisy - almost Dinosaur-esque. Or early Ride. That's probably what they're going for, knowing their predilliction of shoegazing bands, but, then, early Ride was pretty Dinosaur influenced. Vocals sound very Bobby Gilespie-esque. But it's still the Massacre and it's still fun. And evil. And awesome. The last song, "Super F****K" is awesome. Also I didn't know you could smoke acid. I must be square.

Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe - I kinda like this. I don't know that I'll ever listen to it again, but it's a good vibe for a band I usually find too overwrought. I think I can ig it. I like the bonus dub of Oh Well. I like the song about how you're going to have to come back to me because you just are. It has potential. Actually I think I'll listen to it again just to be sure.

Silversun Pickups - Swoon - Sounds like if the Pumpkins kept being awesome instead of went crazy. I didn't think I'd like this based on the live shows, even though, perversely, I love the live shows, but.. I dunno. I am pleasantly surprised. It rocks. it's summer. I want to listen to it again and I'm not even done yet.

Ladytron - Tomorrow EP -This is like straight up pop music almost, with the chick from Ladytron singing, but I actually kind of like it when I'm just listening to this one song in 5 versions rather than the whole album. It makes a good single. I'll roll with it.

Bats for Lashes - Gorgeous. Man how did I not know about these guys? Sarah's always going on about them but i thought they were just like every other band she's going on about. Ha. oops. That was mean. Anyway, they are gorgeous. YES.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Young Adult Friction - This band is so awesome. They are either going to be the next big thing or the next Heavenly, which is decidedly not the next big thing. Still, though,I think they're great. I still wish they'd get the two dudes from Fuck Buttons to join their band, though.

Current Music: "Come Back" by Depeche Mode, From Sounds of the Universe

Our dear chicken turned five today, so I thought it was time for look back... In only 20,000 words or something.

http://www.barbariangroup.com/posts/1938-happy_5th_birthday_subservient_chicken

I am all moved in in SF, by the way. I love the apartment, it's super spacious and clean and nice and has everything you could ever want except a cheese grater and a rice cooker, but I am working on that.

Also, I live on the corner of Daschiel Hammet street. How cool is that?


edit: Oh and I live a block from the Tonga room. And Tunnel top.

If you're in the Boston area, please come to my faux going away party this saturday

And wherever you are, please consider listening to more early period OMD.

Yay!

Current Music: "Messages (single version)*" by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, From Orchestral Manoeuvres In

So, prior to this unending illness, a week or two ago, I reread The Watchmen in anticipation of the movie coming out. I hadn't read it since I was 17. And, for those of you that are politely oblivious to my age, that means I read it about 20 years ago.

In 1988.

As in, maybe a year after it came out.

I could have sworn I remembered it, but... oh my god, there was so much in there that I didn't remember. I forgot about Mars. I forgot about Antarctica. I forgot about there being two night owls and two Silk Spectres.

But more than that, really, it was the whole TONE of the thing. Reading it now, you think everyone is crazy for worrying that the world is going to come to an end. The shit with afghanistan and the russians seems so overwrought and silly. But I remember reading this when it came out, and there was nothing weird about the world ending any minute now in the blink of an eye. The characters didn't seem strange to me at all for believing that.

It's crazy how different of a world we live in than we did twenty years ago. I think remembering this is one of the reasons I was always so silent on certain aspects of dear dubya's term. It was awful and embarrassing, but I remember how bad things used to be, and it was easy to see that even now things weren't as crazy and awful as they were then.

But I digress....

The other thing that was really interesting about it is how much of a firmer grasp I have on world history and the geopolitical events that take place in the book. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Reagan and Nixon and Kennedy's assassination. I had a decent grasp on them all, but the subtle way with which the book slowly parts from reality and sets forth on an alternate reality as Dr. Manhattan becomes an asset of the US government was completely lost on me as a child. The russians were already pulling out of afghanistan when I was reading this, and nixon was a distant memory.

Still, though, the work stands up in both ways. If anything, reading it now adds extra layers of richness to the work - the past is another facet of this alternate reality that branches off in the book. The paranoia of 80's america seems incredible, impossible, dystopian and strange, even though I remember living it. New York seems comically grimy, even though I remember it being that way.

I don't think we give our present enough credit sometimes. It didn't have to turn out this well - even with the depression. Our depression that might hit 8% unemployment. The worst since the great depression. That hit 25% unemployment.

But I digress again.

I am excited for the film. It looks good. I have faith it'll be better than V For Vendetta and From Hell. Why? I don't know. I had more respect for those directors, but... this looks promising. We'll see. Bring it.

Current Music: "Jailbird" by M. Ward, From Hold Time

This week was ultimately disappointing. I lost no weight. I technically used up my amnesty - which I was trying to save for inauguration day - because I was depressed. I had one and a half drinks.

Other than that, I've done pretty well. I got through all the process meetings with turkey jerky (low sodium and approved by noted Health Nut Kristen Hengst), celery, carrots, lara bars, tea and seltzer water, which pretty much made up my diet for the week. Neighburrito has whole wheat tortillas and soy cheese and fajita peppers, and that was pretty sweet. Cerrito @ Logan had the same plus brown rice, which was also awesome. But all the travel made it difficult, and when I got home at the end of the week and weighed myself and learned I lost NOTHING, after massive losses the first week, I wanted to break down and cry.

I need to re-commit for the last two weeks, which is always a shit ton more difficult when you're not making day-to-day progress.