World Racketeering Squad Blog

All right, I've been slacking on the blog front, so it's time for me to contribute.

Isaac and I are in a fairly rare position for a new band.  Usually, the band members are our age and experienced musicians and performers or they're younger and inexperienced.  By younger, I mean teen-aged or in their 20s.  (I hope I'm not outing Isaac by revealing that we're not in our 20s)  Sometimes, a band has a mix, and everyone knows of deeply experienced players who are barely out of junior high.

For World Racketeering Squad, all that is turned upside down.  Isaac's an experienced musician, but he hasn't played in public since the mid-90s.

I, on the other hand, never thought of myself as a musician at all until August of 2007.  (Okay yes, there was my Celtic folk band Clarsach [gaelic for harp] my senior year of high school, but that's been a long time.)

So everything about being a live band is new to us.  We've watched hours of ourselves performing live (see our Youtube section!)  to see how we could improve our performances above and beyond getting technically more proficient. (though we needed that too).

There are lots of disadvantages to being older.  Those golden years of just hanging out all the time don't seem to happen.  I spent them doing a lot of fun things, but only my friends learned to play instruments.  And we don't have the youthful indestructibility that allows bands to go all night and then work all day and then do it again.  I gotta sleep sometimes. :)

But I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.  Since Isaac and I know we don't have forever to get better and make things happened, we're intensely focused on everything we're doing.  We learn and adapt quickly (guile), and we're not afraid to make mistakes because we won't look cool.  Not that Isaac doesn't look cool, but you know what I mean.

So there's just a little glimpse into our journey into rockdom.  I hope to post little bits on it every once and a while to let you see beyond the magic curtain.  Pretty pretty magic curtain.

later,

reed

So, now you'll know it's me blogging, eh? As if people couldn't tell by our writing style. I saw "No Country for Old Men" last night. It was awesome! The acting and writing were terrific, and I loved the portrayal of west Texas.

My only nitpicks (a tad OCD) are that it was set in 1980, and they had a sign referring to "free HBO" and a line referring to a credit-card accessible ATM. No such things in 1980.

later, reed