Music and Musicians.

Music:
Listening -- really listening to it -- is undervalued. Making it is over-rated.

Musicians:
Musicians tend to be self-absorbed, egocentric, one-dimensional, social climbers with overblown senses of their importance.

Hi. I am a musician.

New song...

wide open world
copyright 2008 john common music

when you were a baby
you knew what you wanted
you kept it real simple
didn't you?

now your life is a puzzle
you keep digging the tunnel
head down in the funnel
of wandering

wide open world
it's a wide open world
world

liars love leavers
and losers leave lovers
we hurt one another
without meaning to

sad situation…
blissful rejection…
set free on an ocean
of missing you

wide open world
it's a wide open world
wide open world
it's a wide open world
wide open world
it's a wide open world
world

everyone needs everyone
everyone needs everyone in this
everyone needs everyone
everyone needs everyone in this
in this wide open world

Whisper.

Whisper has a silent "h".

Just saying... I think that's perfect.

Favorite Late Night, Post-Gig Binge Fare

Me: a bag of cool ranch doritos, a six pack of those donuts with the coconut flakes, and a pint of ice cold 2% milk.

Nothing tastes like joy-turning-to-deep-regret like cool ranch coconut donut milk sloshing around in your belly with about 5 or 6 Jamesons and one plastic cupful of PBR.

THIS kind of post-gig binging is why reunion bands are almost always really fucking fat. They spent their youths drinking, playing and binging inside 7-11s.

And you? Go...

You Got The Lonely - new song

you got the lonely
copyright john common music

when I first met you
and got to know you
I saw the storry in your eyes
you let me see you
to really see you
and babe it came as no surprise

you got the lonely
you've got it good
you tried to outrun it
you thought that you could
but it's in your nature
deep down in the wood
you got the lonely
you've got it good

we make it hard
we like to stumble
'cause falling gives us scars
every scar a letter
one more letter
and all those letters make up the words

CH

you walk away
and you don't know why
bridges burning…

solo

I heard the phone ring
and some how I knew
you were calling from far, far away
you found the bottom
you got your answer
and you needed to hear me say

we got the lonely
we've got it good
we try to outrun it
we think that you could
but it's in our nature
deep down in the wood
we got the lonely
we've got it good
you got the lonely
I've got it too
we got the lonely
we've got it good
we got the lonely
we've got it good

Here's a rough demo:

Forget Brilliant... Go For Useful.

Let's be honest. Most records are painfully self-aware pieces of trash. They're uninspired, navel-gazing, banal, cliche-ridden, ego-stroking buckets of awful offal. Yes, occasionally you run across a record that is utterly brilliant. But most sound mediocre-to-good-enough for a few days until our eye catches a shiny object across the room and -- whoosh -- there goes another disc into the wasteland of our cherished CD collections.

As for the topics covered on most records, you could throw darts at a board cut into three areas: 1) Love, 2) Allegedly Political, 3) Obtuse Journal Entry / Who The Fuck Knows, and you'd get a great guess of the average distribution of pithy subjects. (By the way, I am including myself in this unfair generalization. I have most definitely contributed my fair share to the shit heap.)

Look, I'm not just being mean-spirited here. I've been on a practicality kick lately. Think of this as an unsolicited call to action. I think we, as musicians and songwriters, can do a better job. Or, if not better job, at least a more useful one.

Does the world really need another record covering the utter sameness of your (or my) interior psychological landscape? At what point does "Universality" get trumped by "Give me something I can actually use"? I wish someone, anyone, would write and record a CD like this:

CD Title: Useful Songs For Life's Tough Times
Track 1) Whoops! You're Pregnant!
Track 2) You're Fired -- Merry Christmas
Track 3) Bad News: It's [Insert Awful Disease]
Track 4) She Doesn't Love You. She Loves Your Sister.
Track 5) I Just Puked In Your Bed -- Sorry 'Bout That.
Track 6) About That Rash...
Track 7) The Depression Test
Track 8) McCain Won. We're Moving To Europe.
Track 9) Honestly, Yes. You Are Ugly.
Track 10) First Time In Prison: A Beginner's Guide

It's time to be of direct service. Grab a hammer... Go build us a useful record.

The Best Bike Ride Of My Life

Intended time: 2 hours 15 minutes
Intended distance: 30ish miles

Actual time: 3 hours 15 minutes
Actual distance: 48 miles

I got lost.
I got some bad directions.
I got loster.
The sky turned dark as a bruise.
I got blown around by crazy wind.
I got rained on.
I wiped out out on some train tracks.
I got hailed on and utterly drenched.
I nearly got hit by several cars.
People looked at me from their porches like I was a crazy man, pedaling up their street through gales of hail and rain.

It was totally life affirming.

Naming the band.

I'm putting together a new band... that's hard, dirty work, by the way. But anyhoo, I'm thinking that it might be useful to give that collective of special, special people a name. A really good name.

Here are some for you to consider, comment upon, ridicule, edit, and otherwise heap praise upon. The band, of course, will make the final decision, pending your approval:

(p.s. some of these are JOKES designed to keep you on your TOES)

John Common and...

Blinding Flashes of Light (BFL)
The Distinguishing Characteristics
The Fakirs
The Best Ones
The Jokes Which Are Not Funny
Take Her Home
We're Gonna Break Up
We Hate Him
Leading Man
The Tater Tits
Motograss
Secret Digit
The Cavists
Hyperwhite
Magically Delicious
Team Narcissist
The Dump
Furry Feelings
A Kick In The Pants
Hipster Fister
Moustachio
The Silent K
The Derelict Savants
The Long Shots