Ringo 037: Ballad of a Sad Pizza

"Never there when you want me, always there when you need me." — Tony Wilson

Happy (and hopeful) new year!

After a long and mysterious absence, here I am, popping back into your inbox when you least expected it. Or perhaps you never expected it or didn't give me a second thought, full stop. I don't blame you. It's been a long seven months since I sent out one of these newsletters and my blog's eerily silent as well. The only place you could openly find me all this time was Twitter, which is simply embarrassing.

I'm rearing my dully throbbing head in your sight-line for a couple of reasons today. The first is to explain my disappearance, which I'll now get out of the way as quickly as I can.

I wrote about this on Twitter last August with an optimistic tone that, in retrospect, was perhaps jumping the gun a little. Expanding on that thread, I'll say that I was (and am) exhausted — just like many of you. As COVID-times dragged on and on and on and the vicious news cycle dragged on and on and on, the ennui gathered into mountains. There was nothing I wanted to write about. Nothing in my head, nothing inspiring, nothing exciting to document in the early morning hours. Even my journal, updated almost daily for years, went dark.

Luckily my professional life doesn't rely on writing, so I had the luxury to stop and wait. I knew that I was hardly alone in this stifled feeling. And, heeding the advice of those talented enough to write through this malaise, I knew the best strategy was to not stress out about my lack of motivation. The recommended move was actually to lean into it — do other things, find new hobbies, read lots of books, and occupy the brain with something other than the fact that the creative plumbing's sprung a bad leak.

So, that's what I did. I shifted focus to my spunky music label, 8D Industries. I learned to make tasty and fiery hot sauces (which became a gateway drug to vegan cooking). I got actively involved with marketing Caroline's growing Kitten School channel. I spent a lot more time with family as I successfully and safely moved mom to a house next door during a pandemic. And I started getting involved in freelance podcast production.

Several months ago, I was hired to edit and co-produce Andrew Loog Oldham's Sounds and Vision podcast, and the experience has been a delight. If you don't know, Andrew is the original manager and producer for The Rolling Stones — as just one of his too-many-to-list-here historical music adventures — and he's got stories for days. Check out the podcast if you're even a little curious. It's a lot of fun. I'd recommend the Elliot Easton (guitarist with The Cars) episode for a starter as it's got lots of juicy behind-the-music-industry tales.

Meanwhile, the writing bug has finally returned over the last couple of months (along with the music bug, but that's another story). As arbitrary as 'the new year' is as a signifier, it's still a useful prompt to refresh. And that's what I plan to do. On the immediate agenda: make some changes to the blog, start blogging regularly again, and then, once firmly in the saddle, relaunch the newsletter. Voilà. Easier said than done, right? But I'm excited nonetheless, and that's an accomplishment in and of itself.

I'll finish this deep gaze into my navel with a few notes about this newsletter.

First off, I'm retiring Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care. I consider Ringo its own series (in the television sense) and a moment-in-time capsule. I'll call the relaunched newsletter something else (tbd). It’ll have a different format but I’ll cover the same genre of topics.

Also, the newsletter won't be on Substack. I'm exploring a combination of Sendy and Newsletter Glue to host the newsletter on my site. This potentially sets up a roadblock of discouragement as it's complicated (oh jeez I've got to figure out what a VPS server is). But I want to learn newsletter self-hosting partly as a self-challenge and also to be able to teach others how it's done.

Finally, I want to assure you that your Ringo subscription will automatically transfer over to the new entity once I'm ready to roll. You don’t have to do anything, unless you’d like to unsubscribe which you can do at any time (including now if you'd like).

The second reason I'm intruding your inbox as perhaps you curse the post-2021 hangover that befell you: I've released a song today. 🚀

Grottoes is a long-imagined project, revealed as I finally step away from Q-Burns Abstract Message. Yes, the AUDIOTOTEMPOLE EP was always meant as a closing of the door. And Grottoes predates “Touchtones (1997),” the earliest reference on that EP. I tried and failed to start a band called Grotto in the early '90s after the dissolution of my much-beloved (by us and some others) band Tick Tick Tock. There are too many other bands called Grotto nowadays, so Grottoes it is. It looks mightier written as text that way, so win-win.

The quiet first appearance of Grottoes was a remix for Brighton's The Self-Help Group and the song "Temple OS" (a fine song in its own right, btw). That one was recorded in mid-2021, during my supposed creative lag, and is the last time I worked on something musical. I hoped this would spark other Grottoes tunes to serve as accompanying tracks for something called "Straw Belle."

"Straw Belle" isn't new. I started recording it maybe three or four years ago, and it's a song that I revisited and tweaked periodically. I settled on a final version at some point in late 2019. I feel it's one of the best things I've recorded. And I held it tight — only about four people have heard "Straw Belle" before today — under the assumption that I'd record a few more songs like it and release an EP. As you probably guessed, that never happened.

After encouragement during a catch-up phone chat with my friend Jeff (the bass player in even earlier attempts at bands), I realized that "Straw Belle" would never see the light of day if I attached it to the loose promise of 'other songs like it.' I decided it should finally come out on its own, and, as this revelation came a month ago, New Year's Day seemed like a novel release date.

For your consideration, here's "Straw Belle" by Grottoes. Artwork by Matthew Naquin. Secret assistance from The Imprisoned Wizard. Sounds like group homes, wavering spaces, pangs of crunch, tones from belief, e-bow symphonies. I hope you like it. Please tell the others if you do.

("Straw Belle" is also on the streaming machines, and you can click on this sentence to find your flavor.)

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2021 recap? I'd rather not. It was fine and not fine. You know what I mean. I choose not to wallow in the hollow. But if you'd like to read some insightful impressions of the year that was, then look no further than Sasha Frere-Jones' thoughtful collection of those from his bright circle of friends. There's one, from bassist extraordinaire Melvin Gibbs, that I can't stop thinking about — it haunts me like a new year's ghost:

This, the contrast between those who have to deal with tangible loss and those who are scared of intangible loss is, for me, the defining dichotomy of this historical moment. Those who have will need to give to those who’ve suffered loss. To me, it seems that the issue of whether that giving will be regarded as a form of thievery on the part of those who’ve suffered loss, or a form of community building on the part of those who are doing the giving will determine the course of human life on this planet in the coming years.

Something else I think is important to mention is the Sounding History podcast. It's hosted by Tom Irvine and Chris Smith, two academic brainiacs who study music history in a compelling manner: through the lens of the Anthropocene. That is, how the extraction and exploitation of resources of the last 500 or so years — and the intertwined increase in unrestrained capitalism, ecological collapse, and human misery — have led to the music we listen to today. That sounds like a bummer but, while sobering, the podcast has the tone of a rollicking history lesson that mainly exists to make one aware. It's also entertaining and has sent me down a dozen rabbit holes (so far). I highly recommend this.

One rabbit hole is the idea of recorded music as energy expenditure. The last episode of the podcast delves into the history of formats, from shellac discs (made from bug juice and limestone) to vinyl (PVC waste is highly toxic) to CDs (perennial landfill denizens) to streaming (data churning server farms eat lots and lots of energy). Thinking through this has spawned a question: knowing that all material creation and energy consumption have degrees of ecological impact, what method of listening to recorded music has the most nominal cost?

My feeling (and it's just a feeling) is that downloading music and replaying it directly from one's hard drive (or smartphone, iPod, etc.) has the least energy/ecological cost vs. vinyl/CDs/streaming. I had a brief exchange with Kyle Devine, author of the book Decomposed, repeatedly mentioned as a resource in Sounding History, and his feeling is the same. The eco-cost saved may be negligible as an individual metric, but there's still a compelling argument made — along with all the other arguments — for owning your digital music rather than streaming it. If only music files were somehow more attractive to listeners, with contextual touchstones that foster sentiment and engaging interfaces that encourage community. You should read Marc Weidenbaum's keen thoughts on that subject here.

What do you think? I'd love to know. I feel like this topic — and others like it — is influencing my interests and my writing for the future. It's a relief to have something new to latch on to, and as I learn and read more, there's no doubt I'll have more to say.

OK, I'll close this surprise missive and, once again, wish you a fun and hopeful new year. Please write if you'd like — to say hello, to agree or disagree, to tell me what a VPS server is all about; all are welcome.

And I'll see you soon. Really.

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btw — I'm Michael Donaldson and you can read more about who I am and what I do here.

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