I've spent a pretty long time exploring the possibility of putting things on the internet again. Seventeen years ago, this month, we shuttered punkrocks.net under the belief that we were becoming adults and really shouldn't be occupying our time with quixotic nonsense. In the intervening years, I've tried blogging, livejournaling, tweeting, buzznetting (ugh) and various other arcane internet verbs as a means to satisfy whatever need for validation I was feeling. Unfortunately, these days it mostly has devolved into sending group texts about the front office mismanagement of the Washington Wizards to often unsuspecting friends and family. We all need a platform.
The reality is that I still love pontificating about music and things, and in my day-to-day life in marketing analytics there's really no room in the company Slack to share opinions on topics that occupy my mind like,
Can we use Bureau of Labor Statistics indicators to determine the next and all future waves of ska?
Is the 25th anniversary of your band's third record sufficient reason to tour Europe when the only remaining original member is the merch guy?
Should the principles of load management be applied to Greg Puciato's career? In what other ways is he similar to Kawhi Leonard?
Even in the year and half I spent at Universal Music Group, where one of their top executives is the same guy that spent considerable energy in the early 2000's trying to make Gym Class Heroes a thing (so close...), I think my colleagues were more interested in fashion collabs and NFTs. It's been clear for some time that the internet has been calling me back to shout about things, and maybe even use different tones of voice now that I’m in my 40’s.
So what am I doing here?
I'm here because I need... something. One year, three months and five days ago, I lost my five-week old daughter Brighton. My partner is now 21 weeks pregnant with a son, this all after countless rounds of IVF (not really countless, but this apparently will be where I draw the HIPAA line) that because of our ages we chose to continue far more quickly than anyone would recommend following the loss of a child. In our battle to build a family, my concept of self-fulfillment has been completely lost1. More on that later... and probably pretty often.
After plenty of time and money devoted to therapy, the phrase that came to me not in therapy but while staring silently at a candle for ten minutes was "put yourself out there." My first reaction to that was "is that the best I can do? This candle was 18 bucks." But where it really took me was toward writing. Writing has saved me from past malfunctions, admittedly far less severe, and now has the ability to teleport me to different times and mindsets that I either seek to revisit or explore further. And the possibility that my thoughts could connect with anyone else out there is motivating.
So what am I doing here?
I've written extensively about music, and it has been a unifying theme throughout much of my life. It's how I got through high school, one of the core ways I have connected with my sister, the chief reason I now live in Los Angeles, and it gave me the courage to find a more meaningful life that wasn't necessarily the on-rails and perfectly fine life experience my parents had planned for me to follow. My daughter’s middle name is a Bodyjar song, although that was a bit of a happy accident and it’s probably just as well my partner not know that. Most of the true sliding doors moments in my life somehow connect back to music.
The truth is, I’ve only really ever written about myself. How is a news story about Offspring tour dates about me, you ask? I guarantee that I thought extensively about what others thought about the way I shared that information, or even the mere fact that I did. I may have claimed I did not care what others thought of me, but I cared profoundly. I said stuff like that because it meant so much to me for others to think that about me. I never got it tattooed in me, but I might as well have. By the time I posted those tour dates, I'd be awash in dopamine and quickly in search of the next hit. A press release about Coheed and Cambria auditioning new drummers? Perfect. Work in a little potshot about someone fleeing an obviously sinking ship… Post. Now I can get through my day.
This space is going to be about me. About my life and my interests, sure, but also I hope to really and honestly share what I actually think. I still run my mouth about music, so you’ll no doubt see that here. But if I need to spill my guts on the intellectual achievement of training a Kookierhondje puppy to sleep through the night without getting upset at the duvet cover, I may have 800 words on that.
So what am I doing here?
I won't assume I ever achieved any specific or objective level of quality with my writing, but I did get paid for it on more than a couple of occasions and it was once described by a member of Thrice as "really good2." And that was before they were famous.
I tend to use a lot of run-on sentences and I love a good comma splice, so I suppose that makes me a bit of an outlier here. There are a lot of truly talented writers on this platform and none of them need to say a word to me for me to already assume they are all quietly and very sensibly judging me. I’m powering through it.
Should I develop some amount of momentum and reader interest here, yes, I could theoretically start to monetize my work. That's not my plan for now, and should that change the primary objective would be as a way to raise additional money and awareness for causes that have become immensely important to me in the past couple years and give me a small way to stay connected to Brighton. While I’m definitely not here to make money (largely because I really doubt I would), I would be lying if I said never ever.
I'm on Substack specifically because I find it easier to start from scratch than on other platforms. I could take up a philosophical stance about some of the types of content driving revenue on this platform as many have, but that would leave me permanently in search of a platform where that isn’t also true to some degree. If others want to fight those battles I wish them well and if the subject ever intensifies I always remain open to taking my work elsewhere (incidentally another benefit to posting your work here).
Why the name?
I don't have a great track record for naming my projects. The fact that Substack's first request in the signup process is your publication's name is a huge barrier for the self-conscious. If not for that hurdle, you may be reading this a month ago.
I consume a lot of content about politics and culture. In many arenas opinions need to be loud and shrill to be noticed. The amount of filmed content that is considered “unwatchable,” sports figures “unplayable,” political positions "untenable," fine dining dishes “inedible” by people nevertheless consuming massive volumes of the aforementioned is so hilariously and deliciously extreme to me. It pretty accurately reflects my prevailing attitude toward the things about which I've written in the past.
Also, the name wasn’t already taken. Huge win.
So that’s it for now. I don’t really even intend to socialize this a whole lot early on, so I’m hoping you only find this post because something I’ve yet to write will bring you here in the future and you rewind your way back to this post.
Note: The current illustrated microphone logo is a GenAI production until I have time to do something for real. If it closely resembles a work you recognize, please let me know and I will remove it.
If you happen to be connected to my employer, please note that my intellectual struggle for fulfillment does not mean I am in the midst of "quiet quitting.” I can indeed compartmentalize, even if I don’t want to.
Not the singer, though.