As a slightly hyperactive "lead" guitarist without much of a lyrical outlet, I appointed myself ghostwriter for most of our press releases, emails, and website news entries. For example: one phrase I coined for our 1999 bio declared that Filmshow's music was "cinematic, layered, sugar-free pop." As Bill Simmons would say, let's just move on.
I probably could have, or maybe should have, put down my guitar and managed Filmshow. I'd have saved everyone in the band a lot of headaches; then again, I would have lost out on some valuable creative lessons along the way, so it was worth it in the end. (Whoa, did I just get to the feel-good ending before even kicking into the main point of this post? Hey man...slow down.)
Reposted below are the written contents of my personal page from our website (and here's the Internet Archive link to the original page). I've reordered the entries chronologically to make for easier reading, and I've kept the formatting intact for your amusement (more on that in a moment).
Looking back, it's pretty clear that this was some kind of proto-blog. I think blogs were not quite mainstream yet; Blogger was in its infancy, but I hadn't yet clued into it. Myspace didn't exist. There was no Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr for communicating with an audience. No SoundCloud, iTunes, or TuneCore with which to release your tracks. Bandcamp wasn't a music site, it was a reference to American Pie. Nope, you just had a website. That's it.
Reposted below are the written contents of my personal page from our website (and here's the Internet Archive link to the original page). I've reordered the entries chronologically to make for easier reading, and I've kept the formatting intact for your amusement (more on that in a moment).
Looking back, it's pretty clear that this was some kind of proto-blog. I think blogs were not quite mainstream yet; Blogger was in its infancy, but I hadn't yet clued into it. Myspace didn't exist. There was no Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr for communicating with an audience. No SoundCloud, iTunes, or TuneCore with which to release your tracks. Bandcamp wasn't a music site, it was a reference to American Pie. Nope, you just had a website. That's it.
As you read through the below entries, you'll get a glimpse of the younger me; cocky, clever, waxing pseudo-intellectual, stumbling into a few salient points along the way, but mostly showing off my grasp of pop culture (and Jesus, have I really been listening to The Fall this long?). Happily, I can say I also wrote this stuff for the sheer fun of it, as a way to personalize the band, and frankly, to give people something to read on our kinda empty site. In that respect, it works.
Now, about all that lowercase type. It was influenced primarily by Radiohead; namely, guitarist Ed O'Brien's 1999-2000 recording diary and singer Thom Yorke's dumping ground of lyrics and prose, from a slightly earlier version of their official site. Pretty fucking meta and nerdy.
Then again, I suppose that's what you do when you're twenty-two.
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12 april 2000
i was recently interviewed for some sort of ragtag publication and it dawned on me: what is the point of an interview? why put someone in the spotlight, deserving or otherwise, just for the sake of a one-way conversation? all the subtle nuances of speech, gesture, mannerism are completely lost in the transfer from physical presence to black ink. this is where the phrase "out of context" must come from then. we're currently assembling our new web site as we prepare to play our first live dates of the new year. these of course will be the first shows since we changed our name to filmshow. to be honest, just a few short months ago we didn't even think the band would still exist at this point. not because of a lack of initiative or interest in writing/recording/playing etc., but simply because certain band members had left the group or were on their way out. which i suppose leads us to the name change. it's more than just the logistics of finding a more suitable moniker or avoiding confusion with other similarly-named acts. changing the name was, on a small scale, a way to start fresh again with the same five people, odd as it may sound. so for the record, we're still the same band, we still play the same songs (plus some more new ones) and we're still completely incompatible on any bill with any other band we can think of. how's that for a quote?
book: high fidelity/nick hornby
record: this nation's saving grace/the fall
film: mr. smith goes to washington/frank capra
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8 august 2000
stinkin thinkin......we're in the middle of writing new material right now. reread my previous comments for fun. anyway, hang on - - we should have the site fixed up this month and we'll be playing out again before too long. that said, the rest of our dates will likely be out of the area. we're looking at the following cities/locales at the moment: albany / syracuse / ithaca / buffalo / nyc / pittsburgh / columbus / cleveland / chicago / toronto. from there, we'll maybe play one rochester date, hopefully at christmas, which i really want to do. colored lights, free gifts and everything. if you're (we're) lucky, more press coverage and studio time will be in the cards soon. from the birth of existence to the lazy shits on suburban couches, we find filmshow. love, phil.
book: let it blurt: the life and times of lester bangs/jim derogatis
record: fear of a black planet/public enemy
film: being john malkovich/spike jonze
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28 november 2000
we've been killing some time while preparing to enter the studio...a bit too much time, but i digress. in less than two weeks, this ramshackle five-piece will be back in a proper studio again (first time in nearly two years). we'll see how things go...we're either going to get fairly straightforward renditions of two songs, peppered with our own studio-bred touches, or another squeaky pop mess. in the meantime, everybody's been keeping busy...with what, i have no idea. i've been setting up a little pseudo-studio in my living room (dubbed by i. maginnis as "phil's radio shack") and in between FINALLY getting back to multi-tracking some new songs, i started a remix of the elusive "deathbed resurrection" (written by paul o'neill aka litmus, and our own m. t. dailor). bollocks to guitars...
book: this side of paradise/f. scott fitzgerald
record: remixes 10+3/various artists, warp records (available on matador in the US)
film: when robots attack/carl diehl
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19 january 2001
moment from the filmshow timeline: two years ago this evening, we did a live set on a radio show called "rochester sessions." the program director wouldn't bail out a few members of the band when we were given parking tickets, despite the fact that the place we were specifically instructed to park (by this clown) was apparently off-limits...well, at least i wrangled my way out. on another note, the studio has been a drawn-out, but nonetheless good experience...for most of us at least. rough mixes of the recording are showing that we went in the right direction with these songs in the studio, and i personally have had an amazing time working with the band and nic. despite my well-documented comfort with live performance, i'm just more excited to be in a studio, tearing a song apart and finding specific sounds for each instrument. that being said, what is holding things up is vocals...or the lack thereof due to fluctuating illnesses (and fluctuating attention spans) that matthew keeps falling prey to. morale is not really the issue...it's really just motivation. we promise we'll have a finished recording sometime soon. although it seems like we've been in there for ages, none of these sessions has been a full day, and we've often worked odd hours. we're not in stone roses territory...yet.
book: coming of age/studs terkel
record: selected ambient works, volume II/aphex twin
film: o brother, where art thou?/coen brothers
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2 april 2001
mentally recovering from a difficult march (and a not-so-difficult birthday)...in like a lion, out like a liar. turning back again to the "filmshow" brand name, it would appear that once again i am going to completely contradict matthew and say that the band doesn't exist - well, not as matthewbrianjoejayandphil - for the time being. yes, the band turned into a studio project, and yes, i loved that...so much so that i got back to work on my demos, which range from wall-of-sound histrionics to synth-based neuro pop. i'm also currently producing a five-song demo for an as-yet-unnamed (and unharmed) band whose songs sound like a mixture of gomez, jeff buckley, and the unbelievable truth. joe is doing some session work on that recording too. that said, although matthew and i may be writing different things within these digital pages, we're thinking very similarly. i don't know what filmshow is going to emerge as, or if it will collapse, but for now matthew and joe and i will likely pool a few songs together and maybe just continue some soundtrack-ish things we've fooled with individually. a recorded release? i doubt it. something new, up on the website? more likely.
Marvin Gaye
2 april 1939 - 1 april 1984
Sir Alec Guinness
2 april 1914 - 5 august 2000
book: the sun also rises/ernest hemingway (15 months to finish...snooze)
record: modern life is rubbish/blur (an old favorite)
film: small time crooks/woody allen
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