Reflections on Biographer and One Hundred Albums
Every time I make an album, I approach it as if it’s the last one I’ll ever make. It’s not a morbid thing. While it’s of course possible I’ll die between the release of Biographer – Giant Waste of Man’s new album – and whatever it is I do next, approaching album making like a zero-sum game is a defense against a different anxiety. Once I finish an album, I am wholly, one hundred percent certain I will never again write another song. And if, by some voodoo or vision, I do manage a song, there’s no way I’ll write multiple songs. And if – against all odds – I claw and conjur, cheat and pilfer the requisite number of songs needed for an album, there’s little likelihood the result will be as good as what I’ve done before.
This anxiety is acutely prescient with Biographer for two reasons: One, because I think it’s the best artwork I’ve ever made, but two, unlike every other album I’ve been a part of making, Biographer and the One Hundred Albums project were born out of a particular circumstance that may never repeat: a time when I lived like a working artist.
From 19 until 41, I worked in the service industry almost nonstop. Making records was an indulgence, weaseled out from tips scrounged from delivering massive trays of sugar-rich Chinese food to diabetically prone families or slinging alcoholic beverages to drug addicts and sycophants. Many were additionally funded by a patchwork of favors or bartered services, a couch to crash on, free drinks, or the promise of a name in the credits, propelling all involved to greater notoriety, or, at the very least, a paying gig in the future. There was a constant tension between time and resources, the omnipresent calculus of is this worth it.
This is not to say that the work suffered. We did the best we could. We learned shortcuts. If you don’t have the bread to make an album, make an EP. Or better yet, rehearse until you dream in songs, until your fingers move on their own, the way your heart pumps or your lungs breath, then record the album live over a weekend. If you don’t have the bread to make an album, do it in tiny pieces, once a week on your only day off work, for six months. Buy your friend lunch as a thank you for placing the mics. If you don’t have the bread to make an album, offer your services as a musician on other people’s albums and hope they return the favor. Sleep on the studio floor. Record from midnight to six am. Split up duties so one of you records while others still work their shifts the same day.
Making albums this way is akin to dumpster diving and calling it dinner. You can absolutely do it, and you can absolutely leave full. But this is not how conventional albums get made, and by conventional, I mean most albums you’ve heard of. Sure, many indie artists are forced to pull these same tricks in conjunction with more traditional sources of funding, like a label or a publishing deal. But by and large, the albums you love the most were not made by people in between shifts at PF Chang’s. Yes, many musicians have jobs, even more so recently, but what I’m talking about is a dedication of time. It’s a delineation made possible through capital that designated this moment as solely dedicated to the making of art.
If you ever experience this, know it’s a luxury. I know because I experienced it once and then watched the opportunity recede. The shutdown of bars and restaurants in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic brought with it a huge silver lining for people like me. I got paid to stay home. And during this paid time off, I wrote a memoir – One Hundred Albums, presented in earlier editions of this substack – and I made an album, Biographer, with my band. Without this subsidized break, the memoir would not exist, and the album wouldn’t be as good. Previously, it would have been impossible to spend six hours a day writing without getting paid. Now I had nothing but time. It also afforded me the capability to put aside the time and requisite funds needed to make an album the way I’ve always wanted: over multiple recording sessions entirely uninterrupted by work. For fifteen months, I was able to spend time every day being creative, either working on the memoir or the songs. I was able to experience what so few ever get to experience, and for that, Jesus, am I fucking grateful.
But as I watch Biographer begin its fade into obscurity (the way most albums do), and One Hundred Albumsbecome nothing more than code on a platform typically reserved for political hot takes and citizen journalism, I admit I am discouraged. When I was in my early twenties, one of my college roommates told me how lucky I was to know what I wanted to do with my life. Ben, he said, you have music. What do I have? His admission made me quite sad for him. Twenty years later, I don’t know if he ever found a purpose for his life, or what that feels like if he didn’t. But I do know what it feels like to have a confident grasp on what fulfills you and yet it remain frustratingly, paradoxically out of reach.
This is the part in the essay I acknowledge what a privilege it is to be able to suffer in such a fortunate way. This is the part where I reiterate that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. What an experience it was to wake up in Stinson Beach, CA, cliffside where the atmosphere meets the land, deer peeping out from the fog banks, and know all I had to do that day was create. How exhilarating to realize you’ve been playing guitar so long that your fingertips have become little humps of calloused skin, that every idea you have is translatable to your instrument. These are joys that few experience. When I was afforded my shot at the artist life, I stepped up and made the most of it.
Thank you for reading, thank you for listening. There will be more music in the future – I can’t stop now – but this is the conclusion of OHA. I could blame its end on work – and it is partly that – but it’s probably more accurately to say it’s run its course. I wanted to tell the story of how I ended up where I did and show that the story wasn’t over. I’ve done that. It’s time to stop proving and start living.
Future writing about music will continue to appear at post-trash.com. Politics (like my recent 2022 voter guide) and Chain Letter-related writing will appear at chainlettercollective.substack.com. Subscribe below.