in 1996, i was introduced to an album that changed both what i listened to & how i listened: eno’s 1975 breakthrough another green world. although this album led me into eno’s later ambient projects, the stand-out track for me was the more teleological composition, “st. elmo’s fire“. this is not to be confused with the theme song from the 1985 film, st. elmo’s fire, which was, up to that point, my only frame of reference.

that album & that song influenced both the music i like & listen to, and the music i write & record, which has come now to include “st. elmo’s fire“. unlike many songs yearlongday has covered (including eno’s “julie with…“), we tried to stay somewhat close to eno’s original version. for example, the duration of our version (3:06) is very close to eno’s version (3:02). also, we tried to remain consistent with timbre of eno’s original instrumentation & voicing… to the best-yet-humblest of our abilities.

where robert fripp came in with a “wimshurst guitar“, YLD stage-almumnus dave parkhurst offers listeners an “icehurst” guitar for his debut studio recording with yearlongday. dave and i discussed covering this song in august 2011 (15 years after my first listening), but didn’t get into the studio until late october. in november, leah l’orange contributed her vocal harmonies, and this week, i am pleased to offer a rough demo of brian eno’s “st. elmo’s fire“!

http://www.myspace.com/yearlongday

i’ve played bars, but i wouldn’t categorize yearlongday as a ‘bar band‘. it requires a different kind of artistry to be a successful ‘bar band’… a band that not only performs its repertoire with rote expertise, but also conjures energy from the audience seemingly out of thin (or thick) air. that’s not yearlongday… we lack the aesthetic for mimicry that entails our set list be transformed into a checklist of cliches. just to illustrate the point, i recently (2009) noted what a local band played in a very popular franchise bar:

i’m yours (jason mraz)

crazy little thing called love (queen)

lovesong (the cure)

if i fell (the beatles)

kiss (prince)

let’s get it on (marvin gaye)

all the small things (blink 182)

billie jean (michael jackson)

i saw her standing there (the beatles)

folsom prison blues (johnny cash)

… sugar ray, and more.

january- the original shot-story four years come, four years go is published. it is a narrative companion to my first album, humans, and foreshadows the imminent release of the “expanded edition“. doesn’t make a blip on the radar.

february- the announcement is made that humans: expanded edition is complete. its 29-songs (including 14 bonus tracks of rare, previously unreleased material & new, decade-anniversary mixes) represent the fulfillment of my archive-restoration project, an endeavor begun in 2010 with “restored” versions of utopia and modern moments. yet again, 3 albums in less than 12 months does nothing to invoke even a golf-clap from friends and fans.

march- fearful that the obvious lack of interest in yearlongday.com is leading us into an online abyss (less than 1% of comments, or 4/540 per year, are legitimate), i thought to de-fund the website. after consideration, i opted instead to pair another 12 months of yearlongday.com with the simultaneous launch of our facebook page AND reverbnation profile. the idea was that yearlongday could either sink or swim in the world-wide web, and ‘swimming’ meant promoting with everything available to me. but not a ripple, let alone a splash.

april- spring in swing, i record “anything“, the result of my collaboration with john shaughnessy. the song was intended to create “hype” about yearlongday by using the ‘see-and-say’ nature of social networking to gather random lyrics (literally, anything) from a shared audience. in turn, we hoped this mutually vested interest would bring new traffic to our respective websites. But if the goal was to stimulate momentum, the strategy failed, at least for yearlongday.

may- to remind people that yearlongday… well, exists, we covered rod stewart’s “maggie may“, AND released “get me back to nola”, “edgar cayce”, “today will never end (single)”, and “just because” but five new songs weren’t enough to keep us from the margins of the local music scene. no buzz, no hype, no momentum… i started to wonder why no one seemed to care that yearlongday continued to make creative and intriguing original music.

june- another announcement and more music… “like lennon” comes to the forefront, the first recording with leah l’orange since our debut album, while yearlongdecade is announced as the title of the forthcoming ‘best of’ album. also, smothered by the silence is announced as the forthcoming autobiography of jonathan t marlowe & yearlongday. after these invitations to be part of yearlongday’s evolution and legacy draw little response, i began to not just wonder why, but speculate in a public campaign suggesting that blacklisting and collusion are as valid explanations as any.

now it’s july… “starsick” was a fan-favorite from our live set, and it will be released soon as the herald of our new album. but i can’t pretend that i am excited; and i can’t say that this will be the song that jump-starts our ‘comeback’. we never left. we’ve been doing what we’ve always done… making the best “neo-retro lo-fi avant-fab hipster dream-pop crap” you’ll find anywhere, online or onstage. but you gotta look… even little children peek through their fingers at what they’re afraid to see on the screen.

love on ya!

… jonathan t marlowe

far be it from me to build mountains from molehills, but 2011 is showing potential to be another epic year for jonathan t marlowe & co. consider the evidence…

- march: my first album, “humans” is restored and expanded to 29 songs, including 14 bonus tracks of rare, previously unreleased material & new, decade-anniversary mixes.

- may: released 5 new songs… “get me back to nola”, “edgar cacye”, “just because”, “today will never end (edit)”, and a cover of rod stewart’s “maggie may”.

- june: collaborating with john shaughnessy on new music, and beginning yearlongday’s biography smothered by the silence.

- july & august: recording the next album!

once your standards fall low enough to actually read this blog, you may notice that gigs are not in the picture. that’s because we’re focusing on our strengths and likes; i feel that yearlongday is better represented by our studio recordings than our live performances, so expect more from us in that aspect. not only do we find empowerment, we also find enjoyment in the countless hours spent recording, editing, mixing, and releasing from our home studio. i’m not saying you won’t see us in local music venues… i’m saying you’ll only find us booked after much persuasion.

lotta love on y’all!

… jonathan t marlowe

i don’t know exactly how to explain the way i feel about this development in artificial intelligence. “bitter” and “foolish” come to mind. “foolish” because i secretly witheld the idea of robot jazz for roughly a decade; i’ve auditioned nearly a half-dozen drummers for the purpose of robot jazz recording sessions, but never explicitly described my idea in detail. i never even used the words in the same sentence publicly, fearing my idea would be advanced by someone else.

where my alternative indie-pop albums failed to attract the attention i sought, i was certain my robot jazz project would earn an irrefutable place in music history. but this video, posted at least a year ago, makes it bitterly clear that no one will credit yearlongday or jonathan t marlowe for introducing them to robot jazz; trying desperately to stay ahead of the curve has placed me in the back seat yet again, and if i ever have the privilege of being a footnote in the history of music, it will be as the nikola tesla to its guglielmo marconi.

so, the cat is out of the bag… jonathan t marlowe & yearlongday stepped away from the stage and from the public spotlight to begin transforming our ideas about robot jazz into studio recordings. although it looks like someone else will take the place in music history that i wanted, this is only the first round and i’m not down for the count! while guy hoffman & the g.i.t lab may have spent years working on shimon the jazz robot, it was years after i scrawled “robot jazz” in my music journal; my failure was in sharing the idea, not conceiving it.

the who

the rolling stones

the answer to the final question in the last post: crazy from the heat, by david lee roth. “california girls“ and “just a gigalo“ got large amounts of videoplay & airplay, as i recall. but after a recent listen, “coconut grove“ is the song that seems to resound most with the music of yearlongday and jonathan t marlowe; it also seems to foreshadow certain aspects of the red hot chili peppers, such as the vocals of anthony kiedis  in songs like “porcelain“. nonetheless, anyone who has met me would likely agree that i forgot very little of diamond dave’s ostentatious persona.ex

for the next phase of our excretion analysis game, we go back to my first guitar. more specifically, we ask this question: which faction of the british invasion did i first learn to cover? remember, i’m challenging you to answer these questions not by merely guessing, but by listening the musical conventions adopted by yearlongday and jonathan t marlowe. your fairly obvious choices are depicted above.

TO BE CONTINUED…

david lee roth (crazy from the heat)

phil collins (hello, i must be going)

billy idol (vital idol)

a few words before i explain the images above…

food science has made it household knowledge that we will likely experience flatulence after eating beans, process regularly after consuming prunes, increase our alertness after drinking caffienated beverages. the way we function can reveal much about what we feed our bodies.

if we go a step further and examine our poop (or if a labratory does it for us), we can learn more; not just what we put into our bodies, but also the quality of that stuff, the condition our bodies are in, and how our bodies are utilizing what we feed them. this area of investigation is called excretion analysis, and i’m curious about the possibility of transposing its basic premise to music.

i wonder if someone could listen to yearlongday and determine what kind of ‘stuff’ we’ve listened to. after all, such forensics and diagnostic of fossils have given us a wealth of information about the dinosaurs and the world in which they lived… why shouldn’t it work for yearlongday? if poop is a by-product of digestion, then our music is shit that can be analyzed to reveal the kind of music that has fed us.

and it should work both ways, right? just like beans, prunes, and caffiene, i know what will happen after i consume them. well, if my steady diet of sound was known in advance, it might be conceivable that a musicologist could predict and find at least one stylistic convention typical of yearlongday without ever hearing our music.

i don’t know if music or musicians can be studied that way, but the idea provokes thought nonetheless. three of the four albums i’ve written are what some would call “concept albums“ (humans, modern moments, restoring utopia); where did that apparent tendency come from? what did i hear that formed/informed the structure of my own compositions? it wasn’t accidental, i can tell you. the albums that were very influential to me can be identified by name, but my albums rarely manifest those influences the way poop will sometimes reveal information about one’s diet.

maybe i just lack training in excretion analysis. so, i bring this inquiry to you, readers… unlike the paleontologists who cannot verify their research on the prehistoric world of dinosaurs, you have the advantage of listening to the yearlongday/marlowe albums, the by-products of feasting on the music others made.

now, the images above… just as you might conclude that flatulence will come from eating beans and alertness from drinking coffee, you might also conclude what music sources fed albums like humans, modern moments, restoring utopia, and best excuses. so, of the three 1980′s albums depicted above this post, which do you conclude was the first i owned?

TO BE CONTINUED…