This

Well I finally broke the streak and wrote a song a couple of days ago. It's not much, but it's a start. I'm not exactly sure what happened to me. I was just cruising along recording my masterpiece when suddenly I stopped. I'm only about what Nathan would call halfway and I would call about a fourth into the new album. I guess I just need to keep trying.

Also, I'm really starting to miss performing live. I'm sure you guys are too. At least you should be. I'm very good at it. If any of you guys know of some dusty old venue that five people would show up to I'm totally there.

Goodtar on Pandora but not literally

I've noticed a couple things about Pandora recently. First, it really things that I like Brian Jonestown Massacre. How many times will I tell Pandora I don't before it believes me? The other thing is that after a while every station I create just starts to play songs I already have on my itunes. I think the only one that is safe from that is my Louvin Brothers station that only plays country music from before 1960. I guess it's really got me figured out, but it was a lot more fun back when it used to play me music I hadn't heard before. After a while it seems more like a game than a music site.

Today Goodtar, tomorrow the world

For whatever reason I can't stop thinking up songs with people's names in the titles. I try to not record all of them because it would get silly having a bunch of names on my albums. I guess it is like Lou Reed talking about "Satellite of Love." In the original Velvet Underground version of the song, which is much better by the way, the characters are names Winken, Blinken, and Nod. On the not as good Transformer version he uses real names. He said that in the early days he was afraid to use real people's names. I guess he had to work up the courage. That's probably why "Oh Gin" later became "Oh Jim." I suppose I reached that point recently where I wasn't afraid to use names in my songs. Unfortunately it has backfired to a point where I have trouble writing about anything else. The names I pick out usually don't represent any actual people I know, but still! I guess the next step is to work on some new titles.

Also I'm still sitting on piles and piles of unreleased stuff. Hopefully it doesn't all go to waste until my posthumous box set. I need to get back on the horse and do some stuff!

Zombie Jones Jr.

Well ol' Goodtar ain't what he used to be. Over two months of blogging and I have nothing to show for it besides a couple of okay but not particularly good posts. I guess things have been a little on hold lately. I had to stop recording for a couple months in the summer because my computer was not working very well and I was worried about a complete crash. I now have an external hard drive so that is no longer a problem. I am now just waiting for my allergies to clear up so I can sing again. Or maybe I'm just making excuses. Either way I hope to be recording again soon. And maybe I'll come on here and post about my musical thoughts and all of that. Either way I'm going to try to come back from the dead. That's especially hard since I was barely alive in the first place.

Positive Honey Home

I think it's interesting how much people are influenced by bands they don't like. So many times the music people start playing is in reaction to not hearing anything they like on the radio.

It is very much the same for me. A few years back I heard that album everybody loves, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. When listening to it I remember thinking that it was almost the complete opposite of what I would want to sound like if I started my own band. A few years later when I started making my own music I started to incorporate so many of those opposites in my music. I noticed that Jeff Mangum created false excitement in his songs by strumming his acoustic guitar very fast, so I decided to play mine real slow. I couldn't stand his obtuse lyrics, so I made my lyrics very clear and easy to understand. All this help me shape my signature sound.

There's not very much in my music that sounds like The Minutemen or They Might be Giants or any bands I actually like, but some band that I don't even like all that much had a great impact on me. I think it's really weird how that happens. But seriously, why do people like that album so much?

Down and Out

Hey everybody it's Goodtar Jones, and I have decided to start a blog. It's very good timing too because there's never been a time that people cared about me less. All my old fans ignore me and the musicians all laugh at me. People spit on my old album covers, and they would probably create a big bonfire with them if I had sold enough for that. So now I figure my way to the big time is to post my thoughts online. I might even get a comment someday, which is a victory in itself. I have to enjoy the small victories because they're all I got left. So anyway, enjoy my blog. It's not like it costs you anything!

Sexy #1