Straight Angular in the Boston Phoenix?

That's right a band that I play bass and sing harmonies for is on the front page of the music section in the Boston Phoenix! Right after I wrote two very depressing articles this happens...

That's the way life goes - when things are good they will get bad, and when things are bad they will get good. Remember that always all you guys and girls out there.

So here are some links and screen shots!

Here is the link to the front page of the music section:
The Boston Phoenix Music Page

I’m not too sure how long we will be on the front page so, I took a screen shot while we are currently up there!




Here is the link to the article they wrote about us: Anything and everything: StreightAngular just want to know what's now


Just in case you don’t trust my links… here is the full length article by Barry Thompson.


"Anything and everything
StreightAngular just want to know what's now
By BARRY THOMPSON October 7, 2009

People never like to label themselves. Or, at least they shouldn't.

A musician who's comfortable summarizing what he does with a phrase or two probably isn't a very good musician. When asked to describe one's band, the right tack is to sidestep the question, or else offer a bewildering response. For their part, StreightAngular have a knack for making correct choices — and taking them to extremes.

"I had a vision of making music that wasn't just love songs. It would incorporate love, but would be more of a commentary on things around us, things that humanity is going through at this moment," says Al Polk, as he sips coffee with his wife and drummer, Theresa Polk, at the South Street Diner. After doing the White Stripes duo thing for a while, they filled out with Andrew Mello on bass, Adam Strock on guitar, and Michell Barys (also of Brunt of It infamy) on trumpet. "So, StreightAngular spawned from seeing garbage on the streets, buildings, skyscrapers, homeless people, models, magazines, and things like that. If a love song one day were to be written, it might be love for a robot. Or a person. StreightAngular is more about freedom, actually."

Hold on . . . "Girl with a Tambourine" isn't a love song?

"Sounds pretty lovey-dovey," Al admits, after reciting a snippet of its lyrics, which pertain to spandex and escalators. "I think all our songs are love songs, actually."
Once you cut through the abstracts and the contradictions, StreightAngular make their own kind of sense. Curious listeners are encouraged to indulge in this logic this Friday at the Whitehaus DIY collective in Jamaica Plain, and next Friday at P.A.'s Lounge.
Being a nascent, amorphous band, StreightAngular can roll untethered toward anyone's expectations, and they gleefully indulge this freedom on their first outing, After and Before. There's a dancy protest anthem, "Mission Has Failed," a chunk of updated proto-punk, "Empathetic Environmentalist," down-tempo synth-rock on "Open Your Eyes/Take a Picture," surfy fare on "HOTTIES," and two songs that remind me of the Pixies, "Are You Ever Satisfied" and "On the Washing Machine." (Then again, for some reason, every song ever reminds me of the Pixies.)

"Nowadays, with technology at our hand, we can listen to any kind of music from any region, any time period," Al observes. "Maybe that's an overload of things in the brain. On the album, I bet we ripped off everyone. We probably ripped off Paula Abdul and Kiss and anything that was floating around. Like if, when I was a baby, the window was down and Phil Collins was playing somewhere."

Being the multi-tasking sort, Al Polk is also head honcho of Polk Records, a well-regarded local stable since 2007 that's dedicated to throwing eclectic, round-robin-style showcase shindigs.
"I was inspired by the late '60s, when people knew each other and would play on each other's albums," he explains. "I saw this scene in Festival Express? it was Janis Joplin and the bass player from the Band. They were sitting on a couch, singing a song together. They're legends in our time, period, but back then they were just friends. They were just like us, trying to make music, and that's basically why I started the label. I wanted that community."

Funny he should mention the late '60s, given the way After and Before nods to the late '70s and the '80s. When I broach that subject, he tells me how much he's been influenced by the Baroque and Romantic periods of classical music. "It's like everything's connected. We divide things by decades, just because that makes it easier for us. What are these decades and days and years? The sun goes up and the sun goes down. You listen to the '90s, and sometimes you're like, 'Wait a second, that sounds like '80s!' There are these transitions, and I think that's what we're waiting for now. Some people are like, 'What's now?' "

STREIGHTANGULAR + THE WOODRO WILSONS + TOM THUMB Whitehaus, Jamaica Plain October 9 at 8 pm www.whitehausfamilyrecord.com STREIGHTANGULAR + RED QUIET + LADDERLEGS + 16 LIPS + AHMAHLLAMAH + DJ GHETTO BLASTER P.A.'s Lounge, 345 Somerville Ave, Somerville October 16 at 8:30 pm 617.776.1557 orwww.paslounge.com "


And finally as a special treat, were going to be giving away our new CD “After and Before” for free!




Download: Straight Angular: After and Before

Or you can copy and paste this link into your browser:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?t1ettonvwnx

So download the CD for free, read the article, and share both with everyone you know! These are exciting times, and I feel it's only going to get better.

I have a lot more updates to come! Stay tuned : )!

If I were making music 30 years ago: A breif history of the rise and fall of record companies.

The year would be 1979...



Cocaine, the end of disco, the release of Pink Floyd's masterpiece "the wall", the beginning of prince's career and the start of the horrifying 80's fashion movement. If you were a half way talented band who wrote original songs, there was a big chance a record label would pick you up, throw you in a recording studio, pump out a record, book a tour, and if you didn't make them enough money they would drop you like an aborted fetus.

If I were making music back then, I know I would get a deal. Well on second thought... I don't know if I would get signed, seeing how I wasn't alive until 1987, or confident in my talents as musician until 2005; but I know the chances would have been dramatically higher.



The reason being is, back then if you wanted to hear a song, such as the brilliant "As" by Stevie Wonder, you would have to go to the record store and buy the album, "Songs in the Key of Life". On top of that, the radio was like a constant advertisement for the record companies, because they knew the only way people could hear music, is if they bought the record or hoped they played it on the radio. Most people just bought the record. Since the record companies were making so much money off of all of these sales they could afford to take chances on all kinds of horrifying bands and get away with it.

Then time passed, the glorious day of 7/7/87 occurred and I was born. When I was conscious enough to remember things in the early 90's, the state of music was in a gradual change. Now these old "record things" were replaced by tapes, and if you could afford a player, CD's were the highest quality thing out there. The record companies were still sitting high on their solid gold horses, because yet again, killer songs on the radio could only be heard if you bought the tape or CD.

If the record companies were a golden horse, than there was one thing was right underneath them - slowly melting their horse into soft malleable gold. That boiling hot surface was the internet. Software like audio grabber could save ".wav" or ".mp3" files of a whole Cd on your computers hard drive. When it was on your hard drive, sharing programs like Napster, Morpheus, Kazza, or Bear Share were distributing all these music files for....... free.

Free wasn't a word the record companies had ever heard. Then celebrities began to notice that they were not making as much money as they used to; so logically they tried to stop it. They got their fancy lawyers, and made commercials to scare everyone, but the people weren't going to stop. After a while the record companies began to realize this so, they created the itunes store, and similar music purchasing sites. This way people could buy music as .mp3's and put the new "Shakira" or "Britney Spears" song on their ipod.




Just like anyone who has power, they will resort to anything to maintain their power. When sales dip they highly publicize some poor house wife or college kid getting sued for 6 Billion dollars to scare people into buying mp3's again. Currently the best way to steal music is the use of torrents or doing some google searching. The record companies are withering away... they really are on their death beds.




There is only one market remaining that is like an IV in the dying arm of record execs... and that is the "tween" market. This market exists because kids are too young to have to money to buy a CD, so they ask their parental units to do so... the parents being old enough to remember, "if I want to listen to music I need to buy the CD!" So they go out and buy their child the new Hannah Montana or Boys Like Girls CD and pick up an Elton John's greatest hits for them selves, so they can have nostalgic experiences on their drive to and from work.

Now here I am. Its 2009, there is basically no such thing a record label that picks up bands anymore. No one buys music, everyone steals it. So how are musicians supposed to make a living if they cannot sell records anymore? Even Cd's are becoming obsolete. People just want mp3s and a maybe a vinyl to play in their modern record player so they can seem more "indie".




The bleak reality for musicians today is that, the only way to make money creating music is to tour... but the kicker is that touring costs money, so it is very hard to make a profit from it... especially if your starting out fresh. Bands today have to be amazing performers because that is the only way they will be able to sell merchandise. If you can convince people that they are having a great time at your show, then you have secured a few sales so you can have enough gas to get to the next city.

This cycle repeats until the artist gets sick of it or they die due to suicide or exhaustion.



So I wish I was 22 in 1979. At least then it would be possible to make money from album sales. Currently the only way to make money in music is to A) Sell to Tweens or B) Do jingles, or C) Compose for video games or movies. For all of us who are artists and want to stick to our passions of creating original music, we have to tour and hope people like us.

That's just the way the cookie crumbles. So give up those dreams of some British CEO knocking on your door proclaiming that "your music is bloody brilliant!" Than proceeding to flying you in his private corporate jet to a recording studio. Those days are over - you now need to do it your self. Go on tour. Go now... hurry up before that doesn't work either!!

So your a "starving artist"?

What is a starving artist?

Well the literal definition would be - one who creates things who just so happens to be hungry. Hungry for what you may ask? This part of the definition can be skewed - is this artist hungry for calories or is he hungry for people to view his art? I do think in most cases it is the latter. How does one become like this? I like to imagine this scenario.

Picture a summer day, just a few hours afternoon as the sun begins its retreat out into the western sky. In the distance you can hear little Timmy with his OshKosh B'Gosh outfit, stomping on the pavement of his parents drive way.




Martha, his mother - who is of course toiling in the kitchen, hears the triumphant little steps of her 7 year recent vaginal spawn. Intrigued to know what he is all fired up about, she looks out the window and sees her son flailing a piece of paper around, darting to the house; while in the background the roar of the school bus fades away.

Nearly out of breath Timmy opens the screen door and yells in an enthusiastic manner, "mama mama look at the grade i got on this drawing!!!"
Martha takes the sheet of paper only to see a horribly scribbled man flying a kite in a crayon field of orange and green. "Wow this is amazing!" she lies encouraging her young boy, "You could be the next Picasso!"
"Really mama, isn't he a famous artist?!" Timmy spoke with big dilated dreams in his eyes.
"Yes son, he sure is - why don't you keep drawing..." she responded with a careless encouragement.

Little did she know what kind of monster she had just created. The words "famous artist" have now been branded in Timmy's malleable mind.

Fast forward 15 years. Our little Timmy is now 22, and has worked very hard on his art. He is much better now and in fact, he thinks he is so good, that he is still perusing his childhood dreams of becoming a famous artist. His mother long ago stoped caring about his art because she realized she was still supporting her son. So now he is starving for attention. Once his mother kicks him out, poor Timmy will go out into the world (most likely the nearest city) yelling with clenched fists, "Mom I'll prove to you that I will become a famous artist!"



If you go to any big city, you can see hundreds of these "Timmy's" pedaling their art on the street, playing music, dancing, reciting horrifying poetry, or doing what ever art thier mothers said they were good at.

Artists are sad people. They try to change the world by being original... but really they just want to prove their families wrong, because deep down inside, they know you need to make money in this world... with out money you are nothing and no one cares about you.



So, all you starving artists out there - get a job. No one cares about your art except for you and maybe your similarly pathetic girl friend.

God damn I am a hypocrite.