Fav's of '07

Top Five Albums:
1. Sky Blue Sky - Wilco
2. In Rainbows - Radiohead
3. The Reminder - Feist
4. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - Spoon
5. Back to Black - Amy Winehouse

Top Five Songs:
1. The Underdog - Spoon
2. Hate it Here - Wilco
3. All I Need - Radiohead
4. Hurricane - Allie Peden
5. Sea Lion Woman - Feist

Top Five Movies:
1. Juno
2. The Darjeeling Limited
3. No Country for Old Men
4. I'm Not There
5. Waitress

"Let me think about that for a while..."

I tend to get stuck on things. I have seen this film (The Darjeeling Limited) 3 times now. It seems to cater to my desires so well that I never want to leave the world it creates. I want the oppurtunity to go somewhere and hash it all out, so to speak. I often get the idealistic idea of picking up and going somewhere for an undefined period of time, leaving my cell phone, computer...behind. In my mind, I would leave a note for my loved ones...something to the effect of:

Dear loved ones,
By the time you read this I will be well on my way, my destination is undetermined, as is my time of return. All I know is I am heading west. Wish me luck in finding what I need.

love,
Mike

My plan is also to leave on my motorcycle which I will someday own.

I have been trying to write. Short stories for now but with the eventual goal of writing a screenplay of sorts. Film is something that I have always had a mild to severe obsession with and I often dream of creating one myself. I figure no better time than now to start trying.

Wish me luck in finding what I need.

-mike

Beauty in the spaces between...

I saw a film last night that made me very happy. It's called "Mutual Appreciation." It's about guy in his early 20's moving to New York to try and get his music career off the ground. Perfect, right? What's interesting is that nothing happens in this movie...seriously nothing...which doesn't sound like a good thing when I say/type it; However, this is the only film I've seen where this type of anti-narrative works reeeeeally well. All the characters are instantly likeable and always honest. The viewer is simply forced to assume that the real action of this story goes down between the cuts. Although I may not understand completely the meaning behind this technique, I know that I felt like I was watching a perfect representation of "our generation." So much of the conversation and relationships reminded me of myself and my peers that it almost made me uncomfortable. This is a much more accurate and honest representation of my generation than the exaggeration and idealism of, say, Garden State. I think I forgot to mention that this movie is hilarious. Scope it.

Jive on This

Once upon a time I was a youth group kid. I wasn't, however, a "youth group" kid...if you will...My friends and I did go to 3 youth group meetings per week, we did feel guilty about not asking each other about our "walks with the lord" enough, and we did look down on every poor, secular peer in our high school...but... we were "cool" youth group kids...this is how we were different. While most youth group kids would spend their spare time planning the next youth event, we would go fishing off in the sewage-infested water of Lake Ontario; While other youth group kids would sit home alone reading the latest John Eldredge book or doing their homework, we would be out filming each other embarassing strangers or jumping off playgrounds...

....ok the truth is that we weren't very cool...or we were REALLY cool...im not sure which. All I know is that we felt pretty damn good about ourselves given the fact that we weren't faced with the temptation to "party" or "swear" like the lost souls of our high school. I also now know that something in our bodies was telling us that we were a little off base...resulting in us forming a high school fraternity, which met weekly and consisted almost exclusively of us letting out our inexplicable aggression on each other in irrational competitions and "fat kid vs. skinny kid" medieval battles. Another interesting product of our spare time was the production of short videos. We would often shoot faux-documentaries about things such as "Publishers Clearinghouse training camp," and a fake boy band managed by our youth leader.

This is what brings me to "Jive on This." "Jive on This" is band formed as a side project to the band "Nudist Buddhist" whose principal members were Phil Byers and Chris Sterling. "Sleighbells" is a song we recorded at Parkminister church sometime in 2003 or 2004. It was completely improvised, we picked a key which allowed Phil to simply play any black key on the keyboard, I played drums and guitar, and Chris played bass. The following is the subsequent music video we filmed for the song. Enjoy.



-MIke

Carl's Camera pt. 2

The purpose of the above picture is to document the historic micing of Ivan Colon's vocals from the back of a trash can. This is a production move that I am very proud of and the results can be heard on the opening track of Ivan's EP, "Despite the Atlantic."

The Mountains, nephew Damon...Why don't I Live Here?

Big Beard Recording

Winter Came.

Happy Valentine's Day. In spite of the fact that I spend this holiday alone (in the "Valentine" sense of the word) I feel at this moment that my heart is full and my mind is a bit overwhelmed. My Dad just left after spending almost two weeks helping me build up my new studio. When I say "helping me," I really mean discussing with me certain ideas and fantasies about how we could make the studio great, and then him doing it while I do other things. By the end I couldn't handle the amount of effort he had put into helping me out. It really looks amazing and I can't thank him enough.

The aforementioned "other things" I have been doing entail almost exclusively working on the Tyler James record. We are about 2 weeks into it and have 2 more to go. I've been able to fulfill a few of my dreams with this record. One of which is taking a great band and being able to record them live (which we did the first week at Sputnik). The Biv guys were able to help out with the live tracking which made for a relaxed and creative working environment. We trucked through 11-ish tracks in 5 nights (bass drums, organ, piano, and vox on most) with the help of whiskey, cigarettes, and coffee. It was a great time and I am grateful to have been a part of it. Now we're working at my new place doing random overdubs.



I've been throwing around some possible names for the studio. Some tentatives include: Ivy Road Studios, The Ivy, Beard Studios, Big Beard Recording...still working on it.

That's all for now.

Love and Respect. Happy Valentine's Day to all.

-Mike

My best of 2006 (you should care about this...trust me)

Top 10 Albums:

1. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - The Letting Go
2. M. Ward - Post- War
3. Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That
4. Danielson - Ships
5. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
6. Vollmar - Beach Blanket Vollmar
7. Band of Horses - Everything all the Time
8. Cat Power - The Greatest
9. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
10. Yo La Tengo - I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

(*note* - I am positive that Tom Waits' "Orphans" would be my #1 but I haven't had the money to buy it yet.)

Top 5 Songs:
1. "Chinese Translation - M. Ward
2. "Wai" - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
3. "My Love" - Justin Timberlake ft. T.I
4. "Everybody Daylight" - Brightblack Morning Light
5. Beirut - Postcards from Italy

Happy 2007!

-mike

Jesus Actually

Christmas day has come and gone and it was a huge success. Family, Friends, Food, Wine, Jesus, and Guitar Hero...for one day every year, life seems to be perfect. Here are some samples from my new Christmas Camera.








-mike

Carl's camera

I've decided that I love old cameras. Especially semi-broken ones... ESPECIALLY ones with sentimental value. My grandfather's old manual slr, for example. Here are some samples.

I Trembled Electric

In my dream she sang so sweetly
A melody I hoped to sing
So enslaved by her sweet wonder
cut my legs and fingered hunger
she sang my name and so engulfed
i cried and felt me legs fail
in her arms I trembled electric

The older that we get
we know that nothing else for us is possible
when I was quiet I heard your voice in everything.

I will wake up tomorrow
I have tended to God's small song
and to love's small song
and closed my eyes to sleep so long
and tonight I'll go
into all of the places that you love
that is my place here
to have been in those
I will wake up tomorrow
I have amended some of the things
that some actions bring
and close the head to be with you
in each I there is an apple
buried there before the eye
and out of sockets come the branches
and from the branches
dangle I.

----------------------------------

Perfect.

Artist's Point

Time is always molding something..moving me somewhere. It is because of time that some of the world's most beautiful scenes exist. It cannot be slowed down and it shouldn't be. My one attempt at slowing time resulted in a painful slap in the face (metaphorically speaking...clearly). In the midst of my paranoia of forgetting, I overlooked the idea of letting go. This idea, in my mind, was just another term for forgetting, but it's really a healthy way of remembering. My home will never be the same, neither will my relationships, my family, etc... But this is ok. Like "Artist's Point," in Grand Marais, Minnesota, where the above picture was taken, time is always shaping our world, our life, into something beautiful... that said, nothing is without its dangers or "slippery surfaces."

Grand Marais, MN (last stop on trip)

Mirek rewrote history

I have been reading Milan Kundera's "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" and it has proved to be a suspiciously ideal choice to guide me through this 3 week trip. It is about a man on a trip to both hide from the present and revisit his past. It is about fear of forgetting and the weight of one's past. This is a book that I have owned for a while and tried to read several times. For some reason I could never connect with it until now. I now understand that I was supposed to read at this specific moment, when it would significantly effect me by articulating the almost exact discussions I have been having in my mind.

Some excerpts:

"They shout that they want to shape a better future, but it's not true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy or repaint it."

"In the political jargon of the those days, the word 'intellectual' was an insult. It indicated someone who did not understand life and was cutoff from the people...Unlike those who had their feet solidly on the ground, they were said to float in the air."

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

In other news, I had a great weekend in Cleveland with Chris, and a wonderful time with Phil and Ed in Ithaca yesterday. I am here a just two more days before I embark to Chicago then Minnesota to meet up with Dan(imal) (he loves animals, and I love him).

::heart::

-mike

P.S
more quotes:

"Don't put your trust in walls, cause walls will only crush you when they fall"

"I never learned to count my blessings, I choose instead to dwell in my disasters."

-Ray Lamontagne

The quest: Day 3 ("Drink it Up")

I am on my way.
I am trying to slow down time.
It moves too fast, change happens too rapidly.
I am taking a time out to think about what I've done.
I am experiencing the changing of the seasons in 5 different states.
I am seeing old friends.
I am taking lots of polaroids.
The leaves are just starting to change in New York.
I am seeing old friends.
I am constantly listening to M Ward's latest, Ray Lamontagne's latest, and Dylan's 'Time out of Mind.'
I will scan polaroids soon.

I am writing letters. If you would like to write me one. Send it here:
Mike Odmark
7 Boulder Dr.
Churchville, NY 14428

You can't go home again (everybody knows that by now).

My parents sold our house. This means that in a couple months, the official place I could always count on returning to will be intruded by some other family. I feel ok with this right now although it will be different when I actually go home and experience the disturbing reality of not being able to seek refuge in my normal places: the basement or the tree where my child treehouse used to reside. When I moved to Nashville, I felt the slow loss of Rochester as "my home" and knew that my parents would move eventually. We lived in this same house my entire life so I am not familiar with the feeling of a family move. Im sure it will be disorienting but I think I can handle it.

I am nearing the end of my training at the Recording Workshop. It has been amazing and I can't wait to put my knowledge to work upon my return to Nashville. Part of me doesn't want to leave though. This is kind of like a refuge for audio nerds from all over America. Conversations revolve around audio and music exclusively. There are house partys like any college would have but the drunken arguments revolve around Pro Tools vs. Cubase, Analog vs. digital, stereo micing techniques etc. Pretty bizarre at times.





Ryan Booth was kind enough to take some pictures during the Allie Peden project. Here are some of my favs.

On Sonic Intolerance by Larry Thrasher

"This is not a perfect world.

Since the onslaught of affordable Digital audio I have noticed a certain breed expounding new convictions on sonic acceptibility. Intolerant to any audio experience which does not conform to the new standards they negate 5000 years of human experience in exchange for an extra 20 dB of signal to noise ratio. This is not consumer fetishism, this is consumer fascism.

Digital-Aryans begin the new inquisition.

A new crusade promises to save the world frin its past sins of tape hiss, wow and flutter, and record surface noise. Scratchy old records must be "cleansed" and re"mastered" (or simply discarded). Field recordings are considered 'unusable.' Masses flock with great alarm to expect new standards of audio conformity. Preprogrammed factory presets seduce users into convenience oriented approaches. Sounds become controlled by marketing committees and are spoon-fed to eager audio sheep. Under the aegis of multi-national electronic corporations, music produced is little more thand brand endorsements which have nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with disassociation. Human experience (and expression) is entirely ignored. The frenze of indigenous chants echo no more. Studios become an Auschwitz for sounds. A cold sterile laboratory where nothing lives. Souls are reduced to binary data. The heart is discarded, its wonderfully irregular beat simply doesn't live up to click tracks.

Digital audio is a crock of shit...

...At this very moment scores of living, breathing human beings plot the revolution. An underground subculture of non-believers quetly stock-pile noisy vacuum tubes, oversized reel-to-reels, spring reverbs, and tape delays. They use razor blades to edit with. They smile when the meter goes into the red. They not only tolerate human error, they leave it in the mix. They strive for a value system which places the mundane material world in a healthy context...

-Larry Thrasher

Chillicothe

I am in the Chillicothe, OH public library, mentally preparing for my first day of school tomorrow. I am excited for the school but am not sure how I will be able to handle this living situation for 5 weeks. I am living in a cabin with four other guys, who decided that our cabin will be a "smoking" cabin, for both cigarettes and the other. Our cabin is about the size of a typical tool shed, complete with shower, kitchen, and 6 bunk beds. I arrived here last night with a quite surreal welcome. As I hiked up the giant hill to my cabin, I walked past a bon fire complete with a drum circle and a short mexican girl freestyling. I finally got to my cabin to meet my roommates, who were stoned and listening to instrumental hardcore music (?!). As the cabin wasn't big enough for me to maneuver towards my bunk, I stood there for a good 15 minutes and discussed with the stoners the perks of opening a studio in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska. My throat is already feeling the wear of sleeping on the top bunk of a room consistently thick with smoke.
This is only an obstacle though, I will still give it my all at this school and make the best of it. After all, I'm sure the 25 year old stoner has some wisdom to share.
Cheers,
Mikey Mike

The Process

I am now well into the section of my life I call, "livin' the dream." I can now accurately say that I am "too cool for school." I finished the project with Brian Militana last week and it turned out amazing. It was by far the most artistically challenging thing I've been involved in and it was the most difficult project to cram into two weeks. That said, I think the record speaks for itself and I think Brian has huge potential. I am now halfway through a record with Allie Peden. This has been a completely different atmosphere, which has been refreshing for me. It has been a very comfortable and low-stress session where all ideas and input are considered and pursued. I am excited to see how the final product sounds.
I have to constantly remind myself that this is a process and I can't constantly live in anticipation of the future but I have to enjoy the process itself. This goes for all aspects of my life. It takes a lot of patience and faith to live free of anxiety. This time out of school has been a gift but it definitely has not been easy. I am trying to enjoy the aspects of my life that are working and that are proving themselves to be fulfilling. There is a big section of my mind where I keep the worry, regret, anxiety, loss; I plan to keep all of that there, so that it is not consuming my mind but it is a part of it and I am dealing with it. It's kind of like putting a bunch of old pictures in a drawer as opposed to throwing them out. The process is figuring out how to deal with those "pictures," how often to take them out, and ultimately trying to learn from them. It's just a process, and I am ok with that.

-mike