90 Seconds

The inevitability of time has again pushed against our best plans and we are adjusting accordingly. Yes, we are still actively making music and have come up with a couple of songs we think we like at the moment. Of course this has been the case in the past and when we listen to those former darlings now we are reminded of how far we’ve come. Our excuse for delay is multifaceted, sincere, and sadly unsatisfying. Simply put, life comes first. In the meantime we have started a SoundCloud page and welcome you to visit it and listen to our new stuff.
Latest tracks by 90 Seconds

“No matter how hard things get, music will get better. The only proof you’ll ever need of the existence of God is music.”
- Kurt Vonnegut 2004

We have begun to ease out of the full-blown song creation mode, and have begun to start the track selection process. We will choose five songs we believe in to complete. It has been fun so far going through the tracks we have been creating for the last year and a half. Some of them immediately come back alive and I remember how great they were and why we thought they were working. Others . . . well . . . not so much. Dub has these tracks I call “depression sessions,” that just ooze and drip with heavy emotion. She just emotes like crazy and these songs are the result. I don’t know if they will ever see the light as 90 tracks, but it is fun to hear them. And we make these goofy tracks where all the instruments are competing for sonic space without any real theme or vibe. And the funniest thing is that it’s been this way for as long as we’ve made music together. Thankfully, the music we make has improved (even the crappy tracks). Hopefully we will be posting some goodness soon.

Chillwave/Dreambeat/Glo-fi is a fantastic genre. At this point it seems almost impossible to categorize anything now. When people ask me what kind of music 90 Seconds makes I am at a loss to give them an answer. I’m like, “Well, it’s like folksy, quasi-ambient, new wave, instrumental hip hop.” They just nod. Brooklyn based music aficionado Jakub Alexander, A&R for the Ghostly International label just calls it, “low melodic electronic stuffs” One person described this genre (or the mash-up of genres) unmemorable. It’s funny what becomes memorable. Even now there are people who have never listened to the Beatles, The Who or The Rolling Stones. There are a number who never heard The Police, The Cars or Duran Duran. There are even a few who never listened to Pearl Jam, Nirvana or The Smashing Pumpkins. These songs that are coming out are going to be their songs by their bands. These tracks will give congruity and continuity to their narrative. And I am okay with that. I envy the kid who will get all sentimental listening to Highway of Endless Dreams by M83. Maybe that same kid listens to The Dark Party remix of Napping Captain by Jogger while looking out the window of an RV on a road trip with his grandparents and he never forgets it. To me, that kid is lucky.

90 Seconds has always been a concept band based on the idea that music should come from an authentic and emotionally charged place. For us that place is intrinsically linked to our sobriety. In fact the name 90 Seconds comes from the idea that a relapse can happen in 90 seconds and that it happens well before the actual usage. We wanted to use our music as a conduit to something greater than the sum of its parts. Though we might reluctantly admit that we have some innate talent, we have no true explanation for how the songs actually come about. All we can come up with is that it comes from someplace, somewhere bigger than us. When we work from that place, the music comes free and easy. Any time our egos get inflated, the music turns stagnant and rotten. And like good farmers, sometimes you need to plow under your crop and try something new. We have reached that time.

Over the last six months we have been working with a new member under a different band name and completely undercover. Very few people got to hear any of the new material in these tentative stages. As time progressed and the music continued to come every time we all sat down to work and it became obvious that this was going to be our lineup for the future. We discussed it at length in private and came to the conclusion that the working title would be abandoned and the new stuff would be accepted as 90 Seconds music. This was a very proud moment for us. Last night we became the fourth incarnation of 90 Seconds with the addition of our new vocalist Jessica Tidmore. Thank you Bama for being a part of our group. Hugs not drugs.

The elusive thing an artist takes for inspiration can vary wildly from one to another. In terms of music, I think the best musicians love to listen to music. It seems natural. The trick I think is to truly respect the music of others. I get stoked off of all sorts of stuff. Today, for example I looked up what the top songs were in 1975, my birth-year. It was all over the place. The Captain and Tenille, The Eagles, Doobies, Elton John, The Carpenters, John Denver, Earth, Wind and Fire, ELO, Queen, Bowie, and a string of lesser knowns like Freddy Fender and Linda Ronstadt. There was a grip of disco, soul and funk tracks. I am really loving the great keyboard, guitar, and vocals. Crossover hits like I Can Help by Billy Swan are amazing. And sometimes I think people forget how deeply funky the songs of that time were. One Of These Nights by The Eagles has an unreal funk bassline. They got terribly played out, but I never fell in line so their stuff is relatively fresh for me. I always remember the scene in The Big Lebowski when he pleads with the cab driver to turn off The Eagles. “I’ve had a rough night. And I hate the fucking Eagles, man.”

The Stranger: There’s just one thing, Dude.
The Dude: And what’s that?
The Stranger: Do you have to use so many cuss words?
The Dude: What the fuck you talking about?
The Stranger: Okay, Dude. Have it your way.

One of the most difficult things about being an unpaid producer is the balance between life, work, and music. When music is more than a hobby but less than a job it sits in a part of life where things can often collect dust. It doesn’t take much to derail me from making new music, or *gasp* working on old stuff. Something as simple as a computer problem can keep me away for months. And the worst part is that even after the problem is fixed it takes a long time to get back to a place where music takes a high priority because usually in the interim something else has taken its spot, and now the two are in competition. I suppose the point of this is that the time adds up, and projects like 90 Seconds can take actual decades in the making. That can be a bit disconcerting if you are an instant gratification junkie, or need regular accolades and feedback. We literally have hundreds of songs, most of which have never been heard outside of Carolyn and myself. I wonder if other bands are the same way. If so there could be potentially thousands of unheard songs by groups I love just sitting out there collecting dust in some hard drive. Sometimes you see artists release collections of b-sides and alternate takes along with the unpublished tracks that didn’t make the cut. Sometimes this kind of stuff has to be released posthumously, like that new Michael Jackson track “This Is It,” or all that old 2Pac stuff. Sometimes an artist will release their stuff as a side-project instead of trying to fit it into an already existing identity. The members of Tortoise all have interesting side-projects like that. Isotope 217 and Brokeback are both very good in their own right. Sometimes the side project becomes bigger than the original group like how Richard Dorfmeister has released more albums as Tosca than he did with Kruder & Dorfmeister. I suppose all artists need to find the sufficient motivation to get past the inertia of life. We are no different.

Now I can feel comfortable actually writing something on our new site. To be specific this is a MUSIC site for the group 90 Seconds. It will also include other things peripheral to the music like reviews of tech, talk about techniques, and our wild theories about everything. The site is supposed to be somewhat all-encompassing. The idea is that you could come to the site and get an instant feel for what 90 Seconds has been up to. I may seem like using the “blog” format is incompatible for a music site, but I would disagree. My inspiration came from Scott Hansen’s ISO50 site where he and his collaborators do more than just talk about his band Tycho, or his design work. It is done very very well, and our site does not compare, but hopefully we can continue to make it useful and interesting.  Thanks for visiting.