John Roderick: Lunar Eclipses

John Roderick is the singer/guitarist in The Long Winters. This is the first of his weekly contributions to Reverb, which you can read right here, every Wednesday morning.

I was holed up in my little home studio last Thursday working on writing some songs for the next Long Winters record when I got a text message from a friend telling me to check out the lunar eclipse. There's a window over the desk where I work, so I parted the curtains and there was the eclipse right above me, the moon a burnt red. Fortunately, I had my dad's old Navy binoculars right to hand, so I spent several minutes inspecting the lunar surface.

I'd been laying down some mondo-distorto bass grooves over a grimy 808-inflected hard rock disco jam, as you will, and as I examined the moon the loop was still cranking out of the speakers two feet from my head. I gradually became aware that the music was still blaring and that I was sitting in my long johns with a bass feeding back in my lap while I studied an eclipse with binoculars, and I thought "I'm dangerously close to achieving a 'nerd singularity'". If I'd been talking on the phone about the Beatles, or playing World of Warcraft, it could have been a dangerous situation.

In any case, this next Long Winters album is going to have a lot of lunar-eclipse-influenced disco jams on it, and the Seattle Weekly asked me to blog about it because they are running out of ideas and hoping to squeeze some free content out of people. I, for one, don't mind because I'm mad about blogging! I was thinking the other day that, what with the incredible shortage of books and magazines in the world, I'd like to dedicate more of my precious reading hours to consuming the unedited journaling of as many amateur diarists as time permits! Hooray!

What better endorsement of this compulsive sharing impulse than were I to blog myself? I can hear the Seattle Weekly Reverb blog audience now, "That John Roderick seems like an unlikable grouch, I wonder what he's thinking about?" *Sigh* Well wonder no longer! I'm thinking about lots of stuff! For instance, why did I agree to let my brother park his old Audi in front of my house, even after he said, "The battery doesn't seem to hold a charge, and two of the tires have slow-leaks, but it's a great car!"? Have I learned nothing?

Anyway, many of you young people in your twenties might find some items of interest here in my blog. Why, I remember when you had to DIAL a telephone! But seriously, I want to share some of the hope that I've acquired after many years of fruitless struggle. I wasn't always a famous musician who could stay up till five in the morning listening to the Kinks and eating Total breakfast cereal. If you're a struggling musician, or just interested in a career in music, and your life seems to be going nowhere, relax. Life is meaningless!

Feel free to email me any questions. I'll be updating this blog every week in the hope that the more typing I do, the greater the chance that I might accidentally compose some lyrics.