My disclaimer or: I really have seen the future, it's just taking me a long time write about it

Okay, I'm gonna add one more, on a topic I've been meaning to address over at the band's myspace page. However, given that Pete Townshend got me here, it feels like this is a good place to address the topic at hand, which is the upcoming Jet Age record (by upcoming, I mean the next record we'll make, a process that should begin in late summer or so); it's a concept album and, if I'm totally honest, it's a rock opera (or the score and libretto to a musical). It's got three acts and, if I nail the lyrics to the remaining song, it's actually gonna make a fair amount of sense as a linear story. Certainly, a minimum of narrative would explain any holes.

Years ago, I told a music writer that the next record made by my then-band, the hurricane lamps, would spend a lot of time talking about sex (semi)explicitly. I was wrong; a few years after I made that claim, I finally did address sex in a manner that I found satisfactory, and I did it in one song and one song only. Since issuing that false claim, I've learned that the gestation period for my songwriting ideas is really, really long.

Given that, I find that the next Jet Age record runs the risk of being less timely than it could be. I just read an article in a glossy men's magazine (not Maxim of FHM; a rung or two above) that really addressed bulk of the subjects at hand in my latest collection of songs. This tells me that, by the time the record comes out, the discussion I hope to join in on may be well under way.

This blog, then, is my disclaimer: If the next Jet Age record seems to be getting in late on the discussion, it wasn't because I wasn't thinking about the topics at hand, and this here blog is the proof.

I've got lyrics for 10 out of the 11 songs that will make up the album. I've worked my ass off to ensure that each song stands on its own (this last song, which really must tie together the narrative, coming as it does at the end of the "second act," may prove to be the exception), and it's certainly the best record I've written, if not the best collection of songs (I'm still REALLY proud of You Deserve What You Want and Sing Me a Song by the lamps, although those albums certainly could've been better executed); if it's not the best collection of songs, it's damn close.

>PHEW!< Is that enough self importance for one afternoon? -E