Marc M. Cogman

In the last 20 years, we’ve all lived through an age of revolution in the music business. It’s common knowledge that the industry has been changed in unfathomable ways by the internet, the MP3, the iPod, etc., and the major-label system has essentially collapsed on itself.  But meanwhile, another revolution has taken place – also involving technology, one that has to do with the cultural shift from music made by live bands in mic’d rooms to music made with the heavy use of computers.  It’s come in many forms: the emergence of rap music (and its emphasis on producers and beats), the invention of pop-stars without any actual talent (and their use of auto-tune to make themselves sound palatable), and finally, the rising movement of electronic dance-music - an explosion of popularity that has led to some of the world’s most successful musicians only being able to claim “laptop” as their musical instrument.

Whether you see this as evolution or Armageddon (and I’ll stay out of that argument) you have to recognize that it was inevitable.  It’s a sea change in the world of popular music, and it’s given us wonderful innovations that musicians of all genres can appreciate.  But it’s also turned guitar-based rock into a niche art-form, a novelty, and some would argue – a feeble attempt to cling to an earlier time. 

I came of age during the death rattle of guitar music’s reign as the cultural voice of the age.  Being in a rock band was the musical thing to do – the fringe kids were the ones interested in electronica or dance music (and jazz of course.  Those guys were theserious hipsters.)  I loved being in rock bands. I loved the noise and the camaraderie and the social allowance to be as dirty or wild or youthful as I wanted.  And thanks to certain bands who lit the fuse (especially in the late 60’s, the 70’s and the early 90’s), being a rock musician also meant you could be a serious artist.  I could write real lyrics, tell real stories, and not be too presumptuous in thinking I could actually have an effect on people in a tangible, emotional way. 

Over time, certain goals for my music became more important to me, and the importance of other goals waned.  After awhile, noise wasn’t as important as emotional impact.  Camaraderie wasn’t as essential as control.  To me, an infinite sense of possibility could only be reached by the removal of what I saw as limitations (literally, the democratic process of being in a band.)

Welcome to the Danger Show was an amazing experience in that I broke away from all of that.  I finally dreamt up a record, and then managed to make that record in exactly the image I had in my head from the beginning.  Being a solo artist allowed my lyrics and my voice to be front and center, with everything else as supporting elements, and I was able reach new artistic heights. 

Somewhere in there, I got enamored with Americana.  A big part of me started wanting things to be rootsy and dusty, with a sepia-tone feel and analog warmth, like those great singer-songwriter records from Laurel Canyon in the 70’s.  So I scratched that itch with Beneath a Balcony, and again I felt gratified that my personal vision was realized.

But a funny thing happened along the way, in the process of playing clubs in Los Angeles, supporting Danger Show and writing new material:  I was suddenly (and quite accidentally) in a band again!  But instead of opposing it, I realized it felt incredible.  I’d stumbled upon the best of both worlds – the camaraderie and support of world-class musicians, but an understanding between us that this was my ship, and I alone would be steering it.  There was a tremendous exchange of trust: I could create and control the material, and they could use their best judgment in adding their parts. 

And so it was: among the Americana experimentation, the sprawling Dylanesque lyrical epics, and the diversifying subject matter, complete with ars poetica self-examination and a growing sense of doom, that the inevitable happened.  I wanted to take my new, improved band and do something I’d always loved doing:

I wanted to make a rock-n-roll record full of love songs.

And so on March 6^th, 2012, I give you Anthems.

In many ways, Anthems is the rock record I always wanted to make; the one – perhaps – I would have made back when I was just a member of rock bands if I’d been allowed to call all the shots. It’s a rock record that has does have guitar-solos, but only messy ones without flamboyant flourishes.  It’s a rock record with powerful vocals, but not the quadruple-tracked, auto-tuned wall of impersonal sound found too often nowadays. It’s a rock record that features two songs recorded with an entire band playing live in one big room together, and one song improvised entirely.  It’s a rock record full of love songs, but lyrically-driven as much as any of my solo records have been.  (I’m still a singer-songwriter after all.)

Personally, I feel there’s always been a symbiotic relationship between rock music and love songs.  They’re what audiences want to hear, because they’re what people can identify with most.  And poems about love are the perfect accompanying language to a rock song. In this context, with guitars wailing and cymbals crashing, with a band hammering away at simple chords and a melody cutting through the noise, simple love songs become something bigger.  They become the thing that made guitar-based music the music of a generation, however long ago that may have been.  Backed by a loud, awesome rock band, love songs become anthems.  The word actually means, “sacred songs” when you trace it back its Greek roots. 

So maybe guitar-based music is now just a novelty, or a stale genre with a shrinking audience, or worse yet, some lame-duck attempt to coast off a golden age from someone else’s revolution, one long-since given way to innovations like computer-based music or the cultural migration toward hip-hop. While I have no ill will towards hip-hop or electronica, I’d like to think that’s all a miscalculation.

Rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t have to be a goofy parody of its former self, characterized by the gags from Spinal Tap and bad tribute bands.  It doesn’t have to be limited to a set of people entrenched in red-state anti-intellectualism.  And it doesn’t have to “evolve” into something made by a bunch of guys with laptops and robot vocals.  It can still be a pure, American art form, and it can still be taken seriously.

In any case, this much is true: not too long ago, it was something serious artists aspired to – the idea of making great rock music, and singing love songs. It was something special. Something sacred. 

Thanks for listening. 

When I was just a lower-case g, 2010 was that year that seemed to mean THE FUTURE.  It was just wild enough, just far enough away.  My hyper-active artistic older brother Bryan used to draw comic books; he made one where we all got in a time machine and went to THE FUTURE and 2010 was naturally the destination.  This was probably 1986 or 1987 and so his vision of how things would be were understandably off.  I mean, we had the flying cars, naturally.  That one never happened. I think my little brother Clay was running for president with my cousin Melissa as his running mate.  Never mind that Clay's only 26 in 2010 (and that's not an election year.)  I think Bryan had me as a baseball star or something.

Anyway, here in THE FUTURE, the one without flying cars and where my little brother has no hope of carrying New Hampshire, it seems all I've ever wanted was for summer to come around and to climb in the van and go, go, go.  And it would seem in 2010 my wish has been granted. 

I'll be embarking on an especially ambitious schedule of touring over the next six months, going to places I haven't been in awhile and a truckload more to which I've never been before.  I've been wanting for a long time now to stop fussing around with music bizness as we've known it and just take the music to the people, the old-fashioned way: on stage.

First, I'll pop up to Atascadero and San Francisco for just a few shows with Ben De La Cour, June 11-14th.  Then the real fun begins when I join Thomas Ian Nicholas and his band for dates in Nevada, Colorado, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa, and more, from June 20th to July 8th.  Just as that tour winds back toward the west, I'll hop off in Arizona and hop on my own tour (again with Ben De La Cour supporting) which runs through Phoenix, El Paso, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Shreveport, New Orleans, Ft. Worth, Dallas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and back to Arizona and California, from July 9th through July 24th.

That July tour will also feature my old filmmaker friends, Papoose Moose and the Mad Romanian "Loose Shutter".  They'll be filming the journey for their documentary (which also contains footage from our March/April trip up the left coast.)

After some time off in August, another tour, even bigger and better, will kickoff in September and carry on to Thankgiving, but I'll tell you all about that later.  In the meantime, visit the TOUR page and find out when I'm cruising on fumes into your town.  I can't wait.

love and highway miles,

Marc

...and up the coast we went.  Myself behind the wheel, flying down the interstate towards the great adventure.  Ben De La Cour sat shotgun, finger-picking an acoustic guitar across his lap.  In the back, rolling film and sound, the Mad Romanian Loose Shutter and the Papoose Moose of Jersey.  Together we rumbled into San Francisco.

Our first night we slept in the car in the Haight after drinks in an upstairs watering hole.  Ben swore he saw the ghosts of the 60's, long skirts swishing down on the sidewalk.  We had beautiful sunshine the next day, digging the green of Golden Gate park.  Down on Arguello we played our songs and met lots of good folks.  Then further north we traveled.

In Oregon the skies turned grey and cold.  We bunked in Bend and then kicked around Portland, my orphaned home away from home.  My old professor-cum editor-cum pen pal Martello invited us in, gave us hot coffee and a warm couch, and we reminisced about ten years gone.  In the shadow of snowy Mt. Hood we played again in a little roadhouse along route 27.  

Then it was Seattle and the wind and the rain.  I reconnected with old friends and met new ones, and in the early morning we bid goodbye to the Papoose Moose, called home on a big jetliner to the Garden State.  Now just three, we headed south again.

In a big old house in Berkley we caught our breath, played Oakland and San Francisco and snaked toward the rocky coast.  The waves crashed loud through the rocks at Big Sur, and along the highway, Loose Shutter, our Mad Romanian pointed his lens skyward and caught the wide wings of California Condors, swooping down along the cliffs.

We ate barbeque in Atascadero and hit the stage for the last time, songs familiar beneath our fingers.  Finally home again, I slept and slept.  It was easter sunday, and I was grateful.

Here in Venice I appreciate the sunshine and the twelve month spring.  Papoose Moose came back to town.  He and the Mad Romanian Loose Shutter showed us the film - beautiful panoramas of the great Northwest.  And before long the palaver begun, how to extend the adventure, how to heat it up and make it burn even longer.

In July, we four will climb back in the wagon and this time head south and west.  There won't be any snow or wind or cold, just sunlight and heat and dust.  We'll run through the desert, through Texas, down as for as the swamps of New Orleans and then cut north, find route 66 and head west again.  

Here in Venice I appreciate the sunshine and the twelve month spring and the turquoise waves lapping.  But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't already jonesing for the long straight road east.  We'll be there soon.

In the meantime there's music to be heard here, in my home city.  The Dead Messengers will even turn up for a full-scale rocknroll extravaganza on Cinco de Drinko.  More to come, always. More, more, more.

thanks for listening,

MMC

I had a friend in high school a little ahead of his time.  Read On the Road before everybody else, that is to say.  Wanted to get out there and see the Country. Big C.  He wanted to drive the Highways. Even had a friend or two convinced to do it too.  I hung back.  I wasn't quite ready for that.  But it wasn't too long after I developed my own unquenchable thirst to move. Town to town.  I did it first from Boston to Los Angeles in 2001, and back again.  Then again a summer later.  I went to see girls, I went to play shows, I just went.  I loved it.  Being in a different place every day.

I still do.

It's been the bad running joke of my solo career that I've done so much recording and spent so little time touring.  There have been a myriad bunch of reasons behind this fact, mostly coincidence and bad luck.  But nevertheless, the days are coming when I'll no doubt grow tired the path unfolding and will long for a lazy day in Venice. 

I met an old soul named Ben De La Cour from Brooklyn by way of Havana and London.  He's a whole different story and you'll come to know him soon, but let's just say for now that troubled minds think alike.  He and I decided to fire up the old engine again and speed off north, plucking our guitars along the way.  And so we embark on the first little tour of 2010, towards the great Northwest, a place that's never been home to me but has always felt as though it should be. 

The journey unfolds beginning the twenty-sixth of this month.  We're going to get the highway miles, and spend some time with good folks all along the way.  Join the party when we come to your town. All the info's up on other facets of this, my world wide website. 

Thanks for listening,

MMC

When all the spinning stops, I like it best to put together songs and words and stuff in tidy little packets.  Groups of things, sights and smells and times, labeled accordingly, named and catalogued and pinned to photographs.  This is the way the world ideally works - our art is well-defined in it's time and place.

Welcome to the Danger Show did it certainly.  So did Beneath a Balcony, I'm sure everyone will find when it finally pops out into the world.  

Anthems is tricky.  We're having to cobble together bits and pieces, because that's just the way of it.  It's not the way I'd do things in a perfect world, but I don't think it's going to shock anyone at this point to realize that's just not what we're living in.

This record Anthems, it's coming in 2010 (that's about all they'll let me say, and they're an intimidating bunch), and I do think it's gonna be great, no matter how wide and wild it may be.  I'll get up front with you about a few things here and now, though, just to keep you in the loop (so to speak).

In October/November/December of 2008, I got down and dirty in Radar! Studios in Los Angeles and recorded a whole bunch of stuff, including Beneath a Balcony in its entirety and a whole separate group of songs as well.  Now it's important you know that these were never a single group of tunes for the same purpose.  There was always TWO records in mind.  We didn't know which would come first, but we knew there'd be two of them, with their own sounds and mood and vibe.  The first to be completed was Beneath a Balcony.  The first, it seems, to be released is the OTHER record, which I've decided to call Anthems, for a few reasons.

1) it's sort of this acoustic poet's take on "Rock 'n' Roll!"

2) it's a lyric in one of the tunes

3) it's a rather beautiful word, don't you think? Greek etymology.   

Now four of the songs recorded in the autumn of 2008 meant for Anthems are still here, waiting for final touches.  Plus there were two more songs I recorded in October at Sound of Music Studios in Richmond, Virginia.  Those sessions were produced by Dave Lowery of the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven.  It was a lovely studio and a lovely time and those two tracks join the original four to make six.  

Finally, we decided that we just had to make this record Anthems the very best it could be, since it's meant to make me a big ol star and a household name and put my face on all the cereal boxes.  So we decided to take a handful of songs from Welcome to the Danger Show and tweak the recordings a bit, then throw THOSE songs with the four from Radar! and the two from Sound of Music all together.  Thus we have 11 tracks to work with, for those of you keeping score at home.

And just for good measure, while we've been putting tasty little finishing touches on those 11 tracks, we've been recording a couple extra tunes too, just in case we want to use them.  

So that's where we're at.  I spent a few days down at Radar! working on the songs before the hoildays, and I'll be spending a few days there this coming week as well.  We've tapped the famous Eddie Jackson to mix Anthems because we thought he did such a bang-up job with Beneath a Balcony, and we're going to have that record out for you just as soon as we can, working with our good friends over at Vagrant Records.  Of course I'll keep you updated at every turn through all of our magical electronic channels.

So sit tight and prepare to be floored.  We're in the flooring business after all.  At least that's what me and the Dead Messengers are fond of saying.

Cheers,

MMC

On the westside of Los Angeles, on a big busy street called Lincoln Blvd., there's a nifty little bar with no sign, kind of near the Jack in the Box and the address is 2101 Lincoln, but I'm pretty sure one of the digits fell off, and this bar is called THE TRIP, and technically it's in the town of Santa Monica, and these folks called Hollow Body have thrown a concert series there on Sunday Nights, and an one particular Sunday night, the FIRST Sunday night of the new year, of the new decade, that Sunday night being the 3rd of January, 2010, on this particular ngiht, I will be playing my guitar and singing songs I wrote and maybe even blowing in the harmonica too.  This is all most likely to happen in the 8 o'clock hour and hardly costs much at all.  I sincerely hope you'll take a ride down and find yourself some nice free street parking and pull up a bar stool and have a fine time.

More specifics are in the SHOWS section.  Thanks a bundle.

-MMC

I've never been fluent in the digital tongue of my generation.  Ones and zeros and other technical jargon.  I see this stuff fly by with the same dumb "O" shaped mouth of wow as when the aeroplanes take off over my head driving down Sepulveda Blvd.  I can't grasp it. Never have.  

But commerce in this the 21st century implores us to do the best we can, to carve the code and fiberoptic wire into somewhere useful, somewhere colorful and magical filled with content, content, content to entertain the masses and MOVE UNITS!!!!

Long story short (too late), this is the place it all comes to be.  The meeting point between all my old comfy secret handshakes and smoke signals and the blinking, bleeping 3-D horologium of wonder that many of my contemporaries may offer up at www.wherever.

Kapeesh?

Anyone clever enough to sit in front of a home computer device ought to have no trouble finding out what's where.  There's News for sure, all laid out in layman's terms.  And a place called Shows to direct you to our next sit-in jamboree extravaganza.  There's Music, both for listening and reading the words that go along to the tunes, and Photos for looking at.  You can even find out where to Buy the CD or Contact my astute representation.  You can sign up for more goodness in the Guestbook, find Links to more world wide websites of relevant material, or even go Home to where the Tweets come to roost.  

It's all up to you really!  Choose your own adventure!  And don't be afraid to stop by here and see the Stuff Marc Says.  I don't know how often I'll say it, but often enough.  

Welcome to my own personal pit-stop on the information super-highway.  The interweb, if you will.  The "net".  Like in that Sandra Bullock movie.  

Enjoy.

-MMC