“There are two kinds of people in the world…”  That’s the preface to a thousand sentences that end in contrasts usually stated in black and white terms.  Good and bad, happy and sad, fatalistic and optimistic, generous and greedy, self-centered and self-sacrificing, and on and on. But of course most people are not at either end of whatever spectrum you can think of; they’re somewhere along the continuum, and the world is rarely black and white. Except when it comes to music. When it comes to music, there really are two kinds of people in the world. More about that in a minute.

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I haven’t been able to blog much lately. I spent the last three days in Los Angeles working the job that pays the bills for our humble site. Over time, I’ve spent an accumulation of days in LA that amounts to years. It’s a maddening, frustrating, upside-down place with fucked up priorities, a place where ambitions and honesty go to die. It’s also a beautiful, vibrant, immensely creative place where hopes flourish and dreams become reality. It truly is a city of angels, even if many of them are fallen. All things considered, I usually love being there, even if I love being home more.

Off and on, it rained like a motherfucker while I was there. That played hell with the traffic, which is godawful even on dry days. But during the hours between the storms, the weather was glorious, and the elevated views to the west from the place where I was working were crystal clear, all the way to the swath of blue that marked the edge of the great Pacific.

When I travel for my fucking day job, I tend to have no time to myself, day or night, which sucks, because I feel cut off from the world of metal. I wasn’t able to listen to music for more than fleeting moments before collapsing into bed late at night. Yesterday morning, I had to wake up at 3:30 am for work, and the only reward was that by 8 am I was on a rocky flight back to Seattle. When I woke up, there was a riff running through my head. Continue reading »