Get it while it's hot
I'm not sure how to link to Ryan Adams' latest blog posts, as there are several (a common phrase when describing Ryan Adams' anything) and they're likely to be deleted by the time you read this, so you won't even see them unless they're in your RSS/LJ friends etc,  but they remind me so much of how I used to blog... when I first started. That urge to get everything you ever thought about everything out there... opinions, rants and twitter/facebook status updates in the form of complete entries before facebook/twitter existed... the morning-after regrets, etc etc etc. They're all there, updated and deleted so quickly on http://dradamsfilms.com/ it's impossible to realistically keep up - like, I doubt he has a day job and all. In his latest sequence of posts, he's managed to appreciate personalities and pieces as varied as Morrissey, Sonic Youth's Sister, Ayn Rand, Nas, some dude whose identity I'd have no idea and the humble typewriter, which he claims "builds character, does not lose files, makes great racket".

Having once owned a typewriter on which I laid down "permanent" versions of songs, before I owned a computer and a  decent compartmented folder, I'd also like to add to Ryan's list, in regards to typewriters, "initially cheap but expensive to maintain, unreliable, would lock up if you typed too fast and so loud i had to set it up in the front lawn as not to piss off my flatmates".

Pen and paper still rules. That, and as I've discovered tonight, laying down demos. I've been through my digital studio thing, marking down what to keep and what to delete, as it keeps running out of space. Loads to delete of course, finished off recordings from the past three years and whatnot.. but I found a few songs I'd forgotten about, or never finished, or which contain vital ideas for future versions... but most importantly, loads of crap I can delete to make way for new material.

But hearing Effortlessly, a song I quickly realised was a masterpiece (by my own standards, which are significantly below McCartney's) but never managed to record satisfactorily when it was written (in 2005), reminded me how many songs I still have lying around in limbo I have to release somehow. For those of you who know my stuff, imagine a song as tuneful and accessible as Sleepless, but with the depth of Johnny Cash, odd lyrics that are halfway between Bernard Sumner, Matt Bellamy, Nicky Wire and Rivers Cuomo, and a keyboard melody straight from Weezer or the Human League... alright, I've gone too far now. That's enough. The song gave me sleepless (no pun intended) nights back in 2005, I don't want them to start again - especially since this new song I've penned (with Raid Over Moscow in mind), Stop It, is giving me similar jitters!