"GRIND" OFFICIAL VIDEO

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Directed by Red Earth

Edited by Christopher Hassan

First Wave of "Split Lip Serenade" Reviews

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From around the web come the first triumvirate of music blog reviews of our EP "Split Lip Serenade"

Check them out here, leave comments, share them with friends:

Grasping The Synapse

The Third Ear

Respect The Top Hat

Instrumental & A Cappella Versions Up

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HEY PRODUCERS!  We've made instrumental and a cappella versions of Split Lip Serenade available for FREE download as well.  Download them and remix, chop, re-write, whatever.  Let's see what you've got!

No Such Thing As 'Guilty Pleasure'

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The idea that any music is any better than any other music is a ludicrous concept that leads to severe arrested development. This is something that I have only learned in the past few years, and I came to it painfully.

As a musician, the temptation is to shit on whatever anyone else is doing. We either say, “That band sucks,” or “I’ve heard it before.” We say “It’s too poppy.” We say “It’s too mainstream.” We say “It’s ‘good,’ BUT it’s not ‘marketable.’”

Highly educated/theorized musicians deride the music of less educated musicians as rudimentary. Less educated musicians say it’s all about feeling and dismiss theorized music as superfluous and mechanical. 

All of this is nonsense and is generally either a form of envy or insecurity. It’s also a hallmark of most failed and struggling musicians. This thinking is something musicians use as a justification for why they are not hugely successful and all it does is keep them treading water while they stand around, seething about other people’s success.

I was that guy for a long time and it took years for me to realize that my taste is not a measure of what is good. Just because I don’t want to listen to something, or it doesn’t resonate in me, doesn’t make it bad. If the majority of people like something and you don’t, logically, where does that put it on a scale of good and bad? If the barometer for good and bad is dictated by general popularity, and you are not on board, what does that say about your taste? NOTHING! Taste is personal and not a group experience. The fault lies in trying to apply your personal tastes as a measure of good and bad.

I see this in music listeners as well, especially in the US.  People become so genre specific about their tastes that they discount anything else, out of hand, regardless of if they actually like it or not, dependent upon whether or not it fits easily into what they already consider cool.

Example: On the coasts of this country, especially the West Coast, there is no place for Metal. Multi-platinum artists, who sell out arenas in Ohio, can’t fill a 500 person club in LA. There is no real commercial outlet for Metal on the coasts and most huge bands in the Midwest of the US have never been heard of on the coasts. This works in reverse as well. The large multiplatinum artists from the coastal areas, with less aggressive sounds, tend not to be heard on the radio at all in the Midwest and therefore flounder when trying to play in those markets. It’s strange, and stupid, and exclusive, and leads to an artistic monoculture that is at it’s best, FUCKING BORING.

My sincere hope is that this will be changed by the constantly growing and easily accessible body of free music available online. I hope that people’s tastes will be changed in their houses, on their computers, following a link to something they wouldn’t normally listen too. I hope that people’s “guilty pleasures” become their public pleasures, because, to paraphrase Dave Grohl, there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure, only pleasure.

Expand your palette. Explore the differences. Let go of what you thought you liked and find out what your tastes truly are. Stop being the architect of your own boredom, and insecurity. It helps nothing, not your state of mind, and least of all the state of music.

Favorite? The New.

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I can’t say what my favorite is. Don’t ask me. I’m stricken with the absolute inability to sum up anything in this realm of questioning. I’ve learned to be vague about it. I’ve learned to compare and contrast as a means of misdirection. I’ve learned to redirect the question to someone else and agree with the positive assessment without using any superlatives. This is especially true when it comes to something near and dear to my heart; music and musicians.

I can’t tell you who my favorite band is. I have 20 at any given time. And even the idea of ordering those top 20 into a first and last place situation seems futile because they have such differing qualities. They can’t really be compared on such a simplistic scale.  Perhaps if people were more specific with their line of questioning:

Question: What’s your favorite unleavened bread accompaniment with soup?

Answer: Matzo, because Saltines suck. Easy.

I also think my indecision is largely due to the fact that I change mind mind and tastes so often. I am chronically fickle about everything, especially about music. My fickle nature is exactly the reason I have no tattoos. I would not be happy with my choice for long and don’t want to pay for that outcome.

JJXO is the perfect outlet for my fickle taste in music because that fluidity in genre and style bleeds into what I write, making it futile to try and express it in the same way over and over. If I want to write an East LA salsa/industrial tune, I’m going to do it, and then I’m going to put another song right after it that that doesn’t sound anything like it because being a one trick pony is FUCKING BORING. It bores me and I’m sure it bores you.

Beck is in my top 50 favorite all time songwriters for just that reason. Track to track, album to album, the cohesive element is not the genre or style, but his voice, melody, lyrical content, and irreverence. It makes me want to listen. I gravitate towards diversity and often times just towards something new. I will always take “new” in place of “tested" except when it comes to matters of life and death, so, please do give me the tested medication and the well tested airplane. The basic idea, however, is the only way for me to truly diversify myself.

Innately, I think this is where all music listening has headed, at least in people, mostly, under the age of 30. It is the catalyst for music sharing, and live streaming sites, and I LOVE it. Give me “new” everyday, and I will try to do the same for you. Promise.

Question: What’s YOUR favorite song YOU have ever written?

Answer: Whichever song I am working on at the moment. My favorite is always “new.”

Debut EP "Split Lip Serenade" released today!

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It's not everyday you get a chance to start fresh.  It's not everyday, in music, you get to be in control of your own creativity.  It's certainly not everyday you get to do both on the same day.

In what seems like a sweet daydream, we, JJXO, Jeremy Haffner and myself, Stephen Cohen, forge new ground by releasing our newest foray into the musical ether today.  With our focus set clearly on the horizon, we pause to hold dear today, the real beginning to the next thing. The new.  For years we pushed, pulled, carried, and dredged Oedipus around the world experiencing the highest of highs and lowest of lows.  And, amidst and despite that roller coaster ride, the weight of what should be, what's supposed to happen next, what everyone outside the band thought that we should do, the tiny pilot light of true human creativity never snuffed out.

In January 2013 we fanned that flame, cultivating that new nucleus of vision and sonic depth.  It was tiny, then.  A question-mark shaped fuse flickering in the unknown.  Only the two of us saw the potential for this spark to engulf us, set aflame our souls and carry us into the foray of a brand new world of music.  We spent the first three months of the year musing about what these songs, written on acoustic guitars could really become.  In April it became clear and we jammed on the gas pedal.  Three months after that and dozens of songs later, six fully produced songs were born.

Today we officially release our debut EP "Split Lip Serenade."  It's free because, that same freedom we feel from knowing it's coming straight from us, the way we wanted it to sound with no concessions, no compromises and no external pressure, we wanted you all to feel.  It's a sense of community seldom experienced.  We're not forcing it upon you...requiring you spend money to validate it to yourselves or to us.  

The music, the EP, JJXO is invaluable to us.  To put a price tag on the music would be to debase it by assigning a dollar value to our vision, creativity, our productivity and our soul.  That would be unfair.  We allow you to contribute money, to fund, support, sponsor this project not put money in our pockets or to illustrate the worth of the music, but to become a part of the process.  There are tangible costs to creativity and production and we need to pay for them and you can help by donating.  It's simple but TRULY important for us to express that your donations, any money you choose to pay for the music is not for the purpose of 'owning' the music because we and you already own it together.  It's simply your way of saying 'I want in. I want more. I want you...and WE can do this together.'

Enjoy Split Lip Serenade.  Download it at HERE.  Share it, please, with everyone you know. Burn it for people.  Send it to people.  Play it in your car.  But most of all, play it for yourself, so that, maybe, for a moment you discover something new about you and become one of us.

Mindset

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JJXO is something I have wanted to do for a long time, but had yet to put a name to it, or to focus it really. Stephen and I started playing with the idea of incorporating electronica into what we were doing while we were recording the Covetous EP for Oedipus. What most people don’t know about that album is that it was actually double the length, and a bunch of things we recorded for it got put on the back burner. One of those songs was an Oedipus tune that we ended most every live show with called “Younger.” When we were recording that we were trying to put a whole dance breakdown in the middle, but for whatever reason, it didn’t work.

I started dabbling with electronica years before that, under the name “Pilate” writing Drum & Bass and Jungle tracks on Reason software. At that point I didn’t have the capability to record vocals the way I wanted. There are endless possibilities with synthesizers, and though I truly honor the ability to build a song with just bass, guitar, and drums, I had too much music, with too varied a range of emotions for all of it to have the same palette of sounds.

After the last year of touring with Oedipus, with my acoustic bass, while we were driving, I ended up writing almost an album worth of material, mostly dealing with the subject of the counterintuitive actions one takes amidst the confusion within relationships; pecking order, sex, subjugation, submission, adultery, psychological abuse, being anesthetized, being prideful, being in love, and of course being cast aside. These are the oldest subjects to ever inspire the written word, but were a departure from the general bravado of Oedipus tunes.

I had also just spent a decade dealing with the inner workings of a music business that was either not leading, not earning, or giving me advice I was uncomfortable with. I was constantly chasing something undefined (in the business) and therefore constantly second guessing and waiting around to do things like record, tour, etc.

My first step out of this cycle, to truly “cut the chord,” was to fund the recording myself, and to give the JJXO music away for free and donation. The hope, of course, being that you love the music so much that you just have to come see us play it live. Live is where all the good stuff happens anyways.

Only a tiny percentage of artists on record labels, moving massive numbers of records, end up seeing any of the money they make selling them. Also, most people, myself included, are naturally suspicious of being forced to purchase an album that we know is going to have a couple good songs and a bunch of filler. On top of THAT, I love streaming music and being able to see what my friends are listening to on Spotify, and the easy exchange of art amongst a community. So, I wanted to eliminate the guess work and rebuild the trust between musician and music listener, hopefully giving people something that resonates with them, while finally getting to tap into something hopefully a little more intimate. 

The fun of this project is that it can be anything, and that I don’t feel the need to shove a square peg into a round hole for any reason. It’s liberating, and fun, and fast, so I can get music to my friends while it’s still fresh in my mind, and not a year after I wrote it. It allows me to write a lot more material, because I’m constantly purging ideas and feelings. It is catharsis, which is what art should be, and not just, to quote David Bazan, “desperate attempts to fan the flame without the fire.”

I truly hope you enjoy the music from JJXO, and if you hate it, well, at least you didn’t pay for it. Kisses.