Spencer Day: Maturing the Moment

I recently studied, or more accurately, immersed myself in the music of Spencer Day because I am working on a marketing strategy for him.

As I digested his music from a marketing perspective, what really moved me was what I was thinking as a song-writer, which gave me so much more admiration for him.

In my song, “The Al Franken Song“, I sing about having worshiped Al Franken for many years, then suddenly finding myself standing next to him at a urinal.

The song is about that precious moment that you waste - and the reflection you have afterwards about what you should have said if you were more in the moment.

“The perfect thing to say, it never comes till later
And then when it’s said, it’s only in your daydreams.”

Now hold that thought and let me get to Spencer Day.

I’ve written about him before, noting he made the “most beautiful music video” I have ever seen (kudos to Academy of Art University for its brilliant vision and production).

Recently Spencer went back into the studio to record his first album in years, a long, reverberating silence for an artist so prolific that he can noodle for 10 minutes and easily arrive at melodic and conceptual hooks so catchy they seem preconceived.

Since his last album, when he was 26, Spencer has matured in giant leaps. This is to be expected for men in their twenties, who are typically 12 months pregnant with spiritual worthiness.

Even in his first recordings, Spencer exuded wisdom rare in men below the age of 45. But Spencer’s “wisdom” is unique - it is not manifested in the form of reflective conclusions, answers, or insight gained through experience, but rather sincerity.

Spencer opened a much-anticipated week of performances at the Rrazz Room in San Francisco, wherein he demonstrated that indeed, sincerity is his most powerful quality.

On his delivery of his songs, The Chronicle wrote, “no one could resist their sincerity - his arrangements are dazzling and, most of all, his delivery is heartfelt and, often, heartbreaking.”

Compared to their gender counter-part, men are widely accepted as being late, if not improbable, maturity bloomers. The likelihood of a man in his twenties having anything spiritually noteworthy to say, nonetheless “heartbreaking”, is nearly incomprehensible.

Spencer’s wide-eyed exuberance and sensitivity make an even more powerful point about the relationship of wisdom to age. Spencer reminds us that wisdom is not something you wait for, or slowly earn over time. It is not the sum of what you silently, slowly learn over your life, but rather the sum of what you didn’t waste.

Maybe that sounds cliche.

But let me say it this way: Spencer makes long-term investments in the present. He magically creates a long arc in a moment, a mosaic in an instance, a historical observation for an event you just started experiencing.

He doesn’t make you want to wait for wisdom, he’s advanced it to you. And there is no looking back.

Los Angeles Recording Studio Recommendation

For the few of you out there looking for a great place to record in LA, I suggest this Los Angeles Recording Studio.

Johannes is also a great engineer and producer.

Your MySpace Page & The Fame You Await

So, I checked out your music on MySpace.

You probably get really excited to see all the additional plays you get when people stumble on your page because of all the ways you have cleverly marketed yourself.

But you know what?

I moved on.

There are so many of you. Thousands? Millions?

And even the good ones are only worth checking out for a few minutes.

And the best ones? Well, I’ll listen to their music a few times.

If I really like you, well I might stream you on Rhapsody. That’ll get you a few pennies every month. But then I’ll probably blend you into the 600 other musicians I consider genius and when the musical honeymoon period wears off, you’ll fade into the background.

You’ll have to work hard to find another new fan to make up for the ones that are getting distracted and moving on.

After I first discover your MySpace page, I’ll move on to another deliciously short-lived entertainment fling: it might be a YouTube video, I might go to Facebook and see what all the hot women I went to college with are up to, or I might just navigate Wikipedia for 25 minutes.

I’ll probably start on a page about someone like Parker Posey, then 15 minutes and four clicks later find myself on a page about Service-Oriented Architecture.

I won’t really be sure how I got to this page from the one about Parker, but I did.

I’ll explore my Technorati Profile for awhile.

And with so many options in front of me, I keep clicking and moving on to a new experience in a seemingly infinite world of options that reduce the best and most talented to a short-lived moment, like a kiss on the cheek: it was nice but there is no looking back as long as there is a world of more in front of me.

And the sad thing is that you so believe in your talent that you are waiting for fame. But you know what? Fame was something that came to musicians when the world of options was far less infinite, when everything wasn’t free and ready to jump out of thin air and into your computer’s speakers.

Fame was something that happened in a time when things would come and stick to you for years because it’d cost you $15 / album to move on to something else.

We are in the age of the entertainment fling.

Music That Humiliates My Mother, But…

I love how my description of my music ended up perfectly snipped into Google’s index: