ROY

sometimes you play heavy metal music. it's great. it's loud. people beat each other up. then you start to think: is volume all i've got? should one's musical repertoire be limited to headbang-inducing solid-state guitar heaviness? am i a wimp because i kinda like the flying burrito brothers more than slayer? you begin to think that meshuggah really isn't heavy at all, but that part in "when the levee breaks" where the slide guitar comes in. damn, that really punishes. so you dick around with a four track, an acoustic guitar, some cheap microphones, perhaps a fuzz pedal, and whatever else you got collecting dust in yr basement. then you have an epiphany: there's a whole other world of sounds out there. all of the sudden, someone throws money at you and you make some records. this is the part where you're supposed to tour with that band on mtv2 with the moppy dyed-black haircuts and the singer who screeches and the guitar player who does windmills and pretty back-up vocals. you know the band: they're playing warp tour and they have t-shirts with off-center designs at the merch table, and i think they might be selling panties with their band logo screened on them. their primary market is 16 year old girls. really, it isn't too far off from the hair metal years. eyeliner, women's jeans, teased hair. when did danger danger and warrant become popular again? you start to feel a bit old, a bit jaded, a bit smarter than the fresh-outta-high school dudes who are roped into some ridiculous contract. what the hell do you do? you go back into the basement, do what you've always done, and you don't auto-tune your soul. instead, you turn away from the filth and hopefully start to build something new someday. *



roy is an ongoing experiment. an in-joke. an excuse to indulge in guilty pleasures. when you're at the bottom you got no one to impress, and you can do whatever the fuck you want.



*all hail john train. xoxo