i read a discussion thread on the message board about the new jason mraz single “wordplay” and speculation on the rest of the album. for reasons of unknown tradition, i will reply here:

wordplay: yeah, this song actually makes me feel crappy.. it’s too self-referential and inside-jokey, and there’s no heart to it.. as popped out as “the remedy” was, it came from a special place (it originated as a song about his friend who had cancer).. the production on it made it feel cheesy, but when it was stripped down to its core, it said, “i won’t worry my life away”.. that means something to people.

to me, this single is so cold. sure, it makes fun of cheesy pop production, but almost in a way that insults the listener, because when it gets to the big choruses, you want it to say something meaningful, but instead it’s just sounds.. (all noise, no substance).. in the same way that over-the-top movies like “armageddon” can still get us feeling emotional (even if we don’t like to admit it :), this song makes you want to feel something, and then it kind of makes fun of you for wanting to feel something. it’s almost nihilistic, or something.

the rest of the album, however, is *incredible*.. (i haven’t heard the whole thing, but i’ve heard enough of each song to get a good sense of it).. it’s much more arty/less poppy than “waiting for my rocket to come,” and i think that he’ll get some begrudging critical acclaim from the magazines that wrote off his first record as pop fluff (when i say “less poppy,” i don’t mean that it’s more stripped down in terms of instrumentation.. it’s just less bubble gum/easy listening, more dark and mysterious and beautiful.. i’m pretty sure that true mraz fans will love it. also, the packaging/artwork is incredible).

just one man’s opinion, but it is a subject that i’ve been thinking about a lot since i heard the new songs.

names are strange things.. i feel like they determine personalities to a certain extent.. because most people end up accepting their name past a certain age, right? or do a lot of people get them legally changed?

assuming that most people are satisfied with their names, it would seem that a name is a formative thing.. my personal example would be that i have always been a strange kid, and i have a strange name.. i obviously think that there are opposite examples (b/c dave was a strange kid too, and his name was dave), but then you end up with a add-on, like “smart dave” or “crazy dave,” (he’s had both nicknames :)

anyway, i was having the thought, because what if the girl i marry was happy with her name, and it was a pretty straightforward name, and i was happy with my kind of weird name. i want to name my kids sort of strange names (not over-the-top weird, like japhanaya.. just a little different), because i thought it was a good experience. but she might want to do the opposite. what a problem.. if we had two kids, would i name one and she the other? but then wouldn’t we play favorites?

these are the thoughts that are troubling me on a saturday evening before our portland show. that and my heart hurting.

last night i went over to my cousin’s house to eat dinner and hang out with his twin 3 and half year olds.. the kids know that I am in a band and always ask me to play guitar for them, so i brought one over.. i ended up playing accompaniment as they ran through a litany of childhood classics (if you’re happy and you know it, twinkle twinkle, happy birthday, the wheels on the bus, etc..) i didn’t really know how to play the songs (it turns out they are all a combination of 1, 4, and 5 chords), and didn’t remember most of the words, but they anchored the performance, singing multiple verses on every song..

then i got to thinking:

how do you teach your kids all the verses to those songs? because i don’t know anything past the first verse.. do you look it up on the internet? (it must be either that or buying a book or something).. those songs are the standards of childhood melody, but it strikes me as weird that they continue to be passed on.. am i going to teach my kids those songs? would i be a bad parent if i didn’t? what if i taught them some bob dylan instead? “like a rolling stone” has a bunch of verses that a lot of people forget about..

strange.