You are not Milton Babbitt

The blah, blah, blah...
I'm about 96% certain I'm not going to use the fake band names any more.  I've decided that I no longer want to conventionalize my music under prefab rubrics that tell people "you should expect to hear this kind of music from this particular artist."  It's silly.  The artist isn't The Tool Factory Project.  The artist isn't The Subterranean Philharmonic Orchestra.  There is no Tool Factory Project.  There is no Subterranean Philharmonic Orchestra.  There's just me: an eclectic guy who plays a lot of different instruments (some of them well!) and likes making a lot of different kinds of music, and I just don't feel the need to "dilute the brand" (as Mrs. Griffmakesmusic would say) by releasing multiple recordings under multiple fake band names.  I am the brand.  I am the band.  Me.  Richard Griffith.

I noticed this was a problem for me when I was promoting "The Tool Factory Project" and I played gigs at local joints billing myself as The Tool Factory Project.  When I got to the gigs and started tuning my guitars and setting up my looper, the guy or gal running the place would invariably say something like "when is the band coming?" or "oh, I thought you were coming with a band tonight."  And I would have to tell them that The Tool Factory Project is my name for the fake band that played on my album titled "The Tool Factory Project"--which, I know, shouldn't be that baffling these days, considering the number of solo DJ's/laptop artists, et al, who perform under an ostensibly bandish name, but it seemed to throw folks--largely, I think, because the album is meant to sound like it was recorded by a band (well, actually about six or seven different bands, all working in different sub-genres of pop music, but I don't wanna get into that right now).  TFP was also meant to be an homage to a really fun group I played with in the '90's--the first group I ever played with that was completely OK with doing songs about robots, dogs, cheesy sci-fi, and whatnot.  Moreover, I thought sticking a band name (fake or otherwise) on my projects would eventually get me past the "who the hell is Richard Griffith" issue (completely overlooking the "who the hell is The Tool Factory Project" issue...).

OK, so cut to "Take the Stairs" which I released under my own name, and which I initially intended to be a collection of songs done in a sort of "singer/songwriter" idiom which I could easily perform live more or less just like they appeared on the CD.  This would make this CD easy and fun to promote. Well, the singer/songwriter idiom lasted about five seconds into the recording of the first track (which was "Living in Wednesday") which just had to have some keen electric guitar work and lots of digital delay and on and on and on....

...which left me with an album of songs released entirely under my own name that I couldn't perform live just as I'd recorded them, and that made it difficult and unpleasant to promote.  OK, I'm probably overselling that a bit.  I actually had a lot of fun with the "Take the Stairs" gigs, including the ones I did with my short-lived unfake band, The Atomic Panic, but I was unhappy with the fact that I wasn't performing the tunes as they were on the album.  For me, the recordings were the "art".  The performances, therefore, became, in many ways, commercials to try to sell the real art.   Which they didn't.  Well, not much anyway, but whaddyagonnadoaboutthat?

I went through much of the same mental process when I completed my first CD of electronic music, which I knew for a fact I would never be performing live, so I thought a fake band name would be just the ticket.  Hence The Subterranean Philharmonic Orchestra, a stupid band name I've wanted to use since college.  So I used it.   Also not selling well, which tells me that either (a) the music is just not something that people want or (b) the name isn't drawing people in or (c) both.

So here's the deal:  I can't control who's going to like or not like my music.  Sometimes I think of myself as the musical equivalent of those roadside sculptors who make giant pterodactyls from old milk bottles and tuna fish cans or build huge stone grottoes from quick-set cement encrusted with old wrist watches and fountain pens.  I love the attitude and the ethos of the outsider artist: create what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, whether anyone else likes it or not.  And that's kind of where I want to be with my music.  Sure, I want people to like it, listen to it, purchase it and so on (and I know those folks are out there...somewhere), but that can't be the main reason that I make the stuff.  I have to make music for me that I like and will be proud of, and that says whatever it is I feel like saying at the moment I'm making it, whether it's Renaissance lute music or atonal electronic music or silly little songs about robots, candy and the devil.  I mean, why have a Secret Underground Laboratory if you're not going to use it to make giant mutant tarantulas once in a while?

The bottom line is this: it no longer works for me to try to establish an image for my music by pretending to be this or that fake band any more than it would work for me to hang my entire act--studio or live--on a fake Irish accent or a bad Tom Waits impersonation.  I'm not Irish.  I'm not Tom Waits.  I'm not The Tool Factory Project.  I'm Rick Griffith--sonic adventurer, robot hunter, mastermind--Griff Makes Music.  Expect much more to come...

This self-indulgent manifesto has been brought to you by the good people at Soylent Corporation.  Soylent Green is people.

Be excellent to yourselves!

Rick