I,Songwriter, signing off...

With my band Witness the Undefined playing our last show a week from Tuesday (Thats July 24th, at the Picador at 9PM), I wanted to post a little something about the music I have been a part of creating over the past 8 years in several bands... infandous, Drag For Miles, and finally, Witness.
None of my bands were very successful...infandous got pretty big locally right before I left, but they are even more popular now, and any remnants of influence from me is gone.
I now realize why this is (that I've never been in a successful band). I will probably never know whether I have succeeded in what I wanted to create. Its impossible to judge one's own music. You just can't listen to a song that you have written and expect it to sound anything like it will to someone who has never heard it. When musicians do try to judge their own music, they tend to love it, because they know all the fine details that went into it that no one else will notice (see Billy Corgan).
Some people still have an outlet for whether they have succeeded in what they've done, because they are specifically trying to create a sound that will appeal to a certain demographic, be it pop music or generic metal. None of my bands have been extremely interested in creating catchy or danceable hits.
Witness the Undefined is the closest I could ever have asked for the epitome of what my dream band would be. I can think of areas where we needed improvement (vocals, lyrics, harmonies), but we have done everything I have wanted in terms of writing songs conceptually, and breaking what we see as nostalgic traditions (choruses, 4/4, breakdowns). But our overall goal was to create GOOD music...original, unpredictable, experimental, and obviously emotional.
And this I will never know if we achieved. The problem is that when you are in a band that is intentionally trying to be different, it comes across as bad. Because people want to judge bands in the same way they judge other bands. If person A drives to a Witness the Undefined show listening to Metallica, or System of a Down, they are going to judge us by the same standards as they judge those bands. And let me clear this up: I am not saying 'don't judge us', because yeah, I want you to judge us. And I'm not saying that we need to be held to a lower or higher standard than music on the radio. I am saying DIFFERENT. because bands on the radio ought to be judged by catchiness...ability to get you singing along or bobbing your head. But we don't want to be judged by that standard...we aren't going for that. We want...well, let me just speak for myself. I want our music to throw you off, to make you LISTEN. Its not background noise, and its not nostalgia. And its not shut-your-brain-off-and-sing-along music. It is supposed to hold your attention--and you are supposed to think. As I said, we wrote our songs conceptually, and ideally this would matter to people..but people aren't looking for concepts, so they don't notice it.
I am not talking down to people. I am not saying our music is too high-brow for anyone. What I am saying is that people aren't looking for conceptual. They are not looking for mathematical. So there doesn't seem to be anyone to judge us by that standard...thus, no way for us to know if we have achieved our goal.

I guess it just upsets me if people think our music is weird because we aren't talented enough to write radio hits. Because 1. we wrote a catchy shitty song, and its called 'Deep Drags', and 2. Our music takes way more talent to write and play than any song on the radio.

Come see us! July 24th, its our last show and our CD release show.