Setting Sail
Readers, hey.
Lemme introduce me but let’s also acknowledge us.
Introductions can be awkward, I know, I’ll start. I’m Roddy. I’ve made a life for myself making music. With Faith No More and then Imperial Teen. I live in NYC and I work with my boyfriend in a band called MAN ON MAN and two awesome friends in a band called CRICKETS and also sometimes the horror art project gnarl core Nastie Band. FNM is kind of on semi permanent hiatus and Imperial Teen is making a record slowly but definitely. I wrote an opera about Sasquatch a couple years ago but I can talk about all those projects later. I’m here in anticipation of a book I’ve written, it’s a memoir called The Royal We. It’s my first foray into writing and it’s exciting and scary and a whole new world for me..
My initial purge and process was to lay out my life in story form from beginning to end. I did it every morning first thing for like over a year until I was happy with it. When I shared it with an agent he told me that ‘cradle to grave’ pieces don’t really sell that well. Say that phrase out loud. Cradle to grave. Can you even? I don’t care so much about the selling part, but the phrase scared the fuck out of me. For starters, i hate biopics. The predictability and the formula and honestly the straight line of a story, there just aren’t enough surprises, know what I mean? I find myself checking my watch, just waiting for the protagonist to die. Creating something formulaic and routine like that freaked me out so I went to Paris and reworked everything I’d done. I know. Paris. It’s ok to roll your eyes. I needed to change up everything so I could change up everything so I went there and sat in an old library for a month and wrote.
Now as it sits, my book is more of an ode to San Francisco, bicycle messengering, sex work, heroin, dreadlocks, the birth of politics in punk rock, wheatgrass, witches, crystal meth, coming out, self love and the burning down and obliteration of a great American city. It’s not a tell all but it tells a lot. I’m leaning into the poetic and the literary. There are people you know in it, overdoses, tragedies and victories and failures. I’ll share excerpts of it here as we go forward but for now that’s me.
So you. First we can assume you read. And for that I love you, the furtherment of posterity loves you, the flailing industry of the printed page loves you, wordsmiths of the world love you and the rest of them? They look up to you.
Let’s start with just the three things in our lives in this specific moment.
Anohni
The Burmese Harp
PAT at Union Pool
Just that. That’s what I woke up with this morning. Tell me where you’re at, Readers. What did you wake up with?
What’s the three things that moved it forward for you?
This space is me sharing and listening. Two things I do best so let’s engage.
Love you all,
RB
1. I'm learning to be okay with being alone
2. staying mentally healthy by listening to 90s music and dancing alone in my apartment (my dog gives me a dirty look and goes to bed)
3. writing sarcastic blackout poetry which I imagine Christopher Walken reading just for fun
I'm excited about your book! Who the hell am I? Just a fan!
1) keyboardist...so a few more listens of Foreplay by Boston (trying to learn it for my band, and it is ridiculous. And written/performed by a guitarist, which makes this song's continual kicking of my ass even more aggravating).
2) Then a few listens of The Long Highway by Mark Knopfler and Wired to the Moon by Chris Rea as I've been asked to play those at my uncle's Celebration of Life in a few weeks.
3) First day with a new pair of glasses, and I absolutely hate them as they make me dizzy. Apparently the break-in process can take a few days to a few weeks.
Lastly, not sure if I've told you this before, but: I listened to Angel Dust around 10 years ago for the first time. And your keyboard work on that album (simple, yet absolutely driving the sound of a heavy and ridiculously cool album) motivated me like no other album ever has...whether you like that or not. I hadn't played piano for 10 years or so til I heard that album. So thank you! If you make your way up to Western Canada sometime, I'll happily come see whatever project you're touring with!
Cheers.