2004 - my year in review

[illusionofjoy]

That's all folks - 2004 is gone now, yet another four digit number on so many discarded calenders. It is time to say, "good bye," and as far as I'm concerned, "good riddance." 2004 was the year that started by limping out of January, and had all the poise of a heart-attack victim running a marathon as it sputtered through December.

On the personal front, 2004 was the year of the introvert, as I stopped socialising, leaving the rest of the world to rot for the most part, as joi_division and I became more rock-solid in our relationship than I could ever have envisioned (much to the chagrin of some, I'm sure). Frankly, Joi is one of the very few people I know who has yet to disappoint me. She also in the extremely thin minority of people who actually understand me, despite what appear to be glaring feats of illogic to the uninitiated. There are so many reasons that our relationship is headed towards the two-year mark (a record for both of us) and we're discussing the eventuality that we will end up moving in together, that I could not fit them all into one entry. I am very happy with her and that's all that matters.

Counter to the solidity of my relationship, the rest of 2004 was a practise in disappointment. In January, The Night Shift decided that I was not to join their ranks. I pontificated upon this development, my thoughts resulting in a 20-comment debate, of sorts. I sang my swan-song at Ceremony as a duet with Joi on Bitter Valentine's - quite possibly the last enjoyable and quality playlist ever graced upon the regulars there.

After that, I would only be seen at Ceremony on the rarest of occasions. The new direction in which The Night Shift decided to take the night left me with a decidedly sour spectre in my ears. When DJ Imperium and MissJoi were in the booth, I could look forward to a full night of dancing until I passed out in a muddle heap on the ebola-covered floor. I have never been a great fan of DJ Heim's thudfests and I find that Alexx's talents lie with ThouShaltNot, as he is a strong songwriter and instrumentalist, but weak as a DJ. In the ensuing months, The Night Shift would add the sallow and talentless DJ Ancilla, effectively removing any remaining vapours that could have possible cohered into the desire to DJ at Ceremony again. The whiney little coat-room girl finally got her wish, though in response to a friend who had asked me (on one rare occasion mentioned previously), "why the fuck don't they have a coat room here?" I said, "Because the coat-room girl is too busy pretending to be a DJ."

"Yeah," was the reply, "and she's not doing a very good job at it!" At least I wasn't alone in my distaste for the over hyped Ancilla.

On March 26^th, the Illusion of Joy website at illusionofjoy.net finally went live after three months of coding and wankery. A few weeks after that, on April 13^th, Division, the second Illusion of Joy LP was released. Few physical copies of this album have been sold, however, it seems to be a minor hit on the internet, if my website statistics are accurate:

MP3 downloads from illusionofjoy.net [2004]
Song:	Downloads:
"Is There Some Way Out Of Here?"	115
"My Little Girl"	72
"Right Wing Radio"	37
"Crystalline"	32
"Beloved"	31
"Isolation"	24
"Ebony"	20
"The Satellite"	20
"Hip Hip Hooray"	18
"Take Off Your Inhibitions"	16
"Billie Jo"	13

Perhaps calling Division even a minor internet hit is stretching it, given that, of those 398 downloads, only 273 of those are from that particular album. Still, even with the rest of the downloads going towards tracks from Bitter and Crystalline, the clear majority of downloaded tracks are from Division. Despite that, one wonders what happens to a track once it has been downloaded. How many of these downloads are still residing upon the hard drives of the user who downloaded it and how many were deleted after one listen? Furthermore, of those that were kept, how many were potentially burned to a mix CD or file-swapped to someone else's computer? There's really no way of knowing. Also, this is a tally of tracks from the official site only, which doesn't take into account exposure via Myspace, music.download.com or Pure Volume. If you factor in the artist hive sites, the year-end tally looks like this:

MP3 downloads for Illusion of Joy [2004]
Song:	Downloads:
"Beloved"	271
"Is There Some Way Out Of Here?"	141
"My Little Girl"	72
"Right Wing Radio"	44
"Crystalline"	32
"Ebony"	25
"Isolation"	24
"The Satellite"	20
"Hip Hip Hooray"	18
"Take Off Your Inhibitions"	16
"Billie Jo"	13

One must consider that including the hive sites skews the results, as different tracks are posted at different sites. "Beloved," the only track available at music.download.com has gotten well over 200 hits, effectively blasting it to the top on this list. One wonders if it would have so much exposure, if it had to compete with other songs. Meanwhile, the page at Myspace seems to be more in line with that of illusionofjoy.net, despite only hosting three tracks from Division and one from Bitter. Pure Volume has proven to be a wash thus far, with an abysmal number of profile views and no song downloads (the only track posted being "Is There Some Way Out Of Here?").

For Illusion of Joy, 2004 wasn't a particularly bad year, but it is certainly nothing I wish to settle for. Division continued the tradition of major obscurity as it got little to nothing in the way of club play or exposure on even college radio. Nothing has been written about it nor is there much in the way of conversation about the album. Now is not the time to quit my day job, it would seem.

Speaking of which, 2004 was the year that I finally got a day job to quit, if I so chose. In 2003, I had just moved to Pittsburgh and had subsisted through temp work throughout the entirety of that year. By Thursday, March 4^th of 2004, after nearly eleven months of temp work at the Federal Reserve (in two departments, no less), their human resources department saw fit to buy out my contract from the temp agency and bestow upon me one of those little photo ID badges, making me a real employee. I always knew that I'd be a real employee if I wished hard enough and was a good boy.

Employment allowed me to finally get wired to the internet at home and not worry so much about being the most expendable player on the board. Still, I don't make enough to pay off my student loans without sacrificing what I consider to be a reasonable quality of life. I still maintain that college is a cruel joke at this point - more of a business than it should be, but that is a rant for another time.

Politically, on November 2^nd in 2004, America showed the rest of the world what it was made of: 49% intellect, 51% bullshit. In a move that had the civilised world scratching their heads and saying, "what the hell were they thinking" and Al-Qaeda exclaiming, "fuck yes - he's our best recruiter," by a slim majority, voting citizens of the United States said, "yes" to four more years of George W. Bush and his cronies. Never have I wanted to put my boot through the window of a Tribune-Review newspaper box more than when I saw the headline, "W Stands of Winner!" While it may be true that the letter W stands for winner, it also stands for wanker; and let me add that I take a personal affront to the fact that the first letter of my last name is now indelibly connected to that neo-con fuckhead.

Despite my self-imposed exile from socialising with all except Joi and a few others, I did manage to make new friends in 2004. One of these people proved to be one of those most intellectually stimulating and compassionate individuals whom I have ever encountered. I first met meiow (aka: Cat) over the summer by chance at the Friday night Electro-Retro night at The Upstage. DJ EZ-Lou was spinning a great set of 80s music (his bread and butter, it would seem), which got my pale ass onto the dance floor with a great deal of regularity. When I wasn't bouncing about to music of caliber one never hears at Ceremony anymore, I was hanging out with oneirophrenia (aka: Derek). Towards the end of the night, a lovely voluptuous darkling had entered the establishment. I had been sifting it through my head whether or not to talk to her, when Derek, showing himself to be a mind-reader, said, "why don't you ask that girl over there to come over to our table?" Given the green light, I invited her over.

Cat was in Pittsburgh on business. She would be leaving the next day, but she had simply been looking for something to do that evening and someone had informed her about Electro-Retro, inaccurately calling it a Goth night. We chatted for most of the evening and she ended up giving me a ride home. It was nearly a month later when she would return to the city that steel built when we would rendezvous again, this time with Joi along for the ride. While Cat's Pittsburgh trips seem to have dried up (thanks to the mechanisms of her employment), we all still talk to each other online and the idea of a trip to meet up someday isn't too far-fetched for any of us to consider.

While friendships qualify as high points during any year, 2004 also saw a fair share of malcontentment for me, as far as other human beings were concerned. An ex-girlfriend or two rose from the grave to haunt me once more. Some spectres will never be satiated, denying reality much like those of The Sixth Sense - "they don't know that they're dead...they only see what they want to see." Meanwhile, others asked things of me that I either couldn't or was unwilling to give and only redoubled their insistence when I made the point clear that I couldn't provide what they were looking for. There are times I wonder why I even bother speaking when no one seems to believe me in the first place. It seems such a waste of time to try and explain one's internal mechanisms when others insist that not only do they know you better than you know yourself, but are more than willing to turn you from a human being into something more akin to a high school shop class project. Still, though, there were those who I thought, at one point I could trust, but who have effectively made me question every supposedly benevolent thing that they have ever done. These are people whom I wish not to associate with in my life, and will continue in my endeavours to avoid once the signs become obvious.

Musically, 2004 was just as tepid as most of the new millennium has been. Honestly, I don't think the next Beatles or Nirvana is anywhere on the horizon. Still, I did see some killer performances, including VAST, Siouxsie Sioux, The Psychedelic Furs, Henry Rollins and The Legendary Pink Dots. My top five albums of 2004:

1. The Magnetic Fields - i
2. VAST - Nude
3. The Static Age - Neon Nights Electric Lives
4. Interpol - Antics
5. U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

Honourable mentions go to Bjork for Medeulla, Sonic Youth for Sonic Nurse and William Shatner for Has Been, but those five listed above were my personal favourites. Meanwhile, the discovery of the Oaks Theater proved to be a godsend. My top five movies of 2004:

1. Donnie Darko - the director's cut
2. Gypsy 83 [local theatrical release]
3. Lemeny Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5. Big Fish

So, there you have it, my 2004 (or what I can dredge up out of the rusty memory machine) in so many words. I'm looking at 2005 and thinking, "here we go...another spin around the sun and other chance to try to bang out a nice set of memories for the scrapbook." I can't say that I'm looking forward to it, but I'm not dreading anything. By February, I will have lived in Pittsburgh for two years. Overall, my progression in this still new city is going slowly, but it is still going alright. I have a wonderful relationship, my own place and some degree of financial security. Everything else that I desire will come in time and I am nothing, if not patient with the universe, for we all know that it has all the time in the world.

Comments

[meiow.livejournal.com]

Awwwww... *touched* :)

[dragonflydani.livejournal.com]

ouch

[rain19.livejournal.com]

Who needs socialization when you have such a hot chick on your arm?

[joi-division.livejournal.com]

hee. Thank you! *smooch*

[xeyli.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that your year has been musically productive, and am very happy to hear that you and Joi are doing well. Take care of yourself and best wishes for this next year.

Good riddance to 2004

[ruined888.livejournal.com]

and this year, a year that will live in mundanity, thank Eris that it's over.

I resolve to make 2005 at least semi-enjoyable.

however, I'm glad you're year went pretty good.

--Angel
Ow, the daystar came up, my eyes hurt, it's bedtime.