chilljam.com

Stars Burn Out Archive :: Blog Entry

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One of the reasons I was originally interested in putting together the Chilljam.com site was that I wanted to focus on gathering together all of our material into one place. I thought it would be great to put it all together in a nice presentation so that others can access the work and enjoy it however they want. However, I also wanted to gather together the work that I’ve done with other projects in the past and present them in a way that is both accessible and enjoyable.
So today, we’ve got a new section on the right-hand column called “Links” in which we can link to sites with these works.
The first site we’ve got under this category is the Stars Burn Out Music Archive, which includes all of the recordings I have from one of the projects I previously worked with, Stars Burn Out.

Stars Burn Out Members
Chris Dickey
Nick Kelly
Tim Smith
Joe Osborne

Stars Burn Out, to me, revolved primarily around the friendships I have with each of the participating members of the band. The members of the band have been some of my best friends throughout my life and have helped me and participated in experiences stretching back through some of the earliest days of my adult life. Formed from previous bands of our youth such as AGMD and Sometimes Us, Stars Burn Out came together shortly after I’d finished my time spent playing in Tragic Drive.
For me, I was looking for Stars Burn Out to boil down the essentials of writing music. I was looking for a return to a more raw, straight-ahead approach after spending years playing and writing complicated choreographed sequences in Tragic Drive. I basically wanted to return to punk rock and just to have fun with playing again. It was a lot of fun playing with these guys again and I had a great time just getting together in my parent’s basement each week (thanks Mom and Dad for letting us play there, even when I didn’t live there anymore).
Start Transmission was the last set of recordings that I’ve done in a formal recording studio environment. I’m happy to say that there were some great memories laying down those tracks. Drew Mazurek did a fantastic job bringing together our sound. I really love this disk. The vigor and phrasing on this disc is unparalleled with any other work I’ve participated on. Although there were signs that we were each starting to head our own ways during this recording, I have always treasured the times we spent recording Start Transmission.
After Start Transmission, there was a hiatus period in which we did not play. Each of us was starting to find ourselves and who we were as adults. Our interests, both musical and personal, were starting to drift apart and we all went on to explore them individually. I believe during this period, I’d gone on to play in The Stray.
After some time, however, Nick, Chris and I regrouped to have some fun playing the old songs again. We also started to experiment with sound with extended jam sessions in which we’d explore playing without structure entirely. A large portion of these recordings were simply noise. However, some of these jams were fruitful and I was able to capture some of them on a little digital recording device that I’d set up for each session. These sessions led to 1-2-2006, 1-6-2006, 1-13-2006, and 2-25-2006 which are all represented here on the Stars Burn Out Music Archive. Some of these recordings are just noise, some are interesting, some are just plain goofy. But all in all, I really felt like they represented the final days of the band well. I learned a lot about how to work within these loose musical structures and a lot of these experiments likely led to some of my contributions in projects I’ve done since Stars Burn Out, including the stuff here on Chilljam.com.
In any case, I hope the material here represents Stars Burn Out respectfully in the eyes and ears of the other members of the band and I hope they can enjoy these works as much as I have over the years.