| Seth Forster - Guitar |
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Here's Seth's definition of Smash Riley: Smash Riley is a culmination of personalities, of souls, of would-be rude dinner guests who should know better and just wreck your week with melodies that distract you at work, at drive at love making or whatever. It's a montage of dream sequences from different movies by the same director that flow together like a well-ordered greatest hits of an under-appreciated genius. It's a chiffarobe of Neil Diamond costumes...We play music dammit! There's no more need for an excuse of locking in with your heartbeat, whether it's broken or burning, exploding or dissappearing. I make no apologies for the complexity of the soul or understanding it or putting it to a groove or siren wail of a guitar. Here's Seth's own "archtypical definition" of Seth: Born in '79 (or as i like to call it, the year of release for Elvis Costello's 4th best album: Armed Forces) in Newburgh, IN which is the next cornfield over from the 2nd or 3rd largest city in the state. My Dad's dad was a music geek (trumpet) who won several awards, some on a national level and my Dad was just sort of a geek but always loved music, had the standards every family apparently was issued upon bearing children in the years '76-83: Eagles Greatest Hits, CSNY, Hollies, 4 Tops, Chicago and of course the Big Chill Soundtrack. I grew up on a steady diet of pop and rock music, later went to college and learned, as is typical, about disillusionment, i.e. got into punk, "proto-punk" and pop-punk in the early days...any rebellious but with melody or thought. I do'nt like to have too many parameters on what to listen to or like. Hence I put the Replacements and Coltrane and the Boss and Uncle Tupelo and Van Halen in the 5 disc changer now and then and feel that the world makes MORE sense because of it. Like Ellington said, there are two kinds of music: good and bad. I still think there should be a separate category for Dylan or Young or whoever it is that makes music that is simultaneously both. I started playing guitar when I was fifteen. I blame much of this on Brian May and Mark Knopfler, but more on the fact that I used to quiet and when I did talk it was just smart remarks and witty comebacks...um, yeah that's it. I can't say whether I feel like music is in my blood or if it IS my blood or if it's my heart or any of that stuff. I just know that it consumes me and I'm trying to consume it. Gregg Moore was my first guitar teacher. I was slow and mostly untalented, but patient becuase I loved music and mostly the guitar--let's face it nothing has changed the shape of America's past 50 years more than electric guitar...ok maybe the Cold War. Gregg was an old jazzer who demanded good rhythm, feel, articulation, reading, all the boring stuff that typical guitar players could care less about when grunting out AC/DC power chords. It worked for me. I like doing things the hard way. My freshman year of college I attended a classical guitar recital by Atanas Tzvetkov, one of the finest at one of the US's finest music schools, to sit in on the recording of said recital for Audio Tech classes. I walked out feeling at once incredibly inspired and discouraged. I studied with Atanas for about 6 years and had started playing classical guitar at all sorts of events 2 years in and was pretty much hooked. I moved to Austin becuase I love variety in music and originality and here there are plenty of writers looking to make their music better. I want to be in a band that is hungry and has something to say and isn't too damn young to know how or too haggard to, well, feel like Haggard.
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