Ok, so in this age of despicable vanity, it seems that everyone is either a musician or a photographer, or a DJ...
people at bars who see me play, especially people over 40...seem to think that I get "allot of girls" because I am of course, yet another musician...now I have had my share of friends in life...but lets get real.. If any youngster picks up a guitar in attempts to become a rock star and get a ton of ladies, they are a fool. In today’s world, the still picture camera is the new guitar....in this self obsessed scene we live in, all you need is a camera and a "modeling company" or some sort of website like "ninja girls.com"  "skimpyprincess.net" or some other ridiculous domain name you can flaunt around to your local hipster Zelda chic and bingo!... weather you have an ounce of photographic skill or not, you will have an instant conversation starter and a perfect "in" to pursue a girlfriend, bed friend, or one night stand...you see this kind of thing happening everywhere...and it apparently works allot of the time...are people becoming photographers to make a statement ? Or get some fast ass? I have no idea. But bottom line is...in the 60’s, a guitar got you some attention from the opposite sex, today, it’s like.."great, another broke musician" ...I’m telling you, get a camera and start hanging around Charles street or Williamsburg or silver lake and let the good times roll, while your local guitar player can be seen playing for change on the corner or empty rooms at the nearest watering hole open mic night...since anybody can take a picture these days , even with a damn cell phone. We have a serious amount of photographers out there....
D.j kids are another way for this to work. Seems that today, anybody with a laptop and a wide range of indie dance music can score a "DJ gig" , stand behind a table and have an army of half naked woman hanging on his every spin. or should I say...his every click....no folks, it does not take a genius to program a music play list and let it ride while he eye fucks a dance floor of barely legal ass. It all goes back to vanity, people wanting attention all around...girls who want to be seen with the party host MC, sleep with him or the local scenster photographer just to feel superior or piss off her "B.F.F's" ...and the guys who jump into these fields with little or no passion for the craft and a large amount of desire from the penis, not that there are no talented D.Js or Photographers out there, there are many, I’m not trying to make a point here, its just early and I’m bored, and hell...I sure do get tired of goofy dudes with tattoos and names like "Mark destruction" or "Tommy fire starter"  running around sucking self obsessed ladies into the void of a camera lens sex spiral....If you cant kill them, join them I guess, I should just get a camera or a laptop and shut the fuck up!

But I was never one for wanting to be part of the gang...such is life.
Also, i know my myspace page is a music one...but i stopped adding random people long ago...TAKE A HINT PEOPLE! I get 6 to 10 band requests a day! i will not listen to all of them...i dont have the time and i frankly dont care...just because you can post something online..does not mean you are ready to have it out there for the world to hear...take some time to practice, get good, develop your sound and dont blow your chances at getting some fans on a bad first impression just because you are impatient and want some attention..after all...guitars dont get you much these days anyway...like i said...the camera is where its at...stop struming and start snapping

p.s...
If you are thinking of sending me a nasty response, don’t waste your time, I'm not that serious about this issue being a problem, an it’s more of a general annoyance and a concept to bitch about before work during my daily finger exercise. I can be a royal bitch...anybody wanna take some shots of me?...or at me for that matter

good day

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December 5, 4:02 PM

by Brian Holsey, Baltimore Band Examiner

 

Matt on the streets of New York

"Matt who?  No, never heard of him."  

Well by all means allow me to introduce you.  I had the privilege of attending a free show at Towson University last night, graciously hosted by their very own English Club.  The featured performer was Matt Pless, a singer-songwriter I had never heard of before.  But now, not even 24 hours later, I already have that elitist-swagger in my step that we all get when we feel like we've become acquainted with "the next big thing" before the rest of our friends.  Now I know how the first guy to ever make a Facebook account or say "Check out this YouTube video!" must have felt.

When I got to the show – which was a relatively small event held in a classroom-turned-performance-space – my friend pointed out the night's headliner to me, sitting quietly by himself on a couch in the corner.  An evidently soft-spoken and thoughtful individual, Matt Pless utilizes an entirely different voice as soon as he begins to sing.  For the first time in a long while, I witnessed an aspiring musician who seemed to be more at ease while he was playing than when he wasn't.  He didn't once attempt to hide his voice or his lyrics, putting them out for the audience's consideration as confidently as if he'd been playing a show for The Matt Pless Fan Club.

As for the music itself, I must admit that I didn't lose interest once in the entire 11-song set.  Armed with an acoustic guitar, a harmonica, and a distinct-but-likable voice, Matt is easily likened to a certain singer-songwriter who became famous with that exact instrumentation many, many years ago.  But instrumentation aside, his compositions offer lyrically-potent social commentary, on par with the works of...  well...  that same famous singer-songwriter.  So subtle allusions aside, Matt shares many admirable qualities with the legendary Bob Dylan, and could probably become comparably popular if the generation he's trying to reach would only begin to take an interest in lyrical craftsmanship and meaningful messages.  Sadly, it seems that right now one or two catchy hooks, paired with the most popular emo-haircut and some good luck are the only criteria for success in this broken music industry of ours.

Matt Pless has clearly not accepted this paradigm, however, and seems determined to lace all of his songs with a greater meaning and originality not commonly found in popular music these days.  The anti-war anthem, "When The Helmets Hit The Ground," is a plea to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, which Matt wrote for a woman he met who had a son overseas.  Meanwhile, the ironic comment on the masks worn by "normal" families in the song "White Picket Fences" is sure to resonate with anyone who has ever felt that in some way or another they come from a broken home that still appears functional on the surface.

But don't get the impression that all Matt's music is serious by any means.  He has his share of lighthearted love songs too, like the as-yet unrecorded story of the peasant boy and Amber-Leigh, or "She Plays With Dirty Needles and She's In My Arms Again."  My favorite song of the night though, was probably "Talkin' Information Blues," a witty and comedic exploration of how the internet has changed social relations in recent years.  If you have an internet-capable phone and a Myspace page, you can't help but directly relate to almost every line in the song, which is an impressive feat for any songwriter.

Although now that I'm listening to the CD I bought and looking back on my notes from the show, I'm thinking that "In The Past Tense" is also a good contender for my favorite Pless track.  A touching and beautifully fingerpicked song, – stylistically reminiscent of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" – all I wrote about it in my notes last night was "Damn... That's a good one..."

So in case you haven't read between the lines and decoded the latent subtext of this article yet, I'll just come right out and say that Matt Pless has won my highest possible recommendation for music to check out.  Both of his albums are available for purchase on iTunes and CDBaby.com, and some great songs are on his Myspace page that everyone can check out free of charge.  Don't let me down, people.  I know Towson has some local pride, we gave Michael Phelps a damn parade.  But not all of us want to spend all of our time in a pool, so the least we can do is spend a few bucks to support some fantastic local music.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1201-Baltimore-Band-Examiner~y2008m12d5-An-evening-with-Matt-Pless

Wow, good times all around, Texas Biscuits and gravy are the bomb! after our night at the strip club we moved around ttexas a bit more, ate a 26 ounce Strip Steak from a place called "The Big Texan" , drove down to Austin to play a show at the Austin Java, They say to "Keep Austin Weird", and It sure is weird...but very cool, a total music town, they block off the streets for weekend partying and the main drag of 6th street fills up like a holiday parade of drunks, in the meantime, there is music from a live band in nearly every bar along the strip and its all broadcasted over the outdoor speakers through the night air, buskers and street musicians every 20 feet, a weird shop where they have stuffed 3 eyed cows and 2 headed chickens! We play our show and its during the Austin City Limits music festival, so lots of bands and big names are in town...during our set for a crowd of 8 people at a small coffee shop, i notice a shadowy figure walk in the the back of the room, slowly and quiet, dressed in Black and looking up at me from peircing eyes....half way through a song, i realize its Jack White, of the White Stripes, no joke, jack White is in town for the Austin city limist festival and he somehow stumbled into my show...he watches 3 songs, claps, smirks and then leaves...never to be heard from again....weird..! from that point on we head off to see a band play in Dalls that noone knows called "The Fratellis", cool show, not many people there, we catch a meeting with the singer Jon after the gig by the bus, he seems pretty wasted and not wanting to talk, we ezchange a hello, and thats that, he actually seems like the most pissed off person i have seen in a while! Probabaly because his bands performance this evening kinda sucked...we play a show at a real life Roadhouse in Lubbock...people throwing beer everywhere, smoking, swinging girls around, the place is nuts, they want to hear ACDC radio hour rather than my music so i just hang out and watch the chaos...Played a place called the Actors cafe in Louisiana, owned by one of the founders of the Weather Underground, Got to stay with the guy at his apartment as well....So now I have hung out with the Yippies of NYC and the Weathermen, two radical groups of the 60s counterculture...still kciking..in a sense...how do i find myself in these situations??new Orleans, cool town, very spooky, we wander the french quarter, stay in a haunted hotel and smoke pot in the swimming pool..Mobile Alabama, we play in a small bar with a bunch of coool hippie kids having a ho-down during our set, cool people here, we hang out with 2 college kids who get us stoned and drunk andoffer us a place to stay, talk to a guy named D-real (short for darrel) hes a 48 year old guy, going through a divorce, dressed in a nice 9 to 5 outfit, drunk as shit, loves the Insane Clown Posse and insists on smoking us up in our van..says hes " down with the clown like a motherfucker"! hilarious...good time in Mobile! i eat a shrimp Po-boy sandwhich the next morming then we head to FL, where we play a string of Punk shows done up by D.I.Y kids, play a show at a place called the B;aclbpx Collective, while the stage is invaded by wandering homeless crackheads as well as the punks residing over the festivities...meet some cool cats in South Carolina, share the stage at an open mic with more Clown Posse fans, two guys dressed in clown makeup named "Dose" and "Scarecrow" ...whats up with all this I.C.P insanity anyway? and why does it  follow me!? We make a bar full of Chad guys and drunk bootey shaking college chics dance during or set, evry suprising to see a sports bar meat market get down to my songs, that never happens in Baltimore....Hung out at a Hookah bar called the Juggling Gypsy, played the Open mic there and met some cool kids....made 2 thousand dollars in merch sales on this trip! I wanna thank all the cool ass people we met along the way and everyone who let us sleep on their floors, couches and beds, or who purchased a CD, I hope you like it

thanks for making this the best Tour I have ever done

later

Matt