Three Music Thingz with Perpetual Stu
Well howdy there pardner. We've got another Three Music Thingz today. That's the blogseries where I ask musicians for three thingz that are essential to their music-making.
Today our fresh and hot post comes from Roger Feeley-Lussier, who has an extensive musical resume (The Appreciation Post; Pretty & Nice; Yale, Massachusetts) and currently records solo as Perpetual Stu.
Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 30, 2022
Roger's pitch in my inbox was pretty simple: a new song out called "Alone," two minutes and 30 seconds in length, described as "ableton-ified piano indie-pop with rough edges like early They Might Be Giants or later Emperor X." The play button was smashed shortly thereafter with great results.
"Alone" has a jaunty keyboard base, enhanced by a few audacious hand-clap samples. It has a natural DIY-pop charm, and the chorus—"It's okay if you need somebody / It's alright if you just feel fine / Maybe it's fine if you just want to be alone"— reminds me a bit of the I'm okay, you're okay bit of The Sekhmet Hypothesis, which is a type of trend analysis that segments social attitudes into four quadrants. The I'm okay, you're okay quadrant is called "friendly strength." That's the vibe I get from "Alone": friendly strength, something you can play to shore up the nerves, in the thematic zone of "Float On" by Modest Mouse.
Perpetual Stu has a neat singles project this year. He writes, "My goal for 2024 is to release *roughly* one song a month (so like, maybe I'll do a two song EP and take a month off), so follow me on TikTok at @perpetual.stu.music or look for my page on Spotify to keep up with the project."
Hark: Perpetual Stu's three music thingz...
- My family
I know it's a corny answer but, my family. My wife and I met at one of my shows forever ago and she has always introduced me to cool music. More recently, though, my daughters are what reignited my love for writing and recording music. Our oldest, who is now 2.5, is obsessed with BTS and over the summer she was into a lot of Queen, Weezer, and OK Go.
Listening to all of this music with fresh ears got me *curious* about music again. After half a decade of mostly listening to podcasts in my downtime, I started listening to new bands again. I found Samia and Petey and Bilmuri and Katy Kirby and all these great artists I just would've missed. I'll sneak them all in to the playlists when I'm listening with my girls, she calls it "dada music."
Our 4 month old isn't quite demanding dance party playlists yet, but quiet time with her has led to listening to a lot of Explosions in the Sky, Austin TV, This Will Destroy You and other post rock bands. Music is so cool. - My gear
My gear. Just vaguely and generally. I used to have a ton of gear—back in my days touring with The Appreciation Post and Pretty & Nice I had different sorts of monster rigs—multiple keyboards, pedalboards. The P&N years made it especially easy to acquire a mountain of doodads because we *literally* lived in the recording studio. Alas, I've whittled most of that down to some core stuff that I know I couldn't part with. The two main pieces being:
1.) My 1973 Fender Mustang Bass. I got it when I joined P&N and I toured the US and Europe with it and it never let me down. Just such a cool sounding instrument that had clearly changed hands and been loved before.
2.) My Boss PW-2 pedal. Back in like 2008 or so my friend Jeff Poot (of the band Cigarette Camp) posted on a messageboard about the PW-2 saying it was like "a tube screamer and a big muff smashed together" and also that you could find them for like $45. I got one and it is exactly as Jeff said. I love the pedal so much that when it broke, I bought another one, right before the market for them jumped way up. Now you can't find them for under $100. This pedal is all over the Perpetual Stu stuff and will forever be part of my "rig." - My record collection.
I have a *ton* of records. Over my life I've acquired my mother's collection, my father in-law's collection, my stepmother's collection and simply piles and piles and piles of records I've bought, received, and been gifted. I'm not even sure how to get an accurate count of them because they're all over my office.
I love records. I love the fact that records my grandparents listened to in the 40s can *still be played* on (mostly) unaltered modern technology. The only other medium like that is books. One day I'm going to have to go through and cull some of them, and that's going to be a sad day. I always identified with that one scene in High Fidelity where John Cusack's character arranges his records "autobiographically," putting them in the order in which he bought them. Maybe I'll do that.
Thank you Roger! Follow Perpetual Stu for the latest and greatest of his singles project. Thanks as always for reading I Enjoy Music. If you like it, tell a friend about it.
