This is an unpublished chapter of a book I started writing last year about This Dark Shroud. This section deals, specifically, with my ex-band, and the song "Black Nail," whose lyric provided the name for this primarily solo electronic side-project (abbreviated as TDS). It shines a different light (or at least the beam's angle is somewhat different) on this period from the one I wrote in my previous essay, "Without End or Beginning," also anthologized on this blog.

***

BROKEN REPTILE

THE RISE AND DEMISE OF MY EX-BAND 

(OR, HOW I CAME TO COMPOSE THE LYRICS TO 

"BLACK NAIL" IN AUTUMN 2016)

The story of my ex-band, which I have related from a somewhat different angle in a separate essay I wrote earlier this year, and which, frankly, I wasn't totally sure at first whether or not to include as a part of the present story (but then realized the necessity of doing so, after all), is one that is both not directly relevent to the main tale of the "This Dark Shroud" project, and yet, in another sense, also very much relevant to the creation of the project, or at least its earliest incarnation, not only since the project's name itself is inextricably wrapped up in my ex-band's dissolution, albeit indirectly, and not only because, had I not broken free of the band's influence when I did I would not have set out as a solo artist, independent of a band and of depending on other band members to play and arrange and record my songs, would also likely not have studied LOGIC so voraciously or bought my first KORG MIDI keyboard in 2017 in order to create new sounds sans band members, would certainly not have written the lyrics to "Black Nail," a story I shall relate, below, and hence the phrase "This Dark Shroud" and the This Dark Shroud project, and hence, also, this very narrative itself...none of these would have existed, or at least not in their present form, had not my band and I had the problems and the subsequent falling out/breakup we had in late summer of 2016.

-Glass Gecko, performing "Want" c. 2016

This section, then, shall deal primarily with "band politics" and differing perspectives and opinions, and it will also explain, as a by-product/result of what occurred, why and how I got started as a solo artist under my personal name, Marc Lowe,* prior to the inception of the This Dark Shroud solo side-project -- though for a time it had actually become a duo project before again returning, quite unexpectedly, earlier this year (2023) to being what I might call a "reinvigorated solo side-project," or something like that...but all this comes much later in the essay. If one wishes to skip past the part that discusses all of the drama that preceded the inception of This Dark Shroud (TDS) in this section and jump straight into the main narrative, i.e. with the recording of the track "Undo" in late 2017, feel free to do so, though the price of admission is the same either way (though the exit may not be exactly the same!)...

* "Lowe" is the family name I have been using as a musical artist, and which I began using when I first started publishing my fiction in around 2004; it is an abbreviation of my ancestors' longer last name, Lowenstein, or Löwenstein, with an "umlaut" over the o. It means "Lion Stone" in German, which is why I transpose my last name with the Chinese characters (Jpns. kanji) for "lion" and "stone" (獅石). Otherwise, this is in fact my real name and not like "Jagger" or "Bowie" or "Gaga" either, for that matter, but rather just an abbreviation of my original family name, which itself was perverted in terms of both spelling and pronunciation after my ancestors came to the New World whenever they actually arrived (which has remained a sort of mystery or secret, at least on one side of my family). By the bye, I am sometimes asked why my first name is spelled with a "c" rather than with the more standard "k." My answer for this is simple: My parents preferred to have it spelled this way when they named me! That's all, so far as I understand. And no, I am not (nor do I speak) French.

Before we begin our journey here, I would just like to add one more aside.

In this section, I am not trying to sound like some Roger Waters-esque, bitter ex-bandleader, badmouthing all of his ex-band members in order to make them sound as though they were horrible individuals or any such malarky. Similarly, I would never claim that "I could have done it better myself without any of their input," either, as the former tends to claim these days when speaking of the contributions of his ex-bandmates; certainly this was not possible at the time, as I was a fledgling guitarist with little understanding of how to arrange music for a band; this is, indeed, precisely why I brought the members together in the first place: for the purpose of working together, with mutual respect for one another's ideas and opinions, toward a common goal or goals that would ideally have benefited all members in the end. Unfortunately, ideals, like old habits, when they do die, die hard. 

I am also not here claiming that I was always "right," nor that they were necessarily always "wrong," neither in terms of my/their attitudes about things, nor simply because we (that is: I and they) apparently possessed totally different ways-of-thinking and had completely different concepts of what constituted "a band." This is a rather familiar story, though, is it not? I and my band were certainly not unique in this way. Read almost any longstanding band's biography, or any artist who was in a band's autobiography -- which is essentially what you are reading now, except that neither I nor my band is/was famous, and except that the story of my band is only a small part of the larger story I herein wish to tell -- and the same can be seen over and over and over. It's almost become a cliche. Waters and Gilmore from Pink Floyd. Sting and his mates from The Police. Etc. and etc. But then, cliches are cliches (and hence they themselves constitute a cliche!) because they are things that are generally agreed upon as being almost always "true" in most cases...

But, I digress.

I shall herein try and be as open and honest as possible (from a limited "I" perspective, mind you), recounting my experiences and perspectives in this band as accurately as I am capable of doing. Were one to ask any of the others individually today to recount what happened (or didn't happen, as the case may be), I am certain that they (again, individually, though who knows what they would say "collectively" if brought together for an interview about our time together sans any pre-huddle meeting, wherein they might have the time, over drinks and a few laughs, perhaps even a toke or two on someone's freshly-rolled spliff, to smooth out some sort of "consistent" or "definitive" version/verdict before presenting their case to an empty jury of amnesiac ghosts who have never heard of us before and don't care anyway...) would tell a very different story. That is simply human nature; it's the so-called "Rashomon effect" in action. And so, my perspective comes quite literally as that of the founding member of the band, the one who introduced the three members to one another for the very first time, who brought them together for the sole purpose of doing this "band thing" which I, at the time, wanted -- or thought that I had wanted, perhaps a bit too badly -- to do, and as the (yes, the, not a) member whose ideas about this "band/project/collaboration" at that time, anyway, obviously differed quite drastically from the ideas of the other members, both individually and collectively...

One more thing I'd like to add.

Being in a band taught me a lot, not only about working with others, but also about myself, about the way that I tick, about how I prefer to work, about my strengths and weaknesses and limitations, both in terms of how far I am (and/or am not) willing to compromise on certain things within a collective, and about how much I am (or, again, am not) willing to put up with before I might decide to close the door on or walk away from something that does not suit me and/or which, in the end, ends up creating more stress or turbulence than it does joy or ebullience. I took a lot of lessons from the nearly nine, mostly nervewracking, but also at times rather rewarding, months we spent together as a band, rehearsing and having our little band meetings/discussions about the direction the band should and shouldn't take, performing live together, albeit mainly for our friends and acquaintances in the close-knit (often stiflingly so) amateur rock music community based in Fukuoka, Japan -- a smallish city known more for its older-generation "mentai rock" bands and its cute, young girls performing J-pop songs solo with an acoustic than for innovative or experimental forms of musical performance (though there are a couple of venues which welcomed and still welcome it, one such beacon of transcendent light being Utero Livehouse in Kiyokawa) -- and these experiences have certainly colored my perspective when it comes to working with others in any format, for better or for worse. 

Indeed, to date I have never again attempted to form another band, though I have assembled other projects, some which came not long after my original band broke up (including the Laughing Moon trio, which performed for the first time in front of an audience the summer following, almost exactly one year on from my band's breakup, and from which I also gained a future "full member" -- not to mention a rather close friend, with whom I still communicate from time to time -- for what would become the duo-version of This Dark Shroud in 2019). I have always kept these projects to a maximum of three members total, including myself, and have never once since exceeded this limit (!!), since three is, as the saying goes, already "a crowd." Further, each time these units were formed (by me), I always emphasized that they were projects or units or collaborations, and so please, please, never should any contributor think of the unit as a formal band, even when recording and performing under a "unit name," such as Laughing Moon (or This Dark Shroud, for that matter, i.e. when the project became a duo for almost a year), rather than as "Marc Lowe" and his...what? Band? Unit? Musical friends? I never acted like "Ziggy," and my members were never treated as "spiders" (or "reptiles," for that matter) either.

-A Brief Guide to the Fukuoka Years (2017-2019)

In these collaborative situations, there were no obligatory "band meetings," no votes to be tallied via paper-scissors-stone, hanging paper ballots (named Chad or Chud or Chip[munk]), nor any other form of compulsory anything... Members were free to do other projects anytime they pleased, solo or with other people, and always without ever feeling the need to first ask me or any of the other members whether they first had "permission" from"the collective" to do so. There was never any "I am the leader (or "the most accomplished musician in the room," or "the oldest person here"), so you must listen to what I tell you!" kind of inequality shenanigans, no need for overt passive-aggressivity, since all were free to say and do as they wished within the unit, so long as our words or actions didn't step directly on anyone else's toes or intentionally hurt another member's pride, and members were even free to quit the unit at any time if they so wished, or simply became too busy to continue. This, in fact, happened any number of times, and it was fine. No problem. No stress.

In other words: At the end of the day, we are all free individuals, doing this because we want to, not because we signed a contract or are doing it for a paycheck. Use common sense, be considerate, and enjoy the ride so long as it feels good.

And that's that.

If one or another member couldn't make it to a show, even last minute, the remaining members could perform as a duo, or I could even do the show completely solo in a crunch. In fact, I say this because I actually did this once while working with Tana -- who later played guitar in the Laughing Moon project along with Joe on bass -- as part of a duo called Another Room. It was honestly no major stress for me simply to perform my songs solo that night with the backing tracks I'd prepared, though the intention was to have done it as a duo. It was a weeknight, as I recall, the place, a small livespace on the second floor located right up the street from where I'd been living -- not Utero, which was also close by (the theater there is located downstairs, rather than upstairs) but another place in the neighborhood that tended to feature heavier bands -- and there was no fee to perform. He phoned to tell me, apologetically, after I'd arrived to set up my guitar and iPad to run a soundcheck and was wondering when he'd show, that he had suddenly been asked to stay late for a work-related meeting or some such and could I just perform the set without him? My answer was yes, got it, of course, and that was that... No strings attached, no lecture from me, no big apologies necessary: no big deal. This is why, I now believe, I was later able to assemble the Laughing Moon project with Tana in tow (he was an important member, 1/3 of the collective, after all!). Had I given him a long lecture after that night, berated him for suddenly canceling or given him some sort of guilt trip or ultimatum, I've no doubt now that that would have been the end of our working relationship as musical partners, and that Laughing Moon would never have been... (Tana and I, like Joe and I, are still in touch sometimes; in fact, he came to a solo live performance I did at Utero just earlier this [last] year in March, the first I'd done in Fukuoka since before the pandemic got out of control in early 2020 [note: I returned last summer again to perform as This Dark Shroud, with Joe joining me on his bass-guitar for the second half as special guest].)

And so, the reason I believe that these collaborations worked so well is that all members engaged in both common sense and mutual respect; with mutual respect comes mutual responsibility, and so rules and regulations, guilt trips and penalties, and all such powerplay-type things become rather unnecessary. Therefore, there was never any real negativity or stress in the air at rehearsals or at shows, either for me or for any of the other members, and these collaborations pretty much, to my mind, anyway, always ended up being mutually beneficial to all members in some way. If the project outgrew its usefulness, got stale, boring, stressful, or whatever, then it could be easily dissolved without having to worry about in-group fighting, blackmailing, rumors being spread around town by the other members on SNS, and so forth (something that let's just say I had had a bit of experience with by that point in time). This was what I had wanted from the start, and finally, by the time I had formed Laughing Moon in late 2017 -- roughly a year after the breakup of my first band, and also around the same time I started doing This Dark Shroud as a solo "home-based" recording-only project -- I had happily arrived there with this three-piece unit.

-Marc Lowe + Sunny Yasuda performing "Hallelujah" c. 2017

And so, in the end, my rather complicated feelings about having worked as part of a (formal) "band" has not stopped me from collaborating with other musicians/artists or from hosting events that bring others together for the purpose of making music/art: Not at all. On the contrary, what I came to realize most about myself from the experience, as bitter as the taste may have been to me at the time, was that I work much better as a "free agent," without a constant group of others with whom to identify, without the necessity of some kind of musical "clan" or "family." However, short-term and/or "off-and-on" units of two or three members total, myself included, can be quite exciting and fun and sometimes also produce rather unique and interesting results. I also realized that I rather prefer not to have to feel any need of dependency on others for anything I can do for myself, and often (frankly) as-well-as, if not better than, were I to relegate such tasks, however onerous they may at times appear to others, such as, for instance, booking and/or promoting shows on my and/or my unit's behalf and so on. In short, my attitude can be explained thus:

Collaborations: yes, if mutually beneficial

Contributions from members (e.g. booking a show for me or us, doing a remix for me and/or my unit, etc.): yes, if mutually beneficial

Depending on others to do any of the above, to arrange and/or to mix or master my material for me, to take photos and to create cover art and music videos for me, etc., and then, later, to try and charge me or to use this as a way to have some sort of power over me or the decisions I make as an artist: no and no thank you.

Definitely not. Never again.

And so, having said all of this, and taken much more space in which to do it than I'd planned to take, let us now move on to the next part of this untall tale together, shall we?

In short: 

Live. Learn. Grow. Reflect. 

Also,

"Hang up your pride..."

+++

The name of my solo side-project -- This Dark Shroud -- came, as I have already mentioned, directly from a lyric that was spontaneously plucked from my song "Black Nail," a phrase that, as I now recall, had popped into my head as I was in the process of arranging, composing, and simultaneously recording parts of my first-ever track as This Dark Shroud in late 2017, a mainly-instrumental piece called "Undo." (I will talk more about the inception of that song, which literally marked the beginning of the side-project, in the next section.) The lyrics to "Black Nail," in any case, were originally composed on-the-spot as a sort of knee-jerk reaction, post-breakup and re-formation (changing the name and sans vocals, i.e. minus the ex-vocalist!) by the remaining three members of what had been my band: Glass Gecko. Let me briefly explain the origin of my ex-band's name, as it may seem a curious one to some.*

*Here, as in other parts of this section, and perhaps at times elsewhere, I may be "repeating" myself a bit, as I wrote about my band experiences in another essay published on my online blog [note: this one!] just earlier this [last] year (2023), an essay entitled "Without End or Beginning," which was much broader in scope than this one intends to be, dealing as it did with my solo activities early-on, as well as describing in some amount of detail a selection of my recordings and live activities starting with the Covid pandemic in early 2020 through around July of this year, right around the time I was in the process of reviving the This Dark Shroud project.

The essay was serialized on my official blog, starting on June 12, 2023 and continuing through to the last entry, posted on July 28. A link that will bring you to the beginning of the essay is here, for those interested in reading the "broader story" of my musical career up through last summer: 

http://marclowemusician.blogspot.com/2023/06/change-your-life-black-nail-16-1.html

The reason I had in the beginning suggested to the guitarist, the first member to join the project, the name "Glass Gecko" (or, as another option, "Silver Gecko," which is certainly much less alliterative, and also which he -- i.e. the guitarist -- wasn't very fond of) was because on the day I purchased my first-ever guitar, a reasonably-priced Yamaha acoustic with a larger body than that of the guitars I now use, some months prior to the formation of the band, I had encountered a slithery/silvery thing I'd thought perhaps to be a gecko or a lizard on my way home from the music store, the newly-purchased instrument inside a black case strapped to my back. The creature I saw that afternoon may actually have been a lizard, in fact, as its tail was rather long for it to have been a gecko, but my partner at the time (now my ex-wife), looking at the photo I'd taken on the afternoon in question, insisted it was likely the latter, so I went with her interpretation when considering a name for what would become my nascent band. As fate would have it, therefore, the band's name would not end up as either "Silver Lizard" or "Glass Lizard," nor as any other two-word combination including the latter appelation, and so it no really longer matters whether or not the long-tailed creature I'd seen on that afternoon -- July 14, 2015 -- was in fact a gecko or not, does it? In any case, none of this has much at all to do with This Dark Shroud, per se; it's all just a slimy little footprint, uh, I meant footnote, to a much broader narrative...

Getting back to the lyrics of "Black Nail," then: the "them" included in the line "Give them a sign" was a semi-veiled reference to them (actually, it was a rather direct one), i.e. my ex-band members, who had recently reformed as a trio after my/our band had splintered in August of 2016 following several painful (for me, anyway) months of mounting tensions, disagreements, and accumulated resentment between myself and the guitarist, particularly, but what wound up being or feeling to me, anyway, like it was always myself "vs." the three other members, or, in other words, "three against one." This certainly was not how I wanted to be feeling, especially considering that I was not only the band's founding member, the one who had brought them/us together in the first place, but also, or supposedly, anyway, also the "leader" of the band.

Well, or, um...wasn't I?

If this sounds a bit like I had a touch of "persecution complex," it may well be so. I certainly did overreact to things said and done in the context of the band at the time. I was frequently rather oversensitive, jumped to conclusions when I should instead have let my head cool down and first taken a healthy step or two (or three!) backwards before reacting or overthinking, and all of those things. Yes, I can now not only see this more clearly today, but also fully admit it to myself. I am now quite certain that the larger conflicts that eventually occurred, the fights and the accusations and the betrayal of trust after the band split and was reformed without my knowledge, etc., could have been avoided had I kept a somewhat cooler head/attitude and not reacted from a place of insecurity and mistrust of my bandmates' initially "good" intentions (this mistrust developed over time, of course, since at the beginning I approached the project with a blind naivety someone of my age at the time should never have maintained. I was a man of around 42 when I brought the members together, a father, a full-time professor at university, certainly at an age when people are already saying things about themselves like "I wasn't just born yesterday, you know?" But, well, I digress...) 

This being said, I learned the hard way (another cliche, perhaps, but, again, it's "cliche" because true) that my perspective about making music together "as a band" and their perspective about making music together "as a band" were, essentially, in the end, completely different. Again, I cannot say quite how each member thought individually about this, only as a collective at our band meetings and so on, where decisions about "band things" were decided upon "democratically" or, in other words, "majority wins." The biggest problem with the way things ended up going, from my perspective at the time, was essentially that whenever I made a suggestion or had a complaint about the way the guitarist had arranged one of my songs (such as the time, to take a "classic" example in my book of examples, and one which I wrote about in my previous essay, when he turned a short, funky, vocal-centric song of mine dedicated to author Kobo Abe entitled "Box Man" into a longer, prog rock-esque song with odd time-signatures and long instrumental breaks, the members jamming out whilst I hid myself inside a box onstage, periodically popping my head out of it to sing a line of my original vocal melody between their solos), it would be shot down by all three of the other members at our meetings, seemingly regardless of my opinions or input, seemingly regardless, too, of whether or not his arrangements had, in the least, taken into consideration the spirit of the original demos I had presented him/the band with, or even the very chord structures themselves (as in the aforementioned case with "Box Man," as well as with other songs, such as "The Day I Cried," which utilized a riff he had written years prior and "saved," as he admitted to us at a meeting, the others nodding their heads in approval as I bemoaned the death of the original, slower, and also moodier E-minor chord structure I had written for it).

-Glass Gecko performing "Box Man" in 2016 in Fukuoka

To better explain, this is basically how things were done in terms of arranging the songs we would eventually rehearse and then play live together, right from the very first days of our project: I would play a song acoustically for everyone and then teach/tell/show them the chords. What happened almost immediately, however, was that the guitarist took the responsibility upon himself of bringing the final arrangements to completion for the entire band, rather than us doing it collectively in the studio, and so, after a time, and because I was constantly writing new material for guitar/voice, I started making CD-R demos, recorded at home in GarageBand, and handing them out to everyone at rehearsals, so that both he and the other members could listen to and/or practice with them at home. I'm not sure why or how or even exactly at what point this started to happen, thinking back on it now, but I now vaguely recall how, one day early on in our rehearsal schedule -- perhaps it was after the second or third time we met as a band at a rehearsal studio -- comments from both the bassist and the guitar player himself made it sound to me as if it was obvious that everyone was depending solely on him (i.e. the guitarist) to arrange all of my (as well, of course, as his) songs for us, rather than us all doing it together collectively.

"He needs more time to arrange it, Marc. Be patient!" (from the bassist), or "I'm busy at work for the next week or so, so it'll have to wait" (from the guitarist himself, to everyone after the rehearsal), etc. The assumption I'd made that everyone would arrange the songs I'd written collectively in the studio, i.e. so that I, too, might have had some say in how they ended up sounding, was apparently a mistaken one. My passive acceptance of this was my first mistake, I now realize, and I should have spoken up about it sooner, but soon it was too late, and the arrangements became...well, like "Box Man," they turned into creations of the guitarist, resembling the originals I'd written less and less over time. Indeed, the first time I heard my song "Box Man," as presented to the band by the guitarist, I thought to myself, "This isn't 'Box Man' at all!" and, typical of me at the time with this band, I then got upset in the studio.* The more this sort of thing happened, with the other members readily agreeing that whatever the guitarist had arranged would be the way that the songs for "the collective" would be rehearsed and performed, the worse things began to go between "me" and "them"...

*I still remember that day well as, earlier the same afternoon, I and the drummer had spent several hours together at his place quite pleasantly rehearsing songs together. The contrast between the ease I had felt doing this with him, just hours earlier, and the frustration I felt the moment the guitarist entered the studio and, with an attitude of "I finished arranging it. This is how it sounds! Let's practice it now: The bass part goes...and the drums go... Oh and, Marc, just hang out and do nothing while I teach everyone the new parts; you don't need to play guitar in my arrangement..." was enough to make my head spin. I wanted to walk out and call it quits right then and there. This was one of many such moments, and it would not be long before I would find myself no longer the singer of my own band, but totally separate, making music on my own...

And so, over time, perhaps naturally, you might say, I became more and more frustrated with the situation; I started drifting farther and farther away from the others in the band (with the exception of the drummer, who was like a completely different person when the two of us were alone -- especially when we'd started to engage in a separate duo side-project, where we could work on songs I had written together, without the intervention of the guitarist and therefore without any friction or competing "band arrangements"* -- but with whom I could neither speak nor reason for a single moment when the three members were in the same room together, making "collective" decisions, almost as though they had been born Siamese triplets and couldn't stand even for a single moment to disagree with one another). I began to spend more and more time alone with my guitar and effectors, learned how to skillfully employ Garageband in order to record my own compositions completely by myself, eventually adding drums and other elements as well as my guitar and voice, rather than having to rely solely on the guitarist to arrange my songs in order for us to play them together as a band.

*I wrote about our side-project, which we called "The Gecko's Muse," as well as the short-lived trio project that followed and which also involved myself and the same drummer, a unit named "House of Mirrors (HOM)," in some detail in my previous essay, so I will not repeat the same story here.

In addition to "drifting" from the other members, to feeling a stronger and stronger urge to break away as much as possible whenever possible as time went on, having realized that I would never be satisfied with either the guitarist's arrangements of my songs or with our rehearsals and the increasingly stressful monthly or semi-monthly band meetings, I soon gathered up enough courage to try launching, alongside my now-obligatory activities with this monstrosity of a band I had brought together (perhaps this term is a bit too strong, but the reptile was beginning to take on increasingly uglier, for me, characteristics), a so-called solo "career," albeit one that was not profitable monetarily in any way (I'd like to insert an emoji here, with tears squirting out of its laughing eyes, but that wouldn't be a very literary thing to do...), performing as myself sans appellation: Marc Lowe. In the beginning I performed solely with an acoustic and a mic, what in Japan is referred to as "hikigatari" (弾き語り) style, i.e. solo-acoustic, and then, a bit further down the road (i.e. around the time my band was entering its final phase as "my band" and about to splinter into two uneven "halves"), using the electric Fender Telecaster and a cheap Roland drum machine I had purchased used online in order to accompany myself with backing beats. 

I took a chance on the solo idea early on, despite the fact that I was still very much a beginner on the guitar who could not play anything technical, essentially because I felt that I had to. It was, for me, a matter of (artistic) life and death, of (metaphorical) freedom vs. staying locked up inside a repressive cage I myself had constructed around myself, handing the keys over to my chosen "nakama" (仲間), or inside members. I had, by that point in time, only been playing the guitar for less than a full year, though I had also already written at least 15 or 20 songs we had never arranged or rehearsed in the band, employing the limited chords I was able to eke out and using them in what I had thought to be different, unique ways, from song to song; I wrote songs in different tempos, time-signatures (my early song "Doppelgänger," for instance, which we played in the band together, was in 3/4 time), as well as styles of singing. People started referring to some of the chords I used in my compositions as "Marc chords," since they weren't standard for rock or pop, and other guitar players I knew were unfamiliar with them. For me, they just felt and/or sounded right; I didn't even consider whether or not they were usual or "proper."

During rehearsals, the other members would frequently admonish me for my poor technique when playing standard chords or other things that guitarists spend hours upon hours mastering before moving on to the "next level," imploring me to practice more. ("You should love your guitar so much that you fall asleep with it in your hands after hours of daily practice!" was one thing I heard a lot from a certain member, though in fact to date I've never once fallen asleep with a guitar on my lap! That being said, I certainly have fallen asleep multiple times -- too many to now recall -- in a chair or even on the floor whilst playing back mixes in LOGIC or re-watching videos I'd been editing late into the night. Everything is perspective, n'est-ce-pas?) These comments and suggestions about my technique, or rather my (real or perceived) lack thereof, made it rather stressful and unpleasant for me to be a part of things at the time, as I constantly felt that I had to "compete" with a guitarist who had undoubtedly devoted years and years of his life to mastering nothing but technique and imitating guitarists he loved (he was a fan not only of Shoegazer music, but also of guitarists such as Jake E. Lee and Yngwie Malmsteen, who are known for fast playing and flashy, technical guitar solos), not to mention that both the bassist and the drummer could also play the guitar, and that both were much more technically-proficient than I was at the time, having been practicing the instrument for several years already by that point.*

*As an aside, for many years after the band had broken up, and though my technique continued, naturally, to improve more and more over the many months and years I spent composing, rehearsing, recording, and performing live with the guitar -- especially the acoustic, which to this day I consider more my forte than the electric -- I had a sort of complex about my guitar playing technique for a long, long time post-band breakup. At one point in time, as I recall, a couple of years later, when people started to compliment me on my technique, say after a solo live performance or whatnot, I actually had a rather difficult time accepting or even believing that they were telling me the truth. Even when the people I eventually began collaborating with in '17 and '18 and whom I trusted, such as Tana and Joe in Laughing Moon, would make such comments to me after a rehearsal, I felt somewhat hesitant to accept their validity. Were they just saying so to make me feel more confident, perhaps so that I would improve more and be a better player as a part of the unit? It literally took me several years post-breakup of my band before I started fully believing it when people complimented me on my guitar technique. Nowadays, I am completely comfortable playing the guitar in the style I've developed over the past couple of years, which is, I realize, quite different from the way most "standard" rock guitarists play the instrument, as I do a lot of percussive neck and body tapping -- even "body rapping" (with fingers, knuckles, or palm) -- perhaps due to the fact that I was for so long a drummer. It now seems natural to me to do it, and I rarely use a pick these days either (never on the Guild). It is for this reason, too, at least in part, that I prefer the hollow wooden body of the acoustic to the harder plastic one of an electric guitar, such as the Telecaster (which I do use sparingly, with effectors, for distortion/noise at times, but with which I cannot produce "body resonance" the way I can with my acoustic or even classical acoustic guitars).

Another thing I recall with quite a bit of clarity (and I cannot help but slightly wince as the memories now return to me...) is that I also got a good amount of slack from all three members collectively after booking my first solo show, as I hadn't first officially asked for their "unanimous approval," hadn't waited until our next band meeting to tell them and then get their permission (oh and, by the bye, have I mentioned how much I dreaded those damn band meetings?!). I had accepted the offer to perform solo from the livehouse owner on-the-spot because, frankly, I had felt that said offer of a solo gig would be a good opportunity for me to try doing things completely "on my own" for a change (at the time it would be a brand new challenge for me, performing solo, doing my own simple-but-honest acoustic arrangements of my tunes). I had by then already written a number of my own songs and could perform them on my acoustic while singing, without a band backing me: Wasn't it enough? Their reaction, however, much to my chagrin, went something like, "You should have told us first! You are so impulsive/selfish! Why can't you ever wait for anything..." I should have realized this would be the reaction from the others, but it came as a slight shock (and disappointment) when it did.

And hence, once again, the perceptive reader will find here yet another aspect of being in a band -- or at least of being in that band, the only one I had at the time! -- that I quickly came to dislike. Wasn't the idea behind making music, alone or collaboratively -- writing compositions, performing live, etc. -- to fully and freely express one's art, one's very "right" to exist as a free and creative being, not tethered to the everyday hum-drum rules and regulations of work and so-called "society-at-large"? How can one create anything without the feeling of being free to create while, at the same time, being forced first to get the permission of three band members who, I had felt, should have understood my desire and also respected my right to choose to also perform live solo from time to time? Hadn't I myself brought them all together to do this band -- a band, I had made it clear from the start, I wished to form in order to break away from my former band, which had become staid and was simply playing the same songs in the same arrangements over and over without letting in anything new -- in the first place? And yet, now I had to ask them -- all of them, together -- for collective permission to perform solo, though it had nothing at all to do with them/the band itself? Did it? I wasn't canceling any of our performances. I wasn't skipping out on a rehearsal or rehearsals, wasn't prioritizing one over the other either, or at least not at that point I wasn't. If any of them wanted to do the same, I certainly had no problem with it, and I would never have turned it into an issue or tried to use it as a leveraging device, a way to try and control any of their musical activities outside of the band, even as the so-called "leader" (not to mention the "founding member"). I quickly began to resent being a part of this so-called "collective" I had myself birthed, and soon I very badly wanted to break free of the entire, grotesque affair.

Not surprisingly, the further apart I drifted from them, and the more isolated I began to feel whenever I was in fact around them in any way, the more I came to prefer performing solo, despite the others' less-than-enthusiastic attitude toward my solo activities. There also seemed to be quite a bit of resentment whenever I would advertise solo shows on my SNS feed (i.e. FaceBook), and I would get comments from one or another of the members later in person, like, "Xx asked me about whether you were going to break up the band, since you have been doing solo shows lately. I had to explain the situation, and it really doesn't look good. Maybe you should stop doing the solo shows and just perform together with us." Indeed, I was still the so-called "leader" of the band Glass Gecko, which was, after all, supposed to be the "main attraction" for all involved, both those within the band and without (i.e. for the "friends of the band"), rather than my crummy solo "Heck, you still can't play a decent F-chord, go home and fall asleep with it in your lap first!" acoustic-only shows, and therefore which also should have been, according to one school of thought (not mine) my main focus, rather than my no-frills solo appearances around town.

The fact is, the less enthusiastic I became about doing shows together as a band, and the less enthusiastic I became about rehearsing together or having our ridiculous meetings, the closer the three of them grew. ("We're like a family," one of the members later told me. This was before their own post-Gecko project eventually ran out of steam, but that is not a subject of concern here.) I realize now, many years later, that their eventual reformation as a trio, with the guitarist installed as the proper "leader" -- that is, as the main songwriter, arranger, and also the one who would make most of the band's important decisions, presumably -- was an obvious and perhaps even natural result of what occurred during the time I was in Glass Gecko. The guitarist had in fact already been talking about leaving my/our band a couple of months prior to when we did break up, and he'd suggested that he had already been thinking about forming an "all-instrumental" unit of his own, as he was more interested in doing that than having a vocalist standing at the foot of the stage while he performed his songs (stealing his fire, perhaps?). I hadn't realized then that perhaps he and the other members had already decided that, when the time came, his unit would consist of the three of them, sans vocals, hence sans vocalist? Hard to say now, but...

+++

As for the composition of the lyrics to the song "Black Nail," there, too, is a story to be told. It goes something like this: 

My band split up for good in the summer of 2016 and reformed themselves as a separate unit -- hush-hush -- pretty much intentionally (I think it's fair to say) behind my back. Perhaps this was because they didn't want to "hurt my feelings," one might argue, but, at the same time, when I did happen to finally catch wind of it after-the-fact, and much later than many others around me in our little music community had already learned of it (and had kept it from my ears), presumably via my ex-bandmates' SNS feed(s) and/or from them directly, since I had long been blocked by them after being harrassed publicly in a long, vitrolic feed the guitarist had posted to his FaceBook feed, followed by a stream of nasty, one-sided comments from the peanut gallery, well... At the time, anyway, it hurt me like hell. (I've since grown a thicker-than-shark's skin for such juvenile and unimportant things.)

The story from my ex-bandmates' side went something like this: Since I had decided to "quit" while we had still had one last show booked, they would have to fill the slot, since it was too late (and unprofessional) to cancel after-the-fact. What was not said was that the bassist had booked the show at a venue at which we had performed together as a band before, and that I knew the livehouse owner as well, since after that show he had invited me to perform solo (yes, solo) during an all-acoustic event he was hosting, and I had done just that and even been invited back a second time (though it never ended up happening). I offered to discuss the booking with the livehouse owner, and suggested that I might just perform solo acoustic there, as I had once before, instead of with the three of them also in tow (if the logic was that it had been my band, and I had "quit" it, then I should be the one to directly handle/fill in for the canceled booking, no?), but I was forbidden to do so, told that I was a "troublemaker" (I remember that this was the word used) and to stay out of it... 

The next thing I know, the three of them have reformed as an instrumental trio and are performing live -- not only the one time at the show I had so unprofessionally "skipped out on," as I had been told (which, even as naive and trusting as I could sometimes be about certain things, I had found difficult to believe at the time), but also subsequently, and for several years afterwards. Further, the community that had followed us was now supporting them, and I became completely isolated from everyone and everything, except, at least for another couple of months after the official breakup, the drummer (we continued with our own "Gecko" side-project separately, and simulaneously, for a brief time, until a third member stepped in, a bass player (male, and very strong-headed), and then that, too, splintered a mere three weeks later, the drummer swiftly deciding -- it came as a phone call, rather than him telling me face-to-face -- to concentrate fully on his project with my ex-bandmates and thereby wishing me "good luck"...).

Getting back to "Black Nail," then... 

One day, straight out of the blue, one of my ex-band members, now a part of their new trio project with the guitarist and my ex-drummer, who left me twice, essentially, to play with them, e-mails me, "Can I ask a little favor? Do you have a moment?" What, pray tell, might it be? I replied to the mail, holding my annoyance inside. I was then asked, much to my incredulity, whether I wouldn't mind writing some lyrics for a song the guitarist had been struggling to compose words in English for? It was a new song of his, purportedly in a very "My Blood Valentine" style, a song someone (he himself?) would also sing in English (apparently), and it was called "Xxxx Nail" (I won't repeat the original full title here) but he was struggling to write the lyrics, and she thought maybe I could make some suggestions? 

Then she sends me, as in-line text, what he'd written, so that I could see the basic flow of it...

Sure! I say. I'll write them! Yeah, sure. Why not? I would be absolutely honored to write them! Thrilled, in fact!!! Yes, oh please, yes, let me help out... I'll do my very best!!!

Less than a half hour later I had written the lyrics to what would -- some weeks later, and unbeknownst to me at the time -- become the lyrics for my own song, "Black Nail," my first "all electronica"-composed song, though I had certainly never intended for these lyrics to ever be used (by me, anyway!) for anything. I never heard the song the guitarist wrote (and, to this day, have not), but the basic parameters of the lyrics he had written, as I recall, which had been shared with me privately via e-mail -- all very hush-hush this-is-between-you-and-me-only-OK? (which, itself, seemed rather odd to me then, as it does now, since wasn't I supposed to be "the enemy," after all? Wasn't I the one who had quit and made everyone angry, the troublemaker, the one who had done his solo shows and then canceled our final performance, "forcing" the others to reform without me in order to fulfill their contractual obligations...?). The three of them had even blocked my account on SNS, tens of other so-called mutual "friends" quickly following suit after leaving their trail of nasty comments in the "anti-Marc Lowe" hate feed that had appeared with my name tagged to it (again, this sort of sophomoric thing to me today sounds like less-than-nothing to care about, but at the time it had upset me), yet here now I was receiving an email asking for a favor, in secret, on behalf of their band?? 

The song's refrain went something like:

1-2-3

1-2

1-2-3

1-2

And so, I wrote:

"Change your life

Kneel down

Cast your strife

Don't drown"

Followed by...

"Give them a sign

Long, loud

Hang up your pride

This dark shroud"

And so forth...

Needless to say, I had been quite angry at the time, quite furious, even, and the wording of the lyrics were extremely ironic, caustic, intentionally so. I later wondered whether this bandmember, who had so unscrupulously asked me to do what I felt to be the unthinkable, would "get" what the lyrics were in fact trying to convey about my feelings at the moment I wrote them? Was the message lost, or...?

(Give them a sign)

Maybe. Maybe not.

(Long, loud)

It no longer mattered.

After less than half an hour of sending the lyrics I'd written, I got a return mail thanking me, saying that the lyrics were well-written, indeed, that they were "a bit too complex," and that, therefore, the guitarist would easily guess that I had likely written them and there would be trouble. And so thanks but no thanks, please keep them, I really appreciate your effort... 

OK, I thought. Whatever.

(Hang up your pride...)

I really didn't care. I just wanted to be left alone with my anger and my resentment and all of the complex things I was then feeling about the situation.

Afterwards, I more or less forgot about the lyrics and the guitarist's song or demo or whatever (which I hadn't even heard, just read his awkward lyrics, written in English) for some time, though I'd saved the document on my hard drive without thinking much about why.

Fast forward maybe 2-3 weeks.

So, one evening in late 2016, I am sitting in front of my MacBook computer with Garageband open (this was still prior to purchasing LOGIC, though I would do so less than two months after that night, in early 2017). Rather than starting with guitar chords or pre-written lyrics this time around, which was the de rigeur way I had of composing songs at the time, I lay down some beats, then converted one strip of the Garageband-generated MIDI beat data into a synth bass line. This was the first time I'd done that, and it worked. "Oh! I didn't know I could do that!" 

Eureka. 

Another step, however small, in my learning to tap the DAW to do new things and one which would eventually lead me a step closer in the direction of the dark electronica that would later define the early This Dark Shroud sound.

And so, having created this electronic "bass + beats" pattern, now I needed some lyrics and an original vocal line. But what sort of lyrics should I write for this new, more electronica style track? What sort of theme should this new style of song have? 

It was then that I recalled the unused lyrics I'd written for the guitarist's demo, lyrics that I had been told quite definitively wouldn't be used by them, that it would always remain "our little secret," as they were too obviously written by me, too obviously in my style. You can keep your dark, angry, Byronesque lyrics, and let's pretend I never contacted you to ask in the first place... OK?

OK.

Something like that.

Well, I thought, if I simply change the chorus/title to something else, something original, something that was truly my own, surely I had every right to use the lyrics that I myself had written from scratch, didn't I? I hadn't even heard the demo the guitarist had written, had no clue as to what his melody sounded like (apparently it was a "Shoegazer" style song), and my lyrics did not resemble what he'd written in the least. Only a single word, in fact, did I preserve from the original -- perhaps maybe I had even hoped, subconsciously, someone from their band would recognize that I was not completely blind to their insidious game ("A broken reptile / An open sore..."), or to at least question themselves whether the possibility of this existed ("Hang up your pride / This dark shroud") -- was the four-letter word: nail. And so, if this word were to remain in my version, what kind of nail would my nail be? It wouldn't be the same nail as his, not the same as theirs. 

No way. 

Well then, would it be a "sweet" nail? A "rusty" nail, perhaps? Too cute, too cliche (or too hackneyed, like the Rolling Stones...). 

A black nail, then? 

Ah, yes. A black nail.

Black. 

Nail.

I kinda liked that.

Change your life.