House-Trained Labrador for Sale on MySpace
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Crossposted from Haaretz
The story of “Labrador Labratories” (sic) should be taught in workshops for developing creativity. A year and a half ago, after the unknown Makolet band broke up, soloist Tom Gottlieb found himself suffering from a creative block. “In Makolet there was a very critical atmosphere,” he says. “We would sit a lot in the rehearsal room, think about every song for a very long time, play it for others, correct, change and correct again, until I reached a point where I was simply sick and tired of it. Music is supposed to reflect a moment, an atmosphere, a mood, a specific experience, and all that talk about what’s working and what isn’t working simply wipes that out, at least for me.”
Gottlieb, 27, sat at home and tried to write alone, but his increasingly sophisticated self-criticism made that impossible.
“Simply nothing came out,” he recalls. “And then I read somewhere about an exercise for someone who has a block and is unable to write songs. The exercise was to record one album a week, no matter what emerges. The main thing is to get rid of the sense of criticism and do something.”
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