{"id":11277,"date":"2015-11-04T06:18:41","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T14:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=11277"},"modified":"2015-11-02T12:21:13","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T20:21:13","slug":"matthew-good-on-chaotic-neutral-and-the-creative-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/11\/04\/matthew-good-on-chaotic-neutral-and-the-creative-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Good on Chaotic Neutral<\/em> and the creative process"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Good\u2019s days topping the charts in the \u201990s with the Matthew Good Band may be over, but the musician is on his seventh solo album and is more creative than ever. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons<\/i> will recognize the album title, Chaotic Neutral<\/i>, as a character alignment in the game. Chaotic neutral makes characters unpredictable and individualistic, which Good says are also characteristics of the album.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played D&D<\/i> for fucking 25 years. You have to know a bit about the game to understand it,\u201d says Good. \u201cThe gamut the record runs, it definitely has elements that are schizophrenic, and the first thing that comes to my mind is that alignment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schizophrenic indeed: Chaotic Neutral<\/i> is all over the place, telling stories of lost sailors and children who have fallen down wells, as well as Good\u2019s own struggles with being bipolar. Good\u2019s vibrato voice and random sounds of animals and children playing in the background make the album sound like a morbid lullaby.<\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/a>
Matthew Good is just as creative as ever, seven albums in to a solo career (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSometimes I\u2019ll have an idea and I find a way to tell it,\u201d he says about his creative process. \u201cSomething like \u2018Cold Water,\u2019 that\u2019s a story of ill-fated love. It\u2019s an early 19th-century English tale of a sailor and his wife used to get that point across. For something like \u201cGirls in Black,\u201d I wrote that first verse and just thought it sounded really cool. Sometimes it\u2019s really poignant, and sometimes it\u2019s really organic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good\u2019s ability to be creative has kept him a staple in Canadian music for 20 years. Good\u2019s creativity stems from embracing his imperfections, and allowing them to help move his music forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery album captures a moment in time,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s a lesson you learn, for me, at least. I think you start thinking about records and not trying to capture so much perfection. In the creative process that\u2019s important in regards to longevity, because it allows you to see the imperfection in something and then go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good has long used music as a medium for activism, drawing attention to poverty in Vancouver, the war in Iraq, and climate change; Chaotic Neutral <\/i>is no different. A theme of mental illness runs throughout the lyrics, in addition to the reference to schizophrenia in the title. Good says his music is both created from his disorder and used to help deal with the disorder.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, after being diagnosed, and on proper medication, it\u2019s half and half. I think music comes from a place, and it\u2019s also used to cope with the place it comes from, whether you\u2019re really enlightened about that location or not,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Good stresses the importance for writers to be themselves, which is sometimes the hardest thing to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t try to write like anybody else,\u201d he says. \u201cYou need to find your own voice, and don\u2019t be afraid for that voice to be an improper one. Find a way to do something that you\u2019re passionate about, and it\u2019s you, and that you\u2019re not afraid that it\u2019s you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though Good says writers should stay genuine to themselves, he also thinks we\u2019re all still, as he put it in his song \u201cStrange Days,\u201d \u201clying for a living\u201d to get by.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t we all, though? That\u2019s just part of the human condition, isn\u2019t it?\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t think any person would be able to get through the day if we weren\u2019t doing a little bit of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthew Good
\nFriday, November 6
\n$47.25, Alix Goolden Hall
\nvcm.bc.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Good\u2019s days topping the charts in the \u201990s with the Matthew Good Band may be over, but the musician is on his seventh solo album and is more creative than ever. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons will recognize the album title, Chaotic Neutral, as a character alignment in the game. Chaotic neutral makes characters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-november-4-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11279,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11277\/revisions\/11279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}