On the pod.net

I had to write something about myself when I started writing for Finer Things Magazine. I think this hits all the "About Me" bases... On The Pod ...Musician, Photographer, Writer and our new Music Reviewer, Joe Mieczkowski shares a little bit…well maybe a little bit too much of himself with us. How do you write about yourself without sounding like a complete and total tool? Well, since I got off the phone with the kind people at Finer Things Magazine, I’ve been asking myself that same question. I guess I should start with introductions.Imagine you’re looking at one of those name tags that’s printed with, ”HELLO MY NAME IS.” The name you would read is Joe, Joseph Mieczkowski to be exact…and yes, you read correctly, no middle name. Not a big concern for my parents during child birth I’m assuming. That could actually be said for my first name too. I’m Joe, my dad’s name is Joe and my grandfather’s name was Joe. Three Joe’s in a row, apparently my family fears change as much as Wayne and Garth. To elaborate further, I may or may not be a junior depending on who you ask and if you throw in with the Catholics, my confirmation name is Anthony. (None of those in my family, so there!!!)I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1972 which I believe puts me into the year of the Rat were I Chinese. I’m not, but even if I were I don’t know how I’d really feel about that. Let’s face it, the best thing about those place mats in Chinese restaurants is that someone has officially called my father a Cock and lived to tell about it. I, with great foresight on the part of my parents, was also born on May fifth or, as it’s commonly known to frat boys and my Mexican brothers and sisters, Cinco de Mayo. Little did I know as a child that I had the great fortune to share a birthday with the day the Mexican militia decided to whoop up on the French army in The Battle Of Puebla back in 1862 and not the Mexican Day of Independence…which certain tequila manufactures named Jose could care less if you knew about at all. The actual Mexican Day of Independence is September 16th. I kid you not, look it up if you don’t believe me.Where was I? OK I remember now, Bridgeport. Ah yes, Bridgeport, made famous by P.T. Barnum and mayors on the take. It’s actually an unfair impression of the once bustling industrial town, as is the one given by those who refer to it as the “armpit” of the East Coast. It’s not, it’s just in a transitional phase of its history from a manufacturing city to what ever it ends up being. I went to school in Bridgeport and Fairfield and then eventually left Connecticut to briefly attend the University of Lowell in Massachusetts (now UMASS Lowell) just long enough to get thrown out of their music program in a semester.I returned to Connecticut, slightly damaged, where I then proceeded to enrolled in the music program at the University of New Haven. In a fitting show of “I told you so,” I went on to be the finest music scholar they ever had, so much so they named a building after me and to this day still send me money from financially challenged students’ financial aide checks every month. Alright, not really, but I did pretty well. I finished up with a double major in Music and Sound Recording and Music Industry in 1996. I would have graduated Summa Cum Laude if it weren’t for a Shakespeare teacher with a grudge against slightly disruptive music students who sat in the back of her class…but I’m not bitter. I’ll just sit here with my Magna Cum Laude and sulk.I interned at a major recording studio in Manhattan for a summer where I realized, for the first time in my life, that the things you are taught from books are nice…but may not, in fact, bear any resemblance to the real world in any way, shape or form. After I graduated with my second place Magna, I entered the Music Industry side of the equation by taking a position with, or rather in a record store. Yes, I have heard about starting at the bottom, but I think I was actually at the bottom of a different building. After that I…worked in tech support for a PC banking Software Company, helped make the commercials you hear playing in your favorite supermarket, worked in insurance for the duration of the training period, was a customer service rep for an amazingly large and most definitely evil bank and worked as an office manager in a print shop. Currently, in order to support my obsession for all things shiny and with flashing lights, I work in the finance department of a satellite company which has been constantly in the process of being bought, sold and/or merged with its competitors. Ah…blessed progress.When I wasn’t working for the “Man,” I worked on my own projects…I played in a couple of bands in Connecticut, I wrote music, I didn’t write music, I wrote music again, I worked on a plethora of assorted websites that I created, I wrote content for those same websites, I collected guitars, I took apart computers, I took apart guitars, I amassed an enormous music library, I discovered that Whitehouse.com and Whitehouse.gov were two completely different websites, I discovered Myspace, I discovered Audible.com, I bought an iPod, I went Mac and then went back to PC, I file shared, I ripped, I burned, I surfed, I played Xbox and PS2 and Gamecube, I was addicted to Halo and Halo 2, I acquired an appreciation for really good Tequila and Bourbon, I read a lot, I didn’t read at all, I read a lot again, I discovered Sonic Foundry’s ACID and then I met my wife. Now, I basically only do those things when she’s not home.We lived in Florida for a few years in and around the Jacksonville area. While we were there, I became heavily involved with photography and managed to become a published photographer. Eventually though, we moved back up to Connecticut and came to reside in West Haven. My wife actually decided to start her own business after spending way too long in the habitually toxic environment of corporate America. In the spring of 2005, she registered www.bellapetsitting.com as a domain name and shortly there after started her own pet sitting business of the same name. Her example and my burning desire for freedom from the “Office Space” like reality of my own employment got me thinking…in an albeit distracted manner, but thinking none the less.In December of 2005 I started a new website called On the pod.net that, indirectly, led me here. As I said before, by this time I had amassed a freakishly large music collection between my CDs and my downloads from some of the lesser known websites who’s existence threaten their host nation’s entrance into the World Trade Organization…or, so I’ve been told. I began to think to myself, “Self, what can I do with all of this music?” I thought about that for a long time and stumbled upon something I had heard about teachers. “Those who can’t do teach.” I figured that would be as good a starting point as any, so I went with a revised notion that said, “Those who can’t do review.” On the pod.net was born with the tag line, “Mostly music reviews by real people, well person...namely, me.”All of this exposure (insert snigger here) and my constant barrage of On the pod.net update emails convinced some of the people around me that I might actually have a clue about this music thing which, in turn, led to the next phase in my recent evolution. Thanks to a mutual friend, I was asked by the owner of Sogno, Boutique of Dreams in New Haven, CT to develop music for their 2006 fashion show. The original idea was just a “mix tape” of sorts, full of songs for models to strut to. That idea lasted as long as it took me to get back to my car after our first meeting. Was I not a musician? Was I not capable? Was I not slightly insane? My answers were, in order, yes, yes and it depends who you ask.After a month of nights with headphones glued to my head, working with Sony’s ACID (Sony bought ACID from Sonic Foundry) and more loops and samples than you could shake a stick at, I ended up with what I called The Sogno Suite. It was nearly forty minutes of music, written in four sections that matched the collections that were being presented in the Sogno fashion show. I liked the music I had created and I got the obligatory “I like it” from family and friends alike, so with a little seed money from my financial backers (yes, fine it was the same financial backers that helped me with my student loans) I started my own small business by the name of Terminally Vague Media and independently released The Sogno Suite on CD. By the time you read this, The Sogno Suite will be available at CD Baby (www.cdbaby.com) and digitally distributed by them to all sorts of exceptional digital marketplaces, like Apple’s iTunes for instance which excites me to no end. If you’re interested, not only can you hear samples at CD Baby, but also on the Official Joe Mieczkowski Site over at Myspace. You can get there by going to www.pseudojoe.com.So that’s me in a nutshell. I hope you laughed a little and that I didn’t bore you to tears the rest of the time. Keep an eye out for my reviews here in Finer Things Magazine and if you like what you read, don’t be afraid to visit me on the web at www.onthepod.net for music reviews, www.theafterimage.com for photography, www.pseudojoe.com for music and www.terminallyvague.com for everything else.I can’t wait to write for you,Joe Mieczkowski