The multimedia Songs About Time is an ongoing project from the Rentals, the revolving-door band founded 15 years ago by then Weezer bassist Matt Sharp. Songs About Time finds Sharp and Co. collaborating with a cast of about 50 filmmakers, designers, producers, editors and artists. They began this year-long experiment January 1 and have since made a new black-and-white film every week, not to mention documenting the process with a daily photo diary and recording three mini-albums. (All of this content can be found on the band’s website.) As if Sharp wasn’t busy enough, he is also guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read his introduction.
Sharp: If I had this year to do all over again, the one thing I might have changed: I would have asked Gotch, the singer from the band Asian Kung-Fu Generation, to record the Japanese narrations for our first season. Gotch has been a good friend for a little while now. He brought the Rentals over to Japan a few years back to his festival in Yokohama. His band also recorded a great cover of one of the songs from the second Rentals album. Strangely, my favorite creative outlet over the first nine months of Songs About Time has been working with the different narrators and writing the voiceover dialog for their respective languages. If I could do it over, I think I know how I would have started this whole thing.
