January 9

I've got over four months behind me, but I'm not writing this for the old reasons anymore. I was writing this to satisfy my writing itch, share a peculiar interest, and start a potential new revenue stream. Since then, I've dropped the ads, probably because I get a hit a week, probably because it's a stretch to call what I do writing. Although it's not a grocery list, it's basically caption writing in front of whatever video I can find. Time constraints has me spending 30 minutes a day, choosing one subject with a neato video, and spouting my first thoughts before I'm pulled away or pass out. But I want to finish this marathon; I might have brain fatigue, but I still intend on punching through.
Don't know if today's choice had anything to do with that outburst just then. Carl Bell is the guitarist and lyricist for the band Fuel, which warrants the debate of what the most important part of a band is. I remember Fuel's first splash on the radio ("Shimmer") in 1998, little anticipating their evolution into an American Nickelback clone. Ten years later, the drummer got fired, the singer left, and the bass player started a band with the ex-singer performing songs from the first three Fuel albums (just in case you miss the point, their band's called ReFueled.)
So are they a Fuel cover band, or what? It goes back to that fuzzy logic question of how many parts can you change on your old car before it's not your old car anymore, or how many parts of Van Halen can you change before it's not Van Halen anymore. Was Van Hagar the end? Cherrone? Chickenfoot? Wolfgang? I've veered off a bit...
I want to root for Carl on this one, because singer Brett Scallions' voice automatically notches a song in the American Idol Rock sound, while songs like "Shimmer" and "Hemorrage" suggest something with a bit more... range, I guess. On the other hand, Fuel 2.0 was a non-starter...
In the end, I'm of a mind that each artistic enterprise (even if its the musical equivalent of making greasepit cheeseburgers) is its own creature; when the alchemy's changed, it's time to change the name. It's hell on the marketing, but it's for the best...
At this point, the pieces of Fuel past and present are scattered to the four winds; Carl's working on theme songs for TV pilots, the hired guns are now in Everclear 3.0 (don't get me started,) and everybody's thinking about the good old days. So, I presume that in five years time, we'll see most of Fuel reunited on the Legacy circuit of state fairs and casino stages (Stone Temple Pilots already broke that barrier for 90's bands, and don't get me started about them...)
Here's a Carl Bell composition, from back in the day, in a FLCL AMV: