Lord knows I’ve never let failure or obscurity stop me from pushing Somers Thought onto the world. In fact, the more the world obnoxiously ignores Somers Thought, the harder I push it out there in whatever form it takes.
As some of you may know, I occasionally release music under the name The Levon Sobieski Domination, a band with exactly one member (one and a half if you count the program I use to sequence the drums). No one really cares, which is hurtful, but I do it anyway because I firmly believe that if you create something, you should put it out there. Otherwise, what’s the point?
So, The Levon Sobieski Domination keeps on truckin’. I’m about to release their ninth album — it’ll show up on Spotify and elsewhere soon — and to celebrate I went ahead and worked on another futile project no one ever pays attention to: A video constructed entirely from stock clips. Here’s “Blackout Eve” from The Levon Sobieski Domination:
The name Levon Sobieski goes back a long way. If you are actually named Levon Sobieski, I apologize in advance. Back when I was publishing my zine, The Inner Swine, I created a persona for myself which was sort of an alcoholic, shambolic Bond Villain with a dash of Hugh Hefner: Jeff Somers was a tyrannical zine publisher who ran a shadowy global empire. I imagined a cast of bizarre characters who populated the Inner Swine compound, and one of those characters was a guy named Levon Sobieski, an Eastern European man I had kidnapped and forced to work as a custodian. Levon would pop up with commentary from time to time, usually expressing deep unease and befuddlement at my drunken antics.
Yes, this is how a grown man spent his time. What’s your point?
Anyways, a decade or so ago when I started to take guitar playing seriously and formed the totally imaginary band I chose Levon Sobieski in part as a link to that past era of my life, and in part because the idea of a middle-aged custodian fronting a rock band was humorous to me.
I hop y’all enjoy the song and the video, and keep an eye out for The Levon Sobieski Domination IX, coming soon.