Older Musicians: Keepers of a Lost Art

I was recently talking to a friend of mine, a musician, who lives in Buffalo, now. We used to be in an original band together, in the late 80s.

(The pic to the left is a cover band I was in in the 90s -- different one.) 

We were talking about the irony of how we work more now than we did as young musicians. (In fact, we are borderline working too much for comfort with our day jobs.) On one hand, this seems surprising. On the other, it's not, at all.

We're keepers of a lost art. Kids rarely form bands in high school, now. Why? There are no bands for kids to look up to -- not in the popular lens. (I know there are a ton of you who can point me to good and even great indy bands -- I believe you that they are out there. But kids don't always see them. Growing up, I couldn't throw a Wiffleball over my shoulder without hitting a great band on the head: Journey, Genesis, Rush, The Police, U2...even bands I wasn't particularly into were bands who could play their instruments and who wrote their own stuff: Zep, VH, Heart, etc, etc...)

Who's going to inspire a kid to play an instrument now? Taylor Swift? Lady Gaga? Ed Sheeran? Sure, they are good enough pop musicians, but...musical inspirations? I heard Neil Peart play on "Tom Sawyer" and asked my parents for a drum set that afternoon after school. My friends heard Eddie or Jimmy Page and had to pick up a guitar. My dad heard Harry James and started on a trumpet his parents couldn't really afford.

So, of course we're working. Where else is live music, outside of $300 (plus) seats in stadiums going to come from? Are you well-off enough to fly out to Vegas and pay $1,000 to see U2 at The Sphere? Cool. I'm not.

You can play the old records over and over, but we're out there delivering a living history show. We're recreating the magic of musicians playing together and moving air with our voices and our "axes." And maybe moving you to move, too.

So keep hiring us, because when we croak, you're out of luck.

The Vinyl Word

I couldn't resist the title. Sorry. 

So, records... Old-fashioned, 33 RPM, vinyl records...

Don't run away -- this is not going to be an audiophile post, I promise. I'm not a fan of most 'Philes, to be honest with you. I am a fan of the Phillies, but not of the 'Philes, just to keep things straight. 

(Too much coffee this morning. Mea culpa.) 

Anyway, records. I like them. I just patched up the old stereo system with a new amplifier -- which gets used mostly for watching movies in 5.1 surround. (Surround just makes movies so much cooler. The first fight scene in the not-bad Gibson movie, The Patriot, will sell you on the merits of surround sound, if you are not already a believer.)

But, having gotten a turntable a few years ago, I have been rebuilding a record collection. 

There is a camp that argues for the merits of "analog" sound (records and tape), versus "digital" (CDs and MP3s) but, as a musician who works primarily in the digital world, I see the merits of both. (I do think, however, that one can hear a major difference between MP3s and streaming, as opposed to CDs or records. Too much to go into, here.)

This is not about sound quality, though; it's about the experience of listening to a record. 

When I decide to listen to an vinyl album, I have to put it on the turntable, drop the needle and sit back to listen. There is no easy "pausing" and there is no skipping of tracks without standing up, walking across the room and lifting the needle -- after which, one has to find the notch between tracks and carefully put the needle down in the right spot, which is usually a question of trial and error, laced with stifled profanities. (The other day, listening to Sting's The Soul Cages, I actually sat through "St. Agnes and the Burning Train." Who does that?) 

With a record, one commits to the act of listening with attention in a way one doesn't with playlists. And, halfway through, one needs to flip the record over. This, to me, is a refocusing of attention and an awakening of the body: standing up re-awakens the brain, which is why I sometimes tell my classes, mid-session, to stand up and then sit down again. 

And we can't forget the fact that albums were created as songs grouped together around a central idea or theme or vibe, in the past -- or, at the very least, were written during the same timespan and, so, share similarities, if only as a result of the songwriters' preferences or artistic development at the time. This is a completely different experience than setting the phone on "shuffle." (Around the time of the inception of the iPod, I had a young student tell me he listened to new albums on "shuffle" so he never got tired of the order. But the order was chosen for a reason...or, used to be.)

Undeniably, there is an element of nostalgia for a guy my age in listening to actual records: the large-scale cover art; the liner notes; the lyrics. But, listeing to a record used to be an active process, whereas now music has become more of a background thing for most people. 

I like the connection and the committment of listening to a record. And, yes, sitting between loudspeakers that are moving actual air and hearing sounds generated from a needle traveling through actual grooves in actual material must, in some way, make a difference. 

In case you are wondering, no: I never understood why people were nostalgic about the cracks, pops and jumps. They still suck. Which is why I highly recommend re-releases on 180 gram vinyl. 

Now get out there and spin stuff. 

The Big Stereo

On Saturday morning, my wife and I were talking about music. The boys were away on a school ski trip, so I figured I would fire up the "big stereo" in the living room. It has surround sound and a big, fat bass cabinet. 

After some Ravel, I thought I would give my own classical piano CD a listen on that system; I'd only listened in the car. How a CD sounds on various stereos is, in deed, partly a result of the composition, recording and mixing of the music, but it mostly has to do with the "mastering," which is done in a by a person who specializes in that step. Without it, any recording will sound unprofessional. 

I played a piano piece and then I wanted to try our the lone track with a full orchestration and a vocal. It's my arrangement of the traditional folk song, "Oh, Shenandoah." I loved the way it sounded; the basses (four pizzicato basses in the orchestral section and one jazz-style upright bass layered in for some more sustain) shook the neighborhood and my wife commented that she was blown away -- she'd never heard them like that before. 

She mentioned that because she hears me working on my music all of the time, upstairs, that she sometimes thinks she has really heard the pieces. This listening made her realize that she really hasn't -- not in their most powerfully sonic form. 

And there it is. How we see life depends on the "speakers" we "hear" it on, doesn't it? Dynamic range is everything. We may think we know a thing, but if we don't see it with all of its colors or hear it with its complete sonic qualities, our evaluations and decisions are, unavoidably, ill-informed. Our reactions may be the wrong ones; our impressions incomplete.

Some people, by nature, simply don't possess the proper equipment, either because of deficiency or circumstance. Others won't put the metaphoric CD into a different player and hear is on different speakers. Too much work. 

It can all lead to a lifetime of incomplete impact and half-fueled judgements. 

On a literal level, my musical intentions are made clear on the big stereo. I'm glad to have given Karen the full picture. Her excellent ear deserves the best sound. 

Wind for a Dead Calm: Ravel's "Adagio assai," from the Concerto in G

People make a lot of melodramatic statements about music; they will even be heard to say that a piece of music "saved their life..."

I can't go that far, as sappy and emotional as I am. My life has never been in danger that way; that way that implies a death of the soul that leads to the ultimate end...

But I have been a ship in a dead calm, sitting still in waters of various emotional hues: sadness, fear, depression, anxiety...

What is needed in those cases is a breath of wind. So, while I cannot claim this piece has ever "saved my life" I can say that, time and again, it has been that wind to push me out of the dead calm; the thing that showed me that there is more in life than death, taxes, conflict and the mundane clockworks of the daily routine; that hope is somewhere, even when it seems to be hiding from us...

Ravel's "Adagio assai" movement from his Piano Concerto in G, has been that piece for me, for more than twenty thirty years. It's always there when I need it, and I have needed it lately.

Here it is, in case you need some fresh air, too:

From Leaning Bricks to Flying Buttresses

I will start with this statement: Technical complexity or even technical facility are not necessarily the measuring sticks for artistic quality. Simple art can be beautiful; a technically limited artist can do a good thing.

Cathedral builder. 

Usually, though, great art is both complex and technically sound.

Now that I have said that, I have to voice my frustration as a guy who has spent his life in pursuit of musical excellence: being a musician in a world of non-musicians can be incredibly frustrating. The reason for this is that the average person understands so little about music; music is a mystery to most in a way that visual art, literature, theater and even dance are not. The average person understands the core of what is happening with these arts. Music is more ethereal.

A good comparison, in terms of my incredulity about the music that impresses the non-musician, would be this:

It's like being an architect who knows how to design cathedrals who sees a group gathered around a man. The  crowd is agape with appreciation; they titter about how great the man's architectural sense is; how innovative his work is; how great his accomplishment is. When the architect gets close enough, he looks at the man's work and sees that the fellow has taken two bricks and leaned one against the other. The architect knows this is nothing, but the crowd does not; they are amazed and mystified.

Of course, this would never happen, because people understand enough about architecture -- they, after all, live in buildings -- to see that leaning one brick on another is no big deal. People do not, however, generally understand enough about music to make this distinction. (If you can't tell me the notes in a C Major chord, you can't even lean two bricks together.)

Brick leaner. 

This is not to say that I haven't enjoyed the aesthetic of a brick leaning upon a brick. I often like music that is simple. Again, complexity is not the only measure of artistic worth. But it is frustrating to think so much about craft and to learn so much over a lifetime just to see work with less dedication and/or craft get equal or greater recognition than more adept work.

I know many feel that no one has the right to say what is great and what is bad when it comes to art. We all just like what we like. Okay. I can't stop anyone from liking something, no matter how aenemic I might think it is. The problem is, though, that I know if people understood even a little about music they would probably quickly change their opinions.

Imagine you finished running a marathon and everyone ignored you in favor of a perfectly healthy guy who walked across the room to toss his soda cup into the trash. I've  already gone through hundreds of pairs of running shoes, so...

A Sound Revelation

This is, I suppose, nothing more than a public service message plus a little bit of self-service.

I generally get annoyed by "audiophiles" because they tend to spend their time looking for things to dislike in recordings, but, I have to agree with many of them who claim that an mp3 does not sound as good as a CD. I think it is completely true.

My four-year-old prestidigitation. 

I'll occasionally listen to my 2011 album, Hats and Rabbits, on my phone, in the car. The other day, for some reason, I put in the CD and, as attuned as I am to every aspect of the sound (having recorded, engineered and produced it all myself) I was completely taken by surprise by the added depth of the sound on CD.

I'm not sure if everyone would notice this difference, consciously, but I do believe that music works on so many levels that it could have an overall effect on the listener. It's similar to the effect of drinking a Coke, with high fructose corn syrup, and then drinking a Mexican Coke with real sugar: something is just more right about it, even if you can't consciously put your finger on it.

That said, I am not afraid to self-promote, having listened, recently, to my work, and thinking I done pretty good, and to give you a link to buy the actual CD.

Also, in a few months, my collection of piano pieces, American Sketches, will be ready, and available on both CD and download -- I suggest the CD.

Self-promotion aside, it really does make a difference. A step back to CDs could feed your soul on unconscious levels. There's a richness there that mp3s just lose. I guess this position is similar to that of the "vinyl" people (the smart ones, not the dumb ones who say they miss the scratchy sounds, but the ones who prefer the warmth of analog sound).

Too much virtuality. Not enough to sink our teeth into. The world of the senses is slipping away every day, stolen by the scramble for efficiency and ubiquitousness. Everythnig is low fat, across the senses' board.

(By the way, I think just burning a CD from mp3s woud fit the bill to improve the sound by turning it into a WAV file -- try it!)

Blood, Mud and the Convergence of Fifties

Last week was the first week since 2010 in which I have not posted a single piece. The reasons for this are many, including a major storm that knocked out our home's power for five full days. Other factors range from a serious health scare to a band gig, outside, in a near-tornado while water ran under and around all of our electronic equipment. (Idyllic setting, though, on the banks of the Chesapeake, if we could see it through the deluge.)

The beautiful house at which we played in Maryland. 

Of course, everything is "worth it" if there are lessons to be learned; and, there are lessons to be learned from everything, so I suppose that means everything is "worth it." So, let's do this in order of lessons learned:

I. Weather is not kidding around. Take it seriously. 

Around six PM on Tuesday, last, my wife and I got tornado warnings on our phones. The message was: Take cover now. I was packed and ready to go to band practice, so I texted the guys (censored, in order to keep this blog family-friendly:

Me: Serious tornado warning. Take cover now. We worrying about this? 

Tony: Yeah, right. 

Two minutes later, after texts that some of the guys are on their way to practice already:

Jeff (on the road): Stay home. I'm stuck. No power anywhere. Stay home, I'm not f-ing around. 

Various other texts from everyone, then Jeff, again:

Jeff: I'm in a tornado.

Tony: It's here. 

Then the lights went out. For five days. Live power lines were everywhere in my neighborhood. We were some of the last people in our area to get power. The sound of the generators at our house and those of our neighbors nearly drove me to the brink.

This little guy came out of nowhere to lift our spirits
and he lifted mine as only a dog can do. 

II. Don't skip your blood pressure medicine. 

Before the storm, I'd started a curriculum workshop in various locations around South Jersey. I had re-ordered my meds on Sunday, but through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with all of the craziness, I had forgotten to pick the prescription up. No pun intended: there was a perfect storm of the blood that followed. Four days of conference breakfasts and lunches (all salty stuff; sandwiches, chips, etc.) after a month of bad meal choices, even on family time ("School's out! Let's celebrate!") added to the stress of the major storm all ran down to a moment, on Friday, when my son looked at me and said: "Dad --  you have blood in your eye." 

I looked. I did. I thought it was a broken blood vessel from a sneeze or something. I told him not to worry -- I was fine, but he texted my wife on the sly and told her. (She was at a friend's house working because we had no power. She's a former cardiac nurse.) 

Karen texted me back and suggested I go to the local pharmacy and have my pressure taken. She knew I had forgotten to renew my meds. I went. It was 150/100. (Normal is 120/70.) For the rest of the day, after taking the meds, it continued to drop, but I had to go play with the band at an outdoor party -- party number one for the weekend...in the heat, under the sun of an uncovered stage that leaned severely to the left, which wrought havoc on the spines of everyone in the band. ("We have to make a note about this for future contracts," Jeff, the keyboard player, said.) 

III. There is a difference between being tired because of stuff on the outside and being messed up on the inside.

We played the first set. We came off. Jeff, the band's singer, approached me.

"You know I love you, right?" he said. "You know I am honest with you, right?"

"Yep," I said.

"That was," he went on, "The worst set you ever played since being in this band. Are you okay?"

I got a little defensive, but I knew he was right. I wasn't alright and I knew it. My concentration was all over the place, worried as I was, and I was feeling horrible. I did recover for the next two sets, but it took all I had. Breaking down the stuff that night, we had to use brute force instead of wheels because of the mud. As we were carrying stuff to the car, all I could keep thinking was: This is bad. I shouldn't really be doing this... It wasn't the usual post-gig exhaustion. Sometimes muscle fatigue can seep right into your soul.

IV. Joy sometimes overcomes mud. 

On Saturday morning, the band had to travel to Maryland from New jersey to play at a really nice house on the Chesapeake for a fiftieth birthday. This was supposed to be fun. Big payday; hotel rooms; the wives were even coming, some along for fun, one celebrating her fiftieth birthday and my wife and I celebrating our anniversary.

With the power out at home, my wife, Karen, had to stay home with the generator we'd bought to keep our food edible. Happy anniversary. So, okay, circumstances...

The rain poured most of the way down to Maryland, and when we got to the house, to set up, tornado warnings started rolling in. The rain came down harder; lightning flashed which made us stay far away from metal tent poles, which really didn't matter because we were walking in puddles running from those very poles. As the rain intensified, water started pouring in around the electronic equipment. Tarps came out and Tony started digging trenches to divert the water away from the band and down to the Chesapeake.

A muddy-feet-pic, shared by someone in the audience.

By the end of setup we were wet, tired and covered with mud. After a quick trip to the hotel to change and after a quick dinner, we went back to play. And play we did.

By the time we started, the grass had turned to mud and people danced barefoot in the muck, covered to their knees. But everyone had come for a party, some from very far away, and nothing would stop them from throwing their own mini Woodstock. (Kurt, the bass player, called it Bryan-stock, in honor of the gentleman whose birthday it was.) It was a great gig and the band played its collective butt off.

The musical night ended on a hilarious note, as a possibly-tipsy, rather attractive and completely muddy woman asked one of the wives where they were going after the party. When she was told, "Back to the hotel with the band," not knowing the ladies were the band's wives, she jested: "Oh -- is that an option?"

Not a very good picture, but it shows
the trampled, muddy "dance floor." 

V. There really is a difference between being tired because of the outside and being messed up on the inside.

Soggy, exhausted details, aside, the band broke down the equipment, trying to avoid the muck and mud, only to find out the the key to the truck that was pulling the trailer for our equipment, had gone missing. The meant another hard walk, carrying even the things that have wheels, over a swampy mess. From the end of the gig, at 11:30 until around 1:30 AM, we had to carry things to the singer's van and transport them to the trailer, which was about an eighth of a mile up the gravel road, and load things, one van load at a time, by the glow of an iPhone light.

As we moved things from van to trailer, I realized I was dog tired, as they say, but that it was a healthy kind of tired; not the insidious tired I had felt the night before.

"Well," I said to Jeff, as we unloaded the last of the stuff, "Look at the bright side. We're actually getting back to the hotel earlier than we'd get home after a normal gig." (We usually play until 1:30 or 2AM.) 

He had to agree. Later, Jeff said, "We must be crazy working this hard to play music."

I thought about that. We're not crazy. We're musicians. It's what we do.

I thought of my dad, who has been gone for going on two years. He was a lead trumpet player, the lead guitarist of his day; the hero of the band. At one point, he put down his horn, stepping aside, thinking he no longer had the stuff to sit in the center chair. After that , the decline began, slowly but surely, over a few decades. He'd put down who he was because keeping it going would have been a tremendous amount of work and he felt he didn't have it in him. An understandable choice, but one that, I think, eventually did him in.

It's not crazy. If there's a fire in your heart, you have to tend it. A lot of guys don't get the chance to make music, or they let it take a total back seat to everything. Sometimes doing what is inside you is worth a little tornado/electrocution risk. Sometimes it's worth the mud. It's good for a bunch of guys in and approaching their fifties to put aside talk of Metamucil, back pain and plantar fasciitis and rock out, tornadoes and blood pressure be damned. 

Oh, for the record, after we finished our ridiculous piecemeal load out to the distant trailer, the key was found, right where it was supposed to be, in Tony's backpack.

"In a few years, "Jeff said, "This will be that 'Hey -- you remember that Maryland gig?' story."

Indeed it will be. Or it already is. 

Little Buddy Rich: A King Richard Band Adventure

We all know, thanks to Robert Plant and company, that communication can break horribly down. But is it possible that a man, in his sixties, could have really believed, on St. Patrick's Day, that I had invited his two-year-old grandson to sit in with the band?

I was setting my drums up for the evening, and up he came with the boy -- the boy who was clutching a pair of 5A, nylon-tipped sticks in his cute little mitts. I smiled at the two of them.

"He wanted to see the drums," the man said to me. "His grandpop is a drummer. This kid loves drums. He sleeps with these sticks in his hands."

I waved and said hello to the little fellow, feeling the usual awkwardness of situations in which little kids think I am some kind of rock star because I am in a club band. (I've even signed a few cocktail napkins, feeling like total ass -- but, how do you say no to a little kid?)

Anyway, I waved at the little fellow and said, "You want to come up and try the drums out?"

The grandfather smiled and nodded at the kid and the kid smiled and I got up to let him come back and sit...and they walked away from me...

Okay, I figured -- the kid got cold feet and they want back to their dinner. No biggie. 

We played through the first set and, for the first time in my playing career, our most energetic audience was an entire extended family, from two to sixty-something, jamming out, right in front of the stage, including Little Buddy Rich and his granddad.

Straynger in a Straynge Layund

People misunderstand me. I'm misunderstood. Poor me. I'm really such a nice fellow. It's just that I react...energetically to stuff.

Music, for instance. If I hate a piece of music, I hate it with a regurgitative kind of hate. I, for instance, loathe The Doors. I don't think they are bad musicians or that Morrison was a bad lyricist or singer or that their music was low-quality... I just hate their music. No real reason and no real evaluation of merit or the lack thereof lies under any of it. When a Doors song comes on the radio, I actually curl my upper lip, for some reason, and fumble to change the station as if swatting at some horrible insect. There is no good reason for this; it is as if, as stated above, I ate a food that disagreed with me.

The best pictures of the band are ones
in which my face is obscured by a beer bottle.

But I don't believe there is a such thing as an intrinsically bad genre of music. For every -- literally every -- genre of music I have heard, there has been at least one song that I have really liked. (Yes, rap included.)

I don't, for instance, generally like "country music." It has, however (slowly...insidiously...like the growth of a tumor) become a part of my life because I am in a band that plays and has always played what is popular. We were a classic rock band and then alternative came along and then grunge and we shifted with the times. We never fit into the Spinal Tap cliche -- we have never dressed the part of any  particular music movement and we have never become rock stars in our own minds.

Ye Olde Ego

It's amazing how ye olde ego can sneak up on you.

I have, of late, had a bit of a drummer's resurgence. I have been a drummer since the age of fifteen. I have been in a working band since the age of twenty-ish. I have always enjoyed going out to play drums. But, somewhere between the ages of, say, thirty-ish and forty-ish, I started to put my songwriting and composition first and I started seeing drums as a small part of the big puzzle.

The new drums, on a gig. 

Then, I, for whatever reason -- I think it had a lot to do with having been inspired by the drumming of Gavin Harrison, recently -- I got psyched up for the skins again. I upgraded my beloved but tired old drumkit and bought new cymbals and, then, I started...dare I say it? I started practicing again, because, now, that tired old kit is in my little studio, permanently set up. (I have gone years without an actual acoustic kit set up in my house, warming up on practice pads and electronic kits, but it just ain't the same...)

But here's the weird thing: I have been practicing poorly. I just realized it the other day. You know what I have been doing? I've been playing stuff that is easy for me. Any novice musician knows that is no way to grow. I know it full well. Still...

...the other day, I tried something: playing patterns over a steady 3/4 (waltz) rhythm. (Inspired by Max Roach's "The Drum Also Waltzes", but with a slightly more complicated foot pattern.) Anyway, whatever level your musical knowledge is, let it suffice to say that doing this is more difficult than it sounds and, most importantly for this piece, much more difficult than I thought it would be.

I tried it a few times and just quit. Just stopped and moved onto something simpler. Today, driving in the car, it occurred to me why that was. I wasn't conscious of it, but I was saving face.

The Last Ship Has Finally Come In

I finally got Sting's first collection of original songs in about ten years: The Last Ship. I love it. (Don't worry -- this is not going to be a record review. I hate those.)

I haven't "loved" one of his albums in a long time -- maybe ever since 1993's Ten Summoner's Tales. My enjoyment of his work declined with every album since that one...until this one. Yet...I never got bitter.

Sting, doing a character from The Last Ship --
which will be a broadway play in September.

You know what I mean? Did you ever witness people who get downright mad when musicians they like put out albums they don't agree with or enjoy? -- as if it is a personal affront?

It is hard, granted, when one makes a personal connection with an album, not to look for that same level of identification out of everything after. Those albums become dear to us. I wouldn't be who I am today without Rush's Moving Pictures; Genesis's Seconds Out; Sting's Soul Cages and U2's Achtung Baby, just to name a (very) few. In the case of each of those artists, there have been scores of records that I disliked deeply or that I thought just didn't stand up to the "gems."  (I use only rock albums here -- it is a particular thing, the "album of songs" that cannot be compared to the mountains of other types of music I love.) But, though I might have disliked the directions these artists took, I never, as I said, got bitter. And I went right on buying their stuff.

Child Logic

A few days ago, I picked up my sons from something after school. As we were driving home, they asked me to put in the CD of a recording my friend Mark and I had just finished -- one that I posted about a few days ago.

They both like it, but my younger son (10) loves it -- wants to hear it over and over. After it played, he asked me:

"Dad, can we play this song this year while we are decorating Easter eggs?"

I told him that of course we could. Then, I wandered down the sun-flooded path of unraveling the logic of the small one. What connection, in his little head, made him say that? Is he a synaesthete like his dad? -- does the music suggest the bright colors or Easter egg dye to him? -- is he reacting to the closing section of the song with its use of the word "rise," whose phrase is lifted by choir chords and airborne strings?

Who cares? It made my throat lump up and it made my heart about seven minutes younger. And, you  know, for the first time, I am looking forward a process that I usually despise but that I smile through anyway:  dyeing Easter eggs.

Playing It By Ear

My wife and I, cutting-edge people that we are, are watching this hot new show called Lost. (I know, I know -- no cable, plus Netflix...) It's pretty cool, I guess. I have never finished an episode and thought, "Wow, that's brilliant." But I have also never been bored. The show is what a former Romanticism professor of mine used to call "chewing gum for the brain;" chewing gum with good, long-lasting flavor, but no real nutrients in it.

But that's not the point. Here's the point: Dominic Monaghan's character is a former rock star; a guy who was in a really low-intellect, poppy-punk kind of band called "Driveshaft." Or, as the character Hurley's friend puts it: "Driveshaft? More like 'Suckshaft'."

Charlie playing in a less than ideal acoustic environment. 

In an episode we recently watched, Monaghan's character, Charlie, is at the piano writing a song. And you know what he is doing? He is writing down notes. Do writers and people in general really think rock musicians and pop musicians write their music down like classical composers? Let me illuminate through summaralysis. (Yeah, I made that up.)

Classical and orchestral composers write their music down. This is so that a hundred or more musicians all play things that sound good together. Big band arrangers do this too, when you can find a big band.

My Massive Musical Success (Part 2)

People need each other, for basic reasons. Root reasons. Primal reasons.

Most basically, we need each other for survival. This, no doubt, originated with ancient humans standing back-to-back and fighting off beasts with nine-inch teeth. Then, talents were discovered and someone took the role of hunter; another, the cook; another, the healer, and so on... We still operate that way.

Less basically, while the hunters were out looking for wild Whateverbeast, they got to talking (or grunting) and then one slipped on a paleo-peel of some kind and they cracked up about it, and "the friendship" was born. And that night, as the tribe sat around the fire, gnawing the last of the goodness off of the Whateverbeast bones, a man connected eyes with a woman and he offered her the last of his marrow and romance was born...

Everything spiralled off of these things, right? Necessity became safety; safety became comfort; comfort became "society."

This part of it, I get. (At least, I think so -- you tell me what you think.)

My Massive Musical Success

On Saturday night, the band I am in was just about set-up and ready to play in a bar/restaurant in a relatively affluent New Jersey town. It was a good night. We might have been able to fit three more people into the place if we were lucky -- six, if they had been leprechauns. Lots of people were out to get in an early celebration of St. Paddy's day.

The band at work. 

But a good-sized crowd is not enough. They have to be "into it." And they were. There was a lot of energy. In some ways, we played well. In some ways we did not. Each of us made his mistakes, here and there. I made some doozies. (As a drummer, every mistake I make is a doozy. A guitar player drops a chord or two and it fades into the background. When I make a mistake, the entire crowd turns around to stare at the stupid oaf behind the drum kit.) But we had fun.

Rockin' With Cowboy Hats

I have never been much of a fan of country music, though I have loved the occasional country song. I have always tended not to be genre-obsessed. If music is good, it is good; if it moves me, it moves me. Still, the genre that has tended to strike out with me the most has been (next to rap and hip-hop) country.

Then...

At this point, the band I am in is playing a lot of country music, because we are a band that plays popular music and country is very popular just now. Of course -- there is not a whole lot of "country" in today's country music. It is basically rock with cowboy hats. To make up for this, I suppose, the songwriters seem to be reacting to their countryless music by writing what they see as hyper-country lyrics and by feebly begging people to believe their music is "country" by putting references to country life in every title...

...at least in the most popular stuff. I guess there are artists out there doing the real thing and I just don't know about them. But the fact remains that the most popular stuff is embarrassingly superficial, even to a guy who doesn't have a dog in the proverbial race. I imagine fans of real country music (purists of the genre) are getting headaches, at this point, from grinding their teeth every time Luke Bryan comes out with a new tune. Just look as far as some of the titles of songs we play (which are the only modern country songs I know, really):

"Country Girl"
"She's Country"
"Hillbilly Shoes"
"Hillbilly Bone"

Then, there are those that may not have specifically "country" titles but that are all about being country, like "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" (Okay -- that's devilishly clever, but it still references "giggin' frogs" in the song.) Or, "Boys 'Round Here," "here," being, you know, out in the country ("You don't do the Dougie?" "Naw, not in Kentucky."). Or "Cruise," in which a country Casanova, a poet of the highest order, tells his Juliet that a "brand new Chevy with a lift kit would look a helluva lot better with [her] up in it."

...and now. 

I guess, to a great extent, country music has often been about country life, even in the old days, but, it seems to me, from the classic tunes I know, it was more about real life and less about quick references to "ice-cold beer," catfish and pickup trucks with pretty women on them dancing under the KC lights ("country girl, shake it for me...").

I just looked over a list of the "Top 500" country songs and found (and remembered some) titles like:

"Three Chords and the Truth"
"Ships That Don't Come In"
"Your Cheatin' Heart"
"I Walk The Line"
"White Lightning"

These titles just seem a bit more dignified and a heck of a lot more ambitious, if only in a slightly commercial way.

I dunno. I think I would be mad if I were into real country music. As it stands, I am mildy amused and I enjoy putting impotent parameters on the band, like that I have a three-song limit for mention of catfish and will not play any more songs with said reference.

And I'm not complaining. Luke Bryan rocks. (But, is he supposed to?)

How Music Spins Up My Soul

It took quite awhile to realize that people who also love music don't also love music for the same reasons I do. This is probably because music's effect on me is so immediate and so fundamentally related to what is going on in side me that it feels as if it couldn't be any other way for anyone else. Maybe it is genetic. Maybe it is programming, but it is "musical direction" that my dad always pointed out to me -- the way the harmonies and the melodies walk through the span of a piece and carry the listener's heart along. For me, the presence of that direction has always been a necessary ingredient in truly good music.

To put it another way, to guys like us, it is the horizontal progress of a piece that makes the magic, not the a rows of verticals stacked up next to one another like books on a shelf, that makes the magic happen. Rock music (and pop) are often based on verticals: one chord follows another and the melody note is just something laid over the top. To my dad (and to me) that was generally ineffective. But when harmonies melodies and chord move gracefully in a profound arabesque on their horizontal journey; when they "go where they need to go" it affects me (and it affected him) in the most profound way.

When music does this to me, I feel an actual physical "high." If there is a door that holds back the endorphin flood, for me, particular harmonic clusters and progressions are the key to the lock. Emily Dickinson said she "knew" poetry this way:

The Rebellion of the Angry and Dumb

Stanislav Chlebowski

My dad always said dangerous things to me as I was growing up. One of those was: "If you're going to rebel, do it over something big and important and make a real statement."

He knew what he was doing, of course. He trusted me to reason it out.

I used a similar tactic in the school in which I teach and serve as vice principal. The kids wear uniforms. Every year, there is conflict over untucked shirts. To my former Principal's shock, when we had class meetings about this, I did a bit of a stand-up comedy routine, satirizing a fictitious student who "was going to stick it to the man" by leaving his shirt tails untucked. He was a rebel. He was a hell raiser...etc. (Things improved after that.)

My dad was right, of course. But besides picking good things to rebel against, we should be careful about the conformity of non-conformity.

Last night, I was driving with  the radio on and the song "Fat Lip" by SUM 41 came on, and I caught this puerile, impotent little jab at conformist society:

I don't want to waste my time

Become another casualty of society.

I'll never fall in line

Become another victim of your conformity

And back down.

Oooo.

Joe Matt

The boy emerged from an Italian neighborhood in a Philadelphia world that still smelled like burning coal, burning wood and big pots of gravy (that's right: "gravy") bubbling on the stoves. From a world in which the milkman made his slow zig-zag way through the city's streets, an old horse pulling, then waiting; pulling, then waiting, old head dropped low, as his master set the bottles on one side, then another. And when the last clip-clop faded into the distance, the boy would sneak through the grey light of dawn, from stoop to stoop, drinking the cream off of the tops of people's bottles.

Wide-eyed, he'd watched as Dorothy's world went from sepia tones to glorious color, on the screen, for the first time, along with the other children of his generation, as her door opened onto Oz. He ran home on summer nights, dashing especially quickly past dark alleyways, after having spent all afternoon ("for ten cents," he would tell me) with a bag of his grandmother's sandwiches while watching Frankenstein and Dracula creep and stomp through the flickering, silver screen shadows.

He sat on the floor in his father's business, "Joe's Market", on 19th and McKean, playing Mario Lanza on a record player, annoying everyone by lifting and dropping the needle in the same place, over and over and over, just to hear one of Puccini's musical swells...just to nourish his little heart that needed harmonic direction the way a plant needs light.

He heard what Hitler was up to; saw newsreels before movies; laughed at the silly little moustache, but was too young to really understand, so he sat on a stone lion and posed with a comb over his upper lip: the Great Little Dictator.

He perspired in the congestion-free, South Philly avenues of the forties and early fifties playing summer halfball and football until the street lights came on...

He saw Kirk Douglas in Young Man With a Horn, and knew what he wanted to do and who he wanted to be, so his grandmother bought him a silver trumpet and he played, first, like Harry James, but, soon, like Joe Matt. But that wasn't enough, so he walked (as he told it to his less than musically studious son) uphill, both ways, barefoot over broken glass to sit sat at the piano at his aunt's house and to discover chords and the soul-spinning effects of harmony, and he wrote and orchestrated, and approximated the power of God's voice for years to come.

A Stranger in an Ever-Stranger Land

It annoys me when artists wallow blissfully in their weirdness. It doesn't bother me when they are weird; it bothers me when they wallow in it and wear it as a badge -- and especially when they feign it to seem more artistic.

Maybe I should go to a priest and confess: "Father, forgive me. I fall asleep with no problem every night. I have no drug addiction and I don't drink absinthe. I don't wear scarves or knit caps when it is hot out. I come from a close-knit family, with a mom and a dad and a sister and a dog. I don't focus on pain in my writing. I have a whole bunch of what some might label "traditional" beliefs. I even think there is a God up there. Father, forgive me -- I have sinned against the artistic archetype."

That said, every stereotype has its origins in some fleck of reality, I suppose. We creative types can be a strange lot.

For instance, I am wrapping up composition of pieces for my next CD (a CD of piano music; no vocals) I need to decide when I have enough "stuff" to wrap it up. A few days ago, I finished writing a cycle of pieces called "American Sketches." So, last night, I was clicking around on my computer, wondering if I had any unfinished things that might merit completion...and I found something I had completely forgotten about: a symphony.

No, I am not kidding. I had totally forgotten I wrote a complete symphony a few years ago.