Distinctive Musicians III - Guitarists

OK - I have some ACTUAL useable RPG content boiling through my brain so I'm going to stop obsessing over musicians after this post (probably).   There are way too many fantastic musicians to really do this topic justice in a little pot like this, but here are a few of the folks I think are truly over the top:

Charlie Hunter (GARAGE A TROIS, SUPERBLUE, VARIOUS MUSICIANS)

Charlie Hunter plays an eight string and does basslines and guitar lead simultaneously.  He's insanely talented.  The thing below is really a wonderful example; though both the bassline and guitar work is sparse, every note is in the right place at the right time, and I find the whole incredibly relaxing - the word that comes to mind, if you could shear it of the pretentious overtones it's become associated with, is cool.  Hunter's playing isn't always this mellow - some of his work with Bobby Previte is pretty tense - but it's hard to mistake him for anyone else.  There's a playfulness there that I only ever see in the most technically accomplished musicians - guys like Hunter, Les Claypool, or Buckethead - where they are like "now I'm going to do some silly shit and it's still gonna be amazing."  This one doesn't have too much silly shit, but it makes me untense my shoulders when I didn't even realize how tight I was holding them - it just empties the body of stress in some weird alchemy.

Fine Corinthian Leather, by the way, is purely an advertising gimmick.  Ricardo Montalban called the leather used for the upholstery this in a commercial for the 1975 Chrysler Cordoba.  But if anything sounds like fine Corinthian leather should, this is it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGvMic-ZDE

Adrian Belew (KING CRIMSON, TALKING HEADS, FRANK ZAPPA, DAVID BOWIE)

I really do not understand why Belew isn't more well known, he is so creative and plays with such joy.  

Everyone, EVERYONE on this track is fucking incredible.  Bill Bruford is a legendary drummer, Robert Fripp (the other guitar on this) could easily be featured separately on this list as well, but Adrian Belew plays lead on this and when Belew plays lead, he makes sounds with a guitar that are hard to believe aren't the sky cracking in two.  Lyrically, I think this is about as perfect a description of obsession as I have ever heard.

I do remember one thing.  It took hours and hours, and by the time I was done with it, I was so involved, I didn't know what to think.

I carried it around with me for days and days...playing little games...like, not looking it for a whole day.  And then, looking at it.  To see if I still liked it.

I DID!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc6huqPzerY

Robert Fripp (KING CRIMSON, BRIAN ENO, BLONDIE)

The other guy playing guitar on the track above is every bit as unique.  Fripp is a true innovator, cut from the same cloth as Les Paul, who first brought electricity to guitar.  His innovations are too numerous to list, really, but Frippertronics (the introduction of tape loops to his playing, which he started in the late 1970's) and New Standard Tuning deserve special mentions. Here's a lovely quote from him that I think captures his overall approach to the instrument, which, though it can sound incredibly complex, is at its roots an exercise in intentionality and simplicity:

"With a note of music, one strikes the fundamental, and, in addition to the root note, other notes are generated: these are the harmonic series.... As one fundamental note contains within it other notes in the octave, two fundamentals produce a remarkable array of harmonics, and the number of possible combinations between all the notes increases phenomenally. With a triad, affairs stand a good chance of getting severely out of hand."

There are so many things he's done - Fracture is an amazing piece of music, the guitar solo in Baby's On Fire from Here Come the Warm Jets is mesmerizing, his work on the album above with Adrian Belew - all of it is good.  I nearly chose an early piece where he's using Frippertronics, but ultimately decided on Discipline - the thematic counterpart to Indiscipline, above, and from the same album.  If Belew shines on Indiscipline, then the cerebral, beautiful stasis of Discipline is pure Fripp.  Also, King Crimson is probably the roots of math rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en5YRCvppIA

Buckethead (PRAXIS, GUNS AND ROSES)

Buckethead is a once-in-a-generation Mozart level genius at his chosen art.  I listed bands he's been with above, but he is most prolific doing solo work.  Look at this thing - the number of albums he has put out per year since 2010.  In 2015 he put out an album every three or four days.

The thing I like about Buckethead's playing is that it isn't pure shredding for its own sake - he knows how to lay back when he should (listen to Wake the Dead or Whitewash, for example), and even on this track, which is a tour de force of his talent, he takes the time to develop thematic melodies that really push the whole thing to the next level.  I think what I'm trying to say is that he plays with feeling, something I think is missing from some of the other shredders or incredible technical players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNXwYo-w1HE

James Calvin Wilsey (The Avengers, Chris Isaak)

The King of Slow.  Chris Isaak got the credit for Wicked Game but for my money it is those first two notes from Wilsey and his lead playing that make the song.  Just perfect, haunting, beautiful, the lead floats above the tune like a lonely ghost drifting over the desert. Dude puts his soul out there when he plays like that.  We only got one solo album from this guy, below is the first track from it.  He's already gone, and that sucks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9haU5gu-Ccg

OK, that is that for now then!  Next up - A return to the World With No Extras - I think!

The New Innocence and Writing Without Fear

 

“The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being.” – Joseph Campbell

There is a band called Praxis – they are honestly a supergroup – Buckethead, Brain, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell are the main players, along with Bill Laswell and a number of other musicians. All of these guys are really amazing musicians – Bootsy and Buckethead in particular are once-in-a-generation Mozart-level geniuses at their individual crafts of bass and guitar respectively. They do mainly instrumental work and in this work influences from jazz and classical and funk to death metal can be heard.

All their stuff is pretty good, but there’s a couple of tunes that are real standouts. One of these is a piece called “The Interworld and the New Innocence.” I first heard it close to thirty years ago and it still makes the hair on my arms stand up; an analysis of it is really not totally necessary here, but it is an unearthly combination of longing and undeniable drive that I find incredibly beautiful.

Perhaps in part because the song is so good, but I think also for other reasons, the phrase “The New Innocence” stuck in my head the first time I heard it and would not leave. I wondered about it. What did it mean? Why did it resonate so strongly with me?

When I began to write again, my path to the art was beset by fear; I often feel isolated and like the people around me do not understand me, and I often feel as though I cannot make myself understood; in social situations, especially, the words simply don’t come fast enough. Many of the most compelling experiences of my life involve situations and behaviors that have negative social currency or behavior I am not especially proud of – addiction, homelessness, involuntary institutional commitment – dishonesty, violence, dysfunction, sorrow – in short, though I feel I have lived a full and interesting life, it involves experiences that societies at large and people in general want very little truck with. It's made me extremely self-conscious and in many ways I often find myself frightened to be authentic with the people I am surrounded by socially, save for a select few who I treasure. It is very easy for me to carry this fear over into my writing.

Why is that? I think there are several reasons. One very obvious one is that our writing is judged and we are judged by it almost right away, as soon as we enter the school system. Is this paper deserving of an A? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is a failure and we get the dreaded scarlet F. I think this teaches us to judge ourselves as well and this is, in large part, where it begins. Or at least probably where it began for me. I came to think of writing as a way to win approval or disapproval. Columbine hadn’t happened yet, or I probably would have wound up in even more trouble, but some of my poetry, stories, and artwork in high school landed me in sessions with the school principal or counselor, who expressed “concern” over my “disturbing” artistic efforts, though of course most of my peers thought it was awesome shit.

The thing about writing with fear is that it introduces the kind of self-censorship that encourages an author to hide things. Inevitably, those things are all the universal ones – that is, all the important true and human ones.

I remember hearing a quote from Cormac McCarthy, something to the effect that drinking is an occupational hazard of writing. Note that McCarthy was known as a teetotaler. This made sense to me almost immediately when I heard it. In my younger days, I relied on alcohol to lower my inhibition to the point where I felt I could write without fear.  I took a very long break from writing.  At some point I realized what a shit carnival I was making of my life and these days I do not drink, but I’ve had to relearn how to approach the page without feeling self-conscious and frightened of judgement, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am trying to push through those feelings and get to the heart of human experience in spite of them. Why? Not because it is therapeutic; it isn’t. At least not for me. Writing in this way makes me feel horribly vulnerable and exposed and open to ridicule. As if my whole ass is being presented purely for the purpose of people pointing out what a weird shape it is and what the ugliest bits are. So why do it?

For me, I think it is because it is the only way I have to get at those human things in my writing.

So these days, when I find I am thinking about writing something and feel like “people will think you are weird,” or “you’ll be rejected because of this,” or “people will associate you with this thing which is fucked up,” I know that's the thing I have to write.

I have come to think of this approach to writing as “The New Innocence,” which is really just a pretentious way to say that I am trying to write without fear of rejection or ridicule. There is an incredible and paradoxical power in innocence, I find. One of my old martial arts teachers had this saying that the only thing more dangerous than a black belt was a white belt. The Zen mind really is the beginner’s mind, open to all things without judgement. White belts might do something incredible simply because they don’t know NOT to do it or that they cannot do it. Again, thinking back to very early training, at one point my instructor had me practice sidekicks for a bit while he worked with some other students. I went ahead and did what I was told, and at one point I threw a kick that made the whole leg of the gi stiffen and there was a loud “pop!” and my instructor looked around and finally turned to me and asked incredulously “was that you?” I nodded and he said something like “I could tell from the sound that what you did just then was perfect execution. What you did just then, you want to do every time.” Of course, once I was told that, I couldn’t make it happen again for the life of me!

What is the power of innocence? The power of innocence is absolute authenticity. The real things in us that cannot be denied or argued with. It is the eternal, the expression of our humanity. When we are authentic, we own ourselves as human beings with all the beauty and ugliness inherent to our condition. It is so fascinating to me that the core of us is at once so soft and harder than diamond!

Society at large doesn’t really have a place for that kind of authenticity. And that’s ok. I’m not sure we are capable of the kind of total authenticity I am talking about with more than a few people at a time – it’s exhausting! At least for me. But one place we can be that way (if we allow ourselves) is on the page, and when we are, I think it can transform what otherwise might be a completely mundane experience or topic into something more than the sum of its parts, into something eternal and universal that I think other human beings cannot help but recognize.

I’m not certain how to end this little essay, but I want to talk about what I think is possibly the greatest lesson my mother ever taught me, because I think there is a connection here somewhere. That lesson is simply this:

When you love someone else, genuinely love them, you are never diminished by the experience. It my not be reciprocated. It may be painful. It may make you feel small and weak. But you are never truly rendered small or weak thereby. It is only ever an experience which ennobles one’s soul.

I said earlier that the experience of writing without fear makes me feel vulnerable, like my body is on display to be lampooned and ridiculed, but that’s not exactly right. It’s much, much closer to the feeling of saying “I love you” for the first time to someone you are not certain will say it back. Someone who might instead say "Yeah, you're fun to fuck," or "You make me laugh," or the worst, "I like you too."  I think in its own way, trying to write without fear is like saying “I love you” to the whole world.

Facility Designate 339-19

Some time ago I wrote up an adventure I have been referring to as "Facility Designate 339-19" - you will find a link below to a Google docs folder containing all the material I put together for this thing.  There are two main parts to this adventure; a short prelude involving an African village in an alternate history Earth, and a main portion that is a somewhat more classic delve into a demon-haunted scientific facility.  I really feel I should do some additional research and probably a full re-write of the section on the village.  I live in fear that Enziramire will read that part and rip me a new one (quite rightfully) for my shabby appropriations of Africa.  I think the facility part stands up pretty well, but what do I know.  There are definitely a few things in here that are specific to my game and players, and which you should feel free to discard or change if you would like to use it.  If I ever sought to publish this professionally, I would clean that stuff up, but it's free, and my hope is that even if you don't use it wholesale, you find a part of it you like, maybe a single encounter or a magic item, or a monster.  Or the art.  God only knows how I talked Julian Feylona into letting me use his art for the equivalent of a few cups of coffee, but he was really gracious about it.  It won't be the layout, which is pretty much nonexistent.  Around this time I looked at a few layout tools (Affinity for one) and found out that layout is HARD.  But part of punk is working with the tools, ideas, and skills you have - if the guitar only has a low E and an A string, you can still make power chords - so that's what I did, and pardon me if it's a little out of tune.

This was written for 5e, but honestly, that stuff is mostly just stats, which you should feel free to change and re-arrange in any way you please.  I didn't follow the script when I ran this thing (introducing an encounter with a T-Rex to kick things off and get players moving, for example) and you shouldn't either.

This worked for me and my players when I ran it, but I took a slightly insane approach - I split the four players up pretty early and then ran four remote game sessions a week (instead of a single game session for all four players).  In some ways this might be easier to run remotely than it would be to run face to face.  I spent some time before I ran this feeling out schedules to determine if splitting the party up in that way would actually work from a commitment standpoint, and was happy when my players bought in.  I put together a chart (found towards the end of the main document) to track which players had been through which experiences in the maze so that I could re-use an experience if I wanted (or note if something was changed).  There's a corruption system here as well, but you certainly don't have to use it if your players would rather you did not.  Once I split my players up I gave each one a proposal at some point or another to be a secret villain, and I may have rather purposely let it slip that it was ok if they decided not to join the dark side, I could just ask someone else.  I don't think they trusted each other very much when they finally re-united near the end of the adventure.

I refer to the ultimate prize should the PCs successfully defeat the demon (or be rewarded for releasing it into the world) as a MacGuffin, but I only use that term in the sense that it is a prize used to drive action.  In fact, as a powerful reality-reshaping instrument it could easily be the kind of reward that totally changes the nature of the world and the campaign itself, depending on what the PCs do with it and what the DM agrees to, and there are plenty of other reasons the PCs may want to explore the maze.

One other note - there are some assumptions about other works the DM should refer to - the most important of these is probably Veins of the Earth.  There is a full list near the beginning.  You can certainly make this work without access to that stuff, but it helps.

The reason I share this thing now is because it's Halloween, and the goal of this thing was to see if I could turn D&D into an effective vehicle for horror.  It worked for me and my players and I hope it does for you, should you decide to use it.

Happy Halloween!

Facility Designate 339-19