portrait of the artist as a young man

the below is taken from the 'funky monks' dvd, which documents the recording of the red hot chili peppers' 'bloodsugarsexmagik'. there's a nice back story to the making of this album; wikipedia has a pretty good account. it's one of those albums that ranks up there as a personal guitar bible, and in tandem with my best efforts to learn it song for song, i've made it a point to become acquainted with where guitarist john frusciante's head was at the time of recording, something for which this dvd has been a go-to resource.

i am a fan of what he has to say starting around the 3:52 mark:



it's good to bear in mind that john frusciante was only 20-21 years old at the time, not to mention that he was smoking a shitload of weed, and you sort of have to forget about the locker room humor on display in the rest of the clip, but that said, there's a lot of wisdom there; a balanced ego is a great ally in creative endeavors, and it is good to recognize that the outside world has the potential to upset that balance by stoking/diminishing the ego.

where john frusciante veered into deadly territory was when he chose to avoid perceived ugliness in the world by escaping into heroin shortly after the recording of the album. music's filled with too many instances of greatness succumbing to self-destruction, and one of rock's great survival stories is that he fought back against his demons (ones that left him barely clinging to life) and entered rehab, emerging a healthy, replenished individual who claims that a pursuit of asceticism has taken him higher than drugs* and who has gone on to generate a fairly staggering creative output.

side-stepping the world's ugliness by numbing yourself to the point where it doesn't register is the path of least resistance, and leaves you ill-prepared for when darkness inevitably comes calling to roost. the funny thing is that actually embracing the world's ugliness and accepting it as an indelible facet of experience is not letting it win or giving up, and in fact takes a great amount of strength to do. there is an irony (the good kind) to the fact that once you start accepting that there is ugliness and falsity and suffering in existence, and embracing the humility that comes from serious contemplation of one's infinitesimal place in the scheme of joy and woe, that the inner voice actually begins to grow, and finds that it has a function in harmony and order just as essential as anything else.

* realized at some point that i'm troubled by the semantics of the old cliche that you hear from people who have lived rock and roll and come out the other side and insist that spirituality gets you 'higher than any drug' -- it inhibits the potential of spirit by framing it with the language of altered consciousness.

the who went home and cried

been on a big guided by voices kick, and i checked out this brief documentary the other night. the ostensible subject is bassist greg demos (pronounced 'dee-moes') and the last show he played with the band before committing himself fully to family life, but the centerpiece of the video is about 25 minutes of footage of the band rehearsing for the show on bob's porch.

great (perfect?) songs run through a campfire vibe and wrapped up in the beautiful possibility of an early spring day. setting and moment so essential in opening up what a song means, what feelings it communicates.

here's a snippet from the video to give you an idea. unfortunately, the audio's kinda crappy, but maybe it gives a taste of what i mean:

the kids are alright

leilani and i played a couple of tunes at an open mic last week at the lizard lounge, which is quickly becoming a comfortably familiar and supportive venue. when i started into the progression for our cover of 'breaking the girl', this kid in his early twenties who was sitting among the patrons and bore a resemblance to seth rogen bellowed his approval, exclaiming 'i can't believe you're doing this song! yes!!'. he then proceeded to sing along to the entire song from where he was sitting. i couldn't help but smile big at his almost cheerful and sincere gumption as i played, and in an inspired moment of post-song monologue, leilani thanked him for his impromptu back-up vocals. later, there was an emphatic handshake to congratulate us on our performance.

i love seeing younger people express passion for older music. i love when i youtube stuff like hendrix, led zeppelin, ac/dc, nirvana and stone temple pilots and read through comments posted by 15 year olds who profess to loving such artists and having been inspired to explore their music by guitar hero, older siblings or their parents, or even simply the sheer luck they had in nosing around on the 'net and following links into the rabbit hole.

i am aware that there is a tendency to venerate the music one holds dear, especially in cases where there is some kind of generational context in play. still, i sense that perhaps the yearning for music that operates on and rocks hard with unapologetic verve is something that knows no generational bounds. that rock is something that defies the marginalizing effects of both trifling, self-aware spoofs and affectionately daft (even somewhat earnest) emulations, conjoined efforts that seem pretty passe by now.

well, ok

inspired by the ayb's robust call to arms, i'm back with a short little something about a case of mistaken musical identity.

i went to the lizard lounge last night to see these guys, having been drawn in by mention that reeves gabrels would be appearing as a special guest on guitar. i was reasonably familiar with his playing, having been struck by some of the controlled-frenzy whammy bar and whammy pedal histrionics he unleashed while playing with david bowie in the late 90s, and i remembered from actually watching some of the performances from this time that he had a kind of slick, future man appearance going: slim, stoic, shaved head, earrings, angular shades, black from head to toe.

so when i saw that one of the guitar players on hand was a balding, austere-looking fellow laying out precision whammy pedal riffs over the band's trip-hop grooves, i gave all my attention to him. i ignored that he looked a little, well, OLD to have been the same guy i remembered from 10 year-old performance footage, and a little too austere to be capable of the dementia i remembered coming out of his guitar. i stood on tiptoes to catch glimpses of his fingers at work over other patrons' heads.

still, i found myself distracted by the second guitar player -- a big guy with a mountain man beard and wild hair -- who theatened to overshadow EVERYONE with some absolutely nutty blues phrases. when he fully seized the soloing reins on the third song, i thought he was throwing in all but the kitchen sink to cash in on what was surely a token, conciliatory concession of the spotlight before reeves resumed doing his thing. still, i found myself thinking, "cripes, how is reeves going to top THAT?"

you know where this is going. after the 4th song (about 25 minutes into the set), the band leader introduced all the musicians, and i learned that mountain was, in fact, reeves gabrels.

it's funny how the mind will often automatically fill in some gaps and leap over others to create the most convenient version of apparent reality.

after the 1st set wrapped up, i was grabbing my coat when reeves gabrels exited the stage area right by the rack. i managed to catch his eye and said simply and resolutely: "good playing". he gave a little nod (the halfway bowing kind) and said "thanks" in a sigh that suggested that he was drained by the lengthy set, then turned his head down and kept walking.

seemed like a nice, modest guy, but who knows. at any rate, the guy burns on six strings.

food

interesting article in sunday's globe, even if it's out of step by about 17 years: 'the incredible shrinking frontman'

surely there's been a paradigm shift when it comes to music frontmen, but it's dubious to assume, just because they don't exude machismo, that today's rock stars are shrinking, or that they identify any better with the masses than their predecessors did.

on the first notion, let's be frank: you don't need pyrotechnics or walls of marshalls or complicated, oversized props to engender a sense of grandiosity. all you need is a stage and spectators. and when both happen to be sharing space inside a stadium or an arena, not even a dose of earnest humility or fame-spurning (uh, wtf?) on the part of the performer can ground a billowing larger-than-lifeness.

and on to the second: you lose something essential that you had in common with the masses when you step onto a stage and spectator becomes spectacle. remember how pink floyd wrote 'the wall'? this idea isn't exactly a new one.

there's no greater nobility in winning attention with your heart worn on your sleeve* than there is in winning attention with your pants around your ankles. in fact, the argument can be made that at least the latter is more honest.

* i actually do like (not love) both radiohead and wilco, and while i'd be happy if i never heard another coldplay song in my lifetime, chris martin seems like he is actually a decent person.

another of the greatest themes ever

taxi, of course:



something so understated and lonely about it; that horn part at 0:33 exhales like a sigh.

arguably just as good, but the horn fart at the end of the theme kind of nullifies the melancholy:

hi

sorry i've been lean on the writing here lately. i'll be in vegas over the weekend and will no doubt be out of blogging commission until at least next week, so this is going to be a ghost town for at least a little while in the meantime.

i happened to read a favorable review of a new jay reatard album on the onion's a.v. club site yesterday, and thankfully, we live in a day and age where we can bone up on most subjects in a flash, so i youtubed the hell out of the guy, and i found out that while he and his mates are pretty good at what they do, they're not exactly reinventing the wheel, nor are they supplying enough memorable hooks or hitting with enough ferocity to signal that they're doing a particularly great job of going through the motions of making spiky, punk-inflected rock.

the problem here has to do with the assigned rating of an 'A'; if you take a look at the review, there's really nothing terribly hyperbolic or gushy about it, aside maybe from the line 'Jay Reatard is making the freshest, most exhilarating records in the indie world today' (which, if taken at face value, would really limit the scope of the indie world immensely, considering there HAVE TO be a few thousand bands under the radar playing music indistinguishable from jay reatard's), nor is there anything written in the short patch of text that more modestly hints at some undeniable, titanic greatness, and one gets the distinct sense that the 'A' that punctuates the review represents one of those instances where a reviewer casts aside the impossible yoke of arbiter of immutable truths on objective greatness and basically hijacks the scoring system to let us know, 'hey, this music, while maybe not capable of blowing peoples' minds and ears, has REALLY struck a chord within me'.

my points, and lord knows i'm stepping in and out of and dancing around them, are really stupid simple, and are maybe elusive to me only because my mind's going in a bunch of different directions right now: grading systems are often ancillary to the raw content of a review, and on those grounds alone, ratings should basically never be taken but with a grain of salt, and hey, don't ever let grading systems, impenetrable names, lofty prose and comparisons to esoteric indie sacred cows (only one of these really applies to that onion review -- just speaking generally here) obscure the fact that music critics are most certainly not omnicompetent, even if the pretense is pretty much built into the mechanics of writing authoritatively, and remember that a world of listening, especially if you're able to access and read this, is at your finger tips, so go listen to shit so that you can put other peoples' personal epiphanies about the arts into a perspective that's meaningful to you.

must be doing something right

in spite of regularly shaking the foundation of my three-apartment home by way of rehearsals in our band's basement practice space, one of my neighbors went out of his way the other night to tell me that what we're playing sounds great, and that he plans on being there whenever we play out (soon).

considering that we're honing our performances of the same handful of songs, i take that as a great compliment. i think i'd hate us by now if i was in his shoes.

it's hard not to be excited. we've been working at this for some time, and now that we have vocalists in the mix, our songs are beginning to take on the kind of life that our earliest cracks at them only hinted at.

plus, when one of the biggest practice kinks is that your bass player is independently increasing tempo in some spots because he is getting excited in the middle of the performance, you know you're on to something pretty special.

good music writing

check out the angry young bostonian's round-up of lesser-known beach boys gems

here comes another great soundtrack tune

yep, the good ol' meatballs theme. fortunately, the background on this one isn't nearly as nebulous as that of the balls-to-the-wall rock from cheech and chong's next movie, as discussed in a post below. all indications point to the north star kids choir as being the responsible artist, and i think that name in and of itself does all the explaining we'll need.

pretty much the most joyous ode to shenanigans you'll ever hear. i love how the kids build up to screaming on those bridge-like parts.

beat street

i've found that the majority of the music i write tends to originate in little riffs i hear when i'm walking. when a rhythm is forceful and persistent enough to feel hard-wired without my having to do anything to help it along, and when i'm lucky enough to have a relatively clear, unfocused mind, the beats just kind of send notes pinballing around in my head. this tells me i need to get a little tape recorder to preserve such spontaneous ideas (it also proves to me, if nothing else, that i'm a pretty steady walker).

somewhat jealously, i wonder whether melodies and harmonies come from a place that's somehow more ethereal.

under what kinds of circumstances do you hear those special musical nuggets that are distinctly yours?

a great mystery

more often than not, you can pull up conclusive information on nagging bits of trivia by plumbing the limitless depths of the web. but there's times when an answer proves elusive.

below is a scene from cheech and chong's next movie:



aside from the obvious awesome on display -- the motorcycle in the living room, chong's extended coughing fit, etc. -- you may notice that the song playing in the background is ridiculously bad ass. if you were to pull up the youtube page this clip is from, you'd find that a lot of the people posting comments think so, too. however, you'd also find that no one there has any idea where this smoking chunk of maximum rock came from.

the closest i've come to an answer is that steven lukather of toto played on this song; it is not, however, as some suggest, a cover of 'hell on wheels', the 1979 cher disco poop that he also happened to play on.

with its righteous, god-of-rock vocal delivery (check in particular the way the singer stretches "wind" into two syllables), bombing riffage and hallelujah "takin' off" refrain, this is quite possibly one of greatest proto-metal classic rock songs ever, and sadly, it may not actually exist anywhere outside of this celluloid moment.

if anyone's got the sleuthing skills to track this number down, i'd be eternally grateful.

disgusting

kiss: "we have more money than some small countries"

i sincerely hope that hell reserves a special place for gene simmons.

and soundtracks, generally

lately, i've been deliberately gorging on jazz and instrumental music in hopes of pulling myself at least halfway out of a riff rut i've been in when it comes to my relationship with the guitar. when i say 'riff,' by the way, i'm referring to repeated, predominantly single note figures that tend to be rigid in their relationship to a song's beat -- one of the essential building blocks in rock and pop music.

anyways, i loaded up "jazz impressions of a boy named charlie brown" on my ipod today, and was struck, as i always am, by its pensive, understated elegance. i find it impossible to think about either charlie brown or its soundtrack alone without thinking about the other ... so rooted are they both in fostering a very particular mood and a particular mind-set.

it got me to thinking: what other soundtracks are just as indelible from the movies / tv shows they accompany?

lalo schifrin's soundtrack to 'dirty harry' comes to mind ... particularly the pounding, fuzzed-out bass and how it communicates an unstoppable calamity, and the shivering, ghostly vocal lines, so quintessential in a decade where so many movies addressed the supernatural, but which also serve as a quietly-menacing reminder of humans' capacity for violence.

not too big a leap from there: ennio morricone's soundtracks to the spaghetti westerns, with vocals coming on like the exhortations of the Furies, and echo effects stretching the soundscape into the realm of the epic.

finally, what about Harold Faltermeyer's soundtrack to 'fletch'? fitting and expanding the movie's theme, it's quirky to the point of goofiness in parts, but there's times when the bass dips real low and imparts a sense of the forboding, and when the drums strike with the intensity of gun shots.

sometimes, justice

backstreet boys and n'sync creator sentenced to 25 years in prison

ps - sexy never went away to begin with, and even if it had, it wouldn't be goldilocks that brought it back.

blues and bbq

beyond the alliteration, there seems to be something almost tactile that draws these two things together. like, a bottleneck slide and a stinging vibrato together could very easily evoke the sizzle of a fat steak hitting a hot grill. likewise, you could very aptly describe a particular kind of blues singer's rich, haunting tones as "smoky," or a blues guitarist's slippery slide technique as "greasy."

also, and maybe i'm just fucking nuts, but big, rollicking blues boogies seem to be a fat man's music. i could be drawing subconsciously from bill swerski's superfans and its appropriation of "sweet home chicago,", but as a carefree celebration of all things carnal, it just fits.

ramones mania

i don't think i would ever want to be in a tribute band, save maybe for playing a single halloween tribute show or something, but man, it was a trip checking out the ramoniacs over at the abbey lounge last thursday night.

funny, the first ramones song i ever heard was "beat on the brat", and the mental picture of the band that it painted for me at nine or ten years old was one of perfectly typical american teens banging away in the garage against their common enemy, some cheeky little nuisance who got away with pulling crap because he could use his cuteness to appeal to authority figures. as exhilarating revenge fantasy, it made so much sense. here were the guys who sat in the back of the class, relishing the prospect of one day serving up proper punishment to the teacher's pet.

in reality, of course, the ramones resembled a warped combination of 50's greasers and 70's burnouts with thousand yard stares. it's odd to consider, but in terms of creating a distinct band image, they actually had a hell of a lot in common in kiss: sharing the exaggerated beatles mop tops, the leather jackets and the surname, they created a larger-than-life, surreal 'other,' just as gene simmons inc. had done with their rock superheroes from parts unknown.

the similarities end there, though, and the images these bands cultivated came to mean two very different things to their fan bases. where kiss asked its kiss army to literally buy into its mythos, the ramones, by contrast, pulled the myth down to earth; their deliberately lockstep, homogenized look effectively laid bare an absurdity inherent in the archetype of groups that preceded them, leaving it to the listener to make what he or she would of the band, its music and its message.

indeed, "gabba gabba hey" is a nonsensical rallying call, but in its meaninglessness lies a great accessibility; whatever that means, and whatever the ramones are supposed to be, doesn't really matter in the end, because the music itself is FUN -- come as you are. the image matters only in so far as image does not actually matter.

the ramoniacs, like any great tribute act should, do a great job of conveying the spirit of the original band's total package. check them out below:

the name

sights and smells sync up with memory, and sounds are no different.

and because music is this jiggly, malleable thing, there's a natural concomitant there; we can align a piece of music with a memory with just a little bit of wiggling, just as we can allow a piece of music to affect the apparent reality of a memory when see fit.

overstating the obvious: everyone has songs that they connect to moments from their lives.

perhaps not so far removed from the obvious: those songs can take on a summarizing effect, granting us instant access points to all the different feelings and thoughts that a full memory comprises. they're something that play as the credits roll and the house lights go up, and we are left to fresh rumination, even if we're pondering an experience that's long past.

i don't just fancy that analogy. i sometimes quite literally see credits rolling over slowly-blurring and fading scenes in my mind's eye.

i think this is special, and i'd like that kind of pure goodness and feeling to inform every word i put down here.

is music criticism a kind of fascism?

i think it can be.

and like most systems (viewed in the sense of constructs, that's what it is), the bigger it gets, the more easily corruptible it becomes. a tangled mass of expectations imposed by reader and writer and advertisers and a perception of the world at large create the tone, which takes on the function of a master volume knob; a swirl of images and icons, sometimes conflated, sometimes subverted, but almost always whose meaning becomes this entrenched, static thing; the filtering process -- what gets covered and what doesn't?.

what this all amounts to is a framework, a rosetta stone by which a user interprets content. think about what it would be like to read a pitchfork review in rolling stone, and vice versa.

and yet, even on a smaller scale, almost all these things still hold true, right down to a solitary music blogger such as myself.

i took several journalism classes in college that grappled with objectivity, both as a concept and as something that could potentially be measured in practice (at least, in that latter regard, as something that could be judged in so far as it was blatantly violated).

ultimately, the conclusions we arrived at were pretty clearly visible from the outset: objectivity is a practical impossibilty.

the best we can do in the pursuit of perfection is exactly that: the best we can do. with that in mind, i'll do my best to establish context wherever i think it's helpful or illuminating to what i have to say here, all while doing my best to abstain from a cute or indulgent take on gonzo journalism.

i encourage discussion and disagreement here, because in the end, one person's opinion is one person's love, and this project would be best restricted to a diary if that's all that came through.

most of all, i hope that you find this as worthwhile as i think it will prove to be for me.