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.