Whether you know of musicians like Michael Macdonald and Christopher Cross because you were always a fan, have become a fan recently, have heard them sampled by hip hop producers, or just plain 'ol dig Yacht Rock (I refuse to link it, but you can go find it on Youtube), you all know these cats can sing; but did you know that Christopher Cross is a sick guitar player?! Neither did I. Check It:
07 October 2009
24 September 2009
Embryonic Review, or: The Return of Michael Ivins, or: The Record I've Wanted the Lips to Make for Some Time Now.
After taking my second class with Salim Washington at Brooklyn College, I finally convinced myself to swear of music criticism. I stopped reading album reviews (for the most part as old habits die hard), didn't renew my subscription to Paste, and have made a lot of efforts to not be such a dick about other people's tastes when different than mine. I have been fairly successful in this quest to purge myself of the world of negative and/or uninformed response to other people's art, but we all fall down every now and again. I only mention all of this because, while the title of this post does indeed contain the word "review", I am no way hoping to levy criticism or pass any judgment on the Flaming Lips upcoming album or their catalogue as a whole. The fact is, I am only eight songs in and feel the need to celebrate this album's accomplishment in making all of this l'il Lips fan's dreams come true.
Like so many people my age, I was turned on to the Flaming Lips via the lone hit single in their 20+ year career: "She Don't Use Jelly" from 1994's Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. At the time, it seemed something of a novelty and I didn't even get into the band proper until I picked up a cassette copy of the aforementioned album from the "cutout bin" of a local record store during my sophomore year in college. (During the cassette tape's last gasp, you could often find many fairly contemporary and even classic albums on cassette for as little as $1.99. Being as I was in a sort of "hording" phase for music and, as I did live in the 'burbs and only had a tape deck - as opposed to a CD player - in my oft-used vehicle, I loved rummaging through these "cutout bins") While it wasn't exactly love-at-first-listen, I was very drawn to the rather ramshcakle or homemade aesthetic. Raunchy guitars, raw natural drums, and Wayne Coyne's less than stellar (by "conventional" standards) vocals seemed to mesh seemlessly not only with the mid-90's slacker ethos I bought into, but also with the psychedelic element present in this music. All of these modifiers, however, never overpowered the great songcraft and universalist/world saving vibe that made this a fun listen - but, for at the time, only a fun listen.
I finally got wrapped up in their world a few years later. While working at a shitty chain record store during the summer after I graduated (college), I decided to grab a copy of 1999's The Soft Bulletin. Critics had been raving (it was around then that I started my aforementioned dirty habit) about it since it dropped, so that in concert with my earlier casual, but enjoyable, relationship with their music and the cover art that made the whole thing seem somehow cinematic, was enough for me to take a copy home at the end of the summer (with my employee discount). It was nothing short of life-changing. It was beautiful, majestic, exquisitely produced, and, most importantly, incredibly human. There was life in these songs! Roughly conceptual (in both production value and lyrical content), this album seem to tap into many of the things I wrestling with as I stepped out of the sheltered world of the music conservatory and living on my parents' dime and into the real world. It was a mixed bag of louder-than-hell drum beats, chiming guitars, purposefully-phony-sounding string patches, pianos, organs, and the melodic (but always structurally supportive) bass playing of Michael Ivins - and all in the context of the inimitable Wayne Coyne singing about the one thing that matters more than the humdrum drama of daily life and the loftiness of science and the supernatural: love. I was hooked on the music and on the message. The only that seemed to have gotten lost in the shuffle was the reckless "homemade" qualities I found so appealing on that old cassette I had.
My best friend and now ages-old musical conspirator, Lucas, began drinking the Flaming Lips Kool-Aid, at my urging, around the same time - and he took a considerably larger dose, delving into their back catalogue and seeing them live. First the back catalogue: Despite our both loving The Soft Bulletin in a very big way, he was equally drawn to their preceding album, Clouds Taste Metallic. More in tune with the record which had gotten my initial attention (the aformentioned Transmissions...), this record seemed purposefully messy and organic from an instrumental and production standpoint, but seemed to be lyrically grappling with some of the larger issues that got me hooked on their then more recent release. In addition to the role that lyrics about love and whatnot began to play, the musical stylings of Steven Drozd (who plays almost all of the instrumental tracks in the studio) and the sure-handed and imaginitive bass playing of Michael Ivins really took centestage on this record. But, as I was a sucker for slick (and often overdone) production at the time, I didn't give too much thought to Clouds Taste Metallic 'til much later when, in a twist of fate, I found myself interested in it largely due the presence of that more youthful and raw (some would called it "sloppy") vibe that seemed somehow lost on later Lips releases. Luke also got to see them on tour in support of "Bulletin". I look back in horror at my having missed it as this was when the whole Flaming Lips "thing" really came into being. In addition to coming to the shows to sing along to the new and uplifting songs, fans around the country (as opposed to a more localized fanaticism in their Oklahoma City home) started showing up in costumes ranging from large animal getups to chracters from the Wizard of Oz. There was a gong. There was confetti. These concerts were no longer just musical performances, they were becoming "happenings". But let's be clear: the musical stuff was important too! In order to bring their new larger-than-life recordings to... uuh... life with only a three-piece band on stage, they starte encouraging their fans to bring small FM radios and headphone to concerts so that while the band was playing some (as much as they could) of the music live onstage, the remainder of what one would have heard on the album was transmitted via FM to those with headsets on so that they could get the "full" experience.
These changes were really only a stepping stone for the Flaming Lips. After this, things seemed to get even bigger; and as said wideing of scope transpired, my world was getting a big bigger at well. In August of 20002, three important events to this story coincided:
1) I moved to Brooklyn
2) The Flaming Lips released their follow up The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
3) I went to my first Lips show
I was excited to just to find out what the new Lips record would sound like after hearing how things had progressed over their previous three releases. I was also excited to buy it from the indpendent record shop downstairs and next door to my new apartmenet; and while their inventory was made up of mostly hip-hop and R&B records, they were happy to special order it for me and I had it in my hands just a few days after the release. Man did it throw me for a loop. Programmed drumbeats? Synth bass? Synths in general? Breakbeats? Something about a young black-belted girl attempting to battle Pink Robots that have been sent here to eat us? There was just sooo much to digest. Frankly, I wasn't sure I liked it at all. While the inspiring lyrical palate that they had been drawing from over the previous two records (perhaps prefected in Yoshimi's "Do You Realize??"), the sonic landscape had completely changed. I mean: sure, they were moving towards this sorta sound on The Soft Bulletin, but this was completely over the top. The solid songcraft was ever present, but it seemed as though the heavy drums and organic and majestic mess from earlier in their career was all but forgotten.
Their show, however, was a completely different story. Billed as the Unlimited Sunshine festival, Prospect Park was beset by thousands of concertgoers to witness a lineup that included The Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, De La Soul, Cake, and a few others I cannot remember at the moment. A bunch of Jersey peeps came in for the show (and to see my new digs) and after a few hours of "pre-gaming", we hoofed it down to the park's 9th st. entrance and found some spots. Generally overcast, the day came to something of a screeching halt when the inevitable rain decided to start falling in the middle what was already a rather paltry set from DeLaSoul. The entire enterprise was for shit. One of my favourite rap groups was doing a lame show that some of my friends came (at my behest and to the tune of $40 a pop) to see and now it was raining... blah. But wait! Now it's only drizzling! Maybe the Lips' set won't be delayed. Indeed it was not. The lips opened up (as pretty much always at this point) with "Race for the Prize" (opening track from Soft Bulletin) and the crowd went berserk. Singing and dacning ensued. There was confetti. There were people flanking the stage in animal costumes. The Lips' entire world of sound was blaring from the PA. There was a giant screen behind them showing cool images of god knows what. Down front stood their lead singer, Wayne Coyne: part manic-preacher, part Wavy Gravy, part stereotypical rock frontman. His energy was inspiring and infectious. To make matters even better, he proceeded to create what is, far and away, my greatest concert memory of all time. As the band headed into their second tune ("A Spoonful Weighs a Ton") and Wayne opened with the line "And though they were sad the rescued everyone, they lifted up the sun...", the rain came to a complete halt and the sun let itself be seen in all its glory for the first time in hours. Wayne had literally lifted up the sun. If there was any doubt as to whether or not I was ready to hand over a little piece of my soul to this band, it disappeared with the rain that august afternoon. *whew* In addition to this transformative experience, this show helped me in gaining more appreciation for Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The songs off of the new album translated much better and felt somehow less electronic and sterile with actual humans at the helm. The standout, by far, was "Do You Realize??" which so moved us that it has since started a tradition whereby if Lucas, our friend Chris, or I are at a Lips show that the other(s) can't attend, we will call the non-attendees on from our cell phones during that song and hold them up in the air in hopes that those not at the show can at least get a little taste of the Lips and their fans group performance of this uplifing anthem.
As time passed, I did start to dig that record for what it was rather than what it wasn't. Each time I saw the band live (which, btw, is my favourite place in the world: a Lips show. seriously: imagine being at gigantic birthday party celebrating the birthdays of every one of the thousands of attendees simlutaneously. yeah.), I dug into "Yoshimi..." a little deeper, and began wondering what they would do for their next record. How would they, if at all, reconcile aesthetic of their earlier work with the new paths they had forged on the last two albums. The answer came in the form of 2006's At War With the Mystics. To be honest, I feel like this record is kinda mediocre. It's something of a hodgepodge of a band looking to rock out and have fun with a band trying to continue along and avenue that looked to be something of a dead end. Some of the more "rock" elements of their earlier work were present, as were many of the more "digital" sounds from Yoshimi, but the album sounded like, at best, a collection of b-sides, and, at its worst, crude demos. Much like the tunes on their last album, they were a little more interesting when played live, but I was still never able to sink my teeth into "Mystics". Perhaps the facts that they continued to tour using the same stage set as they had used for Yoshimi and chose to include several older songs than ones from the new record spoke to their own lack of confidence in the material. Who knows? No matter how you slice it, I was disappointed.
Luckily, their being significantly low profile in the last three years gave them a chance to finish their movie and me a chance to delve into their back catalogue - and I am glad I did. Hearing their entire ouvre really put all of the aforementioned sonic and lyrical choices in the context of a much larger progression than I had realized. It also set me up to full appreciate their new album, Embryonic. I will be honest with you, I am still one song shy of listening to the whole thing, yet I am already prepared to name this one of the best albums of 2009 and, perhaps their career. Without getting too detailed (after all, I want you to dig it for yourself), I guess the best way can sum it up is by saying that they have finally found that balance. It's trippy, it's loud, it's spacey, it's synth heavy, it's got loud drums, big guitars, beautifully deep and moving lyrics, silly lyrics... it's really everything. It's like looking at Transmissions from the Satellite Heart or Clouds Taste Metallic with the scope of The Soft Bulletin (18 songs!!!) through "Yoshimi's..." lense - with just a hint of the intensity of their pre-"She Don't Use Jelly" stuff.
Yes. I know: all that backstory for a lousy four or five sentences about the title of the friggin' post. Well... either I am getting shittier at writing about music or better at not being a lousy music critic. Which one doesn't matter much. If you want to know more about the new record, go and find out for yourself, and check out this video for the album's first "single" (bullshit term as this will never get played on the radio) here. The record drops on Oct 13.
Like so many people my age, I was turned on to the Flaming Lips via the lone hit single in their 20+ year career: "She Don't Use Jelly" from 1994's Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. At the time, it seemed something of a novelty and I didn't even get into the band proper until I picked up a cassette copy of the aforementioned album from the "cutout bin" of a local record store during my sophomore year in college. (During the cassette tape's last gasp, you could often find many fairly contemporary and even classic albums on cassette for as little as $1.99. Being as I was in a sort of "hording" phase for music and, as I did live in the 'burbs and only had a tape deck - as opposed to a CD player - in my oft-used vehicle, I loved rummaging through these "cutout bins") While it wasn't exactly love-at-first-listen, I was very drawn to the rather ramshcakle or homemade aesthetic. Raunchy guitars, raw natural drums, and Wayne Coyne's less than stellar (by "conventional" standards) vocals seemed to mesh seemlessly not only with the mid-90's slacker ethos I bought into, but also with the psychedelic element present in this music. All of these modifiers, however, never overpowered the great songcraft and universalist/world saving vibe that made this a fun listen - but, for at the time, only a fun listen.
I finally got wrapped up in their world a few years later. While working at a shitty chain record store during the summer after I graduated (college), I decided to grab a copy of 1999's The Soft Bulletin. Critics had been raving (it was around then that I started my aforementioned dirty habit) about it since it dropped, so that in concert with my earlier casual, but enjoyable, relationship with their music and the cover art that made the whole thing seem somehow cinematic, was enough for me to take a copy home at the end of the summer (with my employee discount). It was nothing short of life-changing. It was beautiful, majestic, exquisitely produced, and, most importantly, incredibly human. There was life in these songs! Roughly conceptual (in both production value and lyrical content), this album seem to tap into many of the things I wrestling with as I stepped out of the sheltered world of the music conservatory and living on my parents' dime and into the real world. It was a mixed bag of louder-than-hell drum beats, chiming guitars, purposefully-phony-sounding string patches, pianos, organs, and the melodic (but always structurally supportive) bass playing of Michael Ivins - and all in the context of the inimitable Wayne Coyne singing about the one thing that matters more than the humdrum drama of daily life and the loftiness of science and the supernatural: love. I was hooked on the music and on the message. The only that seemed to have gotten lost in the shuffle was the reckless "homemade" qualities I found so appealing on that old cassette I had.
My best friend and now ages-old musical conspirator, Lucas, began drinking the Flaming Lips Kool-Aid, at my urging, around the same time - and he took a considerably larger dose, delving into their back catalogue and seeing them live. First the back catalogue: Despite our both loving The Soft Bulletin in a very big way, he was equally drawn to their preceding album, Clouds Taste Metallic. More in tune with the record which had gotten my initial attention (the aformentioned Transmissions...), this record seemed purposefully messy and organic from an instrumental and production standpoint, but seemed to be lyrically grappling with some of the larger issues that got me hooked on their then more recent release. In addition to the role that lyrics about love and whatnot began to play, the musical stylings of Steven Drozd (who plays almost all of the instrumental tracks in the studio) and the sure-handed and imaginitive bass playing of Michael Ivins really took centestage on this record. But, as I was a sucker for slick (and often overdone) production at the time, I didn't give too much thought to Clouds Taste Metallic 'til much later when, in a twist of fate, I found myself interested in it largely due the presence of that more youthful and raw (some would called it "sloppy") vibe that seemed somehow lost on later Lips releases. Luke also got to see them on tour in support of "Bulletin". I look back in horror at my having missed it as this was when the whole Flaming Lips "thing" really came into being. In addition to coming to the shows to sing along to the new and uplifting songs, fans around the country (as opposed to a more localized fanaticism in their Oklahoma City home) started showing up in costumes ranging from large animal getups to chracters from the Wizard of Oz. There was a gong. There was confetti. These concerts were no longer just musical performances, they were becoming "happenings". But let's be clear: the musical stuff was important too! In order to bring their new larger-than-life recordings to... uuh... life with only a three-piece band on stage, they starte encouraging their fans to bring small FM radios and headphone to concerts so that while the band was playing some (as much as they could) of the music live onstage, the remainder of what one would have heard on the album was transmitted via FM to those with headsets on so that they could get the "full" experience.
These changes were really only a stepping stone for the Flaming Lips. After this, things seemed to get even bigger; and as said wideing of scope transpired, my world was getting a big bigger at well. In August of 20002, three important events to this story coincided:
1) I moved to Brooklyn
2) The Flaming Lips released their follow up The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
3) I went to my first Lips show
I was excited to just to find out what the new Lips record would sound like after hearing how things had progressed over their previous three releases. I was also excited to buy it from the indpendent record shop downstairs and next door to my new apartmenet; and while their inventory was made up of mostly hip-hop and R&B records, they were happy to special order it for me and I had it in my hands just a few days after the release. Man did it throw me for a loop. Programmed drumbeats? Synth bass? Synths in general? Breakbeats? Something about a young black-belted girl attempting to battle Pink Robots that have been sent here to eat us? There was just sooo much to digest. Frankly, I wasn't sure I liked it at all. While the inspiring lyrical palate that they had been drawing from over the previous two records (perhaps prefected in Yoshimi's "Do You Realize??"), the sonic landscape had completely changed. I mean: sure, they were moving towards this sorta sound on The Soft Bulletin, but this was completely over the top. The solid songcraft was ever present, but it seemed as though the heavy drums and organic and majestic mess from earlier in their career was all but forgotten.
Their show, however, was a completely different story. Billed as the Unlimited Sunshine festival, Prospect Park was beset by thousands of concertgoers to witness a lineup that included The Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, De La Soul, Cake, and a few others I cannot remember at the moment. A bunch of Jersey peeps came in for the show (and to see my new digs) and after a few hours of "pre-gaming", we hoofed it down to the park's 9th st. entrance and found some spots. Generally overcast, the day came to something of a screeching halt when the inevitable rain decided to start falling in the middle what was already a rather paltry set from DeLaSoul. The entire enterprise was for shit. One of my favourite rap groups was doing a lame show that some of my friends came (at my behest and to the tune of $40 a pop) to see and now it was raining... blah. But wait! Now it's only drizzling! Maybe the Lips' set won't be delayed. Indeed it was not. The lips opened up (as pretty much always at this point) with "Race for the Prize" (opening track from Soft Bulletin) and the crowd went berserk. Singing and dacning ensued. There was confetti. There were people flanking the stage in animal costumes. The Lips' entire world of sound was blaring from the PA. There was a giant screen behind them showing cool images of god knows what. Down front stood their lead singer, Wayne Coyne: part manic-preacher, part Wavy Gravy, part stereotypical rock frontman. His energy was inspiring and infectious. To make matters even better, he proceeded to create what is, far and away, my greatest concert memory of all time. As the band headed into their second tune ("A Spoonful Weighs a Ton") and Wayne opened with the line "And though they were sad the rescued everyone, they lifted up the sun...", the rain came to a complete halt and the sun let itself be seen in all its glory for the first time in hours. Wayne had literally lifted up the sun. If there was any doubt as to whether or not I was ready to hand over a little piece of my soul to this band, it disappeared with the rain that august afternoon. *whew* In addition to this transformative experience, this show helped me in gaining more appreciation for Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The songs off of the new album translated much better and felt somehow less electronic and sterile with actual humans at the helm. The standout, by far, was "Do You Realize??" which so moved us that it has since started a tradition whereby if Lucas, our friend Chris, or I are at a Lips show that the other(s) can't attend, we will call the non-attendees on from our cell phones during that song and hold them up in the air in hopes that those not at the show can at least get a little taste of the Lips and their fans group performance of this uplifing anthem.
As time passed, I did start to dig that record for what it was rather than what it wasn't. Each time I saw the band live (which, btw, is my favourite place in the world: a Lips show. seriously: imagine being at gigantic birthday party celebrating the birthdays of every one of the thousands of attendees simlutaneously. yeah.), I dug into "Yoshimi..." a little deeper, and began wondering what they would do for their next record. How would they, if at all, reconcile aesthetic of their earlier work with the new paths they had forged on the last two albums. The answer came in the form of 2006's At War With the Mystics. To be honest, I feel like this record is kinda mediocre. It's something of a hodgepodge of a band looking to rock out and have fun with a band trying to continue along and avenue that looked to be something of a dead end. Some of the more "rock" elements of their earlier work were present, as were many of the more "digital" sounds from Yoshimi, but the album sounded like, at best, a collection of b-sides, and, at its worst, crude demos. Much like the tunes on their last album, they were a little more interesting when played live, but I was still never able to sink my teeth into "Mystics". Perhaps the facts that they continued to tour using the same stage set as they had used for Yoshimi and chose to include several older songs than ones from the new record spoke to their own lack of confidence in the material. Who knows? No matter how you slice it, I was disappointed.
Luckily, their being significantly low profile in the last three years gave them a chance to finish their movie and me a chance to delve into their back catalogue - and I am glad I did. Hearing their entire ouvre really put all of the aforementioned sonic and lyrical choices in the context of a much larger progression than I had realized. It also set me up to full appreciate their new album, Embryonic. I will be honest with you, I am still one song shy of listening to the whole thing, yet I am already prepared to name this one of the best albums of 2009 and, perhaps their career. Without getting too detailed (after all, I want you to dig it for yourself), I guess the best way can sum it up is by saying that they have finally found that balance. It's trippy, it's loud, it's spacey, it's synth heavy, it's got loud drums, big guitars, beautifully deep and moving lyrics, silly lyrics... it's really everything. It's like looking at Transmissions from the Satellite Heart or Clouds Taste Metallic with the scope of The Soft Bulletin (18 songs!!!) through "Yoshimi's..." lense - with just a hint of the intensity of their pre-"She Don't Use Jelly" stuff.
Yes. I know: all that backstory for a lousy four or five sentences about the title of the friggin' post. Well... either I am getting shittier at writing about music or better at not being a lousy music critic. Which one doesn't matter much. If you want to know more about the new record, go and find out for yourself, and check out this video for the album's first "single" (bullshit term as this will never get played on the radio) here. The record drops on Oct 13.
09 September 2009
Running Down... in Circles.
At some point during my junior year in college, I made the decision to NOT go home for the summer and, instead, get an early jump on moving in with some friends in a house off campus. Whether it was a something of a lark, some way of exerting my independence from my family and old friends, or some combination of both, I cannot remember, but I count the summer of '98 as one of the best of my life. I am still not quite sure why my mother agreed to let me do this, but, as I recall, she had little issue ponying up the paltry $273 per month for May, June, July, and August provided that I cover all of my other expenses. In what, in hindsight, was a surprisingly responsible move for 21-year-old me, I got two, count 'em - TWO jobs: one working at "media center" (read: CD, LP, and VHS library) - which was really just my NOT taking the summer off from my regular work-study gig - and one at a local Ice Cream Shoppe/Cafe called Halo Pub.
I had frequented this place since my freshman year and there seemed to be a revolving cast of students from my school behind the counter, so securing employment was quite simple. As most of the other college-types were home for the summer, thus necessitating the establishment's hiring of several local high school and/or community college/live-at-home kids, I was one of the oldest people on staff, so I progressed fairly quickly from lowly ice cream scooper to barrista (making coffee and espresso beverages) to shift supervisor. I was pretty proud, to tell you the truth; but my rising up the in-no-way-corporate (this joint was family owned and operated) ladder was really only a nice perk. The real fun at Halo came from the people I worked with.
Be it this girl Nicola who I took out on one date, my college friend Constance (who got me the gig), another girl who's name I can't remember but about whom I wrote a really great but as-of-yet-unfinished tune, or our hippy manager (and the big boss's son-in-law) Tom, there was always an interesting cast of characters that took an otherwise thankless and mundane job and made it fun. The ones that had the biggest impression on me were the North Brunswick emo kids: Mark and Robyn. Now I know what you're thinking: "EMO?!?!... yuck! Isn't that the adjective used to describe 13 year olds who wear their hair in their face a pretend that their rather pleasant suburban existences are far more dramatically terrible than they actually are to the point where they cut themselves?! Isn't emo some shitty music with screaming and/or whiny vocals about melodramatic teenage bullshit with vague references to the gothic or gorey all set over annoying clichéd punk guitar playing?!" The answer to these questions is a bit complicated, but that's why we're here.
To be fair: the only reasons I remember Robyn Tesauro is 'cos I have for years been trying to write a song in which I rhyme her last name with the word "bureau", she was cute, and was friends with Mark - and he's the important one here. I wish to god I could remember Mark's last name, but it completely escapes me at the moment. He was a skinny kid from North Brunswick who shaved his head and looked like a skater and seemed to be really hip to what was going on in the world of below-the-radar punk music. I was pretty hip to all sortsa other genres at the time, and since we seemed to dig talking music with one another, we agreed to make each other mix tapes. I spent some serious time on his, making sure to include some Phish, some Moondog, some Stravinsky, some Tom Waits, some Monk, and (I am guessing) some Barenaked Ladies and Ben Folds Five, but I really don't remember if he liked it at all. Again: not important. What is important is how lifechangeingly great the tape he made me was.
He said the the tape was made up of songs by all of his favourite punk and "emo" bands - a term he defined for me as "short for emotional punk". Boasting early tunes by soon-to-be-famous bands like Blink 182 and Jimmy Eat World along with seminal proto-emo artists like Sunny Day Real Estate and masters of texture The Jazz June, this tape instantly changed my life and remains one of my favourite compilations ever. (I still have it!) Knee deep in the world of classical music and very arty and/or bubbly pop, this tape full of angry and emotional young men and women playing music that combined the energy and drive of punk with the guitar orchestration skills and attention to texture that really got my brain working, I was in serious need of a reminder as to what first excited me about music. This cassette, called "Chuck's Oh So Political Tape #1", was just what the doctor ordered. It not only forced me to immediately rejigger my values and tastes, but also changed the way I approached contemporary music. I thought Emo was just about the coolest thing in the world.
The knowledge I gained from that tape, in concert with the fact that many of the bands whose music was included were still "underground" also gave me a certain amount of caché when it came to the occasional cultural pissing contest I would often engage in. A few years later, when I started a band that was made up of me and three professional music critics who were always three steps ahead of me in terms of new tunage, my knowledge of emo, which was not even a word in the general public's conciousness yet, allowed me to tread water in the inevitable "what's next" conversations we always seemed to get into. As it was indubitably a young people's music, it also made me seem just a little hipper to my first group of middle schooler students when I taught right out of college. So not only was this tape awesome, but it was helpful too!
Over the course of the last few years, "emo" became a dirty word. Riddled with my aforementioned assumptions about your reaction to the word, it hardly carries any of the weight it did ten years ago. It's become a name brand of sorts - and one that seemingly no one wants to wear. BUT WAIT!! What is that I see?! Someone looking to remedy and explain this in a way that is much clearer than my babble? Indeed. While I have something of a love/hate relationship with Paste Magazine, I still read its online content fairly dutifully, and I couldn't let one today's articles pass without being linked to and commented on. I freely admit that what I have written here is most likely longer than the article itself, but I seriously suggest you give it a read and give the musical examples a listen, because these guys seem to want to rescue the term emo as much as I do.
You can read it here.
I had frequented this place since my freshman year and there seemed to be a revolving cast of students from my school behind the counter, so securing employment was quite simple. As most of the other college-types were home for the summer, thus necessitating the establishment's hiring of several local high school and/or community college/live-at-home kids, I was one of the oldest people on staff, so I progressed fairly quickly from lowly ice cream scooper to barrista (making coffee and espresso beverages) to shift supervisor. I was pretty proud, to tell you the truth; but my rising up the in-no-way-corporate (this joint was family owned and operated) ladder was really only a nice perk. The real fun at Halo came from the people I worked with.
Be it this girl Nicola who I took out on one date, my college friend Constance (who got me the gig), another girl who's name I can't remember but about whom I wrote a really great but as-of-yet-unfinished tune, or our hippy manager (and the big boss's son-in-law) Tom, there was always an interesting cast of characters that took an otherwise thankless and mundane job and made it fun. The ones that had the biggest impression on me were the North Brunswick emo kids: Mark and Robyn. Now I know what you're thinking: "EMO?!?!... yuck! Isn't that the adjective used to describe 13 year olds who wear their hair in their face a pretend that their rather pleasant suburban existences are far more dramatically terrible than they actually are to the point where they cut themselves?! Isn't emo some shitty music with screaming and/or whiny vocals about melodramatic teenage bullshit with vague references to the gothic or gorey all set over annoying clichéd punk guitar playing?!" The answer to these questions is a bit complicated, but that's why we're here.
To be fair: the only reasons I remember Robyn Tesauro is 'cos I have for years been trying to write a song in which I rhyme her last name with the word "bureau", she was cute, and was friends with Mark - and he's the important one here. I wish to god I could remember Mark's last name, but it completely escapes me at the moment. He was a skinny kid from North Brunswick who shaved his head and looked like a skater and seemed to be really hip to what was going on in the world of below-the-radar punk music. I was pretty hip to all sortsa other genres at the time, and since we seemed to dig talking music with one another, we agreed to make each other mix tapes. I spent some serious time on his, making sure to include some Phish, some Moondog, some Stravinsky, some Tom Waits, some Monk, and (I am guessing) some Barenaked Ladies and Ben Folds Five, but I really don't remember if he liked it at all. Again: not important. What is important is how lifechangeingly great the tape he made me was.
He said the the tape was made up of songs by all of his favourite punk and "emo" bands - a term he defined for me as "short for emotional punk". Boasting early tunes by soon-to-be-famous bands like Blink 182 and Jimmy Eat World along with seminal proto-emo artists like Sunny Day Real Estate and masters of texture The Jazz June, this tape instantly changed my life and remains one of my favourite compilations ever. (I still have it!) Knee deep in the world of classical music and very arty and/or bubbly pop, this tape full of angry and emotional young men and women playing music that combined the energy and drive of punk with the guitar orchestration skills and attention to texture that really got my brain working, I was in serious need of a reminder as to what first excited me about music. This cassette, called "Chuck's Oh So Political Tape #1", was just what the doctor ordered. It not only forced me to immediately rejigger my values and tastes, but also changed the way I approached contemporary music. I thought Emo was just about the coolest thing in the world.
The knowledge I gained from that tape, in concert with the fact that many of the bands whose music was included were still "underground" also gave me a certain amount of caché when it came to the occasional cultural pissing contest I would often engage in. A few years later, when I started a band that was made up of me and three professional music critics who were always three steps ahead of me in terms of new tunage, my knowledge of emo, which was not even a word in the general public's conciousness yet, allowed me to tread water in the inevitable "what's next" conversations we always seemed to get into. As it was indubitably a young people's music, it also made me seem just a little hipper to my first group of middle schooler students when I taught right out of college. So not only was this tape awesome, but it was helpful too!
Over the course of the last few years, "emo" became a dirty word. Riddled with my aforementioned assumptions about your reaction to the word, it hardly carries any of the weight it did ten years ago. It's become a name brand of sorts - and one that seemingly no one wants to wear. BUT WAIT!! What is that I see?! Someone looking to remedy and explain this in a way that is much clearer than my babble? Indeed. While I have something of a love/hate relationship with Paste Magazine, I still read its online content fairly dutifully, and I couldn't let one today's articles pass without being linked to and commented on. I freely admit that what I have written here is most likely longer than the article itself, but I seriously suggest you give it a read and give the musical examples a listen, because these guys seem to want to rescue the term emo as much as I do.
You can read it here.
08 September 2009
08 June 2009
The internet has the potential to be even cooler!
Last Tuesday, I (along with my buddy Torres) drove out to Jones Beach to see my first Phish show in 13 years. In addition to the weather (we even got a rainbow!), venue, and music itself being fantastic, I was reminded just how great the whole Phish scene and vibe were. I will try my best to get something up about that night at some point, but we all know how that goes. Anyhoo: I was so thrilled by the experience (and the general ease with which Torres's friend Scotty scored 5 tickets in 15 minutes for 50% of face value) that, despite my yakking never amounting to anything, I talked about going to either one of both of their two remaining nights out in Wantagh, LI, NY. I even considered going down to see them in Camden, NJ last night, but I guess I am just not enough of a fan to make it happen.
Despite my disappointment in both myself and the fact that I likely blew my only chances to see Phish live more than once this summer, I was sated in one regard. As a result of the combinaition of cunning, the tradition of "taping" at Phish shows, and the lighting speed at which digital and mobile technology has evolved in recent years, someone (and on two nights more than one person!) was streaming video of the show live via his or her iPhone. I KNOW! The video and audio quality was only passable, but it was thrilling to even have the opportunity to watch a Phish that I was not otherwise able to attend from the comfort of my own couch!
Due to Phish and their fanbase's long tradition of taping shows and then trading said tapes, this seemed to me like the next step in a rather logical progression. Recently, Phish themselves started offering high quality audio recordings of their shows direct from the soundboard to your PC via download a mere few hours after the end of a show. They even offer an exhaustive audio and video archive - all of which can be downloaded for prices similar to those of iTunes. So I was shocked to read somewhere online (I feel somewhat irresponsible for not remembering exactly what or where it was. I have tried multiple Google searches and have come up with nothing) that Phish seemed none too pleased with this. While their taping policy has always allowed only for audio recording and specifically states that streaming audio is not cool, I would like to believe that with the advent of both livephish.com and the technology that could allow for such a cool opportunity would make the decision to either endorse this or provide an "official" avenue for video streaming something of a no-brainer. Phish has not released an official statement concerning the matter and rumor has it that the stream will be back up for tomorrow night's show, so there's no telling where we're headed on this one.
I know that the Allman Bros. Band did something similar to this for their annual run of shows at the Beacon Theatre this past March. Fans paid x$ in order to watch live streaming video of the entire series of 14 shows. I think it was something to the tune of $110 - which seems reasonable to me - and while the Allmans are certainly not your average baby boomers, it would only make sense that a jam band from a later generation (I dunno, maybe... Phish!) would be even more likely to offer a similar opportunity to its fans. My fingers are crossed - and apparently so are those of many other on the web. There is currently an online petition requesting that Phish provide a live video stream of their shows. I have signed it, and I urge you to do the same. Be you a Phish-head, a casual fan, or even just a lover of live music, this petition is the beginning of what is bound to be yet another chapter in the ongoing discussion about the inevitable meeting of antiquated copyright legislation and the developing technologies that force us to reconsider the connection, or lack thereof, between intellectual property and artistic commodities. While I do believe that this is a large scale discussion well worth engaging in, I also really wanna watch Phish shows live on my computer, so please click through and sign the petition.
Click here to sign it.
If you need any extra convincing, here's some video from the show I was at:
Despite my disappointment in both myself and the fact that I likely blew my only chances to see Phish live more than once this summer, I was sated in one regard. As a result of the combinaition of cunning, the tradition of "taping" at Phish shows, and the lighting speed at which digital and mobile technology has evolved in recent years, someone (and on two nights more than one person!) was streaming video of the show live via his or her iPhone. I KNOW! The video and audio quality was only passable, but it was thrilling to even have the opportunity to watch a Phish that I was not otherwise able to attend from the comfort of my own couch!
Due to Phish and their fanbase's long tradition of taping shows and then trading said tapes, this seemed to me like the next step in a rather logical progression. Recently, Phish themselves started offering high quality audio recordings of their shows direct from the soundboard to your PC via download a mere few hours after the end of a show. They even offer an exhaustive audio and video archive - all of which can be downloaded for prices similar to those of iTunes. So I was shocked to read somewhere online (I feel somewhat irresponsible for not remembering exactly what or where it was. I have tried multiple Google searches and have come up with nothing) that Phish seemed none too pleased with this. While their taping policy has always allowed only for audio recording and specifically states that streaming audio is not cool, I would like to believe that with the advent of both livephish.com and the technology that could allow for such a cool opportunity would make the decision to either endorse this or provide an "official" avenue for video streaming something of a no-brainer. Phish has not released an official statement concerning the matter and rumor has it that the stream will be back up for tomorrow night's show, so there's no telling where we're headed on this one.
I know that the Allman Bros. Band did something similar to this for their annual run of shows at the Beacon Theatre this past March. Fans paid x$ in order to watch live streaming video of the entire series of 14 shows. I think it was something to the tune of $110 - which seems reasonable to me - and while the Allmans are certainly not your average baby boomers, it would only make sense that a jam band from a later generation (I dunno, maybe... Phish!) would be even more likely to offer a similar opportunity to its fans. My fingers are crossed - and apparently so are those of many other on the web. There is currently an online petition requesting that Phish provide a live video stream of their shows. I have signed it, and I urge you to do the same. Be you a Phish-head, a casual fan, or even just a lover of live music, this petition is the beginning of what is bound to be yet another chapter in the ongoing discussion about the inevitable meeting of antiquated copyright legislation and the developing technologies that force us to reconsider the connection, or lack thereof, between intellectual property and artistic commodities. While I do believe that this is a large scale discussion well worth engaging in, I also really wanna watch Phish shows live on my computer, so please click through and sign the petition.
Click here to sign it.
If you need any extra convincing, here's some video from the show I was at:
03 June 2009
The little guy goes "social climber" even in the digital world. (or: Why emusic is pissing me off right now)
I have a few massive posts on the way. I am hoping to find the time this weekend and early next week to roll out a few days worth of reading for y'all, but, in the meantime, I need to blow off a little steam.
For more than three years, I have not only been a loyal user of Emusic (link intentionally not provided) for many of my music purchases, but I have often trumpeted it to friends and family and even gotten a few people to sign up. They have offered a wide array of independent pop music and a healthy dose of classic jazz, blues, and fold recordings on a track-by-track basis for (depending on your monthly plan) as little as twenty-four cents a song. They have been able to maintain this price model by dealing exclusively independent (and mostly small independent ones at that) record companies. You had no chance of getting the new Jonas Bros. or even Springsteen record there, but I always found a way to wisely spend my 65 downloads a month (for $14.99!) by using their recommendation section or by reading other customer reviews. Between the prices, the less than flashy site design, and the knowledgeable and discerning customer base, it was really the digital equivalent of going to a local record store.
Alas it appears that even in the digital world of the web, the quick and the dead are getting separated all to quickly. Just a few minutes ago I went on over to my ex-favourite online outpost for new music to see how many downloads I had left this month and found out that things are about to change there. Apparently, Emusic has struck a deal with one of the big bad wolves of the recording industry (Sony) and will be drastically altering its pricing plan, user interface, and (obviously) catalog.
Yes: I get it - I could now have access to MORE music. Now I can get the new album by some obscure Finnish prog-pop band at the same place as the new Michael Jackson or Modest Mouse record... but this all makes me very sad. To be honest: it started out as anger. See: as someone who has been around for a while, I am currently covered under and older plan which has continued to be granted to me via grandfather-clause through a few pricing tier changes. Well, now that's over too. If I continue to download from emusic, I will now get LESS THAN HALF of the downloads I currently get for the same price. (the grammar of the last sentence is so sloppy, but I am too upset to fix it) But after stewing for a minute I realize that the money is an infintessimally small part of the problem. What it's really about is watching the online equivalent of my favourite local record shop get bought out by Borders or Best Buy or whoever else sells physical copies of music these days. It makes me deeply and profoundly sad. Yes, I buy Levi's and Converse and shop at Guitar Center and the Gap sometimes, but anyone who knows me also knows that I have spent a lot of dollars supporing local and small businesses since I have had the dollars to spend. I have also made a point of it to apply this principle more heavily to the world of music. For every $10 I spend at Guitar Center, I spend $50 or more at local independent music retailers. For every two albums I get through iTunes or Amazon MP3, I get 10 from emusic. I am not looking for a soapbox moment here (though this is my blog :) ), I am just looking for a way to deal with the fact that even in the near-imaginary world of the internet a "small local business" can't survive without selling out to the big boys.
I understand that there is a certain conceit here. I also am fully aware of the indie-elitist bullshit I am bringing to the table. That part of me is sad that now the customer album reviews (which I trust and rely on heavily)may read like the non-musical uninformed drivel you can find in the customer ratings and reviews at the iTunes store. Go ahead: call me an elitist, culturalist, classist dick; but if I wanna read the commentary of an 11 year old still suckling at the teet of the faceless douche bags that buy and sell art like it's hunk of tin, I have 500 students in my school that can give me their opinions. And while those kids opinions carry a lot of weight with me, something tells me my tastes are gonna be a little more similar to the guy or gal on emusic who has downloaded all the same shit that I have. I am getting off topic here...
I probably shouldn't click on the "publish post" button just yet, but I have a class coming in in a few minutes and i need to cool down and perk up before they get here. Please console me - or convince me somehow that I should keep my eMusic subscription, 'cos right now I am planning on writing and angry letter, and cancelling as soon I can without them taking any more of my little guy money for just another big box experience.
For more than three years, I have not only been a loyal user of Emusic (link intentionally not provided) for many of my music purchases, but I have often trumpeted it to friends and family and even gotten a few people to sign up. They have offered a wide array of independent pop music and a healthy dose of classic jazz, blues, and fold recordings on a track-by-track basis for (depending on your monthly plan) as little as twenty-four cents a song. They have been able to maintain this price model by dealing exclusively independent (and mostly small independent ones at that) record companies. You had no chance of getting the new Jonas Bros. or even Springsteen record there, but I always found a way to wisely spend my 65 downloads a month (for $14.99!) by using their recommendation section or by reading other customer reviews. Between the prices, the less than flashy site design, and the knowledgeable and discerning customer base, it was really the digital equivalent of going to a local record store.
Alas it appears that even in the digital world of the web, the quick and the dead are getting separated all to quickly. Just a few minutes ago I went on over to my ex-favourite online outpost for new music to see how many downloads I had left this month and found out that things are about to change there. Apparently, Emusic has struck a deal with one of the big bad wolves of the recording industry (Sony) and will be drastically altering its pricing plan, user interface, and (obviously) catalog.
Yes: I get it - I could now have access to MORE music. Now I can get the new album by some obscure Finnish prog-pop band at the same place as the new Michael Jackson or Modest Mouse record... but this all makes me very sad. To be honest: it started out as anger. See: as someone who has been around for a while, I am currently covered under and older plan which has continued to be granted to me via grandfather-clause through a few pricing tier changes. Well, now that's over too. If I continue to download from emusic, I will now get LESS THAN HALF of the downloads I currently get for the same price. (the grammar of the last sentence is so sloppy, but I am too upset to fix it) But after stewing for a minute I realize that the money is an infintessimally small part of the problem. What it's really about is watching the online equivalent of my favourite local record shop get bought out by Borders or Best Buy or whoever else sells physical copies of music these days. It makes me deeply and profoundly sad. Yes, I buy Levi's and Converse and shop at Guitar Center and the Gap sometimes, but anyone who knows me also knows that I have spent a lot of dollars supporing local and small businesses since I have had the dollars to spend. I have also made a point of it to apply this principle more heavily to the world of music. For every $10 I spend at Guitar Center, I spend $50 or more at local independent music retailers. For every two albums I get through iTunes or Amazon MP3, I get 10 from emusic. I am not looking for a soapbox moment here (though this is my blog :) ), I am just looking for a way to deal with the fact that even in the near-imaginary world of the internet a "small local business" can't survive without selling out to the big boys.
I understand that there is a certain conceit here. I also am fully aware of the indie-elitist bullshit I am bringing to the table. That part of me is sad that now the customer album reviews (which I trust and rely on heavily)may read like the non-musical uninformed drivel you can find in the customer ratings and reviews at the iTunes store. Go ahead: call me an elitist, culturalist, classist dick; but if I wanna read the commentary of an 11 year old still suckling at the teet of the faceless douche bags that buy and sell art like it's hunk of tin, I have 500 students in my school that can give me their opinions. And while those kids opinions carry a lot of weight with me, something tells me my tastes are gonna be a little more similar to the guy or gal on emusic who has downloaded all the same shit that I have. I am getting off topic here...
I probably shouldn't click on the "publish post" button just yet, but I have a class coming in in a few minutes and i need to cool down and perk up before they get here. Please console me - or convince me somehow that I should keep my eMusic subscription, 'cos right now I am planning on writing and angry letter, and cancelling as soon I can without them taking any more of my little guy money for just another big box experience.
20 May 2009
Look, Ma! I'm on TV!
ok... not tv exactly - but this is still pretty cool.
Even though I only sat in for one tune, my getting to play in with my friend (and Randy Bandits keyboardist) Russ's group, Russ Kaplan+6, was one of the highlights of my musical year to date. In addition to getting to add some texture (and an 8-bar solo!) to Russ's super-sexy arrangement of Radiohead's "The Bends", it also meant that I was on hand to watch the third gig for what is seriously one of my favourite groups in NYC right now.
Choc full o' funky and jazzy dreamscapes that straddle the great divide (and somehow find all the common ground) between Radiohead and Charles Mingus, Russ and his crack team of musical assassins premiered the first act of his as-yet-unstaged ballet based on Homer's Odyssey at Monkeytown earlier this month. While I am usually (and often unnecessarily) down on all things Williamsburg, the people at this cool new venue really got it right. As if the restaurant out front's adventurous menu (I had Kobe, Ostrich, Wild Boar, and Elk sliders after the gig) were not enough, the performance space in the back boasts high ceilings, a huge projector screen on each wall, and futon-like full-service couches that surround the performers completely. This place is super cool and I was lucky enough to play there with some other musicians who are well out of my league.
So why all the exposition? Oh yeah! One of Russ's friends videotaped (though I am guessing there was no actual magnetic tape involved) the entire performance and posted it over at his blog. I urge you to put aside an hour and watch and listen to this entire performance, but for those of you who are either impatient or related to me, you can let the video load and then fast-forward to just shy of the 53-minute mark to see my little part. You can also click through the link above to see a larger version in all of its HD glory. Enjoy!
Even though I only sat in for one tune, my getting to play in with my friend (and Randy Bandits keyboardist) Russ's group, Russ Kaplan+6, was one of the highlights of my musical year to date. In addition to getting to add some texture (and an 8-bar solo!) to Russ's super-sexy arrangement of Radiohead's "The Bends", it also meant that I was on hand to watch the third gig for what is seriously one of my favourite groups in NYC right now.
Choc full o' funky and jazzy dreamscapes that straddle the great divide (and somehow find all the common ground) between Radiohead and Charles Mingus, Russ and his crack team of musical assassins premiered the first act of his as-yet-unstaged ballet based on Homer's Odyssey at Monkeytown earlier this month. While I am usually (and often unnecessarily) down on all things Williamsburg, the people at this cool new venue really got it right. As if the restaurant out front's adventurous menu (I had Kobe, Ostrich, Wild Boar, and Elk sliders after the gig) were not enough, the performance space in the back boasts high ceilings, a huge projector screen on each wall, and futon-like full-service couches that surround the performers completely. This place is super cool and I was lucky enough to play there with some other musicians who are well out of my league.
So why all the exposition? Oh yeah! One of Russ's friends videotaped (though I am guessing there was no actual magnetic tape involved) the entire performance and posted it over at his blog. I urge you to put aside an hour and watch and listen to this entire performance, but for those of you who are either impatient or related to me, you can let the video load and then fast-forward to just shy of the 53-minute mark to see my little part. You can also click through the link above to see a larger version in all of its HD glory. Enjoy!
Russ Kaplan Plus 6 May 5th 2009 from Nicholas Whitaker on Vimeo.
Trying to take something seriously...
My dad bought me my first guitar for my 11th or 10th birthday. Not quite sure. I took all of two lessons separated by way too many weeks for me to "get" anything out of it from his friend Lee, who was a helluva nice guy and a wonderful guitar player from what I remember. I am guessing that somewhere in my folks' attic are the yellow legal pages on which he wrote down the "blues scale" and a few chord diagrams that were not in the book my dad had bought me to go with the guitar. They may even still be attached to the sheet on which he drew the fretboard on, leaving most of it blank so I could fill in the corresponding pitches for "homework". For what it's worth, I still have my guitar students do this to help them more quickly memorize the instrument's layout.
I played guitar on and off for most of my teenage years, eventually making sense out of the aforementioned legal pages and getting my friends whose folks got them guitar lessons at local music store to teach me whatever they had learned that week. I always had a good ear and my wanting to write songs that reflected what I heard in my heard (and my spending money on various guitar magazines) forced me to teach myself a good bit about the instrument, so, without ever taking another lesson, by the time I was in late high school (a little late for this, I know), I had found my way into a decent and somewhat serious rock band in which *I* was usually the one who was in charge of knowing all the changes and forms of the songs we covered - in addition to writing half of the band's originals.
By the time high school ended, recognizing that I wouldn't get very far lacking the proper technique I would have picked up in formal guitar lessons, I had modeled myself as more of an all-around musicianly type, proficient on a few instruments (though a master of none) and well-versed in music theory, songwriting, arranging, etc. This also served me well as I transitioned into college. The ear and aforementioned theory knowledge I had forced myself to develop allowed me to make the jump to conservatory-level musicianship in an easier fashion than some of my peers and it wasn't long before I was applying all sortsa cool new compositional and arrangement techniques I learned during freshman and sophomore years to the tunes I was writing and working on with my band(s) at the time. I became more proficient at the piano and became a naturally better bass player (if only as a result of my new-found understanding of harmony), but, while I was the guitar player in my main band at the time, I could still only count myself an intermidiate player due to my lack of techinical know-how.
Now let's be clear: I am not singularly blaming my folks for not getting me guitar lessons here. I don't think I hounded either of them much and, besides, I was and (to a certain extent) still am a notoriously lazy student (grad school 4.0 be damned!); so lessons may have been just a waste of money at the time. Besides, I was still content on modeling myself as something of a musical jack-of-all-trades types and perhaps taking one instrument too seriously would have limited me in some of my other musical pursuits. I do realize how ridiculous that sounds, but it's what kept me from being frustrated with my lack of more specific skills for years.
As college led into my life as a young professional (boy does that sound "official") I nearly fell into the familiar music educator trap of being an "ex-", or even "failed", performer as my musical activities rarely extended beyond the confines of my own bedroom during the first two years of my teaching career. Frustrated with the fear that I too could become an ugly suburban stereotype (that music teacher you used to have was a real live musician at some point, y'know), I quickly found some peeps and started a new band wherein I was the bass player and spent the next couple of years becoming an honest-to-goodness bass guitarist. I practiced, studied, rehearsed, wrote, recorded, toured, etc. as a bassist with a few bands in NJ and NY and even made a little scratch playing on various little recording sessions and pit gigs. I still kicked the guitar around, but seeing as I was out of practice, now living in NYC (whose Native American name I am almost sure translates to "Land of Too Many Guitar Players"), and was never a great player in the first place, I pretty much stopped referring to myself a guitar player.
At some point in 2004, I did start playing guitar on the regular again. I bought a bunch of new gear and started a rock band, so I figured I better get practicing! And so I did; and for the first time ever resigned myself to being an inferior technician and actually sat down and played scales and drills to a metronome for the first time in my life. I absorbed the styles of guitarists whom I could most easily emulate and actually took the guitar sorta seriously! Gone was my former cop-out of "who needs technique when they have style and ideas like mine?!". I actually almost sorta kinda considered myself something of a guitarist. Then I just sorta stalled out.
I am not sure why I was content being a knowledgable-yet-mediocre guitar player. I guess I just thought I could coast on the basis of my larger base of musical know-how - and to tell you the truth: no one called me out on it. I mean: no one was banging down my door offering me guitar gigs, but I was playing guitar regularly on and off in a few bands and it always appeared as though I was holding my own. But at some point last winter things changed. Y'see: every year in late January or early February I have something of a musical mental meltdown wherein I decide I am at best the 10th best player I know on any given instrument and that I am thoroughly incapable of doing anything even remotely valuable as a songwriter or in any other musical avenue I pursue. Luckily, I kept my annual crisis to myself this past winter and as able to contain it to a mere few days, but during the darkest months of early 2008, I was one sad sack. I was ready to quit playing everything. There were quite a few nights when I actually sat on my couch attempting to drown my sorrows in TV only to be distracted by angry tears directed at the tools of my supposed misfortune - still in their respective cases, of course. I went so far as to start investigating the market value of about 90% of the gear I owned in an effort to rid myself of all the things that were there to remind me of the failed musician I once was. I know this all sounds very dramatic, but it's true. It was really quite a shitty time. I am not quite sure how I decided this (in retrospect I think it was a combination of wise words from Melissa and Jay), but I decided to have one last go of it.
While I can't remember the date or time or even place, I do remember there being a very specific moment wherein I resolved to learn to play the fucking guitar. As if the impending self-imposed end of my life as a musician was not enough inspiration, I also had a more specific moment to work my toward. My band had booked Memorial Day weekend to record an entire album's worth of new material almost 100% live. Now: I am not sure how much most of you know about the recording process, but I can assure that two things in that last sentence certainly place my band in the minority. First: recording live is becoming more and more rare these days. More often than not, bands and solo artists record albums by meticulously stacking one track on top of one another - one at a time. This leads directly to the other point of interest above. As you might imagine, this process is painstakingly lengthy, so the idea of cutting an entire album's worth of tracks in a single 4 day span (8 hour days) is almost unheard of these days. (Murphy waits for his dorky music friends that know about this stuff to point out several examples of other recent albums recorded almost live in a very short amount of time) Needless to say, the prospect of only having one or two chances to rip a sick improvised solo that would then be immortalized on a compact disc was a terrifying one. Were we recording using the more popular method, I would have a squintillion chances to play the "perfect" solo and could even edit together the better bits from lots of solos digitally long after I had played them in an attempt to "construct" said perfect solo. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. In addition to the need to be prepared to improvise something worth listening to ad infinitum in only three or four chances, I was also terrified of the prospect of even playing my non-solo parts on these songs. If I dropped the ball on the fourth bar of the last verse, there would be no punching in. The whole band would need to do a whole new take. To be honest: there are quite a few clams on the finished product as a result of this philosophy, but it was all worth it as the energy on most of these tracks is amazing. The only way we ever could have gotten where we did was via the hours of intensely focused rehearsal we did. The only way I could have been prepared for said intense rehearsals was via lots and lots of practicing... and so, for the first time in years, I practiced... a lot. I spent the majority of the Spring of 2008 busting my hump to get these parts down and, in the process, got at least some of my musicianly-mojo back. I even took a guitar lesson with the intention of my finally getting my technique caught up with my know-how. Sure, it only lasted one lesson, but I somehow thought the effort was indicative of some larger progress being made. The recording sessions proved a success, the surrounding gigs went swimmingly, and, due to the time I put in, I felt like a "real" guitarist for possibly the first time ever.
But old habits die hard and, at some point the following summer and fall, I fell of the wagon and became a lazy musician once again. I thought about becoming a "serious" upright bassist and devoted a good chunk of my time this past fall to practicing and playing my upright. For a little while I even considered playing drums in a band I was starting. While I was playing more gigs than ever, I was even less focused than ever. I was busy as hell, however, so I was kinda oblivious to it all. Here's the other thing: I just wasn't that interested in the guitar. I mean: I had spent plenty of money on customizing my guitar and gadgets that would make it sound cooler, but I wasn't in love with my guitar - and that was perhaps my last hurdle on the road to taking the guitar more seriously.
As sure as the pope shits in the woods, when this past winter rolled in, so did my doldrums. While I didn't hit the skids quite as hard as I did in '08, I did spend a good bit of January and February questioning my place (if any at all) in the world of music. Maybe I should devote another post to my complex, but what's most important this time around is how I found my way out. I'll give you a clue: it was the guitar. ; ) There is an half-written 3,000 word missive sitting unpublished on my blogger dashboard about my reborn love of Phish. That story may or may not ever see the light of day, so I will simply say here that after not listening to them for some ten years, I somehow found a renewed and greatly revitalized appreciation for Trey Anastasio and his boys. Maybe I just understand a little more about music than I did when I approached theirs last. Maybe I am jonesin' to make my guitar lines sail like Trey's do. I am not sure, but for some reason, this new-found love found me with the guitar in my hands more often than ever. I was playing and practicing every day for the first time in a year. I was even shocked at the amount of relief I felt when I found out that our hosts on me and Melissa's recent jaunt to L.A. had an acoustic guitar around so I could at least keep up with part of what was becoming a slightly stricter practice regimen. While I was there, said host, Adam, and I attempted to jam on some Phish tunes that I thought I had worked up. This experience told me two things: 1) Trey Anastastion is an arpeggio-junkie, and 2) I was not prepared to jam with a musician on Adam's level. Here's where it gets interesting: Unlike every other time I have found myself victim to my own musical ambition, I did not fall into my usual shame spiral of pity and self-loathing - instead I resolved to fix it so that the next time I am in a situation like that I could hold my own (and play those fucking arpeggios).
It was also around this time that I fell in love with the guitar. I am not really sure how or on what day it happened, but at some point I looked down at a guitar in my arms and it just felt right. The strange symbiotic connection that so many great musicians claim to have with their instrument of expertise suddenly made sense to me. I was somehow meant to do this. I instantly found myself more able to "speak" through the guitar and much of the physical tension that accompanied the mental duress of having to play amidst a vast inferiority complex simply melted away. I looked forward to spending time practicing in a way I never had before and new techniques came to me more quickly and with more fluidity. To be honest: I have not been practicing in a very focused way for a set period of time every day like I should. I haven't memorized the Phish catalogue just yet, but I can't remember a day that has gone by in the last month wherein I haven't picked up a guitar - if even for a minute - and felt some of that magic. .
...And that's why we're here. Not only to proclaim my love for the guitar, but also to proudly announce that after a somewhat thorough search and a really great post-gig conversation with two of my favourite musical conspirators about lessons they have been taking recently (maybe a post on this at some point), I have picked a teacher and, in a few weeks, will start taking guitar lessons. I am excited, not only because my soon-to-be teacher is one of the best players in town, but also because I can't remember the last time I have been so sure of one of my musical decisions. I really want to be a guitarist. After 20 years of dicking around a ton of different instruments and roles in the world of music, I think I may have found some direction. Now let's be honest: in two months I could be at this very blog talking about my newfound love of the Simandl method for upright bass and how I am about to give up sleeping to go late night blowing sessions at jazz clubs in Manhattan; but for now I am rip-raring to go on the guitar and hope that in a year's time I will be writing about how awesome it is to be able to play whatever I want on the guitar with whomever I want without feeling "less than" or out of place. Wish me luck!
I played guitar on and off for most of my teenage years, eventually making sense out of the aforementioned legal pages and getting my friends whose folks got them guitar lessons at local music store to teach me whatever they had learned that week. I always had a good ear and my wanting to write songs that reflected what I heard in my heard (and my spending money on various guitar magazines) forced me to teach myself a good bit about the instrument, so, without ever taking another lesson, by the time I was in late high school (a little late for this, I know), I had found my way into a decent and somewhat serious rock band in which *I* was usually the one who was in charge of knowing all the changes and forms of the songs we covered - in addition to writing half of the band's originals.
By the time high school ended, recognizing that I wouldn't get very far lacking the proper technique I would have picked up in formal guitar lessons, I had modeled myself as more of an all-around musicianly type, proficient on a few instruments (though a master of none) and well-versed in music theory, songwriting, arranging, etc. This also served me well as I transitioned into college. The ear and aforementioned theory knowledge I had forced myself to develop allowed me to make the jump to conservatory-level musicianship in an easier fashion than some of my peers and it wasn't long before I was applying all sortsa cool new compositional and arrangement techniques I learned during freshman and sophomore years to the tunes I was writing and working on with my band(s) at the time. I became more proficient at the piano and became a naturally better bass player (if only as a result of my new-found understanding of harmony), but, while I was the guitar player in my main band at the time, I could still only count myself an intermidiate player due to my lack of techinical know-how.
Now let's be clear: I am not singularly blaming my folks for not getting me guitar lessons here. I don't think I hounded either of them much and, besides, I was and (to a certain extent) still am a notoriously lazy student (grad school 4.0 be damned!); so lessons may have been just a waste of money at the time. Besides, I was still content on modeling myself as something of a musical jack-of-all-trades types and perhaps taking one instrument too seriously would have limited me in some of my other musical pursuits. I do realize how ridiculous that sounds, but it's what kept me from being frustrated with my lack of more specific skills for years.
As college led into my life as a young professional (boy does that sound "official") I nearly fell into the familiar music educator trap of being an "ex-", or even "failed", performer as my musical activities rarely extended beyond the confines of my own bedroom during the first two years of my teaching career. Frustrated with the fear that I too could become an ugly suburban stereotype (that music teacher you used to have was a real live musician at some point, y'know), I quickly found some peeps and started a new band wherein I was the bass player and spent the next couple of years becoming an honest-to-goodness bass guitarist. I practiced, studied, rehearsed, wrote, recorded, toured, etc. as a bassist with a few bands in NJ and NY and even made a little scratch playing on various little recording sessions and pit gigs. I still kicked the guitar around, but seeing as I was out of practice, now living in NYC (whose Native American name I am almost sure translates to "Land of Too Many Guitar Players"), and was never a great player in the first place, I pretty much stopped referring to myself a guitar player.
At some point in 2004, I did start playing guitar on the regular again. I bought a bunch of new gear and started a rock band, so I figured I better get practicing! And so I did; and for the first time ever resigned myself to being an inferior technician and actually sat down and played scales and drills to a metronome for the first time in my life. I absorbed the styles of guitarists whom I could most easily emulate and actually took the guitar sorta seriously! Gone was my former cop-out of "who needs technique when they have style and ideas like mine?!". I actually almost sorta kinda considered myself something of a guitarist. Then I just sorta stalled out.
I am not sure why I was content being a knowledgable-yet-mediocre guitar player. I guess I just thought I could coast on the basis of my larger base of musical know-how - and to tell you the truth: no one called me out on it. I mean: no one was banging down my door offering me guitar gigs, but I was playing guitar regularly on and off in a few bands and it always appeared as though I was holding my own. But at some point last winter things changed. Y'see: every year in late January or early February I have something of a musical mental meltdown wherein I decide I am at best the 10th best player I know on any given instrument and that I am thoroughly incapable of doing anything even remotely valuable as a songwriter or in any other musical avenue I pursue. Luckily, I kept my annual crisis to myself this past winter and as able to contain it to a mere few days, but during the darkest months of early 2008, I was one sad sack. I was ready to quit playing everything. There were quite a few nights when I actually sat on my couch attempting to drown my sorrows in TV only to be distracted by angry tears directed at the tools of my supposed misfortune - still in their respective cases, of course. I went so far as to start investigating the market value of about 90% of the gear I owned in an effort to rid myself of all the things that were there to remind me of the failed musician I once was. I know this all sounds very dramatic, but it's true. It was really quite a shitty time. I am not quite sure how I decided this (in retrospect I think it was a combination of wise words from Melissa and Jay), but I decided to have one last go of it.
While I can't remember the date or time or even place, I do remember there being a very specific moment wherein I resolved to learn to play the fucking guitar. As if the impending self-imposed end of my life as a musician was not enough inspiration, I also had a more specific moment to work my toward. My band had booked Memorial Day weekend to record an entire album's worth of new material almost 100% live. Now: I am not sure how much most of you know about the recording process, but I can assure that two things in that last sentence certainly place my band in the minority. First: recording live is becoming more and more rare these days. More often than not, bands and solo artists record albums by meticulously stacking one track on top of one another - one at a time. This leads directly to the other point of interest above. As you might imagine, this process is painstakingly lengthy, so the idea of cutting an entire album's worth of tracks in a single 4 day span (8 hour days) is almost unheard of these days. (Murphy waits for his dorky music friends that know about this stuff to point out several examples of other recent albums recorded almost live in a very short amount of time) Needless to say, the prospect of only having one or two chances to rip a sick improvised solo that would then be immortalized on a compact disc was a terrifying one. Were we recording using the more popular method, I would have a squintillion chances to play the "perfect" solo and could even edit together the better bits from lots of solos digitally long after I had played them in an attempt to "construct" said perfect solo. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. In addition to the need to be prepared to improvise something worth listening to ad infinitum in only three or four chances, I was also terrified of the prospect of even playing my non-solo parts on these songs. If I dropped the ball on the fourth bar of the last verse, there would be no punching in. The whole band would need to do a whole new take. To be honest: there are quite a few clams on the finished product as a result of this philosophy, but it was all worth it as the energy on most of these tracks is amazing. The only way we ever could have gotten where we did was via the hours of intensely focused rehearsal we did. The only way I could have been prepared for said intense rehearsals was via lots and lots of practicing... and so, for the first time in years, I practiced... a lot. I spent the majority of the Spring of 2008 busting my hump to get these parts down and, in the process, got at least some of my musicianly-mojo back. I even took a guitar lesson with the intention of my finally getting my technique caught up with my know-how. Sure, it only lasted one lesson, but I somehow thought the effort was indicative of some larger progress being made. The recording sessions proved a success, the surrounding gigs went swimmingly, and, due to the time I put in, I felt like a "real" guitarist for possibly the first time ever.
But old habits die hard and, at some point the following summer and fall, I fell of the wagon and became a lazy musician once again. I thought about becoming a "serious" upright bassist and devoted a good chunk of my time this past fall to practicing and playing my upright. For a little while I even considered playing drums in a band I was starting. While I was playing more gigs than ever, I was even less focused than ever. I was busy as hell, however, so I was kinda oblivious to it all. Here's the other thing: I just wasn't that interested in the guitar. I mean: I had spent plenty of money on customizing my guitar and gadgets that would make it sound cooler, but I wasn't in love with my guitar - and that was perhaps my last hurdle on the road to taking the guitar more seriously.
As sure as the pope shits in the woods, when this past winter rolled in, so did my doldrums. While I didn't hit the skids quite as hard as I did in '08, I did spend a good bit of January and February questioning my place (if any at all) in the world of music. Maybe I should devote another post to my complex, but what's most important this time around is how I found my way out. I'll give you a clue: it was the guitar. ; ) There is an half-written 3,000 word missive sitting unpublished on my blogger dashboard about my reborn love of Phish. That story may or may not ever see the light of day, so I will simply say here that after not listening to them for some ten years, I somehow found a renewed and greatly revitalized appreciation for Trey Anastasio and his boys. Maybe I just understand a little more about music than I did when I approached theirs last. Maybe I am jonesin' to make my guitar lines sail like Trey's do. I am not sure, but for some reason, this new-found love found me with the guitar in my hands more often than ever. I was playing and practicing every day for the first time in a year. I was even shocked at the amount of relief I felt when I found out that our hosts on me and Melissa's recent jaunt to L.A. had an acoustic guitar around so I could at least keep up with part of what was becoming a slightly stricter practice regimen. While I was there, said host, Adam, and I attempted to jam on some Phish tunes that I thought I had worked up. This experience told me two things: 1) Trey Anastastion is an arpeggio-junkie, and 2) I was not prepared to jam with a musician on Adam's level. Here's where it gets interesting: Unlike every other time I have found myself victim to my own musical ambition, I did not fall into my usual shame spiral of pity and self-loathing - instead I resolved to fix it so that the next time I am in a situation like that I could hold my own (and play those fucking arpeggios).
It was also around this time that I fell in love with the guitar. I am not really sure how or on what day it happened, but at some point I looked down at a guitar in my arms and it just felt right. The strange symbiotic connection that so many great musicians claim to have with their instrument of expertise suddenly made sense to me. I was somehow meant to do this. I instantly found myself more able to "speak" through the guitar and much of the physical tension that accompanied the mental duress of having to play amidst a vast inferiority complex simply melted away. I looked forward to spending time practicing in a way I never had before and new techniques came to me more quickly and with more fluidity. To be honest: I have not been practicing in a very focused way for a set period of time every day like I should. I haven't memorized the Phish catalogue just yet, but I can't remember a day that has gone by in the last month wherein I haven't picked up a guitar - if even for a minute - and felt some of that magic. .
...And that's why we're here. Not only to proclaim my love for the guitar, but also to proudly announce that after a somewhat thorough search and a really great post-gig conversation with two of my favourite musical conspirators about lessons they have been taking recently (maybe a post on this at some point), I have picked a teacher and, in a few weeks, will start taking guitar lessons. I am excited, not only because my soon-to-be teacher is one of the best players in town, but also because I can't remember the last time I have been so sure of one of my musical decisions. I really want to be a guitarist. After 20 years of dicking around a ton of different instruments and roles in the world of music, I think I may have found some direction. Now let's be honest: in two months I could be at this very blog talking about my newfound love of the Simandl method for upright bass and how I am about to give up sleeping to go late night blowing sessions at jazz clubs in Manhattan; but for now I am rip-raring to go on the guitar and hope that in a year's time I will be writing about how awesome it is to be able to play whatever I want on the guitar with whomever I want without feeling "less than" or out of place. Wish me luck!
02 May 2009
...just as much twee as I can handle.
Sorry if I am late to the party on this one. I just stumbled onto it today.
It might be the uke. It might be because she's cute. Either way, Kate Micucci has found my proverbial line in the sand between cute and fucking stupid and managed to err just a wee bit to the former. Happy saturday!
It might be the uke. It might be because she's cute. Either way, Kate Micucci has found my proverbial line in the sand between cute and fucking stupid and managed to err just a wee bit to the former. Happy saturday!
27 April 2009
Amoeba Haul, Part 2: Rock LP's/CD's
This is part 2 of larger series of posts about my recent purchases at Amoeba Music in Hollywood. You can scroll down or click here to read part 1.
Like I said before: I was fairly disappointed in Amoeba's jazz section - especially in terms of the "good stuff". I scored a couple of good reissues (that V.S.O.P. record sounds sweet as hell, btw - but there's a fucking skip in the middle of the first song - of a brand new record! grr...), but I wasn't able to finally lay down the money to buy original pressings of my favourite albums. All of those ills could have been cured by some choice finds in the "Rock" section, but that didn't go as planned either.
The resurgence of an interest in LP's that I mentioned in the last post has become especially problematic for fans of rock music. The inventory just isn't there anymore. I used to be able to apply a similar classification system to the one I outlined earlier with jazz LP's to rock LP's as well, but between a slightly more "aware" public and the kitsch value found in contemporary artists releasing their digitally recorded stuff on vinyl (an analog medium), the rock section at most record stores has become either watered down or just plain useless. Just ten short years ago, I could easily waltz into almost any records store and find a copy of a mid-late pressing (usually manufactured long after initial release, thus lower in sound quality, but still better than CD's) of any number of classic rock staples by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc. for between $4 and $15 depending on age and condition. My few recent forays to the PREX, Amoeba, and other record stores have shown me that there is very little left in this regard. Without getting too long-winded (me? never!), I can say that I have now found that ROCK records in most record stores can be broken down into the following categories:
Where was I? Ah yes. Amoeba's "Rock LP's" section. I was really hoping that this place might be the exception to the rule, but, alas, this supposed mecca was the same old same old. The area was flooded with new releases (grr) and reissues, but I found very few actual used records. Much like my experience with the jazz stuff, it appeared that I would need to formulate a new plan. I doubled checked the racks for the following:
They did, however, have a reissue of "Pet Sounds". For those of you not in the know, this album holds a special place in the minds of most rock musos. Widely regarded as a precursor to many of the "concept albums" of the late 1960's, this 1966 release is arguably the pinnacle of the Beach Boys' resident genius Brian Wilson's songwriting, arranging, and producing career. Not only is it lauded for it's colorfully orchestrated recordings of beautiful and breathtaking neo-Baroque pop songs, but is also important in the recording itself. As mono recording was being phased out in favor of stereo (or a few years later, even quadrophonic - aka surround sound's grandad), Wilson hung on tight to the "one-sided" tradition and crafted a veritable "wall of sound" in the model of his idol Phil Spector - even improving on it with a touch of subtlety and clarity often missed or overlooked by the aforementioned eccentric producer. It was truly one of the first records wherein the recording studio was played like a musical instrument - the mixing process proving to be as important as the recording itself. Due to its stature in this regard, both hardcore collectors and casual listeners often seek out the original mono recording (it was later released in stereo as well) in at least excellent condition on LP in order to fully experience "Pet Sounds" as Brian Wilson intended. That's what I was after.
Now what you must understand is that if I am making such a hullabaloo about "mono this" and "original that", then it only makes sense that I would approach the reissue (in mono) of this record with a good deal of skepticism. "But the jazz guy said those reissues are fine," you might say. To which I respond in the affirmative, but in the same breath, insist on reminding you that rock recordings and jazz recordings are incredibly different beasts. The majority of the jazz records I own ('cos those are my tastes and 'cos I can't afford the really nice old stuff) were originally released between 1950 and 1970. While there were significant strides in overall recording technology during that period, aside from using better mic's and better mic'ing technique, there wasn't a sea change in performers' perception of the "studio as creative tool" in the jazz world like there was in the world of rock music during the 1960's. In addition to the info provided in my earlier rant on the recording of "Pet Sounds", the recording studio, which had previously been a place (for all genres) wherein the engineers and producers sought to capture the most accurate representation of a performance on tape, was gradually recognized as a tool that could be used to not only record sounds, but manipulate them in a way to engage or play with the listeners ears. While better general mic'ing technique was being developed, several rock musicians (most notably the Beatles) were rethinking the way instruments and microphones were used in order to create new sounds that were sometimes sonically impossible to recreate with the mechanical manipulation made possible by the different tape machines, mixers, and other sound equipment found in high-end recording studios at the time. The word mechanical here is important because the experimentation and attention to technical details paid in the studio that I speak of was all done using analog technology. The majority of today's recording studios (be they in your next-door neighbors bedroom or in fancy buildings owned by record companies) operate on a largely digital medium wherein all of the "effects", shall we say, that so many of these 1960's musicians/pioneers were creating painstakingly and manually can now be done or undone with a keystroke. Now don't get me wrong, I am one of these "new school" recorders complete with a very meager home studio setup, but just like there is a reason we go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa rather than just use a laser printer to recreate a copy we scanned from an art book, there is an equal reason to want to hear Pet Sounds - in mono - on vinyl.
Now: I keep throwing around the words "digital" and "analog" as if the difference is well known or as simple as the "CD's v. tapes", but it only occurs to me now that this is, most likely, not the case, so allow me to give you a little more info. Analog recording occurs when an actual physical impression of a sound is created in magnetic tape or on pressed vinyl by way of a device (usually a microphone) that is sympathetic to the differences to the four determinable qualities of a sound: frequency (pitch), amplitude (volume), length, and timbre (tone color). Different sound qualities will create different sized or shaped impressions in said tape or record and get "re-translated" when played back on the device for which they are designed. Digital recording is similar in that a microphone is involved, but rather than create actual impressions in a physical object (such as the aforementioned magnetic) tape, the sound is translated into data via a seemingly endless round of "20 questions" wherein every question is "is this sound there?" with the "yes's" and "no's" being represented by binary codes 1 and 0 respectively. This difference is something of a double-edged sword. Digital recordings are posteriorally superior because, as there is no physical product, there is not degradation in sound quality over time. I am sure we all played our favourite cassette tape (mine) to the point where it started to sound shitty when we were younger, so I completely understand the appeal of something that will always sound as fresh as the day I bought it. Digital technology in terms of sound recording has also made the technology to create great sounding recordings much smaller, cheaper, and user-friendly, so I also appreciate it in this regard. However, playback and frequency create something of an issue. (this is where my vaguely intellectual and largely experiential understanding of this issue gets a little fuzzy so feel free to comment a better explanation if you have one) Due to digital's very nature, all frequencies are treated equally. This sounds nice from a musical civil rights standpoint, but, truth be told, that's not how we actually hear stuff. Remember that cell phone ring from a few years ago that only dogs and people under 15 or so could hear? Seemed odd, but it makes perfect sense. That's right: there are certain things human being simply cannot hear. The reason many people (myself included) swear by analog recording and playback techniques is because the frequencies they are able to reproduce more closely resemble the natural frequency range of human hearing. Quite simply put: analog stuff sounds more "real". People also use the terms "warmer" and "rounder" to describe the differences in quality between analog and digital recordings. My interpretation and communication of the "analog v. digital" discussion is admittedly a little naive. Some of that is because I am trying my best to communicate some scientific jargon in a way that makes sense. The other reason is 'cos, quite frankly, there is a limit to how much of that scientific stuff I even understand. I also think there's a certain amount of subjectivity involved here. Odd for science, I know, but I trust my ears. For much better explanations on this topic, you can click here and here. What I do understand about this stuff is the REproduction end of it; and that brings use back to the beginning of this pesky "reissue" topic. If something was recorded on digital equipment and mixed and mastered digitally, then it should be manufactured in a digital medium (CD's). If something was recorded, mixed, and mastered in analog, then is should remain analog. (this should also explain my frustration with contemporary artists - 99% of which record everything digitally - who insist on releasing their stuff on LP) The problem faced in the world of reissues is the remastering process. While I admit that mastering is the part of the recording process that is still the most cloudy to me, I can tell you that the basic idea behind the mastering process is to make sure that an album sounds sonically consistent not only with itself but also with other contemporary and genre-appropriate recordings. When you hear and album is getting remastered, it often means that they are taking out the old "master" tapes, or final mixes, and then double-checking the equalization (treble, mid-range, and bass frequency levels) and making volume adjustments. One of the problems with any remastering is that standards concerning EQ and volume tend to change over time. What was considered an acceptable amount of bass was considerably different in 1965 than in 1995, so when anyone - even the musicians themselves - come back to a recording to remaster it, a lot can change from the original release. What makes some remastering jobs even more troublesome is when an originally analog recording gets digitally remastered. I am sure I have beat this point into the ground already, so why don't you go ahead and tell me how much sense it makes to create a digital version of an analog recording, digitally manipulate it, and then put it back onto an analog medium and release it to the public? If you said, "none whatsoever", or something to that effect, you are correct! I actually have a 6-LP Clapton box set from the late 80's in which everything was digitally remastered before being pressed onto vinyl. While it makes sense that my father purchased it because he didn't yet have a CD player, it still confounds me that the digital treatment would be given to the greatest hits of a performer whose legacy is so entrenched in the age of the LP. Upon rereading that sentence I can see the sense in said artist going digital (somewhat anyway) in an effort to revitalize what was then a flailing career, but it's still no excuse. If you don't believe me, come on over and I will play you the pre and post-digital remastering versions of the same tunes from John Mayall's classic album "Bluesbreakers" (featuring a young Eric Clapton) and you will immediately understand my incessant ramblings.
So I am standing in the middle of the "Rock LP's" section at Amoeba Hollywood with this mono reissue of "Pet Sounds" in my hand trying to decide whether or $18.99 will make all my "Brian Wilson's 1966 vision" dreams come true or if it has suffered the digital treatment when it suddenly occurred to me that my friend Luke - the guy who got me into this album in the first place and shares my love of vinyl - might have this very same version of this very same album. So I called him. After a couple of minutes of rather confusing conversation concerning specific "editions" and packaging and labels and so forth, we figured out that this was, indeed, the disc he had, and that it was well-worth the $19 price tag. It was the only album I took home from this section that day - a sad tale as it stood alone, but bittersweet at least as it sounds fantastic and blows the CD version I have been listening to for all these years out of the water.
Amoeba's strongest suit by far is the Rock CD's section (new and used). Like any great music store, their selection is seemingly endless, with a healthy combination of mainstream radio pop and super-under-the-radar indie releases. The new stuff is competitively priced ($9.99 - $14.99 or so a disc) and meticulously organized. The used section is bountiful, has a wide range of prices ($3.99 - $12.99), and is surprisingly well-organized. Despite my short wishlist of Rock CD's, I spent a lot of time in this section as its sheer volume and neat racks were very inviting. Yes, by the way, I did say short list. It's funny, despite my seemingly anal attention to detail in terms of sound quality when purchasing LP's, I have whole-heartedly given over to the mp3 revolution. While I recognize the vastly inferior fidelity of compressed audio, the ease of purchase, minuscule amount data storage needed, and my possession of an iPod just make it too hard to pass up my eMusic subscription and all of my other mp3 purchases. Occasionally I will still go out of my way to purchase new CD's if it's an instance wherein fidelity is particularly important or if the packaging/artwork is stellar, but in a rather polarized manner, I either listen to LP's or mp3's. One of the few instances, though, where buying CD's is just plain cheaper (and you can always rip 'em to mp3 later anyway) is when buying used; so I spent a good deal of time in the "used rock CD's" section looking not only for the specifics on my list (any Phish studio albums I don't have and Pearl Jam's "11/6/00 - Seattle, Washington" from their series of live show releases - by the way, does anyone out there have my original copy of this? I absolutely treasure it and I can't seem to find mine anywhere) but also for things I have always wanted or had never thought to own but suddenly piqued my curiosity. I was basically browsing with a rather open wallet. If I had stayed another hour, I may have come home with a small pile of CD's, but instead would up with a measley one (1) CD from this section: Phish's "Round Room" for $4.99.
So here's the haul:
LP:
CD:
This seems like an awfully long post for one LP and one CD - and to think!: I haven't even touched upon the rest of the store. Stay tuned for Part 3: Bargain LP's.
Like I said before: I was fairly disappointed in Amoeba's jazz section - especially in terms of the "good stuff". I scored a couple of good reissues (that V.S.O.P. record sounds sweet as hell, btw - but there's a fucking skip in the middle of the first song - of a brand new record! grr...), but I wasn't able to finally lay down the money to buy original pressings of my favourite albums. All of those ills could have been cured by some choice finds in the "Rock" section, but that didn't go as planned either.The resurgence of an interest in LP's that I mentioned in the last post has become especially problematic for fans of rock music. The inventory just isn't there anymore. I used to be able to apply a similar classification system to the one I outlined earlier with jazz LP's to rock LP's as well, but between a slightly more "aware" public and the kitsch value found in contemporary artists releasing their digitally recorded stuff on vinyl (an analog medium), the rock section at most record stores has become either watered down or just plain useless. Just ten short years ago, I could easily waltz into almost any records store and find a copy of a mid-late pressing (usually manufactured long after initial release, thus lower in sound quality, but still better than CD's) of any number of classic rock staples by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc. for between $4 and $15 depending on age and condition. My few recent forays to the PREX, Amoeba, and other record stores have shown me that there is very little left in this regard. Without getting too long-winded (me? never!), I can say that I have now found that ROCK records in most record stores can be broken down into the following categories:
- The "good" stuff - Classics in pristine condition. $30+
- Reissues - Same story as jazz records, but the quality of these is often even more problematic (more on that later). $10-25
- New releases - It is absolutely beyond me why anyone who records their music using Pro Tools or any other digital platform would bother to release stuff on LP. If I am missing something, please tell me! I really have no patience for kitsch so spare me that line of reasoning. These annoy me. $10-20
- Bargain stuff - (my entire next post will be devoted to not only my foraging in the bargain racks at Amoeba, but bargain records in general, so I won't get too deep here) Cheap, beat up but playable, plentiful, often amusing, never organized beyond genre. $.25 (not kidding) to $3.
Where was I? Ah yes. Amoeba's "Rock LP's" section. I was really hoping that this place might be the exception to the rule, but, alas, this supposed mecca was the same old same old. The area was flooded with new releases (grr) and reissues, but I found very few actual used records. Much like my experience with the jazz stuff, it appeared that I would need to formulate a new plan. I doubled checked the racks for the following:
- Rolling Stones, "Exile on Main St."
- Rolling Stones, "Sticky Fingers"
- The Beatles, "Rubber Soul" (mono)
- The Beatles, "Revolver" (mono)
- The Beach Boys, "Pet Sounds" (mono)
- The Clash, "London Calling"
- Pearl Jam, "Vitalogy"
They did, however, have a reissue of "Pet Sounds". For those of you not in the know, this album holds a special place in the minds of most rock musos. Widely regarded as a precursor to many of the "concept albums" of the late 1960's, this 1966 release is arguably the pinnacle of the Beach Boys' resident genius Brian Wilson's songwriting, arranging, and producing career. Not only is it lauded for it's colorfully orchestrated recordings of beautiful and breathtaking neo-Baroque pop songs, but is also important in the recording itself. As mono recording was being phased out in favor of stereo (or a few years later, even quadrophonic - aka surround sound's grandad), Wilson hung on tight to the "one-sided" tradition and crafted a veritable "wall of sound" in the model of his idol Phil Spector - even improving on it with a touch of subtlety and clarity often missed or overlooked by the aforementioned eccentric producer. It was truly one of the first records wherein the recording studio was played like a musical instrument - the mixing process proving to be as important as the recording itself. Due to its stature in this regard, both hardcore collectors and casual listeners often seek out the original mono recording (it was later released in stereo as well) in at least excellent condition on LP in order to fully experience "Pet Sounds" as Brian Wilson intended. That's what I was after.
Now what you must understand is that if I am making such a hullabaloo about "mono this" and "original that", then it only makes sense that I would approach the reissue (in mono) of this record with a good deal of skepticism. "But the jazz guy said those reissues are fine," you might say. To which I respond in the affirmative, but in the same breath, insist on reminding you that rock recordings and jazz recordings are incredibly different beasts. The majority of the jazz records I own ('cos those are my tastes and 'cos I can't afford the really nice old stuff) were originally released between 1950 and 1970. While there were significant strides in overall recording technology during that period, aside from using better mic's and better mic'ing technique, there wasn't a sea change in performers' perception of the "studio as creative tool" in the jazz world like there was in the world of rock music during the 1960's. In addition to the info provided in my earlier rant on the recording of "Pet Sounds", the recording studio, which had previously been a place (for all genres) wherein the engineers and producers sought to capture the most accurate representation of a performance on tape, was gradually recognized as a tool that could be used to not only record sounds, but manipulate them in a way to engage or play with the listeners ears. While better general mic'ing technique was being developed, several rock musicians (most notably the Beatles) were rethinking the way instruments and microphones were used in order to create new sounds that were sometimes sonically impossible to recreate with the mechanical manipulation made possible by the different tape machines, mixers, and other sound equipment found in high-end recording studios at the time. The word mechanical here is important because the experimentation and attention to technical details paid in the studio that I speak of was all done using analog technology. The majority of today's recording studios (be they in your next-door neighbors bedroom or in fancy buildings owned by record companies) operate on a largely digital medium wherein all of the "effects", shall we say, that so many of these 1960's musicians/pioneers were creating painstakingly and manually can now be done or undone with a keystroke. Now don't get me wrong, I am one of these "new school" recorders complete with a very meager home studio setup, but just like there is a reason we go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa rather than just use a laser printer to recreate a copy we scanned from an art book, there is an equal reason to want to hear Pet Sounds - in mono - on vinyl.
Now: I keep throwing around the words "digital" and "analog" as if the difference is well known or as simple as the "CD's v. tapes", but it only occurs to me now that this is, most likely, not the case, so allow me to give you a little more info. Analog recording occurs when an actual physical impression of a sound is created in magnetic tape or on pressed vinyl by way of a device (usually a microphone) that is sympathetic to the differences to the four determinable qualities of a sound: frequency (pitch), amplitude (volume), length, and timbre (tone color). Different sound qualities will create different sized or shaped impressions in said tape or record and get "re-translated" when played back on the device for which they are designed. Digital recording is similar in that a microphone is involved, but rather than create actual impressions in a physical object (such as the aforementioned magnetic) tape, the sound is translated into data via a seemingly endless round of "20 questions" wherein every question is "is this sound there?" with the "yes's" and "no's" being represented by binary codes 1 and 0 respectively. This difference is something of a double-edged sword. Digital recordings are posteriorally superior because, as there is no physical product, there is not degradation in sound quality over time. I am sure we all played our favourite cassette tape (mine) to the point where it started to sound shitty when we were younger, so I completely understand the appeal of something that will always sound as fresh as the day I bought it. Digital technology in terms of sound recording has also made the technology to create great sounding recordings much smaller, cheaper, and user-friendly, so I also appreciate it in this regard. However, playback and frequency create something of an issue. (this is where my vaguely intellectual and largely experiential understanding of this issue gets a little fuzzy so feel free to comment a better explanation if you have one) Due to digital's very nature, all frequencies are treated equally. This sounds nice from a musical civil rights standpoint, but, truth be told, that's not how we actually hear stuff. Remember that cell phone ring from a few years ago that only dogs and people under 15 or so could hear? Seemed odd, but it makes perfect sense. That's right: there are certain things human being simply cannot hear. The reason many people (myself included) swear by analog recording and playback techniques is because the frequencies they are able to reproduce more closely resemble the natural frequency range of human hearing. Quite simply put: analog stuff sounds more "real". People also use the terms "warmer" and "rounder" to describe the differences in quality between analog and digital recordings. My interpretation and communication of the "analog v. digital" discussion is admittedly a little naive. Some of that is because I am trying my best to communicate some scientific jargon in a way that makes sense. The other reason is 'cos, quite frankly, there is a limit to how much of that scientific stuff I even understand. I also think there's a certain amount of subjectivity involved here. Odd for science, I know, but I trust my ears. For much better explanations on this topic, you can click here and here. What I do understand about this stuff is the REproduction end of it; and that brings use back to the beginning of this pesky "reissue" topic. If something was recorded on digital equipment and mixed and mastered digitally, then it should be manufactured in a digital medium (CD's). If something was recorded, mixed, and mastered in analog, then is should remain analog. (this should also explain my frustration with contemporary artists - 99% of which record everything digitally - who insist on releasing their stuff on LP) The problem faced in the world of reissues is the remastering process. While I admit that mastering is the part of the recording process that is still the most cloudy to me, I can tell you that the basic idea behind the mastering process is to make sure that an album sounds sonically consistent not only with itself but also with other contemporary and genre-appropriate recordings. When you hear and album is getting remastered, it often means that they are taking out the old "master" tapes, or final mixes, and then double-checking the equalization (treble, mid-range, and bass frequency levels) and making volume adjustments. One of the problems with any remastering is that standards concerning EQ and volume tend to change over time. What was considered an acceptable amount of bass was considerably different in 1965 than in 1995, so when anyone - even the musicians themselves - come back to a recording to remaster it, a lot can change from the original release. What makes some remastering jobs even more troublesome is when an originally analog recording gets digitally remastered. I am sure I have beat this point into the ground already, so why don't you go ahead and tell me how much sense it makes to create a digital version of an analog recording, digitally manipulate it, and then put it back onto an analog medium and release it to the public? If you said, "none whatsoever", or something to that effect, you are correct! I actually have a 6-LP Clapton box set from the late 80's in which everything was digitally remastered before being pressed onto vinyl. While it makes sense that my father purchased it because he didn't yet have a CD player, it still confounds me that the digital treatment would be given to the greatest hits of a performer whose legacy is so entrenched in the age of the LP. Upon rereading that sentence I can see the sense in said artist going digital (somewhat anyway) in an effort to revitalize what was then a flailing career, but it's still no excuse. If you don't believe me, come on over and I will play you the pre and post-digital remastering versions of the same tunes from John Mayall's classic album "Bluesbreakers" (featuring a young Eric Clapton) and you will immediately understand my incessant ramblings.
So I am standing in the middle of the "Rock LP's" section at Amoeba Hollywood with this mono reissue of "Pet Sounds" in my hand trying to decide whether or $18.99 will make all my "Brian Wilson's 1966 vision" dreams come true or if it has suffered the digital treatment when it suddenly occurred to me that my friend Luke - the guy who got me into this album in the first place and shares my love of vinyl - might have this very same version of this very same album. So I called him. After a couple of minutes of rather confusing conversation concerning specific "editions" and packaging and labels and so forth, we figured out that this was, indeed, the disc he had, and that it was well-worth the $19 price tag. It was the only album I took home from this section that day - a sad tale as it stood alone, but bittersweet at least as it sounds fantastic and blows the CD version I have been listening to for all these years out of the water.
Amoeba's strongest suit by far is the Rock CD's section (new and used). Like any great music store, their selection is seemingly endless, with a healthy combination of mainstream radio pop and super-under-the-radar indie releases. The new stuff is competitively priced ($9.99 - $14.99 or so a disc) and meticulously organized. The used section is bountiful, has a wide range of prices ($3.99 - $12.99), and is surprisingly well-organized. Despite my short wishlist of Rock CD's, I spent a lot of time in this section as its sheer volume and neat racks were very inviting. Yes, by the way, I did say short list. It's funny, despite my seemingly anal attention to detail in terms of sound quality when purchasing LP's, I have whole-heartedly given over to the mp3 revolution. While I recognize the vastly inferior fidelity of compressed audio, the ease of purchase, minuscule amount data storage needed, and my possession of an iPod just make it too hard to pass up my eMusic subscription and all of my other mp3 purchases. Occasionally I will still go out of my way to purchase new CD's if it's an instance wherein fidelity is particularly important or if the packaging/artwork is stellar, but in a rather polarized manner, I either listen to LP's or mp3's. One of the few instances, though, where buying CD's is just plain cheaper (and you can always rip 'em to mp3 later anyway) is when buying used; so I spent a good deal of time in the "used rock CD's" section looking not only for the specifics on my list (any Phish studio albums I don't have and Pearl Jam's "11/6/00 - Seattle, Washington" from their series of live show releases - by the way, does anyone out there have my original copy of this? I absolutely treasure it and I can't seem to find mine anywhere) but also for things I have always wanted or had never thought to own but suddenly piqued my curiosity. I was basically browsing with a rather open wallet. If I had stayed another hour, I may have come home with a small pile of CD's, but instead would up with a measley one (1) CD from this section: Phish's "Round Room" for $4.99.
So here's the haul:
LP:
CD:
This seems like an awfully long post for one LP and one CD - and to think!: I haven't even touched upon the rest of the store. Stay tuned for Part 3: Bargain LP's.
21 April 2009
Amoeba Haul, Part 1: Jazz
I honestly thought that I would get some blogging done while on vacation on the left coast last week. I figured on having lots of downtime and I have a few big posts that have been in the works for a while, so I was sure that I would finally get some writing done. Alas, it was not so. Between Disneyland, a Dodgers game, seeing my step-sister and my 7-month-old niece, visiting a teacher-friend at his school, jamming on Phish tunes, and just soaking in the California sun, blogging just wasn't meant to be. But that's not to say I didn't partake of all things musical out there. In addition to the aforementioned jamming and being schooled in the ways of Michael MacDonald, one of our gracious gracious hosts, Adam, also took me on a pilgrimage to Amoeba Music.
Amoeba has three stores in California (San Fran, Berkeley, and the one I went to, Hollywood) and all of them are widely considered to be prime locations for both "regular" CD buyers and more hardcore CD and vinyl collectors. I tend to fall somewhere in between, and always have a running list of things I am "hunting" for, so the location seemed an ideal place to drop some of the cash I acquired for the recent (and 32nd) anniversary of my birth. Two and half hours and $207 later (I know I know I know), here are some of my impressions of the store via (somewhat) a detailed list of the things that came home with me. While I try not to cubbyhole stuff, I will use the same system most record stores use to classify the stuff I bought.
Jazz/Blues:
Up until about two and half years ago, I was a casual jazz listener. I had a modest collection of "classics" from around the middle of the 20th century and knew a fair bit about the CD's I owned, but would have hardly considered myself and authority on anything in the way of jazz. My turning point into the realm of "schooled"came when I simultaneously started to play upright bass and enrolled in graduate school. In an effort to avoid the stigmata of "shitty musician" attached to being a voice major and "failed performer" attached to being an education major, I enrolled in a few jazz courses, and started telling people I was a bassist/guitarist despite my really being a Music Ed./Voice major. Not only did the jazz courses captivate and inspire me more than most of the classes I had ever taken, but I also didn't want to look like schlub in the playing department, so I started woodshedding on my new upright. One thing lead to another and, in addition to getting pretty good on bass, I started a mental and physical list of books to read, and, more importantly, jazz recordings I had to get my hands on. I acquired a ton of stuff in mp3 and CD format, but, having also recently upgraded my home stereo setup at the time, I was bitten my at-that-time-dormant vinyl bug and started to lust after original LP pressings of my favourite jazz records. These items quickly crept to the top of my list and I have spent bits and pieces of the last two years both adding to said list and scouring ebay and the P-REX for whatever I could find within my means; but the search isn't easy. When looking for records you really want to enjoy - as opposed to just have - you are always trying to find the perfect balance between what sounds good and what you can afford. See: jazz records at a record shop generally fall into 5 categories: (this is not "official" in any way, it's just a system I have put together in my head)
What they did seem to have a lot of were reissues. I'll admit it: at first I foolishly believed that I had NOS copies of a few choice items under my arm, but upon closer inspection a tiny 3/4" sticker in the lower right hand corner of the back of the jacket let me know that what I had in my hand were actually Warner/Rhino 180-gram reissues. As I mentioned earlier, I had my reasons to be skeptical of these, but as it became apparent that they didn't have any "real" copies of the stuff I wanted but did have these reissues of a few titles, I thought it best to ask the guys behind the desk. Unfortunately, my first trip yielded no conclusive results as the "jazz guy" wasn't in yet; but after checking back an hour later I was reminded that a) the stuff I was after is incredibly hard to come by, and b) if I do happen upon it, it will be expensive as all bloody hell. He also said that the only complaint he had ever heard about any of the titles in this series of reissues is that they had made some original mono recordings into stereo mixes during the remastering process. Knowing full well that this was not the case with the three albums I had under my arm and realizing that none of these would cost more than what I might spend on a CD version of the same recording, I took the plunge and grabbed three jazz LP for betweeen $10 and $15 each. Here they are:
Charles Mingus,
"Blues & Roots"
Yusef Lateef,
"Yusef Lateef's Detroit Latitude 42º 30º Longitude 83"
Herbie Hancock,
"V.S.O.P. The Quintet"
I won't lie: I have only listened to one of these so far - but if the overall sound quality of "Blues & Roots" is any indication of what's in store with these, I may have just made some of the best music purchases I have made in some time. Seriously: this Mingus LP is yet another reminder (much like when I got that near-mint Eric Dolphy record on eBay last year) of just how much better most jazz sounds on vinyl. If the other two are even half as good as this, I might even up and order that "A Love Supreme" reissue I have been contemplating for some time.
I also grabbed Archie Shepp's "Attica Blues" on CD ('cos they didn't have it on LP) - a disc that I have been meaning to get for some time - but that's just not as fun to talk about. CD's are CD's.
OK! I really did intend for this to be a short little post, but alas, I got excited. Guess I will do it as a multi-parter. Pop/Rock, DVD's, etc. to follow...
Amoeba has three stores in California (San Fran, Berkeley, and the one I went to, Hollywood) and all of them are widely considered to be prime locations for both "regular" CD buyers and more hardcore CD and vinyl collectors. I tend to fall somewhere in between, and always have a running list of things I am "hunting" for, so the location seemed an ideal place to drop some of the cash I acquired for the recent (and 32nd) anniversary of my birth. Two and half hours and $207 later (I know I know I know), here are some of my impressions of the store via (somewhat) a detailed list of the things that came home with me. While I try not to cubbyhole stuff, I will use the same system most record stores use to classify the stuff I bought.Jazz/Blues:
Up until about two and half years ago, I was a casual jazz listener. I had a modest collection of "classics" from around the middle of the 20th century and knew a fair bit about the CD's I owned, but would have hardly considered myself and authority on anything in the way of jazz. My turning point into the realm of "schooled"came when I simultaneously started to play upright bass and enrolled in graduate school. In an effort to avoid the stigmata of "shitty musician" attached to being a voice major and "failed performer" attached to being an education major, I enrolled in a few jazz courses, and started telling people I was a bassist/guitarist despite my really being a Music Ed./Voice major. Not only did the jazz courses captivate and inspire me more than most of the classes I had ever taken, but I also didn't want to look like schlub in the playing department, so I started woodshedding on my new upright. One thing lead to another and, in addition to getting pretty good on bass, I started a mental and physical list of books to read, and, more importantly, jazz recordings I had to get my hands on. I acquired a ton of stuff in mp3 and CD format, but, having also recently upgraded my home stereo setup at the time, I was bitten my at-that-time-dormant vinyl bug and started to lust after original LP pressings of my favourite jazz records. These items quickly crept to the top of my list and I have spent bits and pieces of the last two years both adding to said list and scouring ebay and the P-REX for whatever I could find within my means; but the search isn't easy. When looking for records you really want to enjoy - as opposed to just have - you are always trying to find the perfect balance between what sounds good and what you can afford. See: jazz records at a record shop generally fall into 5 categories: (this is not "official" in any way, it's just a system I have put together in my head)
- Beaters - old records that have been sold back to the store for a reason. Maybe they are shitty records everyone already has a copy of. Maybe they are in terrible, or even, useless condition. They generally cost between $.25 and $3 dependent on the store or popularity of the artist. Unless it's something fun or odd, I usually pass on these.
- "NOS" - every once in a while, you find an older, yet still sealed, record - or "new old stock". These generally run in the $5-$infinite range. Serious collectors look for early pressings 'cos they sound better, but they are also a lot more expensive. Most buyers will take what they can get in this category - myself included. However, these are fairly rare in general as jazz record companies didn't often press in excess of what they would sell.
- Mediocre to decent condition but still well worth it - these are generally albums that are more widely recognized as good or even "classics", or are by someone with an instantly recognizable name, but aren't in good enough condition to be considered true collectors items. I would say I buy these most often as I don't know the music well enough to be looking for the super "deep" or unknown stuff and they're a good deal in the $10-30 range.
- SERIOUS collectible shit - these are the classic albums in excellent to mint condition. These are usually kept in a special place in most record shops and you need to ask to see the actual record (the sleeve is in the rack with a note on it) or even see their "good stuff" inventory at all. Depending on the "classicness" and the condition of the album and its jacket, these can run between $30 and infinity. I have had some good luck with this stuff on eBay but am usually too intimidated to ask too see them at record shops.
- Reissues - There has been a serious resurgence in people's interest in LP's over the last few years. New technology and the scarcity of copies of classic stuff in the general vinyl marketplace has given cause for a few record companies to remaster and reissue several classic titles. Many of these releases have garnered mixed reviews as the remastering methods are inconsistent in term of both method and quality, thus producing highly mixed results that very from album to album. Some of them are seemingly as good as the originals, whereas some of them will make you realize you should have just stuck with the CD. Generally $15-$20.
What they did seem to have a lot of were reissues. I'll admit it: at first I foolishly believed that I had NOS copies of a few choice items under my arm, but upon closer inspection a tiny 3/4" sticker in the lower right hand corner of the back of the jacket let me know that what I had in my hand were actually Warner/Rhino 180-gram reissues. As I mentioned earlier, I had my reasons to be skeptical of these, but as it became apparent that they didn't have any "real" copies of the stuff I wanted but did have these reissues of a few titles, I thought it best to ask the guys behind the desk. Unfortunately, my first trip yielded no conclusive results as the "jazz guy" wasn't in yet; but after checking back an hour later I was reminded that a) the stuff I was after is incredibly hard to come by, and b) if I do happen upon it, it will be expensive as all bloody hell. He also said that the only complaint he had ever heard about any of the titles in this series of reissues is that they had made some original mono recordings into stereo mixes during the remastering process. Knowing full well that this was not the case with the three albums I had under my arm and realizing that none of these would cost more than what I might spend on a CD version of the same recording, I took the plunge and grabbed three jazz LP for betweeen $10 and $15 each. Here they are:
Charles Mingus,
"Blues & Roots"
Yusef Lateef,
"Yusef Lateef's Detroit Latitude 42º 30º Longitude 83"
Herbie Hancock,
"V.S.O.P. The Quintet"
I won't lie: I have only listened to one of these so far - but if the overall sound quality of "Blues & Roots" is any indication of what's in store with these, I may have just made some of the best music purchases I have made in some time. Seriously: this Mingus LP is yet another reminder (much like when I got that near-mint Eric Dolphy record on eBay last year) of just how much better most jazz sounds on vinyl. If the other two are even half as good as this, I might even up and order that "A Love Supreme" reissue I have been contemplating for some time.
I also grabbed Archie Shepp's "Attica Blues" on CD ('cos they didn't have it on LP) - a disc that I have been meaning to get for some time - but that's just not as fun to talk about. CD's are CD's.
OK! I really did intend for this to be a short little post, but alas, I got excited. Guess I will do it as a multi-parter. Pop/Rock, DVD's, etc. to follow...
05 April 2009
A quick one...
Thanks to all who came out to my bday celebration at Hank's last night. Friday and Saturday were like one glorious musical moment and I will make sure to get some details up later in the week. But now: grades.
I have been incredibly hard-nosed about making sure my class is taken seriously for as long as I have been a teacher. While my first full-time gig out of college was a very old skool...uuh...school with the "music is fun" mentality firmly entrenched, there was little more I could do than to give out the requisite A, B, or (for the little kids) S on their quarterly report cards. When I got to NYC, however, and it looked like my friend Don and I would build a program from the ground up, I decided that would be my opportunity to give grades that more accurately represented the work we did in class. I remember trying to give homework to kids who weren't even accustomed to doing as much for their all-important english and math classes. I remember spending nearly a week meticulously preparing my report card grades and additional commentary only to have the principal chide me for attempting to make my class, which was, again, supposed to be "fun", into such a serious task. That was, quite frankly, the first and last time I tried so hard at that school. Unfortunately, over the course of 3 years, said school continually unraveled itself, taking student achievement, teacher morale, and administrative accountability along with it. Needless to say, once again, my grades, and the methodology by which I determined those grades was little more than dead reckoning. The fact that I had only ONE parent complain about a grade in my three years at that school says an awful lot about parental involvement and/or my lack of ethics concerning grades.
When I was hired to work at my current school before the 2005-2006 school year, I decided that I would, once again, make every attempt to make sure that my grading policy was as rigorous as the curriculum I intended to implement in this already academically "serious" school. It's now my fourth year at that school, and I am proud to report that I have held myself to a pretty high standard when it comes to grading practices. I am often surprised that I have more "data" to back up my students' final averages than some of the "real" (read: NOT music, art, etc.) teachers do. It's really a pain in the ass - especially when report card time rolls around - but, seeing as I seem to command a decent amount of professional respect and my class is generally regarded as one of the highlights of our larger curriculum - in no small part due to the seriousness that my, by music teacher standards, stringent and unorthodox grading methods - I think it's all worth while.
But I gotta be honest: It ain't easy on a day like today. It's 60 degrees out, the sun is shining, and I spent the last two nights doing one of the few things I might like more than teaching. The school is placing more and more of an emphasis on bullshit-standardized testing and tracking students based on the scores of said tests, so I could probably give out whatever grades I want without so much as whisper of concern from anyone around me. I am sore and sleepy and would rather watch M*A*S*H all day and drink coffee. But I owe more to the kids than that. They bust their humps every time they set foot in my class or set down to do a homework assignment. Without even realizing it, their hard work, even more than my preaching, posturing, and "serious" grading, is what legitimizes what I do and places a more palpable value in my class amongst those who would sooner let music be one of the "fun", "extra", or "special" subjects. While some of them will fail for not having done any of the work, or for not having made any music at all, I must do the right thing: Ignore the sun. Bite the bullet. Do the fucking grades.
I have been incredibly hard-nosed about making sure my class is taken seriously for as long as I have been a teacher. While my first full-time gig out of college was a very old skool...uuh...school with the "music is fun" mentality firmly entrenched, there was little more I could do than to give out the requisite A, B, or (for the little kids) S on their quarterly report cards. When I got to NYC, however, and it looked like my friend Don and I would build a program from the ground up, I decided that would be my opportunity to give grades that more accurately represented the work we did in class. I remember trying to give homework to kids who weren't even accustomed to doing as much for their all-important english and math classes. I remember spending nearly a week meticulously preparing my report card grades and additional commentary only to have the principal chide me for attempting to make my class, which was, again, supposed to be "fun", into such a serious task. That was, quite frankly, the first and last time I tried so hard at that school. Unfortunately, over the course of 3 years, said school continually unraveled itself, taking student achievement, teacher morale, and administrative accountability along with it. Needless to say, once again, my grades, and the methodology by which I determined those grades was little more than dead reckoning. The fact that I had only ONE parent complain about a grade in my three years at that school says an awful lot about parental involvement and/or my lack of ethics concerning grades.
When I was hired to work at my current school before the 2005-2006 school year, I decided that I would, once again, make every attempt to make sure that my grading policy was as rigorous as the curriculum I intended to implement in this already academically "serious" school. It's now my fourth year at that school, and I am proud to report that I have held myself to a pretty high standard when it comes to grading practices. I am often surprised that I have more "data" to back up my students' final averages than some of the "real" (read: NOT music, art, etc.) teachers do. It's really a pain in the ass - especially when report card time rolls around - but, seeing as I seem to command a decent amount of professional respect and my class is generally regarded as one of the highlights of our larger curriculum - in no small part due to the seriousness that my, by music teacher standards, stringent and unorthodox grading methods - I think it's all worth while.
But I gotta be honest: It ain't easy on a day like today. It's 60 degrees out, the sun is shining, and I spent the last two nights doing one of the few things I might like more than teaching. The school is placing more and more of an emphasis on bullshit-standardized testing and tracking students based on the scores of said tests, so I could probably give out whatever grades I want without so much as whisper of concern from anyone around me. I am sore and sleepy and would rather watch M*A*S*H all day and drink coffee. But I owe more to the kids than that. They bust their humps every time they set foot in my class or set down to do a homework assignment. Without even realizing it, their hard work, even more than my preaching, posturing, and "serious" grading, is what legitimizes what I do and places a more palpable value in my class amongst those who would sooner let music be one of the "fun", "extra", or "special" subjects. While some of them will fail for not having done any of the work, or for not having made any music at all, I must do the right thing: Ignore the sun. Bite the bullet. Do the fucking grades.
26 March 2009
I guess the wild things are still somewhere inside me.
There are some emotions that only a child can experience. They are the same ones we occasionally are lucky enough to catch remembered glimpses of as adults. I can best describe the one that poked me in the side a few minutes ago as rapture/wonder. It's the one where you are swept away and transported to another world in which you are simultaneously the ultimate ruler and most indistinguishable speck of dust which can only float in awe of its own power or absolute lack thereof. Sometimes it comes from a hyper-specific place, like the sense/memory of listening to "Sgt. Pepper's" on 8 track in my dad's car (van?). Sometimes it's a feeling you don't even know you have inside you. I felt one of those just now.
I haven't read "Where the Wild Things Are" since I was a kid. I couldn't tell you what it's about; and while I can remember what the pages look like as clearly as the day I saw them first, I recall little else. While I have walked by copies in the kids' section at many a bookstore while Melissa and I have been last-minute shopping, and have often flashed back to a specific page while standing in the guest room in my sister's house (as it corresponds to "my" room in the similarly designed "Cape Cod" we grew up in), I have never picked it up or read it since I was a little little kid. I have almost avoided it because it is a truly perfect memory which a revisit could only destroy.
I have read a ton about the clusterf*ck that is/has been/will be the Spike Jones live action film adaptation of this book. I secretly even hoped it would never see the light of day. It would surely only serve to either kill one of my few remaining "perfect" and intense memories and/or would raise the most presumptuous bullshit ire in the hipster indie-retro-fuckbag community. Both of those propositions scare the shit out of me. The memory one is obvious, but if you think that Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" flickers brought the crazies (sorry, guys) out of the woodwork, wait 'til we are subjected to one man's vision (revision?) of a book that I am almost positive most of the 20 and 30 somethings around would attach similar sentiments to my own. So I clicked on the trailer skeptically.
Maybe it was my already too-sentimental attachment to the Arcade Fire song used in the trailer (I had a particularly special choir sing it a few years ago). Maybe the weather has me confused on the inside. Either way: I felt that feeling. For 20 seconds in the middle of the trailer I was a child. I was reminded that there are beautiful places and things and indescribable feelings in this world and the worlds that only exist inside our heads. So, while I hate to be the guy who just posts videos on his blog every other day, this one made me feel special. Maybe it will do the same for you.
I am having some vid problems. If it won't load, just try here.
I haven't read "Where the Wild Things Are" since I was a kid. I couldn't tell you what it's about; and while I can remember what the pages look like as clearly as the day I saw them first, I recall little else. While I have walked by copies in the kids' section at many a bookstore while Melissa and I have been last-minute shopping, and have often flashed back to a specific page while standing in the guest room in my sister's house (as it corresponds to "my" room in the similarly designed "Cape Cod" we grew up in), I have never picked it up or read it since I was a little little kid. I have almost avoided it because it is a truly perfect memory which a revisit could only destroy.
I have read a ton about the clusterf*ck that is/has been/will be the Spike Jones live action film adaptation of this book. I secretly even hoped it would never see the light of day. It would surely only serve to either kill one of my few remaining "perfect" and intense memories and/or would raise the most presumptuous bullshit ire in the hipster indie-retro-fuckbag community. Both of those propositions scare the shit out of me. The memory one is obvious, but if you think that Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" flickers brought the crazies (sorry, guys) out of the woodwork, wait 'til we are subjected to one man's vision (revision?) of a book that I am almost positive most of the 20 and 30 somethings around would attach similar sentiments to my own. So I clicked on the trailer skeptically.
Maybe it was my already too-sentimental attachment to the Arcade Fire song used in the trailer (I had a particularly special choir sing it a few years ago). Maybe the weather has me confused on the inside. Either way: I felt that feeling. For 20 seconds in the middle of the trailer I was a child. I was reminded that there are beautiful places and things and indescribable feelings in this world and the worlds that only exist inside our heads. So, while I hate to be the guy who just posts videos on his blog every other day, this one made me feel special. Maybe it will do the same for you.
I am having some vid problems. If it won't load, just try here.
25 March 2009
The Garden King (Part I)
I didn't have the most traditional college experience. Sure, I gained weight, grew facial hair, and tooled around in my parents' absence, but I wasn't into drinking, drugging, being overly promiscuous, or staying up all night to participate in any of the preceding vices. That all being said, I did go to college in a "college town" (Princeton), so I got to mingle, for better or worse, with local merchants, students from other colleges nearby, and, most important to this story, "townies". For those of you who went to college in a big city or didn't go to college at all, a "townie" is, quite simply, a resident of a college town whose day to day existence has nothing to do with the university or college with which that town is associated. In light of its usual negative connotation, townies have been portrayed as stoners, dullards, or curmudgeonly types in most movies and television shows in which they have appeared, but those who I chose to spend my time with were nothing of the sort. (as a matter of fact, the aforementioned connotation makes me feel bad for even using the term, but other words like "locals" or "natives" just don't have the same pizazz) It might have been because Princeton was a fairly well-off, artistically-minded, and liberal town, but all of the locals I befriended were incredibly kind and interesting. I guess that's why, to my wife's continual confusion, I knew so many and actually maintained active friendships with those who were often considered personas non grata to the other students at the surrounding colleges.
My ability to meet my townie friends was, in no small part, thanks to my friend CJ. Performative, charming, and gregarious - nay - socially fearless, he allowed me to essentially be his sidekick and eventually "partner in crime" on our adventures "into town" at the dawn of our college experience. With the Princeton Coffee House, probably the least hip coffee house in town in retrospect, as our homebase, we would essentially hold court for fellow Westminster students on their way into town or back to campus, all the while improvising the rules to backgammon and flirting with Donna behind the counter. We used an evening hang there as an informal and unwritten social litmus test for anyone who wished to become part of our little crew. These having been the days before cell phones were widely owned, it was tough to keep tabs on people or make last-minute plans, but if you wanted to find or make plans with me or CJ, you could simply head to the Princeton Coffee House and we'd start from there. This was the place I learned to enjoy coffee (starting off with kiwi lattes - I KNOW!), would come to wash dishes for free as a way to clear my head, and, due to its somewhat odd location and the number of other more popular cafes in Princeton, our own little hangout. It's where we met, and befriended a large number townies. I count the evenings spent there among my most dear college-era memories.
We often stayed until Steve, the owner, closed up shop - a signal that it was either bedtime or, depending on the amount of caffeine we'd imbibed, a starting point for any number of real or imaginary collegiate adventures. On one evening in particular, we met and befriended a townie named Nam. I had (and still have) the strong sense that we knew him prior to the evening in question, but as that's the first specific memory I have of Nam, and since I am telling the stories here, we'll just go ahead and say that's when we met. We had obviously become acquainted shortly before closing as I vaguely remember still doing introductions as we ambled out of the shop as Steve locked the door and settled on the floor right outside. One (or more) of us had a guitar and we immediately started swapping songs as it was apparent that everyone in our crew was a musician. Lucas (who was along for the evening), CJ, and I were already generally familiar with songs that one of us had written and/or were comfortable playing in public and it appeared that Nam, his friend Steve (not the same Steve who owned the coffee shop, but this guy did play a mean guitar and sitar and worked at the record exchange. Whereas Nam had shorter hair and a seemed to be, at root, of a very "suburban" type, Steve reeked of the stereotypical "townie"), and another friend or two of theirs seemed to have something of a collective songboook as well. To this day, I always come off foolish in these situations as I never feel as though my serious songs are up to snuff with the stuff others present (the continual manifestation of this complex has recently led me to believe that my songs are, indeed, not as good as I think they are) and, thus, resort to the comical. I played "The Squirrel Song" (a spoof lament for a dead decapitated squirrel I had written with my then band, The Gravity) and some other silly little tunes in an effort to keep my ego and newly forming reputation afloat, but the death knell continued to toll with each song my new friend Nam played. Fingerpicking with a precision and rhythmic fluidity I still can only aspire to, he rolled off whimiscal songs in a beautiful baritone about the posters on his wall and a "slow motion" girl. While only a few minutes prior, these new friends seemed to be roughly our age, perhaps a year older, as their collective and intimate knowledge and ties to a town which were only then becoming a part of emerged and, more importantly, as Nam unfurled his brilliant songbook, I suddenly felt childish - not young - but juvenile in my understanding of community, musical narrative, and lack of earnesty. While the floor we sat on was grey cement, the walls and ceiling were made of 12" brown matte ceramic tile. Coupled with the odd design of the building (a multi-business, split-level-like affair wherein it was all open and mall-like - as in you would enter the confines of the physical structure but still be in the open air, and would need to either go up a few steps or downstairs - still outside - to enter individual businesses like our coffee house upstairs or the 24 hr. Kinko's downstairs), these tiles made for a particularly pleasant reverb. His beautiful and simple performances and inherit warmth of his songs rang out in a way that made them seem simultaneously intimate and gigantic in that space. After stumbling upon the one song we all knew well enough to sing along to (The Beach Boys' "Vegetables"), I retreated - not only returning to campus, but also sticking my guitar in a case and not touching it for a few days.
Despite my laying low in fear of bumping into my new idol-cum-nemesis, one of the songs that Nam had played that night stuck with me for weeks. It was a cute number (though faaar more clever than any of my "cute" tunes) sang from the perspective of a "Super Villain" to a girl he's holding captive. "...And you and I will rule the world, a Super Villain and his girl", went the chorus. While not very harmonically or melodically inventive in retrospect, the almost vaudevillian chord progression and melody coupled with the lilting rhythm was incredibly appealing to me. Having only begun to break out of the pop/rock formula I was compositionally tied to, the song seemed like something of a breakthrough. I almost resented its freedom. I honestly thought that my going to fancy-schmancy conservatory and studying Mozart and the boys would somehow (be it through intense scholarship or osmosis) inject a new level of quality into my budding catalogue of songs, yet here was some townie! (with none of the musical pedigree I had recently bestowed upon myself and seemingly little of the training to which I was beginning) who could write me under the table. I was simultaneously presumptuously furious with my own inflated sense of ego and lack of songwriting chops and curious as to how I could write on that level. I had to go to the source.
So rather than avoid town all together, I decided I was better off just befriending the guy. He was sweet as hell and didn't intend to make me feel "small". After all, I was in college and I wanted "experience life" or something. Reading back over those sentences, it sounds as though I aspired to some sort of usury. That really wasn't the case, but I truly did put this cat on a pedestal and always did hope that he I could glean some info on his creative process. So over the next several months I spent time with Nam in dribs and drabs, often playing music or talking about music and art and whathaveyou. I found him to be infinitely interesting and incredibly curious and sincere. He always wanted explanations and he always seemed to want you to go deeper. In turn, he was always incredibly philosophical in his own ideas and explanations of them. His speech was always slow and measured (not to be confused with sounding rehearsed) and his aforementioned silky baritone made each statement he made seem some how important or "true" in a larger sense. His curiosity was also astounding. If I or one of my choir college chronies made some reference to a composer or piece of music that he knew nothing about, Nam, still quiet and contemplative, wanted to know everything we could tell him about the subject. I found his aura of absolute wisdom/authority and his lack of shame about his childlike enthusiasm to understand all the things he didn't know created a larger picture of coolness. There were even times that I thought one of the two sides of this juxtaposition was some sort of put-on, but his intense sincerity continually reminded me that this was the real Nam I was dealing with. I honestly cherished every moment we shared.
Here's the interesting thing: I never made plans with Nam in all the years that I hung around with him. I never knew his address, or his phone number, or his email address. We always just sorta found one another. Now: this has nothing to do with fate or anything "bigger" - or does it?! ; ) - it actually speaks more the community of young, non-Princeton University students who bummed around downtown Princeton in those days. I don't want to paint it as though it was like Haight-Ashbury in 1967, but there were plenty of late high school/early college aged kids who wandered aimlessly and harmlessly around town in their thrift shop clothes with books of poetry in their hand or guitars on their backs. Nam and I were both cut of that cloth, so we often bumped into each other (usually me with CJ and him with a friend or two as well), and would spend the rest of the day "experiencing life" together. Some days we would head back to my campus and play around on pianos and organs in the basement practice rooms. Some days we would just sit in the coffee house and chat. I vaguely remember some more adventurous trips into the the $1 bins at the Princeton Record Exchange or out to "the battlefield", an old, uh... battlefield-cum-park where people would laze about, drink wine, and play music... or frisbee.
At some point it stopped being about my idolizing and wanting to learn from the guy, but the days I ran into him and got to spend time with him still exist in my most exciting (the kind of exciting only freshmen in college can understand) and exquisite watercolor meories that tell me it was always spring when I hung around with Nam.
At some later point during my freshman year, Nam recorded a four-song demo and either sold or gave me a cassette copy. While it was long ago swallowed by the sarlac bit that was my best friend Luke's then-girlfriend Wendy's dorm room (she loved this tape almost as much as I did), I remember the black and white, grainy, photocopied insert/cover featuring my friend Nam (using the pseudonym William Ether) holding a mirror up to a mirror so that the cover image itself was blasted into infinity. It might have been the folky leanings of the songs or the added "record player" effect on my aforementioned fave, "Super Villain", but it surely sounded not only old, but instantly timeless. While I knew people that had recorded stuff in studios and given me copies before, this was not only the most professional looking and sounding independent music project I'd yet come into close contact with, but this was certainly the most artistically sturdy. To be quite honest, I don't remember all four tracks on the tape, but I know that in addition to "Super Villain", it also closed with (I think it was last) an absolutely haunting track that I had not heard Nam play before. Beginning with an ostinato almost baroque in its conception and ending with a sound collage made up of a rain storm and electronic effects, "The Garden King" was a revelation to me. "Come out creatures of the night. The Garden King is in the clearing...", is an opening lyric that I count among my all-time faves.
These two songs alone were enough to change my life and direction as a musician. Not only had they been produced independent of pie-in-the-sky dreams like record companies and whatnot, but they had been done so without so much as an ounce lost in artistic weight and quality. The very fact that I had a physical artifact representing Nam's artistic vision - one that I could pour over and suck dry of musical marrow - was priceless to me. Suddenly, Nam, like the Beatles, Weezer, and Elvis Costello before him was emulable.
To be continued... stay tuned for "The Garden King (Part 2)"!
(I intended to include an mp3 to accompany this blog, but I gotta get me some hosting and then I can start doing so. In the meantime, you can check out some of Nam's stuff here.)
My ability to meet my townie friends was, in no small part, thanks to my friend CJ. Performative, charming, and gregarious - nay - socially fearless, he allowed me to essentially be his sidekick and eventually "partner in crime" on our adventures "into town" at the dawn of our college experience. With the Princeton Coffee House, probably the least hip coffee house in town in retrospect, as our homebase, we would essentially hold court for fellow Westminster students on their way into town or back to campus, all the while improvising the rules to backgammon and flirting with Donna behind the counter. We used an evening hang there as an informal and unwritten social litmus test for anyone who wished to become part of our little crew. These having been the days before cell phones were widely owned, it was tough to keep tabs on people or make last-minute plans, but if you wanted to find or make plans with me or CJ, you could simply head to the Princeton Coffee House and we'd start from there. This was the place I learned to enjoy coffee (starting off with kiwi lattes - I KNOW!), would come to wash dishes for free as a way to clear my head, and, due to its somewhat odd location and the number of other more popular cafes in Princeton, our own little hangout. It's where we met, and befriended a large number townies. I count the evenings spent there among my most dear college-era memories.
We often stayed until Steve, the owner, closed up shop - a signal that it was either bedtime or, depending on the amount of caffeine we'd imbibed, a starting point for any number of real or imaginary collegiate adventures. On one evening in particular, we met and befriended a townie named Nam. I had (and still have) the strong sense that we knew him prior to the evening in question, but as that's the first specific memory I have of Nam, and since I am telling the stories here, we'll just go ahead and say that's when we met. We had obviously become acquainted shortly before closing as I vaguely remember still doing introductions as we ambled out of the shop as Steve locked the door and settled on the floor right outside. One (or more) of us had a guitar and we immediately started swapping songs as it was apparent that everyone in our crew was a musician. Lucas (who was along for the evening), CJ, and I were already generally familiar with songs that one of us had written and/or were comfortable playing in public and it appeared that Nam, his friend Steve (not the same Steve who owned the coffee shop, but this guy did play a mean guitar and sitar and worked at the record exchange. Whereas Nam had shorter hair and a seemed to be, at root, of a very "suburban" type, Steve reeked of the stereotypical "townie"), and another friend or two of theirs seemed to have something of a collective songboook as well. To this day, I always come off foolish in these situations as I never feel as though my serious songs are up to snuff with the stuff others present (the continual manifestation of this complex has recently led me to believe that my songs are, indeed, not as good as I think they are) and, thus, resort to the comical. I played "The Squirrel Song" (a spoof lament for a dead decapitated squirrel I had written with my then band, The Gravity) and some other silly little tunes in an effort to keep my ego and newly forming reputation afloat, but the death knell continued to toll with each song my new friend Nam played. Fingerpicking with a precision and rhythmic fluidity I still can only aspire to, he rolled off whimiscal songs in a beautiful baritone about the posters on his wall and a "slow motion" girl. While only a few minutes prior, these new friends seemed to be roughly our age, perhaps a year older, as their collective and intimate knowledge and ties to a town which were only then becoming a part of emerged and, more importantly, as Nam unfurled his brilliant songbook, I suddenly felt childish - not young - but juvenile in my understanding of community, musical narrative, and lack of earnesty. While the floor we sat on was grey cement, the walls and ceiling were made of 12" brown matte ceramic tile. Coupled with the odd design of the building (a multi-business, split-level-like affair wherein it was all open and mall-like - as in you would enter the confines of the physical structure but still be in the open air, and would need to either go up a few steps or downstairs - still outside - to enter individual businesses like our coffee house upstairs or the 24 hr. Kinko's downstairs), these tiles made for a particularly pleasant reverb. His beautiful and simple performances and inherit warmth of his songs rang out in a way that made them seem simultaneously intimate and gigantic in that space. After stumbling upon the one song we all knew well enough to sing along to (The Beach Boys' "Vegetables"), I retreated - not only returning to campus, but also sticking my guitar in a case and not touching it for a few days.
Despite my laying low in fear of bumping into my new idol-cum-nemesis, one of the songs that Nam had played that night stuck with me for weeks. It was a cute number (though faaar more clever than any of my "cute" tunes) sang from the perspective of a "Super Villain" to a girl he's holding captive. "...And you and I will rule the world, a Super Villain and his girl", went the chorus. While not very harmonically or melodically inventive in retrospect, the almost vaudevillian chord progression and melody coupled with the lilting rhythm was incredibly appealing to me. Having only begun to break out of the pop/rock formula I was compositionally tied to, the song seemed like something of a breakthrough. I almost resented its freedom. I honestly thought that my going to fancy-schmancy conservatory and studying Mozart and the boys would somehow (be it through intense scholarship or osmosis) inject a new level of quality into my budding catalogue of songs, yet here was some townie! (with none of the musical pedigree I had recently bestowed upon myself and seemingly little of the training to which I was beginning) who could write me under the table. I was simultaneously presumptuously furious with my own inflated sense of ego and lack of songwriting chops and curious as to how I could write on that level. I had to go to the source.
So rather than avoid town all together, I decided I was better off just befriending the guy. He was sweet as hell and didn't intend to make me feel "small". After all, I was in college and I wanted "experience life" or something. Reading back over those sentences, it sounds as though I aspired to some sort of usury. That really wasn't the case, but I truly did put this cat on a pedestal and always did hope that he I could glean some info on his creative process. So over the next several months I spent time with Nam in dribs and drabs, often playing music or talking about music and art and whathaveyou. I found him to be infinitely interesting and incredibly curious and sincere. He always wanted explanations and he always seemed to want you to go deeper. In turn, he was always incredibly philosophical in his own ideas and explanations of them. His speech was always slow and measured (not to be confused with sounding rehearsed) and his aforementioned silky baritone made each statement he made seem some how important or "true" in a larger sense. His curiosity was also astounding. If I or one of my choir college chronies made some reference to a composer or piece of music that he knew nothing about, Nam, still quiet and contemplative, wanted to know everything we could tell him about the subject. I found his aura of absolute wisdom/authority and his lack of shame about his childlike enthusiasm to understand all the things he didn't know created a larger picture of coolness. There were even times that I thought one of the two sides of this juxtaposition was some sort of put-on, but his intense sincerity continually reminded me that this was the real Nam I was dealing with. I honestly cherished every moment we shared.
Here's the interesting thing: I never made plans with Nam in all the years that I hung around with him. I never knew his address, or his phone number, or his email address. We always just sorta found one another. Now: this has nothing to do with fate or anything "bigger" - or does it?! ; ) - it actually speaks more the community of young, non-Princeton University students who bummed around downtown Princeton in those days. I don't want to paint it as though it was like Haight-Ashbury in 1967, but there were plenty of late high school/early college aged kids who wandered aimlessly and harmlessly around town in their thrift shop clothes with books of poetry in their hand or guitars on their backs. Nam and I were both cut of that cloth, so we often bumped into each other (usually me with CJ and him with a friend or two as well), and would spend the rest of the day "experiencing life" together. Some days we would head back to my campus and play around on pianos and organs in the basement practice rooms. Some days we would just sit in the coffee house and chat. I vaguely remember some more adventurous trips into the the $1 bins at the Princeton Record Exchange or out to "the battlefield", an old, uh... battlefield-cum-park where people would laze about, drink wine, and play music... or frisbee.
At some point it stopped being about my idolizing and wanting to learn from the guy, but the days I ran into him and got to spend time with him still exist in my most exciting (the kind of exciting only freshmen in college can understand) and exquisite watercolor meories that tell me it was always spring when I hung around with Nam.
At some later point during my freshman year, Nam recorded a four-song demo and either sold or gave me a cassette copy. While it was long ago swallowed by the sarlac bit that was my best friend Luke's then-girlfriend Wendy's dorm room (she loved this tape almost as much as I did), I remember the black and white, grainy, photocopied insert/cover featuring my friend Nam (using the pseudonym William Ether) holding a mirror up to a mirror so that the cover image itself was blasted into infinity. It might have been the folky leanings of the songs or the added "record player" effect on my aforementioned fave, "Super Villain", but it surely sounded not only old, but instantly timeless. While I knew people that had recorded stuff in studios and given me copies before, this was not only the most professional looking and sounding independent music project I'd yet come into close contact with, but this was certainly the most artistically sturdy. To be quite honest, I don't remember all four tracks on the tape, but I know that in addition to "Super Villain", it also closed with (I think it was last) an absolutely haunting track that I had not heard Nam play before. Beginning with an ostinato almost baroque in its conception and ending with a sound collage made up of a rain storm and electronic effects, "The Garden King" was a revelation to me. "Come out creatures of the night. The Garden King is in the clearing...", is an opening lyric that I count among my all-time faves.
These two songs alone were enough to change my life and direction as a musician. Not only had they been produced independent of pie-in-the-sky dreams like record companies and whatnot, but they had been done so without so much as an ounce lost in artistic weight and quality. The very fact that I had a physical artifact representing Nam's artistic vision - one that I could pour over and suck dry of musical marrow - was priceless to me. Suddenly, Nam, like the Beatles, Weezer, and Elvis Costello before him was emulable.
To be continued... stay tuned for "The Garden King (Part 2)"!
(I intended to include an mp3 to accompany this blog, but I gotta get me some hosting and then I can start doing so. In the meantime, you can check out some of Nam's stuff here.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
