Rock & Roll Vivesection

The problem with writing about a band or musician is that the moment you mention the name of your subject, the reader's bias immediately appears.  I am equally guilty of these charges when I am in the position of being the reader.

I see or hear the name of the band and a mental checklist appears.  Do I like or dislike this band?  Are they relevant or irrelevant at this stage of the game?  Am I supposed to say they are underrated or overrated?  What do I think about these people?

I believe there are absolutes in music.  Some bands and some musicians hacked their status from the wilds of the music frontier, made their homestead on solid ground, and their contributions cannot be denied regardless of how the periphery of their estate now appears.

Dylan, The Who, The Stones, The Beatles all fall into this category.  Why stop there?  Go back and pull Armstrong, Holiday, Carmichael, and Cohen into this same elevated place.  Grab Parker, Mingus, Davis, Coultrane and show them the same respect.  Dozens of artists to select out of the many thousands who have recorded music for more than a century.

Knowing the history of music is important.  It allows you to understand relationships in the evolution of artists and styles.  But it isn't the music itself.  History on it's own terms does not care about the sounds Brian Wilson was hearing when he wrote the music for The Warmth Of The Sun.  

Knowing the technical details of recorded music and how music is constructed is also important.  This allows you to understand why the oldest Jazz records sound flat and why popular music sounded so airy and open in the 1950's.  It allows you to differentiate between echo and reverb as well.  Only a trained musician's ear can recognize Carter picking style, the rest of us hear a rich sound that evokes a feeling in our heart.

Music is not technical writing.  An architect cannot blow his gig by scribbling the words I need a big beautiful window right here. in the corner of an elevation plan, followed by a big looping arrow pointing to the center of the drawing.  It is the same with music, you cannot point out the obvious or explain the technical in layman's terms without destroying the visceral effect of the work.  It requires an emotional response.

I'm not talking about a simple emotional attachment to a song or an album.  I'm talking about an emotional response that wells up from deep inside and alerts you to a shift of focus in your consciousness.  Music that allows you to defy the physics of our world.

This is the essence of music.  It is communication on a deep level, one that goes beyond language itself.  This is the reason to die a little to the right song.  It is the reason to explode when the high note is hit and the lead guitarist goes off on a tortured solo while the rhythm section lays a groove a mile wide.  It is the reason to consider the limitless depths of the human soul.

Leave your math at the door and your form at the gate.  Music, when performed with total absence of fear and with complete devotion transcends the science of structure.   It is salvation for the desperate.  I am, and live among, the desperate. 

A Simple Twist Of Fate

There is a song you play that keeps my heart broken.  One time it convinced me the world became empty, everyone got on a spaceship and left me behind.  They didn't even say goodbye or leave a note, or even give me a reason why they were going.  They all just left. 

The song is a cold, damp night with no ending.  No matter how many blankets I have on the bed I just can't get warm when it's chords play in my head.  You breathe the words and that particular chill comes on me.  Like a sick old man, dying alone in his bed in a shotgun shack.  Wondering how long it will be before someone finds my body after I am gone.

How do you write a song like that and still maintain a reason to move into tomorrow with a straight face?  It is one thing to relate to your words, the feeling they explain.  It is an entirely different thing to take an ache and describe the depth it runs with harrowing detail.  It is telling a secret that no one ever spills or unintentionally blurts when tricked.  To tell the story and not be burned by the release, the friction as it escapes, is black magic.

I want to have your command of the words.  I want to understand the feeling of holding the reins when the horses begin to lather.  You were the master smithy before I was even born and you've mostly seemed bored since before I was born as well.  You wrote this song when I was just a boy, a lucid time for you.

I think we burned you and you became burned out on us.  We stalked you and asked why that line has no contraction when the rest are littered with apostrophes, and why this line is about a shirt.  It was important to know, I suppose.  Maybe you just liked the way that shirt looked?  A compliment to a shirt maker that rounds out a line, because it just seemed the right thing to do at the time.  Maybe you don't even know?

I'm Memphis and Mobile and Mississippi and you rode my roads and took me for more than face value.  Maybe that is why this song means so much to me now?  You wrote it to ease my insecurities when none of the learned have taken the time to say, "It's alright."  Maybe you did it because it was a good deed?  Give the man with a busted overall gallous a song he can relate to when his luck runs dry, he has nothing else in this old world.  Not even a champion from afar.



   

Can Rock And Roll Save Your Soul?

Your old notebook is ragged.  Scribbles and half-truths, lies and doodles.  Toward the back pages you write the words etched on your tombstone.  You write on the dirty floor of a squalid little room with no heat and a junkie nodding in the corner.  Two filthy punks having sex on a clean bathroom floor beyond the other side of the wall you lean against.  You don't know where you'll crash tomorrow.  Tonight you are desperate and dramatic and fatal.

You've got a riff that sounded half right on the acoustic, the one that goes sharp above the 6th fret, so you do that run of notes between songs at the next show, with the overdriven amp and the distortion pedal, and for a moment the room went totally quiet.  Slacked jaws and blinking eyes and off you go with another Melvins cover.  That riff was what you talked about after the show and the bass player asks what those notes were.

It is the axle that will carry the load.  It is the pivot point from one generation to the next and the shaved becomes hairy and no one is any wiser that you are pouring rotgut in the top shelf bottle.  It is the fulcrum that lifts the weight and fools walk underneath with umbrellas until a kingpin snaps and it all comes tumbling down.

Years will pass, trends will shift.  Some will decide to rant against the song just because everyone else seems to get in lock-step when it's brought up in bored conversation.  You take the anti stance and in a way, it seems appropriate considering the circumstances.  Young punks do what young punks think they should do, or what they suppose they should do.  You'll go home later and play that song through ear buds.  It's still that good, even if it has to be kept a secret.  

Gotta Find A Way, A Better Way

Good days aren't as common as they once were, but they still come to me.  They aren't as frequent as I'd really like.  They never last as long as I need them to last, and it's so unfortunate that they aren't as intense as they once were.  Still, they sneak up on me and when they happen, I notice them much more.

Some days it gets no better than waking up with my sweet little dog, Butchie.  He'll stretch and yawn and flop his little head on my shoulder and rub his face on me.  The day can fall to pieces after that, it doesn't matter.  Having a little dog who's unconditional love knows no bounds is all you need on any day.

Some days a mood of lightness will come across me, like there is no more weight on my shoulders and some strange sensation will spark my inner voice, "It's all going to work out.  You are exactly where you are supposed to be right now."  It isn't a hollow feeling, there seems to be a point to all this, even though I still see fog.  There are shapes in this mist, I'm simply having trouble making out the details.

From time to time I'll put on a record or CD and the feeling I get inside is so warm and so positive that I have to get up and walk away for a few moments.  To sit is torture.  Words and ideas will come to my mind and I cannot shake them.  My mind will race ahead so quickly I'll stumble over my thoughts and have to back track just to keep pace.

For the first time in so long, I feel more positive about the future in spite of the current circumstances.  I've been here before, I've made it out of the rut, and in the past when I was in those situations the rut seemed just as difficult as the one I am in right now.  One twist of fate, one turn of phrase, one simple idea, and the rut vanishes.

Neil Young once sang,
"Don't let it bring you down,
It's only castles burning.
Find someone who's turning,
And you will come around."

For my sake, I'm trying to be the one who's turning.

Is It Real, Or Is It Memorex?

At my age, I often find myself falling into dismissive territory when I consider new music.  I fall back onto the music of the past for inspiration or simply for enjoyment.  Sometimes I mislabel my emotions or actions as nostalgia, sentimentalism, or familiarity.  I think now its a matter of holding boredom at arm's length.

Pop culture rarely reinvents itself.  Its always a distillation of the distant past or recent-past.  One thing sells so 20 other things that look or sound or feel like it will crop up next.  It is the nature of pop culture and the machine of manufacture, it has always been this way.

I can listen to a number of bands that are popular with today's hipster sect, and I can understand why their passions are aroused.  Self knowing glossiness, self awareness in all-too-knowing lyrics, smugness, routine grinding out of a song that follows a prescribed template.  The trail is always less cluttered when it has been traveled before and the way is easily seen.

Distraction is the last thing you want to have when listening to new music.  When you find yourself drawing a mental line of procession backward from what is coming through the speakers, to the original source, the intent of listening to new music is lost. After the 3rd or 4th derivative generation there is no more distillation from the inspiration, it is all dilution at that point.  This, is what I have been experiencing.

This isn't to say I don't find "new" music to listen to.  For more than a decade I have been finding new music by digging further into the past of rock and pop music and scouring the dimly lit corners.  New music has become the jazz I couldn't comprehend 20 years ago.  There is still something new to listen to, at least something new to me.

I do keep a fantasy alive in my heart that some kid is going to emerge on the music scene, with a sound and energy we haven't seen before.  I dream that they will burn in the minds of millions of young people.  I don't dream of this for personal reasons, I honestly do not care if I get them or not.  I simply wish people below a certain age could live the experience of seeing the world open up before their eyes like some odd fruit because a completely new way of communication has been found.

I may be overly sentimental at times.  If I am, it is only because I can so vividly remember what it was once like to have the wool pulled back from my eyes.  That vision fades in intensity as time passes, but the feelings never diminish.

Evolution

Selling records for a living puts me in an awkward position at times.  More specifically when I am looking at buying someone's old record collection.  I can see the trajectory and growth of a person's musical taste and their level of interest in music through the years.  It can make me feel uncomfortable when things go off the rails or stops dead in its tracks.

Sometimes I will see the entire length of their music buying life.  Of course people started buying CDs in the 80's and 90's but when I can plainly see their CDs placed on a small shelf I know their buying habits didn't grow after the switch in media.

Their earliest albums are the most worn and battered, often they have their name prominently written on the cover, in their child scrawl penmanship.  "I think that may have been the first album I bought.  I got it at Woolworth's." is a common comment while they are looking over my shoulder as I thumb through the crate.  "It's hard to beat {fill in the blank}" is how I usually respond, never condescending, never judgemental, no matter how bad the band was.

Sometimes I find a run of 70's and 80's heavy metal or southern rock.  Sometimes it's a run of light top 40 pop.  Helen Ready, Dan Fogleberg, Molly Hatchet, Nazareth.  They all show up.  I just deal with it.

There are some good scores though.  Someone might have been a bit twisted in their youth and I'll find a wonderful stash of garage and surf rock.  There is always an aficionado of classical with an amazing selection of scarce private recordings or obscure imports.  Some quiet attorney or Doctor with a robust taste for jazz in the days when Eisenhower was President.

I can bring any of these collections home, sort them, and ultimately find the progression of their interest.  The earliest albums are the most common recordings, or the ones with the covers that show the most wear.  There will be the early signs of reaching out, testing artists of different flavors, perhaps a few cross-overs in tone and content.  The collection will suddenly veer into one area and often, it stays there.  One artist struck a nerve and after that album, the course was set for their ship.

There is always an end point.  The most recent album and the last in chronological order.  It is at that point where they no longer bought LPs.  They may or may not have branched into CDs, but the end point for their vinyl buying days can be seen and noted.  Sadness comes to me when I can tell their interest in buying music completely ended at that point.

Perhaps the disposable cash dried up?  Perhaps there was a marriage and children and the time or interest in listening to new music ended?  Perhaps their interest in music completely ended?  Like a love that has wilted and died.

It is the moments of finding gold where I feel good, and they happen just often enough to keep me going.  A person may have stopped loving their music, but when the interest was genuine and heart felt, it is obvious.  I can't entirely fault a person who found music they truly felt spoke to them, even if was bad, or just something loud and rocking to put on the turntable when they were smoking dope.

Aspire To what?

Is there breathing room for the junkies?  What happened to that niche set aside for head cases to explore?  Can the born loser still spill their guts to us?  We are so sanitized and the thought of yet another messy cultural icon is less appealing when the existential moral panic machine is running.  The machine is always turned on, it just keeps getting louder and louder.  That damn machine can't even idle.

Some people will never make old bones.  You see them at the starting gate and you just know it isn't going to end well.  We watch, we follow, we turn sanctimonious beyond description at the conclusion.  It isn't glorification to admire the fire as it burns, it isn't morbid to admit the fire is burning bodies.  It is what it is and ultimately, it is the hands of the artist that stokes the coals or closes the damper.  The ending is always theirs to write, some just have a different view of how the story arcs.

Disheveled is one of the verbs that float to the top of the dead pool when the end is near.  Emaciated and gaunt find their place too.  Thank God the Internet wasn't around when Chet Baker was at his lowest.  Just another junkie with no teeth and ruined embouchure, ruined beauty.

Yes, it is tragic when demons take hold and end a life too soon.  It is an injustice when addictions bind talent and dull the promise of what could be.  I cannot find justification for a life destroyed in part because of weakness.  Imagine Jim Carroll without broken veins.  Imagine Kurt Cobain without a broken sense of self.  Broken hearts, broken dreams, broken souls; they nourish creative impulses as easily as joy and wholeness. 

Few things are neat and nothing is easy.  Breezy and seamless is all hype, it just isn't there.  Maybe you can be so focused on your ambition that you are unable to show the stress fractures of adversity?  Maybe the heartbreaks are easier to silence when only one thing is truly important to you?  Born under a bad sign is just superstition.  It isn't something you can easily quantify.

The Warm Thrill Of Confusion

A manila envelope full of old ticket stubs.  I forgot I saw them, him, her.  I can't remember a single thing about that show.  This show was like a tent revival and that show was a morgue where the corpses were laughing on the slab. So old they are like relics from another life.  I think they are.

I remember he wore a black blazer with white piping, creased jeans, and cowboy boots.  I remember how fine his hair was, noticing a single light behind and to the side shone through it like sunlight through a window screen.  He played four songs that he shared royalties with and walked off and we looked at each other in a funny way and no one said, "Is that all?"  We knew.  So we left too.

I remember her eyes set on her own hand as it strangled the neck of her bass. I thought she was completely hypnotized by every note she was playing amid the chaos.  Her mind calculating the position and angle of direction for every sweaty torso jostling just feet away like radar was being emitted from the top of her head.  Had one of those animals crossed the boundary into her zone I doubt she would have winced let alone miss a note.  It wasn't poise or control, it was strength and no one crossed over her line.  She willed it.  I think she made me love women bassists.

I remember being on the floor and so close to the stage that I was frightened by the proximity long before the opening act came out to bathe in our disgust.  So close I could see grimaces of workman faces between songs when the set list was still too long and the singer was doing his shtick too early in the night.  It felt like no one but me was looking at him and his guitar, and he seemed frustrated at the tone dial, and he glared into the wings at someone who was being paid to take glares.

I remember being so far away that the amplifiers had two echoes. So high and far away that the security guards hid away from the crowd for a quick break and they passed a smoke between each other.  No one but us fools up here in the clouds. 

I remember riding shotgun in a Mustang up Broad Street after my brain had been washed with Marshall stacks and Gibsons.  Fast was so slow and stop was still moving with the red stop lights shining on  wet pavement.  It was spring and the air was warm and humid and we sipped bourbon from my metal flask with the smell of the city filling our noses.  Let's go for a ride and get the energy out of us so we can speak with more than one syllable.

I remember a show and you were pushed by the mob and a bottle broke in your hand.  Big drops and a thick trail of blood and not enough alcohol in your system to numb the pain.  You went to your car and wrapped your hand tightly with cloth and jammed it into a leather work glove.  By time the band was drenched with sweat and it was all over, the glove was already long hard with dried blood.  As payback you scared the mob, waving wild arms and guzzling beer like water and flashing feral eyes and they could all see your mangled hand.  They left before any of us were done, they knew it was safer somewhere else.  The band loved you for that.

I remember taking you out that one icy night to a small club where we were packed in like cord wood.  There were horns and shouting and shiny suits and choreographed steps.  The air was so hot that women were fainting and you shimmered, all hips and fingertips.  You drank sweet alcoholic mixtures and smiled sweetly when that little slur came alive, coaxing me to say things southern, foreign to you.  It was so cold outside.  After the adrenaline was gone you slept peacefully, under warm soft sheets, sleet hitting our window.  It was our last show, the last chapter of our book.

I have my ticket stub.

Let's Go, Let Go, Let's Pretend

Let's go to the drugstore and see if they have anything new.  They have only two bins, so it won't take long to browse.  What the band is wearing on the cover will have the biggest impact on what we choose.  The wilder, the better.

Let's go in the woods, smoke Luckies from the pack you stole from your Pop's bedside drawer.  The one where he keeps a loaded .44, an address book, and condoms  We'll talk about what we suppose is cool, find dead tree limbs and swing them like barky baseball bats and shout Iron Maiden lyrics at each other.  We can sit next to the creek and talk of leaving soon, going out in the real world and away from the valley.  The world is spinning away from us fast, and haven't even had a shot to see The Clash.

Let's go to a dingy little basement and hear the noise coming from busted, ratty amps.  We'll buy beer and jump and hop and sway and fall, we're pimple faced menace without teeth.  Everyone is suffering from the same disease.  We sweat and when we move quickly it flies into the air like a misty rain without a breeze to carry it away.  We'll go to the bar and catch our breath.  Sweat will collect between our shoulder blades and run down the spine in that firm channel of young man muscle.

Let's pretend we're real grown ups and go buy some wine for tonight.  We'll take it back to your place and light candles and listen to your old folk records while we talk.  Can you ask your roommate to go to a movie with her boyfriend?  It'd be nice to have some time alone together, just like real grown ups.  I'll get pins and needles in my leg from laying awkwardly on your bedroom floor while we make out. I may not be as scared as you, but I'm a lot less confident.

Let's pretend none of it matters.  It's all commercial and so stupid and so very gauche.  What we need is something hard and honest and truthful.  Let's pretend it doesn't matter when our wish is granted.  Let's pretend we aren't shocked by our own narcissism and sadness.  Let's pretend we are actually whole and normal, it's everyone else who is full of abnormal holes.

Let's pretend we know better.  It just isn't the same today as it once was.  Yesterday was art and low-brow wonderful.  Today is low tide.  Look at the rubbish left behind.  I know we shouldn't have thrown trash in the water in the first place.  Let's just pretend we didn't do it.