It's Just a Dream He Keeps Having
All right, you amateur psychologists, it’s dream analysis time. Early this morning I awoke in the middle of a dream I’ve had several times before…I’m in high school on the day of a history exam and I’m dreading the passage of time until class. I haven’t studied or read or even been to class enough to even know where the classroom is.
A similar dream I have frequently is…I’m backstage during the production of a play and I have this awful sinking feeling that it’s about time for me to go onstage and deliver my lines. Only problem is, I have no clue what play it is, and I can’t find a script anywhere.
So, obviously lots of anxiety in my subconscious, but…what does it all mean?
The Academic
I worry that his knowledge will not save him. (Not in the Billy Graham “save him” way, but in the “here’s a guy who is doomed to be miserable for the rest of his life” kind of way.)
With much knowledge comes much sorrow. He will be running around chasing contradictory theories and bigger and bigger words and –isms like a puppy for the rest of his days.
And most sad, over time, he will drive away all acquaintances and friends, alerting them to their fallacies and emotionalism in conversation, and most likely he will live a hermetic life, hunched over stacks of dusty books in a drafty apartment like some Dickens character. And then he will die alone, the unknown knower.
The People, Yes
So, when I started this blog, I had some high-falutin’ language about how I wanted to talk about elevated concerns like art and philosophy, and thus far, the lion’s share of the content has just been about me and my journey of aesthetic development. I’ve traced my musical education through high school and believe me, there’s still lots to cover from that point on, but…How rude of me! What a lame blind date this has been. Well, I’ll tell you what. Let’s talk about you for a little bit, baby.
I want to hear what you have to say, dear reader, about music and art and beauty and whatever. Here are some questions to chew on and spit out.
1)
Why do we (and when I say “we,” I actually mean “you,”) listen to music?
When do you listen to music?
1a)I’ve had this discussion with friends before, but
how do you listen to music? Do you put on a particular kind of music in your house or apartment or dorm-room or shanty or lean-to or bedroom to “set a vibe” and to feel a certain way? Or do you put on a particular kind of music because you
already feel a certain way? Give me some specifics. What’s everybody listening to these days?
Let’s start with these questions. But I’ve got several more. (I always talk music because that’s my area of most experience. But does any of this talk apply to any of the other arts?) Please write me back so that I don’t feel like a voice crying in the wilderness like John the Baptist.
That's Baby-Makin' Music, That's What That Is
Thus far, I have dealt with my musical past in a roughly chronological fashion. However, watching a Saturday Night Live re-run this weekend reminded me of one of the most important parts of the soundtrack of my childhood-Paul Simon’s
Graceland. Many was the Sunday afternoon my parents would go for a drive in their white ’84 Thunderbird with me in the back seat, pacified by the sound of Paul Simon’s free-wheeling wordplay and Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s traditional African singing. I can still smell that new-car gray upholstery whenever I hear songs like “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” or “You Can Call Me Al.”
Little did I realize at the time how revolutionary of an idea was behind
Graceland. Paul Simon was known as an acoustic guitar folkster and for this album he assembled all kinds of African musicians as well as a few American session musicians like the Everly Brothers and former Zappa sideman Adrian Belew and created a wonderfully joyous and interesting mix of styles. Like I said, I never realized that when I was a kid. I just thought it all sounded “happy.”
If I ever have a child, it will be required listening for little Immanuel Stutzman as well.
Oh, Frank. How do I love Thee?
Today, a little bit more about Zappa, the longhaired revolutionary who caught my musical imagination. Dearly beloved, if you want your mind blown by some new music, this post is for you. For, what follows is a career overview and some of the key albums that I know. (It’s hard to be a total expert since the man released 63 albums before he died.) A good idea would be to seek out some of this music. But only if you want your mind blown.
Even though there is a “Best Of” compilation for Zappa, it’s not very helpful in trying to figure out the man’s aesthetic because he was very much an eclectic-minded musician. Here’s some help:
Zappa, the musical satirist- his early albums are a direct commentary on pop culture and the politics of the time. One word you would not use to describe the sound is “polished.” Sometimes, the vocals sound like a bunch of drunken buffoons. But there are a lot of ideas being slung around in the midst of it all.
Freak Out!, the first album by Frank and The Mothers of Invention, is a good example of this phase in his career. There are catchy pop songs sloppily played on this album, supported by “important”-sounding orchestrations. What was originally the 4th side of the two record set is just madness. Surreal madness. Right after that album, you have
Absolutely Free, which is a little bit more up-front with the social critique on hippies and the repression of individualism and a little bit more impressive musicality and more instrumental sections. This is one of my favorite albums of his, just because I hear something new and interesting every time.
After he had deconstructed pop music, he injected a little bit more instrumentalism and odd meters into things with albums like
Uncle Meat,
Hot Rats, and
Burnt Weeny Sandwich. Of the three, I think
Hot Rats is a work of jazz-rock genius. Lots of overdubbed saxes and strange harmonies along with some fabulous extended jams. It is impossible to ignore the music on this disc.
Another of my favorite periods is the music he produced while confined to a wheelchair from a stage accident. He took the jazz-rock ideas from
Hot Rats and replaced the overdubbed saxes with an actual big band with horns and second guitars and the whole works. From this period,
Waka/Jawaka and
The Grand Wazoo show off his skills as an arranger. Two of my favorite albums by any artist.
Zappa then returned to music a little closer to rock n’ roll with lyrics.
Apostrophe(‘) and
One Size Fits All are two of my faves from this period. In almost all of Zappa’s music, I must say that there is an element of humor and with his return to satirical lyrical content, he dealt increasingly with sexuality in pretty crude ways. But overall, no topic was safe from skewering by Zappa and in the 80s, the political and cultural landscape of Reaganomics and the rise of televangelism became two of his favorite targets. This period of his output interests me the least, not because I’m a Reagan fan or a fan of televangelists, but because I’m a fan of music, not politics. Two live albums that document this period, however, display the incredibly tight bands he was able to put together:
The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life and
Make a Jazz Noise Here.
Another stream of Zappa’s work is orchestral music. He viewed himself as a composer first and rock n’ roll musician second and so it makes sense how frustrated he got with his experiences with orchestral musicians that never seemed to take him seriously. For me, the orchestral stuff is sort of hit or miss, sounding alternatively like cartoon music and darkly avant-garde.
The Yellow Shark was his most pleasant encounter with orchestral musicians and it’s full of the dark, avant-garde stuff played by a relatively small group called Ensemble Modern. If you can find it,
London Symphony Orchestra Vol. 1 & 2 has the bigger orchestral stuff that is slightly, (only
slightly) more accessible.
All right, so I think I’ve said my peace on Zappa. His music is complex and difficult, not just to perform but to take in as a listener, but well worth the effort, in my book. Good day and Happy Thanksgiving, ya’ll. Word.
Frank Zappa
As I tried to make clear at the beginning of this blog, I am interested in perspective-changing aesthetic encounters. And today I shall relate to you the story of my discovery of one of the top two or three musical influencers in my life. This is not a tale of a mere album that I thought was cool. This is the story of my introduction to the music of a guy who seemed to take my experience as a high school senior and make it something more than just a humdrum existence. I will now tell you about one of my real musical heroes-Frank Zappa.
To tell you the truth, I was attracted to Frank before I heard a note of his music. He would always be mentioned in guitar magazines as an outsider genius and I always thought he looked like a rock n’ roll mad scientist-shaggy long hair and his trademark “Imperial” goatee. (Mustache and little patch below the bottom lip. Just like one might see in, oh, I don’t know, my senior photo and prom pictures!) I had read up on Zappa. He always sounded really smart in interviews. I liked that. I liked my rock served up with a little intellect. He was a guitar player like me, but he also considered himself a
composer, not just a “rock musician.” I found that interesting. Composers, to me, were dead English and German guys from the 1700s in wigs. And even though his music had the reputation of being weird because he was on drugs, it was just the opposite. Frank was anti-drugs and thought that drug-users were stupid people. As I struggled to figure out why I lived such a naïve existence compared to the STUCO kids and cool kids and pothead kids, this was a guy I could really support. And Frank had a very aloof attitude toward fame, criticism, and the music business. He came across as very secure and uncompromising in his musical vision. Anyway, all of this musical integrity fascinated me, to say the least.
And then there was the music. Oh, my God, the music! The fist Zappa album I bought was called
Weasels Ripped My Flesh. The cover was a Ward Cleaver-looking cartoon guy shaving with a weasel. At first listen, I didn’t know what to make of the noise coming out of my headphones. The first song was called “Didja Get Any Onja?” and it sounded like a bunch of savages that had just come across a box of rock n’ roll instruments just washed upon the shore. That album contained just the strangest mixture of music-noise I believe I’ve ever heard. Everything from hyper-organized rock-classical music to blues-based dirty rock to musique concrete a la Lennon’s “Revolution 9.” The last track was the sound of a mic’d vacuum cleaner performance from the end of a concert. Amongst all the madness, there were a couple clean and beautiful moments, but overall, this album was…”challenging,” to say the least. (I later figured out, after hearing several other Zappa albums, that
Weasels was one of the most challenging.)
But I gave it all the benefit of the doubt and I still haven’t totally figured it all out. But the one moment that totally blew my mind was the second half of the song “Toads of the Short Forest,” taken from a live recording where Frank says “At this moment on stage, drummer A is playing in 7/8, drummer B is playing in ¾, the bass is playing in ¾, the organ is playing in 5/8 and the saxophone is blowing his nose” -or something to that effect. And the idea of a band playing in different time signatures at once was a world-shattering idea. And that’s what killed me, this wild guy creating what
sounded like audible chaos, but what turned out to be
organized chaos- a method to the madness. This was my first foray into the avant-garde of rock and I thought that it was sheer genius.
It was brave music with no regard for commerce, or marketing, or developing an audience or any of the trappings of the music industry. This was the sound of a guy creating whatever he wanted to and daring people to like it or to take the time to try to figure it out. Something about that boldness impressed and inspired me. Like I said, this Zappa entry is about much more than a mere album. Discovering his confidence in who he was helped me to learn about individualism-finding your own voice, not just creatively, but personally as well. A fierce individualism like his could serve someone well when they don’t feel like they fit in. I swallowed Zappa’s music like a comforting medicine. In my head, at least, someone else knew what it was like. And rather than feel bad about being uncool, or depressed, I could be confident in my uncoolness, bolstered by this artist who used his intellect as a weapon. I wanted to be that guy. (Although I never became that guy, Zappa certainly made it easier to deal with myself and with other people.)
On Marx, Prog Rock and Music Criticism
I’ve read a little bit of Karl Marx in my life, and the vast majority of it kind of went over my head. But I do remember one of his ideas that got stuck in my head. It relates to value or worth. Here’s the question: how do you determine the value of a particular object? For instance, how do you determine what an ounce of silver is worth? Well, economically speaking, our market-based economy says that an object is worth whatever anybody will pay for it. On the other hand, Marx says that an object or product is worth the sum total of work or effort that went into its creation. I like his way of thinking on this. It’s not messy and nebulous. For, in the first answer, value is an idea. The consumer pretty much brings the concept of value to the object. I don’t like that. I don’t like to rely on people. We’re all fickle and unreliable. We’re messy and muddle-headed at times. With Marx, the value is a little more inherent in the object. Value is material. It is fixed. It is not
affixed.
So, I got to thinking about why I fell so hard for prog-rock back in high school, and why prog-rock is so uncool today. (I was reading a review of Springsteen’s newly remastered Born to Run just today that credited Yes and Jethro Tull with “ruining rock n’ roll.” Pretty harsh.) And I think Marx has helped me in my attempt to articulate my love. Of course, I didn’t realize most of the following at the time. But that’s the way we are. We love first and ask questions later.
Let me first lay out the basics of how prog sounds for the uninitiated. In a word-difficult. You frequently have fast notes all over the place and you frequently have “unnatural” odd meters, rather than “four on the floor” caveman drum beats. You usually have a bunch of instrumental breaks and/or instrumental solo sections. When you first hear prog music, your first thought is usually something along the lines of “gee, those guys must have practiced a lot.” Prog-rock also has a tendency toward the dramatic or epic scale. This basically means long songs that frequently segue into each other. All in all, it’s very musician-friendly music. As a budding instrumentalist myself, I loved hearing what was possible.
Now, what does all of this have to do with Marx and materialism? One of the reasons I loved (and still love) such obvious displays of technical prowess was the clarity of it, like the clarity of Marx’s materialism. A lot of times when people, particularly critics, discuss the merits and liabilities of music, it’s full of fuzzy language. Kind of like when we say a product is worth what people will pay for it. They cite a line or two of lyrics as if they held some kind of universal significance. Or they try to place an artist on some sort of continuum of relevance. To me, popular musical criticism has come to be veiled statements of good old American preference. It’s opinion dressed up as doctrine. Sheep in wolves’ clothing.
But at rock bottom, I could appreciate prog-rock for the musicianship of its creators. Now, “musicianship” is a word that sounds just as ambiguous, but let’s look a little closer. It’s much more easily measured by fellow musicians than the rest of the aesthetic concerns. Someone with basic musical training can hear the difference between musicians who have the “chops” and those who don’t. And that’s what I liked. It actually simplified the aesthetic process for me into a matter of concretes. For you see, either you can play more than three chords or you can’t. Either you can play odd meters or you can’t. And my policy back in the day was, if a musical artist wasn’t doing anything that I couldn’t do, they weren’t worth listening to. I’ve never gotten much enjoyment out of learning other people’s songs and all of this is a big reason why.
To put all of this simply, the presence or lack of good musical technique is probably the aesthetic element subject to the least amount of interpretation. I don’t need a critic to tell me if someone can play their instrument better than I can. I can hear it for myself.
So, how did the progsters of the late seventies “ruin rock n’ roll?” Basically, what separated Yes from all the other rock of the time was their injection of a classically trained musicality into popular rock forms. Obviously, prog was a short-lived experiment for the masses because it’s rarely heard in the new music of today, (with the possible exception of Tool.) It’s not as if all rock music came to resemble it. Unbridled instrumental technique and grand artistic vision did not become
de rigeur. No, history is written by the winners, and prog rock lost. Prog rock didn’t ruin rock n’ roll. It was just one of the many interesting diversions in its history. To say prog-rock ruined rock n’ roll is like saying T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound ruined poetry. The truth is, they just wrote for a different audience in ways that they thought were right.
Now, whether or not critics should speak for the tastes of the “common man,” remains debatable. I honestly think that prog rock confounded its contemporary music writers for several reasons. 1)Deadlines-music of grand ambition does not lend itself well to the life of a time-obsessed journalist. It was probably a lot easier to vilify the likes of Yes and Jethro Tull than to engage their music with the attention, patience, and time that it demanded. 2)Instrumentalism-writers are word people. That is what their income, nay; their whole economy is based on. This is probably why music criticism today worships the lyric. Well, like I’ve said elsewhere, prog-rock certainly did
not worship the lyric. At best prog artists strove to set lyrics with appropriate musical content. At worst, they subjugated lyrics to a place of least importance. 3)A lot of prog rock was pretty cerebral, which made it not necessarily relevant to someone who just wanted music to dance to or to ignore or to remind them of their childhood or their first love or to make them feel all warm inside. And so, by extension, any critic who spent time weighing the merits of such music was also in danger of irrelevance. Thus was born the distancing statement, such as “Jethro Tull ruined rock n’ roll.”
And I’m spent.
What's the Rush?
Another important album for me from this time was
Moving Pictures by Rush. This was another one loaned to me by the same teacher who introduced me to Genesis. Although I have a memory associated with this album-driving in my new car, (a blue Mitsubishi Mirage, with a CD player!), down 39th Expressway with windows down and the volume up, weather perfect- there is still some magic in the sounds, too. Although it’s not a concept album, I think there is something indescribably cool about the sequencing of the tunes. It starts off with probably the one Rush song that even non-Rush fans know: “Tom Sawyer.” And what a great way to start things. It just spills in with a downward analog synth filter and big drums in 7/8 before Geddy Lee comes in with his (admittedly) weird voice. Neil Peart’s lyrics are really smart, which is odd. How many drummers have been the lyricist for a band? No one’s immediately coming to mind. (Well, maybe Don Henley with The Eagles.)
Anyway, another cool thing about this album is the consistency of sounds; particularly Alex Lifeson’s gorgeous guitar tone-it’s dirty but not too dirty. And it’s not harsh or overburdened with effects like much of what would come later in the eighties. His sound is just so warm on this whole record. And really everything on the album, the drums, and the bass- it all just sounds so tight and economical. Although I usually hate the sound of eighties studio production, this album seems to be a bridge between seventies-type sounds and what would come later in the eighties.
After “Tom Sawyer,” “Red Barchetta” fades in and when the verse kicks in, you get these wonderfully ambiguous guitar harmonies. “YYZ,” the instrumental named after the international airport code for Toronto, I believe, displays all kinds of limber musical prowess. The main rhythmic figure was in my head constantly for a couple years there and I’ve still not figured out what’s going on, rhythmically-speaking, in the intro. This song has a nice guitar melody and one of the best guitar solos I think I’ve ever heard. It’s not overly flashy, which is one of the reasons you never hear about Alex Lifeson and his playing, but it’s really melodic and outlines the harmony kind of like a jazz solo. Still grabs my ears every time. I was sold on this album from that point on.
And then you get another classic-rock radio chestnut, “Limelight,” which sounds like Rush’s version of a stripped-down rock n’ roll song, but there are so many cool things to listen to if you’re so inclined. The ensemble playing is so tight. It seems like every little drum fill is matched by Geddy Lee’s melodic bass playing. Speaking of drumming, Neil Peart pretty much puts on a clinic with every song. And, of course, there are plenty of musicians who spit on his technique, saying he overplays. But I, for one, respect the man and his playing, and I thank him for giving my ears something to do for all of these years. But, I’ll agree, a “groove” band Rush is not.
The same part of me that loved seventies progsters Yes and Genesis and their extended structures loved the ten-minute song “The Camera Eye.” And once again, there are some great single-note lines being played by Lifeson, including one of the main melodies, which is really catchy. I can hum it right now.
I talked about the sequencing of this album and after “The Camera Eye,” there are two comparative miniatures: “Witch Hunt,” which I’ve always been sort of ambivalent towards, and “Vital Signs,” which always has struck me toward the end with Geddy singing in his upper register over big sustaining synthy chords and bubbling, blipping arpeggiations.
Anyway, I heard in this Rush band an obviously huge amount of technique from all the players, yet they weren’t trying to sound like an “electric orchestra,” like Genesis certainly did at times. This was more like a workingman’s progressive music. They still rocked enough to be on the radio every now and then. They should be commended for being able to present odd meters in a natural enough way that you don’t even notice it coming out of your radio speakers. And I guess that’s what I liked about this album-they seemed like regular guys who liked to play music and didn’t mind being a little nerdy and accomplished as they went about it. And even though this album was about fifteen years old when I first heard it, it wasn’t as far removed as, say, the first Yes albums from the early seventies that I was listening to.
Once again, I have to say “alas,” as I tell you that Rush is another grotesquely uncool band to like among today’s critics and hipsters. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that modern music criticism really has very little actual interaction with the music of the past beyond the occasional cred-building reference to the MC5 or Iggy Pop or the Velvet Underground, which no one really listens to anymore anyway. And I’m not a big Rush fan, but there are about four or five albums that really interest me and I’m not afraid to raise my freak flag. Soon, I’m going to have to write a prog apologetics post, but for now, this will have to suffice.
Windy Day
I’m pretty sure you could correctly describe today’s weather as “blustery.” Do you ever get taken back into the past when the weather turns this way? The air is cold, but not bitterly cold. It doesn’t take too much concentration to turn it into a pleasant sensory experience.
I think the wind might carry some kind of “past-remembrance particles” that you inhale and they somehow get mixed into your bloodstream and wind up temporarily bridging your synapses and affecting your perception of the now. (Man, that was a weird sentence.)
Anyway, I was walking in a parking garage about half an hour ago and felt the crisp wind whipping around me amongst all that concrete and somehow I was in a couple different moments of my past at the same time. Part of me was back in high school at after-school marching band practice, focused on remembering where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to play. The other part of me was in my first year of college, traversing OU’s huge campus, going to my English lit class that led me past the football stadium, through a couple flowery courtyards and benches, past all kinds of different youthful people, each with a unique story, but feeling largely alone-metaphorically speaking, focused on where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to play.
Still haven’t quite figured it out.
Either/Or (No, not the Elliott Smith album)
I’m going to take a break from the prog-rock section of my musical development to talk about an ongoing musical argument: the either/or scenario of music appreciation. The most famous example is the popular belief that you can only have love for either The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, not both. People’s personalities are supposedly such that they love one or the other. Would it surprise anyone for me to say I’m a Beatles man?. Even when I try to be contrary and say that I like The Stones too, I betray myself. For it really comes down to whether you like your rock music with art or with sweat and I like the Stones’ songs that are artsy: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Wild Horses,” and “Angie.” “Satisfaction” never did anything for me, even though it’s got one of the most memorable, recognizable guitar riffs of all time. In essence, the more The Stones sound like The Beatles, the more likely I am to appreciate them.
And so, this common musical discussion has led me to try to come up with some other dichotomous pairs. However, this is proving to be kind of difficult, since it’s not really a matter of finding mere opposites. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are not opposites. In fact, they’re really kind of similar in the grand scheme of things. They hit it big around the same time. They’re English and, supposedly, low-to-middle-class, (although there is some question about Lennon and McCartney’s breeding.) But like I said, the way I see it, The Stones are rock and The Beatles are pop. It’s “visceral” versus “cerebral.” Street musicians versus chamber musicians.
Anyway, let me know if you come up with some others, especially some modern ones.
Led Zeppelin vs. The Who
Lynyrd Skynyrd vs. Neil Young
Dolly Parton vs. Celine Dion
The Eagles vs. Crosby, Stills, and Nash
Early Bob Dylan vs. Electric Bob Dylan
Jackson 5 vs. Michael Jackson
Wind and Wuthering
I had another band director at the time of my Yes awakening, who introduced me to another of the great “prog-rock” bands—Genesis.
Now, I realize that the name of Genesis brings to mind all sorts of adult contemporary, Phil Collins cheesiness. (Does anybody remember that video for “Land of Confusion” in the mid-eighties that was comprised of all manner of puppets?) I am not about to pontificate on the greatness of their output during the eighties. It doesn’t do anything for me either.
But during my last couple years of high school, my teacher let me borrow a Genesis album called
Wind and Wuthering, which introduced me to a different Genesis. The Genesis of the 70’s-when Phil Collins still played the drums and didn’t write overdramatic, lovey-dovey pop for Disney Cartoons. Back in the day, Phil was a more-than-competent drummer, applying all kinds of odd meters and technical stuff. Sometimes he played the drums like another melodic instrument in the band.
This particular album sounded kind of similar to Yes, with the expanded structures and “symphonic-ness” of it all. The harmonies were often unexpected and dark. But the one thing Genesis had over Yes was their cogent lyrics that didn’t require translation by a faerie or an elf. And this album had its share of catchy melodies popping out every now and then as well as a couple songs that segued together.
And so, this was another jumping-off point for me into the pool of prog. It wouldn’t take too much time before I had bought all of the Genesis studio albums, (the first five or six featured Mr. “Your Eyes” and “Sledgehammer,” Peter Gabriel on vocals), up to the point where they became too polished by the antiseptic recording techniques of the eighties.
Again, like Yes, this was a band that inherited some great synthesizer technology and used it to create great textures, building up huge soundscapes supporting Steve Hackett’s melodic guitar playing.
After getting introduced to Genesis, I was a prog-rock appreciator for life.
Yes--Close to the Edge
One of my favorite smart-sounding words is “dialectic.” I know it involves the tension of opposites. Hegel used it in describing the evolution of ideas-how a synthesis is formed when faced with the truth of one idea (thesis) and the truth of its opposite (antithesis.) And my musical thought-life has a big dialectic at its center, kind of like how scientists say there is a giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. For you see, I’m no musical purist. I don’t believe that punk rock’s simplicity and attitude are the only way to do rock n’ roll. Nor do I think that music should only be complicated.
While I was in high school picking up albums of great melodic pop songs by the Beatles and They Might Be Giants, I was also learning about their antithesis: prog rock.
I had a crazy band director who listened to the band Yes constantly. He was always pointing out technical little passages and musical things going on behind the vocals. Over time, if you hear something enough, maybe you can’t help but become interested. So, after hearing little bits of songs here and there, I thought I would give this Yes band a try. I believe the first album was
Classic Yes. I liked several things about this music. It was bizarre and interesting because you never knew what was going to happen next. It was all kind of stream-of-consciousness. Within a minute or two of a Beatles song, you had pretty much heard all of the musical material that they would use for that song. Everything from that point on was just repetition with different lyrics. I believe theorists call this a strophic form.
Well, Yes was different. It was like listening to a rock n’ roll symphony unfold. These songs were through composed, to use another theory term. Two minutes into a Yes song and you may have heard one verse, or just an intro. The rules seemed a little more lax for this kind of music. I liked that. To me, it was the sound of ambition and wild, artistic impulse unbound.
And another thing I liked about Yes was that it sounded like these guys knew what they were doing. For some reason, that was important to me at the time. I thought that truly great artists and musicians had to be aware of the technique of making music, not just the art. And a lot of times, the music was difficult to pull off. There were odd meters for the drummer to navigate. There were a lot of fast notes for the guitarist and bassist to play. Again, something about the technical proficiency impressed me. I believe the roots of that go back to hearing Eddie Van Halen for the first time. But this music was kind of like if Eddie Van Halen had gone to college in England and studied anthropology, rather than been in a party band in California.
Like I said, these ideas were pretty much opposed to pop music, at least some of the pop music of the Beatles, who seemed a little bit more instinctive with their music and not so academic.
And oh, man, the synthesizer sounds! Starting out in the early seventies, they were blessed with the emergence of all kinds of new electronic musical technology-Moogs and mellotrons and ARPs. They could create all kinds of otherworldly weedly-weedlies, and whip-tee-whooptees, and sounds like floating through space. I loved all the textures that they were able to come up with.
Unfortunately, time has not smiled on Yes and other bands of their “progressive” ilk. At some point, it became grotesquely uncool to be able to play with impressive technique and to be artistically ambitious. I suppose it was when punk rock came along. But I still hold Yes in high regard. I’m a sucker for most of Jon Anderson’s melodies and the adventurous harmonies that venture well beyond the three or four guitar chords that most bands use. And I can appreciate a band that requires something of their audience. In the case of Yes, they require an awful lot of patience. The songs can be long, and perhaps the solo sections can sound like so much noodling and musical masturbation. But something about their overall aesthetic really grabbed me.
The first Yes album that really wowed me was called
Close to the Edge. It only had three songs on it. And it started with one of my favorite devices-the fade-in. It sounds like a jungle fading into life to take over your room. Like orchestral music, Yes was fond of musical movements. However, they were inspired by Romantic composers and linked their movements together. The real reason “Close to the Edge,” the eighteen-minute-long song, got me was what happened at about ¾ of the way through. All semblance of a rock band crumbled as the musical picture was taken over by the sound of a huge pipe organ. It was a moment that gave me goose bumps. Clearly, this wasn’t just rock n’ roll. It was, once again, about big ideas. Some might find the epic drama of it all to be kind of cheesy, but I luxuriated in the sounds that Yes created. However, it was yet another case where I ignored the lyrics. I
had to, because this was one area where I agreed with the critics-the lyrics were at most points indecipherable. Here’s a sample: “A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace/And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace.” (Interpretations welcome.) Honestly, I would hate to meet the kind of hippied-out druggy that could relate to most of their lyrics. And they got criticized harshly for “not saying anything,” not communicating. As if music was purely a verbal art!
Oh, but the music behind those lyrics-I can’t explain the complex beauty behind it all.
Why is the World in Love Again...
I’m finding out that I really developed most of my musical identity when I was in high school. For today’s installment of my trip down musical memory lane is from my senior year in high school.
I had a goofy younger friend in high school by the name of Patrick Franklin. He was one of the smartest, funniest people I had ever met--smart and funny in the way that a mad scientist is smart and funny. He stuck out a little bit—long blond hair, wore different colored socks. Whenever he spoke, it sounded like a robot reciting a textbook. We were pals though, up until he moved to Claremore right before my senior year. I don’t think our relationship was ever the same after that, for I went to college and he stayed in Claremore for another year or two and we just lost track of each other and I know I gave up on putting forth the effort of pretending we were still friends. I’m a bastard that way.
Anyway, before he moved, Patrick had a way of patronizing me for my obsessive love for the Beatles that was festering within me at the time. But he had a couple obsessive musical loves of his own-David Bowie and a quirky little band called They Might Be Giants. I can’t remember the first time I heard them, probably while driving. But I remember the exciting process of learning about this awesome new band. (Actually, half of that is incorrect. I
do remember when I first heard them.) It was probably my freshman year at a friend's house and he played me these two crazy songs called “Dinner Bell” and "The Statue Got Me High" off of the album
Apollo 18. Even though the songs were really catchy and upbeat, I couldn’t help but feel that something was amiss, because Chris, (whose house I was at) had sort of gotten “weird” to me, musically-speaking. All I need to say is that I remember his proudly showing me his nine-inch-nails hanging from his bedroom ceiling. (He literally had metal nails hanging from his ceiling.) Today, Chris is a praise-and-worship music minister here in the city. Can anyone really see the ends of our paths?
I digress. Patrick and all of his friends were kir-azy about TMBG and I remember finally buckling and buying their album
Flood. TMBG worked for me for several reasons: 1) their songs were hella catchy-long melodies and quirky arrangements and instrumentation, 2) their voices were such that they demanded your attention. It was impossible to ignore their music. 3) their lyrics were smart. They sang about odd things and sounded intelligent as they did it. 4) most of all, only a select few of the kids in school had even heard of them. I’ll be honest and say that the last reason was probably the most important at the time. It was like a musical rebellion for us. Since then, I’ve heard just about everything they’ve released and I came to realize just how unique their music is and was. And I think their peculiar aesthetic is one of the larger influences on the songwriting and ideas behind Grandpa Griffith.
I could really pick any album from They Might Be Giants to cite as influential in my musical development, (I was buying them up very quickly, maybe even weekly back in those heady days when I had money,) but I might as well give the highlights for
Flood, the one I remember buying first.
“Theme from Flood”-How great of an idea is that? To start off your album with a chorus of voices announcing the beginning of the album.
“Birdhouse in Your Soul”-It rocks, but not like Eddie Van Halen rocks. It’s smart, but not like Arnold Shoenberg is smart. One of the best melodies and chord progressions in their catalog, I think. It just keeps running over the same ground, like an off-kilter tape loop for about three or so minutes. To say any more would be gushing and I’ve heard enough people gush over this song.
“Dead”-I remember my grandma liking this song as I played it on a drive to Norman to show her where I’d be going college. She probably liked the open harmonies and counter-melodies going on.
“Twisting”-It starts like chincey dance-pop, but once the guitar kicks in, it’s more like rock n’ roll.
“Letterbox”-The lyrics of this song go by so fast. It just killed me how talented these guys were- incorporating all the wordiness, but still having such subtlety in the backing music. If you’re not listening really closely you miss how beautiful the chords are because of the crazy vocal lines. What also used to blow me away was how they did all this under almost anonymity. They were a tiny dot on the big picture of the music world. And something about that kind of appealed to me as well, the idea of these unknown musical geniuses making their music for whomever would listen. Something told me they would have made this music for just themselves.
“Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love”-again, there’s a melancholy vibe just bubbling under the surface. That’s one of their specialties--playing with the listener’s expectations. There is a certain kind of sadness underneath the overall “up-beatness.” It’s hard to explain, never mind.
That’s the short of it. This album is full of songs that not only grab your ears from the first time, but a lot of the sounds will be rattling around in your brain long after you’ve heard them. And it is a “happy” album, but in the weird TMBG way of being “happy.” But it’s interesting to me how this album is held in pretty high regard for the band, but their live sets regularly include only two or three of these songs.
On Time
Saint Augustine has a great meditation on the concept of time where he talks about the slipperiness of trying to define it. I like the idea of a muddle-headed philosopher and he definitely comes across as one when he admits to confusion when trying to pin down what exactly we’re talking about when we use words like “the past,” “the present,” and “the future.” The interesting thing in his little discourse is that neither the past nor the future really exists. The past is just something in our heads, a memory perhaps, and the future is equally just an abstraction. And then he goes one step further to say that the present is in flux between these two. When we say “now,” it has already slipped into the past.
I agree with Augustine that time may just be a concept or an idea that doesn’t really exist. But it may just be one of those necessary categories of thought that William James and, I believe, Kant say are necessary for humans to believe in, regardless.
I was talking to my friend Charlie the other day about his busy schedule and being in college. And it brought up my theory of how we measure time and how I think it changes throughout our lives.
When I was in high school, the basic unit of time was a day. All of our responsibilities and appointments revolved around asking ourselves “what do I have to do today?” Every new day brought the same basic schedule-go to this class, then
this class, and then
this class… And when I went to college, it seems the basic unit of time was expanded out to a week-“Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I do
this and then on Tuesday and Thursday I do
that.” On Sunday nights I would organize in my head what was coming up for the following week.
When I say “the basic unit of time,” I suppose I really mean “the amount of time that passes without our really being aware of it.” Since I’m out of college, it seems that I make plans and keep a schedule in my head for about two weeks out. So, I think that two weeks is now my base. Maybe when I get to be my parents’ age, it’ll be a month or two. Maybe if I get to be my grandparents’ age, it’ll be a year or two.
Anyway, the mind is a pretty incredible device to be keeping tabs on the flux of this thing called “time,” the reality of which it can’t even convince itself.
Abbey Road
As I alluded to before, the other Beatles album my dad had was
Abbey Road and it was just as phenomenal to my high school mind as
The White Album. As the last album that they recorded together, stories vary as to whether or not they knew that it would be their swan song. It sure sounds to me like they were trying to wrap up their career with one last hurrah.
It couldn’t have been more than a couple weeks between my discovery of
The White Album and
Abbey Road and their legends loom about equally as large in my psyche.
I’ll get the gist of this post out quick for those of you who are frequently bothered by customers when trying to read this stuff: I believe
Abbey Road is about as close as you can get to a perfect album.
Now that I’ve said that, I must admit that I’ve always sort of just ignored the lead-in song “Come Together.” Maybe my standards aren’t high enough or I am lazy or whatever, but I’m willing to forgive one only “good” song on an album otherwise comprised of “great” songs.
First, let me speak in generalities. Why’s this album so great, to my ears? Mainly, the continuity. Let’s face it; the “album” is pretty much a dead medium. I don’t mean vinyl. I mean the art of sequencing songs together and incorporating common themes, and establishing a unified “sound” in the studio. Doing all of this to create a sum greater than its parts is, well, like I said, a dead art form. Today’s ruling musical expression is the single or the video--short, easily digestible fragments and sound bytes. This is the age where you express your musical aptitude with a ring tone. Our attention spans are short. Ours is the generation of the “mix CD,” where more than one song by a particular artist is the kiss of death. We would rather arrange our Ipods so as to best accompany our daily adventures than allow an album to
take us on a sonic adventure. We would rather create our own cue list of faves to serve as a kind of audio wallpaper than really set aside the time to experience an extended artwork. It’s kind of like appreciating post card photos rather than a 4’ x 4’ canvas.
The idea of an extended musical art work like
Abbey Road is pretty much crazy-talk today, and I for one think that’s a real shame because I don’t see “great albums” ever coming back.
Towards the end, you have seven songs that segue between each other flawlessly to end in the emotional climax of the album’s zen-like moral: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” At the end of it all, you feel like you just went somewhere. Anybody who has ever been in a band and written musical material will probably agree to just how difficult of a prospect that is. It’s hard enough to link two songs together musically, but seven? And to top it off, “Carry That Weight,” the penultimate song of the suite, refers back to the melody of “You Never Give Me Your Money,” which started off the whole shooting match. When I first heard those trumpets recapitulate the theme, I felt like I was witness to something truly extraordinary.
Speaking of self-referential material, the melody on “Sun King” starts out as a slow recitation of the melody to Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun,” even more evidence of a larger artistic intent. And ALL of this is most likely lost in our present-day computerized, pick-a-song-any-song music distribution system. Anyway, the part of me that loved and loves this album is the same part of me that loved the Big Ideas of Pink Floyd. Once again, it was showing that rock and pop music can have an artful undercurrent.
Incidentally, I’m also amazed at the lack of commercial intent anywhere near the idea of this album’s suite. But since The Beatles are who they are, (or were who they were), I have heard the whole thing played on the radio as one whole, the way it was meant to be heard.
So, briefly, track-by-track:
“Come Together”-not one of my faves, as I’ve said before. I’m not much of a fan of later Lennon songs. Blues-rock doesn’t really speak to me much, but everything from this point on is just golden. Like a gooey, violin-soaked Twinkie.
“Something”-I did a college musical analysis paper on this Harrison song and it’s one of my all-time favorites of any artist. The modulation from C Major to A Major at about the midway point gets me every time.
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”-McCartney gets slagged by critics for his lack of “seriousness” and cutesy rhymes, but I would defy any critic to write a single melody as memorable as even this seemingly tossed-off song has in its chorus. Also, this is the album where the Beatles discovered the Moog synthesizer and it’s used to nicely subtle effect here.
“Oh! Darling”-it’s been said that McCartney was the driving force behind most of the ideas on the album and this song is clearly no exception. It seems mildly referential to 50’s doo-wop, but somehow they pull it off a little more
rock than roll. A fantastic vocal performance by Paul on this one.
“Octopus’s Garden”-it’s the “Ringo song" for the album, and surprisingly more complex than his average country-rock song. Great background vocal effects and again, sort of referential to 50’s doo-wop. Also features some pretty nice playing on Harrison’s part
“I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”-the real genius of this song is its gradual build-up to white noise at the end.
“Here Comes the Sun”-the real genius of this song is its contrast with what just came immediately before.
“Because”-I was blown away by this song on first listen. The vocals are as thick as a Carpenters song, but the harmonies are way more complex than your average rock song. The third Anthology presents a version with just the backing vocals and it is a beautiful thing.
I won’t go over the medley since I’ve kind of covered all that and it just leaves “Her Majesty,” which was tacked onto the end of the master tape. And I love how this grand album has a catchy little postscript to remind us of the Beatles’ sense of humor and to remind us that: this is art, but it’s still supposed to be fun.
And after being introduced to
Abbey Road, I was sold on the Beatles and my primary mission was to hear everything, to figure out how they got from point A-“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” to point B-glorious, grand statements like this. After discovering the veritable mine of great music in the Beatles catalog, I knew from that point on that I wanted music to be some part of my life. I wanted it to be inextricable from my identity. And so far, I’d say that’s pretty much been the case.
The Last Word on The White Album
Okay, so now for my highlights off
The White Album:
1)
While My Guitar Gently Weeps-this is one of the more memorable Harrison songs for me. The reverb-laden piano sound at the beginning lends a very dramatic voice to the song and of course there’s guest musician Eric Clapton’s solo that’s pretty epic. Right up there with Jimmy Page’s “Stairway” solo. Minor key verses and Major key choruses. It’s a blueprint for success.
2)
Happiness is a Warm Gun-it’s basically two songs smushed into one. I always liked the “Bang Bang Shoot Shoot” background vocals.
3)
Martha My Dear-Total McCartney. Tricky piano part with lots of syncopation and a great climbing vocal line
4)
Piggies-another Harrison song that may lay the social commentary on a little thick, but this is so far removed from any pop music I had ever heard before that it can be excused. Heavily features harpsichord and strings for goodness sake!
5)
I Will- another beautiful, flowing McCartney melody accompanied by sparse acoustic sounds. This open acoustic sound is what I most often associate with this album
6)
Julia- one of the most, if not THE most gentle songs in the Beatles catalog. During the verses, John’s voice rarely strays from one pitch and the harmony stays stagnant except for the moving bass line. Two lines of text always struck me from this song, (A rarity for me): “When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind,” and “Half of what I say is meaningless, But I say it just to reach you, Julia.” As a sensitive high schooler, it was not hard to relate.
I’ve always kind of felt bad for the songs on the second half of the White Album, because they never got listened to quite as much. You’re usually wiped out by the first half. And it seems that second disc has some more “out-there” music.
7)
Yer Blues- one of the few songs that was a real band recording, all of them in the room at the same time. Total John Lennon rock n’ roll
8)
Mother Nature’s Son-yet another McCartney acoustic number and one of my favorites to sing and play at my house when no one’s listening
9)
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey- not really one of my favorites; actually the clanging sounds during the verses can be pretty jarring. But I’d still take it over just about 90% of new music that’s on offer today.
10)
Helter Skelter- quite simply, this is The Beatles trying to out-rock The Who. Again, not one of my favorites, probably because I don’t care to hear the Beatles “rawk.”
11)
Honey Pie-I always liked this one because of George’s stretching out with some extended jazz harmonies and I’ve always been a sucker for McCartney’s “show tune” excursions.
12)
Revolution 9- John Lennon’s attempt at
musique concrete. And while I must say I get very little pleasure from listening to this, I am amazed at the chutzpah they had to even release this. With this one song, (as well as most of this album), The Beatles challenged their audience, something that rarely happens today, at least in mainstream music. But that’s just the thing-the Beatles WERE the mainstream of their time. I gotta respect them for that.
13)
Good Night-this song’s beauty is more George Martin’s doing than any of The Beatles’. The string arrangement speaks for itself.
That’s a lot to take in my friends, and that’s just the highlights. I know, a lot of reading. So, enough for today.
Any White Album fans out there?
Hey Daddy-o
All right. So back to my musical adventure down memory lane. In today’s installment, I shall try to relate to you perhaps the most world-shattering musical discovery of my life thus far. I believe it happened either my sophomore or junior year in high school. I’ve got a post entitled “Dear Old Mom,” but today, on his birthday no less, I shall relate mine own father’s most significant contribution to my musical education, and that is an obscure band from across the pond called The Beatles.
I realize nothing new can be said about The Beatles or their music. It’s almost impossible to say anything even interesting about them anymore. However, this is my blog and I would be untrue to my purpose if I left out The Beatles as an obvious assumption.
Jewish folks talk a lot about inheriting faith from the generations before them, and what’s kind of interesting to me is that I first heard The Beatles, in a critical way, exactly like pops did-on vinyl! How cool is that? It was the early to mid-nineties and I was discovering new music on records. My dad had just a few records from when he was probably my age-Stan Getz, the Easy Rider soundtrack, probably some Joan Baez. And I had made my way through the Getz-Gilberto albums (because I was the swinging-est junior high hipster around), but I always ignored his two Beatles records—
The White Album and
Abbey Road. In my head, I figured I knew what they were all about—even 30 years down the line, I had seen footage from the Ed Sullivan show and heard about “Beatle haircuts.” I knew they sang catchy pop songs like “She Loves You” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”
Oh, but brothers and sisters, I was in for a paradigm shift of unfathomable magnitude that day I finally got bored enough to actually pull that
White Album out of the pile of forgotten music in our living room cabinet. Of course, the idea of the plain white jacket with nothing on it was both intriguing and sort of boring to my high school mind. The only thing that struck me visually as I held that treasure in my hands was how “used” those two records looked. The faces of the records were literally gray; they had been played so many times before I ever entered the world.
On a whim, I cued up Disc 1, Side 1 and I must admit “Back in the U.S.S.R.” was catchy to me, but it didn’t sound that far removed from the happy, poppy songs I had heard here and there as a kid. This wasn’t music to set a soul on fire by any means.
Ah, but the sound of the jet engine at the end of the first song segued into the sound of an unadorned, detuned and droning electric guitar melody and it was just all too clear that this wasn’t really The Beatles. The Beatles sang goofy songs about teenage devotion and dressed in funny suits. This wasn’t “The Beatles” to me. It was some kind of musical art. The guitars weren’t chimey and bright; they were actually kind of sad sounding most of the time.
Anyway, I was hooked in by the first few seconds of “Dear Prudence” and I just had to sit down to see if there were any other surprises in store. And boy, were there! Every single song sounded like a different band to me. From the seriousness of “Dear Prudence” to the weirdness of “Glass Onion” and “Wild Honey Pie” to the barrelhouse Jamaican-ness of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” That’s a shock for you!
I’m telling you, this album was phenomenal! There were so many songs and each of them had a personality of their own. Some songs were just a voice with an acoustic guitar. Some songs had pianos and organs. Some of them were just a regular rock band. One song was just a bunch of crazy sounds.
I came to find out later that this album was made during pretty bad times for the band. Both Ringo and George had quit and rejoined at separate times during the making of the record and they had employed a new method of working, with each writer being responsible for finishing their own songs with very little collaboration with the others. The way I understand it, there were few songs where all the guys were in the room together, probably because they couldn’t stand to be around each other, (and Yoko) anymore.
Be that as it may, I still think it’s a fantastic album of fantastic songs with interesting melodies and harmonies and all kinds of different instrumentation and arrangements. Even the “highlights” for this album are too much for me to get into. Perhaps another post for that, for this is getting long-winded even for me.
Suffice it to say, pop music or rock n’ roll, or whatever you want to call it, was never the same for me after discovering this album. All rules were thrown out the window.
Whatcha' Readin'?
I just got done reading an interesting book called _Rare Earth:Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe_ by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. The authors are two scientists in the relatively new scientific field called astrobiology and the basic premise of the book is that, while previous research says that life may very well be present, perhaps even
flourishing elsewhere in the universe, the chances of
complex life are incredibly slim, if the history of life on earth is used as a model. (Of course, life, even basic life like bacteria and single-celled organisms, has not been discovered "out there." "Research" really just means mathematical probability equations.)
The authors cited all kinds of things that have possibly affected and allowed the development of life over our earth's history. Most of the stuff they were talking about I had never even heard about before: Snowball Earth, multiple mass extinction events like comets and radiation, the Cambrian explosion. But they also mention situations in the case of earth that are close to unreproducible elsewhere in the universe, such as being just the right distance from the right kind of star, with a Jupiter-like planet just the right distance away to shield the planet from comet and asteroid bombardment, yet not affect the planet too much, gravitationally, etc.
It was all very interesting to me. Paleontology and biology are not my areas of expertise to say the least, but the idea that ties all of this together is that all of the variables in the formation of life here on earth would have to be present on other planets as well, for complex life to form.
Pretty interesting stuff...
Radio, Radio
Continuing on in my litany of musical influences and revelations, I must mention that around eighth grade or so, I stopped listening to the radio and MTV for musical enlightenment. (Now, I try not to be one of those haughty, pretentious “Oh, you listen to the radio? What a small brain you must have in comparison to mine”-type people. I just know it’s not for me.) And I really haven’t been “with it” ever since. It’s not like I decided one day “from here on out I will refuse to be ‘with it.’” I just gradually became more interested in instrumental music and music of the past, which weren’t on any station’s play lists.
So, I missed Nirvana’s big breakthrough. Actually, that’s not correct. I remember watching them perform “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on Saturday Night Live and thinking to myself, “Why are these guys so angry?” I missed the explosion of Seattle grunge, which most critics point to as one of the most important times for popular music. How nerdy is this-when Nirvana and Pearl Jam were apparently “changing the face of popular music,” I was more interested in a guy who lived in the late 17th and early 18th century named Johann Sebastian Bach.
But I think that’s a part of musical education-to refer back to the past. Let the “superstars” and “divas” of today do what they will, dragging the press along with their hype, like groveling sycophants. The things that last, the things that are talked about or still listened to in twenty years or so will have proved their merit by nature of their mere existence.
And so, from that point on, I was determined to find the music that spoke to me, popular or not, by my own means, my own research and the occasional review.
So, all you radio listeners, and MTV watchers and people more plugged-in to pop culture than I am- here’s your chance to fire off. Who is the least-talented, yet overexposed “musical artist” today? Who is the most obvious, manufactured creation of a record company out there? Who is the one “artist” or group out there right now that will be a punch line within a year or two and by twenty years will be an obscure reference by Dennis Miller in his stand-up act? I might not know who you’re talking about, but it’ll be therapeutic, don’t you think?
Commence screeds and rants…….NOW!
Poesy
I don't know how many of you know this, but in my later college years, I fancied myself a bit of a poet, primarily because of the encouragement of one of my teachers. It never felt quite right, though, kind of like I was faking the funk so I abandoned it all. (Of course, I get all kinds of creative outlet with the band, so it's no big loss.) Here's an old one that's sort of on-topic.
On Love and a Silver-Plated MouthpieceThe course of true love never did run smooth (A Midsummer Night’s Dream I.1.134)
It’s funny,
I still remember all those years as a trumpet student.
I learned from weathered gurus
who knew a thing or two
Like Jesus and his crew
or Confucius and his league of would-be gentlemen.
And we all had the same goal-
a
s u s t a i n e d
emoted
musical moment with complete control
And like the Son of Man
My last teacher’s disciples had their varying potentials and personalities.
I know some of us had gotten really good at going through the motions over the years
But mostly,I remember:
-The Golden Boy-
He used to tell all of us green-horns about this blissful other side
where,
apparently,
if you practiced all the right nebulous exercises and scales enough times
and could be knowledgeable, yet not threatening,
in conversation with the right people-
you could actually get PAID for that harmonious,
s u s t a i n e d,
moment of inner peace and beauty
emoted with complete control.
Yet I guess I never got over the fact that it was six o’clock on a snowy, winter morning and I was firmly pressing a piece of metal against my face.
