of December and alternate realities

This has been a busier month than usual, as Decembers are often wont to be. Five gigs on the books, plus at least one rehearsal, plus of course 37.5 hours every week on the daygig. And it's been no picnic there either. There's been a lot of shuffling these days, what with folks getting ready to retire and other folks getting ready to move into their spots--if we were a deck of cards(and who's to say we aren't?)we'd be getting pretty frayed around the edges.

Well I for one have been getting a bit frayed around the edges, whether I exist in card or corporeal form. My gigs covered every weekend, and as the month went, I wished at times that I'd left a free weekend in there as far as booking gigs, a 48-hr period where I could just catch my breath. Some time off.

And that's the problem! Only so much time to work with. If you work a dayjob, chances are you're doing it five days a week, roughly 40 hours per week. That leaves you with two days off every week, and if you have a sideline business like playing gigs, there goes at least one of them. Days, that is.

The actual experience of playing gigs is usually a positive one. I try and accept those gigs I think will be to my liking and avoid those I don't, and am usually okay. My only problem is the time expenditure, the fact that your weekend time is cut into. If you could somehow distill the experience of playing, the joyous interactivity of a good group, and remove the time constraints- the necessity of the event happening at a fixed point in time, You could both "play the gigs" and enjoy your weekend.

Perhaps the gig could itself be a sort of 'virtual reality' you'd experience on your computer or DVD Player, or perhaps the experience would be such that you'd have to enter another dimension to go through it. A nonlinear dimension. Perhaps something entered by a portal not unlike what Kurt Vonnegut Jr described as a Chronosynclastic Infundibulum. This is a funnel, a 'wormhole of the Universe', wherein the great truths reside". And then from there, you'd get the whole experience irrespective of time or space.

And that way, you'd still have your weekends. Makes sense to me anyway..

The Public Eye

I'm not so sure I want it anymore.

To be in the public eye, that is. Everybody who takes up an instrument, especially guitar or bass or drums or keyboards- the "rock band" instruments- dreams of being up on stage playing for hundreds, nay thousands, of people. Being admired by millions, having untold fame and fortune. Living the dream.

And at its best, who wouldn't want all that? All the money you could imagine, and thus a luxurious- I hate this word but it's the best I know to use here-lifestyle, one with all the creature comforts your little heart could desire: a fancy house with all the trimmin's, a fancy car(if that's your thing), a boat or two, a staff of servants to take care of your every need, plus all kinds of attractive folks who are yours for the taking- for those "other" needs..

Those who achieved stardom, especially after a period of struggling obscurity- two people come to mind here: cartoonist R. Crumb and actor Kevin Bacon- have reported that being able to "get girls" was something that came a lot easier once they were famous. Crumb in particular has spoken about how his fame brought the beautiful women to him that were heretofore only dreamt of.

I have had a few women in my life who've fancied me, thank goodness. One of them even married me. But "getting girls" has never really come easily. Thus this would be the aspect of fame n' fortune that would most appeal to me. That great unattained thing. You can keep all the other material possessions, just give me the babes I've pined over but never gotten.

Then again, I wouldn't want someone who was there just to spend my money or for some form of self-aggrandizement, like advancing their actress/model career. Let them go hang out with Hugh Hefner. I'd want them there because they liked my music, or something to do with me as a person.

It's a hard dream to give up. True, you do modify it- most of us anyway-between adolescence and adulthood, the dream of fame and fortune. Usually just miniaturize it, put it on a smaller scale(i.e. local or maybe regional, as opposed to worldwide), but it's rarely just completely abandoned. If I can't be a worldwide sensation, I'll be a local one.

All well and good. You probably won't make a fortune, but may well be able to make at least a workable living, and with perhaps some of those other 'fringe benefits'. I've seen some do fairly well as active local musicians. More power to 'em.

Me, I once made almost half a living as an active localer at one time. But what with being up on stage that much(and in front of the same people in the same places) I began to feel like I was up on display. Self-conscious, and from that a bit frazzled. And the 'fringe benefits' didn't happen nearly as often as I'd have liked. So for me, it didn't work. I'd at least have to diversify my locations, the places I played.

There are definite parallels of course to local and worldwide fame. Both locally and otherwise, you can enjoy the adulation of either a small or large following, and make a living from that same following- plus reap other various benefits. But the price tag is YOUR ASS!

The more well-known you are, the more of that ass is "owned" by your following. Well, certainly by the media, who feels that, to quote Howard Cosell, "the public has a right to know". When things are going well, you can bask in the bright light of media attention. But-and I've noticed this in many big celebrities, a certain golf legend to name one- if something should go awry, your ass is hung out to dry!! Your career(or at least your endorsements)can come to an ignominious end, or at least have that stain to it that you can't quite get out. That same bright light can burn your ass!

Some years back, locally, there was a certain newscaster who had a certain video that quickly made the rounds. He'd actually tried to get rid of it, and some curious spirit found it in the guy's garbage can. It spread like wildfire, or, perhaps more aptly, like a nasty metastasis in the local body that finally snuffed the sucker out. There was even a T-shirt announcing an eponymous film festival. And the funny thing about all this(in an inherently unfunny situation, at least as regards the ignominy on the part of the individual )was that as porn, it was really tame stuff!

That's the chance you take when your profession puts you in front of a lot of people. Extreme examples perhaps(though none is as much so as the Michael Jackson story, and of the media that crucified and then deified him), but still show the other side of fame.

I remember myself wishing for fame and fortune as a youngster, and even not-so-young'ster. But anymore I find myself pulling back from the whole 'public eye' thing. I'll always be a musician, and always a blogger as well(or some kind of half-assed writer). I love to play music and I love even more to write music. But my personality is too quirky and introverted to do well up in the bright lights-you'd think I'd know this by now. I'm better as a behind-the-scenes kinda guy, with the occasional gig in some public establishment.

For the most part, give me the gigs where you're off in a corner playing for some business's annual party(but still get to play your ass off), or a home-recording setup where I can get crazy all by myself. Out of the public eye, but still viewable out of a corner of it. There's still that remnant of the original dream...

The Letter F

Well I guess it had to end here. Classical composers: Faure, Frescobaldi. Writers: Faulkner, Flaubert, Frost. Artists: fuckicantthinkofanybody.

The Letter E

I can't believe I'm still following this out, but here goes. Classical composers: Elgar, Erb. Writers: Emerson, Ellison. Artists: Escher.

The Letter D

The ice is getting thinner, but I think I can squeeze another one of these out. Classical composers: Debussy, Delius. Writers: Dostoevsky, Dickens, Dickinson, DeMaupassant. Artists: Dali, Donatello. It's the artists I fear I'll run out of soonest.

The Letter C

A bit trickier, but I think we can manage something here. Classical composers: Czerny, Cherubini, Chopin, Carter, Cage, Crumb, Copland. Writers: Chayefsky, Cheever, Camus, Castandeda. Artists: Chagall, Calder.

Eh, at least something to show in all three categories. I don't think I could do that with artists and writers with all 26 letters of the alphabet, nor could I with composers, but I could come closer in that area, even having something for the letter X(Iannis Xenakis).

The Letter B

On your mark, get set- go! Classical composers: Bach(JS, CPE, JW), Beethoven, Brahms, Bartok, Berg, Berlioz, Britten, Busoni, Bruckner, Bernstein, Barber, Berio, Babbitt, Bassett, Boulez, Buxtehude, Bizet. Writers: Boll, Brautigan, Baudelaire, Burroughs, Bukowski, Beckett, Baldwin. Artists: Boticelli, Breughel(elder and younger), Bosch.

Hm. A bit better on the composers than my previous effort(that tricky letter M, see below)and on the writers, but nicht zu gut on the artists. Can't win 'em all I guess..

Bach. Offenbach. More than a coincidence?

Have you ever considered the similarity between Bach and Offenbach? Yes, Johann Sebastian Bach and Jacques Offenbach. Without Bach, there'd be no Offenbach. He'd be Offen-something or other, but not Offenbach. If, as it's said, that there are no accidents in the Universe, then there'd likely be an Offenbrahms. And an Offenbeethoven. And maybe even an Offencrain.*

Also, there'd be no Verdi without Monteverdi. No Schuman without Schumann. Without Weber, Webern would just be n, although he'd still be a "Von" guy. And Yoko, without Nono, would just be Yoko ______.

We definitely need our predecessors, our forbears, if only for their names.

*Samuel Crain(1954-), obscure American composer.

Them Changes

Well at the moment I have one guitar student, whom I teach maybe every two or three weeks. We work mainly on how to play songs, how to adapt them to the guitar. Not always easy, but therein lies the learning. At very least, you end up knowing more about your fretboard than you did before. But we always give it a good effort as far as making the music on the page(quite often written for piano)work on the guitar.

This is one of the few situations in my teaching life where I travel to the student's residence rather then having them come to mine, or to a studio. I don't normally do this, don't really care for it, but this is an exceptional circumstance, so I make an exception. And I reward myself for the drive every time by getting dinner on the way home at a local Taco joint. Tasty food- I'm a Sancho man myself, plus rice-but tired service. Not quite rude, but just tired.

But then I'll take good food and funky service. At least the food's good. And the guitar lesson is always a pleasant experience, even if I don't care for the drive. So I have a drive I don't care for with a good lesson, and good food with slightly surly service. I guess it averages out..

This last lesson was okay as lessons go. Not really unpleasant as such but- well, partly to mostly sunny. Problem: chord changes. In this case, the changes to My Funny Valentine. It gets confusing for student and teacher alike, sifting through the various versions of standard tunes. The Real Book has one set of changes and your songbook has another. And the teacher has yet another, ever-so-slightly different from those two.

For the sake of just learning the damn tune, the elegant solution is just to pick one. And you can do it more or less arbitrarily(by State Flags if you prefer)since there are really no OFFICIAL changes to any of these tunes, even though there are, yes, original ones(which may themselves not be as musically satisfying as subsequent versions)and those more or less agreed-upon by common practice.

That's right. There are no "Official" changes. Learn a version of the tune- maybe even the one in the Real Book-and then have your fun once you've thoroughly mastered it. And that's the beauty of jazz. Saying it in your own way. I never wanted to say it somebody else's way anyway. Not for long.

We ended the guitar lesson being pretty much on the same page. It was more a matter of my methodology as a teacher, my needing in this case to just pick a version of the tune we're learning, preferably one with a printed page so you have something 'tangible' right in front of you. One of the rare times when there was dissension in the lesson, and on the way home got my 2 sanchos and rice from the Taco place with friendly service!!

I guess the suddenly friendly service at the Taco place was the Universe's way of counterbalancing the mild but still uncharacteristic negativity of the guitar lesson. Or maybe it's more that a good(i.e. positive, non-incendiary)guitar lesson and friendly service at the Taco place afterward are mutually exclusive. Something's got to give way, on one side or the other. Or maybe it's just me ascribing meaning to it based on my own prejudices rather than any kind of objective reality. I think I'll pick Number 3, Alex...

Well that may be one of those mysteries I'll never really know the answer to. If indeed there's any one answer to it. Like the changes to My Funny Valentine.

Forbidden Tones

I remember being a music student in college back in the 70's, studying musical composition. Our teacher was more the avant-garde type than most all of his students, particularly me with my Hindemithian quasi-tonality and for the most part early 20th c. musical aesthetic, but still offered musical counsel that we could use. He cited to me an example of a fellow student, who had in his lessons--music comp was taught on a private lesson basis as opposed to a classroom setting--asked the question "can I do this?"

"Never", my teacher said, "ask 'can I do this?'". The only valid question here is "will it work?".

Indeed. Music theory is itself merely an afterthought, a codification of what composers have come up with by asking themselves- will this work? And if it does, it becomes 'music theory'.

There have, of course, been forbidden tones in the past, and for all kindsa crazy religious/philosophical reasons- themselves perfectly logical and reasonable to their holders at the time. A music lesson in the 16th century in which that question had been asked- can I do this- , may well have been answered with a resounding NO(or perhaps nay). . But then in the 20th century--and, let's hope, even more so here in the 21st--we're past the decorum of harmonic "permissions". Anything goes, so long as it works.

Let's imagine though, for just a second, that there were tones, or perhaps a certain progression of notes, that was forbidden by the government. All recorded music and sheet music would be scanned of course to make sure none of the no-no notes were in there. And all electric guitars and keyboards would be programmed to set off an alarm if those notes were played. Within minutes, your house would be surrounded and you'd have at least 10 individuals pointing guns at you. But they'd let you live so you could stand trial..

And they'd have public executions of all the violators of Musical Law. The "forbidden" sounds would be played to accompany the hangings or shootings. In that way these criminals- these "sound-criminals" if you will, would die by the vile notes they played.

Of course you'd have your revolutionaries, and the "forbidden" sounds would be their anthem. They'd de-program the guitars and keyboards, and hopefully lead people out of musical tyranny.

You could take Musical Law another way as well, that being a more gradated system of lawfulness, of musical legality. Certain notes or intervals could be deemed merely misdemeanor offenses while others would be felonies, for instance a Perfect 4th vs a minor 9th. So you'd have your law-abiding musical citizens, your borderline troublemakers, and your musical incorrigibles. "Ahh the Music Prisons are full of guys like you!"


Anything goes. Music is the most abstract of the arts, and that fact itself gives it a headstart on expressive freedom, much less the perhaps-not-infinite-but-still-vast number of possible tonal variations. Some things may be harder on the ears than others(even if they're tonal!)but there are no crimes of noteage.

One closing item, one thing, and from this same period, that made me laugh just a little bit and is apropos here, is an old comic strip from the National Lampoon. A little girl, age 12 or so hears her folks huffing and puffing and her Mom moaning. She calls the cops, "help, my Father is killing my Mother!!" So the cops bust in to the parents' bedroom to find them screwing. They're doing it doggie-style, and the wife turns to the husband and says, angrily, " I told you this position was illegal!"

A Purse Made Out of Pus

Well you can't really say no muss, no fuss
But all the same, tell Mary! Tell Gus!
If you still don't know quite what it is,
It's a purse made out of pus!

Okay, not much marketability there: "Gee, Patty's quite the hit at the party with her new Pus Purse!" Then again, there's a market for everything, really. Disgusting human secretions/emissions? Sure, why not! Probably even Pus Purses, provided of course that you don't really get any onya--provided that you're protected by a patina of clear plastic.

So Patty's Pus Purse just might be the hit of the party. But then Sally just might take over the soiree with her new Snot Handbag.

RIP MJ

Wow. Michael Jackson has died. A wonderfully dynamic entertainer, with a great energy to his performances. The King of Pop. I was glad to see such an outpouring of emotion from fans all over the world-- strangely enough, courtesy of the same mass media that vilified him not that long ago....



I hadn't thought of him in years. Strangely enough, since all that hoohah was going on about him in the media as to his various alleged aberrations. I was never a big fan per se, but always respected his talent. And that's what will shine through in the end, regardless of what he did or didn't do otherwise. Great stuff.



As far as all the bizarre behavior, who knows? Personally, I think he just snapped, and that the subsequent media "coverage"(make that scrutiny)just exacerbated the situation- like a magnifying glass on a leaf outside under the sun. Fried his psyche real good. Of course this is just my halfassed opinion, not any great pronouncement of fact..



As a creative artist of any kind, but particularly a performer--such as an actor or instrumentalist or vocalist--you give a part of your ass to your audience every time you perform in front of them. If you're a good actor or player or singer, you've shared something very intimate to them. You've gotten inside them. And that part that's gotten inside they take with them. So thus they now own a piece of your ass. And the bigger the scale you perform on, the more of that ass they own.

Rest in peace, Mr. Jackson. It's a shame they crucified you before they deified you. Hopefully you won't have those problems where you've gone from here.

The Letter M

Just as a sort of intellectual exercise, I was trying to see how many classical composers I could come up with whose last names begin with the letter M. Okay, so far: Mozart, Mendelsohn, Mahler, Milhaud, Menotti, Monteverdi, Mussoursky(sp?), Martino, Messaien.

Not too many. Let's try artists: Monet, Matisse, Michaelangelo, Munch. Hmm, even fewer there. How about writers? Moliere, du Maupassant, Miller, Michener, More, Mann, Melville, Matheson, Machiavelli.

Well, between composers and writers, about even. Trailing in the M artists. I guess that's the area I need to work on.

The New Curriculum

Granted, I should do the necessary research before embarking on these blog projects , but I'm assuming that Colleges and Universities(though perhaps not the overwhelming majority of them)still carry a Music Therapy major. This was popular in the mid-70's and into the 80's, and I knew a number of folks who went into it. They worked in hospitals and clinics, helping to restore health in their clients by means of music.

My question is, now that we're in the 21st century, if you're a music student at a Terrorist University, would you be able to major in Music Torture? I reckon it'd be like Music Therapy only you'd be endeavoring to cause pain and suffering rather than relieve it. You'd most likely start out with simple interrogations and then work your way up to the real horror.

For me, the music of torture would probably be a combo of Alvin and the Chipmumks, the Bee Gees, and a few tunes by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons(most notably "Big Girls Don't Cry"). Annoying vocal groups with high-pitched stylings are pretty much the root canal surgery of my psyche.

Of course for many, this would be Heaven. A steady diet of these groups would be a Nirvana they'd have to try mightily to conceal, lest it were taken away and replaced with, say, jazz(ugh!). A state of cosmic bliss as they listened, forever, to "cry-y-yyyy" and other such vocal--stylings..

Music Torture. What a concept. And as well how the music used as torture, the pieces of punishment, would vary from individual to individual. Who knows- I'm sure there'd be somebody out there(and yes, I'm giving you this one)to whom the worst possible experience would be having to listen to my music! "Aaaugh- I'll talk! Just turn that stuff off!!"

Well what the hell. At least it'd be getting played.