beautiful, funny, sad & true

Last night, I was co-hosting my friend’s really cool radio show.  While driving home, I was stopped by the police on suspicion of a DUI.  After being questioned, taken to the station, passing all the various tests, and being kept awake all night, I was cleared and released at ten o’clock this morning.  I got home by eleven and took a nap for an hour and a half.

This afternoon, I sold a keyboard case on Craigslist to a really nice guy who plays bass for churches in West Linn and Vancouver.

This afternoon, a lady came by to try (and hopefully buy) one of the two accordions I’m selling.  She had a third one to look at elsewhere first, so she wanted to try that one before she settled on one of mine.  She told me she’d let me know after she saw that one.  Totally fine.  Let’s hope she buys mine.

This afternoon, I wrote out the complete version of the police story here in BFS&T, in order to capture all the details as best I could remember them.

This evening, I played accordion with PolishCellist and our violinist friend at a swanky downtown venue with a North African theme, as part of a gigantic bellydance event featuring the most famous bellydancer in the world.  She’s so famous that even I know who she is.  The venue was full of elaborately clad dancers, cabaret performers, musicians, photographers, and a host of other interesting people.  It was loud, frenetic, and beautiful, and I’ll remember it for a long time.

Just now, I got home from the bellydance event and wrote down this short synopsis of the day’s  events, in order to capture all the details as best I could remember them.  The ironic, caricatural nature of the day’s highs and lows, and the significance of the juxtaposition between them, was not lost on me.  The whole time I was enjoying the gig I kept laughing to myself and thinking, This morning, I was in jail.

My eyes won’t focus anymore.  I’m finally going to collapse in bed, so that I can be ready for rehearsal at ten o’clock in the morning.

Life is weird.

How was YOUR day?

This morning I had a dream that I can’t seem to shake off.  It was a very long dream, with multiple sections, most of which aren’t worth sharing, but the disturbing part is one in which I’m playing cello with two musician acquaintances; we’ll call them L. and A., since those are their real first initials.  A. is also a cellist, and L. is a violinist, at least in the dream.  I don’t think L. really plays the violin, but she is an excellent and fairly well-known singer and songwriter around town.

So we’re sitting in a room in A.’s house, playing through a tricky piece of classical music.  It isn’t a piece I’m familiar with in real life, and I’m not exactly struggling with it, but I’m certainly not playing at my best, and we’re all aware of that fact.  A. is prepared to overlook it, but L. puts down her violin and glares at me.  “Would you get it together, please?” she asks, crossly.

“Sorry,” I say.  “I’m still warming up.  I’ll improve, you’ll see.  Do you have any suggestions?”

“You always have questions about everything,” she snaps.  “Just play better.”

“Uhhh, okay,” I say, a little bit on the defensive now.  “I told you I’ll get better as I warm up.”

She ignores my response.  “What are you wearing?  A cube? Really?”

“What are you talking about?”  I look down to see that I’m wearing a perfectly good outfit of jeans, an orange crewneck sweater, and a black hoodie. “What’s a ‘cube’?”

She rolls her eyes, then turns back and launches into me.  “Why do people hire you? I thought you had a good reputation for playing drums, or piano, or something.“  She pauses, choosing her words for maximum damage.  “Do you really think we’re ever going to call you again? This is a total waste of our time.  And why do you dress that way?”

“What ‘way’?  I’m dressed fine.”

I’m angry now, and I decide that this has gone on long enough.  I gently place my cello on the floor, stand up and walk across the room to gather up my instrument cables, jacket, and cello case.  A. picks up my cello and holds it out in front of herself so she can inspect it.  I walk back toward her and crouch down to see what she’s looking at.  There are two metal clasps on either side of the back (cellos don’t really have clasps on the back) that are hanging loose.  I tell A., “I’ve never seen those before, but I’m guessing they’re supposed to be tightened, aren’t they?”  I reach over and tighten the one nearest me, and A. tightens the other one.  I notice out of the corner of my eye that L. is glaring at me with a look of disapproval.

Next, A. pulls out a long piece of white twine and starts to thread it through the back of the cello, making a square pattern that is raised about an inch above the back of the instrument.  “What’s that for?” I ask her, which makes L. scoff loudly from across the room.  A. finishes with the twine, and I take my cello over to the case and put it inside, avoiding L. as much as I can in the process.

The dream’s location changes, and the three of us are in A.’s yard.  She is walking across the lawn toward L. and me, and she says, “I carried your cello to your car for you.”

“Oh, thanks.”  I put my hand on the back of her shoulder.  “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind.  It was nice to play with you,” she says.

I don’t entirely believe her, but at least her attempt at platitudes is better than L.’s blatant hostility.  “Thanks, you too,” I tell her.  “See you around.”

L. stands and silently watches me grab my remaining things and walk across the grass toward the dirt road where my car is parked.  For some reason, it’s not my current car, which I also have in the dream, but my first car instead, an ancient blue Toyota station wagon.

I notice that it has a new dent on the driver’s side, where someone has attempted to pry the door open.  The back hatch is raised, thanks to A, and the car and its contents are covered in a thick layer of dust from when cars have driven past on the dirt road.  I throw my belongings in the back, slam the hatch and open the slightly mangled front door.  I brush the dust from the seats and steering wheel, sit down, start the car and drive aimlessly for a while, until I realize that I’ve left a small bag of cables and music gear at A.’s house.  I’m not at all excited to go back over there, but I need my things, so I turn around and head back, with a sense of dread and foreboding.

That’s the point at which I wake up, so you can imagine why I’m stuck feeling kind of blue today.

Like most kids, I spent the first decade or so of my musical life listening to my parents’ record collection, which consisted almost entirely of classical music, with the barest minimum of rock (The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Mamas and the Papas, etc.) thrown in for good measure.  My dad’s rare ventures into so-called rock included easy listening stuff like the Carpenters, which made my brother and me cringe.  By the time I was about twelve years old, I finally discovered that I could have a radio in my room, and that radios had stations that could be changed.  I quickly found out about NPR, because they played a radio version of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I still think is one of the funniest and most brilliant books ever written.  I also found out about heavy metal, which was popular at the time, and which changed my life forever.

There was a late-night (ten o’clock is late-night when you’re thirteen years old) show called Metal Shop, which introduced me to a whole new style of music that I would call my own for the next few years.  The show has a newish online presence, albeit without the original host, but it will give you an idea of the kind of bands they played.  The ones I that knocked me out early on were Dokken, Ratt and Twisted Sister, but I eagerly devoured most of what the show offered up each week.  My brother dutifully followed suit, and before long, we were listening to all the metal masters of the day.  I got my first electric guitar a month after my fifteenth birthday, and this is about all anyone saw of me for the next two years.

I’m happy to have a scanner, finally, so that pictures like the one of my brother in Kiss makeup can finally see the light of day.  I’m sure he’ll be thrilled about this.

I’m sharing it here because A) it’s priceless and I love it, and B) he’s standing in my doorway, so you can see that I had corkboard panels covering my wall, and the entire thing was covered with pictures cut out from magazines like Hit Parader and Circus.  From the top down, they are pictures of Aerosmith, Ratt, the Scorpions, Eddie Van Halen, and Kiss.  You’re welcome.

All of this presented a problem for our mom, who was becoming more and more conservative as the years progressed.  She was worried about the state of our souls, and she would give us books by Christian authors like Bob Larson, who was most famous for his theories about the supposed practice of the ‘backward masking’ of hidden Satanic messages that only appeared in songs when the songs were played in reverse.

Bob is still around and doing his thing, and his focus these days seems to have shifted from the evils of rock music to the exorcism of demons, but back in the day he would spend all his time decrying heavy metal and playing song after song while he did so.  He would compare the supposed innocence of the regular version of a song, but as soon as he played the record backwards, its subversive and insidious ‘real’ meaning was revealed.  One of the most famous examples was “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen, which said, upon reversal, “Decide to smoke marijuana.”  Or DID it?

The best times on the show were when he would open up the phone lines and take callers.  He would argue passionately with the ones who found his claims ridiculous, and he would ‘save’ the ones who felt they needed to repent, right there on the air.  It made for hilarious and riveting radio.   When a caller would say, “But, Bob, [insert famous musician’s name here] wears a cross all the time,” Bob would reply, “I bet he doesn’t even know what that cross means.”  Our favorite quotation of his was about the leather-and-studs clothing that Judas Priest introduced, which was quickly adopted by a lot of the other bands.  Bob made it very clear that “leather and studs are symbols of sado-masochism in the gay community.”

Who’d have thought at the time that Rob Halford of Judas Priest (in the picture above) would, in fact, come out of the closet and announce his homosexuality a decade or so later?  Who’d have thought that he spent much of his free time in gay S&M clubs, and that he would fashion the entire look for his band after the style of clothing that he’d seen and worn in the clubs?  The mind boggles.  All I can say is, when my brother and I were young, ideas like ‘the symbols of sado-masochism in the gay community’ would never have crossed our minds if it wasn’t for Bob Larson.  We liked the music enough that we didn’t really care what people looked like, with the possible exception of Vinnie Vincent, who looked even more feminine than most of the other glam rockers at the time, which put him up against some serious competition.

At some point, I’ll have to write a separate entry about Vinnie Vincent, because his is a very interesting story, and a bit of a rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags one, too.  That’s neither here nor there, at least for the purposes of this story.

It was never our intention to emulate the rock-and-roll lifestyle; we were mostly well-adjusted kids who just wanted to listen to the music.  One day, however, our mom decided that she’d had enough.  She marched into my brother’s room, where he had a large poster of Poison on his wall.  The bass player, Bobby Dall (I didn’t even have to look that up!), had a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth.

“That’s disgusting,” my mom sneered.  “Take it down.”

“What?” my brother asked.  “No way!”

“Yes,” she said firmly.  “Look at that; he’s got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.”

“So?  You think I’m gonna start smoking just because he does?”

“Well. . .maybe.”

“Oh yeah, right.  Why do I have to take this down?  Come here.”  He ran into my room and pointed at a huge poster of Yngwie Malmsteen dressed in black, wearing a huge cross around his neck.  “Look,” he continued, sarcasm dripping from his tongue, throwing Bob Larson’s quotations back into Mom’s face.  “He’s wearing a cross. . .I bet he doesn’t know what that means! And all these guys are wearing leather and studs, which are the symbols of sado-masochism in the gay community!”

At that, Mom came bursting into my room, saying, “WHERE?”

I collapsed into laughter, and my brother was still consumed with rage, but after a few seconds he started to laugh too.  He wasn’t about to take down that poster, though, especially since I had an entire wall devoted to all the same people, and I certainly wasn’t going to take anything down.   Mom stood and stared at my wall, seemingly for the first time, and she didn’t like it one bit.  The symbols of sado-masochism in the gay community were everywhere, and so were the symbols of hedonism and satanism.

“I want this garbage taken down,” she said.

“No.  Why is this such a big deal all of a sudden?  These pictures have been up here for two years.”

“Well, take them down now.”

“No.  I like them.”

My brother and I won that particular argument.  I suspect that Mom realized it was a phase we were going through, and that we’d grow out of it soon enough.  Or maybe she just gave in.  Either way, we won, and the posters stayed up until we moved into our new house a couple of years later, by which time they had been replaced by world maps and posters of the Beatles.

In my experience, if you tell somebody they can’t have something, it only makes them want it more.  When I was in college, there was a pathetic demonstration of some sort (I don’t even remember what the issue was) that involved people waving signs that warned other people not to burn the flag.   One of my friends said, dryly, “I never wanted to burn a flag until they told me I couldn’t.”  Also, I worked at a record store during the time that 2 Live Krew’s Nasty As They Wanna Be came out.  That turd of an album sat untouched on the shelf for months at a time, and we couldn’t pay people to take a copy of it.  As soon as it got banned, however, we couldn’t order copies of it fast enough.  People who didn’t even like rap were buying them just to see what the fuss was about.

The point of all this, to the extent that there is one, is that kids turn out fine most of the time, and the music they listen to is the least of their problems.   Pick your battles, parents, and stay involved with their lives, but be careful not to make mountains out of molehills.  If you do, you’ll only make the kids more likely to rebel, which will exacerbate the issues you were trying to eliminate in the first place.

By way of a denouement, here’s a classic Bloom County cartoon I had on my wall back then, from when Apple introduced the first Macintosh computers.  I figured it would tie in nicely with this particular discussion.

Craigslist strikes again.  Or, rather, L.A. strikes again on Craigslist.  Things like this are what keep me checking in on it so regularly.

Music Industry Intern Needed

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Date: 2011-02-03, 9:45AM PST
Reply to:  [deleted]

Los Angeles based singer/songwriter is looking for a driven individual seeking hands-on experience in the music industry. This internship will give you first hand experience in music venue booking, artist management, public relations, and high level communication with managment team. This individual must have knowledge of local Portland music scene. We are only interested in individuals that are willing to commit to atleast six months of service. Must be interested in pop/acoustic/folk music.

Though this is an unpaid internship, we will compensate the individual a percentage for any booked gigs. Further details are available.
Please attach resume to replied email.
School credit is available.

Thank you.

 

Riiiiiight.  This kind of ad may fly in L.A., which is where the person posting the ad is from, but Portland is definitely not L.A.  Any ‘driven individuals’ who are likely to have that particular set of ‘high level’ skills are most likely going to be other musicians, who will already be using those skills in order to further their own careers, rather than doing all of the busywork that musicians everywhere hate doing for themselves.

I hope the ad works for them, and that they find some poor, unsuspecting college student who will do what they want.  I just can’t imagine anybody being fooled by the spin, that’s all.  The L.A. schmooze machine drives me up the wall.  A musician from New York would never post an ad like this, with that imperious tone, as if they’re doing someone a gigantic favor by allowing them to experience the behind-the-scenes of the music industry by doing a bunch of thankless, shitty tasks.  Give me a break.

Maybe I should place an ad like this on Craigslist in Seattle, asking for someone to help carry my instruments around whenever I play up there.  “Although this is an unpaid position, the individual will be compensated with a drink ticket for every two instruments schlepped.  Must arrive hours before each gig to accommodate sound check.”  Maybe I should just pack up and move to L.A.  If I’m lucky, I might get to learn what the music industry is like by doing somebody else’s work for free.  If the stars align in just the right way, perhaps I’ll be able to have my own music career, and then, God willing, I can dangle the carrot of college credit in front of someone, so that they can call around and find places for me to work and play.

This is gonna be great.  I can hardly wait to start my new life.

Sorry for the silence on the blog front.  I’m sure that those of you who’ve been checking in here at BFS&T know by now that when I don’t write anything for a while, it usually means that I’ve been experiencing a deluge of activity in real life, which leaves precious little time for reflection, let alone writing.  This time has certainly been no exception, with lots of out-of-town gigs, lots of recording, and lots of gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest at all hours of the day and night.  Here’s the view from the cabaret venue where PolishCellist and I played in Seattle a week ago:

IrishBand played in Astoria, Oregon last weekend, as part of a poetry festival that brought in the likes of Bill Carter.  There was a freak snowstorm that night, and we somehow found ourselves in the midst of a snowball fight or three, always with random people.  That was probably my favorite memory of the trip.  Also, should you find yourself in that neck of the woods, you owe it to yourself to pay a visit to Clemente’s restaurant.  Their food is incredible, and they treated us like royalty during our stay there.  We became fast friends with the owners and staff.

In the midst of all this, my friend and I started a new band in which she sings and writes lyrics and melodies, while I write the music and play all the instruments on our recordings.  So far, I’ve been playing acoustic guitar at our gigs, but the recordings have lots of other instruments, so naturally, the subject of finding more band members arose.  I’ve been involved with the singer-songwriter scene for the last ten years, in which the members may change many times.  I’ve also been invited to join existing bands, whether to replace a member who has left, or to bring my own particular type of musicality to the band.  It’s been a really long time since I’ve played an active role in recruiting band members for a project of my own.  It’s exciting and daunting at the same time, and that calls for a story.

For about four years, I was the lead guitarist and producer for a woman who, for the pseudonymic purposes of this blog, will be called Bird.  Our original plan was for me to be the bass player, since good bass players are so hard to find, but after auditioning a few guitarists (and realizing that the overwhelming majority of guitarists play in the exact same blues-based way, which was of no interest to us), we decided that I should have that role and that we should seek a bass player instead.  We auditioned a couple of bassists, one of whom bragged about his ability to play the upright bass, but as soon as he pulled it out, it was obvious to us that he was clueless about it.  We finally did find a really good player, who had actually auditioned for us as a guitarist first, but was still interested even after he found out about our change of plans.

Once that hurdle was behind us, the search was on for a drummer.  The three of us knew that this would pose the biggest challenge, since good drummers are already scarce enough, and a newly-formed band has precious little to offer, financially speaking.  We started by posting an ad on ListByCraig, which turned up the usual suspects of tire-kickers and carless (sometimes even drumless!) slackers.  We then posted a free ad in MessengerGodAlternativePaper, which yielded us a couple of interesting prospects.  ProspectOne, in his late twenties, showed up with an endless series of stories about bands he’d been in and tours he’d been on, and the layers of stickers adorning his drum cases lent credence to his stories.  His playing, however, did not.  He was horrendous, and if you closed your eyes, you’d have thought that a seven-year-old was behind the drums.   We slogged through three or four songs (he’d driven clear across town to play with us, after all), then thanked him and told him we’d let him know.

Not long after that fiasco, we drove out to BeaverSuburb to play with ProspectTwo, a guy in his mid-forties who was becoming overwhelmed by his career as a doctor, and who wanted to spice up his life by reconnecting with his love of playing the drums.  He had a beautiful house, and a beautiful drum kit, and a beautiful PA system to sing through.  He cooked beautiful frittatas for us (I had to check the spelling of ‘frittatas’ just now) and squeezed beautiful fresh orange juice for us by hand.  He was a great guy, and extremely intelligent, and we quite enjoyed his company.  His drumming, like that of the previous guy, left a bit to be desired.  His skills were not nearly as lacking as the other guy’s, certainly, but his playing was far from solid, and despite all the positive qualities he offered, we knew he would never be able to meet our drumming needs.

After that round of auditions, we were starting to become disillusioned, and (if I’m going to be completely honest) even a bit jaded.  We tried a new tactic, which was to actually pay money and place an ad in the Musicians Wanted section of the main weekly alternative paper in town, which provided us with a distinctly higher caliber of applicants.  The next person we auditioned was amazing.  He had just moved to Portland, he was a great player, and he had a great personality as well.  We felt like the four of us gelled as musicians, and we sounded like a real band for the first time.   After we had played through our list of songs, we sat around and chatted about Life In General, and about Music, and about Other Stuff too.  Before we knew it, another hour had passed.  Then, the subject of Money came up, and the atmosphere in the room completely changed.  He turned quiet and weird and defensive, and blurted out something about how he needed to be compensated for this and that if he was going to be in the band, and that he was used to making so much money in his other bands back in Colorado or wherever, and that if we couldn’t guarantee that much, he’d have to look elsewhere.  We had no delusions of grandeur, and we made it clear to everyone potentially involved that this was a brand new band, and we might never make money, but we believed in what we were doing, and we expected all of the members to feel the same way.  He made an awkward getaway, and the three of us were left scratching our heads.  Years later, he became a well-respected drummer around town, but I daresay that most people will remember him for being robbed and assaulted in the middle of the night while riding his bike, then being run over by TWO different cars driven by drunks who were friends caravanning home after a night of partying.  Both of them fled the scene.  Drummer did not survive, and the one driver that was convicted was sentenced to an insultingly small fine, a few days in jail, and a short time in a drug treatment program.  In a strange twist of musical fate, I was invited to play cello and accordion on a song that was written by a friend of mine a few months ago as a tribute to him.  The song has recently been released, and I just saw an update on SocialNetwork that said it will be played on a local music ‘spotlight’ show tonight.

The final guy we met had also just moved to Portland from Yakima, which is where I grew up too.  He asked lots of pertinent questions about the songs, and played very tastefully and dynamically.  He even commented on Bird’s blue guitar, which he said matched his blue drum set, and meant that he was ‘in.’  He was our guy, and we all knew it.  The lineup was complete.

The four of us played together for the next few years, until the electric version of the Bird band split up and morphed into an acoustic lineup that didn’t involve the three of us.  But we’re all still friends, and Bassist and Drummer are still out and about.  They even play together in a new incarnation of a really great band that’s been around for a while.  Drummer was lucky enough to tour with the Canadian band The Paperboys, which was a tremendous opportunity, not least of which because they were his favorite band.

We tried out a keyboard player for a month or two, but he could never make time to rehearse with us or learn the songs, and he was going to Australia, and he always wanted to come to my place and videotape my hands when I played the parts, so that he could learn them exactly.  He always seemed to have a reason why he didn’t know the songs.  To be fair to him, he was a genuinely nice guy, and he even came to watch a couple of our early shows, but it didn’t quite work to have him in the band.

This is what the audition process is like, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s challenging, and grueling, and fun, and interesting, and frustrating, but ultimately rewarding, and it’s a necessary part of the musical life.  The good news is that I’m not just starting out anymore, and I know a bunch of people, and I have lots more experience under my metaphorical belt, and I have a MOSTLY good reputation, but it’s still going to be a tough process.  Who knows; I may even end up being the drummer in this new band.  For now, the biggest news is that the two of us submitted a song to the annual compilation of up-and-coming Portland bands, and we’ll find out this spring if we make the cut or not.  IrishBand submitted a song too, and both songs are very unusual in the overall Portland ‘scene’, which I believe will help our chances immensely.

Naturally, I’ll keep you posted.