music: Neil Young, 5/8/03
Two days until the dreaded first of September and I’ve successfully moved my stuff into my room. I now occupy the back room on the second floor of the 1-2-oh-my-god!, painted pumpkin squash orange by Jojo some time last year. It’s a good space and I’m using it well. I’ve actually not been as excited about a living space as I am about this one since Chowdahaus. Now that my personal living space is set up I can go about working on the rest of the house.
More than finally having a couple square feet to call my own after almost three months of transience and milk crates, I am appreciative of having a homebase from which I can launch into several endeavours this fall. The primary and biggest one will be work, something yet to start but looming large on the horizon. Because I’ve been so busy setting up my living space I haven’t really had time to give to getting ready for the school year, and it’s about to kick me in the ass. I’m sure to be taking the end of this week and all weekend to set myself with enough structure and materials to feel a little more comfortable and confident as I start my first years of teaching. An ordered and efficient living space is the foundation for success in that realm, and I’m glad to have my room in order. In order is probably an understatement- this place is humming like an ant farm. Peet and Marla helped me build a bed for myself and I scrounged a pretty nice mattress from the basement. Tmo put up shelving in the pantry while I overhauled the common room yesterday. Vast improvements on each front. Everyone else is trickling into the place, readying to assume control of this building, ready to start building something positive this fall, winter, and spring. The cast of characters is eclectic yet strong, and while we aren’t without our weaknesses we’ll do some good things in this house this year. Myself, tmo, and Chleurrrrr! round out the second floor, while Marla, Ron, and Matt and Gina take on the first floor. Peet will be bouncing here and there from couch to couch for a spell, and Upstairs Chuck continues to hold things down from up top. One, two, oh my god.
And never mind the fact that so many of our friends are moving close by. Dunk n’ Balls up in Arlington, OGD and JZ on the other side of Davis. JoJo and Lil’ Brother in Central. Molly and crew somewhere in Cambridge. Teacher friends all over the place. And an old buddy from college back in JP. He rolls with a very positive crew based off Thompson Island and will be good to have them in the loop this year. Never mind all that.
Things continue to take form as we push into September, and the momentum, for the most part, is positive. This week is a trying one with all the moving and setting up, but getting there. The 1-2 crew does not mess around. The moving has been tough (besides thru-hiking I can’t think of a better workout than moving), but we are getting there. Working together, making sure it all gets done. And for the most part, we are succeeding beyond my initial hopes.
music: Grateful Dead- 4/11/78
Been back in Boston for some time now, but I haven’t. My head has still been drifting in and out of the summertime revelry of the open road. I’ve not yet washed myself of that travellin’ dirt and grime. I’ve not yet settled into anything comfortable here in Boston; I’m still sleeping on couches and (if possible) out on the back porch in my sleeping bag. I’m still living out of milk crates. I’m still quite mobile, even though I’ve been fairly stationary for the past couple of days. I’m still not really answerable to the world-at-large; I still am doing pretty much exactly as I please. But that’s quickly coming to a grinding halt and I’m being forced to become a real person again. It was inevitable, I know, but it still is rough. This summer was just that good-so good that I’m not yet fully willing to trade the vagabond’s lifestyle for something closer to a normal stable life.
Today was the first day of orientation for new teachers. We didn’t really have to do anything but show up and listen, and still it was rough. I came home with a migraine the likes of which I haven’t experienced for some time, probably last May, and I can’t help but think it is tied to going back to work. And things aren’t even that stressful yet. I’m still moving at a West Coast pace, proceeding through my days here with a detached calm, hoping to hold onto that for as long as possible. There was so much that was appealing out there as far as lifestyle…makes me wonder why I’m still out here. But there are reasons. There are friends. There is work. And as my friend M. reminded me the other day, people out here seem to be more driven, more motivated to do something with themselves. Which is good and bad, I guess, but I can appreciate the tenacity in pursuit. It’s a fast-moving train, and I’m about to jump on. This week is about taking that running start.
I finally get to move into my room tomorrow. While I don’t mind living out of a bag when I’m travelling, the couchsurfing thing has reached its limit here. Setting up my own space will go a long way towards allowing me to deal with the rest of it all out here. I’m looking forward to doing some unpacking and reorganizing, putting everything back in its place, setting up a homebase of operations. The structure my room will provide will prove invaluable in the next couple of weeks; there is some turbulence on the way.
music: AndersenPalooza, 7/31/04, Bellingham, WA
Sunday in Boston. I’ve been couch-crashing for almost a week now and have done a stellar job of taking it real easy, reacclimating to city life and all it brings. I’ve been catching up with friends- ran into M. biking through Porter Square, stopped by Dunk n’ Balls’ house briefly, checked in with Peet, the new roomies, and even managed to grab a beer with a fellow educator at Charlie’s late last night. But i’ve been busy. This time around it’s been with recording music.
The past two or three weeks have seen some significant steps towards my musical growth. I picked up a mixer,
a soundcard, two Shure microphones, a fairly nice condensor mic, and the cables to connect everything. I also picked up an acoustic guitar pickup from my sister, and yesterday I bought a bass used for $95. A pretty nice instrument for the price, and an indespensible tool in my quest for sonic documentation. Funny part is that I don’t play bass. But I know enough guitar to get by for the time being. To top it all off, I recovered my poor old drum set from Amy’s magical music room and will be employing its services shortly.
All this adds up to a lot of money, yes, and a lot of time, yes, but it’s worth it. I’m now able to do some high quality recording and produce something listenable. From the technical end, at least. Whether or not my songwriting is any good remains to be seen, but I’ve been pretty pleased with what has come out. Now it’s a matter of arranging things and putting them down on tape…eh…hard disk. AJM and I started the process at the end of the summer, starting in Bellingham around the first of the month, but ever since that day or so in the company of The Chef and the Dub Anthropologist, i’ve been feverishly working towards getting something of quality together. This last spurt of purchasing will allow me to really get down to it, moreso than I ever have.
So this weekend was a work weekend. I figure that I won’t get the chance to put a good chunk of time into making music once I start work, so I pushed hard to get something down this weekend. After two days of locking myself away in tmo’s room with my mini mobile recording studio, this is the result. It’s a campfire tune called “Mama,” (a sappy campfire song of the highest degree to be sure) a collaboration between myself and AJM, our small tribute to Camp Minikani. It would have been nice to have that guy around with his mandolin this weekend to lay a track down, but that’s why I’ve saved the session-to allow for overdubs later. The vocals are a little rough as well; maybe I’ll redo those some other time. For the most part, I’m pleased with the results, especially when compared to what came before.
The music bug has bitten me hard. After our impromptu gig in Bellingham at the start of the month, I’ve been mulling over pushing this music thing a little more seriously. I have feelers out on Craigslist and some local bulletin boards for jam sessions and partners in crime….
Guitarist/drummer/(bassist?)/songwriter w/vox seeking others in the Boston area to jam, possibly form band. Have gear, EP of originals. Looking to jam, gig locally, nothing too serious. Listened to my share of the Dead and Phish, but envisioning something in between Late Paul Simon and a Beastie Boys instrumental. Listening and patience over chops. Originals and covers. Improvisation and exploration a must. Email davidtaus@anize.org if interested.
Gettin’ there, as always. But as of late, the gettin’ there has been really gettin’ there. Hmm. Right. I just have to be careful to keep one foot in the world-at large, to not lock myself away with a bunch of microphones and knobs and stringed instruments for days at a time. But now to post-production. It’s always something…
music: Phish- The White Tape
Twenty-some years ago, four college kids got together to play some music with each other, and in doing so became friends. What that friendship and that music grew into in subsequent years was most likely beyond the scope what any of those four college kids could dream up back when the four of them jammed late into the night in the early 1980’s. Their music was quirky, intricate. But for some reason it took root in the ears of their friends and grew. And grew. And grew. Twenty years after college ended these four friends were still making music, although the circumstances were quite different. By the early 2000’s, these four friends had effectively built nothing short of a cultural institution, a quirky and intricate empire of which they were the reluctant figureheads. And this past weekend, the four musicians known as Phish closed the door to the empire they had built over the past twenty years and handed back the keys.
Phish’s final concert was held in Coventry, VT, a location that bore heavy personal significance to the band in their evolution in the earlier years. As soon as the band announced that this end-of-the-summer festival would be their last performance as Phish, the concert became an event of epic symbolic scale. Those who had at any point in their lives found a personal affinity for the Phish phenomenon scrambled to be a part of this last concert, to revel and dance one last time, and to pay their respects. Expectations were high. The Phish Nation would congregate to celebrate (and/or mourn) the music that in many ways gave them an identity and a sense of affiliation.
The getting there proved to be the most difficult part for some. Because of the heavy rains, Coventry, VT was turned into a colossal mud pit. Thousands waited in traffic for over 30 hours, and when word came down that no other cars would be allowed in the venue, thousands abandoned their cars on I-91 and walked up to 20 miles in order to be a part of the show. I too joined the final pilgrimage with my friends, although we had a fairly painless time getting into the festival grounds as compared with most others. Other than a reunion with this group of people, I did not really know what to expect from the weekend, from this band. But ultimately, this weekend was not about me. Nor was it about any of the 70,000 other individuals who were in attendance. The final Phish concert was not for us; it was for the four members of Phish.
Never before has the band seemed so human to me as they were this past weekend. Whereas before they took the stage, played, and left without a word to the audience, this weekend the band spoke directly to us so informally and sometimes awkwardly it could do nothing but take them down from some exhalted place and humanize them to us. We got stories about origins of songs, we got glimpses into the inner workings of a band rehearsing, we got personal narratives, we met friends and family members, we heard tearful expressions of thanks. They stopped songs in the middle only to restart them in a different key, to deliver anecdotes, to somehow try to include all 75,000 of us in their world of inside jokes that we thought we knew so well. The concert, as a result, felt less like a professionally packaged entertainment event, and more like a backyard barbecue and family reunion.
It quickly became apparrent that the weekend was not about the quality of music. I personally did not go to Coventry to hear Phish give a recital of the body of their work, and I think that those who did go for this reason were fairly disappointed. Those of us who cared about Phish at any point did not need to hear them play difinitive versions of any of their songs. We had heard them do that before. This weekend was more about witnessing how the four members of Phish would reconcile their own experience, how they would walk away from the thing that they had created and built over the past 20 years. We were to be flies on the wall of a final jam session between these four people whose music we soaked up for so long. And as it turned out, the jamming was what Coventry was all about. Compositions were flubbed throughout the weekend, entrances were missed, notes were struck sour, but when the band pushed away from song structure and began to play with each other, and more importantly for each other, the music’s quality appropriately matched the epic scope of the weekend.
The first day and the first set of the second day were precursors to the pith of the experience: the last two sets of the festival. On paper they looked fairly unremarkable:
Phish, 8/15/04, Coventry, VT
Set 2: Down With Disease -> Wading in the Velvet Sea, Glide, [band speech], Split Open and Melt -> jam -> Ghost
Set 3: Fast Enough for You, Seven Below -> Simple -> Piper -> Bruno ->Dickie Scotland -> Wilson -> Slave to the Traffic Light
[fireworks]
Encore: The Curtain With
As Down With Disease began the second set, the band began to feel the gravity of the situation. This song is typically reserved for watershed moments (it was the first song after Auld Lang Syne on NYE 2000), and its rousing chorus “Waiting for the time when I can finally say / This has all been wonderful but now I’m on my way” has obvious relevance. The jam to ensue simmered to a tender piano solo, and as Velvet Sea started, Page broke. It was an unbelievably touching moment, one that, to me, outweighed the mud and the traffic and the flubs and the botched musicianship. Music is nothing if it does not move the spirit, and the tears that flowed during Velvet Sea reminded me of just this.. At that point, Glide marked time, delayed the inevitable outpouring. The band speeches, replete with tears from Trey and Page, and the hour of music to follow was truly inspired, an improvisatory magnum opus that at once expressed the tangle of emotions surrounding that particular moment in time. I am tempted to listen to this hour or so again, to revisit the intensity of such a musical conversation, but part of me is insistent that I never listen to Coventry on tape. The second set, like the weekend, was a lot to deal with, but was why I was there.
The third set was more premeditated: a lyrically poignant song to open, then some jamming and silliness. It wouldn’t be Phish with out some silliness. In Trey’s own words, the whole thing was meant to be a big overblown cartoon, and to the end they were as goofy as college kids in a dorm room. At the same time, though, the band needed some time to give serious thought to such a complex ending. They needed to acknowledge the arc of their careers, the places at which they found themselves, and choose to say this complex goodbye with maturity. The Slave to end, in retrospect, was the perfect choice. While people were expecting the band to end their career with some of the centerpiece songs such as YEM, Divided Sky, or Harry Hood, songs that they commonly would use at moments of signifigance, Slave to the Traffic Light was for the most part overlooked to fill this slot. It is in many ways a quiet little brother to YEM or Antelope, but it is also a grand, sweeping composition incorporating quiet, reflective moments as well as exhalted ones. It was more sparsely played than other larger tunes, which rendered it that much more precious. And as the band transitioned into Slave out of the reckless fun of Wilson (“You still can have fun!” Trey yells), the full weight of this decision became clear to me: Slave to the Traffic Light was the first song Phish ever wrote and played. The last song of the last set was the first song the band ever wrote. They had indeed come full circle. Slave’s execution and delivery was transcendental and as perfect a moment as these four humans could produce. The stage fell silent, the four stepped to the lip of the stage, held hands, and bowed deeply. Then they walked off. That was that.
After some fireworks, a few words from Trey, and an encore of The Curtain With, an obscure and very rare tune from the catalog, the lights came up and we were left to reconcile the final notes of Phish for ourselves. The Curtain With, to me, was an afterthought, a postscript. I was done after Slave ended, and judging by the way they performed Slave, so was the band. They made the decision that is ultimately the most important one in an artists’s life: knowing when to stop. Now that the four friends have moved their narrative to the stuff of history, their body of work can be examined as a whole, complete piece. The spontanaiety that made them famous will be gone, but we fans are not without countless hours of their music to listen to. And I am thankful. For their own sake, I hope that Phish never plays another concert.
(This from my little notebook at the conclusion of the second set:)
Revisit this, dissect it. This is really Phish’s final statement. LOTS of stuff here.They are not interested in playing their tunes - a recital - they really just want to play with each other and for each other. At the end, when there is nothing else on the horizon, that’s what it came back to - four friends making music with each other. At the realization that their shared vision has reached its conclusion, they payed all their attention to each other. When Phish is parsed, dissected, boiled down, and distilled, there are four people, four real human beings, who have built and shared something for 21 years more intimite nad complicated and honest and HUMAN than I could ever imagine. Never before has this band seemed so human. It’s the music, yes, but as a fine art, music is the expression and creation of a human being. It’s not about the scene, the party: it’s about people, individuals, human lives. Four specific human lives, in this case, whose story I followed and entwined with my own for the past eight years.
But ultimately this is not about me. I’m on the outside looking in this weekend. I’m getting to watch these four people talk to each other for a while, publically speak with each other for the last time. To have it out with one another, to love one another, to have some fun with each other. It is sloppy, disorganized, and not always well executed, but it is honest, it is human, it is very much Phish.
I hope that Trey, Mike, Page, and Jon will keep making music together if only for themselves. I hope that they all will meet at someone’s house on some cold autumn weekend and after a fine homecooked dinner, they four retreat to the basement to jam for a little. That is, after all, where they started 20-some years ago: college kids jamming in the basement of some dorm or apartment. I hope that it will come back to this, and I hope that they never record any of it.
music: Keith Jarrett- Live at the Blue Note d.2
It’s over. I’m back home.
After a 13-hour driving day from Western Ohio to Boston, AJM and I reached Boston, my home, and the great Road Trip of 2004 has reached its conclusion. We arrived to the welcome of roommates for the next year. We ate homemade pizza and drank beer. We laughed and reveled, we stretched our legs for a bit. I marvelled at how familiar and at the same time how uncomfortable this place was; I was almost shocked at my home surroundings after two months on the road. But this is home, and after the nights’ celebrations wear thin I will start to go about the more serious business of carving out my own space in this place. It will take a bit of time due to circumstances outside my control, but in two weeks or so I should be solidly established here.
As to some sort of general reflections about the adventures of the past two months: not possible. At this point at least. It’s just too much to bite off, chew, and digest in one piece. Partly because it is so recent — AJM has not yet turned towards his own home — and partly because it is so massive. I have volumes written on the events of the past two months, just under three hours of cassette tape recordings, over 300 pictures (to be posted at some point in the near future), and even some original music that tells the tale of our travels out west and back. It’s been a productive and fruitful summer, full of experience and memory. So full, in fact, that it’s just not worth trying to summarize here and now (although I’ve been told that I have a knack for summing things up). For now, it is enough to reconnect with friends and future roommates, try to keep my mind Pacific-style relaxed even though I’m back in New England, and begin to sift my way through the pile of mail and countless emails that have amassed while I’ve been on the road. A lot of this returning business is unpleasant, annoying even, but after two months of unadulterated summertime and experiences enough for a full year of living, it’s time to start getting real.
But not quite yet. a cadre of old hangers-on will be heading up to Coventry, Vermont on Thursday to pay homage to the music that has been a major unifying force in my life over the past eight years. I have a week or so to get my proverbial act together before things really begin in earnest. And then an entirely new challenge: my first year of classroom teaching. More rivers to paddle; adventures in sight.
For now, though, some convalescence. Some sleep (I hope). Some proximal stability. And some reminiscing. Appreciation and blessings to the places I encountered and the people I met: The Rocky Mountains. Arches. The High Sierras. San Francisco. Yosemite. Big Sur. Sequoia. Havasu. Grand Canyon. Zion. Tahoe. Redwoods. Crater Lake. Eugene. Rogue. Cascades. Olympic Peninsula. Bellingham. Seattle. Badlands. Minikani. Milwaukee. DFC. Kelly. Nav and Reubs. Canton. TAC Posse. M. Bell. Margie. The Brothers Shepherd. Doody. Jami. Hoffman and the Dub Anthropologist. Dan, Lucas, and the folks at AndersenPalooza. And special appreciation and blessings to my copilot, collaborator, and companion for this trek, the one constant in this trip that made everything translate from possible to actual, “AJM.” Much love, brother. We’ve made it there and back again, and now that it’s all done I couldn’t imagine it any other way. But there are other lives to lead, as Thoreau wrote at the end of his sojourn to Walden, and the currents are shifting. I can only hope for as smooth a transition back into reality as were this summer’s trip through the wonders of the American West.