music: Rodrigo y Gabriela- Rodrigo y Gabriela
Dearest Sigma DR1-ST,
We’ve been together a long time. I remember when I first took you home, fresh from Wade’s and realized that you and I were in for a long-term relationship. Granted, my buddy Mike set us up, picked you out of the crowd and said something like “yeah, this one will do you for a couple years,” but once we had some time together to get better acquainted I knew you and I would go places, and for more than a couple of years. It was the end of high school. I was young and didn’t really have a clue as to what was going on; my future was fuzzy at best. And you were there through all the craziness, solid as spruce and rosewood laminate. You were there during those last days of high school when my world was turning upside down. You were right there with me as I played and sang to my first real crowds at summer camp. You got me through some really hard nights in the dorms my first year of college. Your good looks helped me earn spare change for lunch on the streets of Montreal the summer after, and then accompanied me to several concerts where you and I made quick friends with other people. I took you up to the cold North Woods of Wisconsin where we celebrated the new year on more than one occasion. You served as a translator when I had no more words, you helped me find a common language with complete strangers. You’ve eased some of my more awkward moments. You made the trip up to Boston with me after college ended. You endured a summer in the trunk of my car as I drove around the country, but I made sure that we had some quality time every night. You got a lot out of your time in Boston with me; we tromped around that crazy city and did some weekend trips as well, having good times all the while. I remember that on one trip up to Maine we were sitting by the fire and you were lying in my arms when I had one of my more defining musical experiences to date, and you and I formed what would be come the greatest acoustic duo in history. You even sat in the back seat of my car when I drove out to California, squished between boxes and books and fancier electrical equipment. We’ve been places, you and I, that’s for sure.
I know it hasn’t always been easy for us, that sometimes you felt as though I may have been abusing you. I know there was that one time in that dingy apartment where I dropped you on the floor and gave you a solid crack in your finish (but I did get you all fixed up, didn’t I?). There was that other time where I may have forced one of your pegs out a little too harshly and worn into some wood. There may be a few belt scratches, dings in your headstock, gouges in your finish. I know that one night, when I was messing around with one of those cheap pickups that are meant to pop in and out I accidentally took off a chunk of wood and finish right from the edge of your sound hole. I’ve tried to take good care of you, I really have, and there have been many times where I tried to go the extra mile and have your frets leveled, replace you new tuning pegs, or install a strap knob as to take the tension off your neck. I’ve tried to be good about keeping your fretboard clean and changing your strings on a regular basis. I know that I often kept you under the bed or in the closet. and that sometimes when i kept you out the temperature and humidity made your body warp a little. I’ve treated you rough, I’ve thrown you on the bed on more than one occasion, I’ve picked you up improperly on many more occasions. Some days we just can’t find harmony and I get frustrated with you, but you know that the truth is you’ve made me as happy as any inanimate object can.
So, dear guitar, don’t take this the wrong way: I’ve met someone else. I’m hoping you can be friends, because — and I mean this when I say it — I’m never letting you go. I know you got less face time with me when the Gibson came into my life, but those quieter, tender moments were always reserved for you. But now, as of yesterday, really, There’s a new acoustic. You’re from the same family, it turns out: the Sigma DR-28 that swooped into my life took me by surprise. You can’t plan for these sorts of things. But the DR-28 is, by all measures, a beautiful guitar. It’s older than you, made in 1982. It’s well-crafted, has amazing hardwear and solid construction. It’s a rosewood and spruce model, just like you. I can plug it in. And if I could tell you a secret, DR1-ST, I finally decided that the DR-28 was the right one for me because it reminded me so much of you. I know that’s hard to hear, but it’s the truth.
I’ll tell you this right now: If push comes to shove, I’ll get rid of the other one. You may be road weary, dinged up, full of nicks and chips, but you will always have a place in my life. In those dark, lonely hours you are my go-to guitar. You’re the guitar on whom I’ve written all my songs, please remember that. Instead of being jealous, I hope that you and the DR-28 can be friends. We will have our time still, old guitar. Nothing (except the green osprey silhouette - you know the one, hanging out right across the room?) has been with me longer. We’ve been through so much that I could never let you go.
Here’s to more good times down the road. Things won’t be the same, how could they be? Things won’t be better or worse for you and I, just…different. I hope you can understand this, Sigma DR1-ST. You are beautiful. You have made me laugh and cry, and I’m sure will in the future. Thank you for your time, patience, caring, and understanding.
Love,
David
music: Beastie Boys: Check Your Head
My very early musical listening habits were not of my own devising, it was simply whatever was on the house stereo. I can’t remember most of it, save Peter and the Wolf. Around middle school I started developing my own tastes in music, and was split between the raw energy and power of hard rock (Def Lepperd’s Hysteria) and the funkiness of hip hop (Parents Just Don’t Understand). I was, like so many suburban kids, lost in a world of Top 40, because my sole inlet for new music was the radio. Once I got to summer camp, and could sample the musical tastes of way cool college students, my horizons opened up, and when I was 11 or so my ears were graced by three guys who found some middle ground between rock and hip hop. That was it for me for a while. AdRock, Mike D, and MCA became my first band crush, and it lasted clear through the end of high school. In terms of raw energy, varied style, fun, and catchiness, nobody could top the Beastie Boys.
The trio from New York CIty put a spell on me something serious in my teens. Beyond being able to bridge the gap between two styles of music that I’d been digging, the Beastie Boys represented something really important. Here were three guys, three white guys, three Jewish white guys, rapping over live instruments. They would do whatever they wanted, and they could do whatever they wanted, and despite it being hopelessly dorky most of the time we white kids in suburban America ate it up. The Beastie Boys were the Great White Hope for us floundering suburban kids wishing above all else that we could be down. If these three yahoos from New York could do it, then we had a shot, and we at that point refered to myself, and my friends CJ and Roger, who at the time were convinced we wanted to be Beastie Boys and not grow up.
But the B-Boys gave me more to chew on than good times and hopes of coolness. With the release of “Check Your Head” there also came incredible musical substance. I’d of course heard the 1980’s party anthems from “License to Ill,” and they were fun, but nothing could hang with the mix of hip hop, live instrument rock, and acid jazz that was “Check Your Head.” “Ill Communication” accentuated the point, and with the release of the instrumental compilation “The In Sound From Way Out!” I was completely and forever a B-Boys Fanatic. Now, ten years out of high school, the Beastie Boys’ instrumental work is what keeps me hooked and coming back for more. “The In Sound From Way Out!” has probably influenced my playing as a musician more than any other single album has. (It also would make a Beastie Boys fan out of many people who swore that they hated those three brats.) So when the Beastie Boys, now well into their forties, dropped their latest album, all instrumental, and announced a string of all instrumental shows, I knew what had to happen at all costs. I would have to dress to impress, and attend the Gala Event.
Last night, through strokes of incredible fortune, the Beastie Boys hosted a Gala Event (what they are calling the handful of all instrumental shows they are playing around the world) not five miles from my door. My buddy Adam (incidentally nicknamed AdRock, among other things) and I cruised down to the warfield, dressed to impress, and joined the three thousand or so well-dressed eventgoers (and people dressed up! Amazing!) for a night of Beastie Boys at their absolute finest. I was completely and totally hooked into it for two and a half hours, through the new instrumentals (“Off The Grid” holds high esteem), the rare punk breakouts, the acid jazz/funk grooves from the mid-90’s, and the live instrument hip hop that was offered up. It was the best concert I’ve seen in years. These guys, I am reminded, are more than dorky Jewish white guys somehow making it in the rap world; these guys are musicians who play instruments and are bold enough to leave lyrics out of their music despite all the ridiculous crap that has come out of their mouths for the past 20 years.
My band crush with the Beastie Boys never really went away. I dipped into other bands much more seriously after high school, but the Beastie Boys always had a special place in my heart. Seeing them do their thing in person last evoked me at age 15, but simultaneously scratched my more recent itch for quality groove-based rock. I had so much fun last night that tonight I think I’m going to spend way too much money to catch them again at the Greek. Y’can’t front on that.
music: Talking Heads- The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads, d.2
This one came down the pipe a couple weeks back but I’m still thinking about it: what happens when a world-class musician plays the subway with a $3,500,000 instrument during morning rush hour? (It’s a long read, but well-worth it.)
That day, to the 1,100-odd rat racers, one of the most famous classical violinists in the world was relegated to background hum. This is a guy who commands the cultural upper crust to maintain absolute silence during performances, this is a guy who can take in more money per minute of performance than i probably make in a month. And coolest of all, this is a guy who, despite his fame and fortune, is willing to go along with a devilish social experiment. The results were quite clear: context matters. Do people rate a meal as better if it were more expensive? I bet they would. Are people more inclined to litter on the concrete sidewalk or the backcountry of a national park? Probably the sidewalk. So it goes with art. All artifacts of human creation exist in a medium of place and time which lend it certain properties, and often times great works of art are largely altered when removed from that context. Imagine Jackson Pollack in Renaissance Italy, the Beatles in pre-colonial Africa. Such drastic contrasts between time emphasize the point, but there are plenty of examples here and now: hip hop on the street corner and hip hop in the record executive’s board room, modernist paintings made by a 5 year old and modernist paintings hanging in the MOMA, and here, classical music performed in the subway versus the same music performed at Carnegie Hall.
Context matters. True enough. The other piece is prior knowledge on the subject matter. People who are “experts” in certain fields are able to discern more nuance than the layman, understand deeper layers of meaning, and most people aren’t “experts” in classical music. So in the same way that i can’t tell a 1997 ford from a 1999 ford, most people don’t know their Handel from their Haydin. My roommate pointed out something interesting: in the US, classical music buffs are generally more well off and tend to not ride the subway in DC, so there’s potentially a class thing at work here as well.
Most of the effect demonstrated can safely be explained by the current state of urban living, especially during morning rush hour. ipods, job stress, lack of wakefulness, bystander effect, and all that. But there’s also the anonymity factor in this particular situation. Part of why the social experiment here worked is that Joshua Bell wasn’t recognized by face. Classical musicians aren’t necessarily the rockstar types by way of looks and tabloid fodder and are very rarely recognized by face (they audition from behind a screen, for godsakes!). No doubt Paul Mccartney couldn’t pull the same thing off. And furthermore, I don’t think you can completely rule out people’s taste in music. I’d be very curious to test this out on other “virtuoso” musicians that do not play classical. what do we think would happen if one of the Marsalis boys dresses down and plays a subway station? Bela Fleck? BB King? i’d bet you’d get a different reaction.
And still.
This all confirms my worst suspicions: music does not speak for itself. Instead it’s packaged, tied up with image, personalities, lights and ambiance, cover charges, celebrity status, ticket fees, certain cultural traditions, promotional efforts, subcultures, distribution medium, method of consumption (LP vs. ipod), product lines, and the like. Music: buy the t-shirt, see the movie. it’s a pity.
music: Miles Davis- ‘Round About Midnight
I don’t own much stuff by American standards. Besides a couple boxes and drawers full of old relics in Milwaukee, my bicycle and car, and a few assorted odds and ends, I can fit all my worldly possessions into a 9’ × 12’ bedroom. I think that’s pretty cool, as I sit in my room surrounded by pretty much everything I own. I’m rolling on a backpacker’s mentality: only carry what you need (or really, really value) and be sure to use everything you carry. I may not have that much stuff, but the stuff I have is pretty important to me. I rely on it a great deal, count on it being in working order.
I’ve recently been making efforts to take more ownership of the things I own. If at all possible I’d rather fix or build stuff on my own than take it to specialists. Part of this is simple economics. Living where I do and having the job I have doesn’t leave a lot of spare change in my pockets. The other part of this is more ideological. I’m not a big believer in leaving things on the shelf and letting them collect dust if they are meant to be used. My camping gear is worn and patched and grimy at this point (except my whisperlite stove, which is a replacement for the old and grimy one sitting somewhere in a TSA warehouse in Honolulu. Thanks for keeping us safe, guys), but I know I can rely on it because I’ve used the stuff enough times in all sorts of dramatic conditions to know it inside out. I started in on my car under Ron’s tutelage last spring. I’ve been doing my bike for a while. My bed, while creaky, is homemade. Even many of my books are all marked up with notes in the margins. All this has been coming to a head as of late, when some very important material items have been on the outs as far as proper functioning is concerned.
Sometimes we don’t have the tools necessary to do a job properly. This goes for physical tools as well as mental know-how tools. One of the things I use the most and value even more, and the one thing I’ve been afraid to work on is my guitar rig. I’m only a novice when it comes to wiring and electrical work, and only a little beyond that when it comes to woodwork.
After about a year and 3100 miles on the road, though, my guitar needed a setup. This is a mysterious ordeal to many guitarists, even the ones who give a damn about their instruments, where a technician or luthier somehow realigns the guitar to optimal playing specifications. It’s like taking your car to the shop for its 30,000 mile checkup: you aren’t completely sure what has transpired between this skilled technician and your stuff, but you get it back and you can feel the difference. I couldn’t help but think, though, that something was amiss when someone says “oh, well, your neck is out of relief and i’m gonna have to go ahead and get in there and adjust your truss rod. No, no, it’s not dangerous to the instrument but it’s a bit expensive in terms of labor, might have to charge you fifty for it.” Sounds legit, but a quick internet search will reveal that a truss rod adjustment takes no more than two minutes and is as easy as giving an allen wrench a 1/4 turn in the right direction. That someone would charge $50 for this is completely stupid. So instead of dropping off my guitar with some stranger to undergo this magical process of getting set up, I found a excellent guy named Chris on Craigslist who not only does a setup on your instrument, but also teaches you how to do the setup while you sit there. And the whole thing costs $50. Amazing turnaround time, quality work, and more valuable still, a little lesson in self-empowerment. Way cool. I was feeling so empowered that I decided to install strap locks on my Gibson this past weekend, complete with taking an electric drill to its beautifully finished wooden body. There were tense moments, downright harrowing moments for that matter, but by day’s end two small holes were drilled in exactly the right spot, the strap locks were installed, and my guitar became less of a showroom item and more of another tool that I may use in order to make music. (I say that, of course, because I took a big divot out of the back trying to get a stripped screw out of the thing.)
Two weeks ago, my mp3 player finally gave up the ghost. I use that thing almost on a daily basis, and not just for consumption of music. I use it as a portable hard drive, a medium through which I can disseminate my own music, as well as a music player. The kicker is that it was the second one to go in as many months, as the display on my trusty nomad jukebox 3 finally blinked off. As I use my mp3 players for high quality digital recording (production, not just consumption!!) my options were pretty limited as far as what I could go for. Ebay came through: I ended up getting an identical iRiver h120 to the one I had previously. And between the old and new ones, I managed to cobble together a bigger, better iRiver than I had even before, plus I saved the time and headache of transferring all the music onto my new iRiver by just popping the hard drive out of the old one and putting it into the new one. All this, of course, requires that one be willing to open the thing up and tinker a bit. Thanks to “misticriver.net” I was able to stumble through the process with very little difficulty. Add rockbox to the equation and I have ways of customizing a lot on the software end. (And as an aside to any mp3 player user, including iPod users: rockbox is amazing. Look into putting it onto your music player if you can. You’ll be very, very glad for it.)
I employed the same ethic towards truing my rear bike wheel a couple months back. I managed to get it fairly straight, but realized that some spokes were wrenched very tight and others not at all. That all caught up with me this week when I popped two spokes on my back wheel and completely taco’ed the thing. That one, given the tools at hand, was beyond my capabilities and I had to bite the bullet and buy a new wheel. I’ll be giving my bike an overhaul some time soon when I have a minute, adjusting the breaks to be a little tighter on the new rim.
Lesson learned, though: if you’re going to do a job yourself, you need the proper tools. The actual physical tools you use are important, but more than that is the knowledge of what to do with them. Thanks to resources like Chris up in Petaluma, I’m able to take more ownership of the few important things I own. Too often we Americans outsource the care and feeding of all that is important to us, so much so that we lose the ability to deal with it all personally. It gets harder to personally deal with all your stuff in this manner as the amount of stuff you have increases, but it’s very much worth it. Or else, as the line goes, the things you own end up owning you. This sort of education began in earnest at Chowdahaus in Boston, and continues in full force to the present moment. The battle against entropy continues, but not without some of the necessary tools. As always, gettin’ there.
music: The Curtis Twelve- 5/13/2006, Somerville, MA
(Long TIme No Blog. I think February of 2007 was the first month I missed since I started this thing in June of 2003. Things have been busy and I’ve been pushing myself away from this contraption as much as possible.)
Of all the material possessions that I still have, only a few have been with me since I lived in Milwaukee. I moved out to Providence in the fall of 1997, so most of my belongings are newer than that. Between 4 moves in Providence, 6 moves in Boston, and one big cross-country drive this summer there are only a few things that have survived the changes of the last 10 years. I take inventory as I look around my room: what has made cut after cut for the past 10 years? There is my acoustic guitar, a very important object. There are a few ratty t-shirts, each with sentimental value for one reason or another. There are certain CDs and books, for obvious reasons. There is my clock radio. There is my big green Osprey Silhouette, a very important item indeed. And there is my little stereo, which has been around longer than any of the above items.
I bought my little Panasonic shelf unit in December of 1991, when I was in seventh grade. It was a pretty expensive piece of equipment at the time, but put out a lot of good sound for the size and had some top-of-the-line features. That little stereo made its way to college, every apartment I’ve lived in, my cabin when I was a summer camp counselor (where I dubbed a good 100 tapes from AJM in the summer of 1997).. Every night I gazed at the flickering LCD EQ as I drifted off to bed, every morning I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the time on it. Today, though, that all came to a close as I picked up a used receiver off Craigslist for $35. It was time; I’m running three sets of speakers, multiple inputs (the least of which is this computer). Moreover, after 15 years the CD player on the shelf unit no longer works for most CDs and one of the tape players is broken. The new receiver puts out incredible power, is able to fill the entire upstairs of my house with sound, exhibits great stereo separation, can handle multiple inputs with ease, but something is still off. After living with something and interacting with it on a daily basis for 15 years I’d imagine this will take some getting used to.
It is said that every cell in your body regenerates after about seven years, meaning that you are made of completely different molecules every seven years or so. The little panasonic shelf unit, as an extension of my cellular makeup for the past 15 years, has survived two complete biological overhauls. Now it sits under my bed, unused, gathering dust. Its time has definitely come, but it’s still awkward to not have the thing around.
music: none
My roommate Jenn asked me what I would miss most about Boston a couple days ago. There’s a lot that’s happened in the past 5 years here, and a lot that I will miss, but the one thing that stood out in my mind was the biosphere, the music studio the basement of 12 Curtis. Every week (or almost every week) for the past year and a half I’ve descended to the basement and played my heart out. The biosphere has become a cruciible of artistic output, and has spurred me to push my music. What was accomplished down there isn’t groundbreaking or earth shattering on a consumable level, but the biosphere sessions hold a very significant place in my personal musical growth. Even looking back on the first biosphere sessions in February of 2005, it’s amazing how much has changed.
Two years ago the back of our basement was filled with tons of scrap, 30 years-worth of collected waste in a neglected triple-decker. The fall of 2004 saw a collective form here; 12 Curtis ceased to be three separate apartment units and became a house. With that, an opportunity: transform the basement into usable space. Ron and Tim cleared some space for workshop projects, and Peet started a modest bike repair center. Matt dreamt bigger than that; he singlehandedly designed and built a room in which music could be made. I initially thought he was thinking too big; just a cleared-out corner would be enough. But Matt persisted with minimal help and by November a room had in fact taken form. It was an incredible gift, although I did not know it at the time. Little by little the Biosphere flushed itself out, with gear and decor being added at a healthy rate until the room was packed with amplifiers, speakers, drums, microphones, posters, a mixer, guitar stands, and most importantly, people to use all the equipment on a regular basis. We had a fully-functioning music studio right in our basement, and roommates who not only tolerated the racket but encouraged it. The biosphere became my favorite room in the house; walking through the double doors was a transformation. You could leave the rest of the world out there. The biosphere was its own world, a haven.
We had a party at 12 Curtis this weekend, and a well-attended one at that. It was the final time I would play in the Biosphere. Because of this the night was bittersweet, a celebration with a tinge of nostalgia. One of my musical projects had ended almost a month previous, so it was left to Matt, Sebastian, Duncan, and me to close things out down there. I was glad to be able to do it with witnesses, to share what had been going on down there for the past year and a half. We had our last gig on our home turf, in the most comfortable setting to make music that I could hope for. We put up a good effort, at this point so locked in to each other that music came as second nature, and people responded positively. Never before had I seen people dancing (and dancing hard!) to music that I made, and I was floored because of it. We ended modestly, with a small sigh and without much fanfare, and that was that. Last Saturday my time in the biosphere came to an end.
I can’t say how much more my mental health would have suffered had i not been able to go down to the biosphere, plug in, and play whenever I felt like making music. I can’t say how thankful I am that there was a place to play (and play loud!) right in my own house. I’ve meticulously archived all the biosphere sessions, and can say that I’m very proud of the music I’ve made down there. I can’t see a music-making situation as perfect as the biosphere wherever I end up. Most likely I’ll have to rent space, travel with considerable effort to some place in order to play. I still don’t know how good I had it. But it is time to move on from my basement, I think. Says Anansi: The important thing about songs is that they’re like stories. They don’t mean a damn unless there’s people listening to them. I’ll continue to play music, probably for the rest of my life. I hope to get into some inspiring and challenging musical arrangements, but I doubt that anything will be as familiar, accessible, and comfortable as the biosphere.
I spent a couple hours this morning breaking down my gear and carrying it out of that room. Of all the uprooting that has to happen with a cross-country move, I think that moving out of the Biosphere will be the hardest.
music: King Johnson- Hot Fish Laundry Mat
I’ve been obsessing over my guitar tone recently. And for good reason: this spring has been explosive with music on the personal front. The band reconvened after about two months of hiatus, and after bringing fellow acoustic conspirator Duncan into the mix, we’ve solidified a lineup of sorts that will ensure that this musical project goes out with a bang. We actually have a gig lined up on the 13th of May, and perhaps one more before July. I’ve also started up with another band since January, something that tends as much towards gospel/soul as a twentysomething caucasian with two overdrive pedals can get. Both bands are coming along nicely and have spurred me to refine my rig.
(warning: geeky guitar content to follow.)
Refine is an understatement. I’ve been perseverating over my guitar tone. I’ve taken some big steps towards that holy grail of tonal perfection, which inches closer to what I think I want with every step. I’ve switched my strings from the muted, jazzy flatwound .11’s to the standard round-wound .10’s, which has afforded me a little more speed, attack, and nuance in my playing but has cost me some thickness in my lows and mids. More importantly, I dropped a good chunk of cash on a beautiful amplifier a couple months back: a refurbished and customized ‘76 Fender Vibrolux, with all point-to-point electronics cleaned up and tweaked to 60’s blackface specs, down to the faceplate and grille. The amp isn’t quite blackfaced completely, though: it still has a pull-out volume knob for high boost, and some pretty sweet AlNiCo Fender Special Design Speakers. It’s truly a unique amp, and I was very lucky to run into it on craigslist when I did. Between the vibrolux and my Gibson things are sounding pretty sweet. But your instrument is not just your guitar and amp, it’s everything you run your signal through. Upgrading the speaker cones and pickups of my rig are items I really should give some thought to, but not now. Now I am devoting full attention to obsessing over pedals.
Which pedals an electric guitarist decides to use might make the most difference in terms of customizing their instrument than the guitar or amp itself. Those little metal boxes are not generally thought of as part of someone’s instrument, but they are incredibly important. I would say that the pedals I’ve chosen to use account for half of my tone, and after a good amount of research and experimentation, I’d say that with my current setup I’m a little over 75% of the way there. The basic setup is a giant effects loop running out of and back into a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor (used mainly as a mute button for me). The loop, right now, is a Dunlop Crybaby (wah) > Electro Harmonix Q-Tron (bubble sound) > Ibanez TS-9 DX (overdrive with low-end boost for a little growl) > Ibanez TS-9 (lead distortion) > Boss BF-2 (flanger) > Boss CS-3 (compression and a little sustain). Then after the effects loop the whole thing runs into a Line 6 Delay Box (for which I’ve dialed in the Maestro Tube Echo, Electro Harmonix Memory Man, and Sweep Echo settings) before being sent out to the amp. It’s a lot to deal with.
One of the great parts to a rig like this is that there are so many places to tweak your sound just so. Each box does something different, and depending on the order in which they are placed you’ll get different results (wah > overdrive sounds different than overdrive > wah). Mixing and matching pedals has been even more fruitful than messing with knobs on each individual pedal. But all these knobs are a double-edged sword: all these options leave more possibilities for things get messy. Between the guitar, amp, and pedals, I have no less than seven volume knobs and six tone knobs. Finding and maintaining the right balance is quite a balancing act. There is also the issue of signal degradation: with all those input and output jacks, and with all those cables connecting the jacks, there is bound to be some diminished quality in the sound. If (when?) I get really, really serious about all of this, I replace my mid-grade cables with customizable solderless connectors, or the top of the line gold-plated cables.
I’m not quite satisfied with my rig. Sometimes I don’t think I will ever be, and half the fun is going to be continually building and experimenting with different combinations. While everything I have will stay put, I can’t help but wonder if replacing my standard crybaby with the 535Q, or if it is worth swapping out the q-tron for the q-tron +, which offers a softer, vowel-like response. The flanger is old and horribly beaten up and makes some pretty freaky sounds, which can be cool sometimes, but maybe I’d be better off with something a little more reliable and even-keeled, like the MXR Phaser. Perhaps throwing in an EQ at the end of the effects loop will give me a more full tone. And recently I’ve been enamoured with the leslie speaker effect, which points things towards the Uni-Vibe, but damned if I don’t have a stereo rig. It wouldn’t make much sense in mono to have a Uni-Vibe, which is essentially a phaser that pans between a left and right channel, but there are some less expensive options. I also have a Boss Octave Pedal kicking around, but it’s less than awesome as it cuts out and distorts when you play chords through it. Makes me drool after some of the high-end Electro-Harmonix Synths…
I spent a good three afternoons at Mr. Music trying out different pedals in different combinations. Didn’t buy anything, although I think they are pretty sick of me now. These pedals and all the options they offer have my head spinning. Maybe I should take a lesson from Angus Young and worry more about what my fingers are doing instead of my feet. After listening to all the options and pedals I begin to lose perspective. After talking to a particulary helpful guy at Mr. Music for over an hour on Wednesday, I handed back an armful of pedals with an apologetic and resigned look on my face, and thought to myself, that’s it. I’m going acoustic.
music: The Hackensaw Boys- Love What You Do
A while back I answered an ad on craigslist for a guitarist needed. Turns out the ad was for someone to do some studio work up in Billerica, which I wasn’t aware of when I answered it. I went ahead with it anyway when he finally responded. About a month ago I went up to Billerica with my rig and jammed with a bassist and drummer. The whole thing was recorded in 16 track digital with separate channels for each instrument. By my ears the session was not all that great; I set up too close to my amp and had problems with feedback all night. Several of our jams were messy, distorted affairs closer to bands like Tool than the standard whitebread rock/funk I usally produce. But he seemed to dig it. A bunch of time went by before the guy got back to me and I sort of wrote it off so when he did I was pretty surprised. He wanted me back up to do some studio overdubs and rework some sections. I haven’t ever really been interested in doing anything like this, but that could in part be due to the fact that I haven’t had the opportunity.
Hearing the tracks from last time really surprised me. It sounded a lot better than I remembered, plus he had a keyboard player come in and do overdubs on some of the stuff we recorded. It was a strange phenomenon listening to a jam you remember as mediocre at best with a keyboard track that was not originally there. All told it came together quite nicely, but something didn’t sit well.
Studio work is an exercise in detail, and an endless stretch towards perfection. Over the course of three hours I probably added about 30 seconds of sound to the existing tracks, along with splashes of chords here and there. I’m not sure that the tiny changes amounted to all that much but the guy seemed to be pretty happy about it. I kept thinking that you could keep tweaking and punching in and overdubing forever and never be satisfied with the outcome. I was glad for the experience, but left thinking about how much I prefer to play with people who are actually there. And moreover, I like the blemishes, those little honest moments, that you can only get by playing live. It’s a lot messier at points, risky too, but it’s also a lot more revealing and cathartic to put yourself out there with no chance for post-production, editing, or mixdowns.
Musicians can be placed on a continuum according to their focus as related to this issue; on one end is the studio and on the other end is the live show. I think I’ve always been drawn to bands that tend towards the live side of the spectrum, even before I started playing myself. There’s an energy to the live music experience that you don’t get on an album, and there are moments of brilliance and humanity that somehow don’t translate to the studio. Live music reminds us that this sound is the creation of humans, real humans right there in front of you playing instruments, and that somehow puts the music in a different perspective. Of course there is some life-changing studio music out there. I love certain albums and will always love them. And I know the importance of studio work, how you can do things in the studio that you can’t reproduce live, that the most important rock band in history is almost completely a studio band. But studio sessions are sometimes so squeaky clean, the composition’s delivery so prototypical, that something vital is lost. There’s the other issue of packaging music and the problems in the industry with doing this now that people have the internet at their disposal, and how live music is the way for musicans to make a living without having to worry about people sharing their music. But that’s a rant for a different time.
It’s really a matter of medium, which brush auditory artists choose to paint with. And all else being equal, I’d rather go live. That might change now that I have almost an album’s worth of originals, but the thrill is not listening to a stitched-together piece of music in a soundproof booth and throwing in your part; the thrill is plugging in and sharing a desparate moment with other musicians, even if it doesn’t come out perfectly. You won’t find moments in a box, they say.
I think that this particular situation was a strange one because we had no preconceived compositions to track out in the studio; it was essentially a live jam recorded in the studio. Things might be different if I went into the studio with a band, people I have been playing and writing with. But here was a situation with two strangers, and some I’ve never met adding parts at later times. The illusion is quite convincing, but something doesn’t sit right with me about the whole setup. It’s a strange enough thing to collaborate on a creative improvisation with other people, but to put your piece down and then find that someone else has come along and thrown something on top of that calls the whole project into question. You never hear about four painters working on one canvas, even painters who know and respect each others’ work.
I came away from the studio experience intruiged, glad to have done it, but excited for band practice the next night. Band practice turned out to be the worst one we’ve ever had, but despite not clicking at all and quitting an hour early there were still moments where I was thought to myself, oh, this is why I do this. Something I could not get in the studio.
music: Grateful Dead- 6/10/1973, Washington DC
I was catching up with someone after a wonderful salmon dinner tonight, talking about this and that. There’s a guitar nearby, and he eggs me on to play a little. I tune the thing up, and out from the woodwork comes B. B. is somewhere in his 50’s, presents with impenetrable eyes and facial expression,sports long stringy hair and shaggy goatee and an ample round potbelly framed by old stretched suspenders. He shuffles around, partly due to a small cast or brace on one of his feet, but mostly because a lucid reality isn’t his forte. He smells a bit of old underwear, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He had shuffled back and forth once or twice over the course of the evening, and had probably been there and back more than that in a larger sense, but this last time he stopped in front of us at the sound of the guitar being tuned. He looks at me for a good long while, damn near half a minute, without saying anything at all, and not seeming like it was necessary for him to talk. Something clinically close to catatonic, were I to guess. I asked him, seeing his Jerry Garcia shirt, if he liked the Grateful Dead. He nods after another excruciating 10 seconds, still staring quite blankly at me and the guitar. I’m not sure if he blinked the whole time. I start running through some songs I know how to play, and halfway through the list he speaks up:
“Play Eyes of the World.”
So I do, carefully, and not too loud, not knowing exactly how this guy would react to it and not wanting to make too much of a spectacle. But as soon as the chords started, he breaks out with the lyrics, shouting his way through the lyrics, barely holding melody and rhythm together. And as soon as it began, though, B. was immediatlely transformed. An intensity came over him as he half-sang, a certain glow as well. Something in B. resonated and reverberated and amplified, he somehow was now awake, snapped out of his placid trance. It wasn’t good, but it was pure and honest. He hit most of the words pretty well.
I kept playing the tune for all my life, not quite knowing what would happen to this human being once the music stopped. When it inevitably did he fell silent, cracked an imperceptible smile, and asked: “Box of Rain?”
I didn’t know it.
“Ripple?”
That I knew. So we did Ripple, with B. scratching out the verses. There was something heartbreakingly human listening to him recite the lyrics almost as if they were the Gospel. In some very significant way, especially with the music of the Dead to a certain demographic, music takes on a highly spiritual quality, and B. was in church, testifying.
If my words did glow with the glow of sunshine, and my tunes were played on the harp unstrung, would you hear my voice come through the music? Would you hold it dear as it were your own?
We ended up doing Brown Eyed Women and Bertha before it was all said and done. He seemed pretty disappointed that we had to stop, but we’d made a bit of a scene and my fingers were hurting. The point, however, was made. Music is an incredibly powerful and moving thing, sometimes able to accomplish in a few seconds what years of therapy can not. It evokes something deepset and vital in even the most impenetrable of minds. A Ripple in still water.
(if I knew the way, B., I would take you home.)
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world
the heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings
The heart has its seasons, its evenings and songs of its own
music: Biosphere Sessions - 9/28/2005
I spend a lot of time thinking about improvisation, which is funny because I’m a planner at heart. It’s also funny because improvisation, by definition, is something you don’t think about beforehand. I think I’m attracted to the idea of improvisation because it is a creative act that in many ways rattles the cage of order, safety, and composition, and is a reaction against constraining structures.
When you improvise, you take risks. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t, but when things do click it is complete ecstasy. The more you improvise the more you can get things to work out in some way, but the more you need to keep pushing back the boundaries of your comfort zone.
My own musical endeavours over the past month or so have exploded with improvisation. We’ve been rocking the Biosphere since February, and over the past couple sessions I’ve been able to say to myself that we sound like a band who has played together for a bit and sounds tight, even in our improvisations. We are falling into musical pockets that, as they say in the field, get there. Moments where our improvisations fall into alignment are ecstatic, some of the best moments I have all week. With the most recent addition of a tenor sax we’re pushing in new directions and cultivating an adventuresome attitude towards music making. At the same time, though, our improvisational approach is growing more disciplined. In order to make the improvisation work there are needs for some constraints, some rules. Most of it is because our improvisations are communal; everything is interplay and reaction, and since none of us knows what is to happen next we have to be able to fall back on a little bit of agreed-upon structure. In some sort of paradox, the more we practice together the better our spontinaeity becomes. And strangely enough, some of the best moments of improvisation are when something completely new and unrepeatable slides into something composed, familiar, and recognizable. Our immediate goals, in fact, include expanding our repertoire of compositions and rearranging some of the tunes we already have down.
Music is a safe venue in which I can improvise. The payoffs are huge, and the adverse consequences for something not working out are not that bad. But trying to stretch improvisation to other corners of my life has proved less fruitful. I found that I have had to improvise with my teaching a little more this year than last, and while teaching will never be devoid of improvisation sometimes I think that the best thing to do is to avoid improvisation by planning as much as possible. But Missa Toss is trying his best to have a life of his own this time ‘round, and after a weekend full of friends and short on lesson planning, I found that I had to improvise a little more than I would have liked. It hasn’t blown up in my face yet, and has worked almost enough to convince me that I could get away with a drastic reduction in the amount of planning I do, but over the past day or two I’ve gotten some indication that kids may be suffering academically because of my lack of planning. This is more apparent in my behavioral science classes, the whole of which is, if not an improvisation, a work-in-progress, an uncompleted vision. The course is new to the district, something I applied to do, and since the suits downtown said I could do it I’ve been scrambling to throw things together in a satisfactory fashion. Due to time and energy constraints, it’s been mostly improvisation, and it’s been only me. No dropping out for a couple seconds to listen to the rhythm, get my bearings, and re-tune, no sitting back on the melody and letting the other instruments take over…if I’m not prepared then I suffer a tough day at school and the kids don’t quite click in with the material. A lot of the stuff of the last unit has been disjoint and organized poorly as far as theme. Because I haven’t done the course before and because I’m pulling together so many things from outside sources I’m finding that I’m dropping the ball every now and again. Even though I’m feeling like teaching is becoming more second nature and less performance, I still need to suck it up and spend the majority of my Sundays preparing for the week. In the teaching venue, I’m not the one that suffers if my improvisations don’t pay off. My students are.
Stopping to think about it is a bit overwhelming. I sometimes can’t believe that I’m managing to keep it together at all on the teaching front. But that is the way with improvisation: as soon as you start to think too much you are lost. Miles and Coltrane practiced so much because they wanted to engrave the basics into their heads, fingers, and mouths so much that they didn’t have to think about them. Whatever your improvisation is, your goal is to flow with it, to blur its boundaries and blend yourself into its stream, to skip into some sort of groove with your medium. And at the same time, your goal is to impose enough structure onto any system such that there is a coherent scope and theme, but leave enough room such that there can be some degree of improvisation. Be it music or teaching, or pounding out these weblog entries, I realize that I can’t achieve the level of organization I want on the fly just yet. And when the lives of others are at stake, I’m realizing, sometimes my own improvisational spirit needs to take a back seat to some solid planning.
music: Bootsy Collins- Back in the Day…Best of Bootsy
Acoustic guitar players have it easy. Their instrument is, well, their insturment. The piece of wood and steel that they hold in their hands is the beginning and the end of their technical quest for perfect tone and feel. How nice it must be.
Electric guitar players have a little more to consider. There is the instrument, which is undoubtedly a very important piece of the puzzle, but when you go electric you have a rig, a chain of boxes and cables and vacuum tubes that end in an amplifier of some kind and a speaker or two. There are a dizzying amount of options to consider. but if you somehow manage to own the right guitar, put the right boxes in the right order, and run them all into the right amplifier, life is sweet.
My rig has been developing over the past year or so. The big steps up have been purchasing the Gibson ES-335, and the Fender Super 210 amp. I’ve thrown a series of stompboxes in between the two, and more or less settled on a crybaby, two tubescreamers (one with extra boost on the low end, the other with gain and tone max’ed out), a flanger, and a compression sustainer. Until today. Today, as Peet said, is a special day, for the Q-Tron arrived in the mail. I’m now the funkiest one in town.
I can only describe this one as the box that makes the bubble sound. There are a host of other things it can do, but i’ve got it set to bubble, somewhere in between late ‘70’s Jerry Garcia, Bootsy, and that opening bass line to Chameleon (and not unlike a certain bass player on songs like Down with Disease and the breakdown to Free, although we are told he used the vintage mu-tron III). It’s the first box in the series right now, even before the crybaby, but I’m thinking of trying it in between the wah and the tubescreamers. Either way there are some interesting combinations to be had. Q-Tron + Flanger make for a cool sound, add distortion and things feed back in an unsatisfactory way until I step away from the amp a little. Semi-hollow guitars are a pain sometimes. I’m working on it.
For now I’m content with just the Q-tron. That bubble sound is the coolest.
So my rig is coming into its own, and my instrument in the larger sense is being revised and honed. A big piece will come next week when I take my guitar to a guy I jammed with a couple times, and we tinker with the electronics. Want more sweep in the mid-section? More headroom on the lead channel? A brighter clean tone? It’s all possible. Plus I can get the tubes checked; there’s been a rattling that indicates something is up. Then what? Replace the cheap tubescreamer with an original model, update the cables and connections, and mount all on a homemade pedal board. Maybe, just maybe a delay pedal.
Fine. Biosphere be rockin’. We’ve done some cleaning and rearranging down there, installed new christmas lights, and turned a section of wall into a chalkboard (aw naw, missa…). We’re playing with a sax and potentially a new keyboardist in the coming weeks. And now with the Q-tron, I get to make that funky bubble sound whenever I want. Acoustic will always have its place for me — it’s how I started playing — but now that I’ve gone electric and have built a halfway decent rig there is no going back.
music: Talking Heads- Stop Making Sense
I bought an amp this weekend. The old Crate was hitting the upper reaches of its capabilities and the new band setup demanded a little more headroom. Up comes an all-tube, 60-watt, 2×10 amp on craigslist for $300 and anticipating a decent tax refund this year I jumped at it.
The thing is a beast. An absolute beast. The highs are piercing and the lows are rattling. It’s way too much to deal with, more than I’m prepared to handle at this point. Louder than I’ll ever need it to be in our studio space downstairs, but plenty of headroom to entertain the possibility of playing an actual room one day. I spent about an hour each yesterday and today playing around with it, trying out its built-in lead channel, tweaking and balancing levels on it as it runs through my stompboxes. The increase in power will allow me to get a more full sound out of my axe with less finger strain, but also increases the likelihood of feedback, especially considering my guitar is semi-hollow. Probably doesn’t help things that I’ve got my guitar running through two tubescreamers, along with a flanger, crybaby, and compression sustainer. The compressor helps some but my rig is now an unruly 1,000 lb. angry gorilla ready to rage at a moment’s notice.
I worry a little bit that I’ve sacrificed the finesse and soft touch that the Crate allowed for, that I’ll go way over the top when I plug in with the band on Wednesday. New gear always takes some getting used to, and this will be a bit of an adjustment. Amps are curious things to use; they are often overlooked and money is spent on the actual guitar, but the amplifier (and all accessories) is part of the instrument in a larger sense. It is arguably the most important part-it’s where the sound comes out. I’m not completely set on the Fender, and there’s no way I’m getting rid of that little Crate, so there’s room for growing pains and experimentation. There’s also an incredible amount of headroom for me to crank the thing up and literally shake the house to its foundations.
music: Recordings from the Biosphere (with Matt and Sebastian)- 2/18/05
Another week of vacation from school is upon me and my goals this time around are modest: resurrect some of that which I lost to Missa Toss over the past six months. I knew going into this nine day stretch that some sort of ritual was appropriate to mark the reclaiming of my own life that was to take place, and in the days before the vacation proper I considered doing a three-day fast to help clear the cobwebs and to create some mental space from which a more healthy, balanced perspective could take place. The topics of hunger and the inescapable need for food have been rattling around in my head for the past couple weeks, and the idea of a fast appealed to me as a way to manage both my accumulating emotional and visceral clutter. As the vacation hit, though, I realized that I did not need to empty out; instead, I needed to fill up. Enough of my time has been spent in personal deprivation that a physical acting out of that deprivation was not the proper means of making the most of this time given to me. No, instead, I thought to see what I could to to fill time with things of substance. My eating habits are poor enough during the work week.
If I had the inclination, I could easily fill my time from now until the end of break with work for school. I’ll have to dip into it at some point-lessons must be planned for the week after this and an entire curriculum in psychology must be outlined for next year-but for the time being I’m content to do things for myself. And even though break has only been dented by this past weekend, it is of significant substance. Time is being filled with goodness, mostly with that infinitely difficult but unspeakably positive thing I’ve been working towards and pushing on since I returned from my trip across the country: music.
Friday night, by all personal measures, was a watershed moment. I connected with two guys from Craigslist, a bassist and a drummer, and got down to it for about two and a half hours in the 1-2 basement music studio. We threw around some original ideas (I’m re-listening to the 30-minute straight improv we opened things with now), a couple Dead covers, a couple Phish covers, and some other assorted works. It was the first time I got to put the room downstairs to good use, and it was also the first time I got to put the newly-tuned and tweaked Gibson through the motions. Both earned their keep and then some-things came out better than I ever could have hoped for. Considering that it was our first time playing together it was downright incredible now that I’m listening to it again. Peet, a man who knows his music and takes it seriously, said that he’s paid good money to hear music much worse. It occurred to me afterwards that this was possibly the first electric jam session I’ve had on guitar…ever? It legitimized a lot for me: all that time spent noodling in my bedroom playing along to CDs, all that work put into recording demo tracks, all that money thrown into the new Gibson. It also made me glad I dropped some bills on mixers and microphones-we got a great sounding recording out of the session. We three are going to make a habit out of it and hope to eventually bring a keyboardist into the mix. Friday night saw a big goal of mine for this year come to fruition. I couldn’t be happier about it and am already itching to have another go at it.
I’m still staying true to my roots on the music front. I’m working on some more structured singer-songwriter type stuff on acoustic with Jono, a guy who contacted me about playing music a couple weeks back. We met up this afternoon, ran a few of his tunes including some covers, some of my originals and some of his. We’re shooting for an open-mic at the Middle East tomorrow night. It isn’t perfect yet, but it sounds good enough to take out there and let hang in the breeze for a little bit. Another goal of mine to be realized: playing out. My musical horizons are expanding by leaps and bounds given this short time in February and the best part is that these recent aural explosions are by no means limited or isolated incidents; they are beginnings.
Music, no matter how good it can be, is not the sum total of anyone’s existence. This week saw, by my standards, a staggering amount of social movement. C. and I had our weekly Thursday night dinner for the first time in a couple weeks and it was good to catch up with her. We came up with a great hairbrained scheme: I supply the music, and she’s going to make us Hammer Pants. (That’s word, because you know…) I also got a chance to see M. twice this week, a monumental feat considering I haven’t seen her since last September. Jono invited me out for the time honored tradition of drinking beer and then throwing really sharp pointy things last night. And tonight we had a dinner gathering at the 1-2 that blossomed from an offhand comment to Peet this morning into a way cool get-together. TiMO and JZ came back to the 1-2 from dogsitting, Jono stuck around after running through songs and convinced Sam to join us, Matt and Gina came up from downstairs, and Jojo made the trek up from Central Square. We had a good hour or two in the kitchen full of frying, boiling, slicing, talking, eating, drinking…even a good grease fire in the oven. We then did a good amount of lounging and laughing in the common room while we waited for our digestive systems to do their thing. It was a simply beautiful (and beautifully simple) Sunday night at the 1-2. It was a study in what is necessary this break: food. I do not need to be emptied, assuming a passive stance towards my surroundings. Instead, I need to be forceful and purposeful in my actions, to indulge in and enjoy food of all kinds, and as the song goes, share it with many friends. There are seven days left in which I have a lot to accomplish here in Boston. This vacation isn’t about leaving, and that’s important. It’s tough work resurrecting one’s social life after over a year of neglect, but I’m already beginning to taste the rewards.
music: Phish- 11/14/95, Orlando, FL
A drive
beyond the city
around
but not to long to
riot in the night
through fuss and fight
through nothing
live through it all
The three day weekend was, for the most part, spent convalescing. I’m not sure what from. I spent a good amount of time pinballing around the house tweaking this and that, having minutes of focus and purpose, but most was filler. I got some big projects for school out of the way. I played a decent amount of guitar. I started work on a new song, which is now well on its way to completion. By Monday night I was restless and disappointed at how the weekend shook out. Cue tmo, asking coyly if I was interested in going to an open mic. In Gloucester. On a school night. I needed the recklessness of it all more than the content of the trip, so I dragged out the acoustic, bundled up, and headed out.
Enter the Rhumb Line, a small townie bar at the ass-end of the commuter rail far beyond the hype of the big city. The crowd was friendly and accepting, or drunk, or both. The music was predominantly classic rock covers, with some impressive improvisatory moments thrown in for good measure. The open mic was in fact an open jam session, and me there at 10:00pm on a school night, bringing the wrong brush with which to paint. I sat back and took in the scene, keeping mostly to myself, but some time around 11:30 the host of the session points a meaty finger my way. Apparently Shane, the guy who we travelled to meet up with, put my name on the list. He also loaned me his old Strat, an axe that’s been through the war and then some. The frets were almost flush against the fretboard and the action was dangerously low. It, besides all that, was a Strat, and as such has a completely different feel than the ES-335 that I’ve spoiled myself on. Throw an actual crowd of strangers into the mix, a drummer, a bassist, and the host on another guitar, shake. No, puree. I call for a simple funky improv to open: Am7 > D7, nothing too difficult, and I immediately falter on my first riffs. The Strat played sharp and pointy, the clean channel far too choppy, and I ended up fighting with the instrument for the rest of the night instead of using it as a tool. We segued into a fairly standard E-blues jam where I took a stab at a weak solo. The host asked me to sing something, and conjuring back from a far more successful gig in Bellingham, MA, I started Franklin’s Tower. By that point I had already lost my legs. I bumbled through three or four verses, the host ended it, and I turned the borrowed Strat over to Shane. I’d had enough.
This music things is hard enough as it is; doing it in vivo is even harder. But I realized as we were driving home that that is my zone of proximal development. I’m no longer challenged as much by my bedroom solo recitals. I needed to get out there, plug in, completely fall on my face, and stick it out. I needed the reality check to my pride, the humbling, the reminder that I don’t know jack. The challenge, as I saw it, was not a kinesthetic one; I didn’t feel the need to rip off mammoth solos. I’d like to blame the guitar but as a wiser person once said, the tools are only as good as the carpenter. The challenge was and is how to put myself into the proper frame of mind when I know other people are listening. There was a great deal of static and interference last night at the Rhumb Line. I was not clear and directed, and I certainly was not at ease. I made it through, and will live to play another day.
I’ve redoubled my efforts on the music front. I’ve been thinking hard about how to transition to playing in a more public sphere, about my own songwriting, and about some of the more fundamental issues of tonal theory that I’ll need in my bag of tricks. I spent about an hour on Sunday night taking a music lesson. All of this is directed towards a point- I have a jam session/audition scheduled with two guys from the craigslist music board on Thursday.
Musical horizons are expanding as I push outwards. Part of creating art is putting oneself on display publicly. I have tended to lurk in the shadows, produce from behind a curtain and reveal work without standing next to it (blog?) but that’s not so much an option any more. The musical externalizing process is too far along to slow down or reverse now, and despite any stumbling blocks that I may make for myself, there’s only one direction to move. Struggle, progress, and all that.
Slipping
Finding the stream
Living the dream
Feeling the sound
music: STS9- 4/21/02, Champaign, IL
To tune means to bring into harmony. On the most basic level, we have to bring our instrument into harmony with itself…Tuning means to hear. Too many of us allow our eyes to dominate our ears. Try closing your eyes and listening with the ears of a blind person…Beyond tuning the instrument itself, it’s also important for you to be in tune with the insturment. In the same way that singers understand their own voices, learn to understand your guitar…Much more difficult is finding an internal tuning — one that brings body, mind, and spirit into harmony. A player must be clear of internal static such as impatience and frustration; otherwise, the spirit frizzles like a radio slightly off dial. Your sound must have what the Chinese call ch’iyun: a sympathetic vibration of the vital spirit. It is a harmony that speaks from your heart directly to the heart of the listener — an intangible element that enables us to transcend our separateness and feel the greater oneness. When you feel that moment of transcendence, when your spirit is uplifted — that’s what you’re going for.
-Philip Toshio Sudo
I spent almost two hours restringing, tuning, and adjusting the intonation on my guitar this afternoon. Tuning itself is a relatively short practice; adjusting intonation takes much more focus and time. It was a chance to get to know the instrument better, to adjust its sound in a personal and significant way, and allow myself to meditate on the alignment of vibrations that is and will become music. Musicians often rush through tuning, eager to jump into making music. I’m trying to use the practice and discipline of tuning as a way to enter into a receptive mental state before I start to play. It also separates time spent making music from the rest of the day, allows me to set up my dojo, so to speak. I think that the sanctification of musical space is an excellent (and widely followed) practice by musicians of all sorts-it explains candles on the guitar amp, special carpets on which musicians stand, rituals involving setting up rigs, and more broadly, the use of music in religious rites.
I find that on days I am unhappy, discontent, or restless my guitar sounds out of tune no matter what I do. Taking the time to stop everything else and focus on bringing sound into alignment can make a big difference in the quality of my music to follow. I try to use my own ears for this as much as I can; electronic tuners can be helpful but make people too reliant on visual feedback and allows them to stop listening. More than that- electronic tuners allow people to tune without even hearing the note they are playing, which seems self-defeating. Music is more about feel than physical calibration; to really dig into an instrument or music in general it is imperative that one can internalize tone, can hear the tone in their own head before they are able to bring it into actual harmony. This was a lesson learned early: one of Mr. White’s first lessons in high school band was to listen to the reference pitch, then sing the note in your head before you make sound with your instrument. He also used to say something along the lines of the thinking of Mr. Sudo- that if you are playing a scale, then make that scale music. if you are only playing one note, make that note music. It’s harder than it sounds.
Music, above all else, is a discipline of rhythm and harmony. I spent almost two hours bringing my guitar into harmony this afternoon, and in doing so pushed myself into a more centered mind state. It’s a necessary practice. Making time for alignment is important, as is learning how to listen deeply. Both are lessons that ripple through the creation of sound, yes, but also to every other corner of my existence.
music: Tori Amos- Tales from the Choirgirl Hotel
Winter break is probably past its halfway point and I’m still in Boston. But there are plans afoot to get out of here. I’ve, however, had my hands full here. Three solid days of work on music, and almost exactly one year to the day of my first concerted effort at recording the resultant EP is nearing completion. I’ve pasted together a rough mix of all six tracks. While there is still a bit of patching and mastering and normalizing and stitching together, the infrastructure is in place and the bulk of the work is done. Pushing this project into its final stages was a big goal of mine for this break and it’s good to have something to show for all the time I’ve spent messing around with instruments, computers, mixers, and microphones. While I’d ideally like to rework sections of most of the tunes I have to draw the line sometime soon. This EP is not meant for public consumption on a commercial level-it is more a document for myself and my co-writer as well as something handy to give to people I might play with in the future. Many of the tunes push towards the sappy guy-with-guitar campfire cheese about nature and the open road. It’s to be expected considering I drove across the country this summer with a guitar, but in the larger scheme I’m not looking to make that sort of music. It was what we had to work with this summer, and it is what came out. Now that it’s down on an EP, it’s time to move on to a more full electric sound. More than anything else it feels good to get the six tracks of the Rivers and Roads EP out of my head and onto disc. I’m rollin’ on.
Get me out of this city…
Such a simple line, such a powerful sentiment. It’s a proclamation of discontent I’ve voiced on more than one occasion, and as luck would have it, my good friends happened to paste it into a song, the song that really made the rest of this music thing possible. With the penning of Gato Negro worlds opened up for me. Yes, I’m reaching, and perhaps even making good time. But after three solid days of work on music in my isolation chamber/recording studio/bedroom, I’m ready to actually get outta this city. An impromptu midnight trip to the Arboretum tonight was a nice appetizer, but I’m thirsty for more.
Last minute audible, made earlier this evening: Philadelphia for New Year’s with friends from my childhood. It will be great to see them, and it will also be good to hit the asphalt and drift for a couple days. I’ve been a little too boxed in here. I saddle up in THW-455 some time tomorrow and set out for points South on the current of the mighty I-95. And now I’ll have a soundtrack, one conceived primarily during travels in the same car, to keep me company on the quick pop down to the city of Brotherly Love.
My faculties for language slip at three in the morning. More from the road. I’m rollin’ on…
music: Tea Leaf Green- 5/10/03
Peet played it for me last Thursday and I promptly lost my potatos. We’ve been rocking it loud multiple times every day since. The song itself isn’t anything too mindblowing, but all things considered, Lapti Nek is a jam of intergalactic proportions. It also reveals the extent to which Peet and I are incredible dorks. No, really, we are incurable. Way beyond help. Along with a good proportion of the males born in the 1970’s and 70,000 Australians.
Have a listen. A free drink to anyone who can place the song without outside help. Another drink to anyone who can name all the members of the band.
(And for the true dork: lyrics and translation. Zorze zot.)
music: Drums and Tuba- Vinyl Killer
I realized this Friday afternoon that I hadn’t been to a concert since Phish’s final show in mid-August. Good that I was finally getting out and taking in some music: the Sam Kininger Band at Harper’s. While the show would be good in its own right, my friend Amy plays keys in the band and can throw down with the best of them. Even though she’s a friend of mine, she’s also a good enough musican for me to want to listen to her stuff regardless. The show was good; more than anything else it felt good to be back in the realm of live music. But it left me more hungry than when I came in.
I’ve been bitten by the music bug. it’s not enough to be a passive observer of the creation of music anymore. It seems that every time I hear music happening these days I want in on its creation. I’m not saying that I’m good enough to hang with the likes of the Sam Kininger Band yet (nor would I get off on playing funk for over an hour at a time), but hearing isn’t enough. Music is no longer a spectator sport. I left the show sort of bent out of shape because 1) I wanted to make some music and 2) I realized how little time I have been giving myself to pursue things I wanted to do for me. I spent the rest of the weekend with my guitar, bass, drums, and recording equipment getting some stuff out of my head and onto tape…er…hard disk. It’s now Sunday night and I’ve just spent a good long weekend doing little besides making music. It’s been just me on all instruments, but hey, I take what I can get.
This summer AJM and I cannibalized a tune written by our buddies in Madison and made it a connecting piece between two more structured tunes: Gato Negro and the Asphalt River. We retained its name but none of its lyrics. And so Fernanda became my little project for the weekend. Every time I get into a recording session the bar is raised in new ways-this time was a much, much better mic job on the drum kit thanks to Ron’s Oktava MK 12’s. Plus, this is the first song I recorded with the Gibson. The results are astounding; Fernanda has become an ass-kicker of a song. I seem to have worked myself out of the sappy campfire songwriting phase I was in from this summer. I also got a good drum and bass track down for the reworked studio version of Gato Negro (probably the best song I’ve had a part in writing thus far). To be finished this week sometime…but with the end of the quarter at school and tests and notebooks to grade it might have to wait for a while.
All this sound crunching has put my computer through the ringer. It’s probably more than that but things have been a little off with this trusty machine this past week. I’m getting some electronic static on audio tracks. It could be a whole bunch of things including the patch cables connecting the mixer to the soundcard (let it not be the mixer itself! and PLEASE let it not be the soundcard or computer…) but some of my work has some crackles in it. Funny part is when I rewind and replay that section, though, the crackles are gone. Curious. Cool Edit has flaked a couple times as well, randomly shutting itself down mid-session. Chalk one up for Microsoft. And this is probably unrelated, but over the past week my computer’s developed a case of insomnia- it isn’t able to standby or hibernate. I think this is because of something else (the error message says something about COM 1 and drivers) but it’s still frustrating. I’d like to lean heavily on this computer of mine for audio recording even though I know it’s not designed for such uses.
Recording sessions are a long process that require discipline and patience. And for now, the creative process is a solitary endeavour. Just as well; I need to make more time for things that allow me to grow. Plus most days school burns me out on conversations. Besides those technological glitches and electronic hiccups I’m glad to be getting this stuff down. Fernanda is an enormous rocker. I’ll still tweak levels and fiddle with the things for a bit but for the most part it’s done. It feels good to know I have the potential to make some really good music, but more than that it feels good to do more than consume. I’m now starting to contribute some original music to the world, and it rocks.
music: Allman Brothers Band- At the Fillmore East d.2
I’d been plucking away at my old Epiphone Les Paul Special for almost four years now and over the past year or so I finally outgrew it. While the low-low-lowest end LP was a perfect starter electric, I realized about a year ago that I was past the starter stage and it was time to upgrade. I kept a casual eye open to new guitars around town, periodically popping into music shops to check out the latest. An axe caught my eye a couple days ago at Mr. Music in Allston. They say that you’ll know when you pick the right one up, and as I took it off the wall and started to pick at it something felt very, very right about it. the weight, balance, neck width, action, the way it sat, distance from volume knob to selector switch…this was it. ES-335 model (an ES-333 actually), which is the model i’d been eyeing for years. This one had a natural finish, not flashy but elegant, and because it was an ES-333 it was about $800-$900 cheaper than its bigger brother. I was in and out of the store for a couple days this week, plugging the thing in, debating whether or not to drop so much money on a piece of wood and metal, allowing myself to believe I was ready for such a nice axe.
So it’s been a long time in the coming; the old tools could only get me so far. I dropped a hefty chunk of change today on my new guitar.” It was a sizable investment to be sure, but one that will pay dividends in excellent sound and playability for years and years. This is an axe that will be with me for a long time.
The difference between the old and new guitar is astronomical. Everything feels more solid now; I actually feel like I can pull off some pretty brash licks that I couldn’t have before. Part of it is the new axe just plays better — it’s better constructed and has higher-quality components — but part of it is that this new guitar means that this music thing is getting serious. The biggest hang-up I had in buying the new axe was the question of just how serious I was going to be about playing. Was I content to play in my bedroom, record some stuff and squirrell it away, or am I ready to start collaborating, hitting up jam sessions, playing out? The latter just wasn’t feasible with the old guitar, at the level I was looking for anyway. And even if I spend another couple months or years in the bedroom recording mode, the new axe will lend a higher quality to my work. What comes out of the thing is more balanced, measured, even. Simply put, I can worry less about putting my fingers in the right place (the old guitar demanded a much more exact hand technique, a good thing for a starter axe) and start worrying more about bringing feeling to the music. I’m much looser now. I’m able to think more laterally than vertically on the fretboard. And the sustain…
The past couple months have seen a steady investment in music gear. I’m now in possession of some high-quality mics, a mixer, some digital production software, a pretty nice 20-watt tube amp, some pedals, some cables, a bass, my trusty old acoustic, and now one beautiful natural cherry semi-hollowbody Gibson electric. Looking at the thing now, I realize that it’s almost the same model as a guitar I listened to a lot growing up, one owned by a friend of mine in high school, a guy whose playing (and discipline and modesty about it all) did a great deal in inspiring me to pick up the instrument for myself. My buddy Mike is now making it as a musician, performing on Garrison Keillor’s Prarie Home Companion, and I can only hope to channel some of his drive, emotion, passion, and talent in this new step.
The guitar is a musical intstrument, and like any instrument it is a tool that humans use to facilitate some other project. It is a means to an end. This particular instrument will allow me some more freedom of expression, increase the range and quality of my pallete, but ultimately the music will come from the same place it always has. Now, though, more has been made possible and the bar has been raised. I look forward to the challenge.
music: Geoff Scott’s Public House, 9/21/04
Music has been riding the bench along with the rest of my life since the summer ended. David, as of late, has been more or less ignored while Mr. Taus is busy getting it together. Tonight, though, I indulged and recorded some ideas that have been kicking around since the road trip. One of these ideas is yet another sappy campfire folk tune extolling the virtues of the open road and the wilderness. This one is called ‘Miles from Nowhere.’ The vocal tracks are painful to listen to. I was much better with my singing at the end of the summer, when we busied ourselves with singing and playing every day. I’m still maintaining some limited proficiency on the stings, but my singing voice is suffering from gross neglect. No matter. Add it to the repertoire of originals, and call it the first one that was written solo. It’s passable as far as acoustic folk music goes, but I’m not really that interested in making that sort of music these days. I’d rather plug in and rock hard or funk deep. Still, nice to have another original under my belt.
It appears that I’m not the only one distributing original music on the internet. (No, technically, thousands of people do this every day…) This one hits close to home. If the secret wasn’t out yet, it is definitely out now: Tuesday Night at Matt Murphy’s is now on archive.org. The little weeknight residency that I frequented for so many months is now hitting the information superhighway, freely downloadable by anyone with an internet connection. It’s the way things should be, I suppose, but I feel some remnant of selfishness over Tuesday Night even though I haven’t gone in more than 6 weeks, and only 10 or so times this whole year. The last time I went in there was a plainclothes stranger carding at the door, and the crowd was completely fresh to me. Besides the musicians themselves and Jason behind the bar, the Tuesday Night scene is no longer mine. Not that I could pop out at midnight on a Tuesday anymore…Mr. Taus wouldn’t allow it.
The music, though, is what matters. The stuff that comes out of that little corner of the bar is some of the best stuff I’ve heard. Period. That is why I’m thankful that Geo allowed his stuff to be put up on archive.org; people who like music really should hear this unadvertised residency. I’ve been writing about Tuesday night for some time now and have been listening to live recordings of the Murphy’s sessions for even longer. I did a review of Tuesday Night for Live Live a year or so back, and it sums up the experience (at least, the experience than) nicely. Thanks to taper acquaintences and friends, I have amassed a decent collection of recordings from Tuesday Night and have passed copies around where appropriate.
Be it Tuesday Night at Matt Murphy’s or David’s cheesey campfire folk music, the internet is a powerful way to indiscriminately throw music around without regard to distance or hard format. Thanks to my computer gurus DFC and tmo I’m able to join the information race. Maybe one day I too will be up on archive.org…
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
