Lawn and garden. Making your dent in the natural world. Practicing the art of cultivation. Making decisions that gravity,wind, rain, snow, animal migration, insect behaviour, light, fire and pollution will eventually reverse. Your meddling can only yield microcosmic success. High fashion versus wearability. Can’t make the leaf fall close to the tree. Its all going to be OK. My home is a tradesman’s garden that the natural forces of human interaction are shaping to their needs. I clean it and the work is reversed almost instantaneously. The natural world is moving indoors. Flora & fauna. Microbes and enzymes. Catalysts and neutral loam and silica. I surrender.
The iron is hot. The door could open to a the new freak era. The yardstick could be longer. It strikes me that the conservatism of our time is different than the conservatism of the 50’s. This new conservatism consumes outlandish behavior, neuters it and then spits it back out to aimlessly walk the earth with its new lobotomy and a benign smile. Rave culture is hardly subversive. Porn is mainstream. Slacker chic is so depressing it barely exists. Pot is pretty much legal. There is no good acid. New punks and hippies are not about social change (see slacker chic and common consumer affiliation). Even as late as the Vancouver of the 80’s punks were blowing up power stations and shooting Brinks guards. Instead of careening off the musical corner into a new void of improvisation our modern jam bands all sound like old jam bands. It was a richer existence for the great Frank Zappa. Look at the world he got to work against. These were real stinky, funky, drugged out, R&B loving, racially integrated crazed freaks in a world of military haircuts, soda shops, barber shop quartets, unjust wars and draft boards. In his own words, “it was a more colourful time”. If you dyed your hair in my hometown in the early punk days you would be surely beaten. If you were a small-town freak in the early sixties you stood a good chance of spending at least a year in a wheelchair or a month in jail for your crimes (see Zappa). My son has attended elementary school with both dyed hair and a mohawk haircut. Nobody even noticed. Then: lifestyle vs lifestyle. Now: one lifestyle under corporate sponsorship. Zappa was definitely a “freak” and not a hippie. I mean “freak” in a rich, noble and glorious way. There is more libertarian anarchy to the freak way than the quasi socialism of the hippie way. This is why California remains an intoxicating place. It spawned fast food and rooted the crawling ivy of the right wing Disney morality BUT it also spawned Captain Beefheart, skateboards, bike gangs and the Merry Pranksters. It is a place of possibilities. The brain drain pulls original thinkers from other places and drops them here for the good money and the good weather. Vancouver holds hope in this way as dangerous artists discover that you can live on the street year round in this temperate climate. Those from Canadian points east can make their way here instead of chancing the border in these post 911 times. As we insulate our countries against real threats perhaps Vancouver has a chance to be a place of possibilities instead of a bogus world rec room and US film industry sweat shop. The iron is hot.
Life invades art. Experiencing life wins battle. Art is temporarily driven from this corner of life only to return today. I have heard the statement, “there is no greater enemy to art than a pram in the hallway”. Total bullshit of course. How many wives and children did Picasso have? I believe he treated most of them poorly but continued his stud service well into his seventies.
Suffering and time to create seem to be the variables that the author of that epithet finds so attractive in an artist’s life. Firstly ...I’m not an artist. I don’t think what I do is necessarily “art” and , therefore, I am free. Secondly...suffering is possible in any situation. One can be pool side, hanging with the Rolling Stones, and enjoying a massage and still be suffering. Some are born to suffer. Thirdly ... “time to create” has never existed. If you don’t have anything better to do you are guilty of shirking. Art is seen by most as a frivolous enterprise so when you are “working” it is not given the same weight as other “real work”. Most people see an artist as working in a parallel universe that is not actually connected to the way that life is supposed to move. This concept changes when people start to cough up money in shitloads for the art. At that point the artist is actually “working” . . . for real. This is why it is so hard to get the ball rolling in the first place. You need all the support and praise at the beginning. You need the money at the beginning. The “experience necessary” Catch-22 of the job description comes into play for the artist too. How can I get the experience without ever being given a chance to get the job?
When the artist is finally commanding value for their “work” it is said by snobs that their best work was done back when they were struggling and starving. “I liked the first independent albums in the period before they sold out”. Struggling produces uniform art of a different kind. Why do people want to endlessly experience the artist’s pain? Does is validate their own pain? Does it make them feel better to hear that someone is worse off than them? Is it because blissed out music so truly sucks.
Most children’s music completely blows because it denies that children have intelligence or experience pain. Usually it is cheaply produced on a midi keyboard and features absolutely no ethnicity. It is the sonic equivalent of the Happy Meal. We allow folks to market shit for food directly to our children and then we give them shit to listen to while they chow down on their fatty free-radicals wrapped in nice cartoon character prints. Give them the big people food. If you crank AC/DC records around kids you will see just how much they are missing. Apeshit. Sly & the Family Stone or Muddy Waters can also turn the rumpus room upside down. I’ve been busy trying to give my kids a good healthy start. Must...build...muscles...to ....swim...upstream...against....what I’m supposed to want. “There is no greater enemy to art than a pram in the hallway”. I can think of a few greater enemies. “There is no greater enemy to bullshit than a child with the right question”. Art builds immunity and strikes back. Beautiful sado masochistic cycle is complete. Dad returns to the battlefield with fresh legs. Life invades art.
Tongue sticking out of the music star cat. Time clock devil angel sees the sun rainbow movie dog cry then hug right, hug left, from his angry age sex location beside a wilted flower. These are the important emoticons in the MSN messenger vocabulary. Perfect fridge magnet poetry. Read the list up or down and add conjunctions to taste. Kiss the ideas asleep telephone vampire bat. Drink rose handcuffs. Preteen language created by people who are not teens. I don’t think any of them are stringing them together in poetic couplets. Hanging on the telephone has moved into an even more banal realm. Shorthand codes for shorthand conversation. This is full colour black and white. Actual emotional connections are most excellently avoided. The computer seems to be a bigger filter. The sound of a voice in your ear holds you to a time and place. Accountability is a possibility.
I suppose this messenger thing is a safe game whose only result is more lethargy and distance. Dumb it down kids. Perhaps the evolution of the computer keyboard is written. Pictures corresponding to the only objects and words needed as decided by kindermarketing will replace letters and punctuation. There will be a row of keys for different inflections of the word “like”. I see about 47 symbols on the emoticon list and there are at least three times that many spaces on a conventional keyboard. Language and spelling evolves. It is hoped that this works toward all things being described in more vivid and accurate ways. I see devolution. As corporations become the only gatekeepers of our day to day communication some majestic words become extinct. The multisylabic world is in danger. Nicknames become names. The lazy tongue inherits the earth.
Familiarity is part of the nickname world. I call you by your nickname because we are intimate. Chums use nicknames. It is an obviously false intimacy. All words do not have to come with a three beer buzz. Hype is now mundane and there is fatigue linked to the mundane. If all things are giant and amazing then nothing is giant and amazing. Are we stripped down to hyperbole for the strip mall droning. So...I beg of you...try some ten dollar words. Trip on them and use them inappropriately. I’d rather see fumbling with pretentious language than six thousand solid “right ons”. Ebonics are great. There is something new in there every minute. Lets stab at he piñata and get some candy. We know its in there. Carnivores: would a meat piñata be a real goat? The cat plays with the little stunned, hyperventilating mousie. His pupils dilate and he seems to be smiling as he bats the little ball around on the moonlit glass blue grass. You want to step in and stop him. How could nature be so intentionally cruel? Isn’t the food chain about necessity and nobility? Words can be used like that cat’s claws. Its not a simply inflicted, black & white hurt. Its not a simply inflicted black & white world. Torture can be artful and result in the perpetuation of the species. Survive the learning curve and you can do five thousand more damage. There is an emoticon for cat. He has a nickname given to him by the kids. This does not describe him in this situation. Tongue sticking out of the music star cat.
After looking back I realize this is a companion piece to October 3rd's entry. I am not very complex but I want you to be complex.
Every now and then you cash in. I wonder what I owe now. I was getting ready to head out to the studio to use my time wisely when an angel knocked on my front door. He held out a little black helmet, gauntlets, some sunglasses and a little silver key. The angel said, “I really think you need to go for a ride” and pointed to a gleaming black on black Harley parked out on the street. I think I was trembling with anticipation. It was one of the most beautiful sunny fall days on record and it cracked wide open with the roar of those dual pipes underneath me. I grew up riding motorcycles but retired from the game about eight years ago. This little angel knew what I was missing. It all came back pretty quickly. As I rumbled through the adjoining neighbourhoods I shaved a year back in time for every goose of the throttle. I guess this might be the pump down in the depths of the fountain of eternal youth. Bless my friends. I’ll get him back.
Music therapy. I suppose that is what my life is really about. If I look at it from a selfish perspective it has functioned as auto erotic behaviour that doubles as healthy voyeurism for others. I’m getting off and someone is hopefully getting off listening to me get off. I think you have to look at in a grotesquely selfish way because the truth lies in there somewhere. There is no other reason to choose this as a vocation. Nobody should be able to make it work any other way. In order for the music to be of real value the musician has to love it first. Each note flies away with a piece of the ego and, after a whole night of “givin’ it away now”, the player is grounded. He or she has shared themselves with Caligula’s whole palace throng and can now kick back on the pile of discarded togas.
We took our Sharkskin music therapy machine to a sunny Vancouver Island for the thanksgiving weekend (Canada). Although I would say I “get off” playing solid, behind the beat rhythm with Colin James there is some part of me that needs to play the occasional solo. All my guitars are specially built to handle both rhythm and lead work. My amps are dual purpose as well. The ‘skins are an instrumental R&B organ combo in the style of the MGs or the Meters and this gives us all plenty of space to wank. The groove comes first. First you must surrender to the collective to be taken by the blissful trance of the groove. That can’t happen any other way. You must be willing to give up all flash and peacock behaviour in order to later be rewarded with the chance to strut. If you can stay on the same skinny little chicken skanking for five minutes you will be anointed with the power to bend, slide, trill, and hammer on before the song is over. There is no end to the song until everyone is done. In the best cases we have gone somewhere we would never have thought we’d go by the time the song is played out. We hadn’t fired up the Shark machine for some time so we were all hoping to get to that experimental and exotic place quickly. It took a little bit of time but we all got therapy. I guess its our musical veteran’s idea of a “getaway spa” in an exotic locale. We take Sharkskin to a beautiful location and get paid for doing all the things we were warned by club owners and musical advisors never to do. We don’t sound check. We show up 5 minutes before playing. We don’t have set lists. We start slowly and build it up. We don’t sing songs. We don’t play anything that anybody really recognizes. We have no “career plan”. In this way we are free.
I really think the audience loves to feel this energy. They don’t want to go for a night out to a place where the predominant vibration of the band is, “we are giving you what we think you want in order to keep our jobs and live to play for you again”. People get to wallow in that feeling at work all day. Lord knows I’ve played out the pop showcase scenario countless times in order to get a leg up. I have surrendered my will to them on many occasions . In the end those high pressure situations only ever panned out if we all went in saying, “#@7*this %#@!, lets just play”. Sometimes the “f’you attitude” backfired when the band got carried away with its own inside jokes but, in most cases, it served to make us look different than the social climbers. Anecdotally it might be fair to point out that opening with a faithful cover of “Play That Funky Music” by Wild Cherry at the Odds label signing celebration in Los Angeles might have been a mistake. I still remember the baffled frozen “what are we going to do with this” smiles of all the record company stiffs who were flown in to check out the new next best thing. They later grew to love that part of us but could never “market” it. The cultivated “f’you” works much better in a marketing strategy. We’ve seen that work through all of rock history. The “new punk” is perhaps the best example. A “fuck you” with fashion sense. A real “fuck you” isn’t as easy to control. Sometimes it involves dropping out of the whole scene in order to save yourself. That doesn’t help “career momentum” at all. Sometimes it involves burning your meal ticket and starting from scratch on your own terms. Who’s going to understand that except you? That’s why daddy needs his medicine every once in a while. It comes in the form of music therapy. Live by the sword . . .be healed by the sword.
Indoor outdoor world. Last night I got back to my hotel room late and opened the drapes. It was the SkyDome hotel in Toronto. My room had floor to ceiling glass facing into the vast techno lego cave. It was dark and lit only by the exit lamps and amber safety lights in the tunnels and concourses. The gridded turf and the space station catwalks were shades of deep blue with golden accents. Silent. I could open the windows and lean over the edge of the 4th story into musty air. An enclosed space that is this massive can play tricks on your senses. Why is the first invitation always to the fantasy of jumping in? I guess your brain tells you something must be done to fill the space. Rush forward quickly and confront what you can’t instantly comprehend. I spent two nights and a couple hours of the night before in this hotel. The lack of natural light became an issue when the novelty wore off. It really was like life blasting in when they opened the roof one day. My activities here ran parallel to the idea of the indoor outdoor world.
The creation of SkyDome speaks to the idea of insurance. All the charm of an insurance office. With this astroturf biosphere we insure that no baseball will ever be rained out and thus remove the one element that made baseball games precious. The fact that baseball swung with the weather was part of its charm. No time limit and the possibility of postponement. In musical terms my gig in this building was an illustration of the same neutered reliability. I was computer editor and tenor sax player for Colin James and the Little Big Band. A computer being used to run a swing band show is as pragmatically gross as the retractible roof at the dome closing to protect the ball game. By the way . . . I can’t play the sax.
In the same way that the Dome offers a protected environment this idea runs through all half-time entertainment. Those of you who are surprised that performers at half-time shows are playing to tracks can now catch your breath and begin the long journey to reassembling your faith in humanity. All these shows are played karaoke style. The singer might be singing but that’s it. On this occasion I had been out playing “actual” shows with the CJBand and was enlisted to help put together the backing tracks for Colin’s half-time and pre game stint at the Argonauts vs B.C. Lions football game. Pat Steward had gone home so we had Joel Anderson subbing on drums with no rehearsal and only two hired horns with no charts. Simon Kendall had never played keys on a Little Big Band gig so that left only Colin and Norm with any experience. Someone had to fill the tenor sax chair to make it look convincing. I had a suit. I was in. I don’t think I’ve played as surreal a show since Sharkskin did the on-ice extravaganza at a Christmas Canucks game with the sexy elf figure skaters and Santas repelling from the rafters. At least then I had a guitar on me.
As we were being driven to the stage, waving to the crowd from our golf carts the dream began. Like driving with a cop chopper searchlight tracking your vehicle the spotlight increased the sensation that I would soon be sucked up into the roof and into the belly of the alien mothership. Here they would strip me down and make me do strange things with the saxophone that lay in my lap. Nothing could be stranger than what I was about to do.
In the souldcheck I had been the trumpet player so I had a basic idea of where some of the shots were but I was unprepared for the four solos I would take. My friend Dave said I forgot to move my top hand on the fist solo so it looked like I pulled the whole thing off wearing flesh coloured mittens. There was no reed in the mouthpiece so drool was channeled straight from my mouth and down the centre of the beak of the sax to my black suede hushpuppies. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in that band laugh harder and lord knows I’ve seen them laugh. I gave my camera to a friend for the half-time portion of the show and he captured my “Lenny Pickett in the headlights” performance on the "Jumbotron" screen for the record books. At one point in “Train Kept a Rollin” there was a huge horn shot that featured all three horn players caught on the giant screen with their horns down. After the pregame songs I asked Pat, the bari-sax player, to take the solos in the half-time portion so I wouldn’t look so ridiculous and he bailed on me saying they were really tenor solos and he couldn’t possibly do that. Its half-time at a football game and the audience is drunk and a hundred yards away. The difference between tenor and bari sax is as important as someone wearing a historically incorrect polyester toga in a crowd scene from Ben Hurr. It slips past pretty easily. I got two more solos in the three songs in the half-time and he took one. Afterward Pat and the trumpet player (William) were doubled over laughing that he took a tenor solo on the bari sax -- he said sprocket not socket. I was doubled over laughing that I took four solos and the actual professional sax player took one. I felt a lot like George Plimpton must have felt as a “participatory journalist”. He once played in an NFL game. I now know what it feels like to be in the horn section of the Little Big Band. I ‘ve stood in front of them and enjoyed the sound blasting up behind but now I’ve been in the back row. Maybe this will give me the secret powers they possess to drink for twenty straight hours and still stand?
It all takes a bit of the charm out of the performance for those who know the dirty little secrets but at least the show wasn’t rained out. Now the teams can move out into the open air and we can go back to actually playing. Just as most pro sports facilities build in these insurance markers there are big name acts out there who play to tracks all the time. Their names might surprise you. Its a strange idea that we create these giant indoor spaces to build a perfect context for some aspects of life. They allow the fragile elements of our culture to go untested. Darwin winces. Shelter. They are marvels of human ingenuity but it only takes a day or two for the wonder to wear off if you stare into them long enough. A perfect show leaves your system when its done. They say the public demands this. Consumable, reliable and disposable. They still write about Alice Cooper falling off the stage after one song and breaking six ribs but nobody is still talking about any of the U2 shows from a tour that just happened. I’m sure the shows were well done but somehow the idea that they are guaranteed to go off without a hitch changes things. The sound is good, the lights are good, but not in the way they would have been "good" when most sound was shitty and musicians were unreliable. If those variables were reintroduced the show would be “fucking amazing” by description. Indoor outdoor performance. Impervious to the elements. The outside world can never be fully taken in. The inside world is good for a laugh on the best of days.
Christina Aguilera is humping. She humps the air. She humps a girl in a Road Warrior bikini. She humps a greased stud in a wrestling mask. She is “Dirrty”. She can hump so hard she may even be humping herself. Her video is the uber version of Britney’s “Slave”. Instead of panties on the outside she wears panties pulled up her crack and some nice chaps. The casting may even be all the same people as Britney’s video. They may have even recycled the body grease. The song is a rip on something I spotted right away but escapes me right now. It seems “Shakiralera” would be a fitting supergroup. Embarrassing booty saleswomen using kindergarten fascist imagery and cartoon eroticism. Hair does not grow on the chests of any of these shirtless hunks. Boys are sexier than men? Will these constant waxings contribute to the evolution of the species as Hollywood attempts to force Darwin’s hand? Its a bald costume. If we get rid of the costumes will the actual sexuality scare the shit out of everybody? Maybe we are being protected from the true power of humanity because we are all afraid of what we actually are.
No costumes. Being alone for a long time can help dissolve your costume. There is nobody there to encourage you to fit in . . .to keep it pressed. You can forget about patching up holes and cloaking the imperfections. Here is where all things actually happen. The accumulation of scars and marks and stress fractures makes a common object something of its own beauty. If you want to go for being the most beautiful by fitting into the brand spanking new model you will always come up short. There will always be someone who has a cleaner version. I aspire to be what my guitar has become. I have an old 1958 Fender Esquire that is unquestionably one of the best guitars in the world to play. Everyone who picks it up says, “holy shit”. It is worn in like a tradesman’s hammer. The neck is the shape of the inside of your palm and the ends of your fingers. . .all over. It has been played by hundreds of people by now and has risen beyond inanimate object to almost oscillate on its own. It is worn, beaten, corroded, pealing, and low tech. Stylists and aestheticians find it ugly. Its only a “role player” when it comes to set dressing for a video. Here again civilization conspires to destroy the actual beauty it creates.
Things that are shaped by life are shunned. Brand new items can translate their power through low resolution mediums. Clichés and common thoughts don’t need high resolution transmission because your brain fills in the blanks. You’ve seen and heard it before so you only need the suggestion of the object to get all you need out of it. The minute cracks and signs of wear need time and care to understand. Its best to experience them first hand. Each communication might then be unique. Instead of drawing on the same components of your brain to fire out the same responses this would instead add to your bag of tricks. Each unique situation, therefore, compounds your own mojo. Beauty creates beauty. The low resolution world only drains your resources while actual contact fills your tank. This is the audiophiles lament. Digital versus analog. While your brain fills in the gaps in the sound you are taxed. Analog may be noisy but the noise is soothing.
There is a vernacular to rock video acting. It is built around the idea that it is possible to deny that this is not real. Can truth and intensity be communicated while lip synching? No. Never. There are some who never acknowledge this fact as the form keeps limping along. You are faking. Deal with it. There are rockers who design their every move around the idea that people are watching them. They move into the video genre effortlessly. Their onstage “emoting” works just fine. When they stare into the camera with their wounded sensitivity and Details Mag grooming you feel nothing. I am taxed. My brain is trying to bridge the gap between the bad acting and what they want me to feel. The side effect is nausea. The cracks and scars in their appearance only appear if they are conscious affectations. Designer “pre-stressed” clothing. The messy hair look with its messy hair products. The real stresses are hidden under makeup. The one element that you find to be “out of style” is the only window into the soul. If the budget is high enough there are no elements “out of style”. The more money the less it resonates. The more humping the less sexy it becomes. Soon schoolgirls will be showing up to school in their underwear and humping the air as they head down the flourescently lit, locker lined corridors to Algebra 101 with Mr. Sanders. No one will bat an eye. The boys will be shirtless, shaved, greased down and bored. The girls will air hump the greased up boys and the boys will sigh. The custodian will be the sexiest man around.
Sex, violence, extreme weather, money, celebrity scandal. Same old same old. The gatekeepers at the narrow end of the TV intestine must all be 13 years old. Nothing shoots out that seems anywhere outside this formula. I speak in broadly general terms but so does the TV. Even the “highbrow” channels are variations on the same themes. Lets speak to a renowned author about his/her views on the same five topics. Lets watch the discovery channel to see animals captured doing the same things (through creative editing). Lets talk in low and intense tones about the nocturnal life of the tree frog. Lets use the same tones we use for tracking the murderer throughout the Detroit crack house.
Although life is constantly peppered with intense moments there are a lot of things in between that could do with some attention. How about some TV about people watching TV. I would like that channel just as a motivator. If you want to do something with your life then rent a hotel room and turn on the “People Watching TV in Hotel Rooms Channel”. It will force you to do something with your life. How about the “Teens Typing Into MSN Messenger Channel”. You’d find more suicide notes beside idiot boxes playing these channels than any other. Why am I not wrestling the alligator? Why am I not the philandering drugged out movie star who has just flipped his Ferrari? Because those aren’t all the best things to be doing?
We’re all watching a world carefully selected for us. Not all great things make good television. The “People Staring At the Sea Channel” and the “People Reading the Last Chapter of an Amazing Book Channel” would have 9 viewers between them at any given time. If things come out boring at the small end of the telescope then the gatekeepers try to make them what they are not (see exciting tree frog). On the other hand I’m watching this live hurricane coverage and it is making an exciting event boring. Its like they are attempting to tame this wild wind by being ready to document its every facet. Impossible. Its only television. You can’t fit a hurricane into that limited language. GoreTex jacket with a necktie rhetoric. I wish it had just died offshore and left them all holding their limp mics like Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s safe. Reality TV is far from real. Everyone is making choices about what is shown. I think people are now narrowing their focus on what is exciting to only include those things predetermined to be exciting for them. The obvious thrill sports and “extreme” activities and the head and crotch games of “Blind Date”, “Survivor”, “Friends” , and “Will & Grace” are the only options. A life without black & white reactionary behaviour and manipulation is a life without “drama”. Like a hurricane you can’t even fit cancer into the TV. All the medical dramas can’t get the real feel. Its still “General Hospital” with better acting and lighting. Can we widen the focus back out beyond what makes good TV? Good TV might not be good living. Hey...”the Simpsons” is on...got to go.
Does going cold turkey on coffee affect your mood? I better start running these variables through the scanner a little more often. There just might be some external component to my sketchy behaviour of late. Woohoo. I’m off the hook? Blame it on the bossa nova. Its a dangerous dance. A dance of temptation. It was not the lustful locking of eyes and the finger running gently down the crook of the back following the bead of sweat to the crest of that hidden valley. It must have been the coffee.
I guess I’m scaring a few people. All this talk about death and mortality can come across like a flying brick at times. You can’t feel the subtleties until the stinging has stopped. A friend pointed out that if he guaranteed me life after death I might go out and do something stupid. This made me think that the fear of death adds value to each day. Once again my weaknesses are my strengths. When you’re 16 and understand you will die one day it doesn’t change how you behave. Your fear only serves to inform your immortality. You are immortal because the predicted end seems far enough away that it might as well be forever. Time to steal your parents car and see how fast you can make it go backwards down railway tracks while steering with your bare feet. This makes sense if 70 years seems like an eternity. Later time will begin accelerating until it starts whipping past faster than the cigarette ads on the walls of the Indy Brickyard. Some go over the wall and into the crowd (especially those who are steering with their feet). There will be blaze of glory after blaze of glory for others to go out in along the way and you will start to feel that your long range predictions may have to be altered to suit your new concept of time. Don’t waste any. “Use it up. Use it all up. Don’t save a thing for later”. That’s all I’m saying. Straight to the punch line. All rewards all the time. If it is work it must be its own reward. Faster pussycat purr purr purr.