Recently in Music Category

Last year at some point, I was asked by a local fellow to come to a Board of Directors meeting for a local music fest, and they would have some sort of job (unpaid) for me. I had been wanting to get involved with some sort of project like that for some time, so I ended up going to the meeting, and giving them my contact info, and an idea of what I'd like to do, and where I thought my skills might best be applied within the constraints of the jobs that were available. They took my info and I basically never heard from them again, which was a disappointment, since because of my twenty five years of working in and around the music business, I definitely think I have some skills and connections that would benefit such an organization.

It's amazing how things often come full circle in this life, and the other day, I got a call from a friend who is organizing a small but local, outdoor music festival for this summer, and he asked if I would like to be Technical Director. Well heck yes! This is exactly the kind of thing with which I've been wanting to be involved. This event is scheduled for a weekend in August, but I can't give out any other details yet. As things become more concrete, I will be able to do so.

At Salon last night, we also started a kind-of ad hoc committee to organize a local Spring picnic, to as one attendee put it, "Bring in the Spring with great exuberance!" This event will be in May, and again, once details become a little firmer, I will be able to divulge more information.

Sunday, was one of those days where I had a lot of psychic coincidences. You know, those cool but coincidental moments when you think about something, and it happens? Well it happened several times.

I had been thinking about Frank a lot; don't know why. When I went to look at my email, I noticed that in one music list to which I subscribe, people were talking about Frank, and his autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book, which I had read twenty years ago, when it was first published. I jumped into the conversation, mentioning that I had been meaning to dig up my copy, because Frank had a great quote in there, about people who think they like music. By music, I mean the day to day, pop drivel, that is force-fed to them on the corporate air waves, and music channels. Well, as you can imagine, Frank had something interesting to say about that, and then, someone on the list was kind enough to locate that in the book, and transcribe it into an email for me. Then, later in the day, I turned on the TV and began watching a show called Hot Rocks, on the Science Channel, and the host was in Peru, talking about Inca Roads, and I almost fell off of my easy chair, because Inca Roads is the name of the first song on Frank's One Size Fits All, record. I was being psychically assaulted by Frank, and I don't know why!

This led to one fellow Zappa fan, contacting me off-list, and we continue to have an on-going conversation about Frank, which has led to even more thoughts about Frank, from myself.

Moments like these remind me about just exactly how vibrant Frank was, and how involved he was, in so many areas. He liked to call himself a composer who happened to play guitar, but he was so much more. In addition to his musical talents, he was an astute observer of pop culture, a writer, humorist, social commentator, business man, film maker, and political activist. I'm certain I am forgetting something.

Another thing about Frank, was that he was widely and wildly misunderstood, misquoted, and mischaracterized. Frank would often make racial references in his works, not because he was a racist, but to point out the absurdity and pointlessness of racism, itself, by using racism as a device. People who did not know Frank, also felt free to judge him based on the unusual names that he chose for his children. What that has to do with the price of tea, in China, I will never know.

Thinking about Frank's life, and Frank's death, reminds me that we simply don't encounter people like him very often. People capable of defining, and inspiring a generation. He was one of several musicians and composers who opened my eyes to complex and interesting music. I have many friends, who would say the same thing.

In addition to writing interesting music, Frank always toured with a band full of world class musicians and performed the music, as well. His shows were a kind of variety act featuring music, and all sorts of fun, and absurd nonsense. I had the pleasure of seeing Frank several times in the '80s, and they are experiences that I will never forget.

I am not sure what the point of this post, is, but it sure was nice to go down the Frank Zappa memory lane these last few days.


P.S.

If you're interested in knowing what that quote was, for which I had been looking, here it is:
 

So, if music is the best, what is music? Anything can be music, but it doesn't become music until someone wills it to be music, and the audience listening to it decides to perceive it as music.

Most people can't deal with that abstraction -- or don't want to. They say: "Gimme the tune. Do I like this tune? Does it sound like another tune that I like? The more familiar it is, the better I like it. Hear those three notes there? Those are the three notes I can sing along with. I like those notes very, very much. Give me a beat. Not a fancy one. Give me a GOOD BEAT -- something I can dance to. It has to go boom-bap, boom-boom-BAP. If it doesn't, I will hate it very, very much. Also, I want it right away -- and then, write me some more songs like that -- over and over and over again, because I'm really into music."

I've been a little down-in-the-mouth for the past few days, and haven't felt like writing, but I thought that I'd share this quick story with you.

I am a part of this little group of talented, interesting, and cool musicians (I don't count myself among them) who frequent the same IRC Channel, talk a lot online, and also sometimes collaborate over the internet. Another thing that we sometimes do is broadcast concerts to the other people in this little clique, using an Icecast Server. Two of the guys in our group set up dedicated Icecast servers, and if I want to broadcast myself playing guitar from my home, I send my broadcast to one of the Icecast servers using a tool called BUTT (Broadcast Using This Tool), and the other people in our group hit a particular URL at the Icecast server, and they can listen. Don't worry, this is relevant.

So, tonight, my friend Mike and his girlfriend Valorie played a few gigs, and their second gig was at some sort of dive bar in the sticks of North Carolina. After their set, he fired up his netbook and started chatting with us on IRC. Then he fired up BUTT, and let us listen to the band that played after them. The band was called Cattle Truck, and they sounded exactly like you would imagine.   :-)

So there I was, sitting on my sofa with my earbuds in, listening to Cattle Truck, drinking a brewski, and eating vegetarian chili (that's as Redneck as I get). It's almost as if I went out to get rowdy, without having to leave my living room, and it was fun!

I couldn't help but be transported back in time to the original Blues Brothers movie, however, when I heard bottles breaking in the background. I am wondering if the stage in this bar had chicken wire in front of it, like the stage in Bob's Country Bunker, in the movie. I'd like to think it did.

I don't know how this developed so quickly, but I really am at the "shit or get off the pot" stage with my record label idea. I have an artist ready to go now, and I have no infrastructure.  This guy is a super talented guitarist, who is starting his own publishing company to promote his original compositions.  He hopes to get them into commercials, and movies and such.

I contacted him at apparently the exact time that he had been thinking that he needed a label to help distribute his music, as well.  How fortuitous!

The problem is that we will need a real E-Commerce web site, and I have no skills in that arena, and I really don't have the money to pay for it.

How did the Vanderbilts and Guggenheims get their start?!

For many years now I've had the idea of starting my own record label.  Call me crazy.

It would be my kind of label, where I am the A&R guy, and I get to choose what artists appear in our catalog.  The primary focus of the label would be to feature artists who write interesting and original music, that you simply don't get to hear on most radio stations and in most clubs.  I sometimes refer to it as "player's music."

Me?  I prefer the creative end.  I want to find artists and record them and I want nothing to do with the paperwork end.  But, we still would need a paperwork end, and that's what scares me the most.  I want to be sheltered from the paperwork end.  I want nothing to do with it, but in a venture like a new boutique label featuring non-commercial music, I guess that in the beginning I would have to be the only employee, most likely working for free.

Do people really do this kind of thing?  I mean I know I read about stories like this, but is it like winning the lottery?  Does anyone actually succeed at such a crazy thing?

As of this writing, I have actually purchased a domain name, and contacted several people whom I would love to have as artists in my galaxy of stars.  Most have agreed, or at the very least have been very receptive.

I'm bursting with ideas, and my friends are being very helpful and supportive.  Now the only question that remains is: Do I have the Gonadicals to attempt the difficult parts of starting a project like this.

When I started playing guitar years ago, I always dreamt of the day when I would finally be able to own a Gibson Les Paul guitar.  I loved the look, and the symmetry of the design, long before I had ever even plugged one in and heard their amazing tone.  Then after I had been playing for only a few years, a fortuitous thing happened.  A friend who needed money badly to pay his rent, offered to sell me his Les Paul.  He had done some customizing work to it, and really, had messed it up a bit, but I offered him all of the money I had been saving for the day when I would finally be able to buy a Les Paul, and he accepted.  Three hundred dollars later I was the proud owner of a 1977 Gibson Les Paul Standard (pictured), and I started the difficult task of trying to undo the work he had done, and bring it back as close to stock as possible.  I had a friend who was a Gibson dealer, and he sold me the needed hardware at cost, and after a short period of time, I had it the way I wanted it, and own the guitar to this very day.

Why am I talking about my silly guitar, you ask?  Well, it's because on Thursday, August 13th, Les Paul died at the age of 94 years.

Many of you might not realize this, but Les Paul is responsible for so many of the things that musicians take for granted on a daily basis.  He gave us the first solid body electric guitar.  Before that, the guitars that people played on stage were likely likely to be hollow with arched tops, and if they had a pickup, and were plugged in, they were much more likely to feed back.  Solid body guitars have a completely different sound, but allow you to play with your amp set really loudly, and they won't feed back.

Les also gave us multi-track recording.  The idea that an instrument can have its own separate track which gives you ultimate control over how that instrument/track sounds, and how it sits in the final mix.

Les also pioneered the technique of close-miking sound sources.  Prior to Les, microphones would typically be placed far away from the sound source that they were recording, which would result in a more distant, less present sound.  Les decided that it might be cool to put the microphone more like six inches away from the singer, or instrument, which resulted in a more present sound, and to this day is the way most things are recorded.

The guy was also one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived.

Quite a legacy, eh?

So the next time you pick up your solid body electric guitar, stick a microphone in front of your amp, and record it to its own track on some sort of multi-track recording device, think of Les.