YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!
… and that about sums up the years in the basement jam room in a nutshell.
For the most part we were a bunch of pretentious stereotypes that couldn’t see beyond ourselves at the time. I’ve said it for years and I’ll say keep saying it for decades to come, there’s a whole hell of a lot more to music than just the sounds you hear. Ultimately it boils down to communication, honest and clear words and thoughts flowing between the individuals within the group. It’s a whole hell of a lot harder just to string those words together to form that preceding sentence than it is to actually put it in practice face to face.
What we lacked in adult life experience we made up with passive aggression, it was ultimately a recipe for disaster. I’m still friends with everyone I played with, though looking back I feel like I owe them an apology for wasting that spot of our youth right after college. At the time I still had all sorts of unresolved issues in my head, and lacked the life experience to properly address them. As a result our jams became more of a cathartic exercise, none of us went to therapy; we just exorcised our demons through our improvisations. There are plenty of times where our drummer / vocalist blew out his vocal chords and finished the afternoon completely hoarse due to having screamed out his own frustrations about his situation.
I’m not proud of having to admit to having thrown a guitar across this basement either. It might not look like much but it thoroughly captures the essence of that group and our relative immaturity (mine are the feet on the left)
I still struggle with grasping the difference in how people see me and how I see myself, but musically I’ve finally been able to assert myself clearly. Problem being, I only found that ability long after our last jam room flooded and we all started moving in separate directions. All the people I used to play with still talk about jamming when I see them again, but the only one I’d truly feel comfortable starting anything substantial with is my original drummer (the F). That’s not to say I never made attempts to express what was flowing around in my head. I’m going to take the easy way out of this entry by copying and pasting en email I wrote to my bandmates back in what almost feels like a past life (Summer 2007):
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by another version of me
alright so here's the deal.
it seems to me like i'm somehow the logistical focal point of this band that almost kind of exists. not because i want to but because it's how it's come to be through the direction of communication from within it's members. but we need to communicate better.
it's not that i want to be a dick and say this is how it's going to be. but more that i think i can explain how we've come to be, and what we've always been in a way that crystalizes our music and makes it simple for other people to understand.
the only catch is that you have to accept that anything that exists is everything or it is nothing. it's not that complicated. i won't get into my full theory on everything, just the bit on music.
the whole deal with music is that it's an energy. it's the aural component of light. light comes from the friction of the internal and eternal struggle between the ego and the self for control of the individual. most people fool themselves into believing that one side is an external force rather than an equal aspect of their whole but whatever. so if you can grab that we emit energy music is simply one aspect of it.
but if anything that exists is everything, then music is it's own entity as well. so think of it like a sun with a band of musicians around it. from what i see in our society it seems that most bands over the last 50 years or so have focused primarily on the left side of the brain music. which is basically like that band of musicians taking a little piece of the sun then working with it to polish it up into a nice ring. once each musician has a ring they go back to the sun grab another piece and add another ring to their last one until their composition is complete.
then when it comes time for performing each musician stands on their ring of light and dances around as they move along their individual chains.
but being that music is an energy the chain is only as constrictive as the ego makes it. the balanced musicians will understand that the rings can be reshaped differently every night but they still end up making similar images. it might not always be the same chick but it still ends up being a hot chick every time kind of thing.
with the free jazz types they basically had one ring then would reshape it over a set amount of solos for the duration of the piece and then finish up with another ring around the rosie.
*lame 'band' stuff*
going back to the sun analogy when we make music it's like we're all standing on the sun when we jam. from where i stand i hold onto The F with one hand and The Hooligan with the other and so on. where we end up forming the ring around the music as opposed to making the music form the ring around us. so long as we hold on to each other we can't fall off, we just ride the music wherever it takes us.
instead of being a static sun the music becomes like a comet, which allows to play anything from anywhere because we become everything. which is what makes it hard to follow.
basically from my perspective, when i look out at music in our society i see very little from the last example. a fair amount from the middle. and a whole lot of the first. my whole reason for playing music is to play music and to remind people that it's just that simple. i care far less about people who would hear us to say they did than those who would hear us to communicate.
by not imposing any form of structure prior to playing our instruments it allows us to be completely free. the free jazz cats were close but they still stuck to having heads that would repeat at the beginning and end to tie them into the left. the trick we end up working on everytime we jam is the ability to not listen to the note we just finished playing so that we can
hear the next one. i'm pretty sure that's also why the whole is more than the sum of its parts. i know that The F and i have said that we can't play the same way with other people or on our own.
so that's basically how i see music. never really had the words to express it right but i think that works.
*mushy 'band' / college stuff*
we don't need to write anything, we don't need to practice anything, we don't have a point. we just play music. no point to it. just music. a reflection of everything we've ever heard up to now channeled through ourselves for everyone to enjoy in that moment. it's like Eric Dolphy said, 'when you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. you can never capture it again'.
and that's it, the reflection can only happen in that instance. that's why i don't really care to learn covers, why i have little interest in practicing sets, and why i see little point in us ever trying to make a commercial recording. but i would like to play a show sometime. i think it could be fun with people who understand what i just laid out. dig?
so... are we jamming on saturday and if so what time?
|
Apologies for the lack of capitalization, I was a bastard, but that last two paragraphs really solidify the majority of my perspective on being an idealistically artistic musician. Yet, even 5 years later, I still complain. The result of that original email? Lots of praise from the bandmates, lots of OH YEAH! LET’S JAM!!!. Was there ever a show?
Well… we can’t just go up there and make it up. You can’t just do that. I don’t want people getting angry or laughing at us… From a guy who fancied calling himself a Hooligan (incidentally this is the same guy who never learned the bass line to The Mountain Song).
Yeah… COMMUNICATION! It’s not about saying the right thing, it’s about being honest, with both yourself and your bandmates; and sometimes that means the best thing for
your band is to find new mates.