Other People's Music

For starters: apologies for missing a day, but given yesterday's (Friday, that is) jam-packed schedule, and the fact that this is pretty much the last thing I do before bed each night, by the time we got into bed at 1:00, I was only going to get two hours of sleep before I had to get up to take Yesenia to the airport. So the Rambler fell silent.

Anyway, now I face ten days without the wife - and I'm not one of those married men that yearns for any kind of freedom. Basically, Yesenia's absence translates into cranky, moody behavior and an even greater degree of insomnia than I usually suffer from. So I the next few entries get increasingly self-pitying/mawkish/incoherent, at least you'll know why.

Spent the day hanging out with a couple of artist friends - both musicians, also in their mid-30's, both facing crossroads in their careers. Meaning that pretty much my entire day was spent giving advice and offering comment on their situations when I haven't even been able to sort it out for myself - simply put, how to proceed?

Putnam, a singer-songwriter in a folk/acoustic vein, seems to be on an upswing - he's just finished recording and album and has lined up some musicians to play shows with, and booked himself a few shows. If he plays his cards right, he should be able to build a small career touring the New England coffee house 'scene.' A scene I wasn't aware of until today, but I am assured exists. Which is good, because if you've ever met any New Englanders, you know how much they need a mellow place just to get some fucking coffee.

The other, Kristen, is in more of the same boat as me - a songwriter in a rock context who fronts a power trio. Kristen has suffered the same seemingly endless personnel changes as the type that plagued Copper Man during our seven year run. In our case, we were constantly breaking in new guitar players. For Kristen, it's either a new bassist or a new drummer, depending on the year. In the time I've known her - since 2002, when she answered an ad to audition for Copper Man, no less - she's had four bass players (although this last has stuck around for three years or so) and no fewer than four drummers in the last two years. And her most recent drummer just quit, meaning that she's half-heartedly embarked on the search for a fifth.

A fifth of scotch? Ha fucking ha. (No, although I'm sure she feels like she needs one.)

So, she's started to question even the point of proceeding in the context of the band as it is, and I feel both ill-equipped and perfectly suited to offer her any advice on the situation, since, when faced with the same decision a year-and-a-half ago with Copper Man, I decided just to shelve the fucking thing and walk away. And the sense of sheer relief I got when I registered that that particular outlet for my musical ambitions was truly over-and-done with released from me a mighty sigh, a sigh that shook the foundations of Heaven and Earth! Maybe you felt it? Big gassy rumble, back in January of 2006? Maybe it was more localized than I thought.

However, I can't bring myself to just tell Kristen to cash it in - although a goodly number of her friends have been telling her to do just that - simply because it feels wrong to do so, somehow. Mostly, it feels wrong because I think she's such an excellent writer and performer that she needs to have an outlet for her compositions. But I doubt she'd be happy with the solution I came up with to keep going for myself - namely, to construct a new band in which I was deliberately just a member and not the lead writer.

And I really doubt that she'd leap at the second part of my own musical reconfabulation, namely, giving up the lead vocal chores. Nor should she - in Copper Man, my position as lead singer was always by default, and ultimately it was a bad choice, hurting the strength of the music. I knew our songs were great, and that I just wasn't up to the task of singing them - since being a lead singer requires good pitch, projection, easy charm and sex appeal, all of which I lack (well, I'm dead sexy, but I lack the rest).* Towards the last year of the life of the band, I'd already made up my mind several times to find another singer, but was argued out of it. So the first decision I made when the new band came together that not only would I not write complete songs and would open up the lyric writing to all members, but that we'd get a singer, preferably female, to record the damn songs.

For Kristen, this part isn't an option, because she does possess all the great frontman qualities - she's got great pitch, excellent projection, charm to burn and (like me) she's quite sexy. But clearly the trio format no longer works for her. After all, what good is a tricycle if every trip down the sidewalk, you have to run out to buy a new wheel? Time to give up the fucking trike and upgrade to a Radio Flyer.

Lord knows what the Radio Flyer represents in this analogy - a band where everything is painted red enamel? - but it's at least a hint at a new strategy.

In other words, in Copper Man, the weakness was myself. For Kristen, the weakness is the structure of the band and the sound and style of the way it plays her music. So: how to create an environment where she can:

1) Write and sing the bulk of the material,
2) Maintain the environment without upheaval,
3) Find a way to make this new thing - whatever it is - a worthwhile pursuit.

And that's where it sits. I've suggested that she find a co-frontman, someone who could have a hand in writing the material while leaving her with the role of lyricist and singer, but she seems reluctant to pursue, and I don't say as I blame her. She's got such a unique style in mind that I don't see how she could fit anyone else's compositions in, and the primary time I tried that in Copper Man - the aforementioned Ryan Kaplan - the results were like chalk and cheese, if the chalk were radioactive and the cheese were (say) a fine, nutty Brie.

To me, the main stumbling block to finding Kristen a wider audience is the challenging nature of her arrangements. In many ways, her songs are straightforward enough (new wave anxiety like the love child of Tom Verliane and Chrissy Hynde), but every song is worked into a mini-suite, a collection of time-signature turnarounds and rhythm section feats of showy technique that push the music more into almost a Rush kind of context, with each song having not an ABACAB structure, but something that more resembles On Beyond Zebra in terms of sheer number of riffs, verses, pre-choruses, choruses, chorus variations, first bridges, second bridges, tacets, fugues, etc.

And the sad part is, losing that would change a fundamental part of what I've liked about her music - those clusterfuck arrangements. But what could be gained? Thematic clarity, renewed focus on lyric and melodic content, music that plays to her strengths as a singer and a trained actress, and above all, more direct communication with the audience.

I think that I could live with hearing that change in her. Frankly, I'd love it. But would she? I hope so, because the alternatives - either another go-round with the power trio or giving it up altogether - don't excite this fan.

Note: The entire reason this became a Subway Rambler entry rather than an email to Kristen should be apparent, but for those that missed it: all of the above says much more about me and my musical tastes than Kristen. She knows what to do and will figure it out without any influence or advice from me. In fact, following my advice in real life - much like in a game of Risk - can only ever lead to total disaster. Or at the very least, the loss of Kamchatka.

D.

Actually, there's one area of frontsmanship in which I excelled, and that was between song banter. I mean, woo-hoo, but it's something. To this day I can listen to a live recording of one of our shows and laugh at something I just came up with, out of the blue.

The Backburner

Spent the evening doing the 'final' overdubs for a friend's album that I've been producing - very, very slowly - over the last six years. You can see why 'final' is in quotes... anyone who's ever been involved in a long term backburner project like this knows that the finish line recedes faster the closer you get to it. Theoretically, we're going to start the final mixdowns on Thursday, and they'll be occupying the better part of my weekend. I'm looking forward to it, because when I'm in the studio I feel a confidence and decisiveness that's pretty elusive most of the rest of the time.

Tonight's work consisted of two final vocals - trouble songs that couldn't quite come together in the past. One got a complete melodic overhaul; Ryan (the artist) had written the original melody as a fast, rappy patter, with a lyric about someone else's romantic obsession with him. Neither the lyric or melody worked for me - in fact, it's fair to say that I really disliked them strongly. But the guitar solo had a completely different melody that I thought would work as a verse (it does). So, on Saturday - in a break from home repair - Ryan and I sat on the back porch and threw together a new version of the song, along with a more thematically appropriate lyric. The theme? Being unable to finish a long-term backburner project.

The other song just needed a tweak to make the melody more interesting, but apparently we didn't tweak hard enough, because even after redoing the vocals tonight, the thing still just lay there, a great instrumental track waiting to be fulfilled.

Other overdubs were mostly some 'final' vocal harmonies for me - a role I as a singer volunteered myself for, and I as a producer accepted. Ryan also laid down some nice harmonica on his ode to George Harrison - which was timely when we first started recording this album, so that should give you some idea of how long it's taken to get to this point.

Lord knows why these things take so long. Copper Man's own album, Selling the Downtown Dream, took about three years to pound through the tubes. The first sessions were done while Ryan was still in the band (in fact, about five of the songs on his album are his Copper Man compositions from those sessions) back in early 2001. Then those were laid aside. After Ryan left (alright, I fired him, sigh), Shaun came onboard and we developed enough new songs to replace Ryan's in the set, and went in to record those the week before Christmas, 2002.

Then Shaun flew to India to attend his sister-in-law's wedding, and broke his back in a terrible traffic accident there Christmas Eve, on his way back from the rehearsal dinner (well, whatever passes for a rehearsal dinner in Zoroastrianism). Then, his first week recuperating, they discovered that his wife was pregnant.

Think about that: that's got to be the most intense possible chain of events possible. I think only if he'd found out he was due to fly to Mars the following Wednesday would it have been any more storied.

So, we slowly recorded the guitars and vocals over the course of 2003, which Shaun mightily soldiered through, relearning each song before recording, not having a chance to develop any solo ideas that he really was thrilled with - although the guitar turned out to be a highlight of the album. But it all proved too much - he finally retired from the band in late 2003. The record sat around for a few more months, and then we finally mixed it - but by then, the spirit had gone out of it and I can barely stand to listen to big chunks of it (but I'm still proud of the achievement, so go figure that paradox).

It's funny - the rest of our lives, we spend trying to figure out ways to make time to play music - for many musicians I know, it's about the only thing that we really enjoy doing. But always, it's on the backburner, getting black and crunchy. Maybe when we all retire, we'll form some godawful band of octogenarian light rockers, an "America" for the 2060s.

But, really, who doesn't have something in their lives they'd rather be doing than the things they usually find themselves doing? Anyone who's figured out how to live that full life, out there? Or are you editing copy instead of printmaking? Assembling widgets instead of writing illuminating travel literature? Clearing tables instead of studying Byzantine Art? Answering phones instead of writing symphonies?

Really, why are we all jerking off instead of humping like bunnies?

Or was that just me?

D.

Many Miles, etc.

The days are longer, so it only seems appropriate that my days have been getting longer in response. For example: it is now 11:44 PM on Monday night, but I have at least three hours worth of work before I can get into bed. And I can't even really blame it on poor time management, because there simply isn't any other time to do the work I have to do, now.

Not such a great complaint, of course. Being forced to pound a few designs through Quark isn't exactly shoveling 16 tons - but I do owe my soul to the company store, these days, and I am deeper in debt, and will be another day older by the time I post this blog (E.S.T., of course).

Wait! Didn't I promise that this blog wasn't going to be about how life has wronged me? I suppose so. But this isn't really life that's getting on me (except for the giant flood in basement and the collapsed ceiling and the leaky toilet, etc.), but me deliberately overfilling my plate. So: what's the solution? Head down, as the saying goes.

The big problem is that I've always had a lousy work ethic. It's gotten better over the years (really, it couldn't get no worse), but I still find work just a silly waste of time. This is one reason why I've never been a very productive cartoonist - the trade I still consider 'mine' - apart from whatever doubts I might've had about my ability, the labor involved in creating comics just made it too much like work, to me. I have entire worlds in my head that only have my drawing hands as their outlet, and it's a bit like that on-ramp to the Oakland Bay Bridge that just got melted into slag - nothing is getting on or off that way.

Curiously, I can throw myself into music and have no problem doing whatever gruntwork necessary to make the music sound good. That sounds like a laugh-line, but I believe very strongly in being well-prepared for performance. But how does one 'prepare' to draw? My drawing preparation seems to entail a lot of stalking around and muttering obscenities under my breath.

My musician's eye (yes, 'eye') is very clear. I can always see clearly where a composition should go. In the visual arts, my eye is blind. No picture exists in my mind before I start to work on the page - just vague abstractions. Very, very cool, but very, very vague. My adult years will be dedicated to learning how to make that eye see and bringing that vision to the page. I've already taken faltering steps - but I'm both heartened and cowed by the fact that the drawings I did when I was an ambitious 17-year-old are far more sophisticated than anything I can do now.

Not a bad goal, I think, to get back to where I was 20 years ago.

Anyway, one aspect of the revised site will be a selection of some of my comics and other works, probably going back to when I was 12. I hope that others will find tracking an artist's progress fascinating. And there'll be plenty of music in the archives, too - I may take a cue from my friend Karl, and post an annotated song of the week. There'll be plenty of content, and not all of it old, of course.

That's not much of a mission statement, I know - but it's a place to start. And since it's now nine minutes past midnight (here in New York, that is), I am now another day older - and you'll have to excuse me.

Those 16 tons aren't going to shovel themselves.

D.