Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
the hardest thing about being a musician...

not knowing if what i have to offer is relevent or makes much of a
difference in the long run.  i feel it's relevent and it makes a
difference to me, because i love to play music.  but does it really
make  that much of a difference to the world?  even if it inspires some
and by some miracle i can earn a decent living doing it, is it helping
on a broader scale?

 
  

    

>Hey Gary, I know you spend a lot of time in NYC, but what are some of
>your favorite current SF bands?

I spend *all* my time in NYC these days, save for an occasional brief
visit out that way. But I've tried as best I can to keep track of some
of my favorite SF/Bay Area bands and individual artists. Among the ones
I still love best are:

Tin Hat (and various related projects, like violinist Carla Kihlstedt's
Two Foot Yard and guitarist Mark Orton's Aurora Septet);
Any of the brilliant drummer Scott Amendola's various ensembles;
Guitarist Will Bernard in his many guises;
Alphabet Soup;
Any project involving Zakir Hussain;
That combo Michael Tilson Thomas has working out of Davies Hall;
A guitar playin', singin'-songwritin' fella name of Gans...

And of course, I have kept up with the doings of my esteemed friends and
erstwhile employers from the Grateful Dead in their various and sundry
endeavors. They've all done some fine post-GD work, but Bob Weir's
Ratdog is the band that's carrying the flame brightest and best right
now, IMO.

I should also note that some of the stuff that's exciting and inspiring
me most in New York right now is being made by musicians who migrated
here from the Bay Area, including Peter Apfelbaum, Steven Bernstein,
Jenny Scheinman, Charlie Hunter and various others. It's a thrill to see
them thriving here and serving as such vital members of the local scene.

I regret that I still haven't been able to check out The Love X Nowhere
in person as of yet, but have very much enjoyed what I've heard so far
in recorded form. Hoping to see and hear you guys live one of these
days.
  

    
>> but does it really make that much of a difference?

Brett, we all have to make some sort of noise on the planet.  Yours is
for the jubilee, if you choose. (A lot of us non-musicians look at
that and think it would be a pretty cool place to play––on the same
stage as Mozart, Monk, Holiday, Guthrie, Joplin, Dylan, Waters,  Lennon
and Cobain). Great noise is good for us all.  

. 
  

    
Gary, we hope to make it to the East Coast very soon. 

And I just saw Will Bernard play at Amoeba recently...first time I'd
seen him since we shared a stage at High Sierra in 2004. 
  

    
> guitarist Mark Orton's Aurora Septet

Ooh, I didn't know about this.

See you guys at the Well party today!
  

    
Interesting conversation, all of you.

Adam et al - have you seen the Dick Dale rant about the music business
and owning your own rights, etc.?
  

    
Hey all, jumping back in...
As I said in a previous post, you can't separate what's happening in
the music industry from what is happening in society as a whole.  As
long as we (our society) consider the collection of wealth as our
greatest goal, then the people who are best at that will become our
leaders.  In this case they are the record company execs, and they are
doing creating personal success for themselves that is reinforced as ok
and proper from the entire landscape of popular thought.  The tragedy
of being in minority opinion is balanced by the hipness of the
underdog.

There is nothing hard about being a musician.  That's like asking a
plant if it's hard to be green.  There are many challenges associated
with being in a band, and trying to "make it" in the model of a
successful touring and recording artist, but I think we covered some of
that already.  It'a a terrible system, but it's the system we live in,
and the emotional expression of the music is our way of fighting back.
  

    
Nicely said, Gabriel.  And it was a great show this afternoon, guys -- 
thanks!
  

    
>The tragedy of being in minority opinion is balanced by the hipness
of the underdog.<

Do you think that mainstream recognition and rewards would diminish
the hipness? Is  "underdogness" enhanced by the existence of
"overdogs"?  
  

    
TLXN:

How will you know when you guys are an "overdog"? Maybe the odor
around you will change and your hit song will be coopted far beyond the
music.  I went into my teen stepdaughter's bathroom today and saw a
deodorant stick on the counter. The brand was called "Teen Spirit."
  

    
Cobain came up with the song's title when his friend Kathleen Hanna, at 
the time the lead singer of the riot grrrl punk band Bikini Kill, spray 
painted "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his wall. Since they had been 
discussing anarchism, punk rock, and similar topics, Cobain interpreted 
the slogan as having a revolutionary meaning. What Hanna actually meant, 
however, was that Cobain smelled like the deodorant Teen Spirit, which his 
then-girlfriend Tobi Vail wore. Cobain later claimed that he was unaware 
that it was a brand of deodorant until months after the single was 
released.[9]

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smells_like_teen_spirit
  

    
Heehee.

Thank you so much for your performance at Bottom of the Hill yesterday.
It was fun to watch members of the world's most talkative community get up
and start dancing.  

And the last song with those strinking, moody chords, really stuck me...  
I just checked, it was "Into The Fire," which I had heard only once
before on the CD.  On hearing number two, it seemed familiar already... 
which is a sign of a memorable tune.

That was so wonderful.
  

    
Great story on Teen Spirit, even if I got the coopting all backwards. 

So, then, what we might suggest is for TLXN to pen a song called
"Smells Like Old Spice."  Maybe this would launch them over the top!!
  

    
Heh!  "Into the Fire" packs its own spice, in my humble opinion. 
(For anybody who's looking for more to hear, here's link again to 
where to find the music. http://thelovexnowhere.com/products.html )
  

    
How do you guys compose?  Is there a primary melodicist/lyricist/arranger?  
Do you approach long exploratory tunes differently than shorter punchy
ones?  Do you guys ever just jam out for extended periods and see what
happens?
  

    
First of all, we had a *great* time yesterday. It was a joy to finally
have faces to go with many screennames I've seen on the Well over the
past 6 years...and then see those faces dancing around to the beat I
was playing. ;-)

And I don't think mainstream recognition has to squelch your hipness,
but only a few iconoclastic artists have been able to continue evolving
and creating trends beyond whatever initially made them famous (Bowie,
Dylan, etc in the past and people like Radiohead & Beck today).
Perhaps it all depends on what your goal is as an artist.

And vis a vis how TLXN composes....Gabriel and Brett can answer that
better than me, but I can tell you that in general one of them brings
in a basic idea for a song and then we arrange it as a band, frequently
turning the original idea into something wildly different. 

The best example of that is probably "Just For Now Again," which began
as sort of a slow folk drone that Brett would sing solo during idle
times at rehearsal and recently turned into a kind of glimmering
alt-pop march. 

There are also a bunch of songs we do that were written around a
sequence or a loop...but Gabriel can better explain that as well.
  

    
Also, concerning our previous topic, Mick Hucknall of Simply Red had a
good quote in the Chronicle today in an interview with Aidin Vaziri: 

"[today] style is so much more prevalent than substance. I wonder if
Bob Dylan was starting now, whether he would even get a shot. I'm kind
of jealous of the era of the 60's, when people were reaching out for
something to say. They weren't copying anybody. It was for real."
  

    
It's a major achievement getting an honest thought into a Vaziri interview.

Hey, you guys were great yesterday.   Recording and performance have become
so decoupled lately, that you never know what you're going to hear at a
show, based on a CD.   I went in liking your recordings, but you're even
better live.  Nice variety, too.
  

    
Thanks all for the kind words and encouragement.  It's hard to imagine
being faced with the kind of choices that could alter our underdog
status.  It's so far away, it's not really worth much thought.  Of
course I believe our integrity will hold true (to our own, how that
matches up with a public opinion no one can say), and that goals we
have are well underneath the break point.  We see so many bands come
through town that we love, playing to full houses at the best venues in
town (Bimbo's, Great American, Independent, Fillmore), and releasing
quality albums every year or so.  We don't strive for excess, just to
quit our day jobs and focus on music full time.

How do the songs come about?...
Brett and I are the primary writers.  There are basically 4 ways that
songs happen.
1.2.  Brett or I write a song and bring it to the band.  We jam it out
and all develop our own parts until it works.
3.  I write a piece of music (chord progression and arrangement) that
I like and bring it to Brett who then writes melody and words.  We then
bring it to the band and work it out.  A lot of our best music has
come about this way, and I really enjoy the true partnership of these
pieces.
4.  We do jam a lot (i just found a rehearsal tape with some amazing
free form jams on it from a couple years ago) and these sometimes
develop in to songs on the spot.  Brett will often take these ideas
home and work on melody and lyrics.

Gotta run off to work now.  Fish tacos anyone?
  

    
Thanks for the info.

What are your day jobs?

A personal question:  Do you guys consider yourselves spiritual or 
religious in any way?
  

    

Re: Mick Hucknall's "style is so much more prevalent than substance. I
wonder if  Bob Dylan was starting now, whether he would even get a shot. I'm
kind of jealous of the era of the 60's, when people were reaching out for
something to say. They weren't copying anybody. It was for real."

Um, I would argue that when Dylan was starting out he was VERY MUCH about
style and he WAS in fact COPYING. He totally tapped into the folkie
zeitgeist, spewed fake autobiographies about his spurious folk origins, all
of it to gain folk authenticity cred. Dylan's "originality" came later. The
material that got him his Columbia record deal was far from "original." He
was damn good at the copying thing, and the breakthrough visionary was just
below the surface, but he shrewdly marketed himself by playing into what was
stylistically "happening" at the time.

I don't buy the argument that there was some golden era when "vision" and
"substance" got you somewhere. Perhaps there was an era, the '60s, when
substance was more appreciated in general, but even back then that wasn't
what got you discovered. Dylan exploited the folk scene, The Beatles came to
label attention with fairly typical early-'60s rockin' pop tunes, The
Rolling Stones glommed onto the blues revival scene happening in British
clubs at the time. Certainly, these artists all broke new ground in their
careers, but their breakthrough work isn't what got them noticed. They
played the marketing game as has always been the case.

Go back an listen to Bob Dylan's first album for Columbia records and
cite what's original about it. I love that album. But not for its visionary
avant-garde originality.
  

    
I bought Dylan's first album when it came out.  Me and about 2000 other
folkies.  "Freewheelin" didn't do much better.  As long as he remained a
derivative folkie, the pop market ignored him and he made his living as a
writer of hits for other people.  The stunningly original "Bringing It All
Back Home" began to change that, and the lid blew off with "Highway 61
Revisited".   At that point he was the style setter and everybody else,
John Lennon included, was copping his licks.   Hell, he even made it cool
for white guys to have afros.
  

    
>> Certainly, these artists all broke new ground in their
careers, but their breakthrough work isn't what got them noticed. They
played the marketing game as has always been the case.

I agree with you shmo.  The idea that in the late '60s artists were
able to express themselves more freely was not some phenomenon occuring
outside of a marketing vacuum.  The system has been maligned for
commoditizing the '60s, but its merchandising mecahnisms were in full
force at the peak of upheaval.  However, there were enough young people
buying this more substantive "art" that musicians, especially, had
more freedom to experiment or make boldly relevant social statements.  

There came a time for The Beatle's and Dylan where they became their
own gatekeepers, so to speak, and began writing whatever songs they
wanted and the market would largely support their artistic vision.
Because Dylan came out of the American folk revival movement known for
its populist lyrical expression, he was able to write some very
substantive music earlier than The Beatles. Yet, both should be
credited for, in many ways, leading the way for other groups to be
boldly expressive earlier in their careers. 

In many ways, they were not only reflecting but also forming the
cultural ethos of their own era.  Hendrix, not as a backup, but as a
British Invasion mainliner in '67, didn't have to wait to be bold, but
could write a song such as "If 6 were 9" almost immediately. The
Jefferson Airplane didn't go through a more pop phase to establish
themselves, (that came later with Starship!!); they were stepping
through a door that Dylan and The Beatles and the Stones had opened
wide for them.  

So the guy from Simply Red may oversimplify his history, but there was
that time, especially from '67 to '72 that is already being looked
back upon for its amazing vibrancy of musical expression.  The music
was more substantive than stylistic (although there was plenty of
sell-out crap then, too). 

The Grunge scene in Seattle in the early '90s, on a much smaller
scale, had that vibrancy, too.  Maybe TLXN will catch the next wave. 
  

    
" >> Certainly, these artists all broke new ground in their
 careers, but their breakthrough work isn't what got them noticed. They
 played the marketing game as has always been the case."

I disagree, and made my points in the post above yours, Scott.   To add to
it, the Beatles began writing songs that didn't sound derivative of the
times by their second album.  "Love Me Do" didn't sound like anybody I knew
at the time, and by the first tour of the US, barbers were already bitching
about the new hairstyles.   They were style-setters over here right out of
the box.  I'd say that the breakthrough year was 1965.  By then, the old-
style marketers were utterly flummoxed.

One of the things that struck me about TLXN yesterday was that they didn't
sound derivative.   Their stuff is recognizable as their stuff.  In the old,
major-label dominated era, that would be problematic.  But in the dawning
age of digital distribution and viral marketing, all bets are off.
  

    
Hope so. We've been talking to some small labels about doing our debut
full-length soon. It's all written and some demos are already done,
but it's been tough finding a label since we don't have anyone
representing us but us at the moment.

Regarding our day jobs: I teach at an Italian-immersion preschool (1
to 5 year olds) in the Presidio and babysit on the side for more
income. Gabriel owns and operates a longstanding Mexican restaurant in
Mill Valley. Brett is a waiter at a posh Thai restaurant in the Castro.
Michael is usually a strip-club DJ. And Yuki works for iTunes.

Regarding being religious or spiritual, I can't go so far as to speak
for everyone in the band and their *religion* (mine is probably rock n'
roll), but I do know for sure that all of us have a spirutual bent. I
was raised Catholic and now lean more towards Buddhism (I think we are
all one collective conscious i.e. we are all God) but never want to
affiliate myself with any one school of thought -- I think that beliefs
cause the mind to stop.

I also know we all used psychedelics in our youth as a kind of gateway
to spirituality, and Yuki even once made a journey to hang out with
Rolling Thunder when he first moved to America from Japan, which is a
really interesting story.