Last night I watched the Cameron Crowe Pearl Jam documentary, Pearl Jam 20. Some thoughts:
in hindsight, Mother Love Bone was a lot more glam than I remember.
I had forgotten all that crazy climbing Eddie did during concerts. The shots of Jeff looking up at Eddie hanging overhead were great.
there's an early scene where Stone (I think?) talks about returning demoralized from LA and considers giving up on being a rock musician. It seems to me this is a common thread in a lot of rock docs, with one person on the verge of washing out completely but deciding to give it one last go.
the scenes during the Ticketmaster hearings where various committee members admit an ignorance of "grunge" and "alternative music" are as cringe-inducing as the recent SOPA hearings.
I never really bought the whole "we hate being famous -- ohh, the spotlight, it burns" shtick and I still don't. Equally cringe-inducing. Although if the doc is to be believed, that was mostly Eddie.
Confidential to Mr. McCready: you look badass with grey hair.
the whole doc is comprised of footage shot in the 90s so the whole doc feels like an unearthed episode of MTV's 120 Minutes. I think I've seen the future of Instagram filters.
the "drummer story" bit was cute but unfortunately that was the part I most most wanted to hear about!
Drummer and good pal Josh Williams is moving to Boulder this week, thus leaving Explone to carry on without him. Patrick has written some words you should read about Josh over here -- they've been friends for longer than I've known either of them and have a lot of shared history. Josh and Pat were Explone for the debut Crooks album, which I first randomly discovered via MySpace and it was Josh's high-precision drum work that drew me to that record in the first place, long before I came aboard as bassist.
If you listened at all to Dreamers/Lovers or Crooks, you know that Josh isn't content to just hold down the pocket. While tracking the new Telescope and Satellite EP, Josh's criteria for what made a take worth keeping came down to what he thought would inspire kids to take up drums. I think that says plenty.
I'm sad to see Josh leave town, but also really happy for him and his wife Katherine, because awesome people deserve to have things like careers that pay bills. I'll miss his drumming, but I'll miss his jokes and stories even more. Treat them well, Colorado! Or else.
As to the fate of Explone? Read Patrick's post for those details. Safe travels, big guy.
"Well guys, looks like we are awesome." -- Josh Williams
"Like most things on the planet, thinking about doing it is a lot
worse than simply sitting down and doing it. The writing wasn’t hard
to do, you just need to plant ass in seat and go from there."
Sci-fi author John Scalzi, declaring the completion of his first novel to a newsgroup in 1997. Reminds me of the the songwriting advice I got from Pat DiNizio years ago: "No. Nope. Ass in chair. That's the only way."
So I went bananas and got myself a DM6Kit electronic drum set a few months back. I did this because, while I'm currently a less-than-amateur drummer, I've always liked the idea of having an electric kit so that I could work out human-sounding tracks and fills instead of drawing them on a grid in FL Studio. With the advent of USB-enabled kits, this is something I can actually do now.
I skip the built-in sounds and just plug directly into my MacBook. Then I fire up Garageband and assign EZDrummer to the active track. I've written about EZDrummer before and it continues to be pretty awesome.
The Good:
sturdy construction and easy to assemble.
did I mention it's sturdy? You can really whale on these things.
the kick pedal and pad is surprisingly solid.
the cymbal pads have different zones for the bell and the edge, nice touch
the USB setup is a breeze. I didn't even bother with any of the built-in sounds. Paired with the MacBook running EZDrummer, it sounds pretty fantastic
The Not So Good:
the hihat pedal, it really sucks. You have to really train yourself to open/close it at just the right moment or you'll drop a note. Also, not that I expected better, but there's only two positions: open and closed. There's no half-open or loose closed/tight closed. I've seen electric kits that can do this, but the DM6Kit is not one of them.
you get one crash cymbal and that's it. There's no way to add more pads. This isn't a real problem for me as I can just grab a few notes and reassign them to different crash sounds after the fact. But get used to that one crash.
the built-in sounds are weak sauce. Again, not a problem for me as I'm using the DM6Kit as a fancy MIDI trigger, otherwise it'd be a real disappointment.
this isn't for nuanced playing, obviously. You'll have a hard time pulling off a realistic-sounding buzz roll, and playing with brushes means loading up another kit.
Of course, the whole benefit to this is to have realistic drums without having to set up mics or infuriating the neighbors. Bang out the best live performance you can, then edit the parts you're unhappy with. Add in a missed accent or scoot a late kick over. Straighten out a sloppy fill, or punch in on a separate track, re-do the fill, then copy/paste the notes into the final track. Or switch the whole performance from the Yamaha to the Craviotto kit by way of a dropdown menu.
Here's me playing along to a song I'm working on, running the DM6Kit into Garageband with the EZDrummer "Classic 4 Mic" setting with a Craviotto sound bank. Despite my middle-school rock band level performance, I gotta say it sounds a whole lot like real drums to my ear.
I haven't seen the new Louis C.K. digital thingy yet but damn well plan to, because his standup is state-of-the-art. I'm not at all fan of his brutal crushing downer of TV show, but the man is funny.
A lot of hay is being made about the nerdy and financial aspects of the thing, but I don't care so much. Here's something: did you catch that the material on "Live At The Beacon Theater" was developed just for that show and will never be performed again?
Can you imagine working for months creating and refining jokes that are only going to be told once? I find that weirdly inspiring. Not just the caliber of the work, but the willingness to fling it aside and start again from nothing. Thinking about it actually makes me feel a little nauseous, because as a songwriter guy I know how hard it is to sit down and try to write something good, anything good, where "good" is that nebulous region between hit song! and anything that doesn't make one feel like a no-talent fraud1 who'd be better off doing something else that makes gobs of money instead.
But unlike a musician, a comedian can't tour on his greatest hits package.
I've developed a huge amount of respect for standup comedy over the past few years -- listening to podcasts like WTF with Marc Maron and TSOYA has contributed to that. It's probably the last remaining profession that you can't buy your way into with money or good looks. I mean, you can try, but eventually you have to open your mouth and say something at least as funny as the last time you opened your mouth. You're constantly woodshedding and workshopping, or you're dead. U2 could've stopped at Achtung Baby2 and would still have their private jet today. Rock stars have it waaay too easy.
Where was I going with this? Anyway, note to self3: keep trying to make good stuff. But don't be afraid to burn the ships.
1 not as self-effacing as it sounds, as I firmly believe that an artist who doesn't occasionally feel like a no-talent fraud is either delusional or an artist in name only.
2 and I kind of wish they had.
3this!
I'm currently reading Bob Mould's biography See A Little Light. It reminded me that the first rock concert I ever attended was Hüsker Dü, at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh, during the band's final tour for their Warehouse: Songs and Stories album.
So I'm 17 and it's 1987.
I and my schoolmates Patrick and David are involved in our high school's theater program. Pat and Dave are the kind of kids who listen to "college music" when most kids our age are into FM pop radio. This meant a lot of mixtape cassettes of bands like R.E.M., Skinny Puppy, Guadacanal Diary and others. When Pat and Dave make plans to see Hüsker Dü in Pittsburgh that winter, they invite me -- and our faculty theater director, Mr. Hayward, who agrees to come along. Okay.
The venue is a downstairs room with a dirty linoleum-tiled floor. No more than a hundred people have come. We keep to the back as the crowd presses forward to watch the opening act, a local punk oufit called Half Life. I've never seen a punk band up close before, so the impression they make is very clear in my head: lanky lead singer, hair dyed orange with huge, sculpted spikes in all directions with whitish tips. Guitar player in black leather jacket, black-rimmed glasses hidden beneath a huge fluffy ball of jet-black hair.
They play furiously for an hour. As they dive into their finale, a cover of "Wild Thing," a fuse blows somewhere and we all plunge into darkness, amps going silent, the drummer rolling to a stop with a comical flourish. Somewhere in the dark, someone in the crowd shouts "it's a sign!" A few minutes later power is restored and they finish the set.
Now Hüsker Dü comes out, ripping the air with "These Important Years," the lead track from Warehouse. Until now the crowd has been thick against the front of the stage, but well-behaved. Pat, David, Mr. Hayward and I have been lingering near the back of the crowd, and now we sense a wave of pressure as people up front start moving -- first pogo-ing and bumping into each other, then outright shoving. I hadn't heard of a mosh pit before, let alone seen one, but here I am, about to experience one all up close and personal.
We escape to the back wall near the bar as the crowd becomes a storm of pinwheeling arms and thrashing heads, guys grabbing each other and pushing them away and toppling into others. It's scary, but I feel safer once I notice a kind of decorum: no one throws any punches, people who fall are immediately helped back up. The few people who stumble become unwilling crowd surfers, hoisted above the throng for a moment only to be set back down again.
A few songs in we're starting to get cocky, laughing and shoving each other towards the pit like kids horseplaying around a swimming pool. At one point, either Dave or Mr. Hayward pushes Patrick into the edge of the action. Pat takes two steps forward to escape, and then a guy with dyed red bangs covering his face comes running from out of nowhere to our right, tackles Pat around the waist and drags him backwards into the heart of the pit, which closes around him like a whirlpool.
We don't see Patrick again for several minutes.
During all this, Hüsker Dü is shredding through their set at top speed, just a smear of white noise. Avoiding the pit by entering from the front side, I push up to the foot of the stage. As a kid who loved bands like the Police, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, Hüsker Dü is the weirdest group of guys I'd ever seen. Bob Mould, short-haired and wearing a tucked-in dress shirt, Flying V guitar slung down to his shins, pouring sweat. When he sings, his eyes stay on the ceiling, never looking down at the audience. When not singing, he looks at his hands. Bassist Greg Norton with his handlebar mustache spinning in circles (and flinging sweat into the audience; some gets on my shirt and possibly in my eye). Grant Hart looking like a strung-out caveman behind the drums, stringy hair long and flat, his head perpetually cocked to one side as he sings.
And they're tearing through some punk. Fast. But it isn't quite punk. It's something else. They certainly don't look like punk rockers. Throughout it all, they don't say a single word to the audience. Not one.
Things get a little weird later on. Mr. Hayward gets pulled into the mosh and loses his glasses. Luckily he didn't drive us there, but now he can't see anything. We can't find his specs, so he hangs out against the back wall. At some point, either Dave or Pat loses their shoes in a similar fashion.
And then, Hüsker Dü decides to prank us. What happens is hard to describe. They finish a song, set their instruments down, and walk off the stage. But they leave the amps on, so the guitar, bass and vocal mics start feeding back. The feedback rises and rises and eventually stabilizes until there's nothing but unbroken, ear-splitting noise. The crowd just stays put, wondering what's going on, like we are.
The band doesn't come back. For forty minutes. It might have been much less, but it feels like forever. The feedback shrieks on without end and the crowd just mulls about impatiently. But no one leaves.
After 20 minutes of this we're starting to get worn down. We sit against the back wall. We can't find Mr. Hayward's glasses or the missing shoes. The band still isn't coming back. The loop of noise goes on and on and on. It's starting to suck. I don't get it.
Then finally, finally, the band wanders back onstage. They don't say a word, they just pick up their instruments and leap into a song as if nothing had happened at all. WHAT.
Hüsker Dü finish out the set and leave the stage. No goodbyes. I couldn't have known at the time, but that's the first and last time we'd see Hüsker Dü; the band had already started to implode from personal grudges and drug use.
We start gathering coats as the crowd starts to disperse. Suddenly Mr. Hayward shouts gleefully. Some random dude has walked up and handed him missing glasses. We were sure they'd been crushed to bits out in the pit. But no, they'd been found, rescued! Likewise, we find the missing shoes set neatly on the front of the stage.
We emerge onto a snowy Pittsburgh street in the dead of night.
A few years later, I attend my second-ever rock concert: Boston, at the Richmond Coliseum in Ohio, during their "Third Stage Onstage" tour. It's okay.
You are underestimating the future. You are fretting about the now; worrying about little things that don’t matter. You are wasting precious energy obsessing over irrelevant details. You don’t believe that a better future is out there and can be built, that it can exceed people’s expectations, because you’re spending so much time considering the truth of the present and the seemingly important lessons of the past.
You are underestimating the future because you believe you cannot see it, but you can - you’ve seen it done before.
that SIC was happening at all. Seriously guys, I'm surrounded by geeky techie engineer people every day and not one of them even knew this 3-day conference was happening in our own city.
that the Showbox SODO was so caverous. It's like a hangar big enough to house several crashed UFOs.
that the judge's panel would include Sir Mix-A-Lot. Okay.
that the Showbox ran such a tight ship. A separate stagehand just for monitors? Sign me up.
that all the "geek" bands would be so great. My personal highlight of the night was Stay Tuned's mashup of the Gilligan's Island them and Iron Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" lead by a keytar. Perfection. Notable plaudits also to Clutch Douglass, who not only stole the show (and my heart) with their laptop-and-bass-guitar electropop, but should have gotten additional nerd cred for experiencing a "CPU overload error" in the middle of a tune.
that the headliner of the evening following the band battle would be The Presidents of the United States of America, who are still great. So now I can say I opened for PUSA, although technically all of the bands playing that night can say they opened for PUSA.
that I'd get yelled at by a stagehand for turning my amp down. That's a first.
