2-11-14 Tributes and Music News.

          I am constantly (regularly) astounded at my inability to see things the way others do: different things are obvious to them than those which are obvious to me. This goes along with a talent for original ideas; the ability to see things others don’t.  I endeavor to have this balance out my self-involved behavior – and what has been called a condescending air.  I have a gift (a eureka moment) or a skill (keeping at it until the idea works), but the inability to put folks at ease – being without tact - is no kind of skill, and an unwanted gift.

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PHILLIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN

         This week brought more bad news.  One of our best loved actors passed away, and we are sad.  We agonize over it, then we get over it.  I can see his face right now.  I can see all his roles in turn, playing in a reel in my head.  I’m re-watching all his movies.  I miss him.

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 BAD ACCENT FIRST SPECIAL GUESTS 2/3!

I did the first of “First Mondays with Charlie Messing and Friends” at The Monkey House, a rock and roll club with pool in Winooski, and no TV which is much more vital to atmosphere.  Pool is fine – people played pool at CBGBs.  They sure didn’t have a football game going on over the bartender’s head! I saw Matt Dillon, Kevin Bacon or Christian Slater - one of those guys, playing pool low-key with a hat one night.  People left him alone; it was cool.

          They moved the stage to a much better spot, but they’re still setting it up – the monitors were a puzzle which eventually got solved, awkwardness in the speakers or the board, who knows.  But in a month I bet it will run more smoothly.  In a way, it was perfect, because I was reminded of the way I am at a gig – some things work and some don’t, puzzles are solved, time is taken.  Heads are scratched.  It was appropriate. 

I tried out different types of material on the crowd (okay, 20 people) to see their responses, paused a few more times (“the mids down a bit more”).  It’s a bit surreal when your heart wants to be in the music and instead it’s like a dream where you wander blindly, as if walking through sheets hung out to dry.  (Could anyone ever forget what it was like to walk through hanging, fresh dried laundry?)

So I wasn’t bad - some connected, but it should have been a walk in the park.   Everyone else seemed fine.  Some of the pool players could not drag their attention from the table – they were mid-season in a complex competition, so for them I was in the background – which was fine.  Though I felt as if I had a transparent quality, or a blurriness, I was well-received.

The band I’d invited showed up while I was playing. I sort of hoped they’d watch me play, but they had their minds full of getting all the equipment into the club, reasonably.  (Parking is tough there.)  I just wanted their attention because I’m selfish.  But I got some nice looks and smiles.  And later on I communicated a bit with Evzen, the guy who holds it all together, husband of the lovely lead singer, the man behind the songs and arrangements (I believe).  He and his charming wife Karine seem right away to be more used to French than to English, which is why their band is named “Bad Accent.”  I think it’s a really good name.  They’re good, and just getting started.  I was glad to give them what he called later “a live rehearsal.” 

[Andy Feltus, Drums; Jonah Salzman, Lead Guitar; Brad Olsen, Bass Guitar, Evzen Holas, Rhythm Guitar & Accordion, Emma Cook, Vocals; Karine Poulin, Vocals]  I think they want to be called Bad Accent Music.  They have a sign onstage.  I think “Music” is just extra, but what do I know.

I am recruiting for next month, for 3/3! 

CM

 

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS (and IDEAS)

Ideas bump into each other, things get lost, and I try to go in two directions at once.  It doesn’t work.  Shouts echo in the fog. 

We live with expectations reasonable and unreasonable.

Have fun when you can, because you’ll have to be serious all too often.

Think before speaking, and listen... 

Be brief. 

Be not tense. 

Be kind.

Look in the mirror before leaving the house. 

Dust more often. 

Bouncing off the people I admired (huh?), I realized my physical attraction magnet was set wrong way round.  I was rejecting myself to get it over with.  That was never my job.  

My job was to be charm incarnate. 

Conflicting forces move within us.  These forces will battle forever.  We just work here.

Everyone has a complex life.  Why take anything personally? 

I do it, but I don’t believe in it.

What you do a thousand times becomes a habit. 

The rest of your mind goes somewhere Else.

We want what we want, and we take what we can get.

Happy New Year, everyone.

OF COURSE, MAN, I’LL JUST WRITE AN ENTRY IN THE BLOG!

             I have a cold.  There are more important things happening in the world, but here the headlines have been about the war going on in my sinuses.  But the worst is past.  I cannot talk today – I squeak like a kid whose voice is changing and really cannot talk.  Couldn’t yesterday either.  But then my head was stuffier, and now my voice is squeakier.  I’m staying home so I don’t make other people sick.  And I’m exhausted.  I drank two strong cups of coffee this morning, then I just sat there.  Hmmm. When I have no energy, it means I’m ill.  I am glad this is Saturday, and New Year’s Eve is Tuesday!  So much can happen to a non-serious illness in four days (like it can Die).  I look forward to the return to ground level.

Projects planned: new band, friendships, hangouts, new radio show, new TV show, new schedule.  The old things?  Still all over the place!  Anything that is not determinedly and consciously New remains (out of habit) Old.  When you’ve done something a thousand times, it becomes a habit.  I’m set in my ways, my days resemble each other, my problems rarely get worse or better.  (Okay, let me qualify that: arthritis gets worse, colds get better.)  I keep learning as my body keeps wearing out.  Now for a girlfriend, and possibly a  new job!  I’ll tell you about those when they happen.  

[I would like to be young again.  “Waiter! Waiter!”  Aw, he can’t hear me.]  

I am comforted by the thought of how baffled and scared most teenagers are inside.  When I meet teenagers I want to tell them: “The things you worry most about every day are going to turn out to be absolutely nothing.  You will be amazed.  What you should worry about has nothing to do with any of those things.  And brush your teeth - you’ll be glad you did.”

I did not take good care of my teeth.  I don’t seem to have taken care of my hearing, either…I have two modern hearing aids which enable me to sing better than I have for decades.  I just hadn’t known what everyone else was hearing.  I now know that my guitar was strident, and my voice harsh, because I was adjusting it all for my bad ears.  I didn’t find this out for a long time.  Now I can distinguish between a careless note and a sweet note.  I can play with them, work with them; my voice has become an actual instrument.  I took a half dozen voice lessons, but they were hard to absorb and actualize until I could truly hear myself.   ($1300 in each ear, and if I had not become poor enough to qualify for full medical coverage, and if my hearing had not been so bad that I qualified for hearing aids, I could never have afforded these.  What a world.)

I had what I call a “singer-songwriter” voice.  It can have a lot of character, is often a wonderful instrument for heartfelt sentiment, and serves to put the song over, but it clearly sounds different than the voice of someone who would win that job if auditions had been held. 

When a group has a singer who is as good as the guitar player or the drummer, it’s great – often these are people who called, auditioned, showed up and turned out to be the best.  That’s a Singer.  I can tell when a singer wrote his song, because no one would hire a singer with such an idiosyncratic voice.  There are many bands with singer-songwriter voices.

Exceptions: The Doors, U2, Pearl Jam, Queen, The Beatles – there certainly are great singers in bands singing their own songs.  But most bands have the writer as the singer, and it shows.  Why not?  Extreme example – Dylan. 

 

Onward!

Looking forward to starting the new TV program, but I need to get someone else involved.  Interviews, even just conceptual art will help (someone walking back and forth behind me as I talk?)  and it’s going to be great.  Not just me in a studio this time.  Guests are coming.

Also looking forward to my new radio show on The Radiator, transmitting from a studio only three blocks from here.  I'll play songs most people have never heard: songs that influenced the music they have heard.  Roots.  Importantly, I want to play what they might never hear elsewhere.  Name of show…”Before That”, “Long Ago” “Outsider Pop”, “Rock History, Early”, “It's All Good”?  Must think.

Soon come. 

Ready for New Year’s Eve!  It’s predicted to be about zero degrees, so I may have quite a bunch of people up here huddling from the cold and watching the fireworks out my window with coffee, tea, cocoa, or whatever drinks they are bringing.  Can’t afford a bar this year – my apologies. 

I hope you all had a great holiday, and have a happy new year too!  If you’re nearby, I look forward to seeing you.  There is music in town before and after (3:00 PM at Red Square - Steph Pappas will be there weaving her spell, and at 9:00 PM I believe Brett Hughes will preside over honky-tonk at Radio Bean.)  The whole night is a gigantic sandwich.  Also an epic arctic expedition…be well!  Stay warm! 

I have been re-reading a William Kotzwinkle book I loved when I read it decades ago – a dreamlike detective novel entitled “Fata Morgana”.  I have a book about Jewish Resistance in WWII, a history of Chess Records, and a history of the Procul Harum, one of my favorite bands ever.

Happy year’s end.

THE FIREWORKS PARTY

I would never set off Fireworks.  My best friend in high school had scars on his hand from a firecracker, that stuff is dangerous, and people likely to be playing with fireworks late at night after drinking are not all that careful.  I wouldn’t do it, though I don’t drink. 

The party is to see the Fireworks, which occur as early as 7:00 PM, and then again at midnight. The early one is good for all those parents with little kids, marching around all day and night.  But some older people want to be watching a movie or doing something even better at midnight.  They need not stand in the cold.  I’m an early fireworks guy.  (It is due to a job which involved working on New Year’s Eves, which I had long ago.)  It’s nice to hear them in the distance at midnight.  But I’ll tell you – the view here is so great I’ll be watching the midnight one also, whether anyone’s left at the party or not.  Wow. 

It’s interesting to see it for the first time – it’ll happen twice a year from now on.  Crowds, and I mean thousands, of people coming down my street, right past the building, voices floating and jabbering and occasionally shooting up like an arrow, signifying that someone feels that they’re in a big city, alienated, just passing through – as if he or she has no idea if anyone lives here, or whether their voices are loud or soft.  Perhaps a few will peel out of the crowd and come up to see out the window with us. They have been invited, plus friends.  That has been accomplished. 

The tricky thing is to buy the right amount of food and drink.  Worst case scenarios one and two: lots of drinks left which you would never drink, along with bread and cheese and vegetable dip you must eat for a week.  Two: enough folks show up that you run out of things immediately. Followed by mad scramble to nearby store, thank god there is one.  But look like clown, some party ha ha.  There they are, my two scenarios: king of leftovers, naïve socialite does faceplant. I could use a nice revelation, or epiphany.  Keep yer eye upon the weather and yer hand upon the wheel.  Meanwhile, we’re expecting a big snowstorm to commence tonight.  Good night and good luck.

So I’m having a Fireworks Party on New Year’s Eve, which is to say I have a view that will allow a lucky gracious, spacious few (or dense intimate larger crowd of many) to gaze out the window on what could be an outstandingly cold and/or windy night, and see the fireworks while sipping hot cocoa or whatever.  I used to do that when I had another apartment in Burlington, long ago.  From that one you could see about 2 to 5 degrees of lake on the horizon, and basically see the fireworks.  Now I have about 100 degrees of lake.  Yah. I will See them.

I have an event page for this party on FaceBook.  The page has a mind of its own.

Facebook makes it like a contest.  "Who's going?  Who's maybe?  Who else is invited?"  A gossip magazine.  What do I need this for?  They offer gimmicks - sending reminders to everyone I've already invited, to "promote the event".  Fugedaboudit.  Some people might show up even if it's nice out, but  basically it's a question of the weather, and how closely people are negotiating a frantic First Night schedule.  I've many times attended First Night, and I have seen much happen - often choosing from ten ensembles playing simultaneously in ten venues.  One misses most of it, no matter what.  I enjoy the celebration more when the weather isn't miserable.  I have about ten buttons. Several times I helped out as a volunteer. 

It's a big deal - especially on a truly cold, inhospitable night.  Ah yes - six years ago, I spent New Year's Eve being a job coach, retrieving shopping carts from a Shaw's parking lot on a busy evening.  Moving clusters of six or eight is usual.  Eight gets to be too many, as you're getting tired.  That New Year's Eve, it was hailing, sleeting, snowing and raining.  We pushed those carts through six inches of slush.  We might as well have been pushing them on the beach.  Memories...

But most New Year's Eves, when you go out to do something, are great, and some are truly outstanding.

May your New Year's Eve be truly outstanding, and the entire year to follow.  I'll throw that in as a bonus.

HI FOLKS IT’S BEEN BUSY, NOT IN THE BEST WAY MAYBE, BUT THERE IS PROGRESS BEING MADE

So much has happened (mentally) in the last few weeks, that some of it I won’t be able to tell you.  I mean when you’re dealing with big companies that screw you it’s better not to name names, cause it gets legal – or illegal - call it either.  No names.  It will be interesting to see  if I can tell this story so abstractly that you really won’t know who I’m talking about.  Oops, a company is not a who, it’s a what.  But right now it’s really late cause I attended two parties tonight, both of which were really nice, and did other things today as well, and it’s just too late to tell you today.  So much to do, so little time.  I see you tomorrow.  This post will be scrolled below the one telling the story, and will seem so pointless.  And on that note, good night.