Can you hear me?
Friday, November 28, 2003
I often wonder how my life would have been different if I had done anything differently.... Turned a different corner, taken a different route, left one minute later or earlier. I was taught not to be superstitious. I was taught to be a realist. So, I guess ultimately, I am where I would have been. If your life is based on random chance, what kind of life is that anyway?
I know I tried really hard to be a rock star and still do. When I first played out I always thought that there would be a man with a pen in the back of the club saying, “sign here kid,” and I would be transported to some new realm replete with swimming pools, shrimp cocktails and forbidden fruit. Each time, though, life stayed the same.
I guess I believe that fame is illusory. I mean, I bet Bill Cosby watches some Coke commercial and hearkens back to the day that he was the spokesman.
I am an optimist. I do believe that you can improve your life. I believe dreams come true and that happiness is attainable. I’ve always worked hard and anything that I’ve achieved I attribute to that. Still, I’m happy that I decided to go to New Hampshire the weekend I met Stacia. I wonder what would have happened if that hadn’t of happened. I might have been a rock star.
Friday, November 21, 2003
It is a hard life for someone with great expectations. I think of my friends in the art world and what they do to survive. My friend
James Williamson comes to mind. He’s just amazing.......Dominique Wilkins amazing. Yet he can’t get that steady faucet of money. Miklos too, one minute he’s cutting movies for Costner and the next it’s Joe job city. Anthony Avildsen should be getting paid tens of thousands of dollars a day as far as I’m concerned (well maybe a week).
I remember when I played for Jewel. I played lead guitar on a version of “You were Meant For Me”. We laid it down in the studio. Sean Penn directed the video. We played it on the Conan O’Brien show. The date was November 27th, 1995. There was a close up of my fingers as I soloed my warpy Dan patterns. I nailed it! Conan shook my hand.
The next day I was back at Roosevelt Island Day Nursery, singing Yellow Submarine with five year olds. For years that felt like defeat. Now I’m not so sure.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Nicolai’s band swelled to an enormous size. He decided to call it Random Arts Festival. The name was indeed apropos. There were times when I would get off stage and people did not know that I’d been playing. The line up consisted of Nicolai on guitar and vocals, me on guitar and vocals!, David Grey on guitar and vocals!!, Chris McGrath on Vocals!!!, Ian Jacobus a rapper(?), Hector Becera on drums, Adrian Lopez on percussion, (oh yeah and I almost forgot) the man whose name was (I kid you not) Timba Leather on bass. Best rock name ever.
Nicolai used so much fuzz that notes rarely appeared. Dave played bend after bend and tons of rigadiga (you know....rigadiga-rigadiga-rigadiga-rigadiga). Kind of a seventies spaz guitar, no phrasing cocktail. It’s too bad too because he’s a breathtaking acoustic player. The rhythm section sounded like a subway train rumbling into a station. Hector could be so musical one moment and the next the train would fly off the rails. Timba played bass with a pick, basically strumming the notes. The weirdest one was Chris who had such a contorted, strangled sound and stage presence that people thought he was the lead singer. Ian was a good rapper. He wrote some deft intros to some songs. But he was lost at sea.
When you’re in a band of that size it is imperative that everyone leave tons of space. This is a lesson we never learned. We all played tons of notes. It was extremely chaotic. Additionally, we were too 70s to be 90s. We were too hippy to be punk. We were too everything to be anything and we had a rapper. The biggest problem, though, was that it was too much work for me. Nicolai would bring in skeletons of songs and I had to fix them and teach the band.
Still this band had some things other bands I’ve been in did not have. We played tons of gigs. We didn’t care who did not show up. We were hell bent. We played every small and mid sized club in NYC and we played twenty-six times in two and a half months in Colorado (the misadventures of which I’ll describe later). Good clubs out there as well. We were a family and we made friends and changed peoples lives. We had our great moments as a band as well. We played so much that there grew a comfort level on stage that I have not had in other situations.
Nicolai, despite his criminal tendencies wrote some great music. The other guys, despite theirs, were good friends.
It's Not Mine
Friday, November 14, 2003
About those people that I learned my people skills from who had poor people skills:
One of the first bands I was in was called Bones Jones and the Jones Tones. It was my older brother Josh’s band and I was the bass player. I was fourteen years old and in the eighth grade. The rest of the guys were eleventh graders. The band, featured Oren Bloedow, who grew to be one of my most important musical influences. At the time those guys were raw as can be and treated me like a younger brother, even though I was probably the second best musician in the quintet. I remember once coming in with a harmony on the song “My Avenging Fury”. Peels of laughter ensued... the guys just fell all over themselves.
Anyway, I stole the show the first time we played CBGB’s. It was a nervous gig and we we’re intimidated and playing terrible. Then, Elliot's string broke and he went off the stage to fix it. In a move that would change both Oren’s and my careers Oren grabbed my bass I took his guitar and we did our cover of the Beatles Drive My Car. The crowd was knocked out. I was like Michael Jackson except I could PLAY GUITAR!! Elliot came back and played out of tune the rest of the show.
Needless to say, I was fired at the end of that year. Oren took over on bass. I don’t blame the guys. They were too young for me to expect them to be supportive. They were threatened by my precociousness and I did act like a little brother often.
This was 1981 and bands like XTC, The Gang of Four, and Polyrock were happening. Commercial success was coming to Elvis Costello, The Police, and The Talking Heads. New Wave still had a hard edge. I am indebted to my brother and his friends for their exquisite taste in music.
They changed the band’s style radically from a hard melodic pop sound to a garage-y bug. They picked a new name, Hodge Podge Lodge, and went on to play CBGB’s a number of times in the next two years. They were a great band. They were flippant songwriters and human beings. They did songs called “The Korean March”, “People who Live in Holes”, “The Same Wanda”, and “Jews Have it Tough”. A critic for the Village Voice came and heard them play and called them glib. They were mystified. They were like, “who us”.
They had a language all their own. Kind of a mix of ghetto slang and in-humor. They were blunt. Once I told Oren I enjoyed a show. He looked me dead in the eye, made a circle around his temple and said, "you're crazy". You needed to understand their language and their sense of humor. They were not going to make an effort to explain.
I brought this style of interaction into my relationships with other musicians.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
I’ve been in a number of serious rock bands. (Maybe that’s been my problem all along....being too serious, but that’s a discussion for another time, perhaps.) For now, a discussion of why none of my bands ever made it big. You see, none had all the flags. Check out my last entry “recipe for a rock band”. I’ve had good bands that never promoted, bad bands that only promoted and reasonable bands that never quite did enough.
Joe Clay is an example of the third category.
I met Ivan Rubenstein-Gillis at Bucks Rock Camp where we were both guitar teachers in 1991. Ivan writes amazing songs. The kind where you ask “who wrote that?” and it turns out it was him. That’s not to say he lacks his own style. He’s got tweaks all his own. Ivan and I formed Joe Clay (the name Clay was already taken) and we made some nice recordings and played some successful shows in the mid 1990’s. The folks we recruited to play loved us and our music like it was their own. We all invited our friends and we’d pack little clubs like Sine on St. Marks Place.
At the time, however, all Ivan had was an old out of tune nylon string guitar and that annoyed me. Basically our styles were at odds and that annoyed me. He really is a folkie and I’m more of a rocker and that kind of annoyed me. His nylon string and my telecaster never quite jelled in the band format. We were better on the porch in the summer time. He was in his early twenties at the time and hadn’t grown to be the brilliant man he is now. His songs hit and missed. Joe Clay alternately sounded like The Band and The Partridge Family. I just couldn’t take it. I had learned my people skills from people with bad people skills (more on them later) and I did not always stay positive.
The group had two female singers, Rachel and Cathy. They had issues with microphones. The band played too loud (especially me) and they did not project. The Bassist, Roberto, had deep mysterious issues that no one ever really knew. All I remember is that these issues made him very late a lot. Dave the drummer was the most mercenary of us. He was the only one of us who actually made a living playing music. However, to his credit, he showed up and did not complain about the lack of money. He had no issues except with me at the end. He made it clear, without ever really saying it, that there would be no further collaborations between us. Ultimately, I think he found my complaining a problem when he had done none.
The girls and Ivan all had issues with confrontation which ultimately made it impossible for them to work with me. I remember the turning point was me saying, “listen, stick your !@#$’n fingers in your !@#$’n ears!” during a recording session as we we’re practicing a four part harmony. They didn’t appreciate my “advice”.
Ultimately, I take the blame for this one myself as well. I just did not have the patience to stick with it until it sounded good. I never quit the band but I did not want to work with the girls anymore. Morale just dropped and that was the end of that. If we’d stayed together all this time we’d be incredible now but that would never have happened, even if I had been Gandhi.
Astronaut
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Recipe for a rock band:
So you wanna be a rock n’ roll star. Well it’s possible but it’s difficult. You see, it’s a combination of a musical and a social phenomenon.
First of all, you need a band. One that sounds fantastic, has great energy, and personality of it’s own. It is good to have great songs, visionary players and an amazing singer. Barring all of that, you, at least, need good catchy songs and your music cannot be rife with mistakes (If I had a dime for every time I heard a friend complain about his station at the bottom of the food pyramid when his drummer blew every fill, etc.)
This band needs to be a family/ cult/ gang/ co-op. Mercenary attitude makes things impossible, so kick those jazzers out on their fannies. There will be no money for a long time (and maybe never). If you are in the catchy tunes and serviceable players category you’ll need to rehearse a good bit in order to avoid sucking. It takes cooperation to make and promote a band. You can’t have some old man
Here’s the payoff: if your band’s personalities are well matched then your friends will like each other too. So, when everyone invites all there friends (!!!) a scene can be created.
Shut Up and Sing
Saturday, November 01, 2003
College was a time when I really think I had it all. The crowds at shows were fantastic and they’d just show up. You barely had to put up posters. It was so exciting just rocking people. We played Providence clubs like Lupo’s and The Living Room. The Round Band opened for The Neville Brothers and Hot Tuna.
Lisa Loeb and I became very close friends over those years. She’s a sort of combination of Kelly Ripa and Bill Gates. Kind of a debutante meets power broker deal. You know, she likes kitties, and then turns around and swings something enormous with Geffen Records. She’s a heck of a songwriter and guitar player. She can do that Texas stuff where you use a pick and finger pick at the same time with the third fourth and fifth fingers.
Almost any luck I had in show business after college is attributable to her. Here she is on background vocals in this song recorded in 1994.
This Will Never Be
