Can you hear me?
Sunday, December 21, 2003
7 funny things (to me).
1.) Miklos, “sacrificing “ Ben and Jerry's ice cream, throwing spoonfuls into Lake Sunapee.
2.) A guy at The Gold Pan in Breckenridge, Co. yelling, “play something you know” at Random Arts Festival.
3.) A guy on the NYC subway shouting, “you must be out of my mind!”
4.) Roberto from Joe Clay singing a song Ivan’s song “Come Back Home to your Boy”
I like the day time
I like the night time too
Any time’s al right with me
As long as I’m with you
I don’t care what time it is
Don’t care where the world is at
As long as I’m with you
My whole world is phat
So tell me when are you gonna
Come back home to your boy
5.) My two and a half year old neighbor Charly Sperling saying, “come on in, you wanna beer, you want some food?”
6.) James Williamson’s “Glasnost”
7.) Anthony Avildsen sticking a cue-tip up his nose.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
My terrific friend Scott Barkham worked for Steely Dan’s producer Gary Katz, booking River Sound. The studio was owned by Steely’s cofounder Donald Fagan. When I first found out that I was one degree of separation away from these people I plotzed. Strangely enough or, actually, not strangely at all I never met these individuals. Such are the walls that people build around themselves. Most of us are just not invited to the club. Once you get invited (a.k.a. you’re worth $) you run into Alice Cooper on the golf course and schmooze (this happened to Lisa Loeb).
Anyway, Scott always did what he could for me. This included spec time at the studio on a number of occasions, support at shows, and endless appreciation for my under promoted art. In the Spring of 1995, he introduced me to Phoebe Snow. When I met her I, again, plotzed.
Phoebe Snow was famous in the seventies, making solo records and singing back up for such luminaries as Paul Simon. In the eighties, she sang “Stouffer's, nothing comes closer to home”. In the nineties, she hired people, made promises she never kept, and never returned phone messages.
When I found out that she was being represented in her come back bid by Bob Dylan’s business agent I plotzed a third time. When we jammed with members of the Smithereens I realized that just because you’re famous don’t mean you can play (true story, I had to teach one of the guys how to use an electric tuner). When we hired Eric Sheinkman, ex-guitarist from the Spin Doctors, I realized that being a has been can make you a mean person.
Eric started in on me from the start. He was a jam hog. He took every solo as if it was his birth right, playing his facile trite major pentatonic blather. Then he got really angry at me for playing too much (that’s too many notes for those not hip to such things)......really angry! His world beat drummer buddy was on the session (I repressed his name, I’ll call him Louis) and he would say patronizing things like, “ Dan! Just listen to Louis, man.....just listen to Louis”.
The last session I played was at Sony Music. We were recording our demo. It was an unmitigated disaster. It happened at the last minute, over Easter week and Stacia was ripping mad that I wasn’t coming north with her. I had brought in Roberto from Joe Clay and he for some reason never returned messages and never showed up (I never forgave him, really).
So the engineer on the session, a bleeper named Kirk Yano played bass. He played it sloppy, with a pick and gnashed the tunes. He told me, echoing Eric, “Less is more, Dan......less is more”. Eric told me not to play a part I’d been practicing for a week and told me he had a, "short fuse". Phoebe had been sick. She was icy cold, I tried to hug her when I saw her (very naive). I think she actually made fun of me for this. I thought we were friends. I had had long conversations with her about the direction of the band. She wanted to do an alternative thing (though her songs were more like Bette Midler). I had done a bunch of sessions gratis. I had canceled summer plans.
I got about three hundred dollars for the day. Kirk never called me back to do over dubs/ fixes. Phoebe never communicated with me again. Diane (Dylan’s manager) called me after a few weeks. She told me she could see that it didn’t work with me and Eric. I complained about the bass playing and what she said I will never forget. She said “I’ve been in the business for thirty years, I can hear through a bass”.
Business Card
Sunday, December 07, 2003
The Round Band played steadily through the 1990’s for a core audience made up mostly of my friends. We did get some good gigs. We opened up for Lisa Loeb a couple of times where we reached a larger if incongruous audience. We cut spec deals with beautiful studios including Effanel (MTV Unplugged) and River Sound (Donald Fagan). We made great recordings and perfect music. I’m not ashamed to brag about our music because that is the one thing about being a musician that has always made me feel good. And thank god (“or somebody”, as my Grandma Edith says) I have that. Because a career in show biz gave me nothing else. Important others may not have shared my enthusiasm about the band, club owners may have ripped me off, A and R people may have thought I don’t write hits, girls may have liked the bands manager (so called) more than me, Jon may have hated every sound system, Joe may have invited one person to a show (and put them on the guest list), I may have smashed the muffler off of my Civic after overloading it with amps and drums and woken up the next day with a stiff neck and fifteen dollars less than what I started with, but I do have my pure love of what I created. That’s more than most entertainers can say.
Hack
