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  <a href="/blogs/blog/1734886/back-to-school">Back to School?</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><font size="4">I have a weird relationship with music education.</font>
<p> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><font size="4">On the one hand, my experience as a music student is pretty checkered, at best. Though I might have had music in my mind most of the time from an early age, I was an incorrigible under-achiever in music lessons. The music I was required to study in piano lessons always seemed much more an academic or tactile exercise than an artistic expression to which I could relate. My piano teachers, meanwhile, all took the same tack: 'you will learn the pieces in Western Board Book 2 this year and practice scales in a different key each week. I am here to evaluate your performance in this and choose which tune from the book you will next study.' Oh, such fun.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><font size="4">School Band and Jazz Band added the elements of camaraderie, and even started to introduce repertoire I thoroughly enjoyed playing – but University would introduce a bewildering and somewhat conflicting sea of choice and disciplines. My jazz background wasn't strong enough to get me into the UVic Big Band (Jazz) on guitar, so I found myself playing a lot of French Impressionist and post-impressionist repertoire on saxophone, with some Baroque transcriptions thrown in for variety. While I enjoyed the music and the broadened horizons it brought, I can't say it completely ignited my passions. Perhaps I'd need to live in Paris a while. This was against a background of atonal music as the de rigeur 'legit' compositional style, and pointy guitars, spandex, big hair and keyboards all over pop radio. Very confusing times for a Led Zeppelin fan from Armstrong, BC.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><font size="4">In short, I look back on my pre-adulthood music education and see a lot of wasted opportunity. My teachers could/would rarely see what musical enthusiasm and interest (if not ability) I hid in my state of good-natured under-achievement, and I just thought my abilities were not in the same league as more conspicuously successful students. Worst of all, I'd assumed that what enthusiasm I had for music was, for practical purposes, worthless. If my fascination with Mozart's Symphony 40 seemed irrelevant to my piano teachers, I instinctively knew that my later mania for Kiss wouldn't impress anyone either. Ironically, if one of my piano teachers had helped me get started with “Detroit, Rock City”, piano might be my first instrument today. </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><font size="4">Perhaps ironically – or predictably – I'm a music teacher now, and have been for decades. I've done my best to right the wrongs I remember from my own music education, as well as build on what has worked. I've grown aware of how different people have different learning styles, and therefore what works for one student might not work for another. I've even made a practice of matching some of the students' repertoire to their own personal musical tastes. Does it help? It certainly doesn't hurt.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><font size="4">Still, I get a kick out of famous pop and rock musicians who proudly claim they've never had a music lesson in their lives, as though this were unusual. Absence of formal training is far more the rule than the exception among pop musicians, which has led me to some disturbing questions. I've had no formal training on the guitar either, yet it has been my most enduring musical interest; the rock world is populated by musicians with no formal training; could it be that formal training inhibits pop ambitions? Or, worse yet – does formal training kill musical enthusiasm in all but the hardiest and most determined musicians?</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><font size="4">I can't say I have a conclusive answer to this. Despite the quibbles I have with my own music education, I don't regret any of my own formal training, and I would hope I've enriched, in some small way, the lives of the students I've taught. Music is a hugely valuable – perhaps the very best - activity for developing the brain's ability to harness myriad cognitive, sensory and tactile activities under one yoke. I've also sometimes encountered unschooled players who have deliberately avoided learning music theory for fear of losing their 'original approach' to music - when in fact theory can help a musician avoid pop-worn cliches. If there's a conclusion to be drawn from all this, it may be that the role of a good music teacher has more to do with utilizing and cultivating – not suppressing – a student's natural musical curiosity and facility. Instilling (rather than imposing) some discipline has its place, but not at the expense of all else. Frankly, I didn't become a disciplined music student until I sat down to learn Zeppelin on guitar – around the time I quit piano lessons. Coincidence? Hard to say. In any case, the number of professional pop musicians who do (or don't) have any formal musical training is probably not all that valuable a yardstick, anyway. Whether music training significantly enriched anyone's life is ultimately the point.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><font size="4">Back to school we go – and I'll watch for the kid who wants to learn Detroit, Rock City.</font></p></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2013-09-28T12:06:30-07:00" title="September 28, 2013 12:06">09/28/2013</span></p>

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  <a href="/blogs/blog/1492079/last-of-the-summer-reading">Last of the Summer Reading</a>&nbsp;
</h2>

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  <div class="message"><p> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Enjoy a good book while you're lazing on the beach? Maybe you seek something to motivate your creative streak; or perhaps you'd just like an engaging distraction. Here's my prescription for your year. While this is mostly music-related, it's a fair bet that non-musicians could find a lot of the following books a fun read.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Writing Down the Bones</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Poet Natalie Goldberg helps you unlock your creativity by helping you unlearn all the restrictive writing practices acquired in school. Receiving this book as a gift back in the early 90's was a turning point for me as a lyricist – and even as a musical improvisor. Goldberg's method of taking a few minutes every day for non-self-judgemental, stream-of-consciousness writing is a crucial kind of process to true creativity. As Goldberg points out, we're conditioned to reject most or all of our own ideas as we sit before a blank page – yet so many of these rejected ideas are ultimately diamonds in the rough because they are so uncensored and genuine. Typically, we just need to develop the courage and lack of self-consciousness to let these ideas see the light of day on a regular basis. It certainly doesn't mean that every little thing you do is magic, but it does mean you'll take an important step toward finding your own voice, rather than being trapped by your restrictive cage of vanity and conformity. How You Think You Should Be might be quite different – and far less interesting – than How You Are.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">The Lesson</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">If this book had not been written by a world-famous, Grammy-winning, jaw-droppingly accomplished bassist by the name of Victor Wooten, it might have been a bit difficult to swallow. This is the story of Wooten, in his days of struggle as an unknown, unmotivated, freelance bassist in Nashville. As he falls asleep one day during a dull practice session at home (a common occurrence for him), he is visited by an uninvited stranger named Michael. This mysterious, oddly-dressed intruder reveals himself to be a music teacher par excellence, whose concern is developing Wooten as a true artist, rather than a capable technician (which is a major pitfall of music education in general – we teach what to say, how to say it, but not how to feel, or how to generate sounds from feelings). Initially very sceptical and even a little hostile, Wooten ultimately finds that the feelings employed and unleashed by music ultimately take care of the technical aspects of musicianship more efficiently and pleasurably than hours of repetitive practice. A hugely entertaining and informative read, this is the musician's equivalent of Star Wars: “Trust your feelings, Luke – use the Force!”. For Wooten, the Force is the Spirit of Music. Is Michael a metaphor rather than an actual man? Most likely – but Wooten leaves that question tantalizingly unanswered.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Age of Persuasion</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Terry O'Reilly worked in Advertising for decades, and- as you'd expect from an Ad Man – he has a knack for grabbing your attention and holding it with his observations, stories and theories about the business of Persuasion. Admittedly, this book has nothing to do with music, but it's certainly applicable to the business of music – a necessary evil if ever there were one. From the invention of Aunt Jemima to the fall of billboards, O'Reilly paints a fascinating portrait of the very inexact science of pitching product. Best of all, the story doesn't end with the book – O'Reilly has a weekly show on CBC Radio from January to June every year, now called Under the Influence. As hugely entertaining as it is informative.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Hit Men: <font color="#000000"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">I can't exactly call this book inspiring – but it's unquestionably an eye-opener.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Fredric Dannen's <u>Hit Men</u> tells the story of Payola – the practice of American record companies paying radio stations to play their music. This has been deemed an illegal act for almost as long as music has been played on radio, but the practice has continued in many forms up to the present day. Most of this book's action takes place following the great payola scandals of the '60's, after which bribing radio stations simply took on a new name, and thereby a quasi-legal (or at least difficult-to-prosecute) form. Over time, the sums required to keep the “Promotion Men” (the glorified, independent mobsters who spoke directly to the radio stations on behalf of the record labels) happy grew so high that a few label execs decided to fight back. I won't spoil the story by describing how things conclude, but this will certainly dash the expectations of those who believe that artists' careers progress on the basis of talent and a bit of luck. Money talks – and if the soulless thugs who run record labels and 'promote' music to radio stations happen to like you, you might have a career of sorts.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">The good news is that this explains why corporate radio seems to have such singularly bad taste in music so often. Here I'd worried it was the public's fault...</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Fascinate</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Fascinate disects the phenomenon of capturing and holding human interest. Author Sally Hogshead (no, I'm not making this up) suggests that there are seven possible 'elements' that potentially draw our attention, and those people, places, products and brands that capture our hearts and minds most effectively are those that employ the greatest number of these elements. The seven elements specifically are: Prestige, Mystique, Alarm, Lust, Power, Trust and Vice. Certainly, if you point to any celebrity musician and ask yourself which of these elements the celeb employs, you'll likely find that the bigger the name, the more elements are employed – and to a greater degree. Of course, Paul Simon once famously said that he'd played with some of the best musicians on the planet, all of whom nobody had heard of; and you'll notice that 'skill' or 'artistry' are not among the elements that fascinate us. True, you think? I wish it weren't...</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Also in the Recommended Book Bag, enjoy:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Effortless Mastery (Kenny Werner – in some ways, the music-specific version of 'Writing Down the Bones').</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Life Inc. (Douglas Rushkoff – the invention and development of the Corporation and its culture from Renaissance France to present day. For better or worse, this explains a lot – including what might be done to alleviate the damage...)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">One Train Later (Andy Summers – Police Guitarist recounts his whole life – including early Jazz leanings, touring the world in '60's British bands such as the Animals, heady years in the Police, and post-stardom drift. A little flowery in style, but more complete than those autobios of his Police bandmates.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">the Cello Suites (Rock Journalist Eric Siblin takes on three stories in one book: the life story of J.S. Bach, the life story of 20<sup>th</sup> Century cellist Pablo Cassals, and Siblin's own experience in getting to know the cello and how Bach's famous Cello Suites bind all three stories together.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Hope your summer was good to you! See you at the Roxy on October 15!</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p></div>
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</article>  <article class="post blog-article full-item post-full" data-controller="zoogle-video" data-action="message@window-&gt;zoogle-video#handleVimeoPostMessage">
    
<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs/blog/1233402/eureka-s">Eureka!&#39;s</a>&nbsp;
</h2>

<div class="post">
  <div class="message">As a companion to last blog's litany of woe, I've compiled a few helpful conclusions I've reached while observing the art and craft of music. Some might seem more obvious than others, but they've all proven very helpful to keep in mind at all times. Here's hoping they can be of use – or at least interest – to you, too.<p><strong>Keep the vocal chords warm before performance</strong></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">One piece of conventional wisdom for singers is that it's very important to keep oneself hydrated before a performance. Dry vocal chords are inefficient, unresponsive and more prone to damage, so would it not make sense to drink a lot of water before going onstage?</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">As I'd mentioned in an earlier blog, my vocal performance quality over the past many years often seemed to have no rhyme or reason; sometimes I'd hit the stage with no warm-up, no hydration – and feel like I was wearing Superman's vocal chords; other times – something more akin to Batman on a bender, despite thorough hydration in advance. There were even a couple of occasions where my vocal struggles were so obvious to friends in the audience that they'd helpfully send a glass of ice water to the stage. I'd gratefully drink it...and grow worse. At the time, I put it down to subconscious nerves. Mysterious, and frustrating.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">At my last couple of gigs, I put a theory to use: what if the temperature of the hydration mattered more than the material? Coffee is usually frowned upon as a vocal chord lubricant, as its diuretic quality ultimately dehydrates a voice over time. Still, it's warm, it's liquid, and the diuretic quality is not immediate. Seemed crazy enough to try – and I rarely say no to coffee anyway.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Wonder of wonders - my voice responded magically. I had all the range and tone I needed, almost effortlessly. Granted, this is hardly a clinical trial – I'll need to keep putting this theory to use before I can claim conclusive proof. Certainly looks promising so far, though, and I'm definitely avoiding ice water from now on!</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><strong>There are many levels of “knowing” music. Best performances demonstrate the highest level.</strong></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Perhaps due to an evolutionary adaptation arising from the need to ration energy, the human animal is a naturally lazy beast. Our first instinct is usually to put no more effort into an endeavor than what is absolutely necessary. In witnessing musical practice – my own and others – the impulse seems to be to practice until we get it right once (or nearly right), and then move onto the next challenge.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">This ain't nearly enough.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Granted, it might be just enough to give the performer a better-than-zero chance of executing the passage successfully in front of an audience, and a much better chance than if the player hadn't practised the passage at all. Still, an audience is not usually interested in watching a musician who is focused purely on the technical aspect of a performance. Dullsville. Without emotional expression on display, a typical rock audience is not interested...and it doesn't make for an especially fun performance, either. Without fluency on the instrument and the music to be played, a musician is too preoccupied to connect meaningfully with the audience or with his/her bandmates. In short – you have to play the music as passionately and fluently as if you were speaking from the heart verbally. This can only come from logging time on your instrument and the songs – enough to be able to play it all in your sleep. Or, you can just write music that's so ridiculously simple to play, it's always easy. Can't say that's ever been my forte, for better or worse...</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><strong>Consider all advertising hype. Use your ears.</strong></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">As a kid, I was a big fan of a futuristic, English-made sci fi TV series called...'Space: 1999' (yup – the future, as in 14 years ago and counting...seemed like a long time in the future if you lived in 1975). I loved the ultra-modern-looking spacecraft, the moon base interiors that the characters inhabited, the brooding atmosphere, the excitingly dark stories (compared to, say, Star Trek), orchestral scoring and most of the characters. Unfortunately, the first year was not a smash hit, especially in the only market that mattered, the US. Respectable, but not living up to the expectations of the financial backers and ITV, the production studio. The solution? Bring in a producer with a track record in American TV, and revamp the series. I remember all the hype just before the show's second (and final) season: “Bigger! Better! More Exciting Than Ever! The Future Is Fantastic!' The promo trumpeted exciting new characters, sets, costumes, the introduction of more humour, more 'current' music, catchier stories, etc...</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">It was horrible.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">At first, I just thought there was something weird about me for preferring the first year of the show. How could I be right in the face of so much 'official' opinion to the contrary? True, they canned Barry Morse as the kindly professor in favour of an alien woman who could metamorphosize into any space creature she wanted. Wasn't that exciting? Hmm...kinda cheesy – even to an 8-year-old like me...and who can compare with Barry Morse?</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Anyway – fast forward to the year 1999, and the show has a convention/reunion in LA. Lo and behold – everyone to a man (including the actors and writers) feels as I did about the second year, with the exception of the American producer himself (who bravely attended and spoke). The second year, officially now, sucked, and in part because the budget and rehearsal times had been dramatically cut. Didn't stop them from talking big, but the show suffered terminally.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Yes, I've wandered away from music a little here, but I've seen the same thing – albeit less obviously – happen with artists, instruments and equipment. Where there's huge hype (including some critical reviews), approach with caution. Like brass hardware, dense body wood on guitars, and digital amps, fashion often conflicts with sound, and sound always wins the test of time. Use your ears, be as objective as you can be, and never abdicate your own judgement for someone else's...even if you do feel temporarily More Exciting Than Ever!</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><strong>Mic placement – use your ears Part Deux.</strong></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Placing microphones for a recording session is a bit of a black art, and there are a few engineers of note out there who take rather unorthodox approaches. Drum kits, for example, tended to sound small, boxy and sterile in recording until Jimmy Page started distancing the mics from the source in 1969, allowing the natural ambiance and resonance to come through on tape (culminating in the famous stairwell session for “When the Levee Breaks”. If memory serves, it was Daniel Lanois who espoused literally using your ear to place mics; if (as in my own experience) the snare drum sounds best to you when your ear is point blank at the shell, put the mic head there. Convention be damned.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Wonder of wonders – he's absolutely right! This has produced a few strange visual results, but consistently stellar aural results for me. Pointing a Shure SM57 directly at the snare shell is a good case in point. I've had other engineers shake their heads at that one, but the sounds has spoken for itself – and Curtis has witnessed the likes of Jojo Mayer using such placement live, which is all the vindication I would ever need. As Jimmy Page likes to say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><strong>Composing by jamming vs. Writing alone: the results are different. Do both.</strong></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Back in the glory days when band rehearsal time was not at such a premium, I was in the habit of starting rehearsals by playing some musical idea that had just occurred to me on the spot, or improvising an accompaniment to something one of my bandmates was noodling around on at that moment. Usually everyone present would join in, and voila – we'd have a jam going. One of the reasons I'm still playing with Curtis after so many years is that most of the stuff we came up with is a pleasant surprise; jamming with him brings out a part of my imagination that I don't normally have such easy access to. A couple of years ago, Curtis and I jammed together with Shaun Verreault of Wide Mouth Mason, and the amazing Issah Contractor on bass. We took a couple of hours to just play whatever fresh ideas popped into our heads, and follow the ideas wherever they might lead. Our conversation at the end went something like:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Curtis: Too bad be weren't recording tonight.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Shaun: Yeah, we let a lot of good ideas get away.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Mike: Guess it was sort of a musical “catch-and-release”. (all laugh)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Shaun: Well, we let a lot of big ones go tonight.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Jam music tends to have a different vibe, perhaps a greater vitality, than a lot of the material I originate on my own, and I'd love to be generating more of it on a regular basis. It's also way more fun to create that way. The ideal MLB album would have equal parts of both. Vitality and reflection.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><strong>A little extra effort can go a very long way</strong></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Once again, the efficiently lazy human beast rations energy and therefore dictates: if it appears the energy expenditure would likely be too little too late, don't bother.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">This is generally sound reasoning, but the issue arises when it comes to determining what is too little and/or too late. Case in point: it's nearing the end of a performance, and I'm a little fatigued. My body's telling me there's not much energy left to burn, and I'd be wise to just play the remaining stuff well enough. Extra effort toward a more energetic performance, e.g. pronounced physical gestures, sustained vocal phrases, 'go-for-the-throat' performance as opposed to 'get-to-the-end', is instinctively rejected...unless overridden by better judgement. Like that Hail Mary dive you take to return a tennis shot, it's always worth the effort – despite the energy expenditure, you feel invigorated by the save. 'Oh, whatever' is a phrase that never seems to pay off in performance.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">Even worse than 'More Exciting Than Ever!'</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"> </p></div>
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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs/blog/1081983/catch-22">Catch-22</a>&nbsp;
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<div class="post">
  <div class="message"> While no job is perfect, and most occupations have their fair share of frustrations, I'm struck nearly every day by the nature of the obstacles confronting a typical working musician. Joseph Heller coined the phrase and titled his first novel Catch-22, a mythical bit of military fine-print that, with Kafka-esque logic, causes the solutions to problems to be paradoxically self-negating. For example, Heller's protagonist Yossarian is scared to death of flying any more bombing missions over WWII Italy, but knows his only hope of avoiding further missions (short of getting killed) is to be relieved of his bomber duties by reason of insanity. His superiors reason that there is obviously nothing wrong with his sanity if he fears for his life on bomber missions. Meanwhile, if he claims to want to fly more missions, feigning insanity – he would simply be seen as a willing participant and his missions would continue. This is just one example of dozens of “catch-22” scenarios in the book – and there are more than a few in the music business as well...<br><br>
By the way – while this probably isn't the sunniest blog I've written, it's not due to a turn of mood or recent revelation. It's just the nature of the business, and it may be illuminating to non-musicians out there. My next blog will deal with the other side of the coin – eureka moments that inspire. I like to balance my mopes with hopes whenever possible...<br><br><b>Good sidemen/women=busy sidemen/women</b><br>
I've been a gigging musician for decades now, and I've had the opportunity to play with some highly-skilled and talented people. Naturally, those who are most skilled, professional and easy to get along with are in greatest demand whenever a gig comes up that requires someone who plays their particular instrument, and few in-demand musicians are in a position to turn down well-paid work. The result: yes, I've got an amazing band with devastating technical and artistic prowess. No, we're not available for a goodly chunk of the summer as my guys are gigging in other outfits  in order to make ends meet. I certainly don't begrudge them in the slightest – everybody has to eat, an originals act simply can't fully support a working musician, and even a weekly local gig would likely risk over-exposure. Solutions?  Have a stable of substitute musicians at the ready (problematic and undesirable for such technically-demanding, chemistry-driven music such as mine); Tour, grow enough of a following to support bigger and/or better-paying gigs (like that hasn't already been the point of this for years!), grin and bear it. Guess we'll do the latter until we can do the former.<br><br><b>Good management will find you when you don't need them anymore</b><br>
Behind every great band from rock's golden age is a great manager. The Beatles had Brian Epstein, the Stones had Andrew Loog Oldham, the Who had Lambert &amp; Stamp, Zeppelin had Peter Grant, Kiss had Bill Aucoin, Floyd had Steve O'Rourke, Rush still has Ray Daniels, the Police had the drummer's big brother Miles Copeland, and the list goes on. These managers made massive investments of effort and trust (if not personal fortunes) in their artists, betting the farm on the act's eventual success. Rarely is an artist who is worth his/her salt as an artist any good at music management – the skill sets are just too disparate. Still, all of the examples above are exceptions to the rule that management tends to take a far more cold-blooded, mercenary approach to its artists, and will generally not touch an act unless the act has proven it is highly-professional, already in huge demand and easy to manage. In short – managers seek acts that have already proven they can handily manage themselves, or who have at least crossed the biggest, hardest hurdles already. Finding an Aucoin or an Epstein, who backed unproven acts mostly on a hunch about their band's potential, is probably less likely than becoming a lottery millionaire. Solution: keep building what following and management skills you have, and invite potential management to your gigs regularly. Just be sure the management can do more for you than you're already doing for yourself.<br><br><b>You must build a following of drinkers, but not record for them</b><br>
Most musicians are, for better or worse, in the entertainment industry – not the 'Arts Industry'. The public associates what you do with having a good time, even if you sing death metal ditties about the oncoming environmental holocaust. As with most forms of public entertainment, alcohol accompanies. Entry-level gigs and beyond usually take place in bars and clubs, and the chief source of revenue in such places is liquor sales. Therefore, if you're an artist that brings the drinkers out to your shows in good number, you'll likely be hired back by the establishment often. You could be the next Beatles, but if you're not bringing drinkers to the club, you'll have a hard time getting hired back. Some bands simply become great crafters of drinking-music. Arguably, ZZ Top, AC/DC and Great Big Sea did just that. Some bands lead double lives, playing very simple, tuneful songs live, but developing original music for recording that might not grab the average drunk. Some bands just do their thing and hope/suspect the drinkers will eventually get it, or that they'll soon be an opening act on some major act's tour. By that point, the artist might not have to worry about playing for drinkers...they'll most likely be drinkers themselves. <br><br><b>Music that lasts usually isn't music that initially pleases</b><br>
I find pop music is like food: junk music, like junk food, is designed to be immediately (if superficially) tasty. There's not enough nutritional value to sustain you, and consuming large quantities of it is hugely unhealthy, but it answers (if not satisfies) a craving...and those conditioned to consuming it often have a much higher tolerance for it than those who avoid it. Unfortunately, the music industry has moved toward a quick-gratification-or-die model for reasons stated in a few of my earlier blogs. The days when a band like Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Cheap Trick or Yes could put out two or three poorly-selling initial albums before hitting the mother lode, are long gone. To put it succinctly, this really sucks. Few bands ever reach the point of being seasoned writing and recording collaborators, and fewer still have the opportunity to have a label work tenaciously at turning the public onto their sound. Solution: Indie doesn't have the resources of major labels, but at least the labels can now be more easily sidestepped by the public and artists. It's hardly a solution equal to the problem, but it's all there is presently.<br><br><b>Nothing Succeeds Like Success</b><br>
Almost any musical artist or band you can think of had a rough start to their career. Celebrities who transfix the world with every little utterance now once suffered days when no one showed up to their gigs, no one returned their calls, and anyone who had heard them could think of a thousand reasons why the act wouldn't succeed.  Sting and Supertramp both claim they had about three people show up to their first gig, and have since had hundreds of people who claim to have attended those very shows. They may have been performing material that was every bit as good and catchy as the stuff that made them a household word, but people are more likely to go see an act on the basis of how many other people are going to see the act – not the actual quality of the act.  Nothing succeeds like success – and therefore nothing prevents success quite so effectively as a perceived lack of success. The first major rock concert I ever attended was Kiss in Vancouver, 1979. The opener was a badly chosen band of nobodies named...Loverboy. They had yet to release their first album, and they were roundly despised by the crowd. I couldn't count the number of cups, cans and toilet paper rolls that hit Loverboy that night. Months later, their “Turn Me Loose” single was trouncing the charts, and soon Vancouver's mayor was declaring a Loverboy Day (which I guess did not become an annual event...). I personally know a few Kiss fans who bought the Loverboy album and loved it. A hit single getting airtime all over the US and Canada does wonders for credibility... <br><br><br><b>You can gig for little/no money and help drive down the standard wage; or not gig.</b><br>
Some companies require an initial start-up cost. If you've invented, say, self-cleaning clothes, you've still got to come with a whole whack of cash to build the factory that will produce this brilliant creation. A musician's investment is perhaps on a smaller financial scale: you invest a relatively huge amount of time learning your craft, a relatively small or moderate amount of money in instruments (classical players have it the worst in this regard), and then play a lot of gigs for embarrassingly small wages in hopes of gradually building a following. In Vancouver, most venues that offer original live music arrange for the soundman to take home a reasonable wage and the band to split a portion of the proceeds from the door (i.e.: the cover charge patrons pay at the door of the establishment). This is great news if the venue has a core of regular patrons...but few do. Most rely on the followings of the bands to provide band payment and bar revenue. Most musicians find this a frustrating situation, but there are few alternatives. Without a following, one has no bargaining power, and it's quite a challenge to build a following and a good live show if you never gig. If all bands united and held out for a better deal (which is unlikely in the extreme), it's most likely that the venues would just bring in canned music/DJ's (who get paid significantly better than musicians, on average). For a few years, Pay to Play gained prevalence in the LA area, as bands were willing to pay large sums to get up on stage in the hopes of being 'discovered' by industry bigwigs. I'm happy to say that practice never picked up much traction locally, but I'm sure there were a few club owners who salivated at the prospect. Even those who were former musicians themselves...<br><br>
Did I mention I'm just putting finishing touches on a new song called “Cannibals”?<br><br>
Cheerier stuff next time, folks – I promise.<br></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2013-07-07T07:43:20-07:00" title="July 07, 2013 07:43">07/07/2013</span></p>

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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs/blog/867794/peripheral-vision">Peripheral Vision</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"> Years ago, I lived in a household that included a very black dog (dachshund-cocker spaniel cross, believe it or not). Bailey had an evening ritual of running out into our large, enclosed backyard. Some nights she'd hurry back to the back deck to be let back in the house after she'd conducted her necessary business. Sometimes, she'd prefer to linger, exploring the yard with its evening scents and sounds. Occasionally, if she remained out for an especially long time, I'd have to go out looking for her, just to ensure she hadn't found an escape route to the neighbours or the front yard.<br><br>
So here I'd be, looking for a black dog in the dead of night on a large, unlit expanse of lawn. Black fur on a black background. Alrighty, then.<br><br>
Even with very little available light, my eyes would sometimes adjust enough for me to pick up Bailey's motions. My eyes would focus on the location of movement, and the dog would vanish...but if I let the motion remain in my peripheral vision, I could pinpoint the dog's location. Direct focus obscured the image – while oblique non-focus located  it. <br><br>
Then, with a little more luck, her eyes might give off enough faint glow to help out...<br><br>
Of course, this is not news to star-gazers. Focusing directly on a star with the naked eye usually obscures the stars details; an oblique view brings out the detail. <br><br>
So what has this got to do with music?<br><br>
Much to the joy and chagrin of most musicians, many great musical ideas and moments are accidental – or, at least, not wholly deliberate. They're the result of oblique effort; not direct.<br><br>
Randy Bachmann, of BTO and Guess Who fame, famously admits that most of his biggest hits were unintentional. 'American Woman' originated as a live jam, 'Ain't Seen Nothing Yet' was a throwaway poke at a stuttering friend. Cheap Trick's 'Budokan' album wasn't even intended for wide release in Japan, let alone the rest of the world, and it became their biggest seller.  I'm not saying unintentional success is the rule rather than the exception, but it plays a greater role than most people realize or admit.<br><br>
I must concede, I've found the peripheral approach a more effective way to originate musical and lyrical ideas than to focus directly – and the earlier I am in the development of a song, the more I find this to be true.<br><br>
This doesn't mean I'm especially good at taking my own advice. I still have the terrible habit of, say, sitting with a blank page of my notepad, awaiting the great first idea that will start off my next song and inspire me to the completion of the song (and that's pretty rare, to be sure). Some of my more inspired works have come from an attitude closer to “well, these ideas are probably silly, but let's see where they lead...”. Certainly, those ideas tend to be more original, more genuine and more fresh than the ones that come from hyper-focus and careful crafting. Focusing specifically on attaining a particular musical mood, a specific  musical objective, usually does not come close to success. Even trying to pinpoint in words what I'm feeling at a particular time can be arduous – but in releasing the direct focus, and letting the details tell the story (even if it's a different story than what was originally intended), things tend to flow more easily, enjoyably, successfully. <br><br>
The lesson to be drawn from this, weirdly enough, is that I – and perhaps more than a few other artists – need to try harder to not try so hard. Perhaps a slightly less confusing way to look at it is to have a little faith in the little sweatshop-workers of one's subconscious mind. They may not be as nutty or unfocused as they're reputed to be.</div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2013-06-03T12:49:04-07:00" title="June 03, 2013 12:49">06/03/2013</span></p>

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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs/blog/726319/recording-at-the-speed-of-change">Recording at the Speed of Change</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"> It was pointed out in one of my earliest engineering books that modern recording technology was developed mostly through the efforts of three men: Bing Crosby, Les Paul and Adolf Hitler.<br><br>
Pretty provocative statement, and slightly fudged for effect. <br><br>
Certainly the Nazis and their espionage specialists developed recording technology significantly for surveillance purposes. Moving the medium to magnetic tape from the old shellac discs or cylinders allowed for massive refinement of recording quality (and while Hitler supported the initiative, I have my doubts he ever fired up a soldering gun or studied a specs sheet himself...). After the war, Bing Crosby toured Europe, and the German reel-to-reel Ampex tape machines were brought to his attention. He took one back to the USA and showed it to his musical collaborator, Les Paul, a guitarist and music technology tinkerer of the best kind.<br><br>
Les Paul soon discovered that if he recorded the sound of his guitar-playing along with the playback from a recording he'd made earlier, he could effectively clone himself. Soon he was arranging pieces featuring several guitars (all his, of course) and multiple Mary Ford vocal lines, choirs of guitar and voice...performed by only two people. Check out his recording of “How High the Moon”, for example.  <br>
Soon afterward, Les Paul built the first multi-track recorders, which divided one length of  tape into four  parallel “tracks”. This allowed Les to clone himself and his wife using only one machine, and with far less signal loss in the process. In the late eighties (which is when I started spending time around recording devices), recording onto digital hard drives rather than magnetic tape became affordable enough for hobbyists to explore. At the University of Victoria, we still recorded on half- and quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape  (4- and 8-track) – and my first recording device was a Tascam 244 cassette-tape 4-track. The manual was written by Tolstoy. The earliest incarnation of my band, Victoria Secret, recorded on 24-track 2-inch tape at Zero Gravity Studios – definitely the autumn years of tape. Some artists (Slash, for example) still hold out stubbornly with magnetic tape, claiming it sounds warmer – but the medium is quickly vanishing. Digital is just so convenient, and only the keenest of ears (if, indeed, anyone)  can hear the difference between a magnetic recording and a digital one.<br>
I embraced digital recording fully in 2006, when I purchased a digital 16-track Yamaha recorder. Until recently, I've recorded absolutely everything on it, and felt only limited by its output options (everything must be burned onto CD – no USB out. Curses!) and my own yet-to-learn's as an engineer. I've grown very comfortable doing everything myself, I've developed some quick-and-efficient techniques for getting good sounds, and I've learned a hell of a lot. Still, time and technology march on...<br>
The band is currently polishing off a three-song EP in a very well-appointed home studio in North Vancouver. For the first time in a decade, I'm not engineering this one. Because the medium is digital, this allows for computer software to step in and do huge engineering tasks that were unheard of until the '90's. Not surprisingly, we're using the ubiquitous Pro Tools multi-track recording software, and our award-winning engineer, Bud Arnold, has hand-in-glove familiarity with the latest version.<br>
The biggest difference between this Pro Tools approach and the way I'd do it at home is at the editing stage. At home, if I laid down a track of, say, lead vocals, and I feel I goofed a couple of phrases of an otherwise good performance, I would “punch in” the correction just by setting the start and finish time of the spot I wanted to record over, and record the corrected phrases. In North Van, we tend to take four passes at, say, lead vocals. Of the four performances, we listen to each performance phrase-by-phrase, selecting (and very occasionally arguing over) which phrase we like best of the four. We then paste together one complete performance from that collection of our favourite phrases (I could technically do this in my home studio as well, but the process would be far more cumbersome). Bud's skill with Pro Tools allows him to stitch together a complete composite performance quickly and seamlessly.<br><br>
It's taken a bit of getting used to relinquishing my little aural autocracy and performing in front of others while recording. There's a little more pressure, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. As we haven't reached the end of this project and therefore have no final results, my jury's still out on whether this approach to recording is a step forward for us. I can at least say that I've been blown away, yet again, by the musicianship of my two band mates and the hugely artful expertise of our engineer. One of the three tunes we've recorded, “Villains Anonymous”, had never even been rehearsed together as a band, let alone played live, and I was completely floored by everyone's contributions. This is the first recording I've made with someone other than me on bass for almost a decade, and to say I was pleasantly surprised by Jason's work is a massive understatement. I definitely look forward to hearing the finished works.<br><br>
With a fair quantity of formal training in Classical and (to a far lesser degree) Jazz,  and an enduring love for bands that can deliver the goods live, the purist in me isn't entirely comfortable with these new Pro Tools of recording. In the days before Bing brought the Ampex machines back from the remains of Germany, recording required a near-perfect performance from all musicians simultaneously. If someone messed up, the engineer would have to throw out the recording cylinder or shellac disc and load a new one for the next attempt. Back then, all recordings were essentially live. All musicians had to deliver the goods at once. Just like on stage.<br><br>
I do take some comfort in the knowledge that we haven't required all of Pro Tools' capabilities. There is no auto-tune/pitch correction, drum re-placement, side-chain compression, or even frequency equalizing or effects used. While there may be a touch of reverb and delay in the final mix, that will likely be all the artifice we'll employ. It's not live, but it's honest – probably more so than most current pop/rock recordings. In the meantime, it's been suggested that we record one of our live performances one of these days. I'd certainly be game. I can guarantee it won't be a perfect performance (as there's no such thing), but again – it will be honest. Like those pre-WWII recording musicians, we'll just have to get it right – but at least we won't have to toss out our hard-drive if we balls it up.<br></div>
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  <a href="/blogs/blog/670979/death-by-bargain-hunter">Death By Bargain-Hunter</a>&nbsp;
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<div class="post">
  <div class="message"> There's the old myth that if you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, he'll immediately leap out – but if you put a frog in a pot of tepid water and gradually increase the heat, the frog will cook before he even realizes the temperature has changed. <br><br>
Politicians sometimes use this image to justify slow, incremental change. Maybe you can't eliminate the Ministry of the Environment in one fell swoop, for example, but you can erode its effectiveness slowly over time until it becomes irrelevant and industry can exploit the land with impunity. By the time enough people wake up to the changes, they're cowed by the enormity of problem, or they've grown complacent. 'That's just the way it is and I can't change it now'. Voters would react with outrage to a large, sweeping motion, but go to sleep with seemingly small, insignificant changes.<br><br>
Just recently, you probably heard about the little nudge on the stove-knob by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC is actually their real corporate name now...kinda like KFC, only in this case, they're likely interested in playing down the 'Canadian' aspect rather than 'Fried'). The bank had attempted to fire over forty workers and replace them with temporary foreign workers provided by an Indian outsourcing company called iGate. These workers would be paid approximately half of what their Canadian counterparts would receive; they would then take the expertise acquired in Canada back with them to India so that they could continue to do the same job in their native land. RBC – Canada's biggest, and most massively profitable bank – would save a few bucks in wages and benefits. Unfortunately for RBC management, the fired employees blew the whistle, CBC picked up the news story, and everything got rather public. Royal's CEO has since apologized and promised the fired workers that jobs would be found for them in the Bank.<br><br>
The story brought to light the fact that outsourcing has been going on since the mid-80's (the award-winning documentary movie 'Roger and Me' by Michael Moore, about General Motors moving a profitable operation from Michigan to Mexico in order to save on labour costs, is a stark illustrator of the practice). I suspect that the reason the RBC story made waves is because a) it's a simple, unambiguous story that transcends ideology – 'foreign workers steal Canadian jobs', b) the CBC is not yet under Corporate Canada's thumb (unlike the Canadian Government) and is still widely heard, and c) there had been similar 'wake-up' stories recently in the press, such as the BC Chinese mine-workers debacle brought to us by HD Mining. The groundwork was laid for people to understand what was going on and to perceive it as an insidious trend rather than an isolated anomaly.  <br><br>
So here we have a particular livelihood in danger of having its wages severely eroded because (a) there are a lot of as-yet untrained people willing to do it cheaper, and (b) management hoped consumers could not tell the difference – or at least, wouldn't care enough to do anything about it, and (c) the wage-eroding practice has been slow and gradual. Up until now, little attention has been paid.<br><br>
Which brings us (at last) to the music industry.<br><br>
I understand supply and demand. There's a massive supply of people who'd love to play music for a living, many of whom would work dirt-cheap to do it (at least in their early years, when they're still living with their parents...or later, when they've had a day job for decades and would like the musical weekend warrior option). My generation grew up watching music videos, which tended to make playing music look a hell of a lot more fun than, say, selling insurance...or just about anything else, for that matter. You get onstage, you look cool, you're showered in adulation, and you get rich. It's almost a miracle that the whole generation didn't turn to music as a vocation. Certainly, many tried. Still, no matter how flooded a labour pool might be, there is not justification for exploitation, sub-standard wages or ignoring such factors as expertise.<br><br>
To add to the pinch, technology has probably worked more against musicians than for them. Although the costs of recording music at a professional level have plummeted over the last three decades, live bands have been replaced in many venues with DJs (as music playback and lighting equipment as developed), and of course, digital recording has eviscerated the recorded medium as a source of income. To add a little more misery to the mix, disposable income for all generations after the Baby Boomers has crashed, which knocks down available funds for music, be it live (with accompanying liquor sales) or recorded. Less income means less time, so people have turned to 'fast-food'  and 'wallpaper' music in droves; quick, shallow gratification, or a soothing background, to be discarded and forgotten in an instant. Who's got time or attention to sit through (as an ironic example) Amused to Death? Bring on the DJ...<br><br>
It's been the expected rite of passage for the ageing generation to bitch about the music of the younger generation – but this time, it's not just age. The most widely-heard pop music of today really is a lot worse than that of previous generations, in part for the reasons I've mentioned above. It doesn't mean good music isn't being written or performed somewhere, it simply isn't widely-heard, fostered or supported significantly. Decades down the road, will middle-aged folks get misty-eyed when they hear 'Call Me Maybe'? Perhaps...but probably more due to embarrassment. <br><br>
So where is this all leading?<br><br>
My paternal grandfather grew up in a village in the Ukrainian corner of the old Austrian empire. Over a century ago, on the rare occasions he and his buddies found some spare time from the day's toils, they'd often pursue a most entertaining pastime that also fulfilled some small civic duty. <br><br>
They'd run the musicians out of town. <br><br>
Musicians were seen merely as vagrants with delusions of grandeur, after all. Might as well keep the streets clean.<br><br>
Perhaps the surplus bank workers would be next.<br><br>
A species with no natural predators eventually starts competing with itself for resources...and in our case, preying on itself. The stockholders at RBC like the idea of a bigger return on their investment, even if it means eroding the standard of living in Canada to third-world levels. Seems stupid not to save a buck where you can, right? The same way it seems stupid to pay for music when  you can just as easily 'download it for free (a.k.a. 'steal it')'. The way it seems stupid to pay for a professional band for your reception when you can get your nephew's friends to play the gig for beer. <br><br>
The way it seems stupid to be whistling 'Call Me Maybe' thirty years from now? <br><br>
The crux of the problem is the belief that any slight advantage you might relinquish to someone else – pay a few more bucks for a CD, a service, a product, for example – is a net loss to you, end of story.  As I've tried to illustrate, it doesn't quite work that way. Even if you want to keep your focus narrowed exclusively to self-interest, squeezing any goods- or service-provider to the last penny and cheapest alternative isn't good economics in the long-term. Save a few bucks on 'free' music today and enjoy a pathetic selection a decade from now...just as you can look forward to the total absence of middle-class society. The very rich and the vast population of the working poor will, according to pervading trends, be all that is left.<br><br>
Put another way: would you rather invest in good music and quality products of the future, or cheap, offshore-manufactured junk and stolen music in great quantity now? As much as the popular assumption seems to be otherwise, we can't have both.<br></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2013-05-03T13:12:53-07:00" title="May 03, 2013 13:12">05/03/2013</span></p>

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  <a href="/blogs/blog/442425/ladies-and-gentlemen-mr-curtis-leippi">Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Curtis Leippi!</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message">For the last six or seven years, the most frequent comment I tend to hear from audience members after our show is, “are you guys ever tight!” For non-musicians, I should explain – this doesn't mean we won't spring for drinks or that we walk funny; it pertains to rhythmic cohesion. I'm happy to hear that response, but somewhat bemused by it. We've never consciously tried to be tight per se, but we have logged a lot of time on our instruments, we love bands with very propulsive rhythm sections... and Curtis and I have played together for 17 years.<br><br>
17 Years! The figure blows my mind. For what it's worth, it certainly seems like less than 17 years – and when we'd met, I'd probably have been flabbergasted to learn that this is the guy with whom I'd form my longest-lived musical partnership. To explain...<br><br>
Back in the Summer of '96, I'd been without a band for over a year, and was hungry to get playing again. I'd started hanging out with local bassist/guitarist extraordinaire David Augustin to chat about the craft of songwriting and to 'workshop' song ideas. Dave was starting to get the itch to play live again too, so he rounded up a couple of locals for a jam. We agreed to meet at the drummer's rehearsal studio in a storage complex near Saanichton. Dave had raved about this drummer's skills on our way out to the studio, as he'd caught Curtis in live performance recently. This drummer, apparently, had tons of slick, professional chops, and could play live to click-tracks and sequencers effortlessly. I prepared myself to be impressed.<br><br>
The guy I met was laconic to the extreme. He spoke very little, and our few verbal exchanges weren't exactly Hallmark moments. Here's our first exchange, for example:<br>
Me: Hey, Curtis, would there happen to be a power outlet in this part of the room for my amp?<br>
Curtis: Huh. Guess you should have brought an extension cord. (goes back to reading a book as Dave and I set up).<br><br>
Curtis, years later, explained to me that he was very jaded about guitarists in general at that time, having played with many recently who were musically disappointing and professionally lacking. Fair enough.<br><br>
I don't recall having any planned repertoire beforehand – the three of us jammed on a few tunes we all happened to know (the singer didn't show at the first jam), liked what we'd heard, and agreed to meet again with singer in tow. Then, something strange happened. I'm not sure who started it, but Curtis and I started jamming on 'the Crunge' by Led Zeppelin. This is akin to a man with three heads happening upon another man with three heads. The Crunge is a very obscure song from the Zep repertoire, and is metrically bizarre. If you could imagine a Charles Ives arrangement of a James Brown tune with stream-of-consciousness lyrics by Richard Pryor, you'd be in the aural ballpark. Naturally, it's one of my faves – and it happened to be a favourite of Curtis' as well. To top it off, we didn't just like it – we could both play it (hell, I could sing it and play it simultaneously - even Page and Plant can't do that)! Two men with three heads (each) meet and discover they can both juggle chainsaws. What are the chances?<br><br>
Naturally, it wasn't all harmony and happiness from then on. I had a bit of a habit of micro-managing drum parts for my songs, and Curtis had no reason to trust my suggestions for his musical contributions. He also despised non-drummers trying to change his approach (with good reason – he's ten times the drummer I could ever hope to be). Things were a little tense between us for the first year of working together, and the band fell into a natural division: Dave and I as the formally-trained strait lacers, Curtis and Jeff as the road-weary, laid-back pros.,<br><br>
The longer we worked together, the more we grew to value the musical partnership. As we had a rhythm section of guys who enjoyed playing demanding, intricate, yet groove-friendly parts, I started writing music that made use of such firepower. Meanwhile, I began noticing how much Curtis' distinctive playing coloured the band's sound, giving it a coolly powerful, yet very organic flavour. I was also shocked to learn that Curtis actually paid attention to and valued good lyrics. In all my previous bands, I could have been singing in Swahili for all my band mates cared.  This guy, a voracious reader for as long as I've known him, would often quiz me about lyrics I'd written or complement something he liked. I should also mention – if he and the other two gents in Victoria Secret (which is what we named this little quartet, thanks to Dave) hadn't all got behind the idea of playing original music, let alone mine – the band would likely have run its course by 1998. Lucky for me, my music with those boys turned out to be a very good fit.<br><br>
All good things come to an end, though, and Dave and Jeff moved on to other music and other parts of the world, respectively. Curtis and I continued to collaborate in writing music (“Pretty Good Joke”, “Everything's For Sale” and “Caesar's Palace”, for example, all began with an intriguing Leippi drum-groove), jamming, and working with various singers, keyboardists and bassists. While we have substantial musical common ground – we were just recently discussing how much we both loved Ritchie Hayward's drumming when he worked with Robert Plant, in fact – it's fair to say we're pretty different people. Curtis' idea of a good day would likely include drumming, getting out toward the BC interior (rather rapidly) on his motorcycle, catching some live Shakespeare or live fusion phenom like Marco Minnemann, sharing a good scotch with a diverse assortment of friends, and instigating provocative conversations that alternately make you think hard and laugh harder.  Me, I'd tend to replace the motorcycle and drums with a coffee, notepad and guitar, the scotch with a gin and tonic, and the rest with well-meaning inertia. Despite initial impressions from our first meeting, it's Curtis with the people skills. Whodathunk. <br><br>
Just this week we've been in the recording studio together for the first time in at least six years. I have the pleasure of hearing my tunes come to life, as they're transformed from home demos (on which I use a 20-year-old drum machine – Alesis HR16 for you gearheads. Curtis despises it, I might add) to living, breathing music with Leippi drum artistry. Seventeen years? Bring on another seventeen. This just never gets old. </div>
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  <a href="/blogs/blog/338617/voices-in-my-head-meet-the-writing-staff">Voices In My Head: Meet the Writing Staff</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"> Ah, the blank page. Here it sits before me on a Saturday morning, staring back, mute and smug. I've found that Blank Page has a way of activating my inner-grade-9 student, who doggedly starts trying to stack simple, uninteresting ideas together in order to build a plain little philosophical fortress. Like the Brutalist architecture of Soviet Russia, the fortress may stand up to the elements, but it's a bit of an eyesore. <br><br>
Thankfully, that inner grade-9 student is not the sole writer on staff – he's just often the first responder to the blank page. On days when I'm a little more courageous (a.k.a. smarter), I'll let Mr. Impulsive blab for a while, and I'll dutifully take down what he says. Mr. Impulsive is sort of the mad fool of the Writing Staff: much of what he says at first seems nonsensical, but upon later reflection, there's usually a good helping of substance in what he says. Usually.<br><br>
The other great by-product of letting Mr. Impulsive speak (without the Thought Police shutting him down, of course), is that the rest of the writing staff usually won't start tossing in ideas until they're sure that Mr. Impulsive isn't being gagged by the Thought Police. They're a little cowardly, as well as a little arrogant. They seem to figure that if a whack-job like Mr. Impulsive can be given voice, then surely the real writing staff can do it even better. <br><br>
At this point, it's easy to listen to Dr. Philosopher. He's quick to speak and fairly eloquent, but has an annoying habit of keeping to generalities and spouting principles. Loves the sound of his own voice, too. I think I hired him in my teenage years when I was listening to a lot of Rush. These days, I try to use his contributions very sparingly.<br>
No one likes to hear a textbook sing, least of all me. <br><br>
Chances are, one staff writer will hold sway at this point, partly determined by the musical ideas (if any) underpinning the mood of the piece, partly determined by the vagaries of my emotional state. The Activist tends to rail against social injustice of various forms, and often speaks in bitter irony. The Satyr is much more jovial, yet visceral - tangling lust, humour, desire and self-deprecation. The Loser is surprisingly resilient and talkative, like the drunk at the bar – he has nothing left to lose by speaking his mind, and he has a very long memory. Probably the most recent- and most shy - voice at the table is the Observer. This one simply recounts what his senses show him.  This is a voice I regret not having paid more attention to as a younger writer (drowned out by Dr. Philosopher at the writers' meetings, I'd guess), but try to listen to more now. Tom Waits, for example, is a master of using this kind of voice, as in:<br><br>
Cuff links and hub caps<br>
Trophies and paperbacks<br>
It's good transportation<br>
But the brakes aren't so hot<br>
Neck tie and boxing gloves<br>
This jackknife is rusted<br>
You can pound that dent out<br>
On the hood<br>
A tinker, a tailor<br>
A soldier's things<br>
His rifle, his boots full of rocks<br>
Oh and this one is for bravery<br>
And this one is for me<br>
And everything's a dollar<br>
In this box<br><br><i>A Soldier's Things</i>, Tom Waits<br><br>
A seemingly neutral collection of observations ends up painting an incredibly vivid portrait...and because he left the listener to put all the pieces together herself, it carries that much more of a kick.<br><br>
There are still a couple of spots on the writing staff that I'd like to fill, but have not yet managed to. The Happy Guy posting, for example, has proven impossible to fill convincingly. There are plenty of things in my life that contribute to my happiness, but I'm damned if I can write well about them. Years ago, I had a girlfriend who seemed a little disturbed that I could pour my heart out in lyrics about previous relationships (gone wrong), but had nothing to say about her in song. I tried to explain that I was deliriously happy, and if I started writing about her, it indicated the relationship was in big trouble and she'd probably start to find me quite dislikable. Her response was to write beautiful poetry about how cheated she felt in that arrangement. In desperation, I got Dr. Philosopher to fill in the Happy Guy position for one song. You can guess the results. I did mention that's a former relationship, right?<br><br>
A couple of last thoughts about the writing committee: I stumbled onto all of these 'voices' over time, and I hope that I – and any other writers – remain open to new voices joining the staff. The voices appear without notice, and can fall mute just as suddenly, but perhaps a key art to writing is the art of keeping the communication lines open to all these voices, and listening keenly. I hazard to suggest selecting which voices to hear, but too much conscious effort has a way of drowning out all voices, save Mr. Grade 9. Funny, that. The other thought concerns writer's envy. Sure, it's natural to wish I could write like Tom Waits or Jeff Buckley or dozens of other greats – but if I actually did write like Tom Waits, I'd be even worse off than I am now. A major component of great writing is having one's own distinct voice. If Tom Waits wrote just like Bob Dylan (one of Waits' influences), nobody would have heard of Tom Waits. You have to write from your own voice, flaws and all. In fact, flaws are necessary...well, unless you're J.S. Bach, who didn't have to write much of his own lyrics, anyway.</div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2013-03-03T03:42:40-08:00" title="March 03, 2013 03:42">03/03/2013</span></p>

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  <a href="/blogs/blog/315141/smash-the-meat-dress">Smash the Meat Dress!</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"> In 1964, the young guitarist of a new English band, formerly called the Detours, was finishing the last song of the band's set. He intended to flourish his guitar over his head before setting it down on its stand and taking his leave from the stage. Instead, he accidentally rammed the neck of the guitar into the unusually low ceiling. The guitar howled with feedback, the crowd went wild, and the guitarist - in a flash of embarrassment, anger, quick-thinking and chutzpah - grabbed the guitar from the ceiling and smashed it to bits. For the next few years, the band was arguably best known, for better or worse, as the guys who smashed their instruments after every show (the drummer and singer quickly learned to follow suit; the bassist would always keep on playing through the mayhem). The guitarist's name was Peter Townshend, and the Detours had recently changed their name to the Who. <br><br>
The Who's managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, sought the Who as clients purely because of the band's attitude and standing with the fashionable Mod crowd. Lambert later explained his rationale to a young Malcolm McLaren, who would go on to take the same approach to the extreme with a new punk band called the Sex Pistols: “I just found a bunch of guys with lots of attitude who couldn't play, and promoted the hell out of them”.<br><br>
The problem was, Townshend considered himself a dedicated and gifted musician, and went to great lengths to prove it with grandiose rock opera such as Tommy and Quadrophenia. Audiences would still call for him to destroy his instrument at the end of performance. Eventually he ended the practice (around the time he started playing the very weighty Les Paul Deluxe guitars....coincidence? Probably not), and the Who transitioned from trailblazers to elder statesmen (well...half the band died over the next twenty years, too. Curiously, the remaining instrumentation would fit the Beatles survivors now quite nicely, 'though Ringo would probably have a coronary event trying to play like the late Keith Moon. Oh, well...).<br><br>
There are a number of bands who have taken up the practice of instrument destruction on stage since then (although Yngwie Malmsteen and Paul Stanley always switch to cheap copies just before the wood starts to fly), but it's not the highlight of anyone's show anymore. It was the Who's trademark. It put them on the map, and it eventually became a millstone holding them back from more legitimate recognition. <br><br>
Townshend had been well-aware that the Who needed to distinguish itself somehow in order to rise above the run-of-the-mill plethora of young bands in early '60's London. They already had the Beatles, the Stones, Pink Floyd and the Yardbirds as contemporary, local competition (no pressure, mind you). Instrument-smashing was accidental for the first few seconds, but a calculated expenditure from then on. There are a number of bands since who have amplified some element of their character in order to burn their image onto the public retina. Just as the Who caricatured its own anger, abandon and nihilism to make it crystal-clear to even the most thick-headed audience member, AC/DC caricatured their tiny, frantic, cheeky lead guitarist; Meat Loaf drew attention to his own girth; Madonna updated her self-caricature every year or two in her heyday, from club-dancing queen to sexhibitionist; David Bowie conveniently morphed in and out of the Ziggy Stardust image; and a band like Kiss was and is almost a caricature of a caricature. More current bands like OK Go got themselves on the map with incredibly inventive videos (you've probably seen their treadmill-syncronized-dance routine on video...can't say I remember anything about the song). <br><br>
A rather weird by-product of this image over-amplification is that quite often, a goodly number of bands see the success of another band's image, and assume...the same image. The pop-metal bands of the '80's (teased hair, guy-liner, pvc pants, pointy guitars, etc), and grunge bands of the '90's (garage-band instruments, baggy clothes, unwashed long hair), all writing music from the same idea-book, cashed in on existing images. A very small handful of bands survived such origins. The resulting output of music tended to be a mile wide and an inch deep. <br><br>
Of course, the one rule in artist “attraction devices” is that there are no other rules. There have been more than a few notable cases of artists rising above the sea of their contemporaries purely on the strength of (gasp!) their music. I've always marvelled at the cajones of the A&amp;R guy who signed Dire Straits to the Polygram label in '77. Understated, almost mumbly singing, clean and tasty guitar lines, slice-of-life poetry for lyrics, and not especially catchy songs – all brought to market at the height of disco and punk. Somebody at Polygram had figured out that a few baby-boomers had actually grown up and wanted some adult music...and Generation X was there already in strong numbers.<br><br>
Then as now, all bands – consciously or unconsciously – choose one of the three approaches described above. You can craft and amplify an original image, perhaps fast-tracking you to public recognition; but pay a price for your image upstaging your music. You can 'borrow' a trendy image, cashing in on what's currently hot (remember all those Nickelback sound-alikes from a decade ago?) and probably suffer both artistic restraint and utter anonymity within a few short years; or you can take the big gamble and let your music speak for itself, leaving the 'image' to hazard. If you're a band of especially photogenic people, a la the Police, the image will probably take care of itself, provided you don't come to blows over the hair-dryer too often. For the rest of us, who'd just like to make a comfortable living making music, having good musicians play the best music you can write – and have fun doing it – is the best platform to start with. Despite being a longtime fan of a number of 'caricature' bands myself, I've never felt compelled to take either of the first two options, and getting older does nothing but reinforce that view. I may keep myself trim, but at my age, I don't think wearing a meat-dress would help my career.</div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2013-02-17T05:25:57-08:00" title="February 17, 2013 05:25">02/17/2013</span></p>

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