As the elder days of my life approach, I find myself asking questions once believed to be unaskable...
- while listening to the radio - "What are these youngsters listening to?" - while watching tv - "Why does everything have to be so violent?" - while sitting in a movie theater - "What happened to ambiguity?"
While the tender days of my youth seep out of the garbage bag of my life, I wonder if things have diminished in quality and craftsmanship, or have I outgrown the slobbery, hypnotic whirl of my teenage days where everything was new and all the experiences were mine to experience, and all the lessons mine to learn anew?
Let's take music for example. Back in the day when I started my love affair with hip-hop I started to realize that for me, the beauty of this genre was in the music. The rhymes were definitely a part of the picture, but the groups I listened to had a common thread; warm, wooden, vintage, funky sample driven production with a crisp finish that added a smokey note to the wine of my halcyon days.
Now with the advent of in-home music production that can actually compete with major artists, (yet only in competent hands, any yahoo can put loops together!)and the "I need it now and I can actually have it now" mentality, music and it's accompanying memory making ingredients have seemed to lose their luster.
All of these wonderings and wanderings were abated when I heard QKnox's "Meet Mr. Q" - a collection of no less than 30+ homemade beat blankets to warm this cold and lonely heart of a disinterested music snob.
With "Mr. Q" I see the progression of music stretching in both directions; historic and futuristic. With his latest offering, QKnox asks the listener to engage in a temporal freeze frame. A timeless landscape that is created from the limestone of some old and new soul and jazz records, shaped by the hands of the present to craft a gift to the future. In another way it seems QKnox takes ancient relics, crushes them into a powder and forges new metals and alloys with which he builds a new and fantastic world.
QKnox gives a tip of the hat to his musical heros while maintaining a stance that is completely his own. "Meet Mr. Q" takes me back to those smoked out cars of my younger days when the music made the magic happen. This is a treat to listen to and it's an album that can be delved into again and again, as new twists and turns are available from each successive listen. Keep your ears out for Captain Jean Luc Picard. He's all over this!!
As we continue to try to scrape what goodness we can from the crusty innards of life, it's nice to know that someone is walking behind us, picking up the scraps that we forgot, and giving them back to us in shiny new packages that make us remember when things were right in the world and we took time to appreciate.
Favorite Tracks - Find a New Way - Something about this is yum. Call Me Up - genius Chromeo reimagining
As a musician entrenched in an ever changing medium, I feel it's my duty to keep my ear to the streets and see what other folks are listening to, practicing on, who they're playing with. It's tricky to keep up with everything and stay relevant. You have to observe what other folks are getting into so it can help you get out of routines, help you break through self imposed limits and other glass ceiling type inventions. However, sometimes you'll find yourself on stage or at a rehearsal, looking and listening to everyone saying "Did I miss something?"
Such was the feeling when I looked around and noticed every jazz musician was a Buddhist. I had heard about Herbie and done my own research into Eastern mythology and had always had a resonate feeling with that bunch. But now it was reaching some kinda Pod People level. EVERY serious cat playing jazz was a Buddhist and I thought, "am I missing something?" I started feeling remiss in my jazz duties. Like when people started quoting other songs in their solos, or people started playing A Love Supreme chromatically rising when the heat got turned on. These are gimmicks but they hint at a very real concept; when you hear that next level shit you just know it.So what was I hearing in these peoples playing that wasn’t there before? Had their spiritual beliefs manifested themselves aurally? Then what about Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Mormon musicians, or that Satanic band from Oslo Dark Funeral?
"We need some goats and some virgins and some Zima. It's on our Rider!"
Did their take on spiritual nature not make the cut? Was jazz just reserved for some First Class Buddhist’s Only Lounge where they chanted and ate grapes and bean pies and wore saffron robes and fucking dominated Donna Lee for 20 choruses?
"18 more choruses boys! How high the moon indeed!"
My thoughts -
The musicians who turn to Buddhism or any religion are showing a dedication to something wholly larger than themselves. It is ridiculously easy to get wrapped up in music and think that YOU are the one calling all the shots and pulling the strings and it all relies on YOU. What’s different for those folks who bring religion into the picture, is that they are relinquishing elements of control to something other than themselves. Buddhism is very much about cause and effect and this is a huge part of jazz. When something occurs on stage it’s absorbed, transcribed and redirected at lightning fast speed. People who are not focusing on how they are doing personally are going to be better suited to translate this language and give the audience a clearer picture of the true nature of the musical exchange.
Do you need to be Buddhist to get these results? No.I’m of the mind that every little piece of information has it’s place at my table. As I go through life I take what lessons I can from where they poke out and assimilate it to my conceptual understanding. It makes sense that musicians that rock have spiritual coals in their fires. It’s just a question of how deep and bright you want your own fire to burn.
You've been working hard on a project and it comes to the point where you've edited everything out, added and subtracted every known plug-in, used different instrumentation, thought it would be a good idea to bring the synthesized Chinese Moon Guitar into the mix, took it out, decided to sing all of the lines and then play them backwards through a high pass filter....and there it stays.
Finishing. It is the one thing most creative people cannot get there heads around. At the beginning of an idea, at the genesis, you see it all in front of you; like what Frodo thought when Gandalf gave him the ring;
"I got it. Into the volcano. We'll be back in about a week. Yeah yeah yeah no no no I got it. Bang! I'm Frodo Baby!"
But as you start coming up to the sculpting and shaping, editing and thoughtful reflection on what the true nature of your work will be the direction and passion seep out. It's so much funner to say to a room full of people "We will eat freshly baked brownies!" than to be the person who now has to make a roomsworth of brownies.
Almost everyone I know who is a dreamer is awesome at conception and development, but it takes a certain person to deliver the goods. In Anthony Kemp's book The Musical Temperament he says that highly creative people who are successful, exhibit characteristics of both genders - the female ability to stop and admire the color, contour, scent, dynamism of a bed of flowers; and the male ability to schedule, appropriate, delegate, shape and process those feelings into a tangible product. I do not believe in gender stereotyping as such, and these terms are used to codify the point, not to exclude or deny anyone; the fact remains that to be a "successful" artist one must possess both the ability to dream and create, and a knack for getting things in understandable packets that folks can take with them.
The title for this post says it all.
Mountains start from a small pocket of gas somewhere deep in the Earth and slowly over time and with much refining they become majestically huge and objects of wonderment, except to the poor Sherpa who has to carry your Sleep Number Mattress to the summit.
Tenzig's number is 34.
Mole hills are made by moles I'm assuming; I'm not a mole man myself.
Mordor is explosively filled with dragons and all types of evil bad assery.
These things are not entirely linkable but that's not the point. The point is that your man Jake Sanders had an idea, and saw that shit all the way through! Finito. Done! Game = Changed.
Seriously:
Creation is half of the act of creating. It's the funnest part. The other half is sustaining, nurturing, guiding, plugging, and finally letting go. You can sit on a track or a painting or a script for YEARS and nothing will ever come of it because you may feel it's undone, or the mix is off, or just a little more exposition here would be... - it'll never get anywhere. My good friend Ben Senterfit says "Once your done, you're halfway there."
So what you can do is learn to slowly melt your ego off of your projects and learn to trust yourself and your networks. I believe a large contributor to the unfinished aspect of the creative individual is lack of organizational skills as well as lack of business savvy, but the core of it is plain old fear. What are they gonna say? It's not up to snuff with the material I listen to! I don't sound like Stevie! I can't orchestrate like Gil Evans! It's not country enough, those aren't real chinchilla screams, I'm not convinced....bottom line here folks - It's either gonna flop or fly - and both will ultimately leave you with the same question: What's Next?
With my latest album I have found all of these lessons out over and over again. The reason I wanted to post this is because if you feel this way, it's not gonna go away. It's always there. It's the fear of flying, it's the teary father at graduation, it's the feeling you have when you go up a flight of stairs and you think there's one more for you to land on - it's natural baby! It's how we go about the struggles of life that really show who we are - not the fact that we learned once and are better for it and thank God that's over! These things keep popping up because it's good to keep checking yourself - And it's been happening to artists forever - Emily Dickenson wrote -
This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me; The simple news that Nature told in tender majesty.
Her message is committed, to hands I cannot see; For love of her, sweet countrymen, Judge tenderly of me.
Written in the 1860's she is talking about her fears of unknown people reading her material and judging her. She's basically saying what Erykah Badu is saying when she introduces "Tyrone" on her Live album - "Bear in mind, I'm an artist, and I'm sensitive about my shit."
Everyone has hangups and just because someone is established in a field does not mean they're above these feelings. I just saw a YouTube video of the late and monstrous Michael Brecker talking about how he HAS to practice or else he feels like he's a scam artist.
Creative people out there: Finish your work and move on. Find a producer to help you, find a writing partner to help you, talk to your friends about how they finish. Check out David Allens book "Getting Things Done" - read THIS BLOG - find a deadline and go for it. The sooner you clear your head of the "Unfinished Symphonies" (which was unfinished because Schubert DIED) the sooner you can get to more creation -
This is a sheet you can use to inspire you when you are feeling low on creativity. What follows is a list of what helps me personally when I'm getting into the creative mindframe. Keep in mind this may not work for you, but it could one day so keep it handy!
1 - Wake up on time and whatever you do, don't drink the milk because it smells sideways to me.
2 - Take a break from writing to practice distance looking, chair cleaning, and judgingly commenting on people walking by your window i.e. - look at that woman! She does not skip meals.
3 - Try to signal for help using the Morse Code on your heating pipes. If you don't live in an apartment or are not trapped in a prison of your own design and you own your house, good for you!
4 - Think about what the ancients used to do when they got low on creativity...they probably murdered mermaids.
5 - Take an online course where you learn the ins and outs of sausage tubing. Vomit.
6 - Change clothes.
7 - Science is hilarious because we invented numbers and words. We invented the tools we use to explain the shit we don't understand. Thank God you're not a scientist.
8 - Translate your deepest saddest memories into a different language and then translate it back to English to see how foreign people hear your sad ass stories.
9 - Explain your way out of a room filled with socialists. Explain your way back in.
10 - Finally, just take it easy and clear out your mind. Breathe deeply and come to an understanding that all things being equal, each moment you engage your mind in the pursuit of creativity is a chance for your to connect with a version of your self that is free of constraint and worry and nothing but pure energy and honesty can come forth.
I am excited to debut the new "website." I realize in today's aggressive online music market, one has to seperate themselves from the heard, and I think i have achieved that goal.
Sort of.
The new album MegaFauna is in the mastering cue and I have my wonderful audio team at sleepingbrotherhood knocking it out, as well as the inevitable heat coming off the publishing house, CueBro!
The press photos are done, all thanks to the wonderfully talented Katie Kovach and you can check her stuff out HERE.
And the album artwork is genrously being provided by my man Esteban Cabeza De Baca who is a supreme talent and a good person. Check his wares HERE.
A cavalcade of wonderful musicians are also helping fan the flames of WhaleHawk's heat on this album and you can dig their links below.
So while you folks are patiently waiting for the dope to be sold, tell your friends about us and check out more amazing music @ CueBro and the WhaleHawk ReverbNation Page.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is kinda like the Gary Busey of classical composers. He was wild, unbridled, sexually charged like a stick of TNT, willing to drink beer at a fraternity level, not interested in paying rent or respecting rules, and could write the shit out of some music. So he really wasn't like Gary Busey, but his habits of rocking out with his stockings out was similar to Gary Busey; the pride of Goose Creek, Texas.
When he carried a torch at Beethoven's funeral, it was more than just an homage he was paying. He was literally carrying the torch of early Romantic music, and passing it to late Romantic's like Wagner, Berlioz, and Mendelssohn. In his brief life he managed to write an extraordinary amount of work, and almost all of it was ignored and only later was it recognized that Schubert was one of the greatest composers of all time.
That's all well and good, but this guy was wild. He was like a cross between Zach Galligan, Brad Pitt in True Romance, Toulouse Lautrec, Tiger Woods and Loki - the Norse God of ADHD. He didn't want to teach like his dad, he didn't want to write symphonies like Uncle Ludwig, he didn't want to date girls and deal with all of that clothing - he just wanted to drink, write music, visit the women of ill-repute, and probably get chiefed in opium dens (maybe) -
This brings to mind a question that has plagued me ever since I became a musician. Is it possible to be totally outta control with substances, and still be a bad ass? Or is a better question, what role does mind-altering substances play in the realm of the creative spirit?
Quick story - When we think of game changers you may think of names like WonderBread, Linaeus, or YouTube. When it comes to the jazz world one alto player changed the way everyone thought about music and basically flipped everyone's lid - this man was Charlie Parker (1920-1955)
Game Changer
Parker innovated an approach to music and composition that was comparable to none. His approach to harmony and his blazing fast mastery of the saxophone left people dazed, confused, and inspired. At the same time he was harboring a wild addiction to heroin. He would pawn his sax to get a fix; he would be so stoned he completely missed gigs; he was fired from numerous ensembles for being high; he was committed to a mental hospital for 6 months; he found a friend in and relied on a baroness for financial support; and yet he still cranked out some of the most groundbreaking music to ever be heard creating legions of saxophonist's who thought that Parker was the beginning and end of all music.
One young person who heard this music was alto sax great Frank Morgan. He thought that Charlie Parker's sound and lifestyle was all a package deal. To get the sound, you had to party like Charlie who was shooting up. Frank emulated the music of his hero and was beginning to rise to the throne of be-bop. He recorded one album in 1955, the year Charlie Parker died, before he was arrested for drug possession and burglary and sentenced to 30 years. When he came out of prison he had a nice dove tail ending and recorded some beautiful music, but his career was ultimately derailed by emulating Parker and all of his habits.
So. This raises the question, do people think to GET creative they have to start messing around with substances? Or are supremely talented individuals 'using' to get to access to "creativity?"
My thoughts are these; musicians and artists are ALREADY in altered states when they engage the creative spirit. Thusly, the soothing cave of substances seems like a relatively comfortable place for these people to dwell. However, in an effort to expand their horizon's, many creative ships find themselves beached on the siren shores of drugs and booze. When you're soloing or creating something out of nothing you are touching the essence of life, the energy of creation - and this is not some psuedo-science crap babble; this is the real deal.
It is my opinion that experimenting with these things is every person's right. Altered states of conciousness should be a part of the artistic discussion because artists are already dealing with these states without drugs, so remaining educated about the role of substances is crucial to a complete develpoment of your talent and an artistic self knowledge and determination.
Let the record show, Franz Schubert and Charlie Parker both loved to carouse and booze it up, Franz loved himself some hookers and Charlie loved the Horse. But they weren't flunked out homeless bums willing to peddle their ass for a hit - they were incredible genius level artists who were drawn to altered states of conciousness.
So for the new artist who is taking their place among the creative class, understand the function and role of substances and decide what is right for you. Just because Franz could drink like a fish and still write amazing music does not mean you can do this. And just because Bird put a needle in his arm and then played a solo that would turn your eyes into fire does not mean you can do this. These fellows were fightning the creative fight - but just imagine what they would have accomplished without the balm of substance?
I used to get all types of crazy excited when the CBS "Special" screen would pop up. It meant that something extraordinary was going to happen to you. Charlie Brown Christmas, Star Wars, Ghostbusters...that was about it. I remember one time, the special screen popped up and then Lonesome Dove came on. You have no idea how depressing that was. No disrespect to Lonesome Dove, Robert Duvall's mustache has never been more real. Why I'm recalling that moment on the TV of my youth is not for nostalgic reasons, though many times we find ourselves looking back longingly. This is also not another attempt to lament the passing of simpler times due to the increasing din and presence of technology in our modern lives. I think of this screen because in a last ditch effort to find happiness, I found no laughter, I found no flowers, I found no frolicking Austrian children singing perfect harmonies - I found the CBS Special Presentation Intro.
This small 8 second bit of footage used to get my skinny body all types of animated. I knew something 'special' was about to occur. This past Sunday in a guided meditation class, the leader asked everyone to think of a moment when they were truly happy. I started pouring over all of my happy moments (and I have many of those), but one thing popped in there - and it was this 8 second intro. The leader then asked us to 'marinate our minds' in that happy moment.
I'd like anyone reading this to also find their own happy moment and 'marinate your mind.' If you train your brain to be truly invested in these happy moments, it will become second nature for you to be happy or well. We practice our scales and arpeggios, our voicings and lyric writing, our approach to mixing and representing sonic pictures - and as a result of this work we get stronger. Your brain's approach to being and staying happy is the same way. When you think of happy moments, your brain can't tell the difference if it's happening in reality, so it thinks you are in the middle of a happy moment. When you do this multiple times, you rewire your brain in a way so it has a stronger ability to remember happiness, thus creating it in that very moment. You create your own reality. It may seem like you need a bag of drugs and some place to hide for this to be true but you do not. But if you do find a bag of drugs...do not send them to 411 E. 74th St. Apt. 8H* - There will be no one there to pay you whatever amount of money you need. Whatever amount.
I had the dream again. The one where Ice Cube is taking myself and a multicultural bunch of youngsters on an historic bus tour of buildings he's flipping and re-selling for lots of money. This got me thinking...what happened to the WestSide Connection?
Formed originally for the song "WestSide Slaughterhouse" on Mack 10's self titled album, this was the rap equivalent to The HighwayMen - the beloved secret weapon of record labels - the supergroup. Ice Cube, Mack 10 and WC are The WestSide Connection.
I was little surprised when I saw these mugs appear in the onslaught of unenthusiastic TV appearances that were part of the promotional machine in 1996. I was more surprised at how quickly they blew up, and then how quickly they went away.
What's the use of lamenting the passing of any type of popular fad or trying to glean any lessons from it, when the equipment that builds these types of careers never considers shelf-life? Because it is not about longevity in the music business today. It's not even about music. It's about product.
Why burn yourself out as a musician wondering why we create things that don't last? It's not that pop music is crappier, or that there's some flaw in the craftsmanship of these songs or groups or labels - it's that money became involved and people weren't really sure how to handle themselves. Musicians are NOT instant entrepreneurs. Most of us have little or no working knowledge of business strategies, yet it is left up to us as to how to creatively market our own wares. Then on top of that, if people start paying attention you now have a persona you are in charge of. So taking all of this into account, we can see how some people can make a living, and some people just burn hot for a short while and retire.
Musicians always get upset at the state of music and how it's dumbing people down. Music lovers are a resilient bunch and they can also smell BS a mile away, so don't waste your time trying to figure why pop music is so bad; make your own music.
All I know is that music will always endure and the more you put honesty and a true love of what you do in the front seat, the driving is a lot easier.
But I think what my dream was telling me is that Ice Cube is doing alright.
WC was in Belly 2 - Millionaire Boyz Club - and also has plans for an album this year entitled "Revenge of The Barracuda" And Mack 10 was in Def Jam's video game "Fight for NY" - cool.
