The Skills of Expression

For the last year or so my workouts and long car rides have been accompanied by Marc Maron, Terry Gross, Greg Kot and Jim Derogatis. Nothing passes time like a good interview, and yesterday while huffing and puffing on a stationary bicycle I heard a doozy of a conversation on Sound Opinions with multi-talented Esperanza Spalding, just another of the seemingly endless blind spots I have in my musical repertoire. I only knew Spalding as the bass player with big hair who beat out Justin Bieber for the Best New Artist Grammy some years ago, but after this interview I’m next in line to purchase her latest album, Emily’s D+Evolution. (Yes, that’s right, if you like a piece of art, you should buy it, not stream it on youtube.) This gal can not only play, she can express herself, think deeply, push boundaries and challenge conventional wisdom. If you haven’t heard the interview, I highly recommend it.

But it was the interesting juxtaposition of something Spalding said and a quote from a character in the Mike Mills film 20th Century Women that prompted me to write this blog.

20th Century Women is if nothing else a love song to punk music, and while I’ve never been a fan of the genre, I was taken with the following exchange as Dorothea – played by Annette Bening – challenges Abbie – played by Greta Gerwig – about the music she’s listening to (thanks to Wikiquote for making this easy):

Dorothea: What is that?

Abbie: It's The Raincoats.

Dorothea: Can't things just be pretty?

Jamie: Pretty music is used to hide how unfair and corrupt society is.

Dorothea: Ah, okay so... they're not very good, and they know that, right?

Abbie: Yeah, it's like they've got this feeling, and they don't have any skill, and they don't want skill, because it's really interesting what happens when your passion is bigger than the tools you have to deal with it. It creates this energy that's raw. Isn't it great?

There’s something to this, I think, and it really made me consider punk music in a new way.  There is something very powerful in expressing oneself in a raw, uninhibited way despite not having tools to do so eloquently. It happens at nearly every outdoor festival I play at. There’s always that one guy – usually shirtless – who stands near the side of the stage and dances. Dances like there’s no tomorrow, like he’s offering a primitive prayer to the heavens, arms and legs flailing, torso gyrating, eyes closed. This man is dancing despite not knowing how to pirouette or jeté, and there’s something very freeing and very pure about this, like when a three year-old joyously shakes and stomps to music. I wish I could express myself as uninhibitedly.

But in the Sound Opinions interview Spalding offers another way to consider things:

“You need technical prowess to express yourself freely. You don’t need to use all of it all of the time, but it really helps to have technical facility.” She goes on to mention dance troops who hire ballet dancers, not because they’re performing ballet, but because they need the technical skills to pull off the dance moves the troop requires. “Music is the same. Jazz music, whatever music. It’s just having more vocabulary, like you want to be a great writer and you discover that your vocabulary is limited, like you feel the crunch, like I want to have a place out here, I need to work on my vocabulary.”

And she is, of course, spot on. I think of the multitude of times that I wanted to get my point across in a sharp, succinct way, but couldn’t find the one word that would have allowed me to do so, instead leaning on very basic vocabulary that diluted my message. Similarly, when I play piano, there have been times when I wanted to take my playing to a new place, and although I could visualize exactly what I’d like to do, I didn’t have the technical skills to take me there.

It’s important that Spalding added the following caveat, “You don’t need to use all of it all of the time.” When my son was just learning drums and starting to come up with his own fills, I played for him the tom fills in Toto’s song, “Africa.” You know it well, but in case you need reminding, go to 1:10, 2:20 and 3:15 of the following video. 

These are three of the simplest tom fills you’ll ever hear, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find any more effective. It’s important to note that Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro was among the most talented and most sought after drummers in the music industry at the time, and while he could have overcomplicated things (probably in a very tasteful and interesting way), he opted to offer simply what the song required. I imagine it’s the same in any art form. Ernest Hemmingway wrote relatively simply, but I suspect he could have rivaled F. Scott Fitzgerald’s word wizardly if he’d chosen to or needed to.

And that’s the ultimate aim of any musician, any artist or really any human being: to have the skills to express yourself in any way you see fit. If simplicity is required to express raw emotion like that of punk music, great. But if something more extravagant is needed, you can go into your bag of technical skills and do what’s required.

Keyboard Rig for the Aging Rocker

When I started gigging again back in 2011 I was using a heavy, inflexible beast from the 1990s, a 60 pound Roland A-90 that – along with its sonic limitations – virtually guaranteed regular chiropractic visits. When it died two years later, its replacements offered other problems. The Korg SV-1 was 15 pounds lighter, though still cumbersome, and it was functionally limited. It offered zero layering and splitting capabilities and its organ sounds were simply terrible. I added a second keyboard – a 31 pound Kurzweil PC3LE6 – that really shined in some areas, but now I was lugging around two heavy-ish keyboards that still didn’t do everything I wanted. Add to that a QSC K12 for my keyboard amp, and at the end of an evening my back was ready to cry uncle, not to mention my ringing ears. I considered purchasing a Nord, but in additional to the exceedingly high price, these keyboards also have imitations. I was looking for something to offer me flexibility without breaking the bank or my back.

A year ago I started to seriously consider updating my gear to a laptop based system, and after months of research, several purchases, a steep learning curve and countless hours of frustration, I am now playing live with a new setup that’s got one foot in the 21st Century while still offering the stability and simplicity of a 20th Century rig. Here are the specifics:

Nektar Panorama P6 61 key controller keyboard (used)

Casio PX-5S 88 weighted keyboard (used)

MacBook Pro (used)

Mainstage 3 software

IK Media Sample Tank software

Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 (2nd Gen) audio interface

USB port (used)

2U Rack mount case

Rack mount Power Supply (used)

3 keyboard pedals

Shure SE 215 headphones with self-made in ears molds using Radians custom molds

Call it a keyboard rig for the aging rocker who still wants to stay relevant. The price? I purchased both keyboards, the MacBook, the USB port and power supply secondhand, saving me around $1000. All told, my new gear cost somewhere around the price I would have spent on a new Nord keyboard.

A couple of points:

The Casio PX-5S is the best-kept secret in the keyboarding world. It sounds great, it’s flexible and I can carry it under one arm. It’s staggering light – only 23 pounds – and I personally love the feel of the keys. The Nektar Panorama P6 only weighs 17 pounds. So in essence I went from carrying 76 pounds of keyboards to 40 pounds. Nice.

I no longer take an amp with me when I gig. Instead, I use my Shure headphone and directly monitor my keys along with a PA vocal feed through my audio interface. No more heavy amps and I’m guaranteed to be able to hear myself without subjecting my ears to deafening sounds.

I use soft synths for my top controller keyboard only. I use the internal Casio sounds (while still programming patch changes with Mainstage), partly because I like the sounds and partly because it provides me with a backup in case of catastrophic computer failure. No matter what, I'll be able to get through a gig. I basically use the Casio for pianos, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, clavs, Vox Continental, Farfisa and some pads and strings, but it can do a lot more in a pinch.

I run both the Casio and the softsyths through the Focusrite and out the back in mono - each panned hard right or left - so that the audio engineer still has flexibility to change volumes. I've learned that this is a better way to go (for me, at least) because sometimes the volumes I set during rehearsals need tweaking when playing live.

My rack mount contains my audio interface, mult-USB port, Power supply and all the cables I need to set up, which I can complete in about seven minutes. I use Velcro strips to adhere my rack mount onto a music stand, and I use additional strips to adhere my MacBook to my rack mount. Easy, cheap, flexible and – to date – accident free.

Similarly, I adhered all three keyboard pedals onto a 11” x 14” canvas board (painted black) with Velcro strips. This keeps my pedals from sliding around, and it’s light and easy to carry.

All you Apple lovers out there who told me that MacBooks are the best and I would wonder why I didn’t switch to Apple years ago, I cry bullshit. My MacBook freezes and crashes at inopportune times just like my PCs do. It’s a computer, and an inflexible and overpriced computer at that, but I wanted to use Mainstage to play live so I had no choice. Fortunately the most significant problems have occurred during rehearsals and not during live performances.

Speaking of which, Mainstage is an amazing value but also amazingly frustrating to use. Yes, everything can be configured if you have enough hours in the day, but it could be oh so much better. I am not a MIDI guru – I know just enough to be dangerous – and this is no doubt the source of much of my frustration, but Mainstage makes me work very hard to do some very simple tasks. Still, once you get things set, there’s nothing as wonderful as pressing a button and having all of your song settings appear. I no longer spend my time on stage trying to select the correct patch at the correct time, and I enjoy performing live much more as a result. 

Mainstage is impossible to learn well without help, and I found two on-line sources to be invaluable: http://brian-nagel.com/ and https://brianli.com/.  I owe them big time.

The sounds that come with Mainstage – particularly the organs and synths – are amazing and allow for endless tweaking to get the sound you need. I purchased SampleTank to help supplement some of Mainstage’s shortcomings, particularly the horns and strings, and for piano, Rhodes, etc. I use my Casio’s internal sounds, and although they’re not as strong as my SV-1’s patches, they’re certainly sufficient and enjoyable to play, and they're much better than Mainstage's pianos.

I have odd ear canal sizes and I wasn’t able to get my Shure headphones to stay in place consistently and block out enough room noise. Rather than having proper in-ear molds created, I purchased Radians ear molds and created my own based on some youtube videos I watched. Cheap and effective.

All in all, the switch to a laptop based system has achieved what I’d hoped for: a lighter rig with better sounds and more flexibility. It’s been a source of frustration to be sure, and I don’t even want to think about how many hours it took me to learn how to use the gear properly and to program patches for my bands, but ultimately it was a challenging and rewarding experience. In a way, it helped me to reengage with music that had become a bore to play and allowed me to examine each song’s potential, challenging me to make the song sound as good as possible. Performing is much more fulfilling as a result, not to mention less back-breaking, and I also feel like this is a rig that can grow with me rather than being bogged down with a expensive keyboards that only do certain things well. 

Danny Green Trio: Jazz Plus

When I attended Berklee College of Music in the 80s, students engaged in an adolescent turf war, a sort of whimpified version of West Side Story sans knives or anything else involving danger. Instead of the Sharks and the Jets, it was the Rockheads and the Jazzheads, the former perceived as buffoons by the latter, and the latter perceived as smug elitists by the former. I was somewhere in the middle, having been raised on rock and roll though very open to learning about jazz, but the jazz tradition at Berklee made it hard not to side with my rock brethren. So smug were the Jazzheads that they gleefully rode the coattails of Wynton Marsalis’s criticism of his brother Branford for his joining Sting’s band, and they were downright incredulous at how Sting ruined his otherwise legitimate song “Englishman In New York” with a rock beat breakdown (right after a swing section, which the Jazzheads natural approved of).

I may still be a rock guy at heart, but my favorite musical discovery of 2016 came not from one of the dozen rock stations of Chicago but from the jazz frequencies of 90.9 WDCB.  While driving in my car, I heard a piano jazz trio playing an odd-metered song with a stellar melody backed by – of all things – a string quartet. It blew me away. I rushed home, went on-line to check the name of the song – “Porcupine Dreams” – and purchased the Danny Green Trio album, Altered Narratives. It’s a gem.

Altered Narratives showcases a wide spectrum of jazz styles, and with Green’s flair for odd rhythms and the addition of strings on a handful of tunes, the album offers a listening experience that’s far more interesting, varied and fulfilling than any other jazz album I’ve heard in a long, long time. The addition of strings is a stroke of genius as it completely changes the musical palate.  As much as I love the sound of a traditional piano-bass-drums combo, the strings fill out the sound when the band plays percussively, and offers accents at other times, each unit balancing the other to lift the song to an entirely new level.

Some songs stand out in a big way. After a few more traditional pieces to open the album (still original and still excellent), the trio dives into the haunting “October Ballad,” a tune in three-four whose tensions and changing tonal center keep the song moving forward and avoid getting too settled. In addition to his piano chops, Green’s gift is melody, and this song is exhibit A. 

After a solid Latin-based “6 A.M.” the band switches gears yet again with “Second Chance,” opening as a sort of romantic piano piece with the first string accompaniment on the album and reminiscent of some of the cinematic themes of Ennio Morricone. It’s a lovely piece that seemingly concludes, pauses, and then begins again with the full band in a different key and a different time signature, now with the reprised melody offering a compelling 4 on 3 motif that gives the piece its momentum. The next tune, “Katabasis” also sounds cinematic, and its 12/8 rhythm would feel right at home in a tension filled montage of a mystery film. Once again, the feel changes a third of the way through the song, becoming a more staccato piece and giving the song a welcome lift.

Next on the CD is the piece that started it all for me, the wonderful “Porcupine Dreams,” offering another haunting melody with strings punctuating the 7/8 rhythm before the band breaks with a frantic conclusion that alternates between 7/8 and 4/4 and keeps the listener desperate to find the down beat, like a thrill rider’s anticipation of the next stomach-churning drop.

The short piano solo “Benji’s Song” once again stresses Green’s mastery of melody, and the chromatic changes would fit right in with a Randy Newman instrumental album.

Here ends the more experimental side of the album, with the last three songs completing things on a more traditional jazz-trio note, though “Friday At the Thursday Club” offers yet again some very interesting chord changes beneath a melody whose accents are unfamiliar in a 6/8 time signature (a 4 on 3 is once again employed – wonderful!). But for me, tracks 3-8 are among the best six I’ve ever heard on a jazz recording. If the bookends are a bit more on the traditional side, they’re still excellent.

Bassist Justin Grinnell and drummer Julien Cantelm hold down the rhythm fort nicely, particularly in the odd-metered moments. If there’s one criticism I’d make of the album, it’s the inclusion of so many bass solos. I suspect jazz purists will crucify me for saying so, but I never understood the allure of the bass solo. To me it’s an instrument that should stay in its supporting role and allow other instruments to handle the highlights.

Whatever. The Danny Green trio is a stunning group that’s willing to push the boundaries and explore interesting territory. That may be what’s expected of all jazz musicians, but this is a band that is equal to the task.

Alpine Valley Concert Memories

It happens to all venues eventually, I know, but this time it kind of hits home: for the first time since its 1977 inception, Alpine Valley won’t host any concerts this summer, and it may be in jeopardy of closing permanently. Tucked in rolling hills of southern Wisconsin, Alpine Valley is a spectacular site for a large concert, but it’s miles from nowhere and has fallen victim to the likes of Wrigley Field and Soldier Field, two Chicago venues that are hosting more concerts than in the past.

Nonetheless, Alpine Valley remains an integral part of my memory’s concert vault. It's the venue where I experienced the inimitable thrill of witnessing not just a show, but an Event, larger than life and at times life-affirming. I attended eleven shows during those hot, summer nights of my youth:

1983 Supertramp
1984 Bruce Springsteen
1984 Rod Stewart
1984 Elton John
1985 Tom Petty with Til Tuesday
1987 Tom Petty with Del Fuegos and Georgia Satellites
1989 Elvis Costello with Cowboy Junkies, Violent Femmes and Edie Brickel and New Bohemians
1990 Rush
1990 Billy Joel
1990 Jimmy Buffett
1991 Elvis Costello with BoDeans

If I could go back on see one of these shows again, it would be the first: Supertramp’s Famous Last Words show from 1983, the last tour with Rodger Hodgson. I may have enjoyed Springsteen and Stewart and Petty and the rest, but I lived for Supertramp. They spoke directly to me and my brooding teenager sensibilities. Hodgson sang about living a meaningful life in a world that didn’t understand you, and regardless of what Rick Davies sang about, he did so with cynicism and anger. I identified with both. I memorized their lyrics, labored over their piano patterns, and studied their albums' liner notes and intricate cover art. At their Alpine Valley concert, the opening segment on the movie screen of a tightrope walker about to fall to his doom as Bob Seibenberg attacked his kick drum prior to the opening of "Crazy" was the perfect introduction to my amphitheater concert-going experience.

The biggest show for me by far was Springsteen’s 1984 performance, the first of two nights. (The second night can be streamed on youtube, but I sure do wish the first show was available.) Bruce was just about to hit his peek, “Dancing in the Dark” was on just about every frequency along the radio dial, his voice was forceful and confident as opposed to the twang he’s adopted over the past couple of years, and when the first booming note of “Born in the USA” kicked off the show, the rumbling cacophony of 25,000 fans filled my gut with a palpable thrill. I’m not sure I’ve equaled that level of excitement at any concert I’ve attended since.

That same summer, Elton John toured his last decent album (IMO), Breaking Hearts, and sped through a cocaine-induced set that I enjoyed at the time, but in hindsight was probably really mediocre. I’ve listened to recordings of that tour, and they suffer from the constant drone of a synthesizer mimicking strings and other sounds from the studio recordings. They also suffer because Elton was a performer who was tired of performing, so much so that this was supposed to be his final tour. Har har. On a brighter note, I may have witnessed the last Elton John tour during which he was able to belt out the high notes in all their falsetto glory. Elton likes the way his voice sounds now compared to his younger years, but to me, give me Elton pre-1985. Among the purest and most flexible voices I’ve ever heard, and hearing him sing "One More Arrow" was worth the price of admission.

Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck may have started off the Camouflage tour together, but by the time Steward came to East Troy, Beck had had enough and was likely happily sipping a martini in England without his pain-in-the-ass colleague. A terrific replacement was recruited, and at the Alpine Valley show an audience member proudly displayed a home-made sign that read, “Jeff who?” In front of my brother and me was a gorgeous blonde who was taking photos of the show and who promised to send us some prints. She never did.

It was on my return trip from Tom Petty’s Southern Accents show in 1985 – a tour that sported a regrettable giant Confederate flag as a stage backdrop, and an almost equally regrettable horn section – that I received an East Troy welcome in the form of a speeding ticket, as I was going a whopping 67mph in a 55mph section of highway (it’s now 65). I wasn’t the only one. It was Wisconsin's favorite way to thank visitors for spending money at the local venue. My buddy Jim did his best to support my case with the officer, but a ticket was issued before the cop even put his car in drive.

That same day a fellow fan in the parking lot heard me ruminating over my wish for a classic Yes reunion by mentioning their epic track, “Gates of Delirium,” and he yelled “YES,” kneeled down on the ground in front of me and echoed my feelings, after which we spent five minutes discussing all the great songs we’d like to hear a reunited band perform. The shirtless man had cut his knee on a piece of broken glass when reacting to my plea, and said, “It was worth it.  We’re like Yes blood-brothers.” 

Lou Reed was to open up for Elvis Costello in 1989, but he cancelled and was replaced by The Violent Femmes, though the Cowboy Junkies paid tribute with their rendition of “Sweet Jane.” It was also during this show that my buddy Todd looked to his friends from England as Elvis sang a spectacularly subtle performance for such a large venue of “Tramp the Dirt Down,” during which he spouted the venomous lyrics:

When England was the whore of the world, Margaret was her madam

During the Jimmy Buffet show in 1990, the old folks yelled at my gaggle of college pukes to sit the hell down. At the Billy Joel show that same year, he bragged about getting to sleep with Christie Brinkley. And you know what? Even decades after their divorce, he’s still entitled to brag about that one!

Just two weeks later, Stevie Ray Vaughan and four others died in a helicopter accident as it was leaving the venue.

Elvis capped off my Alpine Valley experience in 1991, promoting an album that had no business at such a large venue, and the driving riff of “Pump it Up” was the last sound I’d ever hear in the lush, green hills of East Troy, Wisconsin. There are concerts I probably should have gone to since then (Radiohead comes to mind) but life gets complicated, bands become repetitious, and now if I really need to see a concert at a big venue, Miller Park and Wrigley Field are a-callin’. Live Nation claims they will book shows for at Alpine Valley in 2018, but I have a hunch we may have seen the last concert at East Troy. 

And I have to wonder, how the heck are Wisconsin's finest going to reach their ticket quota absent concerts at Alpine Valley?

Thomas Dolby's Autobiography

A friend of mine sent the following email to me a few weeks ago:

Thomas Dolby did the synth on Waiting??

He was referring to Foreigner’s 1981 hit, “Waiting For a Girl Like You,” and yes indeed, Thomas Dolby of “She Blinded Me With Science” fame played synth on the tune, including the intro that drummer Dennis Elliott categorized as “massage music.” In Dolby’s crafty autobiography, The Speed of Sound: Breaking the Barriers Between Music and Technology, he credits Foreigner with saving him from his stint performing for tips at Parisian Metro stations, though he admits that he was disappointed to learn that it wasn’t Mick Jones of The Clash who came calling. Instead, Dolby was whisked away to New York to record with Mutt Lange and the other Mick Jones, where he earned enough money to kick-start his solo career.

Before reading The Speed of Sound, I knew nothing about Dolby save for his big hit and for an erroneous belief that he or his family had had something to do with Dolby noise-reduction found on tape decks. It was actually the other way around. Born Thomas Robertson, Dolby acquired his nickname due to his propensity to play with gadgets that included a cassette recorder. In 1986, Dolby Labs actually filed for an injunction to prevent Thomas Dolby from using the name, and though the lawsuit was eventually dropped, Dolby took a financial hit that led to him to move permanently to California, where he spent the next two decades in the tech industry. A tinkerer at heart, Dolby formed his own company, first writing soundtracks for computer games and helping develop software that allowed nonlinear compositions to interacted with the user, then striving to discover ways to send music over the Internet in real time, ultimately achieving great success with ringtone software and content.

Particularly fascinating in The Speed of Sound is witnessing the technology boom through the eyes of someone living in the moment. Dolby is careful not to give us the benefit of hindsight: he places us squarely in the period when home computers and the internet were just beginning to flourish, websites were not entirely understood, and when tech companies were sprouting up by the hundreds, all hoping to stay ahead of the curve. No one was sure how it was going to play out, even bigwigs like Bill Gates. When Dolby attended a digital media conference in 1994, a guy named Marc Porat prophesied that one day PCs wouldn't be needed at all because “all your work will be in a sort of cloud.” Gates went ballistic. It would take a while, but Porat’s words proved prescient.

Though there were all sorts of discoveries for me reading this book (his playing with Bowie at Live Aid and with Roger Waters at the Berlin performance of The Wall), the most fulfilling one was learning of the English pop band Prefab Sprout, whose second album Dolby produced in 1985. I’d never even heard of the band before, never mind their music, but a quick listen on YouTube demanded that I buy the CD on eBay that same evening. It’s a gem.

Why isn’t such a great band better known? If Dolby were to summarize the reasons, he would probably say that the record industry “is rotten to its fucking core.” He takes us into the industry's underbelly, where money is laundered, artists are exploited, and support is taken away without notice. Dolby’s career as a recording artist was frustrating, though he managed to release four albums over a decade before finally calling it a day. Things looked bright for a moment when EMI released him from his contract and Virgin Records came calling, but six months later EMI purchased Virgin. Such was the music industry in the early 90s.

Unlike the Springsteen autobiography I just finished reading, Dolby devotes most of his writing to his career and eschews getting bogged down in his personal life, a wise move for an artist whose career isn’t as well understood as someone like Springsteen’s. Too many musicians and producers who embark on authoring a book don’t understand this, and for this reason most of their writings fall flat. Sure, for a megastar whose work you memorized long ago, you may want to know what makes him tick and learn details about his childhood and time away from music. For Dolby, it's enough to understand his journey from synth-pop hit-maker to a tech company founder (and now, a professor of music and film at Johns Hopkins).

It’s a great read. Highly recommended.