How can a man’s death have such a profound impact on a fifteen year old kid stranger in Arroyo Grande? How can that man’s life have such a profound impact on that same kid’s life, before and after, still, thirty years later?
I’m just a human, a victim of the insane.
Happy Birthday John, I still miss your physical presence being here on earth and always will. Your everlasting magical musical presence continues to inspire me always too.
October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990
It was twenty years ago today when we lost Stevie Ray.
I’m always a bit awed by the passage of time, considering time is an illusion.
We miss you Stevie! And have your frenetic smoking thoughtful riffs, like a blues man on speed kicking it on the front porch of oblivion, to revisit time and time again…
I love you,
Mark
If you are a musician and play for the music, not fame, glory, or women, then you will recall listening to a tune or piece of music and dismissing it out of hand as “commercial”. I remember.
My buddy Victor Moreno loaned us Jazz by Ken Burns and I was pleased to see that this practice goes back many decades.
Real musicians versus profiteers.
Which isn’t to say that commercial music is always without musical merit, but mostly is.
When I was jamming back in the eighties the commercial music scene was far more wholesome than today’s, and yet we true musician’s still puked at the thought of producing such crap. So we don’t.
And are happy musicians. But out there somewhere, is someone who will say, when listening to our tunage. . . “commercial”.
Final analysis and Off Every Day’s reason to be, it’s the music.
The player doesn’t like this file Why I Don’t Know
[audio:2007_08_16_why_I_don't_know.mp3]
The last music posts that were rough recordings of My Favorite Subject by Off Every Day is something new I am trying out, largely as a motivator I must confess, but should prove to be interesting.
Before I forget I did want to point out one of the most incredibly consistent observations I’ve made about musicians and how the public relates to them. Any aspiring musician is the subject of criticism from virtually anyone. The interesting thing here is that the general public will not criticize, in general, a published artist or more importantly a well known artist. What would have been “you should do this and you should do that” becomes “not my bag, but I respect what they are doing”. Not everyone is like this, least of all me and my favorite subject, I’ll relentlessly criticize anything, music most of all. I am not an aspiring musician, I am one.
Back to the topic though.
What I am doing here, is to publish, after each session hopefully, a rough mix of that night’s work.
These first two are actually writing sessions, where I play the song over and over experimenting with lyrics and melodies. Since they are solo performances they take on certain characteristics that will be nothing like the finished product. Of course I will publish solo versions of everything as well, but the interesting thing here should be for all the OED fans to see the evolution first hand. Probably stupid to do in that one gets to see all the weak performances as well but fun nevertheless.
The goal of phase one is what I call a pilot track. Normally I wouldn’t do this, I would repeat until I had the final arrangement, write the drums, record the drums and go from there. Problem being that you can’t drum to a guitar track after the fact and since I never used a click track or metronome I always laid down the drums first. But now. . . I am using a metronome in Acid Pro 6.0 so I can do the opposite. Giving it a go anyway.
Pilot track in the works.
Wellp. After updating to Acid Pro 6.0d because of repeated exception errors I blew my time, which is an illusion. So I whipped out Vegas 7.0 mistakenly referred to as 6.0 and laid what I hope to be the final arrangement in a decent performance.
One of the things that will become evident to fans is that these performances are not in fact performances in the sense that a live performance would be. You mix it up when playing solo to help kill the repetition doldrums. But a pilot track, that can be really boring. If you want to try out harmonies and such the melody has to be exacting, no mixing up. This is unfortunately more like a live performance. Anyway. Probably the last pilot post.
[audio:2007_06_28_My_Favorite_Subject.mp3]
Me.
[audio:NHM_My_Favorite_Subject_06_27_2007_Take_3.mp3]
For all you Off Every Day fans here is a rare opportunity to hear a work in progress.
Very in progress.
Take a hear.
[audio:My_Favorite_Subject.mp3]
Speaking of tools.
Just perusing a piece in emusician on cd sweetening by some dude who gets paid by the major labels to tighten up performances. Great junk.
Amazing tools, that allow you to pretty much meticulously completely re-perform a performance in a sense. Now, yes, crappy singers with star quality can be made stars after all.
Not really down on the notion but if you spend any time recording at all it only takes a small amount of studio sweetening, necessary usually, to realize that if you had just learned your instrument and performed worth a damn in the first place there wouldn’t be half as much work fixing the junk. The other angle on that of course is to say you did it on purpose a la Nirvana.
Still, these tools allow the art of recording, and mixing and producing a CD to reach new artificials heights, furthering the road braved and paved by the Beatles.
The rest of the issue really focuses on software and hardware tools of the trade. You begin to realize that this industry is more and more focused on the studio side and less and less on the skill and performance side. Of course, that is what an emusician does, still, the lack of organic people is pretty clear. I sure don’t miss it though.
What comes through today more than ever is the complete lack of skill in the modern pop musician at performing an instrument. You don’t see the virtuosos as readily, though, yeah they are out there, mostly not in pop. More and more, mediocrity is not only acceptable but popular. Then take out the creativity and what you have are some really well produced and doctored recordings.
I came to the realization not too long ago that the only ones pushing the envelope were the rappers. I don’t know why I would say this having really only listened to Brotha Lynch Hung’s Season of Da Siccness but this was honest art. Now, I guess they too got sucked into the glossy commercial machine that is so much fun to punish and purchase. Girl sings, dude raps, repeat. But the Brotha, he was honest back then.
So back to the tools of the trade. I suppose I just wonder what happened to music for the sake of music, the bard earning his dinner and giving the folks hope and diversion. Music was free, you didn’t charge per se and you sure as hell didn’t expect to be paid forever if you happened to make a recording.
Another topic, the advent of recording, the piano roll and the droll end of open music.
There is no substitute for flat out virtuosity.
Shut up and play yer guitar.
Well. OK. This is a pretty common theme, and we all know and love the hook.
You don’t have to have a hook of course, but they sure are a fun goal to be reached as the lyrics progress.
The journey to the hook, or refrain, is where creativity can really be a blast.
Using lyrics and context the most enjoyable twist is bringing the meaning back to the refrain in the new context of the line.
Ultimately the song itself works the circle and completes a cycle ending where it started.
Musically the same thing happens.
Rock and Roll.