Electric Medicine

Modern Suspects - 'Just Watch Me'

2016-03-29T09:50:00.002-07:00

The new single from Modern Suspects is out today! Be sure to check out 'Just Watch Me' here on iTunes.

I'll be performing this song with the Suspects all around the Colorado area over the next few months and, hopefully, in the days to come, all across the planet. Be sure to tune-in to these guys, follow them on social media, and dig on their music as they continue to release it. And if you can catch us at a live show, I guarantee that you'll have a good time!

But, for now, here's to Garrett, Bart, and Tyler and the release of their new single!

'Batman v. Superman', the consumer culture, and Artistic Appreciation 101

2016-03-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

So here I sit, on the Monday after Easter, attempting to enjoy a much needed day off for my hands and ears after a weekend of double drumming celebration at church. I can't help but notice how often physical exhaustion and spiritual nourishment go together. Anyway. How's that for a random introductory thought for everyone? Take it for what you paid for it.

Besides the annual celebration of human history's single most dynamic, beautiful, and important event, something far less notable took place this weekend. The highly anticipated or highly dreaded (depending on your response to things like Batfleck and some inordinately revealing trailers) arrival of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice came to fruition at movie theaters. Being a lifelong Batman fan, a lifelong movie fan, and a seriously interested cultural analyst, I couldn't resist the opportunity to seize the moment and beat the drum (pun intended) of one of my own oft-repeated philosophical mantras.

For anyone unaware, the movie is, according to the vast majority of reports, not very good. (And that's putting it lightly.) Full disclosure: I haven't seen it. I don't plan on seeing it. And while I don't consider myself particularly taken most of the time with what critics have to say, I have found myself intrigued by the overwhelming and homogeneous nature of the reviews. A lot of people are agreeing about a lot of the same things when it comes to why BvS doesn't work, and, as of this writing, the film's Rotten Tomatoes score is below 30%.

Warner Bros.

And yet, despite the almost universal panning of the movie by most of the people seeing it, BvS has still managed to break a handful of box office records. As far as weekend openings go, it's the seventh-most successful of all time, the biggest DC movie release of all time, and with the inclusion of international markets, it generated over $400 million.

Which brings me to my point.

By any financial metric, BvS is a smashing success. When it comes to the bottom line, this film has delivered. While it will be interesting to see if the film continues to rake in the dollars after its initial weekend release, the powers-that-be at Warner Bros. can only be celebrating what appears to be - again, from a financial perspective - a massive home run for their company.

But the financial accomplishment of BvS can do nothing to negate the apparent consensus that it is not a quality piece of art. No matter how much money the movie makes, no matter how many sequels it spawns, and no matter how many toys it sells, the fact remains that it seems to leave a whole bunch of things to be artistically desired.

In the consumer-capitalist culture in which we live, it is far too common to judge the success of any venture according to how it performs economically. Almost everything put out into market is given a kind of pass/fail grade based on whether or not it delivers according to some kind of cost/benefit analysis. If a movie costs x-amount of dollars to produce, market, and release, then we consider it successful if it makes more than x-amount of dollars back in ticket sales. The real artistic value of the product is more-or-less a non-issue. Whether or not the product is actually good has precious little to do with whether or not people conclude that it was a worthwhile idea to create in the first place.

We see this in spades in the sequel-obsessed culture that seems to have arisen within Hollywood. There are seven Fast & Furious movies. A fifth Transformers movie is in production. Disney has promised one Star Wars film every year for the next decade. The actual artistic excellence of these movies isn't even a consideration when it comes to producing the next installment. People keep paying to see them, so the studios keep cranking them out.

Of course, what has resulted from all of this consumerism is the emergence in people's minds of an attitude that declares that what makes something good - as in, commendable, worthy of attention, or valuable - is how it performs financially. Now, while this may seem farfetched, I have actually had conversations where I am told that my critiques of popular bands, for instance, are illegitimate because, "Well, they've sold a few millions records, so they must be doing something right." I can almost hear the CEOs' relaxed and satisfied sighs.

In this society, the actual artistic value of a piece of art, music, cinema, or literature has been completely overtaken by its financial performance. We judge, not by excellence, timelessness, or any artistic standard, but by popularity, wealth, and relevance to the moment. We become fans of things not because of their artistic merits, but because of what we believe it says about us that we are fans. We are attaching ourselves to things in order to jump onto bandwagons and be in-the-know, not because those things are actually benefiting our lives for having been consumed.

This is not good for art.

Batman v. Superman is simply the latest in a long line of popular artistic offerings that has managed to achieve monumental financial success in spite of severe artistic failings. And, here's what I've learned from my years of frustrated observation: despite the critical rejection of the film, people will still go to see it (this point has already been soundly validated). Because people go to see it, the studios will take it as a sign that people want more of the same, and so they will produce more of the same. People will go to see those films, too. And the cycle will continue. And continue. And continue.

And it will continue until people say "Enough!" and stop spending their hard earned money on art that isn't any good. Whether or not this ever actually occurs remains to be seen. But if the consumer-capitalist mindset is what drives the market (and, unfortunately, therefore, all of the strands of art that enable real artists to make a living), than money will have to be the thing that changes the dynamic. If people want quality art, people need to pay for it and, additionally, stop paying for things that reinforce the notion that low quality, incoherent, and senseless art is something what they want.

Look, popular music lyrics are composed at a second grade comprehension level. All of the literary phenomenons of the 21st century so far have been written so that could middle schoolers can understand them. The Baha Men and Taylor Swift have more Grammy awards than Queen or Jimi Hendrix and despite an abysmal reception by almost every serious film critic in the nation (as well as a few non-serious ones), BvS absolutely wrecked the box office.

Something is wrong here, people. And it doesn't bode well for the future of our culture. Appreciating art primarily through the lens of popularity erodes, corrupts, and debases great art. It sends the message to true artists that their work is unimportant and undesired. It reduces the depth of artistic purpose to nothing more than what will serve to separate people from their money. It makes hypocrites out of all of us who claim to value the same things great art is created to proclaim. And it reduces the capacity for the culture to even understand, comprehend, or treasure great art when they do happen to encounter it.

I've really rambled here (I'm blaming it on Monday), but for those of you who think I'm overthinking or being dramatic, simply realize that how we all spend our time and money has real effects on what comes next. The danger here is that talented and earnest artists will wind up marginalized and unappreciated as their roles are filled by hucksters and charlatans intent on building celebrity empires. It's becoming harder and harder to believe that people are being duped rather than playing their roles as willing accomplices in the dumbing-down of our culture. We need to change course or come to the realization that we deserve what's coming to us.

//

Movie Music Monday: 'Legends of the Fall'

2016-03-21T16:30:00.002-07:00

Few composers capture the vibe, theme, philosophy, and character of the movie they are composing for as well as James Horner did. When you listen to his soundtracks, you can hear what the movies are about. You hear the romance, the heartbreak, the terror, the violence, the grandiosity and the epic sweep. You can sense the period of time and the mood. Horner, like precious few others, had the ability to truly capture in notes, melodies, harmony and percussion what the films were created to say through dialogue, cinematography, plot, and action. He was a magnificently gifted composer and Legends of the Fall is one of my all-time favorite Horner scores.

Edward Zwick's Legends..., based on the Jim Harrison novella, is the story of a Montana family's battle to stay united through the early years of the twentieth century. Horner's score beautifully and terribly captures the dynamics of the Ludlow family's saga, from the idealism of young men heading off to fight in World War I to the catastrophic loss of loved ones and the eventual discovery of the family's need for one another. The soundtrack masterfully incorporates elements that bring to mind the Americana of the newly settled frontier, the chaos of trench warfare, and the spiritual appreciation the characters hold for the land and time in which they live. The film is a multilayered and complex story, and the music is similarly diverse.

But Horner never leaves a listener stranded for long. He was clearly a big believer in theme and accessibility, and the soundtrack for Legends... contains a handful of some of his most memorable lines. You may even hear hints of other Horner films and recognize traces of instrumentation that were prominent in some of his later scores. His signature was a memorable one, and Legends... certainly marked some of his most potent work.

Buy This Album - 'I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it' by The 1975

2016-03-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

The sophomore slump is a real thing. After you've had your entire life up to the point that you write your first record, the new deadlines of being an already established artist tend to quench the flow of a substantial amount of artistic juices. Add to this the dynamic of a successful first record, and now you've found yourself with the added pressure of living up to (or even exceeding) expectations. Even more rarely do you hear real artistic growth between a first and second record.

Well, it seems that The 1975 has defied all of those tendencies with their second label release, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it.

The band's self-titled debut took me by surprise and blew me away. The retro '80s influences, the great playing, the hooks... it was an unusual breath of fresh air in a market oversaturated with disposable pop detritus or artists trying too hard to be important. It rocked, it grooved, it was singable and accessible with just the right amount of artistry to remind everyone that these cats weren't looking to be anyone or anything but themselves.

I'm glad to say that the new record has picked up right where the first left off, but with enough twists on the original idea to verify the notion that these guys aren't settling. They're not over-extending themselves, either, but they're moving in directions that indicate growth and a lack of contentment with where they left off the first time.

Whereas the first record featured short sound effect-y interludes between songs, I like it when you sleep... has taken things a bit further, featuring entire instrumental pieces built on the foundations of those earlier clips. These might not be welcome news to everyone, but they're an interesting touch on a modern pop/rock record. The instrumentals on this record are pleasant and intriguing, and they allow you to disappear a bit into the soundscape while wondering just what the guys had in mind when they were orchestrating them. They bring to mind composers like Hans Zimmer or James Newton Howard, and they demand another layer of attention: this is a record designed to be listened to. Imagine that.

As for the more conventional tracks, the band is back to their proven process of drawing from artists before their time. There are traces of Bowie and Prince here, with hooks for days and electronics that manage to keep from becoming annoying or obtuse (a notable feat in today's music scene). And I, for one, can't wait to see if Adam Hann (the band's guitarist) manages to reintroduce the guitar solo back into popular radio. The guy is a monster player and the band doesn't shy away from showing him off here and there.

I like it when you sleep... has been a great trip for me since its release last Friday. If you like solid, groovy, melodic pop/rock from real musicians who understand their heritage and seem more interested in their art than succumbing to the machine of industry celebrity-ism, be sure to give it your undivided attention. The 1975 are proving they've got plenty to say and, hopefully, are just getting started.

Movie Music Monday: 'Fantastia'

2016-02-22T10:04:00.000-08:00

Alright, alright, alright... today's movie music pick isn't technically movie music. Or, maybe it is technically movie music. Either one. Whatever.

Disney's timeless animated musical, Fantasia, features the performance of classical music tunes that have become - at least in part because of the popularity of the movie itself - some of our culture's favorites. The Nutcracker Suite. Ave Maria. The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. These are all pieces that most people recognize and love, regardless of their exposure to or education in classical music. They have simply become part of our cultural understanding of what the genre sounds like.

The soundtrack for Fantasia features Leopold Stokowski directing the Philadelphia Orchestra through these masterpieces (and more) in what is surely one of the most popular classical music recordings in modern history. For fans of Disney, for fans of soundtracks, and for fans of classical music, this collection is one to own. It's a deep and moving progression, as well, even if you haven't seen the film. This one's a treasure, people. Be sure to check it out.

//

This is your brain on music.

2016-02-22T09:27:00.000-08:00

The people at TED have put together an interesting video about the effects of both musical performance & simply listening on the brain. Basically, playing an instrument is like a full-body workout for the muscles of the brain and enables people to deploy those muscles in other ways that have nothing to do with music, too. Check it out:

How Playing an Instrument Benefits Your Brain
A look at the neurological wonders behind playing a musical instrument: http://ow.ly/SDkts
Posted by TED-Ed on Saturday, September 26, 2015

Joel's Annual Grammy Renunciation Post

2016-02-15T09:01:00.000-08:00

Seeing as how tonight millions of people will no doubt tune-in to watch the annual travesty that is the Grammy Awards, I couldn't help but share with you the following relevant passage from Llosa's Notes on the Death of Culture:

Art preceded all other expressions of cultural life in laying the foundations for the culture of the spectacle, by establishing that art could be fun and games and nothing else. ... [Today is] a time in which insolence and boastfulness and empty provocative gestures are sometimes enough, with the collusion of the mafias that control the art market and with complicit or half-witted critics who confer false prestige, giving the status of artist to illusionists who hide their poverty and emptiness behind counterfeit insolence. ... In our times, artists are not expected to show talent or skill but rather affectation and scandal, and their daring statements are nothing more than the masks of a new conformity. What was once revolutionary has become fashionable, a pastime, a game, a subtle acid that erodes art... In art this frivolity has reached alarming extremes. The disappearance of any minimal consensus about aesthetic value means that in this field confusion reigns and will continue to reign for a long time, since it is now not possible to discern with any degree of objectivity what it is to have talent or to lack talent, what is beautiful and what is ugly, and what represents something new and durable and what is just a will-o'-the-wisp. This confusion has turned the art world into a carnival where genuine creators, sharp operators, and conmen all intermingle and it is often difficult to tell them apart.

Jimi Hendrix.
Queen.
Bob Marley.
Journey.
Guns 'n' Roses.
Tupac.
The Who.
Busta Rhymes.
Chuck Berry.
The Beach Boys.
Led Zeppelin.
Brian McKnight.
Joe Satriani.
Diana Ross.
Spyro Gyra.

Not a single legitimate Grammy Award between them. (Call me nitpicky, but giving the Beach Boys a "Best Historical Album" award in 2013 for a 45-year-old record doesn't count.)

So, I implore you, my friends and readers, stop allowing the cool kids' table to determine for you how you spend your highly valuable time. Let the pop culture nonsense and popularity contest that is the Grammy Awards alone and stop lending credence to an obviously farcical charade. Stop courting conformity. Vote with your attention that you think music & art should be more than what people who only want your money want you to believe it is. Leave the cool kids' table back in high school - where it belongs.

"Music's greatest night"? Hardly.

//

Buy This Album - 'The Epic' by Kamsai Washington

2016-02-12T10:18:00.002-08:00

Those of you who have been keeping up with this blog know that I am all about promoting jazz. But, in an attempt to be sensitive to both my audience and the spirit of the times, when it comes to modern jazz music, I'm always on the lookout for one of the genre's more elusive qualities: accessibility. I understand that a lot of jazz these days just goes over people's heads and recommending it probably does more to damage people's impressions of the art form than to bolster them.

The album I'm plugging today is one of those rarest of examples: one that is both innovative & original while retaining an accessibility for the vast majority of interested listeners. The Epic by Kamsai Washington is real jazz. Make no mistake. But it is not a difficult album to listen to. If you're at all interested in the genre or just wondering what great contemporary jazz music sounds like, than you should give this album some serious attention.

I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Washington could very well be one of the next huge names in American jazz music. He's already compiled a resume of gigs that reads like an old veteran's (including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Harvey Mason, for instance, as well as arranging the horn parts for Kendrick Lamar's latest release), and his Epic record has certainly been turning heads for the past 6 months or so (his snub for a Grammy nomination is just the next in a long list of facepalm-worthy nonsense from the association). But, dig it: $11.99 on iTunes gets you 17 songs and just a shade under three hours of music. When he named it The Epic, he wasn't being facetious.

I can't say enough about this album, people. Whether you're a serious jazz fan or you're simply interested in beginning to learn what it's all about, check this record out. It's a great one.

//

Peter Gabriel & the point of music.

2016-02-10T13:24:00.000-08:00

Alain de Botton over at The Guardian has a written a very interesting piece considering the question, "What's the point of music?" In it, he draws from the example of one of my all-time favorite artists, Peter Gabriel.

The article contains some great thought food on the purpose music plays in our lives and highlights two of Gabriel's great songs, one of which I've posted below. It's always good to consider just why it is we give so much credence and attention to the things - like music - which are so ubiquitous in our culture. Thinking deeply about music makes music more to us than simply a background soundtrack to all of life's other activities. To really experience the beauty of music, we need to start thinking about it like this writer at The Guardian:

[A] clearer handle on the theoretical role of music may at times enhance rather than impoverish our capacity to appreciate music. Knowing what music does for us can give us a sharper sense of which of its varieties we might be in particular need of, why and when.

And, hey, you could do a lot worse than analyzing an artist the caliber of Peter Gabriel. Check it out here.

Movie Music Monday - 'Burnt'

2016-02-08T11:12:00.000-08:00

The wife and I checked out the Bradley Cooper flick Burnt a few days ago, and, while we both felt like the movie was alright (not great, not bad, but worth watching), the soundtrack definitely had some notable highlights. There's some beautiful, introspective, and melodic pieces throughout this film, and I took to iTunes to grab some of the tracks that I couldn't ignore. The piece posted here is included on both the soundtrack album (which features some of the instrumental score along with some other tracks from various artists) and the score album (which is comprised of only Rob Simonsen's music), and adds a wonderful texture to one of the best scenes in the movie.

~

Book Reviews on a Music Blog

2016-02-03T10:30:00.002-08:00

Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The question is not whether you have a philosophy. Everyone has a philosophy. ... The question is, are you aware of the philosophy you have – the assumptions, beliefs, and ideas that drive your actions? Are you aware of the way those assumptions, beliefs, and ideas add up to shape your life? Can they stand exposure to the light of day?"

A book about philosophy and worldview written by a former Navy SEAL? Yep, this one is right up my alley.

The good news is that this book delivers. In everything from its structure (letters exchanged between the author and another former SEAL friend of his), to the topical ground it covers, to its accessibility, this book provokes thought, challenges, and inspires without the usual hand-holding that usually seems to accompany most contemporary books written about worldview and purpose (RE: 'self-help').

This is not a self-help book. This is not a book interested in communicating to each of us just how special of a snowflake we all are. This book does its level best to convey the wisdom of the centuries in light of the reality of how the world works and how difficult life is. Greitens is interested in the time-tested, the ancient, and the bonafide, not in the flavor of the month or the flash in the pan.

As I so often like to say, stop trying to reinvent the wheel - give me the old stuff.

There are some things here I disagree with. For instance, I like much of Stoic philosophy (of which Greitens seems to be a big fan), but I find it incomplete. That's ok. It's good to think through why you disagree with something - especially when you're reading a philosophical work. This is the one and only reason for my lack of a perfect 5-star review. Not quite everything in this book can be completely imbibed, but maybe that's good, after all.

Nevertheless, despite my lack of complete, 100% endorsement of every point and conclusion reached in this book, I can't imagine anyone to whom I wouldn't recommend it. We are all going to go through seasons of life in which we will find this kind of wisdom and philosophy invaluable. Getting our minds right on why we think what we think in the midst of the chaos and noise of modern life is an important venture for everyone.

Do yourself a favor and read this book.

View all my reviews

Movie Music Monday - 'Nightcrawler'

2016-02-01T11:43:00.000-08:00

I watched Nightcrawler inside Bob Hope Airport waiting for a delayed flight. It is a provocative film, definitely not for everybody, but from the moment the opening credits begin to appear, the thing you absolutely cannot miss or deny is the power of the music. James Newton Howard's score is vibey, cool, atmospheric, and melodic. It's one of the most listened to soundtracks in my collection and definitely worth checking out regardless of whether you have any intention of even seeing the movie. Great, great stuff here.

Favorite Friday - 'Hell Freezes Over' by Eagles

2016-01-29T10:18:00.002-08:00

New things happening here on the Electric Medicine Blog, my friends, and it seemed right to kick off Favorite Friday with a little tip of the cap to the recently passed Glenn Frey.

Frey was one of the greatest singer-songwriters in American history and together with his band cemented one of the most memorable musical legacies in all of rock 'n' roll.

In November of 1994, the Eagles released one of the greatest live performance albums of all time. Hell Freezes Over (so named because it was the precise time when an Eagles reunion was predicted after a backstage brawl between members split the band apart in 1980) marked the return to prominence of a '70s classic rock band in the midst of the grunge revolution. A group of old guys got together on MTV and showed all the wipper snappers how it was actually done.

This album has meant a lot to me for a lot of years. It introduced me to the music of the Eagles and, consequently, created a lifelong fan. It's probably as close to a perfect live record as you're ever going to get (and it features a handful of new studio recordings, as well), and masterfully demonstrates the power of magnificent songwriting mixed with mature and deliberate instrumentation. If you're at all in the dark about the media hoopla surrounding the death of Glenn Frey last week, give one listen to this record and it will all make sense.

Movie Music Monday - 'Saving Mr. Banks'

2016-01-25T17:50:00.002-08:00

Had this song playing in my head all day yesterday... there are worse things, I assure you. It's from a great movie and Thomas Newman is one my favorite movie score composers. This soundtrack is just one of many examples why.

Rock 'n' roll, vinyl stores, and the hyporisy of COOL.

2016-01-21T11:04:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, I was on tour in Toronto with Alex G. A handful of us had decided to take in the town before the afternoon's setup and soundcheck duties, and we happened upon a vinyl record store in a particularly pretentious sector of the city's downtown. One of the members of our little crew decided that he wanted to see if he could find a certain record, so we moseyed on into the shop.

Upon asking about the album, however, the employee who had found his way over to help us wasted no time in revealing himself to be a troll of the ugliest distinction. The conversation went something like this:

"May I help you all?"

"Yeah, I was wondering, do you have any copies of the Escape album by Journey?"

"I think you need to leave the store."

"Uh, what?"

"Yeah, I think it's best if you just leave."

Now, this wasn't the complete verbatim total of our conversation with this individual, your honor. Someone else in our group asked if he had Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in store, which, I believe, he did. And there may have been one or two other albums asked about, too, but the main gist of our conversation centered around asking about the Journey recording and promptly being asked to exit the store without the slightest sense of humor or irony.

This guy? Not nearly as hilarious in real life.

Once my brain caught up with my ears and I actually realized what was going on, I looked my friends in the eyes and told them something along the lines of, "I'm leaving, because if I don't, something very bad is going to happen and you're all going to be really embarrassed of me."

Ok, stop, reload real quick.

I've spent my entire life despising condescension. As long as I can remember, I've hated conformity, trendiness, and the cult of COOL. And being confronted with it in such a naked, unabashed way is something I am not at all equipped to abide. That day in Toronto, the record store employee with the hipster clothes and nerd glasses awakened something primal and dangerous in me, and it was probably best for everyone involved that we just walked away. (You can ask the people I was with: I think I remember saying something about how it would be well within the boundaries of common sense and moral justice for the Canadian authorities to allow me to firebomb annoying, ostentatious businesses. Or something.)

This story highlights one of my greatest frustrations with the music world and greater culture in general. Namely, not just the existence, but the elevation of and reverence for fakery and self-important vanity within the arts. The haughty record store salesperson demonstrated this reality in spades: condescending to and insulting my friend for wanting to purchase a Journey record while proudly displaying, of all things, Katy Perry's latest release on their shelves.

Here's the deal, folks: the world is full of pompous, arrogant pretenders. People who couldn't record a decent song to save their own lives will pronounce judgment on the work of others as if the entire universe genuflected to the power of their own particular tastes. And what do those tastes tend to be based upon? Not musical criteria, obviously. But, usually, a kind of sludge of trend, public perception, unearned confidence and projected cultural intelligence.

Hated on in Toronto, plugged on my blog.

With "award season" (ugh... shoot me for even writing that) coming up, I felt the need to share this story in order to remind us all of something we know deep inside but rarely give expression to: the world is full to the brim of people who can't wait to tell you what is cool and then wait expectantly for you to fall in line. I can only imagine what gave our Canadian flower the idea that Journey was such a undeniably despicable and universally distasteful band that asking potential paying customers searching for their record to leave his store seemed like a sensible decision. My guess? He's probably read too many issues of Rolling Stone, too many Pitchfork articles. Now, he doesn't have to like Journey. That's fine. But they're a musically powerful band with almost 50 millions albums sold. You can label them corporate sellouts or whatever other hipster indie label you want to use, but what-in-the-world kind of criteria can you use against them that will still allow you to sell a Katy Perry vinyl with a straight face?

And this gets to the heart of the issue: the hypocrisy that drives the hive mind of what's COOL. See, I'm not old. But, I'm old enough to remember things like when Nickelback was just another band (and not the universally labeled WORST BAND IN THE WORLD), when Creed genuinely was the biggest band on the planet (and not regarded as the WORST BAND IN THE WORLD), or when Jay-Z was just another wannabe Biggie Smalls replacement (and not the MOST GENIUS ARTIST IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC). This is kind of my point. Far too many of the labels we attach to various bands and artists are completely arbitrary and fluid. One day, an artist is just walking along, doing their thing, trying to figure out how best to survive in the industry and stay true to themselves. Next day? They're the worst music anybody's ever heard and only the terminally un-hip would ever dare to listen to them, or they're a genius akin to Beethoven whose music we are all undeserving to even set our ears upon.

Someplace somewhere there are rooms full of music writers - that is, people who write about music, not people who write music - attempting to determine for you, for me, and for everybody else what we "should" be listening to. What you'll notice, though, if you pay close attention, is that none of the criteria used to justify their pronouncements is ever truly musical. It's always related to nebulous ideas like "importance" or "notability", i.e.: what the wizards of smart and keepers of cool have capriciously determined to be worthy. Case in point: Kanye West has 21 Grammy Awards, Queen and Jimi Hendrix have zero. That make sense to anyone?

And here's the real kicker: of all the subcultures, of all the arenas of life, of all the groups to belong to, wouldn't you think that rock 'n' roll, for crying out loud, would be the very last place that conformity, trendiness, and falling in line would be expected of anyone? And yet, here we are, living in a world where the people who scream the loudest about non-conformity and expressing one's self as an individual can't help but prejudice themselves against anything that doesn't look or sound exactly how they think rock 'n' roll should look or sound. They just can't help themselves: keeping things in nice, tidy, little boxes is just part of their DNA.

Don't fall for it.

Think for yourself. Decide for yourself. Don't let your tastes be hijacked by anyone else. Don't listen to the siren overtures from the cool kids' table telling you that the good life is determined by how well you fit in with them. Let them have their pointless tastes and indefensible pronouncements. Instead, listen to the music you want to listen to for the reasons you want to listen to it. Recognize the hypocrisy and vanity of people who want to tell you what is good without having the slightest ability to produce it themselves. See through the trendy clothes and indie labels and pay attention to what's really going on.

The real cool is being able to tell the people who want to define it for you where to stick it.

My first night at the Gothic, a retrospective. OR, "Some Things Never Change".

2016-01-13T17:59:00.000-08:00

"Alright, you ready?" I ask, looking at Garrett. He nods.

"You?" Looking over at Bart now, and then Tyler, and then Joel.

And with a nod of affirmation from all four bandmates, I press play on the backing tracks. Here goes nothing.

And there it is: the click track and electronic drumbeat that signals the beginning of 'Told You So', our first song of the night. Too distant for my taste, but our rushed get-the-other-band-off-and-get-our-own-stuff-on setup was just a step or two away from being a total nightmare and the tech wasn't thrilled about having to run our in-ear monitors, anyway. The tracks and click are quiet, but it's nothing I can't handle.

The band kicks after the requisite first four bars, and everything seems to be alright. Not great, but alright. And then, Garrett starts singing.

The prevailing theory post-show is that the monitor guy got his channels switched around and Garrett's mix was now coming in through my monitor line. Meaning, of course, that his voice was now screaming over everything else in my lame excuse for a hastily thrown together monitor mix.

I adjust my wireless pack's onboard volume. Garrett's voice drops, mercifully, but, so does the click track. Uh-oh. Time to dial-up the focus.

Nevermind that I can't really hear my kick drum (staying strong on my all-time top 5 pet peeves list) or even my toms from time to time. It feels like I'm playing with no real feel at all; no real sense of enjoyment of what I'm playing. I'm just kinda going through the motions, playing what I know needs to be played and trying to find a few spots to shine. It feels like I'm a noob up there, playing to a packed house at the Gothic Theatre for my very first time.

It's become obvious fairly soon into the set that this is definitely not going to be some of the most fun I've ever had playing drums.

But, half an hour later, almost everybody seems to have been really into it. Good crowd reaction (they have to tell me, because I wasn't really able to tell from behind the chaotic cacophony that was my in-ear mix). The guys from the other bands have nothing but nice things to say. And the Suspects themselves are psyched that our first show at the Gothic seems to have gone over really, really well.

Ain't that just the way of things.

I can't remember how many times I've come off the stage frustrated about this thing or that thing only to be told that the show as amazing. Just like I can't remember how many times (many, many fewer times, I assure you) I've been psyched about a performance, feeling like I was in the pocket and in command the entire time, only to hear crickets afterwards (aside from the perfunctory "Good show, man" that seems to be more of an acknowledgement that I made it out alive rather than anything related to my competency on the instrument).

Ah, well. Some things never change, I guess. I suppose it will probably forever and always be a quest of mine to finally play that show where both the crowd and the band feel like a show was all that it could be. Maybe one day. We'll see. Until then, I'll just rest contented with the facts that Modern Suspects' trajectory seems to be more-or-less consistently upward since I was asked to join and that I can now check the Gothic Theatre off of my list of Denver venues at which to perform. Not many more left until Red Rocks.

Here's hoping, anyway.

2015, the year that was.

2016-01-04T10:56:00.002-08:00

I'm not really one for New Year's resolutions. In all honesty, I'm not really one for goal setting. That's not to say I don't have a sizable list of things I want to accomplish, but putting timelines on things I know are beyond my control is not really my style. (Cue the tut, tut's from the motivational speaker crowd.)

All of that to say that I've never really been one to write big, important, beginning-of-the-year blogs, lists, or year-in-review posts. And yet, here we are. Not because this kind of thing is something I always do or even see the need for, but because it feels appropriate given what I've been going through as of late.

On the one hand, I find myself still struggling with frustration because I'm still not where I want to be. As much as I see and recognize the lies of the culture in regards to what makes a successful and meaningful life, I still find myself combating the angst of not possessing what the world would classify as a "career". The money's not great, regular, or dependable at this point.

But then, I'm an artist. What was I expecting?

I was expecting to be THERE by now, that's what. THERE, that place along the journey of life where you get to pitch your tent for a nice long season and enjoy steady work and steady income from the job of your dreams. Because, after all, you've earned it. You've worked hard, you've been passionate, you've maintained focus and vision and direction while others around you checked out and faded away.

Or something.

This all coming from the guy who walks around repeating the mantra, "There are no equations". Inconsistency, thy name is Burns.

And so, today I take a step back to remind myself of what just one year has done for the formation of my career, for the realization of my dreams, and for my life.

I'll lead off with perhaps the most obvious contradiction between reality and my sense of things: I think I spent more time in 2015 as a working drummer than in any other year of my life. I spent more time behind the drum kit as an asset in someone's band than ever before. I got to record a great tune with a best friend in a famous Nashville studio. I got to tour North America with a wonderful artist and a group of new friends I never would have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. I found opportunities to share in music ministry playing worship services with a bunch of different churches and worship leaders. I got to play sold out shows and summer festivals with a band here at home. And I got to see the release of an EP with my drumming on it that found, among other things, one of its songs featured on a prime time network TV show. All of a sudden, stopping to consider what's actually happened this year, the temptation to feel like nothing's happening begins to recede rather forcefully.

The non-musical side of my life was pretty rich in 2015, as well. I spent a weekend in Kansas City with my wife & aunt taking in the town and my first-ever Royals game at Kauffman Stadium. A few months later, they won the World Series for the first time in 30 years.

Don't miss the wonder in the everyday.

I enjoyed probably the single richest concert-going year of my whole life (which is saying something, believe me). In addition to getting to attend what will most likely be Rush's final concert tour (one of my all-time favorite bands), I took in performances from Garth Brooks, Chris Botti (each for the very first time), as well as Bruce Hornsby, the Zac Brown Band, and Toto.

I discovered a new artist and a new book to file amongst my very favorites. I saw my little sister-in-law get married. I spent my first-ever really enjoyable day in New York City. I finished writing my first book. And I watched as my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and, having caught it early, was able to beat it after surgery but without any need for chemo or radiation treatments.

See, God was good to me in 2015. Really good. But I can still succumb to the pressure from a world consumed with materialistic standards to feel as though I haven't achieved anything and that I'm not where I want to be.

What a joke.

So join me, won't you, in rejecting the notion that success in life can be determined in purely financial terms. Your life is more than the money you make (or don't make) or how many people follow you on social media. Our lives are made up of more things than can be reflected in a bank statement. Combat the temptation to be frustrated because you're not at the very top of the mountain by looking around at the meadows, the rivers, the streams, the fields, and, yes, even the plateaus around you and appreciating the beauty they have to offer. Take joy in the little things like good books, music, food, company, and conversation.

Here's to 2016.

Life is in the moments, people. It's not in the status. We can't create career opportunities for ourselves or control the things that would make us rich, anyway, so stop trying. It's so much wasted effort. Instead, embrace the beauty in the mundane and realize all that can happen in just one year. It's hard not being where you want to be. It's hard working for so long and still not realizing your dreams. But what's harder is allowing life to pass you by because you're too busy focusing on where you wish you were that you're completely missing the wonder of where you are.

So, here's to 2015 and all of the great things it added to my life. And, to being more contented and present in 2016.

And here's to wherever you are: be there and let the rest of it worry about itself.

~

Music for all the Christmases

2015-12-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

When people ask me what my favorite kind of music is, I genuinely enjoy answering with, "Christmas music". I get so excited for this time of year every year and the music is a huge part of the reason why. It's a wonder that some of the best music in the world only gets played for a single month: in a society so enamored with overindulgence, we somehow manage to do a good job holding off on some of the most magical, romantic, spiritual, and purely enjoyable music of our culture's history until the time is just right.

Well, the time to indulge has come around again, so I'd love to share with you all some of my favorite Christmas albums in the hopes that you might just discover some new favorites of your own. Unfortunately, Christmas music is like any other kind in that there is just as much garbage out there as there is real treasure worth spending your time and money (and ears) on. And, for some reason, far too many retail outlets, radio stations, and other commercial interests given to playing Christmas music tend to favor playing the cheesy, the annoying, and the obnoxious.

So, in light of all this, I offer you my own list, hoping you might find the time to celebrate the season through listening: Christmas music, with it's unique power to remind us of the wonder of the season - through it's timeless & beautiful melodies, it's relaxed swing, and it's lyrical content - should be something we all cherish. I hope you find something in this list that enriches your Christmas this year and stays with you for all of the Christmases that follow.

Happy listening!

~

Harry Connick, Jr. - When My Heart Finds Christmas
Whenever anyone asks me about Christmas records to buy or what my personal favorites are, this always seems to be the first to pop into my head. Connick's album embodies the very idea of the sounds of the season: his voice, his piano, his arrangements, his performance. The originals are just as good as the classics; this is one of the all-time greats. Also, be sure to check out Connick's other two Christmas records, What A Night!, and Harry For The Holidays. (Highlights: every single song.)

George Winston - December
This is it for Christmas piano. There are some great solo piano records out there for Christmastime, but if you can only have one, this is the one to have. In fact, if you can only have one George Winston record, this is the one to have. It's beautiful and peaceful, and the progression of the album from start to finish, song by song, is a masterstroke. (Highlights: Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head; Variation on the Kanon by Pachelbel; The Holly and The Ivy)

Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin - Christmas with The Rat Pack
Let's face it, along with Bing Crosby, the voices of the Rat Pack epitomize the sound of classic Christmas songs. This collection was put out on iTunes last year, and it's been a long time coming. Timeless and classic. I mean, who doesn't want to own the song that plays during the end credit roll of Die Hard? (Highlights: Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!; The Christmas Song; I'll Be Home For Christmas)

The Ramsey Lewis Trio - Sound of Christmas
The modern concept of Christmas music wouldn't be what it is without the advent of jazz. Since the creation of the old Christmas hymns and carols, no style of music has infiltrated the season's celebrations like jazz, and we are all the more blessed because of it. This Ramsey Lewis record, from 1961, is one of the great demonstrations of the beauty of Christmas music in the hands of a jazz combo. Great playing and masterful arrangements and that feeling of age make it one worth owning. (Highlights: Santa Claus Is Coming To Town; What Are You Doing New Year' Eve?; God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen)

Chris Botti - December
Continuing on our jazz theme, but with a classical influence... Botti's bread and butter. He makes the trumpet the herald of the season along with some heartrending arrangements. This record has to be heard to be believed. There's jaw-dropping musicality on display here, but nothing ever gets in the way of the songs themselves. An astounding record. (Highlights: Ave Maria; Hallelujah; The Christmas Song)

Vince Guaraldi Trio - A Charlie Brown Christmas
I mean, do we really need to give a reason why with this one? There are few more timeless Christmas records than this - a must-have for any Christmas music fan. (Highlights: O Tannenbaum; Linus and Lucy; Skating)

Michael Buble - Christmas
What the Rat Pack was then, Connick and Buble are now: the modern bearers of the standards. Buble's vocal mastery is something to behold, and his Christmas record is an instant classic. His are the only versions of Holly Jolly Christmas and Santa Baby I will listen to, and, dare I say it, I even enjoy his version of All I Want For Christmas Is You more than Mariah Carey's original. Buble is the very definition of smooth, and people will be listening to his renditions for decades. (Highlights: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas; All I Want For Christmas Is You; Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas)

James Taylor - At Christmas
Taylor infuses the sounds of the season with his classic folk style here, but also recruits the right people to help make the record jazzy, and the result is sublime. The record is relaxed, musically powerful, dynamic. The arrangements soar... you'll just want to sit and absorb it. An absolutely wonderful album. (Highlights: In The Bleak Midwinter; Auld Lang Syne; Go Tell It On The Mountain; Deck The Halls)

~

Thankful.

2015-11-25T10:36:00.002-08:00

- For Christmas tunes. It's officially time for the greatest music in the world to ring out, my friends. Let it rip.

- For getting to witness the Kansas City Royals win a World Series.

- For the interesting, talented, and dependable people I have the privilege of calling my friends; for the old ones who stick around when others leave and for the new ones who have brought new color and flavor into my life.

- For a wife who, after 13 years together, still manages to find me funny from time to time.

- For my mother's victory over cancer this year.

- For a glorious and jaw-dropping year of concert going: Chris Botti, Bruce Hornsby, Zac Brown Band, Garth Brooks, Rush, Toto. (Might have been the best year so far, truth be told.)

- I'm thankful for Star Wars, Roald Dahl novels, and Batman: things that were awesome when I was a kid and are still awesome all these years later.

- For gracious musicians who still want me to play drums in their band.

- For living in a country that understands putting lemons in iced tea.

- For hope for the future in the midst of an uncertain & incomprehensible world.

- For great books; vast treasures of paper & ink.

- For great music; what a joy to know that the cacophony of pop culture is not all there is.

- For a God who loved me afar off and continues to give of Himself to make me into something worthwhile.

- For sunsets, the colors of fall, mountains, snow, stars, waterfalls, and all of the other wondrous things that make life in Colorado so enchanting.

- And for so much more I don't have the time to write about now. Thanks for reading, everybody. Thank you for taking the time. If you have ever read this blog, even once, I appreciate it. I hope you can find so many things to be thankful for in your own life that you wouldn't be able to fit it into one blog post, either. Enjoy the season!

Having It All

2015-10-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

Within my faith there is a popular heretical offshoot known to as The Prosperity Gospel. You may have heard it referred to with other terminology, Health/Wealth, Name It/Claim It, The Gospel of Success, what have you. Basically, it is a warped understanding of Christian doctrine that teaches that as long as you do the right things, believe the right things, say the right words, and check the right boxes (which usually involves sending some guy on TV in a suit a check), God will hop to and begin to make you wildly successful in every area of your life. It promises prosperity in finances, good health, and security in all things worldly and temporal. It defines the love of God as wanting only the best for His people in this world (if only they would demonstrate enough faith to lay hold of what He's all-too-ready to give them).

It is a lie. Christianity is about far more than earthly wealth and good fortune. But, the Prosperity Gospel has made a lot of its proponents very rich both because people are gullible and because it's very tempting to believe that God doesn't exist for any higher purpose other than to fulfill one's every wish.

There is a non-religious version of this idea, as well. The only real twist is that the source of the successful, perfect life resides in each one of us and not in God. Just yesterday I was skimming around social media (I don't recommend it) when I happened upon a lady who captioned one of her pictures with something along the lines of, "The one thing I want everyone to know is that they can have it all: the job, the body, the spouse, the life..." Of course, what she means (and what she no doubt spends the majority of her time on social media espousing) is that you can have the best/perfect/greatest version of all of those things.

...as long as you do what she tells you do, stay plugged into her social media networks, buy her products, and listen to her advice, presumably forever.

Now, I'm not calling into question the motivations of people who want to spend their time trying to help others live better lives. There's nothing wrong with that. What I do have a problem with, however, is attempting to sell people - through religion or empowerment or self-esteem or whatever - on the idea that life is completely malleable, within our control, and up to us. That life is what we make it. That we, regardless of circumstances, have the ability to turn each and every one of our dreams into absolute reality.

Now, again, please don't get me wrong: I am definitely not trying to say that we have no responsibility in our lives to work hard, pursue our dreams, and be willing to do what it takes to go after what we believe our purpose to be. I absolutely believe in each and every one of those things (anyone who has spent any amount of time reading this blog already knows this). But, there is a huge difference between encouraging people to follow their dreams and telling them that anything at all that they can imagine can be theirs. Let me first make a few salient points:

1. We do not control our circumstances. It's tempting to believe that we can make our own luck, that we create our own opportunities. What power that would be, right? Some of us have even seen things in our lives fall into place in just such a way as to make us believe that we actually caused fortune to smile upon us. But, let's think about all this for just a second. Consider this metaphor: a musician makes a record. The record is released, marketed, advertised, promoted. Now, do any of those things, either the production of the record itself or the marketing campaign behind it, actually force people to buy the thing? Of course not. Now, the idea of marketing, of course, is to convince people to buy the product, but convincing is not forcing. All kinds of factors go into the success of a musician, but not a single one of them involves holding a gun to a million people's heads and actively compelling them to make them a star. The truth is, quite simply, that we cannot control all of the circumstances that contour our lives. As much as you may attempt to guide your life in certain directions, none of us has the power to keep sickness at bay, prevent the economy from going south, guarantee that car accidents never happen, or direct any one of millions of other things that affect our lives without asking our permission. Beyond that, none of us had a single say in so many things that determine our lives from the very get-go: none of us decided how talented we were going to be, how athletic, how intelligent, how capable, how attractive, what body type or metabolism we were born with or what socio-economic position or time in history we were born into. The reality is that there are untold numbers of factors that help drive our lives that we have absolutely no control over. This is not at all something to be upset about - it just is. This is life, and to pretend otherwise is simply to delude ourselves.

2. Life is all about trade-offs. The very nature of our lives is that we only have so much time in a day and so much energy or opportunity within that time to do anything. Each of us can only do so much. For me, for instance, going on tour means being away from my family (at least right now). That's a trade-off. Also, an hour spent practicing the drums or writing or working out means an hour not doing something else. The very nature of life is that we are limited. We can only do so much before we simply can't do anymore. We need rest. We need to recharge. The notion that IT CAN ALL BE YOURS attempts to convince you that you have no limitations, circumstantial or otherwise. Or, worse, it tells you that limitations are only in your mind. And, while I agree that there are definitely some obstacles we place in our own way, the truth remains that we simply can't have it all because we can't do it all. Part of becoming a responsible and sensitive human being is understanding prioritization and giving proper attention to the things that really matter. It's not wrong to chase six-pack abs, for instance, but are they really worth it if it comes at the expense of things that matter more? Those are the kinds of questions each of us constantly needs to be asking ourselves in order to become who we were meant to be.

3. Contentment and joy happen in spite of circumstances, not because of them. Some people reading this may be getting the idea that I am encouraging people to settle. I am doing no such thing. But, what I am trying to get people to see is that if you want real, solid, lasting contentment & joy in this life, it cannot be based on what the philosophy & ideology of the world tells you it's based on. You know the one I mean: the one that sells magazines, governs advertising, facilitates celebrity culture, and tells you that you're not enough if you don't measure up the standard that it alone can set. No, to be fulfilled in this life, we need more than what People magazine and the E! Network tells us is worthwhile. What we need to realize is that "having it all" is not what brings real, lasting joy - at least in the ways that the world defines it for us. Contentment and joy are things that last even when your circumstances go south. Do you retain your identity and your individuality even when you lose your job or when cancer strikes? Are you not fully you until you're a millionaire? Is the purpose of life really acquisition? Are competition and comparison really the primary characteristics of a happy person? Are you less of a person because you don't happen to have the kind of face or body that gets paid to have its picture taken? Can you not be deemed successful if you earn less than six figures? No, I think joy and contentment are things that can be yours no matter your circumstances - as long as you're willing to reject this world's notions of what success, beauty, and the good life happen to be.

Don't let them tell you what your life should be.

And this is the main point: you cannot allow the world to determine for you what your life should be.

Both the religious and non-religious version of the Prosperity/Self-Empowerment Gospel have the same fatal flaw: they imply that it is somehow your fault if you don't achieve or acquire all of the absolute best things this world has to offer. The Prosperity heretics tell you that as long as have enough faith and believe strongly enough, God will assuredly grant you all of your biggest dreams. The self-esteem social media gurus lay out their plan for success and insist that you follow it to the letter. Thus, if you don't achieve what you're hoping to achieve, you only have yourself to blame. I mean, heaven knows that the system, the plan, the guide, the tips & tricks can't be wrong. So, that only leaves one unlucky soul to shoulder the blame for the lack of success in your life (and it sure ain't the people doing the selling).

This is a crock, my friends. It is a lie designed to get you to buy (or buy into) something.

Make no mistake: your life is your own. It is not for others to determine how it should go or what it should be like. God made us and gave us our lives, and I wholeheartedly believe that each one of us will answer for how we lived. Not only that, but there will be very real consequences here in this life, as well, for the decisions we make in regards to what we prioritize and what we decide is important.

They want you to believe that you can have it all: the best job, the best car, the best house, the best marriage, the best kids, the best body, the best ____ the best ____ the best ____ the best ____. And make no mistake: you can have an amazing life. But you will short-circuit that process by insisting that the world define for you what "the best" means. You can spend your life going after what everyone else tells you is the best, or you can choose to be who you were created to be, while letting life, in all its unpredictable fickleness, do what it's going to do.

One final note that I can't help but tack on: the inspirational social media guru who wanted nothing more than for people to understand that they could have it all? Divorced. I didn't dig deep enough to know what exactly caused the breakdown of that relationship and I'm certainly not judging her, but I couldn't help but notice that a person hocking the idea that you can have the best version of everything is herself subject, in at least someway, to the very circumstances she is telling people they can master.

We might insist on being the captains of our own ships, but we do not control the weather. It's alright to not be the best or not have the best version of anything. Life is not a competition and is about so much more than what you manage to acquire while you're here. Don't let this crazy, stupid, screwed up world tell you what your life should be, and don't let them make you feel any worse for not having the kind of life they tell you is a good one.

God made you to be you. Let that be enough.

~

Adventures in iTunes: New Discoveries

2015-10-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

One of the massive benefits of going out on the road with a group of really talented people who dig music is that I always seem to come home with some fantastic recommendations for new music to listen to. There are few things I enjoy as much as sharing the stuff I love with other people who will love it, too, so when people return the favor and pass things along my way, I quite naturally get all giddy about it.

Alex G's Share Your Story Tour was no different. So, I'd like to take the next few moments and pass along to all of you some of the great music I've been turned on to by the people who joined me out on the road.

~

Brandon Flowers - The Desired Effect
Perhaps more well-known as the lead singer of The Killers, Brandon Flowers put out a record just this year that fits really, really nicely into that revival of '80s synth-pop I wrote about a few months ago. To simply describe it as such is probably too much of an over-simplification, though. On this record, Flowers is, more than anything else, a great songwriter. But, he did manage to get the word "gravitron" into a song, so I guess the '80s thing fits pretty nicely, too:

The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten
This record's a few years old now and The Gaslight Anthem has been around for longer than that, but someone finally had the wherewithal to suggest that I listen to them. What a record Handwritten is. This band just drips east coast rock 'n' roll - you won't have to listen too closely to hear the Springsteen influence - and in this day & age, that is a wonderful thing. It might seem like solid, dependable, well-written rock records are a thing of the past, but these guys prove that notion dead wrong. I can't wait to dig into some more from these cats.

LANY - I Loved You.
LANY's a new-ish band, once again hearkening back to that '80s thing everybody knows they love. This stuff is just so good & easy to listen to: singable, dance-y, memorable. It sticks in your head in the best way. LANY (along with the other artists mentioned here, really) is showing people what pop music could be again. Maybe it's even better to say they're showing people what music can be. There is great new music happening out there, folks. It's just waiting for you to get your ears on it.

Rest.

2015-08-31T15:29:00.003-07:00

We've all heard something like it before:

"I'll sleep when I'm dead."

"Rest is for the week."

"It's all about the hustle."

Our modern culture isn't big on rest. And that shouldn't come as a surprise given our proclivities-bordering-on-obsession in regards to distraction, over-indulgence, materialism, and commerce. If we do anything at all as a people, we go. We associate stopping with weakness, we are addicted to an ideal of constant achievement, and we are uncomfortable with stillness & quiet. We define a successful life in terms of measurable quantities (read: "bank account") and relegate any and all attention that could be paid to the inner life to a back burner that never gets lit.

Rest is not our thing.

This thought has been bouncing around in my own head for at least a year now. I discovered awhile back that I more-or-less sucked at rest. For the life of me, I could not take a solid day off without feeling like I was missing out on an opportunity to do something. For that reason, I found myself massively frustrated every time I wound up moderately sick - which is to say, sick enough to make being around people in a social context completely inappropriate but not sick enough that I would feel justified in just letting myself recover. I would find myself asking questions like, "Am I really so sick that I can't workout a little?" and "I can still practice, right?"

For whatever reason, the sense of need I felt to do would make me feel like a slacker if I didn't power through in some way and accomplish something.

I think I had bought into the lie that enough hard work, enough effort, and enough achievement in some way magically guaranteed the realization of my dreams. If I could just continue to keep chipping away at the stone, eventually God would have to move me right where I'd always wanted to be.

But then I began thinking about all of the things that go unheeded when the idea of rest (not to mention the necessity of it) is viewed as a universal pejorative. Did I really want to be the guy who couldn't slow down, who couldn't relax, and who couldn't find it within himself to appreciate where he was at any given moment if that place didn't happen to be THE PLACE he hoped & prayed he would one day end up?

Lovable ball of dualities that I am, I happen to be a blogger who doesn't read very many blogs. This, however, comes from a blog I peruse every now and again:

You have heard the hackneyed saying: “Life is a road, not a destination.” Nothing could be further from the truth in our world. Many people covet what they do not have, live only for what they want to achieve, are always looking to the next bend in the road, sacrifice the people in their lives for progress toward their goals, and are unsatisfied with where they are. But maybe this was truly the case with the patriarchs – they thought in terms of the road rather than the destination. It was enough for them to simply live the life of faith, unhurried and unencumbered, while enjoying the different “seasons” of the covenant relationship. Perhaps we, too, should live and think more in such terms.

Speaking of the ancient peoples of the Hebrew Old Testament, the writer of this blog post had made a fabulous observation in regards to rest: that in at least one instance of history, people understood that their futures were decided by more than their individual efforts, that they happened to be where they were for a reason, and that slowing down and appreciating where they were (instead of constantly focusing on where they wanted to be) was a completely normal & healthy part of life.

I also happened to recently read the following within the pages of Eric Greitens' great book, Resilience:

We spend the bulk of our lives doing things. And yet some of the most meaningful parts of our lives come when we simply choose to be, when we let time carry us, when we "face sacred moments". Space is something we strive to control and conquer; you can grab things with your hands. You can't grab time. You can't slow it down or speed it up. Time is beyond your control. Yet you have to live meaningfully in time as well as in space.
As [Rabbi] Heschel says: "He who wants to enter the holiness of the [rest] day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man."

I think it's safe to say that a message was getting sent. I hope that I've properly received it.

There is time for everything. Which means that there is time to slow down. There is time to focus on the being and not all of the doing. There is time to reflect, to ponder, to daydream. There is time to relax and to recover. There is time to not work. There is time to absorb and to be absorbed. There is time to spend celebrating and appreciating the work & the art of others instead of brooding over our own. All of this is real, and careers and dreams and the world will not end if we decide to partake of it.

So, here's to learning how to become better at rest. Here's to taking a step back and realizing we can't do it all by ourselves. Here's to realizing that the inner life matters more than the exterior one, and to cultivate that inner life, we must slow down from time to time. Here's to directing attention towards being and not simply doing. Here's to taking the last hour of the day and turning on some soft music, reading a book, and allowing our minds to come to a stop before trying to sleep. Here's to being in our own minds every once in awhile instead of allowing the world to dictate to us what we will spend our time thinking about.

Here's to rest. To celebrating it, cherishing it, and prioritizing it. How might life be different if we actually decided to take it easy from time to time?

Success & its Anticedents OR Why "Successful People" Don't Post Inspirational Memes

2015-08-13T11:26:00.001-07:00

Last night, the boys of Modern Suspects and myself had a quick laugh over this meme:

This morning, I woke up thinking about it. Not just laughing about it anymore, but thinking about it. So, here we are.

Now, on the most basic level, I get it. This is supposed to be funny in a cynical, "I'm cooler than inspirational memes" kind of way. It's supposed to imply a wink and a smile at the notion of being tapped into what's really going on: namely, that successful people don't post inspirational memes because they don't need them, and that the people who do actually take the time to share these kinds of ideas are those with some sort of desperate need to believe that they're not missing the boat or that life isn't passing them by.

But here's the deal.

I couldn't help but think this morning that if the idea that "successful people" have no time for inspiration or encouragement or philosophy happens to be true, then that fact says a lot more about "successful people" than it does about anyone else.

Consider the following points:

1. Success is not greatness. Every great philosophy, religion, worldview, & moral system known to man warns people of the dangers of success, the pitfalls of making money the goal of your life, and the importance of others over and above one's own achievements. We have all heard since we were old enough to listen that money does not equal happiness and that success creates as many problems as it solves. We can all think of dozens and dozens of examples of things that are juvenile, boring, poorly-made, and generally terrible that have become massively, wildly, & inexplicably successful. Something - a movie, a book series, a musical artist, what have you - generating a lot of money in the marketplace does not mean that that thing is in any way artistically viable or great. We can all recall stories of people who made millions of dollars and sat at the top of the heap who were infamous for being braggarts, jerks, divas, or in any number of ways despicable people. Making a lot of money in no way means that you are a good, great, or even decent person. No matter how hard we may fight the idea, we simply cannot get away from the truth that "success" is in no way an undeniable indicator of goodness - moral, artistic, commercial, or personal. Things that are successful are not necessarily things to be admired and people that are successful are not necessarily people to be imitated. We all need to check our tendency to conflate successful things with good things.

2. Success is driven more by exterior circumstances than by personal strength. I recently heard an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he was recalling his rise to fame. He spoke about his bodybuilding career and his beginning in movies and how he was able to use people's negativity to fuel him toward success. Along the way, he recalled an instance when James Cameron (who wrote & directed The Terminator and T2: Judgement Day, some of history's all-time biggest & best action flicks) was quoted as saying, "When it came time to do Terminator, if Arnold didn't exist, we would have had to build him." The point was, simply, that Schwarzenegger was born to play that role and was integral to both the film's and the character's massive success. As history has shown, he was the right guy at the right place at the right time. But, think about that for a moment. There was no way Schwarzenegger could've known that he was going to be the right guy at that precisely right place at that precisely right time. How could he have even known of the existence of James Cameron, let alone that Cameron had written The Terminator script? How could he have made sure that the film would get green-lit by a studio? How could he have known that audiences would receive it with such enthusiasm? How could he be sure that Cameron, even with his great idea, would be the kind of filmmaker that could even pull off making the movie in a way that would make sense and serve to launch him into the stratosphere of movie stardom? The point is simply this: with all of his hard work, preparation and dedication, there was still no way Arnold Schwarzenegger could ever have known that the planets would align at just the right time and in just the right way for things to work out for him the way that they did. And, given all of that, there was certainly no way he could have caused any of it to occur. Other things over which he had absolutely no control - people, circumstances, ideas, cultural trends, etc. - had to be just the way they were for him to reap those incredible benefits. Bottom line: there are truisms about the keys to success & patterns by which we can structure our lives to move us in a successful direction. I mentioned a few before, things likes dedication, perseverance, hard work, & resilience. But those things do not magically force success to happen. Plenty of hard working people never end up as successful as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Plenty of dedicated people never reach the heights of riches & fame. Plenty of talented people are never afforded the same opportunities as their less-talented, less-driven, and less-capable counterparts. The hard but simple truth is that there is no equation to life - there is no formula that guarantees anything, never mind massive success. And, when we do find examples of hugely successful people, what we find happens to do more with the things over which they had no control. The idea that we make our own luck or create our own success is simply and demonstrably not true.

3. Be careful how you define "success". The meme tells us that successful people don't post inspirational memes. But just what is a "successful" person? Who defines that? I believe the joke is supposed to reside in the idea that success here happens to be of the financial sort: they've hit it big through their job, through business or some other kind of commercial enterprise. But is that kind of success a truly apt definition of the idea? As we've mentioned before, not all commercially or financially successful people are worth admiring or imitating. But, in addition to that, many of the things that lead people to that kind of success are precisely the kids of things that cause them to be unsuccessful in other arenas of life. There are certain kinds of jobs that offer financial rewards through avenues of workaholism and the ignoring of one's family & friends. There are certain jobs that promise success through dedication to one's body or athleticism or skill or talent with no regard for the soul, mind, or internal life. There are certain roads to success that lead through deceit, cheating, or stepping on others to get ahead. If financial success is the greatest definition of the term, what does that mean for all of these examples? Is "success" worth being successful if it means lying to people, taking advantage of them, or sabotaging one's own spiritual growth in order to achieve it? We may joke about how "successful" people don't bother taking the time to share encouraging insight, deep thought, or philosophical truth with others via their social media platforms because they're too busy networking, crunching numbers, or getting work done, but what might those people be losing if they've shut off the part of themselves that seeks out those deeper things? Is a "successful" person truly successful if he's become a terrible spouse, an absent parent, or a philosophical moron along the way?

~ ~ ~

Look, the point of it all goes something like this: maybe our assumption that the ultimate goal of our lives should be financial/commercial/marketplace success is a bit skewed. Don't get me wrong: I want a successful career. I really do want to be able to support my family and enjoy some of the choicer things in life through music and perhaps, one day, writing. But I don't want to sacrifice the more human, spiritual, and beautiful parts of my life in order to achieve it. I don't want to pretend that truth doesn't matter or that encouraging other people in their own journeys along the way isn't a good use of my time. Perhaps there's value in struggle. Perhaps there's real, tangible value in not being successful. Perhaps there are things that "successful people" are missing out on precisely because they've become successful - perhaps their journey toward success has blinded them to some very beautiful & true realities. Perhaps the assumption that "success" necessarily means a person has it all together is as errant & wrong as the notion that success magically creates a wonderfully perfect world full of nothing but happiness and sunshine and rainbows.

In my own career, out of all the things a person could theoretically fire me for, I have never once been booted off a gig or out of a band for being encouraging. I have never once been replaced for thinking deeply or for wanting to share beauty with people. I have, however, been fired multiple times over money - for having the audacity to ask for what I had previously been promised. What does that tell you?

So, instead of laughing at people that post inspirational quotes & memes, perhaps we should be more concerned about the people patting themselves on the back for not doing so. Perhaps we should wonder about all of the things they're missing out on if they indeed have traded "success" for all of those precious truths & ideas that lead to spiritual and personal growth. Perhaps we should stop elevating money to the highest platform on the dais of success & begin to realize that there is more to life than making it, and that making it has more to do with things we can't control than the things we can. Perhaps one's ability to recognize the beauty in a sunset, a true & timeless quote, or the embrace of struggle is, in and of itself, a sign of true success.

So, lastly, here's a quote meme that has meant a lot to me lately and, I hope, strikes a note of encouragement for you today:

The Summer of Sound (Part I)

2015-07-22T15:58:00.001-07:00

Summer 2015: the season that is.

In between the sometimes-gratifying, too-often-frustrating DIY home projects my wife and I have been getting ourselves into, the family wedding that now stands at less than a week away, and the numerable one-off gigs I've been able to be a part of, I've found myself neck deep in work with both Modern Suspects and Hillary Hand. As I've written about already, the Suspects have been crushing the summer festival scene here in Colorado, and we're not even close to finished with it yet. Hillary has put together a new band since releasing the EP we've been working on for the past few months, and I'm thrilled to report that our sound going forward - like the record itself - is definitely something of which people are going to want to take note. The work this season has been great. Busy and hectic, yes, but great. I am fortunate beyond words to get to work with the musicians I do.

But in addition to all of that stuff I've been doing myself, there's another aspect to this summer that can't go unmentioned (read: 'unblogged'). Summer is concert season, after all. And, given the number of performances I've been able to absorb lately, 2015 might just take its place as the single best year of live performances I've ever experienced.

Zac Brown Band @ Coors Field

My wife and I began our summer hijinks by attending the first-ever live music performance in the history of Denver's Coors Field (recognized more widely, of course, for being the home field of the Colorado Rockies). Now, granted, my wife didn't exactly know we were going to this show: I used it as an opportunity to surprise her for her birthday (which was a few days afterward). The Zac Brown Band brought its own unique and spectacular brand of country music to town that night, and given both the event's historical significance as well as it's taking place during Independence Day Weekend, the band delivered...

...and delivered seriously.

To put it mildly, these cats can play, and they've used the past few years to carve out an altogether unique identity for themselves in the midst of a genre that continues to grow ever more rote & generic. ZBB shows are packed with musicality, genuine patriotism, and an ever-so-unexpected set of cover tunes that all meet up to create a fast-paced and energetic roller coaster of a performance. It's hard to imagine that many other contemporary bands come close to this level of showmanship.

Rush lights up the audience @ Pepsi Center

A handful of days later saw Rush's R40 tour grace the Pepsi Center. In what is probably going to be the trio's final performance in Denver (as Neil Peart is starting to show symptoms of arthritis in his hands and elbows), the band delivered a true retrospective: beginning their show with selections from their most recent Clockwork Angels release and proceeding systematically backwards through their 40-year career, all the way to a final encore featuring the song Working Man, the band's first-ever single. As the show progressed backwards in time, the music, the stage setup, the instruments, and even the lights progressed with them: the songs from the '80s featured laser lighting, those from the '70s dry ice snaking across the stage. Even Peart's drum kit got a facelift during the intermission, and the second half showcased the legend on a set built to look like the one he played on records like Moving Pictures and Permanent Waves.

The Rush show served as a celebration of a four-decades-long career that has seen one of the most unique and masterful bands in rock 'n' roll not only survive, but thrive, despite their rejection by popular radio and print media. Rush has proved for more years than I've been alive that great music has staying power because people really do want to hear it. There are those who, despite the entrapment and allurements of mediocre & redundant pop culture, still want to be blown away by the music they choose to listen to.

And, to wrap up the first half of our summer concert series, my wife and I took in another performance by the great Bruce Hornsby at Denver' Botanic Gardens. The setting for shows like this is about as informal as it gets, with concertgoers situated all around the stage on a small amphitheater-style lawn. There are no significant stage elements to speak of (in terms of lights or pyrotechnics or what have you), so the music truly becomes the star of the show. And there are few artists more suited to headline such a show than Bruce Hornsby.

Hornsby's sets are notoriously casual & jazzy, with the man himself calling out tunes to the band as they go, signaling for solos and endings, and doing his best to put on a 100% unique performance each and every night. There are no set lists or predetermined arrangements, so whatever the audience is getting, they can rest assured it's a show like no other. The informal setting of the Botanic Gardens fit Hornsby's performance style perfectly, and, as always, he showcased his magnificent songwriting, virtuosic playing, and almost infinitely broad sense of musical appreciation in a way that leads one to think he might still be in his artistic prime.

Bruce Hornsby's stage @ Denver Botanic Gardens

It's a huge breath of fresh air for me to partake of performances like these. They serve not only as awe-inspiring experiences in and of themselves, but also as reminders that all is not lost when it comes to the condition of music in the 21st century (from either the standpoint of a musician or fan). To try a metaphor: in a world seemingly obsessed with novels written for 15-year-olds, it's good to know that we still have the work of Neil Gaiman, Dennis Lehane, and Cormac McCarthy to read, appreciate, and celebrate.

It's good to see marvelous music still doing well amidst what seems like an overwhelming onslaught of petty & disingenuous pap. It's good to know that real musicians are still out there getting it done. It's good to know that there are other people still interested in hearing the best they can get their ears on.

So the summer of sound continues. There are more shows to play and more shows to attend coming up next month, and then...

....well, then, I'll be on a tour of my own.

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, shall we?

~

Hillary Hand - 'In My Head'

2015-07-01T10:19:00.001-07:00

The day has finally come.

Hillary Hand's new EP In My Head is available on iTunes.

This has been one of the coolest projects I've ever been a part of, and I couldn't be more excited that it's finally available.

Now, I could write all about how original and unique Hillary is at an artist (because she is), how amazing the studio experience was (Nate Jones is a magnificent producer & guitarist), or how cool it is to be drumming on a record with the incomparable Matt Bissonette on bass (it's pretty cool).

I could write about all of that.

But I would rather that you all just listen to the songs and dig on Hillary's music soul & all of the stuff the rest of us came up with to support it.

I hope you dig it. I hope you enjoy listening to it half as much as we enjoyed making it.

Happy listening!

~