Music Depreciation

2000-12 - Lost Songs of The Franklin Mint

2009-01-26T22:19:00.000-05:00

In case you missed it, Guns n' Roses just released a new album. Sort of. It's not the Guns n' Roses most people remember -- every member of the classic lineup is gone except lead singer Axl Rose -- and it's no Appetite for Destruction (or even Use Your Illusions II). Still, it's a superlative work: it took over 15 years to record, quite possibly the most time ever devoted to one album. And it wasn't 14 years on the beach and 1 year of sweat, either. Axl has really been working on it steadily since 1994.

So, when you consider it in that context, my former band The Franklin Mint is actually rather efficient. We just released our latest (and first and presumably only) album, and it only took about 8 years. We weren't exactly working on it the whole time -- I probably have about 3 hours invested in it myself -- but it's a monument all the same.

Like the new Guns n' Roses album (inexplicably titled Chinese Democracy, by the way), the new, self-titled Franklin Mint album had been the subject of rumors for years. The first press whispers about the Gn'R album were around 1996, while a 2002 Portland Phoenix article hinted that The Mint would have their album out soon. (OK, so what if three former band members worked for that paper at the time, and one of them wrote the article. It's still good press.)

However, while Guns managed to hold on to one original member, the Franklin Mint is no more. The band was breaking up (amicably) around the time of the recording in 2000. I had actually quit a few months earlier because all that rock and roll was cutting into my hiking time. But we had saved a bit of money from live shows and figured we'd use it to capture the magic before it slipped into history.

Here's a sample of the proceedings, a lilting tune called "Scorpio" (I'm playing the high guitar part that enters around 17 seconds in):

(If you're reading this post via e-mail, check it out on the web to hear the clip.)

I actually only play on about half of the album. Since I'd already left the group, I was back more as a guest performer, contributing guitar bits here and there. The final disc also includes a couple live songs from a show we played on May 13, 2000, when I was still a regular in the band, so I play more on those. (In keeping with the Guns n' Roses analogy, maybe that makes me the Mint version of Buckethead, the enigmatic shredder who played with Axl from 2000 to 2004 and contributed some parts on Chinese Democracy.)

We recorded most of the album live on stage at The Skinny, a porn-theater-turned-rock-club-turned-vacant-building-turned-different-rock-club. It wasn't a live show with an audience and all, just us on stage in an empty club one afternoon with a bunch of microphones. After we recorded the basic backing tracks, there were some later overdubs, then guitarist/singer Josh put the tapes in his closet and we forgot all about it.

Until last week, when a nondescript envelope from Josh appeared in my mailbox with a finished recording. The final tracklist:

Temp. Sort of the first single from the album, since Josh uploaded it to iLike a while back.
Whoah! I don't play on this one, as they wrote it after I'd left the band. Nice song, though.
Founder's Day. I added a mutated "Layla"-like piano bit on the end of this one, but the piano was so far out of tune, it didn't really work. Just kept a few seconds of it in the fade-out.
Go West. Possibly my favorite Mint song. It has modulations and tempo changes. Very fancy.
Darkest Hour/Spur. A medley of two tunes, one about Eric Clapton and another about Paterson, New Jersey. Some of my favorite Mint guitar noodles. (I have a live clip of "Spur" in a previous post, if you're interested.)
Pat's Song. Another song I don't know, from the latter days after I'd already quit the band.
Scorpio. I played a high, shimmering guitar bit on this one. I was trying to rip off Johnny Marr of The Smiths.
Sedan Delivery (live). The Franklin Mint played this Neil Young cover at every live show they ever did.
I Could Tell You (live). The only song on the album where I sing. Features amiable lines like, "If I could make just one suggestion, don't ask so many questions," which is at least nicer than the part where Josh sings about putting a body in the trunk of his car.
Tropic of Cancer (live). Josh always described this song as having a "porn movie" beat. Fitting, I guess, since we recorded it at a club that was once a porn theater.

I don't record much these days, so it was neat to hear me playing something "new" on CD. Who knows, maybe it will inspire me to record again. I think in another 8 years, I might have something ready. About on pace for someone who only updates his blog once a month.

1990-05-10 - My first (and last) publicly performed classical composition

2008-11-12T22:23:00.005-05:00

A couple times in this blog, I've noted that listening to gig recordings from years ago is like looking at photos in your high school yearbook. In this post, I take that analogy a whole lot further.

If that guy in back with the guitar had a goatee, he'd look a bit like me

When I was a senior in high school, Ms. Meyers, the school music teacher, cornered me and asked if I'd be willing to take band class. Other than a brief and not so fondly remembered stint playing trumpet in 5th grade, I had no school band experience and wasn't looking to change that. Ms. Meyers persisted, however, because she'd heard that I played guitar, and she really wanted someone to play guitar in the pep band at football games.

I relented, and it went well at first. I found playing football games quite fun--a bit surprising, since I don't care much for football otherwise. After the season ended, though, things changed. We switched to concert repertoire: no more guitar parts. I spent the winter playing miscellaneous percussion--bass drum, crash cymbals, timpani--and I didn't like it one bit.

Desperate to escape the percussion section, I asked Ms. Meyers if I could write something instead. She said sure, and I spent the next couple months of class time composing a short, pseudo-classical, four-movement work with the shockingly stupid title of "Big Babushkas." (Keep in mind that I was 17. Tacky double entendres meant more to me in those days.)

I scored out one movement, a brisk march, for the whole school band, and we performed it in our Spring concert. I even conducted, using a cheap baton I bought in East Berlin shortly after they opened the Berlin Wall. Looking back now, the writing seems a bit, er, simple, but I think the performance sure sounded good for a little high school band:

If I could change just one thing, I would have notated it in 4/4 time instead of 2/4. It may seem like a minor point, since it would have sounded the same, but it would have looked better. I didn't (and still don't) know much about conducting, but when you only have two beats to count, the conducting pattern is basically a lot of up and down. Presumably, you're supposed to put a bit of style and grace into that, but I mostly focused on the up and down part. Judging from the videotape, I flapped about like a twitchy, flightless, acid-washed-jeans-and-skinny-tie-wearing albatross.

You don't need the whole video. Those two pictures really sum it up.

A final highlight from the video occurs after song is over, when Ms. Meyers tells the audience how I composed and printed my score. We used the latest technology, she explains: a brand new Macintosh Plus computer (the first time I used a computer mouse) and some big, cutting-edge, high-tech gadget called a LaserJet printer. Wow, those were the days.
.

2008-10-30 - Lost Songs of George Harrison

2008-10-30T23:43:00.003-04:00

Pop quiz: Which member of The Beatles had the highest-selling solo album? Who was the first to have a solo #1 album? Who was the last to have a #1 album? First to have a #1 single? Last to have a #1 single?

If you guessed Lennon or McCartney, you probably didn't read the title of this blog post. All of these feats were accomplished by the the so-called "quiet" Beatle, George Harrison, the focus of my second Beatles-themed "Lost Songs" performance.

For background listening, here's a sample recording from the show. The audio quality isn't great (had some microphone problems), but the performance is OK. The song is called "Run So Far," and it's from Harrison's final album, which was released posthumously in 2002:

It isn't hard to find obscure, forgotten, and/or lesser-known songs in the Harrison canon. Other than a couple well-known songs -- like that first Beatle solo #1 ("My Sweet Lord") and the last ("Got My Mind Set on You") -- his music is far less familiar than that of Lennon and McCartney.

Given the abundant options, here's how I narrowed it down:

I needed songs spread across his whole career, from the Beatle days right up to his last album.
For a change, I decided to arrange the set chronologically. The idea was to make it more of a cohesive narrative, showing how Harrison evolved as a writer and how his influences changed, and the songs needed to reflect that.
In hopes of carrying less gear, I opted to do the whole show on piano -- rather than 50/50 guitar/piano, like I often do -- so I had to pick things that would fit that instrument. (An ironic challenge: of all The Beatles, Harrison played piano the least...)

Here's the set list I ended up with:

I Want To Tell You (1966). Though he had written a couple of nondescript songs before, Harrison really started to shine on The Beatles album Revolver. He actually had three songs on the album, whereas he had never had more than one before.
The Inner Light (1968). I think this is the best of the Indian raga-influenced songs Harrison was into at the time. The other Beatles liked it so much that it made the B-side of "Lady Madonna," the first time a Harrison original was on a Beatles single. The lyrics are borrowed from the Tao Te Ching.
Old Brown Shoe (1969). Harrison once described this as the only song he ever wrote on the piano. It was the second Harrison song to appear on a single, this time as the B-side of "The Ballad of John and Yoko."
I Me Mine (1970). This Let It Be track was the last song that song that The Beatles recorded together before breaking up. Well, three Beatles -- John wasn't there.
All Things Must Pass (1970). The title track to Harrison's first solo album (the best-selling and first #1 by a solo Beatle) was originally written for and rehearsed by The Beatles. It didn't make the cut for the Let It Be album, reputedly because Lennon found it boring. My piano arrangement made it sound almost like a gospel tune. Since its title refers to the Buddha's final words, let's call it Buddhist gospel music.
The Light that Has Lighted the World (1973). In every set, it seems there's one song that I almost didn't do. Part of me wanted to cut this plodding, Hare Krishna-fueled ballad, but it's so representative of Harrison's work at the time, I just had to keep it. The melody is uncharacteristically monotonous, and I theorize that it was meant to sound like a religious chant.
This Guitar Can't Keep from Crying (1975). One way that Harrison stayed connected with his Beatle past was to write sequels to Beatles songs. He followed this song with "Here Comes the Moon" a few years later.
Not Guilty (1979). Another way Harrison held onto the Beatle years (or possibly just mined them when he was low on ideas) was to finish off unreleased Beatles songs. This one was originally recorded for the White Album in 1968, but even after the group recorded over 100 takes, none were deemed worthy of release. Harrison recycled another White Album reject, a song called "Circles," on a 1982 album.
Blood from a Clone (1981). Not one of Harrison's better songs, but it has the best back story. He delivered an album to his record company, and they rejected it as "not commercial enough." They ordered him to replace a few songs with better ones, and he responded by writing this scathing assessment of the music business (and his record company by implication) -- and the record company accepted it as one of the replacement songs.
I Don't Want to Do It (1985). After years of disheartening relations with record companies, critics, and fans, Harrison went into a period of semi-retirement. He only released a few songs in the mid-80's, and all were on movie soundtracks. This simple, nostalgic tune was from the movie Porky's II (which, if you haven't seen it, was nowhere near as good as Porky's I).
When We Was Fab (1987). As the title implies, this was an ode to the Beatle years, complete with Ringo on drums. The song references Beatles sounds, especially bits of "I Am the Walrus," and ends with a psychedelic sitar bit. It was on the first Beatle-related album I ever owned, Cloud Nine, which was also the last #1 album by a solo Beatle. (And will likely remain so, unless Paul or Ringo do something unexpected...)
Run So Far (2002). Too bad Harrison's final album Brainwashed didn't get more attention. It was pretty good. I like several songs, but this is the only one I thought I could play well enough. Though the lyrics fit Harrison's later years -- he sings, "There's no escape, can only run so far" as he's dying of cancer -- he actually wrote it years earlier, and his buddy Eric Clapton recorded it on an album in 1989.

The third and final installment of my Beatles series, Lost Songs of Paul McCartney, is scheduled for Dec. 4th. And it will probably happen, but for the record, I'm itching to get this series over and play some more jazz instead.
.

2008-09-25 - Lost Songs of John Lennon

2008-09-26T22:45:00.003-04:00

Though I've been into The Beatles about as long as I've been performing live - wow, 20 years already? - I've never actually played a Beatles-themed show. In fact, I tend to avoid playing Beatles songs live at all. They're familiar to audiences in ways that other songs aren't, and I'm not really into playing what audiences are familiar with.

But one day not long ago, probably while writing a related blog post, I got thinking about those good old days in 2006 when I put together my Lost Songs series. The idea of that series was to perform songs that I like but most others wouldn't know, in hopes of sharing something new (well, old but new to them) and deflecting the silly notion that musicians should only cater to what audiences already know.

That series worked well, so why not try it with The Beatles? Granted, their songs are better known than most, but I figured I could pick enough rarities to make it interesting. As I started brainstorming a set list, I quickly realized one show wouldn't cut it, and the idea evolved into a three-show series: one each for Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison. (Sorry, Ringo...)

The first installment, the Lost Songs of John Lennon, took place a few days ago before a crowd of 60-70 people, many of them rather Beatle-literate, as it turned out. I played a dozen songs, the first half on guitar and the second half on piano, with plenty of rambling trivia and backstory between songs.

Here's a sample from the recording, a version of an early solo Lennon song called "Hold On":

Here's the complete set list:

Good Morning Good Morning. I figured I'd lure people in with a couple Beatle tunes before I hit the more rare stuff. First, one of the least known songs from one of their best known albums, Sgt. Pepper. The song was inspired by a Corn Flakes jingle, and Lennon later called it the worst song he ever wrote.
Dig a Pony. Lennon also didn't speak highly of this 1969 song, which has lyrics so random it makes "I am the Walrus" seem almost lucid. I almost replaced this song with "Don't Let Me Down" at the last moment, but I thought too many people would know that one.
Hold On. I really wanted to do something from his first solo album, Plastic Ono Band, but those songs are so personal, so idiosyncratically Lennon that it was hard to find one that worked. I picked the only one I thought I had a chance with, and it did go OK live.
I'm Losing You. From his first solo album, I jumped to his last, Double Fantasy. Many of his most enduring solo songs are on there, so I tried to pick the least known.
She Said She Said. Again, a Beatles song that some people probably knew. It was a guilty pleasure for me, a fun rocker that I really wanted to play, from my favorite Beatles album, Revolver.
Gimme Some Truth. Originally written for and rehearsed with The Beatles, this political tirade wasn't released until Lennon's popular 1971 solo album Imagine. A great song in an election year, featuring the lyric, "I've had enough of reading things by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians."

Hey Bulldog. I started the piano half of the show with this early 1968 tune, which Lennon threw together one day in the studio. One of the Abbey Road recording engineers remembers this session as the last time The Beatles were all happy performing together.
Mucho Mungo. Next, a real rarity. Lennon wrote this song for his friend and drinking buddy, singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson, and Nilsson recorded it for his Lennon-produced 1974 album Pussycats. The only Lennon version of it is a 1976 home demo, which includes background cooing and babbling from his then baby son Sean.
Steel and Glass. Over the intro to this acerbic 1974 tune, Lennon whispers, "This here is a story about your friend and mine. Who is it? Who is it?" For years I figured it was about Paul McCartney, since they did some bitter sparring in the post-Beatle years. Then, I figured maybe it was about Yoko, since she and John were separated when he wrote it. But now I'm pretty sure that he's singing about himself.
Cry for a Shadow. Another rarity, the only (I think) song attributed to the team of Lennon and Harrison. It's also one of very few instrumentals that The Beatles recorded, though few people heard it at the time, as it was released in 1961, a couple years before they became famous.
Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out. Critics generally pan Lennon's middle solo album Walls and Bridges, but it's one of my favorites. It's a loose, rocking party album - Lennon was separated from his wife and living it up in LA at the time - but it's tempered with sincere ballads like this.
Dear John. Probably the most obscure song of the show, this one only exists as an incomplete demo home recording from 1980. I forgot to mention it at the show, but I put this song last because it's the last song he wrote before he died.

Next up, Lost Songs of George Harrison on Oct. 30th, followed by Lost Songs of Paul McCartney on Dec. 4.

1992-08 - A taste of Raw Fish

2008-09-02T23:25:00.014-04:00

To tell the story of this next gig, and to explain why I have a Japanese version of my name, I need to tell you about my "bohemian period." For a year or so, I had no particular home. I was an itinerant, aspiring musician, sleeping on the couches of friends, relatives, and strangers I met at shows, with some long stretches staying in my grandparents' barn (unbeknowst to them) and an occasional night out in a city park.

From time to time, I'd rent what we bohemians called an "artist space," a bare 10x10 room in an old, near-derelict warehouse downtown. These spaces weren't zoned for housing, and the landlord made it clear that you could only rent them as painting studios or whatever, but of course most folks who rented them did live there. I think I paid $70/month, at a time when the cheapest apartments in town went for $300.

In the middle of this bohemian period, I saw a newspaper ad offering free room and board to people willing to play host for Japanese exchange students living in one of the University of Southern Maine dorms. (Each of them was to be paired up with an American roommate, in hopes that we would teach each other how to swear more effectively in a foreign language.) Figuring that free was less than $70, I signed up.

The first day I moved into the dorm, I met Paul, one of the other Americans, who just happened to play drums. He introduced me to his Japanese roommate, a very long-haired fellow named Yoshi, who played guitar. Then we met Sho, who played keyboards, and a bass player whose name was (I think) Tetsuya, though everyone (Japanese included) called him George. It was quite a coincidence -- out of just 30 people, we had exactly the right players to start a 5-piece band -- so we took advantage and started jamming.

And just what do you call a band full of Japanese exchange students? Raw Fish, of course.

Raw Fish in action at Spring Point Cafe
(left-right: Sho, George, Paul, me, Yoshi)

I played guitar on a couple songs and bass on another, but mostly I was just the singer. To enhance my Japanese street cred, Sho even gave me a good Japanese name, Ohdono Tomio. The Kanji characters mean specific things -- I can't remember exactly what, but something ironic for a homeless musician, like "big rich king."

The Japanese were only in town for a month, but we managed to play two shows, a farewell party in a conference room at Southern Maine Community College on the last night of the exchange (2008-08-19), and a long open mic set at the nearby Spring Point Cafe the night before that.

Not sure why I'm playing dead, and, yes,
that is a pool ball in George's mouth

Here's the set list for the farewell party, and the open mic set was the same or similar:

Hard to Handle. Originally by Otis Redding, but better known for The Black Crowes' early 90's remake, which we copied as closely as we could.
Take Me Back. The first of two originals, it had a cool mock military snare bit in the intro, and a catchy (yet basically meaningless) refrain, "Take me back, take me back to the promised land."
So Many Times. Our other original, probably not the better of the two. I couldn't even sing it well, which is always a bad sign for a song that you wrote yourself.
Desire. This is a cover, though I don't know anything about the original, since it's in Japanese. It's a pretty ballad, one of the first I played that had complex (beyond major/minor triad, at least) chords. I didn't sing this one (Sho did), but I later learned the lyrics phonetically, and I have sung it live since then.
Walk This Way. Can't go wrong with a bit of Aerosmith, except with me singing. I sang it with approximately 10% of Steven Tyler's chutzpah.
Blues Jam. The name says it all: 12 bars of standard changes with a lot of solos on top. I played bass, and the solos were all Yoshi, who is a much, much better guitar player than I am.
Tequila. For our grand finale, we did a very long version of this mostly instrumental classic. I brought the mic out into the crowd and had various audience members shout "tequila" at the appropriate moment. At the end, we segued back into a quick reprise of our original "Take Me Back," with the lyrics changed to "Take me back to Tokyo, Japan." I distinctly (and very proudly) remember looking into the crowd and seeing people sing the words to the song. It was rather catchy, now that I think about it.

The Japanese students all flew home the next day, and Raw Fish was no more. Yoshi came back to spend the next year at USM, and we started a new band, the immortal (at least on this blog) Jump Cat Jump. Then I spent the summer of 1996 in Tokyo hanging out with Yoshi and Sho, both of whom now work in the music business. (Sho actually wrote some of the songs for the video game Dance Dance Revolution, and another of his songs was a #1 hit in Japan a couple years back.) I talk to Paul once in a while -- he was headed off to grad school last I knew. And as for George, well, I suppose he's still out there somewhere, playing bass and eating pool balls.

2008-08-16+17 - A long hike that had nothing to do with music

2008-08-23T00:05:00.002-04:00

Just to clarify, this is still a music blog. But this post has nothing to do with music. I haven't been performing lately, and I'm too busy with summer recreation to think much about past gigs, so this post will be a diversion. A 25-mile diversion through some of the most remote terrain in New Hampshire, to be precise.

The Bondcliff was, until last weekend, a mythical spot on map, surrounded by the deepest, darkest forests of the Pemigewasset Wilderness. It is the point in the vast White Mountains National Forest that is furthest from a road, and the view from the top is 360 degrees of trees and mountains with no sign of civilization, other than the slopes of a small, distant ski area.

The Bondcliff and the view. The pictures don't do it justice.

After eyeing that dot on the map for about ten years, I finally planned a trip there last weekend with my friend, pack mule, and former employee, Luke. We hit the trail at 10am on Saturday and finished about 5pm Sunday, hiking 7-8 hours each day (OK, we took a lot of breaks...) for a total of 25 miles.

Instead of some boring map, how about 3-D view from Google Earth?
(Click for a bigger version)

Here's a quick summary of the hike, with numbers corresponding to the locations in the Google Earth view above:

Left Zealand Trail parking lot around 10am Saturday. There were lots of cars, but most of the hikers were only going the 3 miles to Zealand Hut.
Reached Thoreau Falls, which is oddly named, since Thoreau probably never went there. He did hike Mt. Washington in 1839 and 1858, but his likely routes didn't pass these falls.
Much of the first day's hike was along old logging railroad beds. The trains stopped running around the 1930's and the tracks are gone, but the wooden ties are still visible (and tricky to hike over). We also saw remnants of old logging camps: a rusty water bucket, an overgrown stone loading dock, a piece of cast iron that looked like a stove leg.
As the trail turned up toward the Bondcliff, we passed the decrepit remains of the last logging railroad trestle in the White Mountains. Post-hike research suggests it was built some time between 1903 and 1917.
After a 14-mile day, we camped partway up the Bondcliff Trail. The problem is, the further you go up a mountain, the fewer flat, open camping spots you find. The trees get closer together, to the point where you can't even walk through them. We took the best we could get: an uneven, lumpy spot a couple hundred feet from the trail and slightly smaller than the size of our tent.
After a morning hour of hiking and then scrambling up a last ten-foot high ledge, we emerged on the Bondcliff summit around 9:30am. The view is as if you're flying over a sea of trees and mountains that extends as far as you can see. There's one ridge with another behind it, another behind that, and so on, each one a slightly lighter shade of blue-green eventually fading into the hazy horizon sky. It seemed particularly expansive since we'd spent the previous 24 hours in the dark woods below.
We lingered at the Bondcliff for a while, then climbed to the highest point of the trip, the summit of Mt. Bond. We could see Mt. Washington from there, at least the part that wasn't in the clouds as usual.
For the next several miles, the hike alternated between exposed ridge and thick, mossy woods. As we neared the Zeacliff, the last point on the ridge before the descent, we noticed a couple birds watching us. When we recognized them as gray jays, we knew what they wanted: food. I've seen them on high mountains before, and they follow you down the trail until you give them food. It's easy to get them to eat from your hand -- they don't seem picky or skittish, so long they're getting food.

Gray jays: spreading the bird flu, one hiker at a time.

After the birds, it was all downhill. We stopped to dip our heads in the Zealand River and chat with strangers at the Zealand Hut, then marched on, returning to the car a little before 5pm on Sunday.

If you want to see more of the views, I posted additional pictures on Facebook.

2006-11-09 - Lost Songs of the 1960's

2008-08-06T23:01:00.004-04:00

When I was in college, I worked as a radio DJ. After paying my dues (and earning my FCC operator's license) at my alma mater's great campus/community station, I hit the real world of commercial radio at a 50,000-watt station called WTHT.

Though they later switched to mainstream country, they were an oldies station when I started working there. At first, it was great. The bulk of the playlist was 60's to mid-70's, and I like most music from that era. I already knew and liked most of the bands (The Kinks, The Animals, The Who), and I discovered some new ones as well (Gerry and The Pacemakers, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Dave Clark Five).

But after a few weeks, it got, well... old. It wasn't because most of the music predated me, it was because the station played the same songs again and again. Just about every night, we played "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" and the ubiquitous 'Brown-Eyed Girl." (By the way, just to clarify: I didn't get to pick the songs. Commercial radio DJ's are generally given a predetermined playlist, particularly at a station like WTHT, which was part of a corporate chain of stations nationwide, each playing exactly the same songs at exactly the same time.)

That's the problem with radio. They rely on a small pool of "common denominator" songs known by most people. It's especially sad for oldies or classic rock stations, which take 20 or 30 years of music and condense it into a playlist of 300 songs. Good business, I guess, but boring to listen to.

My distaste for such things inspired one of my favorite performance ideas, my "Lost Songs" series, where I played a carefully chosen variety of lesser-know, forgotten, and/or obscure tunes from a particular decade. The third installement of the series, the one most directly inspired by my late night shifts at WTHT, focused on the 1960's.

The set list for the show:

She Says Good Morning (The Pretty Things). A track from the very first rock opera, The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow, which came out a year before the first popular rock opera, The Who's Tommy. In other trivia, S.F. Sorrow was recorded at EMI Abbey Road Studios at the same time The Beatles were there recording Sgt. Pepper.
Care of Cell 44 (The Zombies). The opening track from the marvelous album Odyssey and Oracle, which was also recorded at Abbey Road in the Sgt. Pepper days. Incidentally, Pink Floyd was there then, too, recording their debut album. How many rooms are in that studio?
Time Has Told Me (Nick Drake). I don't know much about introspective folky singer-songwriter Nick Drake, other than he died young. Heath Ledger and Elliot Smith were both reportedly fascinated by him, so maybe I'm better off not knowing more.
Papa Gene's Blues (The Monkees). Sneer if you like, but The Monkees are one of the most maligned bands in the history of rock music. Sure, they started as a canned, made-for-TV group that didn't play their own instruments. But that changed very quickly. Within months of forming, they had wrested artistic control from their masters and were performing and writing most of their songs. They even had some originals right from the beginning, like this early tune by the woefully underappreciated Mike Nesmith (i.e. the Monkee with the green hat).
Savoy Truffle (The Beatles). They may be the most famous band ever, but they still have lost songs. This nugget, hidden near the end of The White Album, was written by George Harrison about his friend Eric Clapton's insatiable sweet tooth.
Ferry Cross the Mersey (Gerry and The Pacemakers). A guilty pleasure for a "lost songs" show, since this was a hit and is still played on oldies radio. A few people in the crowd knew the song, and that was uncommon at the Lost Songs shows. It's an ode to the band 's hometown of Liverpool, but it applies to other hometowns as well.
Take Me Home (Johnny Cash). I've loved Johnny Cash since I was kid, so I had to do something by him. I picked this one because it's lesser known and it doesn't have that half-singing, half-talking style like a lot of his other songs. I really sound stupid when I try that bit.
No Fun (The Stooges). Despite the late 60's image as the happy hippie flower peace days, something nasty was bubbling under the surface, and that something was Iggy Pop and The Stooges. They were loud, rowdy, and nihilistic, and they had a huge influence on everything that followed. In particular, they virtually invented punk rock -- about 8 years before The Sex Pistols tried to pass it off as their own.
William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed (Phil Ochs). I'm really not the folksinger type, but there's something about Phil Ochs that I really like. This long-titled ballad is about the 1968 Democratic National Convention, but it's all wrapped up in metaphors and allusions, so you might not have known if I didn't tell you.
I Feel Much Better (Small Faces). Roughly analogous to The Who, though not as popular outside England, The Small Faces were one of many R&B-influenced British Invasion bands. But they had something the others didn't: relentlessly soulful singer/guitarist Steve Marriott, who quit The Small Faces to form the 70's hard-rock-meets-Ray-Charles group Humble Pie. The Small Faces replaced him with Rod Stewart.
Oedipus Rex (Tom Lehrer). OK, so this one if from the 1950's, but I didn't have enough material for a "Lost Songs of the 1950's" show. Pianist/satirist Tom Lehrer was like a 50's Weird Al Yankovich, writing songs with humorous lyrics and styles that parodied pop music of the day. This particular tune is a retelling of the famous Greek play, featuring couplets such as, "He loved his mother like no other /His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother."
Days (The Kinks). One of the best 60's songs by one of the best underrated 60's (and beyond) bands. This song is simple yet shimmering. If I were in the audience, I would have cried. 'Nuff said.

Favorite blog audio posts

2008-07-21T01:02:00.003-04:00

The problem with blogs is you have to keep adding new stuff, or it gets boring. But then when you post something you really like, it gets pushed down off the page and into obscurity once you've added a few more posts. Nasty cycle.

To keep some of those highlights alive, I'm starting this ongoing page of favorite audio clips from previous posts. It's now linked up on the side navigation as one of my check-this-out-if-you're-new-here pages, so new visitors can catch up on past tunes without having to do all that time-consuming searching and reading of old posts. (Each clip has a link back to the original post, though, so you can check it out if you want.)

First, a pair of recordings that I'm very proud of, from an April 2008 show called "Two Bits: Solo Jazz Piano Interpretations of Early 1980's Arcade Game Music." [original post] Each is an improvisation based on a different classic arcade game:

Donkey Kong

Dig Dug

Earlier on the same day, I also performed as part of a guitar/guitar rock duo. [original post] Here's a clip of me playing a song a friend wrote called "Terrified":

As part of that same duo, I played a January 2008 show [original post] that featured this rendition of Radiohead's tune "Optimistic":

Through most of 2007, I was playing piano in a jazz group called Excursus. We did original tunes, as well as jazzy versions of TV themes, video game music, and rock songs. Here we are playing the Nirvana song "Heart-Shaped Box" [original post]:

And here's an Excursus version of "In the Street," a song by Big Star that was used as the theme for TV's That 70's Show [original post]:

Finally, this clip of me and my wife singing a Slaid Cleaves tearjerker called "Don't Tell Me" is from a post about a 1997 open mic night [original post], though it was actually recorded at a 2002 performance:

Those are just some favorites. There are even more audio clips lying around in other posts, if you just can't get enough. And I'm sitting on hundreds of hours of archival recordings -- a thousand years worth of blog posts, at the rate I'm going -- so stick around.

2008-07-20 - Paul McCartney in Quebec City, me at home

2008-07-21T00:47:00.006-04:00

Paul McCartney's only North American appearance this year, a mammoth free outdoor concert in Quebec City that ended moments ago, was an incredible experience -- or at least I assume it was for the people who were there. Sure looks that way on YouTube:

"Got To Get You Into My Life"
The first video to hit YouTube from Paul McCartney's show in
Quebec City (and I was actually the first to see it on YouTube)

Despite my passionate rambling last week about how much I've always wanted to see a real live Beatle, I opted to skip Sir Paul's appearance. As the day got closer, it started sounding like a lot of work:

Ten hour round trip drive, much of it on dark, lonely, moose-infested back roads, and the second half of it in the middle of the night when I'd be half awake.
Several hours waiting in a very large crowd. Macca was scheduled to play at 9:15pm, and gates were to open at 5pm, but the lines started forming the day before. Pre-show estimates were 200,000+ people. The biggest concert crowd I've been in was around 60,000, and that was plenty. Not a fan of big crowds.
Might not have seen the show anyway. Only the first 70,000 people were in direct view of the stage, and the rest had to watch from big screens. Seemed like a crummy gamble to drive 10 hours, wait 10 hours, and possibly just watch it on the tele.

And the final reason, the one that broke a week of indecision: I prefer mythology. I learned this at a Bob Dylan show that I helped plan in the late 90's. I wouldn't call myself a huge Dylan fan, but as a connoisseur of pop music history, I was excited to see such a legend. And the show was a letdown. It's not so much that he was good or bad, he was just trying so hard to be opaque and aloof that he came off as desperate and artificial. Now I don't see him quite the same as I did before.

(Before the Dylanophiles beat me up, I'm not the only one who feels this way. A while back Ringo Starr commented, "Some days, he gives you very clear Bob, and some days he gives a Bob that doesn’t want you to understand what he’s saying." In the same interview, Starr also laments going to a recent Stones concert and only being able to see it on the big screen. See? Ringo understands me.)

Of course, I wouldn't expect McCartney to be opaque -- on the contrary, he's the crowd-pleasing type, plays the hits, doesn't get too adventurous -- but seeing him live might have taken some of the mystery out of our relationship.

Or then again, maybe I'm just too lazy to drive 10 hours, and now I'm just trying to convince myself. He's supposed to tour next year, and we'll see how I feel when tickets go on sale in Boston. After all, that's only about 7 hours of driving.

2008-07-20 - An evening with Beatle Paul

2008-07-13T23:31:00.004-04:00

I'm not usually one to bother with goals -- just wake up in the morning, go to bed at night, do something cool in between, and you'll cover plenty of ground -- but there is one thing I've always wanted to do: see a real live Beatle.

Just about anyone who knows me is aware that The Beatles are central to my musical psyche. As noted in a previous post, I once snuck into Abbey Road studios in London, just to breathe that sacred air. I've also been to the site of their last live performance (the roof of their old office building in London), scoured the back alleys of Hamburg, Germany looking for the clubs where they got their start, and made the pilgrimage to the Dakota, the New York apartment building where John Lennon lived and died, several times.

But I still haven't seen a living Beatle -- not yet, at least. On July 20, that will change.

A couple weeks ago, a post floated over the Rolling Stone magazine newsfeed. I looked quick: "Paul McCartney to play some big show." Oh yeah, that's news. He's done that before, at least a hundred times over the years. Just last month he played for 350,000 screaming Ukranians out in Kiev. But what good is some big Paul McCartney show if it's somewhere far away? Not much.

Pictures from some other big show McCartney played far away
(generously provided by the BBC)

I looked again at the news post: "Paul McCartney to play some big show in Quebec City." Hey, I live a few hours away from there. Neat. Too bad concerts like that cost $200 these days.

I kept reading: "Paul McCartney to play some big free show in Quebec City." Well now, that is interesting. But too bad they changed the border rules so you need a passport to go to Canada, and my passport expired a couple years ago.

Just for kicks, I checked the State Department web site to see how fast I could get a new passport. Oh, wait a minute. They delayed that rule about needing a passport, and you still can get in with a driver's license and birth certificate.

I stopped reading and switched to writing. Within an hour, I had contacted an old college buddy and fellow Beatle fan about carpooling, and plans were set. (In case any wish to question his credentials for this trip, his MySpace profile lists his religion as "Paul McCartneyist.")

So if you need me this weekend, you'll find me in Quebec City. Only don't go there looking for me -- if 350,000 people showed up in the Ukraine, I suspect the crowd at Macca's only North American appearance this year might be sort of large as well.

1999-02-21 - The day I played gospel piano for Penelope Ann Miller

2008-07-07T22:28:00.007-04:00

So far, most posts on this blog fit into three general categories: rock gigs I played, jazz gigs I played, and shows I planned where someone else performed. My music career includes a fourth category, however, one best described as... miscellaneous. Aside from my usual fare, I've dabbled in other genres, including -- believe it or not -- gospel.

In 1999, a friend asked if I'd do him a favor and play piano for his church choir. Well, I'm not the type who could play for one of those classical-hymnbook-and-pipe-organ churches, but this wasn't that type of church. This particular friend went to (and actually was a minister at) the Green Memorial AME Zion Church in Portland, Maine.

For those who don't know what an AME Zion church is, it may help to know that the "A" is for "African." In short, it's a predominantly black church, and they're all about the music. About half the service involves singing (and clapping and swaying and assorted impromptu hallelujahs and amens), and it's pure gospel, the kind of music that a suburban white guy like me had only ever seen in movies like Sister Act.

I've never been so unprepared for a gig in my life. First, I'm not a very churchy person to begin with, and second, they don't do a lot of sheet music or chord charts in gospel music. The best part: though I did have a chance to run through a couple songs with the choir in advance, when I showed up at the church, there was a band of musicians (guitar, bass, and drums) who I'd never met before, and they had a whole repertoire of their own. There were no hymnals, and about two-thirds of the tunes appeared to be chosen (or even made up) on the spot.

Everyone else knew the songs because they went to the church, but for the most part I struggled to keep up. "Let the Spirit guide you," the guitarist advised, but the Spirit didn't even tell me what key they were playing in most of the time. Then, at various times in the service, the drummer would whisper "play something," and I'd have to ad lib some gospel noodling to underscore a particularly important point in the sermon.

So what does this have to do with Penelope Ann Miller, the actress known for her work in movies like Kindergarten Cop and Carlito's Way? Well, there's a point in many church services where the minister asks any new or visiting folks to stand and introduce themselves. At that point in this particular service, a woman stood up and said, "Hi, my name is Penelope, and I'm here from Los Angeles visiting my sister. I love your church!"

I didn't catch it right off, but afterwards, as we drifted into another song, the drummer leaned over and whispered, "Hey, that's Penelope Ann Miller. You know, from Kindergarten Cop." Off the top of my head, I think she's the most famous person who's ever seen me perform. Not exactly the President or the Queen Mum, but a proud moment all the same.

1994-03-24 - Jump Cat Jump road trip to Worcester, Massachusetts

2008-06-12T23:41:00.007-04:00

There's a rule in the music business: the best way to be taken seriously is to play as far as possible from home. If that's true, then the gig where I was taken the most seriously would have been on March 24, 1994 at a club called Ralph's in Worcester, Massachusetts.

But I don't think the theory works in this case: I'd like to think that my most serious gig was NOT the one where I was playing a neon striped guitar, wearing a ratty Casper the Friendly Ghost t-shirt, and standing next to a 6-foot tall skull.

All pictures by my Dad, one of about 20 people at the show.
(Left to right: giant skull, me, Jon, Yoshi)

This show was the one and only out-of-state road trip by my first steady band, Jump Cat Jump. It was a few hours south of our home base of Portland, Maine, and I don't think we were paid much (if at all), but Jon still saved his toll receipts, just in case he wanted to deduct them on his taxes.

To set the scene: Worcester is a dump. My Dad, who lived and worked in the area for years, refers to it as "the left armpit of Massachusetts" and occasionally as the "hepatitis capital of the world." At the time, Ralph's didn't feel like much of a rock club -- it's like a big, strangely decorated attic over a diner -- but Google-ing it now, it appears to be a fixture of the local rock scene. It's still there all these years later, so I guess it must be doing something right.

We were the first of three very oddly matched bands. After our set of jangly, 80's-flavored power pop, they had a punk band from Columbus, Ohio with the awesome name of Pet UFO, followed by a local Rush-like progressive rock band (forgot the name) who were all dressed in long black robes. I actually kept in touch for a while with Kevin, the guitarist for Pet UFO, and he said we were cool even though we sounded like The Smiths.

Our set list for the evening was similar to our other shows, mostly my originals with one cranked up 80's cover thrown in:

It's Not Your Birthday. Sounds sort of like The Smiths, and I usually sang a bit of their song "Ask" in the coda.
King of Wishful Thinking. An original tune, not a cover of the 80's song of the same name by Go West, though that would've been cool, too.
When Yer Gone. Wrote this a few years earlier in high school, when I listened to The Cure's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me a lot -- and it shows.
Thinking of You. This song was the highlight for me, because this was the night that we replaced the guitar break with a three-man kazoo break.
Video Killed the Radio Star. The token 80's cover, obviously.
I'm Your Man. Sort of like Erasure when I wrote it on a drum machine, but not as foofy as them when played with live drums.
Venus is a Man's World. The riff is like early Pearl Jam, though I don't really sing like Eddie Vedder. (And really didn't like Pearl Jam anyway.) Probably the only time we played this one.
Overcome. The only song I ever wrote entirely in a dream. It's not really that good.
Miss Temptation. I actually wrote this as half of an electronic duo in 1992 with a guy who's now a club DJ named Sandman Tikisong in New York City.
Good Enough. Another sort of grunge song, later revived for use in my 2000-ish band The Franklin Mint.

Finally, a side note, a much belated response to a phone number scribbled on the back of my set list for that night: Johneese, thank you for your kind words about my band, and I'm sorry I never called. I lived three hours away, you know? Hope all is well, wherever you ended up.

The real history of rock music

2008-06-07T23:50:00.005-04:00

For every band you've ever heard of, there must be a thousand you haven't -- and that's where music really lives. Sure, the big names get most of the attention, but it's only superficial. Most of the time, people consume music in the same way that they watch TV sitcoms or eat a McDonald's hamburger: they're sort of funny and/or tasty, but there's no real connection with them.

The vast ocean of unknown bands is where the magic is. There's something about playing in a band (or at least seeing your friends playing in a band) that makes the experience of music far deeper, far more human. That's part of what this blog is about for me. I'm not trying to promote my music -- if I were, I wouldn't post audio clips of me singing out of tune 15 years ago -- rather, I just want celebrate the fun of playing music for its own sake.

And it turns out that I'm not the only one. I don't generally post stories about other web sites -- sort of conflicts the whole idea of writing about myself -- but I stumbled across another blog that I really liked. It's called For Those Who Tried to Rock (a nod to the AC/DC song "For Those About to Rock," in case you didn't catch it), and it's about all those unknown , forgotten, local bands that went nowhere. People send in stories about bands they used to have, not to sell anything or prove how cool they were, but to share some great memories. I've been playing in bands for 20 years without any particular goal beyond just playing in bands, and it's great find a whole site full of kindred spirits.

Since the stories on their blog are submitted by readers, I figured I ought to contribute something. I wrote up a blurb about my early (and fondly remembered) band Jump Cat Jump, and we'll see if it makes it onto their site. I got thinking about Jump Cat Jump more in the process, so I'm working on another post about them for my own blog. Should be online in the next few days.

2008-04-15 - Another rock duo show with Adam

2008-05-22T22:55:00.012-04:00

Though I didn't mention it there, my last post only told half the story of my 2008 Michael D. Wilson Symposium Arts Night performance. In addition to those jazz improv versions of Donkey Kong and Dig Dug music, I also played a short set in the UMF Art Gallery as part of a guitar/vocals duo.

My cohort for this show was Adam, who I played with at a gig back in January and at various jam nights last year. We played four songs, a couple reprised from the January gig and a couple of new ones. He did most of the singing, and my job was more secondary guitar noodling. The idea was to do original songs -- it was an "arts" night, after all -- so three of the four were written by Adam.

I wanted to sing something, too, but rather than do one of my originals, I chose a song that a friend wrote years ago. In part, I picked it because I know it well. I can remember it without thinking (or practicing!) too hard, and I was trying to save my brain for the more difficult jazz arcade game music, which was later that evening. I also like the tune for nostalgic reasons, as it harkens back to those long past days -- er, you know, the 90's -- when I was but a wee singer-songwriter, still idealistically (and/or naively) believing in the transcendent power of lyrics and chords.

The song is called "Terrified," and it's originally by a guy named Steve Gerlach. (Aside #1: I played another of his songs, the infamous "Joey the Donut Jerk," at a 1996 show I previously blogged about. Aside#2: He's now a corporate tax lawyer, of all things.)

Here's a clip of me and Adam playing "Terrified" at Arts Night:

In honor of my and Steve's shared roots in 80's alternative rock, I threw the melody from The Replacements' "Can't Hardly Wait" into my opening guitar lick, then ripped off the intro to The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" and threw it in the verses. (And, strangely enough, I just realized that I also played both of those songs with Adam at our gig in January...)

So why not play one of my own songs? Well, I'm in strange spot these days, as far as original music goes. I've written plenty of those "lyrics and chords" songs over the years, but none at all (not completely at least) since around 2000. I've squeezed out few jazz instrumentals and done plenty of jazz arranging in recent years, but I really don't write much any more. Those old songs are dusty relics of someone I used to be, and I just have other things to do now.

2008-04-15 - Solo jazz piano interpretations of music from "Donkey Kong" and "Dig Dug"

2008-04-30T21:15:00.014-04:00

I'm really not that interested in practicing. For the most part, I'd rather run through a song once or twice, then rush out in front of crowd and play it. Sink or swim, the performance always feels more spontaneous and fun that way. Practice too much, and it just sucks the life out of it.

I made an exception, however, for this show. I practiced and I practiced -- a few times a week for about three months -- quite possibly the most I've ever practiced for one performance. The kicker is the whole set only lasted about 12 minutes, a few of which consisted of my typically rambling song introductions.

The performance was called "Two Bits: Solo Jazz Piano Interpretations of Early 1980's Arcade Game Music." (Get it? Two bits -> 25 cents, if you missed that. I actually thought up the title first, then planned a show around it...) It consisted of only two selections -- again with the "two bits" -- one based on Donkey Kong, the other on Dig Dug.

I started out by learning some of the main themes, incidental music, and sound effects from each game, then I built arrangements around those. The songs start out more or less sounding like what you'd hear playing the games, then they meander into improv for a while, then I go back to the main themes to wrap them up.

This set was part of a bigger show, the Michael D. Wilson Symposium Arts Night (more affectionately -- or lazily -- referred to as "Arts Night") at the University of Maine Farmington. The overall event is a celebration of the arts on campus, so I tried to stir up something classy and intellectual. As I described it in the Symposium program:

These two pieces explore the possibilities of kitsch as the basis for jazz improvisation. The idea is to focus on a particular aspect of popular culture and recast it in a more artistic context, akin to Andy Warhol’s paintings of soup cans.

Here's how it all worked out:

Donkey Kong
Dig Dug

If you listen closely, you can hear snippets of several other songs tucked in there: Chim Chim Cheree, Take the "A" Train, Angel Eyes, The Simpsons theme song, Super Mario Brothers theme song, and even an original tune called Apocalypso, which I played a lot last year with my old band Excursus.

As if that's not enough, this was only one of two performances I gave on Arts Night. More details on the other show in my next post.

1996-11-07 - The first jazz night at the USM Open Mic

2008-04-01T22:12:00.006-04:00

Here's a paradox: I don't particularly like listening to jazz--maybe a Thelonious Monk song once in a while, maybe some of Herbie Hancock's more commercial work--but there's nothing I'd rather perform. Ever since I learned my first jazz song (Duke Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," which I actually discovered via a rare Paul McCartney cover), I've been hooked.

I even remember my first real "jazz" gig, such as it was. My chops weren't quite there yet, but it was an auspicious start. The show was a couple months into the USM Open Mic Night, a series I hosted for over two years while I was a student at the University of Southern Maine.

One recurring theme in the series was a monthly "jazz night," where the featured performers were students from USM's music program. I actually conjured up the idea so I would have jazz people around to play with and learn from. The guests for this show, as with many of the early jazz nights, were guitarist Ted Davis and drummer Marc Boisvert. (I don't know what ever happened to Ted, but I think Marc is still around Portland, last seen playing drums with well-known local group Paranoid Social Club.)

As if to reinforce its historic significance, the event was well documented. I had a video camera rolling through most of my set, and a guy from our college newspaper was there taking pictures, reprinted in this post by permission. (That guy, Troy Bennett, is now a real grown-up photographer, still taking great pictures. He's also in a band called The Half Moon Jug Band, which played one their first shows a USM Open Mic Night around 1998.)

Among the songs I played that night was, of course, "Don't Get Around Much Anymore":

It was a long night. First, a solo set on piano:

You Should’ve Been a Dancer. The traditional opening number at each of the 75 or so USM Open Mic Nights.
Just Like Heaven. This song by The Cure was, believe it or not, the theme song at my Senior Prom in 1990.
Just the Thought of You. I wrote this song in Japan, inspired by a girl I met at a disco in Roppongi, though there's nothing Japanese about it.
I Don’t Like Mondays. The Boomtown Rats classic, performed more or less the way they did it.
Beatitudes. It's pronounced "be-AT-i-tudes" not "BEAT-i-tudes." I didn't know that at the time, though, so when I introduced this original song, I probably looked like an idiot.
New York City Metaphor. The debut performance of one of the first "jazzy" songs I wrote.
Joey the Donut Jerk. A friend of mine wrote this song about a donut maker who, um, does improper things with the donut batter after hours. And if that's not disturbing enough: it's based on a true story.

Then I played a few more on piano, backing a singer named Mary Beth. I think this was one of her first appearances at the open mic, but she ultimately became a regular and sang at many more shows. My notes say that Ted played on these, and presumably Marc did, too:

This Masquerade. A smooth jazz tune from the 1970's, best known through cover versions by guitarist George Benson and The Carpenters, who actually started out as a jazz trio.
Ain't Misbehavin'. Old New Orleans jazz standard by Fats Waller.
Dream a Little Dream of Me. A tune from the 1930's that resurfaces now and then, like in a popular 1968 remake by Mama Cass of The Mamas and The Papas.

After that we went back to a trio, me with Ted and Marc. I picked these songs, a couple of which were odd jazz choices in hindsight:

I’ve Got You Under My Skin. I switched to guitar for this Cole Porter standard. Not a common jazz tune, maybe because the chords are a bit bland for soloing.
Malachi’s Dream. I jammed a couple times around 1994 with a memorable guy named Malachi, who said he'd always wanted a band called "Malachi's Dream. He liked this song, then untitled, so I later named it after him. It's sort of a poppy bossa nova. I quoted a bit of "That’s Amore" in the guitar solo.
Chattanooga Choo Choo. OK... weird song choice. Glenn Miller is sort of jazzy, but not exactly hip. Still, one of the first I learned, so I wanted to play it. We veered a bit into country territory as it went along.
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. Back on piano for this one, which featured one of my first decent jazz piano solos. (Sound clip above, in case you missed it...)

Finally, we closed with a couple of free-for-all instrumental jams:

Untitled, or "Something in C." An audience member wanted to play piano with us for a song. We asked him what we should play, and he said "just play something in C." So we started on C, and 10 minutes later, we were still on C. Ten minutes, one chord. Almost like being in The Doors, though at least they used two chords.
Should I Stay or Should I Go. For our grand finale, photographer Troy Bennett played piano with us. It started out as "Let's do a blues in G," but in the middle I started singing "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash, which just happens to be a 12-bar blues.

1995-04-08 - Fugazi live at USM, the only show I planned where someone left in an ambulance

2008-03-16T22:24:00.010-04:00

Ironically, one of the biggest shows that I've planned featured a band that not a lot of people know about. Fugazi was an alternative post-punk group most active in the late 80's/early 90's, back when alternative was more than just a marketing term. And, unlike some similarly branded bands of that era, they were truly an alternative.

Not a photo from my show, just one I lifted from Wikipedia

(thanks to the Creative Commons License - photo credit to Tim Trentham)

Fugazi defined the anti-corporate, DIY ethos that other 90's indie rockers aspired to (or at least pretended to aspire to). They pressed their own CD's and distributed them worldwide for $10 postpaid. They spurned offers to sign with major record labels. They didn't do T-shirts and other merchandising. They rarely did interviews. And, as I learned firsthand, they planned their own tours and had very particular demands: admission $5 for everyone, and the show must be open to all ages.

To give some idea of Fugazi's underground cred, this show was promoted mostly by word of mouth, fanzines, and some fancy new (for 1995) contraption called the world wide web--and over 1,500 people showed up. I heard it was the northernmost show of the tour, and people drove for hours, from places like Montreal and Halifax, Nova Scotia to attend.

But perhaps the best indication of their unique popularity: I ran "fugazi usm" through Google, and I found two reviews of this exact concert. Can't think of many shows I planned 12 years ago that I could say that about.

First I found a blog reminisce by someone who was in the audience. This line was the highlight for me: "The fact that some booking agent thought this sweat-stunk dungeon was the best place to display these acts defies logic." Hey, wait, I put them in that dungeon! Actually, there probably wasn't much choice, and I bet that's why they ended up calling us. Bands like that don't get too far calling up a classy venue: "Yeah, I'm in a band you've never heard of, and we want to book a big room for a concert. Oh yeah, it has to be $5 a head, and you can't sell beer." Two years earlier, they'd played in a run-down warehouse on the Portland waterfront--infinitely cooler, I admit.

The second Google hit was an article written for a now-defunct online music magazine called Addicted to Noise. Their site is gone, but I found two partial copies, one on a Fugazi fan site and a cached copy on archive.org. (The first is easier to read and navigate, the second is more complete.) The story has a great description of the show:

As the volume comes up, the crowd directly in front of the stage becomes a human sea, bodies literally thrown into the air, surfing over head, only to be carried in its currents before they drop out of sight.

Finally, three random memories of the show:

It was the only show I remember where someone left in an ambulance, and I think there were more than one.
Ironically, Fugazi leader and DIY icon Ian MacKaye made a point of saying to me before the show, "If the crowd gets out of hand, turn on the house lights. I'll stop the show until they calm down."
As the band left the venue, I gave MacKaye a copy of a homemade live tape of myself that I'd been selling at shows. I'm sure he still has it. Maybe he's listening to it right now...

2008-01-31 - Back to rock guitar after a year of jazz piano

2008-02-07T21:17:00.003-05:00

After focusing on jazz piano for most of last year, I started 2008 by getting back to rock guitar -- for one show, at least.

I was asked to play a midday show at The Landing (sort of a small, coffehouse-type venue, just without the coffee) at the University of Maine Farmington. I've been leaning more towards themed shows of late, but I didn't have anything particular in mind for this one, so I enlisted Adam, a bass player I know from the UMF Jam Nights and elsewhere, to join me for a random mix of songs.

Cool thing about rock guitar: some chords
make it look like you're flippin' the bird...

Our only real goal was to incorporate some original tunes, so about half the set fit that. The rest was a mix of whatever covers we felt like playing. And here's how it panned out:

Can't Hardly Wait. An 80's alternative take on the road song, this Replacements classic features the immortal line, "Jesus rides beside me / But he never buys any smokes." Toward the end of the solo, I wove in bits from Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon."
Aphrodite's Cigarettes. One of my originals, now in its 12th year. First time I ever played it with someone else, though.
Optimistic. I worked out a cool arrangement of this Radiohead tune for my Lost Songs series -- for the "Lost Songs of the 90's" show, even though the song came out in 2000 -- and I liked it so much, I wanted to revisit it. [Sound clip below]
New Slang. At this point in the show, Adam switched from bass to acoustic guitar and took over the vocals. His first number was this song by The Shins. I didn't know it until I learned it for the show, but it's really been growing on me.
Adam's original #1. Then Adam went through a few of his originals, which lacked titles at this point. I only know them by key signature and his descriptions, so this one is the "Left-Wing Political Song in A minor."
Adam's original #2. And this one is "the song with the flamenco bit, also in A minor."
Adam's original #3. For Adam's last original, "the sort of grunge song in F#," I worked out a little guitar riff that I later realized sounds a bit like the one in "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand.
All the Kids Are Right. The last song that Adam sang was this Local H cover. The title, I suspect, is a nod to The Who's "The Kids Are Alright."
The Emperor's New Shoes. I went back to singing and Adam switched back to bass for this song, another old original of mine. Again, I've played it a million times before, but never with a bass player. And it made all the difference, especially in the heavier, bluesy, no-I-didn't-lift-this-from-Led-Zep opening riff.
You Get What You Deserve. As part of my ongoing exploration of the mythic cult band Big Star, I wanted to do this song from Big Star's 1974 second album, Radio City.
Where is My Mind. This Pixies song was our "extra," meaning we were going to cut it if we were short on time. We ended up fitting it in, though, and it went rather well. If you're not familiar with The Pixies but have seen the movie Fight Club, this is the song they play at the end when everything is blowing up.
Chains. Unlike my other originals, this one I've played with other people several times. In fact, whenever I get together with someone and we want to do an original, I usually turn to this. It's one of the simpler tunes I have, so it's easy to learn. It's also easy to solo over, since the verse/solo parts only have one chord...

Here's a clip of one of the songs, our version of Radiohead's "Optimistic":

All in all, it was a laid-back, slightly random, rockin' good time. We had a small yet respectable crowd of 20-30 people, which included lots of friends -- the best crowd in many ways.

And we even had a band name, though we didn't know it until the show started. Before the first song, I mentioned to Adam that we didn't have a name, and he suggested "The Stolen Bones." Not only does it have that hint of macabre suitable for a rock band name, he pointed out that it sounds a lot like "The Rolling Stones," so if people overhear it in casual conversation, they might just pay attention.

1998-11-07 - A background jazz "work gig" at the Portland Public Market

2008-01-13T17:03:00.006-05:00

The oft-cited saying, "Choose a job you love, and you'll never work a day in your life," doesn't tell the whole story. If you take what you love and turn it into a job, there's a fair chance you'll end up not loving it because then you have to do it, even on days when you feel like doing something else that you love instead.

Sure, it seems obvious enough: if you like to play music and can get halfway good at it, you can make some money with it. And that worked for a while, until I realized that playing music for a living is more about looking for gigs, negotiating contracts, and lugging amplifiers across icy parking lots through two feet of snow uphill in both directions. Performing is only a small part of workload, and even then, you're playing songs that people will pay for, not necessarily what you feel like playing that day.

These are the lessons I learned in what I call my "background music" period. For a few years, approximately 1997-2000, I played jazz piano at restaurants, weddings, and the like. At first, it was very flattering to think that someone would like my playing enough to pay for it -- quite well in some cases -- but the novelty wore away after doing it again and again. By the summer of 1999, I was playing as many as five shows a week, some of them three or four hours long, which is a painfully long time to play the piano. And to make matters worse, I was usually dressed up all fancy, which is definitely not me.

Having said all that, I do have fond memories of a few shows from that era, such as this 1998 appearance at the Portland Public Market. It had just opened then, and I think our performance was part of their opening festivities. The idea was to create Portland's version of Quincy Market in Boston, but it didn't work out: they closed last year.

The Portland Public Market in all its former glory

I was playing as part of a duo called Straight No Chaser, which consisted of me on piano and Rob on guitar. We started playing together around 1997, brought together by a shared interest in learning jazz. Our backgrounds were different -- he was a blues guy with a respectable wedding/function band, and I was mostly playing alternative rock -- but we played well together.

To set the mood, here's a clip of the jazz standard "Autumn Leaves" recorded at the Portland Public Market show:

I can't remember how many gigs we played total (maybe 10 or so over about two years), but this performance was about in the middle. Notable memories of the occasion:

It was the last show before I upgraded from a Roland EP-7 electric piano that I hated to a Yamaha P-90 that was much better.
Much of my family was in attendance. In fact, I recently listened to the recording of the entire show, and my then two-year-old nephew can be heard throughout. I even played a snippet of "Wheels on the Bus" for him at one point.

Rob and I played for about two hours without a set list, just taking turns picking songs as we went. The whole show went like this:

Chitlins Con Carne.
Night and Day.
Sweet Georgia Brown.
Don't Get Around Much Anymore.
Route 66.
The Girl from Ipanema.
Summertime.
Autumn Leaves.
When You Wish Upon a Star.
Seven Come Eleven.
All Blues.
How High the Moon.
Straight No Chaser.
The Shadow of Your Smile.
All of Me.
Sleepwalk.
Take the "A" Train.
Tuxedo Junction.
Puttin' on the Ritz.
Satin Doll.
In a Mellow Tone.

2007-11-30 - The final performance of my jazz group Excursus

2007-12-22T20:11:00.003-05:00

After a run that spanned nearly ten whole months and three momentous performances, my band Excursus is no more. Not because of musical differences, not because we fell off the charts, not because our rock star excesses led to any untimely demises -- simply because starting a band with college students means your days are inherently numbered. Half of the band just graduated from our home base, U. Maine Farmington, so it seems the end is nigh.

Me with the $80,000 piano and Dustin without a hi-hat

Our final show was a few weeks ago in Nordica Auditorium on the UMF campus. It was part of a larger event, which was dubbed "The Grand Carnival" for reasons that I can't particularly remember. We were the second of four acts, playing after an a capella group and before an experimental electronica performer and a free improv group. Attendance was respectable at around 120-130 people.

The set list was similar to that of our previous gig in April, but with one song cut (the 80's tune "Tainted Love") and two songs added (a brand-new, overly complicated original and a groove jazz version of the Big Star song "In the Street," better know as the theme to TV's "That 70's Show"). For background listening as you read, here's a clip of us doing "In the Street":

And here's a rundown of the whole gig:

Apocalypso. We moved this original up to the front of the set list because it's one of our more upbeat, lively numbers. Besides, I wanted to show off the originals more this time.
Heart-Shaped Box. This Nirvana song is the one we rehearse the least. It just plays itself. Mostly just the white keys on the piano...
In the Street. The theme from "That 70's Show," with a sound clip above. We played it with a groove reminiscent of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man," which I even quoted in my solo.
Non Sequitur. Hours before the show, I realized that this original is a bit like "Christmas Time is Here" from the Charlie Brown Christmas special. I tried to put a bit of that into my solo, but it didn't come out quite right.
Linus and Lucy. Speaking of Charlie Brown, folks usually call this the Charlie Brown song, though it's really called "Linus and Lucy." The melody and bits of the solo are done with big open chords like those in Miles Davis' well-known tune "So What."
The Grand Carnival. This new original, which I wrote over the course of a single lunch hour, was untitled until just before the show. Lacking a better idea, I just named it after the event, so now it's like a souvenir of the occasion. It has a few distinct parts, all in different keys, but it ties together nicely.
Super Mario Brothers Theme. I haven't been feeling this one lately, and I think it's a bit too cutesy, so I proposed dropping it from the set. But we didn't.
Mah-na Mah-na. Our big closing number was the immortal "Mah-Na Mah-Na." In between the "Mah-Na Mah-Na" refrains, where there's scat singing in the Muppet version, we instead interpolate bits of classic jazz songs. This time around, the tunes were: "Well You Needn't" (Thelonious Monk), "So What" (Miles Davis), "Straight No Chaser" (Thelonious Monk again), "Israel" (Miles Davis), "The Girl From Ipanema" (Antonio Carlos Jobim), and "Route 66" (Bobby Troup and many others).

Of course, we left the door open to any possible reunion shows, but for now it's time to look for something new. It's been nice having a band again, after playing mostly solo shows for years, so I'll probably put another together. Who knows when, though, so I have more posts about old gigs in the works.

The Excursus posse (minus me): Dustin, Dan, and Josh

1990-03 - The day I walked right into Abbey Road Studios in London

2007-11-25T22:52:00.002-05:00

OK, so this post isn't about a gig, but it isn't too far off topic. This is the story of a formative musical adventure into the world of the one band that made me want to play music more than any other: The Beatles.

I know, it's almost de rigueur -- just about any musician is likely to say nice things about The Beatles -- but for me, at least when I was first discovering music in the late 80's, they were an obsession. And if you're going to get all religious about something like that, you might as well make a pilgrimage.

My family spent a few days in London around March 1990, when I was a senior in high school. Though we hit the usual tourist sights, like the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace, I was really only interested in communing with The Beatles. In fact, as soon as we arrived, I hurried to the nearest book shop, bought a city map, and started looking for Abbey Road. Then I hopped on the first subway train in that direction.

My plan had been to start at one end of the street and keep walking until I found what I was looking for. I didn't know how long Abbey Road is, but I was willing to find out. Fortunately, though, I started at the right end and immediately found what I was looking for.

If you know The Beatles, you know this crosswalk

You can't really tell from the Abbey Road album cover, but this is a very busy street. To make matters worse, this crosswalk is at a Y-type intersection, so to get a picture of it, you need to stand in the exact spot where the three roads meet. All you can do is run into traffic, snap a picture fast, and hope for the best.

To fully document the experience, I took a pictures of the crosswalk and the general area from various angles, and in doing so I discovered something that should have been obvious: that crosswalk is actually in front of EMI Abbey Road Studios, where most Beatles albums were recorded. You can see the studio in my photo above -- it's the white building on the left, with the white wall and iron fence in front of it.

The gate was open, the door unlocked. How could I resist?

The gate to the parking lot was open, which I naturally interpreted as an invitation. I strolled nonchalantly up the steps and walked right through the front door. Just inside was a reception desk, staffed by some sort of uniformed security guard.

"Do you have business here?" he asked.

I just smiled dumbly, wondering if there were anything I could possibly say that would extend my stay for a second or two more.

"Alright then," he smiled. "You'll have to leave."

So I left. And I walked all the way back to downtown London (a few miles or so) contemplating my brush with history.

Along the way, I stopped at another key Beatle site, 3 Saville Row (the 5-story brick building with the white first floor in the picture at right). This nondescript office building was the late 60's headquarters of The Beatles' ill-fated record label Apple Corps. They recorded some tunes in the basement, including songs that ultimately ended up on the album Let It Be. The building is most famous, however, as the site of the final live Beatles performance.

On a cold day in January 1969, teetering on the brink of a rancorous break up, The Beatles dragged their instruments to the roof and rocked out one last time for an unsuspecting crowd of businessmen and shoppers on the streets below.

Of course, I tried to get in, but it was getting late and the doors were locked. I did manage to enter some adjacent buildings, hoping for a view of the rooftop, but couldn't locate a suitable vantage point.

Still, the trip to London was a successful adventure. Far more productive than the time I wandered around the Reeperbahn, the nefarious red light district of Hamburg, Germany, looking for the nightclubs where The Beatles started out... But I'll save that for another post.

1995-04-22 - Opening for (and delivering beer to) The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

2007-11-12T17:03:00.001-05:00

And the award for the most fingers in one pie goes to... my performance at this 1995 Earth Day celebration at University of Southern Maine. It was an all-day event, with various performers, speakers, and green-themed revelry, capped off with an evening performance by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I served many roles: performer, promoter, writer, beer delivery boy. One of the more memorable shows I've worked on.

I was initially hired to perform a daytime set, which I now refer as "the time I opened up for The Mighty Mighty Bosstones," even though my performance and theirs were separated by seven hours and several other acts. (I did, however, perform on the same stage, with their PA system, sound guy, and elaborate stage light setup -- as seen in the picture at right.) At the time, I was playing under the pseudonym "Buddha Jack," a name inspired by Jack Kerouac. I played from 1-2pm, between someone called Sir Master ("a Caribbean Dub Poet" according to the flyer) and the USM Classical String Duo.

But my involvement actually began a couple weeks before the show. At the time, I was writing for the Arts section of the USM college newspaper, The Free Press, and I figured that was a good excuse to promote the show. I contacted the Bosstones' press people and arranged an interview with their sax player, a guy named Tim Burton, for an article about the show. The conversation started a bit awkwardly -- trying to be clever, I opened by saying, "I really like what you did with the Batman movie," and he didn't think it was funny -- but I pieced together a decent article out of it. Though I've written many newspaper/magazine articles since, I think this one holds up OK. Just a bit short.

Then, as the big day approached, I took on yet another role. A problem emerged a few days before the show: USM had only sold about 150 tickets, and they needed to sell about 10 times that much to break even. While it's not uncommon for a college to lose money on a concert -- that's sort of the idea, actually, since they can't compete with bigger, for-profit venues -- but they were facing a $6000 loss and weren't too happy about it.

The promoter and the USM events people blamed each other, but all agreed that something had to be done. At first, USM said they'd cancel, and the promoter threatened to sue, since he'd then be liable for the Bosstones' $15,000 guarantee. After some haggling, both sides agreed to split any losses and promote the heck out of it in the last few days.

Thus, I became a flyer-hanging promotional machine. Everyone who was even peripherally involved in the show scattered state-wide, stapling flyers on telephone poles and starting Bosstones-based conversations with strangers on the street. I ended up in the Lewiston-Auburn area, which in hindsight is odd, since it's 40 miles north of where I lived, and I didn't have a car at the time...

The 11th hour promotion paid off, and the event was fairly well attended. According to a newspaper clipping I saved, we sold 850 tickets in advance. Adding the number we likely sold at the door, we easily had over 1,000 when the Bosstones played. In the end, the school lost a thousand or two dollars, but that's not so bad for a college show.

The crowd was much smaller when I played at 1pm, however. Hard to estimate, since they were scattered around a large gymnasium, but it was in the 100-150 range at best. Still, I remember it as a good turnout because I had what mattered: a lot of friends showed up, a mix of loyal regulars and a few who'd never seen me play before, and that's the type of audience I prefer.

It was a solo gig, just me and an acoustic guitar, with one wacky set-closing exception:

It's Not Your Birthday. A standard from the Jump Cat Jump days, this song was also in most of my solo sets at the time. It was also on a 4-song live tape I was then selling at shows.
The King of Wishful Thinking. No, not the 1990 Go West song from the Pretty Woman soundtrack. Rather, another from the Jump Cat Jump repertoire.
My Reflection / I Get a Kick Out of You. The first is an original ode to narcissism; the latter is, of course, by Cole Porter. Songs like these show the first rumblings of my interest in jazz, though I was still leaning more towards the schmaltzy side.
Another Stupid Love Song. I'd just written this one, so I wanted to show it off. It was rather unspectacular, though (like its title), and now I can barely remember how it goes.
Billy, Don't Be a Hero. Besides jazz, the other thing I was into at the time was corny one-hit wonders, like this 70's tune.
Leave My Bones Alone. This bouncy original had lyrics inspired by a 1949 Allen Ginsberg poem called "The Complaint of the Skeleton to Time." I often played "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on the kazoo in the middle section, though I don't think I did at this show.
Imagination is a Dangerous Thing. This was another I'd just written, and though it wouldn't make my all-time favorites list, it was one the better songs I'd written up to that point.
You Are My Morrissey. If ever there were a Buddha Jack classic, this would be it. Opens with the lines, "You're always so depressed / It's a tragedy, I guess / But at least it gives you a personality."
Tainted Love. I don't remember why I did this, but I did it. I performed a near note-perfect rendition of this 80's track, complete with a frightfully authentic prerecorded synth/beatbox backing track. To make matters stranger, it used the theme from Monty Python's Flying Circus (i.e. John Philip Sousa's "The Liberty Bell") as an introduction.

I would like to offer an audio clip from the show, but I can't. I did have the foresight to bring a blank tape and a tape deck to the show, knowing that it would be a rare opportunity to record off a quality PA system with a good sound man. I gave the tape to the sound man before the show, then raced back after the show to pick it up, but he'd forgotten to press record.

Even after all that work -- performing, promoting, interviewing, writing -- I still had one task to help with. See, every performance contract has what's called a "rider," which lists things the band expects in addition to payment. (An infamous example: Van Halen used to ask for a bowl of M&M's with all the brown ones removed.) Well, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones asked for alcohol. Lots of alcohol. I wish I could remember the exact list, but it was something like: ten six-packs (four domestic, six import), two fifths of vodka, three fifths of Jack Daniels, and on and on.

The problem was USM, like most colleges, doesn't allow student activity money to be spent on alcohol. Furthermore, it was also against regs to drink in the "dressing room," since it was in a campus building and lacked a liquor license. Ordinarily, we'd explain this to the band and, though disappointed, they would deal with it.

Because of the pre-show controversy this time, however, we didn't want to rock the boat with band or the promoter. So we went to the store and bought alcohol. Lots of alcohol. (I don't remember, but I think the USM activities guy paid for it out of pocket.) We knocked on the door of the tour bus before the show, and already-sodden singer Dicky Barrett took delivery with a slurred thank you. Maybe you had to be there, but it was a true rock and roll moment.

1997-10-30 - The Irish Halloween Fest at the USM Open Mic Night

2007-10-30T22:56:00.001-04:00

Exactly ten years ago tonight, I was playing a Halloween-themed show at the University of Southern Maine. It was part of the USM Open Mic Night series that I hosted from September 1996 to December 1998, but it wasn't just another day at the office. First, we had free candy--thank you very much, Student Activity Fee--and we also had a cash bar, which was uncommon on campus. It even had a snazzy theme: "The Irish Halloween Fest," complete with a Celtic duo named An Grian as the featured guest performer.

But the most unique aspect of this particular show is my memory of it. That is, I don't have any. I usually remember shows quite well, even most of the 75-ish USM Open Mic Nights I hosted and performed at, but I can't recall this one at all.

Fortunately, I took notes at the open mic nights, so I know a bit about it. First, it was well attended: approximately 150-200 people, making it one of the larger shows in that series.

It was also likely a busy night on stage, with a lot of other open mic perfomers, as I only had time for one short set:

You Should've Been a Dancer. This was my warm-up song, the first I played at each USM Open Mic Night (and several other shows as well). It's a good attention-getter, starting with the timeless lines, "I hate to say it, but you're ugly / And you don't have any friends."
Brown-Eyed Girl. Ironic, given my comments about this exact song in my last post. Guess I didn't always hate playing it...
Irish Ballad. This song by 50's satirist Tom Lehrer isn't one of his funniest, but it did fit the occasion. As the name suggests, it's a mock Irish folk song, but one with a rather macabre plot: it's about a gal who offs every member of her family.
The New York City Metaphor. I'd written this one a year earlier, inspired by a then-new girlfriend, and I played it because it was the first anniversary of when we started going out. Since this show was ten years ago, and we're still together, I guess this week is our 11th anniversary. I should really buy a card or something...

According to my notes, I had prepared more songs but didn't have a chance to play them. Interestingly, I don't recall ever playing any of them at any show, so I might have missed my only chance:

Sie Liebt Dich. This alternate version of "She Loves You" is one of only two songs The Beatles recorded entirely in a foreign language. (The other was "Komm, gib mir deine Hand," a remake of "I Want to Hold Your Hand.") I was a German Studies major in college, so I'd always wanted to play one of them.
Handle With Care. The first single by The Traveling Wilburys, a late 80's supergroup comprised of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison.
Science Fiction Double Feature / Time Warp. Too bad I didn't get to these, since they're good Halloween songs. Both from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, of course.

2006-10-12 - Lost Songs of the 1970's

2007-10-23T16:33:00.004-04:00

The problem with audiences--and forgive me if you're part of that crowd--is they always want something. You could rehearse the most carefully chosen set of tunes, all tied together in the most clever of artistic statements, and there's always someone out there who wants to hear "Brown-Eyed Girl." No disrespect to Van Morrison, but I hope I never play that song again.

At first, I suppose, it's flattering. You're playing, and someone throws out a request, so you oblige. The audience may like you more (assuming you actually played a decent version of the song), and you might feel like you accomplished something because you could deliver the goods. But if there's something else you'd rather be playing, you'll soon be tired of "Brown-Eyed Girl."

There are plenty of songs I'd rather play. For example, I spent many years focusing on originals, playing either in alternative-ish rock bands or going the solo singer-songwriter route. Then, I drifted into instrumental jazz territory, which I liked because it was more flexible and abstract. A nice side benefit of playing originals or jazz: you don't get many requests. These types of gigs deflect expectations because the audience generally doesn't know the songs. If you play "Moondance," they expect "Brown-Eyed Girl," but if you avoid that sort of thing completely, you're free to focus on whatever you want to play.

My monthly "Lost Songs" series last Fall was born from this same idea. I happen to like playing rock cover songs, but I don't like playing the ones that everyone else plays. Rather, I prefer the neglected, forgotten, obscure, or otherwise under-appreciated, so I put together a series of fours shows devoted to these "lost" songs, with each show focusing a particular decade.

It was an eclectic series, as evidenced by this set list from the second show, "Lost Songs of the 1970's":

Better Off Without a Wife. It's a Tom Waits song from 1975, though I play it more in the style of an uptempo remake done by another 70's performer, Pete Shelley of The Buzzcocks.
Fools in Love. Since the 70's had a lot of reggae, I wanted to at least represent it in my set. Bob Marley I ain't, so I went with this reggae-influenced rock tune by Joe Jackson instead.
Radio Radio. If you're going to do angry new wave like Joe Jackson, you have do Elvis Costello, too. Playing this song, I always think of the time Costello played it on Saturday Night Live in 1977. He had agreed to play an established single, as requested by his record company, but at the last minute he jumped into this diatribe against the music business instead. One of rock history's great middle finger moments.
Turn on Your Radio. In the late 60's, when an interviewer asked who their favorite songwriters were, John Lennon and Paul McCartney both gave props to Harry Nilsson. So I did too, with this song from his 1972 album, Son of Schmilsson. I read somewhere that the album featured Peter Frampton on guitar, so when I played this, I was thinking about Peter Frampton.
Outdoor Miner. I've never actually heard the original version of this 1978 tune by the post-punk band Wire. I know it only from cover versions I've heard by other bands.
'Coz I Luv You. Though Slade wasn't well known in America, they were huge in the UK. This 1971 tune was a #1 there, as were several of their other songs, including the original version of "Cum on Feel the Noize," which was famously covered by Quiet Riot in the 80's.
Did We Meet Somewhere Before? How do you work Paul McCartney into a show of lesser-knowns? Pick a really obscure song like this one, which appeared uncredited in the Ramones-themed cult film Rock and Roll High School.
Way Out West. If ever a band were meant for a Lost Songs show, Big Star is it. They're the best-known obscure band around, and with good reason. Catchy yet meaty songs, a great back story, and lots of disciples (R.E.M. and Weezer being the most famous). Their most recognizable song is the original version of "In the Street" (the theme to TV's That 70's Show), a song that I played live a few weeks ago.
The Ballad of El Goodo. And because Big Star is so perfect for a Lost Songs show, I actually did two of theirs in a row. I can't think of many songs that I would describe as a favorite, but this is one of them.
Ten Years Gone. You can't cover the 70's without a bit of Zeppelin. I tried to pick the least known tune that I could actually sing, so I ended up with this mini epic from Physical Graffiti.
Bill Jones' General Store. Just in case people knew too many of the others, I decided to throw in one really obscure tune. It's by a singer-songwriter named Jud Strunk, who was from the part of Maine where I live. He gained some national attention on the TV show Laugh-In and had a Top 20 song called "Daisy a Day" in 1973. He stuck around the area, and as a young'un I once picked blueberries in his yard. The song I played is about an actual old general store that used to be around here somewhere.
All Things Must Pass. OK, so calling this a lost song is a bit of a stretch. It's the title track from possibly the most significant solo Beatle album--first #1 album by a solo Beatle, best selling solo Beatle album, pinnacle of George Harrison's impressive writing career--but I played it anyway. Sometimes, you just have to play what you like.

2000-04-06 - The Franklin Mint live at Zootz, the peak of my indie rock career

2007-10-17T22:42:00.002-04:00

Sometimes, you start with a vision. You plan out how the music will sound, record a nice demo, sketch some ideas for promo fliers, shop for matching suits, design a fancy band logo with lightning bolts shooting out of it...

Then other times, you just get together with some cool people, start playing music, and it turns out better than if you'd planned it. The Franklin Mint was one of those bands. Three of us--Josh on guitar/vocals, Pat on drums, and me on bass--got together around 1997. We rehearsed off and on and played a couple open mic nights but didn't accomplish much until 1999, when we expanded to a five-piece, adding Josh's high school friend Ben and Ben's roommate Casey. The general lineup was then Josh and I on guitar, Casey alternating between guitar and synth, Ben on bass, and Pat on drums, but we switched around for some tunes. Josh sang more than anyone, but Ben, Casey, and I also did a song or two at each show.

The Mint had some street cred before we even started. Josh and Casey worked at Bull Moose Music, the hip CD store in town, so they were already part of the local music cognoscente. Pat was (and is) an artist/designer of some local renown--among other things, he's done the album art for Portland's best known band, Rustic Overtones--and he was already playing in a couple more established local bands.

After a solid debut at the legendary club Geno's (Portland's answer to CBGB's) during a nasty March blizzard, we lined up a second show at Zootz. Then in its final days, Zootz was the best club in town for a while. I saw so many great alternative bands there in the early 90's--The Lemonheads, The Dead Milkmen, a then-unknown group called Smashing Pumpkins--that I always felt a bit cooler on that stage. (A feeling which, I must admit, was amplified by alcohol at this particular show. I'd had a bit to drink, and the stage was rather small, so I spent much of the set leaning against a wall at stage right...)

I don't have any recordings of the show, but we did videotape the next one on 2000-05-13, so here's an audio clip extracted from that. The song is "Spur" (more info in the set list below), and I'm playing the high guitar parts and singing backup vocals:

Back to the 2000-04-06 show, the set list was:

Tropic of Cancer. Most of the originals at this point were Josh's, like this one, which we referred to in rehearsals as our sleazy funk tune.
Sedan Delivery. We covered this punk-ish late 70's Neil Young song at every show, with Casey on vocals.
Free Food. A jangly number written and sung by Ben. I think it's a break-up song, not really about food.
Darkest Hour/Spur. These two by Josh were always played as a medley, though they don't have much in common. The first is bouncy, country-tinged swing with lyrics about Eric Clapton, and the second is a straight rocker inspired by William Carlos Williams' epic poem Paterson.
Kickin' Me Down. I wrote and sang this one. It's about a chance encounter between two guys, one of whom used to beat up the other one when they were little.
Sister, I'm a Poet. A faithful cover of a late 80's Morrissey B-side, with Josh singing.
My Own Private Idaho. Written mostly by Josh, but I added some bits in the middle and never really thought they fit. Liked the guitar lead line, though.
Good Enough. Another of my songs, actually written back in 1992. I used to play it with Jump Cat Jump, but I wanted to bring another of my tunes to The Mint, and this one seemed to fit the band. Silly lyrics, but it rocked well.
Satori in Paris. Josh really had a thing for borrowing song titles from other works, like this one named after a Jack Kerouac novel. The song opens with the enigmatic couplet, "I'm on a surfing safari / playing Nerf and Atari."
Rhumba Lynn. Josh's again. At one show, he described it as "our dance number." Some of my favorite Mint lyrics, though I don't know what it's about.
Temp. The set closer was also by Josh, though I have a vague memory that Ben may have contributed to it. It's an ode to office romance, featuring the memorable line, "You can talk to me like you're answering the phone."

We actually had some press buzz around this gig, even though it was only our second live appearance. First, the city's major daily paper, The Portland Press Herald, gave us a "Hey, check this show out" nod in their local music column. (In part because the writer was an fan of my previous band, Jump Cat Jump.) Then the alternative weekly, The Portland Phoenix , interviewed us and published a full-page article. While seeing your name in print is usually flattering, I didn't like this piece that much. I thought it was fawning, as if the writer wanted us to think he was cool. Maybe I just didn't get a good first impression of him, and I suspect it was mutual, since I think he portrayed me as a bit of a buffoon in the article. (In ironic trivia, I later did some writing for The Phoenix, and Josh eventually became the Arts Editor.)

I much preferred the concert review that appeared in the local music rag, FACE Magazine. Though it was mostly about Shawn Saindon, the guy we opened for, it had a nice blurb about us:

Franklin Mint opened, and they began by announcing that this would be their second show ever. Overall, you'd never have known. They're a five-piece with three, count 'em, three guitarists, and to their credit, they use them not as an all-out assault but as an array of textures. Their material is decidedly Beatle-esque in places, and in fact they reminded me, both visually and sonically, of early-period Sloan. I was most impressed by lanky guitarist Tom O'Donnell, he of the USM Open Mic Night. Multi-talented lad, that one. [emphasis mine - but hey, it's my blog]

I bowed out of The Franklin Mint in late 2000 (to devote more time to hiking and camping--not very rock star of me), and the rest played on until 2001. Then, we all scattered. Josh (who has actually e-mailed me twice since I started this post a couple hours ago) is a writer in NYC, working for Zagat Survey among others. He also has a blog, which is classy even though it has nothing to do with music. Ben and Casey moved to the Boston area, where they've played in various bands, including The Reports and Carlisle Sound. While Radiohead expects you to pony up a whole 45-pence handling fee (almost an entire dollar!) to download their new "free" album, The Reports give theirs away for nothing. The only one left in Portland is Patrick, who now has a band called Seekonk, which is cool enough to rate its own entries in Wikipedia and The All Music Guide. And if you look really close at the Seekonk logo, you can see that the "S" looks an awful lot like the "F" in the Franklin Mint logo. Our influence lives on.