It can’t be… after 5 years an audio file, not quite a podcast but a peek at things to come…

PIBC #43- Wha?!!

Hook- a catchy musical phrase which forms the basis of a popular song.

Most often when discussing the term “hook” in music it is to a catchy melodic part you remember. It might be a favorite song or those tapeworm-like parasites that won’t leave you under threat of death. As I continue to explore the genre of progressive metal/dent/ambidjent, the concept of a rhythmic hook is forefront.

Two reasons for this; as a drummer, rhythmic hooks have been how I identify my favorite parts and players. The other is that the technical, detuned, heavy style of the genre depends on drones and simple octave patterns that lock rhythmically with the drums. Why is it so simple? Mainly because it sounds so heavy; but the style depends on a locked groove that communicates to the listener on a primitive level.

Groove- a pronounced, enjoyable rhythm.
Drums have been used for communication,worship,celebration, meditation and warfare. The open groove will cause a group to move in unison, clap, cheer. It’s a heartbeat, a dance step , a call to arms. Even in these times of touchscreens and Twitter, the drum beat effects even the most stoic among us. What does this have to do with this rather small segment of the music making and listening public?

Almost all music is based on repetition. In rhythm, melody, lyric and form, you can recognize a part after it repeats a few times. Those catchy summer sing-a-longs would not be without it. A groove is extremely important in certain kinds of music, like funk and dance. Heavier music like metal, over its history, not so much. Yet a player like John Bonham of Led Zeppelin or John Stanier of Helmet groove like crazy. How can a genre both have or have not a groove? To me it is a matter of intent and syncopation on behalf of the drummer and the rest of the band. Head banging is a kind of groove but a real groove is deeper, pelvic, snake necking, sexual. For a form of music based on riffs, a groove should be a no brainier.

Scientifically: pulse (signal processing), a rapid and transient change from a baseline
In physiology, a pulse is the throbbing of arteries as an effect of heartbeat
In physics, a pulse (physics) is a single and abrupt emission of particles or radiation
In music. a pulse (music) is a rhythmic succession of sounds

Jazz and progressive music can lack pulse and groove but also include it, if that’s the intent. These are words musicians love to argue about, like “swing” and “groove”. In interviews Matt Halpern of Periphery discusses groove and pulse almost preliminarily , as he appears to have studied those who have come before very thoroughly. He also has another project called Bandhappy, an online education site that has student musicians able to study with their musical heroes. In this day of diversifying income for musicians, heres a way to augment their living even while on the road. I would have eaten this up as a youngster and in fact might pursue it as an old fart, as these guys came to play…

Ok, wandered off into a PSA…

This kind of music is busy and heavy, with necessary ebbs and flows along the way. The rhythmic busyness almost demands harmonic simplicity, as there has to be some form of space as relief and release for the rhythmic intensity. The drums and guitars lock into a pattern, propelling the sound forward, octaves leaps synced with the kick drums, the movement in the feet, the pulse in the chest, the complexity not in harmonic movement but rhythmic. Being a progressive form, this is the starting point. It comes in many favors from the gloss of Periphery to the grit of the more growly bands.

I was born the son of artists
And raised by them to see
That light is magic, depends on shadows
That perspective improves your depth

The sensitive platelets found in my blood
The rage and sadness too
The strength of heart defies my tests
As they gave me more than most

Tears from trees and music
Laughing at the acts of man
Some things are taught and others bequeathed
Or its breathed among the fog

The hallowed halls hold paint
Represent their minds eye view of how
The sun brings life to the dead
The hollow holes in the living

Perfect misses the point
Let your humanity flow, adding artist to art
Subject to object
Point and line to plane

Better yet, obscure it with emotion
Reduce it to a draft
And see it hit the target harder on a cellular level
Get out of the way of the electricity

Can you talk like this to your mother, your father?
I have this gift
Even when I’ve hidden the face of the statue
They know what the words are describing

Let a storyteller tell his version
The dancer paints, the drummer sings
The painter writes a poem, the poet sculpts
It’s all interpretation of a life lived, the death that awaits

Defy dimension, defy the mundane
Share the truth you see, only you
Don’t bother copying the others
We want your version.

10/29/11
Gurgaon

Arrived in a fever dream
Where every village in the country
Appeared to be shooting fireworks
Or attempting to bring our aircraft down

This festival, all light, explosive and tranquil
Dripping strings of color below, flower bursts above
A place where the air is already rich with scents and atmosphere
Now a country in a pyro haze perfumed with incense and gunpowder

The night hides most of the squalor as does the neighborhood
Western logos and guarded gates that keep the poor out
Unless they enter from the back in uniform to serve
Tourist bindi punctuation a rubber stamp for out of towners

There is always the work
This attempt to build a city for the day
With a consistency of detail that verges on mania
Adapting space and time to fit us

Where we have been, what we have driven through
With both acceptance and denial
Is who we are, what we do
It’s part of the reason why we do it like we do

We take the challenge and walk through
We boil with frustration and sigh with apathetic resignation sometimes
Because there are those who depend on us
To allow them to create and perform

Like a broken play on a marked field
You can see the defense fall apart before it does
Slow motion car crash sickness in the pit of your belly
We near miss drivers have steered clear so many times

Impact
Some see the the game unfolding and pull the cord
Disbelief replaced by some deeper program
Fight or flight
Some shitty field becomes the Alamo

Survivors we are, broken in ways you’ll never see
The show must go on, onward, outbound, endless
The sun rises twice and we squint
Gallows humor at it’s best

We wanted more, to make it work, again
And we will
But you can’t fist fight an ocean
And running away never hurt so much
Because it might have been the right thing to do
And that always hurts more than what we know.

10/24/11 Abu Dhabi

Arab fall
The turns outside my window smell of money
How the work finds the the holders of the purse
Wherever it’s held

Covered features and firewalls
The moral fibers cover her sad smile
And her swollen middle
Just a different cloth a world away

Irrigation
The gardens in the desert
Sprouting concrete and glass, fertilized by gold
And the need to leave a lasting mark
In the swirling sand

Gold vested concierge
Cuts the line
The lesson of money talks but has no queue or signage
The words foreign for those in line with me

Far across the sky
Distance and the alien pry words from my jaw, my diminished chest
The silence leads to talking with the poet and his supernatural heart
He threatens to speak the incantations, the sputtered, the hard heard word
Heart heard, unfiltered, unafraid

We go where the work is, money is, love is, peace is
Those who don’t turn from the broken tap live empty
Drying fuel for engines who still can run
Farther, new money, new roads, old ways

Poets mutter and few listen, understanding just an option
For both, writer and listener
The act of striking out for answers reaps return,
The attempt to listen brings quiet, where true clues lie.

Miami-Rio-Barra

Released from the ground
Sick spattered walls washed and the guilty
Sent away

Country boys living in jet seats
Uniforms and injuries
Rhythm pushes the drone through new landscapes

Somewhere a troll charges toll
How we earn a whole new world
Subscribe,ransom, set up the pashas tent
Pick a muddy field, a closet, a men’s room
All these jobs posing as something else
Games are anything but
Jobs are anything but

Creating something with unseen goals
Employed to do one thing, making art on the side
Historians in stage blacks, selling memories and memorabilia
Our experience becomes the R&D for others
And the weaning process for our own future

Out the window, in the distance
The dancing lights of the lampago de catatumbo
Far off in time and space
Another planet, another heart
A soft silent sigh of shared song
The toxic fumes of man, of earth, of woman

Fly over state of your own history
Toll paid, troll fed, what to make, what to make
25 years is time for many buildings, children grown
Cars junked, canals cleaned, new streets for art and traffic

Still here, still wondering
Still more than a few steps behind what moves me
The push, the pull, looking in the wrong direction
Often gets the ire and the occasional perfect shot
When not obsessing over happiness or self destruction

Still writing about the lights on the hills
And the sound of wind and surf
The lines cross again and again
The words wash up on the sand
Or fall from the sky blessed and undiscussed

The fleeting lesson probably something simple
I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam
Can I be content with that and sleep
And dream
And dream.

The framed seascape welcomed the fog
From the shower behind the curved bar
Three dories roped aft to stern
The house beyond harder to see

The mirror hides nothing once
The steam slips away
I stare at the boats instead
The wind and seagulls in my head

The ocean song is blood based music

Inland and mid-sea

The crash of waves within my heart

Feel the swell while land locked

My spirit in the undertow

Not fighting the tide, not at all

Waiting for the breakfast room to open
Gate slides wide and the people come out of the woodwork
European buffet brings all types around
Business men and Vacation groups
Sleepless roadies, liars

Families of the modern Muslim age
With women in different degrees of traditional garb
Hijab, leggings, long sleeve shirt
Subtle patterned scarves
Dark top to bottom Jilbab
Sometimes simple jeans
Designer sunglasses on their covered heads

The men less traditional, almost slovenly
Shorts, untucked shirts, baseball caps
Could be road crew without the family in tow

The children, vacation casual
Polo shirts and Bermudas

Then throw in an Italian fashion plate business women
And she looks like a porno star
Parading her snug ensemble and gold frames
Confident with what the lord gave her

The cream jacketed staff hovers, practicing the few English phrases that they’ve been served
Cued by the fat, the blatant appearance
Managers circling, steering, glad to have busboys to correct

Back to the wall, all the little dances are visible
The initial seat fine until a wife finds fault
With ventilation or sunshine
Businessmen who give the better seat to their luggage
Daughters following mothers like toilet paper on a shoe
Old couples filling remaining days, making up for wasted ones now that the clock ticks louder

To hide behind a bush
Ziplock full of Splenda & green sauce
The endless ferry of espresso
Eyes casing the room
Strange pleasure draped over
The tired bruised body
And the destructive default mind.

I woke up this morning thinking about how loss changes with age in many ways. What was once unthinkable for a young person has become acceptable; the levels in between are interesting progressions from one end of the spectrum to the other. This is triggered by the news of Clarence Clemons passing away last evening, after a very serious stroke knocked him down one last time. The sense of loss was different from losing Danny or even my brother Sam. I think it is because of  my own aging and actually having been in the process of grieving in the past 6 years or so.

I’m gonna elaborate a little on the first idea. As a child the thought of a friend or a relative being gone forever starts off as not even a possibility. You have forever and they are ten feet tall and bulletproof. As feelings and emotions develop the concept intensifies. Not only for those close to you but the odd connection to celebrity, an emotional closeness created by media or art. People are very different in how they process and carry these losses, bearing them like full-sized monuments tied to their backs or stuffing the grief inside, the venom oozing out of the person in other forms. This is not to say that the loss of a child, a sibling, a parent, a spouse is not a major and consuming thing; it can alter your whole life with or without some proper handling.

I often wondered what else people are grieving when they become immobilized by the loss of a celebrity or an outright stranger, their only connection through the TV or media outlet. I tend to vacillate between thinking I am partially sociopathic or they are drama hungry, feeding on the sadness like the thirsty drinking tears. Could the bond created by a single song or a repeated sequence of still photos from a tabloid news show make an authentic connection or does it represent something else? Marilyn Monroe,Elvis, John Lennon, Princess Di… they were big but became bigger with the death cults, martyrs for something missing in everyone’s everyday life. Better to focus on that than 100,000 unseen victims in a far off war or a second cousin withering away in a hospital room. The fear of being close to it, like you could catch it, easier to manage with the patron saints and their merchandise.

shot by Jo Lopez

As I approach 50 rapidly, the emails come more often and find myself thinking of Facebook as “Deathbook”, the speed and frequency of the obits increasing. I visit my parents and older relatives, hear stories of being sick for months, see the oxygen tanks, the slowing down. For those who suffer, often for a long time, the end is actually leaning more towards welcome than not. When I began working with the ESB in 2002, Clarence had physical ailments which required him to prepare mentally, physically and spiritually  before every show. His knees, his hips, his back, they were all a mess. He was in pain so much of the time. The toll on that massive frame radiated off of him. It didn’t get any easier between then and the last-go-round. You could see that pain in his big beautiful eyes but very little would slip ungrateful from his lip in front of us. He was an incredible example of love and spirit persisting when the body had no business carrying on.

So, I guess this little post is about the path between denial and acceptance. Beginning with death not existing and ending with it being the only conclusion, the act of growing up and letting go of these temporal temporary bodies, it always has been what we made of the time between the beginning and the end. In the Middle Ages, Sunday was put aside for church and the idea that things would be better in the afterlife, because life was so hard for so many. Many philosophies focus on being in the moment, the act of finding “heaven on earth”. As a pretty typical human being shifting between the selfish “woe-is-me” headspace and the slivered moments of Eden found in a flower pushing through the concrete, time lately has been on my side.

I don’t want my friends to go but they’re gonna. I don’t want anyone to truly suffer but some will. Some defy the odds and others are struck down by space debris. Nobody gets out of here alive.

The lessons that those who have gone before left us are still here, good and bad. It’s our job to share them, keep the memories alive and hope that someone else gains something from these people who no longer walk the earth. Lessons about passion and sharing, selfishness and self-destruction, creating and destroying. Like road signs or myths, they can guide another generation to choose between doing something while they’re here or rushing headlong into the abyss, dragging the innocent along with them.

After the last breath, it’s up to those remaining to let go. What we let go of, well, is up to us. I hope that those who suffered in life are released once they cross the threshold. Perhaps the thought of that can give us peace even if we’re not in the Middle Ages. Perhaps we can find the grace to live a better life by holding the memory of our fallen Blood Brothers close to our hearts.