Not really

You all know that the previous post isn't true, but it made me laugh to write it. For the most part, the next chunk of my life is chock full of stories about my wife, my jobs, my kids, etc. (You know... the real stuff) but I wanted to break the flow to avoid a domesticated anticlimax. Coming Soon: Jive Bruthas

The Big Time

One day I was playing with my amp turned way up, and a car screeched into the driveway. A man got out and asked me if I’d like to make it big and I said yes. Since then I’ve been touring the world, and playing sold out arenas as the bassist for the worlds biggest stars.

the next phase

Soon thereafter, my family left southern California and took Zenmaster with them. I had a hard time learning all these crazy bass lines like I used to, so I spent many hours with the Tascam 4-track, crafting new songs with my bass, a drum machine and a keyboard. I wrote some good stuff, but it’s hard to have inspired chemistry with yourself, especially when you’re focused on the technical aspects of the recording process. I slowly atrophied into a skinny armed, smooth finger-tipped music junkie with a dusty bass in the corner. I redirected my attentions to hiking and exploring the seemingly endless miles of canyons and ridges in the area. I walked for months… then years…with crazy music in my head the whole time, but alas… that is a different story.

Years went by…I was now a listener instead of a player. Things were starting to change in the world of music. The crossdressing hairbands had peaked and were finally losing their ground. The glam-band dipshits had to buy whole new wardrobes. Some of them chopped off their hair and denied their past, the rest grew goatees and traded in their spandex for flannel. Phish, Janes Addiction, Alice in Chains, and Primus all put out their first albums. Things were getting better.

crazy music

You might be asking yourself, “So, dude. What’s the big deal about this music?” Well I’m gonna tell ya. The music I heard on that day represented a true peak in western music. Some of it was Jazz-fusion, and some of it was progressive rock. The 2 styles came from two different directions, but came close to merging in the 70’s. The Fusion bands were coming from a jazz background with improvisational strengths and new state-of-the-art equipment. They took their jazzy asses to Rockville and laid it down hard. The progressive rockers had abandoned standard rock formulas, and using the same state-of-the-art equipment, they wrote new and exciting music by letting each player focus on their individual roles in the arrangements. In other words, the rockers learned to improvise, and the jazz heads learned to rock. These guys were musicians proper, not just dudes in bands. Their skill levels were way up the scale, and the chemistry between the musicians in these bands was magic. The music they made was more than just the sum of the pieces. The line-ups in these 2 forms were basically the same: guitar, drums, bass, and keyboards. Add a singer and you have progressive rock. Also, these dudes were young and on fire… they were inspired. They seemed to know something that the rest of us didn’t… they had some secret knowledge that allowed them to tap into eternity and lay it out for the rest of us to see.

On a more personal level, it opened my eyes wide. I realized that I was a tiny little bass player in a vast sea of greatness. I was humbled.

We continued with Insanity, but there were hollow voids where the keyboards and newfound textures should be. New ideas came faster and faster…. eventually, our brains left our fingers in the dust. Before one idea came to fruition, another took its place. Playing time started to give way to listening time. I scoured the used record stores for more and more. I listened more and more. In the back of my head, I imagined that I would somehow receive the elusive hidden knowledge through osmosis if I kept listening real hard. So I did.

Musical Milestone #4: Chemistry

One day, me and the Zenmaster paid a visit to an acquaintance of dubious character. He lured us into his lair by offering to let me tape a bunch of speed metal albums. When we arrived, however, he had changed his tune. He chastised us for our small-minded metal infatuation, and claimed that we should broaden our musical minds. I relaxed on his couch and tried to keep my eyes from rolling too far back into my head as he lectured. After the scolding, he started describing the musical climate of the 1970’s. He asserted that while the world was dancing on lighted dance floors with polyester suits, the real musicians of the world huddled in dark studios, forming into small secret societies whose only goals were to record the best music ever. He mentioned unfamiliar names, and spoke with intense passion in the otherwise silent room. Being a product of the 70’s, I have to admit that I was quite skeptical of his assertions, just as I was of everything he said. Through the haze of excitement, I saw him rummaging madly through his exorbitant record collection. Finally he pulled a record from its sleeve and carefully placed it on his fine turntable. He gently placed the diamond stylus on the vinyl disk and stepped back, as if he just lit a firecracker. From the massive liquid-cooled speakers came a chorus of voices from another galaxy:

“Dawn of life lying between a silence and sold sources……
chased amid fusions of wonder…..”

It was beautiful. As the trans-galactic chorus reached a point of resolution, the instruments took over and wove a sonic tapestry that brought tears to my eyes.
He handed me the double album cover. It was “Tales from Topographic Oceans” by YES. The song was called “The Revealing Science of God” which was appropriate to me on many levels. He picked up the needle again and put on something else. He put it right smack in the middle of a song. It was a tornado of virtuosity, with bass, guitar and keyboards playing a thousand 64th notes in perfect unison, as the run came to a head, it climaxed into a masterpiece of resolution. It was “The Dual of the Jester and the Tyrant” by Return to Forever. He then played Egocentric molecules by Jean-Luc Ponty, then Colloseum, Brand X, and King Crimson. The crazy man put on little shows as the music filled our ears. He played air guitar, air keyboards and air drums. He was a real dumbass, but he changed my life forever that day.

faster and faster

I soaked up Metallica like a sponge. It gave me a new outlook, and had all kinds of new riffs and sounds and structures. Then, a guy I knew turned me on to Slayer. It was super fast and it creeped me out, but in a good way. We started a band called Toxic Noise, which was just plain hardcore. We weren’t brilliant but we were the fastest band I could imagine. In the meantime, Zenmaster sat alone in his bedroom making up crazy new songs. The concepts were complicated, the structures were flabbergasting, and the potential was dizzying. He started teaching the second guitar parts to Kram, a good friend of ours. Toxic Noise was getting old after a year, and the Zenmaster/Kram duo was getting solid, so I defected, and Insanity was born. The songs we played together were completely insane. The time signatures changed constantly and there was enough music in each song to make an entire album, had we followed traditional songwriting practices. We found an already insane drummer to learn the drum parts that we had programmed into a drum machine, and he learned them all, even though they weren’t humanly possible. We played for hours on end, day after day, with no goal except to keep playing. We developed forearms like Popeye, and fingertips of steel. We were like the US Oympic speed metal team.

By this point, I was in college. I was taking a music appreciation class in a hall with ideal acoustics and an awesome sound system. One particular day, the professor started telling stories about Antonio Vivaldi, and painted a vivid picture of him composing various works, including the Four Seasons. He was teaching at a school for women and formed a string orchestra by teaching the students how to play the violins, violas, cellos and contrabasses. He conducted the string orchestra while standing in the front and playing the lead violin part. She described the imagery inherent to the pieces, and then she played the "Winter Concerto". I melted into my seat as the powerful piece swept through the room. Visions of the small intense red headed composer playing this masterpiece overwhelmed my senses and I was yet again transformed by the greatness of music.

Zenmaster was studying classical guitar with an ancient man who was a classical guitar master in his own right. He was learning pieces by Bach and Scarlatti, and bringing ever more grand ideas to the table. Our songs got longer, crazier, more complex and beautiful. Ideas kept blossoming. Our fingers struggled to keep up with our brains. The ironic thing is that even though our music was getting smarter and more progressive every day, the speed metal we indulged in was getting stupider. It kept getting faster and faster, but not better. When new bands pioneer new musical forms, this is what happens. The pioneers have their own fresh ideas and create something new, and then new bands snatch up the concepts and drive them into the ground. The music becomes contrived instead of inspired. I was running out of music that satisfied my increasingly fickle musical tastes for power, complexity, dexterity and greatness. Something had to give.