Tasting the Pain, Singing the Blues

I listened to almost nothing but Pink Floyd for an entire summer. Every album. Then I realized why I was so depressed. I was 16. Musically innovative, expansive, deep, but fu**ing depressing. So I stopped listening.

I have never seen "Old Yeller." I have no desire to see it. If you know the dog gets shot in the end and everyone cries their eyes out, why subject yourself to it? Why make yourself sad when you don't have to be? Who does that? There is enough sad in life anyway, without looking for extra.

And that has mostly been my life aesthetic. I want art, music, film. literature, poetry that inspire; that elevates my soul; that makes me wonder; that turns me on and gets me riled up; that makes my heart race; that sends me off to contemplate the Cosmos.

But then I found a different kind of sad. Blue sad. Blues sad. I don't remember when I started listening to Delta Blues music, but it has been a while.

The lone blues man, with his guitar and his loneliness, sometimes without even a guitar; with his suffering, sitting on a porch step or a curb. Hungry. Feet hurt. He knows the kind of sad that has always haunted me.

He wails of our ultimate alone-ness in the world. He cries out about Love's impermanence. He frees his blues soul through his fingers, his tapping foot, his raspy voice. If you don't believe me, listen to Son House.

There is no emotion, no music, more primal than a blues howl. And yet, sometimes when I hear it, it doesn't sound exactly sad. It's cathartic. It can be transformative. Like somehow turning his heartbreak, his alone loose into the Universe, changes it.

But I don't know that. And neither does he. And that's where the blues plumbs the depths and the heights. The blues man sings his song out into the Universe; he wonders if the Universe or anyone else in it hears him at all, or gives a shit.

And then, hearing no reply, hearing nothing back, he knows it doesn't fu**ing matter;

He's going to sing anyway. Because he has to.

Wilco, Little Boy Blue & the Man in the Moon

I've said recently and frequently that the two bands I'd most dig seeing live are Wilco and The Black Keys. I've been in a listening frenzy. And then I go and win tickets to Wilco this Sunday through a WRNR 103.1 Twitter contest. Color me stoked in vibrant, groovy colors.

It's a Sunday evening concert and Robin bows out, so I am roledexing my friends for big Wilco fans. Meanwhile the band played on Letterman on Wednesday night and I am watching the performance Thursday morning. Anna, our nine-year-old is next to me watching and I mention to her that I am going to see these guys on Sunday.

"Can I go, dad? Please, please, please???"

SOLD! Instantly I hear Cat Stevens singing, "The cat's in the cradle with the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon...," and think about five to seven years when she won't want anything to do with dad at a concert, unless it's transportation. I think about how she digs the music I listen to, always asking to hear Black Keys, going to Pre-K asking for The Raconteurs and Jack Johnson.

She wants to go to a concert, with dad, and it doesn't involve sitting through Britney Spears or Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber. Color me amped, in a cool daughter way, who will get to hear real music performed live, by an awesome, challenging band. I have said before, there is hope for her musical soul. And to boot, we get to go up a little early for a private performance by the band, for WRNR contest winners.

So Sunday will be a time to see a great concert; a time to spend daddy-daughter time; a time to build the kind of memory, that if you don't start early, will likely go the direction of little boy blue and the man in the moon.

Color me a heavy metal drummer.

"Long distance runner, what you standing there for?"

Heavy metal is not the soundtrack to long distance running. It might power you around a track or get you amped and angry before a game, but for a long, grueling run, my mind/soul needs something more expansive. Something that can charge or carry me through the valleys.

Not to knock heavy metal music. Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, were formative musical influences for me, ultimately dropping me on the door step of the hardcore and punk, from Bad Brains, the Clash, 7Seconds, Sick of it All, that would be the soundtrack of my skateboarding teens. And I still dig and listen to all of them.

It started in sixth grade, trading cassette tapes back and forth with my friend Nate. Priest and Maiden and Motley Crue, Quiet Riot and even Deep Purple. Nate put a Grateful Dead tape in my hand, the artwork looking a bit like the Maiden covers, and proceeded to sing Casey Jones like it was an Alice Cooper song. I took it home to give a listen. It didn't fit with the screaming and power chords I was after, but wasn't bad.

I don't think you can dig old jazz and blues and not be pulled in with what the Dead, Phish and the jam bands have done with the improvisational, free-form vibe. Saying that, the unencumbered "space" of some of the live jam bands has always been a turn-off for me. The best of all of it keys a balance between structure and improv.

When I want to go out and plug in to the iPod for a long run, the Dead, moe., Strangefolk, Umphrey's McGee have given me that mojo of making my mind and body want to dance, want to float, making the soul smile and heavy legs lighter. That can be more valuable on some days. It can be what laces your shoes up.

Long distance runner, what you standing there for? Get up, get off, get out of the door.

Fire on the Mountain has a prominent spot on a number of running playlists. Towards that expansive state of mind where the runner, and the run, and the road or trail are all the same. And it carries over into the rest of the day, where Robin and I are driving with the girls and dogs to Tuckahoe State Park and both singing along together to New Speedway Boogie, with the road winding under the wheels...

The blues man painted houses

 
The blues man painted houses. He painted the one across the street from us, growing up.

I don't remember his name. It might have been John or James. He brought his bass guitar and a small amp with him. He wrote a song with my sister, who was six or seven at the time.

My name is Su-sie, I live across the street from here...

An old school blues bass line thumped along behind her.

A cosmic smile wore his face, black skin and beard.

You might try to argue that he was too happy to be a blues man. His rebuttal was his heart, which seemed to take in the human condition. He felt. He got it.

And he took the time to plug in and help a six-year-old write and play a song. I was 11. And I can hear the song, his fingers walking on the bass, the plaster walls and old windows rattling, my sister's voice, off key, with a hint of what it sounds like now.

I can hear his smile.

The blues man painted houses. He painted the one across the street. And a couple of kids who hung out to hear him.

Who's afraid of... Thelonious Monk??

I blame Schroeder. Sitting hunched over his cartoon piano, he rocked the tune "Linus and Lucy," which began in me a lifelong fascination with playing and listening to the piano. If I recall correctly, he was the first in an odd lineage of keyboard ticklers who have pulled me in an aesthetic tractor beam.

The list looks something like this: Schroeder. Rick Wakeman. Bill Thomas. Herbie Hancock. Thelonious Monk. Chris Merritt. Marco Benevento.

Some people dig guitar solos and I am no exception, letting Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan wash over. Cliff Burton style bass solos? Absolutely. Neil Pert with a drum set spinning around him? Supercool. But it's always been the piano that has most captivated me and made me wish I could play it.

Wakeman owned the keys for the band Yes in their era of psychodelic album covers, Roundabout, and beyond and was the cat that opened the door to solos and jamming in the rock context. Bill Thomas caught my attention when I returned to Easton High from Hagerstown, first in a music history class, then AP Music theory, then helping out as a teacher's aide my senior year. When he sat down at the piano to give us examples, he took no small amount of breaks hearing, "Hey Mr. Thomas, can you play 'Linus and Lucy' again?" He generally rolled his eyes, hunched his shoulders and appeased us (me), breaking out the notes that make you want to do the Snoopy dance.

Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" put him on the popular teenage conscious map when we were in middle school, but it wasn't until I heard his stuff prior to getting synthesized that he pulled me in. I like Miles and Mingus as much as any jazz cats, but Hancock and Monk and hearing the keyboards roll through improvisation and form somehow sends me in ways that horns, sax or bass doesn't always achieve.

In the last couple years, we've stumbled across (or been encouraged to check out) a number of bands. But it's been the live performances of Chris Merritt and, this past Tuesday, Marco Benevento, that have elevated themselves and me above the fray.

Which brings me somehow here. I often challenge myself with physical/mental goals. Can I run a marathon? Can I finish the JFK 50-miler? Can we paddle from Easton to Oxford or around Wye Island? Can I swim from Oxford to Bellevue? Can I skateboard for 50 or 100 miles? Our pal Landy Cook, en route to completing the 4+ mile Chesapeake Bay swim heard a lady say that she tried to do something that got her both excited and scared every year. I like that idea. But I don't think it always has to be a physical challenge.

I am not musically inclined. I'm also not internationally known or known to rock the microphone, but I digress. For me, I think that one of those exciting and scary challenges, one that I've wanted to get my hands on and into for some time is to learn to play the piano.

I don't hold delusions of grandeur or set high hopes for myself. I don't want to sit in with a band or play Carnegie Hall (or NightCat for that matter). I will start with a goal. Learn to do something I've wanted to be able to do since watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special as a kid. Learn to play "Linus and Lucy."

But just the same, I think I'll go with the Bill Murray as Bob Wiley philosophy: baby steps ;)