Archive for July, 2015

The Value of A Musician – A Cautionary Tale

Posted: July 8, 2015 in Opinions and Observations
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As a member of a cover band, I was given the opportunity to add something to my personal profile on the band web site.  I added a statement that went something like this; “we will play anywhere for free…..we just charge to move the equipment in and out”!

If you think about it, you would have to pay an awful lot of money to have ‘professionals’ move that much equipment.  Then they have to pack it all up and take it back at the end of the gig.  I have played keyboards, guitar, percussion and back up vocals in most of the bands I performed with.  Sometimes I also ran sound at the same time!  I was carrying so much gear for myself that I probably had more than the sound guy!  Once you haul equipment out of your house (I did not have duplicates, so what I used in the studio I had to tear down and take to the gig, set it up, tear it down, take it home and set it up in the studio again) and set up the gear you are all hot and sweaty and exhausted and now get to play for 4 plus hours, pack it all up and take it home.  Ahhhh, the glamourous rock and roll life.   Knowing all that, I think most people would be amazed at how little the local band playing the bar scene gets paid for all that work.   Maybe it is confusing because we call it ‘play’.  If I figured out an hourly rate I would probably get really depressed!

We also had to practice, individually and as a band.  No weekends free….  you get home at 3 or 4 in the morning and have to recover most of the day, then you play that night and do it all over again.  I always worked at a day job and still do, so this was about all the free time I had.  Now time for family, writing and recording projects and hopefully a little time in the sun.

Is it fun?  Absolutely.  I am an introvert and very shy in public, but it is a thrill to perform with great musicians and have the audience appreciate what you are doing.  I would not give it up, and if I were a bit younger I would still be out there.  At one point I told the band members that I would quit gigging out when I turned 50  – or my van broke down, whichever came first.  My van did break down first, but our light guy fixed it himself for free.  So I kept playing out.  Way past 50.  I recently stopped because tinnitus (a ringing in the ears from long exposure to loud sounds) got pretty bad in the last few years.  I only play out for special occasions these days, but it is still a blast.

Girl from Arlington Heights

Posted: July 6, 2015 in My Tunes
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https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/dark-energy/id962943592

This is another acoustic guitar song with me as the vocalist.  This is a true story that I took creative license with and made into something more than it was for the effect.   This song really is about me getting a ticket while driving around town.  This was many years ago, so the details are always suspect, but I was driving local roads and might have been distracted but as the traffic ahead of me slowed and then rapidly came to a stop …… I didn’t!  Unfortunately I ran into the car in front of me – at very low speed –  but to fast and to late to stop in time. The police officer gave me a citation for ACD, which I suspect, most of you safe drivers might not know what that is!   Around here that stands for Assured Clear Distance.  It is the driver’s obligation to make sure to have enough distance between you and the vehicles ahead of you to stop in time to avoid doing what I just did.   This was my first accident and it was all new to me.  While I am waiting to get my citation and then reviewing the event afterwards I thought ‘how am I going to explain this?’.  So I came up with a rather funny romantic embellishment and wrote a song about this experience. The song also has an interesting intro and break.  A number of my songs will have unusual time signatures.  For the musicians out there, send me a message if you know what time signature I used.

Walking Man Part 2 – Pack A Lot Of Punch

Posted: July 4, 2015 in projects, Video
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For this project, we needed a few volunteers and some inexpensive themes.  We took advantage of the resources available.  Ric worked as an auto mechanic so we started there.  I made a couple cameo appearances but the story is about working hard and no time for creating and performing  (you have heard this theme before !) During the Jeep ride up the hill you do not see the driver (Gorgeous George…) but he is still in the Jeep as Ric appears to be pulling it (and metaphorically his career) up the hill.  George is pulling in and out on the clutch so there is real tension and sometimes Ric is literally being pulled back by the Jeep.  Who needs acting skills!

When we moved to the live Personal Touch segments it is the duo before Phyllis Ann officially joined us.  You can see Ric is kicking bass pedals and controlling an accompaniment system.  On his guitar you can see him tap two silver round pads. The one triggers a drum crash from the accompaniment system he is controlling. The other pad triggers a drum pattern change to a drum roll for as many times as he taps the pad.  He is the lead vocalist for the song and yes, he is also playing guitar…….. I am playing my Arp Odyssey, a Yamaha electric piano and my Yamaha DX7 and doing back-up vocals in this video.

For this I think we went into the club the day of our regular performance and shot the raw video segments for the Walking Man video.  We played other tunes for other projects but there is no real audience and we only had to set up once to do the video shots and perform later that night.  I try to be within budget (usually none….) and also with no wasted effort!

For a duo, we packed a lot of punch.  Not only because it was just two of us in the beginning, but  also in the space we could fit.  We had no live drummer or bass player.  I could play guitar and sing and when I was not playing guitar (and indeed, in some songs I would play guitar and keyboards) I could play keyboards and/or control the drum machine that I programmed.

Ric sang and played the guitar and almost all lead guitar parts as he also controlled the accompaniment system that had preset drum patterns, bass pedals, and a foot pedal and switches that let him add backing instruments like strings or piano sounds and at the same time determine if the backing instrument chords were played Major, Minor, 7th etc.  We fit anywhere, as long as they had tall ceilings LOL!!!

The Walking Man Intro

Posted: July 1, 2015 in projects, Video
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Believe it or not, MTV started off as a media outlet for – VIDEOS!  It was not what it is today.  Music videos were still relatively new and there were not that many out there but they started being produced in numbers once MTV provided an outlet for them. The Chicken or the Egg thing all over again.  I did not own any video equipment, but I was familiar with photography and music, so it was a natural interest for me.  Back then, cable companies were starting to set up monopolies in various cities throughout the US and we were in the Warner Amex territory.  As part of their agreement with the city to provide cable and other services, Warner Amex made some of their equipment and channels available to local citizens. They provided training and allowed non-profit citizens to go through camera and editing training and once completed you could schedule use of their equipment to create content for viewing on their Public Access channels.

I was one of the first (my card was # 000090!!) to sign up for the training classes.  I would borrow their equipment and film bands and live performances, family growing, along with a number of other projects.

My first project was to make a video that introduced the idea and benefits of the Public Access program, (we hoped if we had a complimentary message it would be good for PR and relationships with the people that administered the program, (we were right). and a music video idea we had been working on.  This is by definition low-budget and is dated by equipment and resources available today. But it was a learning experiment and was a lot of fun.  To do a lot of what we did it took a bunch of planning and trial and error.  I had been playing keyboards for a very short time and there are a bunch of mistakes, I was new with the video editing and production, but not this was not bad for the first release.  Usually, I am also the cameraman, but filming my own band required additional operators.  I edited the video from the collection of raw tapes and a live performance of the song.

This video features my younger brother as the narrator and the music is from the duo I was in at the time called, “The Personal Touch.”  The intro theme is a musical piece called “The Big D Jam”.  The video is based on a song the guitar player wrote called “Transaxle“.   We took vague ideas and filmed them all.  Then edited them into something semi-cohesive!  There are a bunch of funny stories that went into the making of Walking Man but I will spare you for now.  The end credits use a song of mine introduced earlier called “The Pleasure Tax“.

As with many of these blasts from the past, there are lots of good memories and a number of painful ones.  Looking at this video again so many years after, I see my youngest brother Chris in his healthy days doing the narrative part introducing the musical video before health problems including throat cancer took their toll.  This is when we thought we would last forever….. there was no end in sight.  We do not last for ever.  For him, the end was so close to the beginning.   We all have our vices, but with legal ones like tobacco and alcohol killing people every day, we all know someone that has been affected by the results. Here is the real message we should be sending; These drugs may not kill you.  You will not lose ten years of your life.  You will survive – and grow old – and suffer – for decades, with a disease that is eating you from the inside out. I am glad I was there to help him a little as he faced the end.  I would have given anything to find another path for him, but he knew where he was going.  It did not stop him and neither could I.

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