The Shopocolypse

Photo swiped from Rev Billy without permission - forgive me!

I saw Reverend Billy's show yesterday at Dixon Place, an entertaining and emotional event. I'm quite honored to say that I've known him for many years, from before he was the Reverend, even.

Reverend Billy, who occupies the mortal container that is Bill Talen, is the Minister of the Church of Stop Shopping. His activities are portrayed in the recent Morgan Spurlock documentary, "What Would Jesus Buy?". Billy evangelizes an anti-consumerist creed that worships the small in favor of the large, the personal in favor of the commercial and the local as the best angel of the global. He preaches against the evils of the big box and the brand name. He holds particular distaste for those corporations that cultivate, at great expense, a veneer of social awareness and sensitivity to the needs of the individual when in fact they are entirely motivated by the same thing that drives all large businesses: profit.

The afternoon service was a simple event. Upon arrival I found a bare stage in the center of a beautiful new theater steadily filling with audience - parishioners. The setting couldn't have been more elemental; a blank back wall, no drapes or curtains. At stage right loomed a serviceable upright piano, a digital keyboard and an electric bass on a stand. There was a nice basic ceremonial vibe, like a clearing in the forest or a revival tent.

The show was exceptional on a few levels. First off, the choir rocked hard and excellently. I attended a Church of Stop Shopping event a few years ago, it was meaningful and fun, and the choir was very good. But the choir in 2008 is just plain slammin'. Directed by James Solomon Benn, the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir is the backbone of energy and spirit for the proceedings. I didn't get an actual count, but maybe 20 members drove the space throughout the event. A fine variety of spectacular singers traded solos, from ripping gospel to sweet ballads, setting up the point of view and attitude.

I was treated to a song of cronyism in the boardroom, another encouraging the shunning of Walmart and one exhorting the gathered crowd to stop shopping. As the various tunes resonated throughout the theater, the Reverend clapped along on the sidelines, stamping his feet and uttering an occasional well-placed "Halleluja".

Once the tone of the service had been thoroughly established, Billy took the stage and delivered a measured and thoughtful sermon. He covered topics that ranged from Jdymytai Damour, the minimum-wage temp worker trampled to death by overeager shoppers at the black Friday opening of a Long Island Walmart, to the pre-Christian meaning of Christmas as a winter solstice fertility and survival rite. One might think that this sort of thing would feel, um, preachy - or at least guilt inducing. The genius of Reverend Billy is that he is able to provide a sense of uplift and humor to a message that is normally associated with dour funlessness and resignation. Reverend Billy has dedicated many of his years finding ways to bring satisfaction and even triumph to simple personal acts like visiting a public park or shopping at a local business. And when the inevitable moment arrives in the show when someone in the audience - or choir - is caught with their Starbucks cup mid-sip, Billy bows his head humbly and intones, "We're all sinners here." This is a fight we're in together.

I don't pretend to have the answers to the ills of the world, and I suspect that even if the solutions turn out to be simple in theory, they will be tortuously difficult to bring to reality. I can say that when I've felt a little down, a brush with Reverend Billy always pulls me up or at least makes me feel I may point myself in the right direction. If you've got a bit of worldly malaise and want to get it cured up, you could do a lot worse than check out The Church of Stop Shopping.

Kent

So if we go to one beginning, that might be Kent, who lived in the attic of his grandparents house. The place was situated along a two lane that got people from one side of town to the other, it was set back just barely from the street where cars flew past on the way to a large strip mall nearby. The house abutted an ancient Native American ceremonial ground that had been given an update to an eighteen hole golf course by whitey forty or fifty years earlier. The house was neat and quiet for the most part.

I pull into the driveway behind Kent's car, which is a beat up white Valiant. Sharp into the drive and cut the ignition as I throw open the door and hop out of my own vehicle, a Chevy Vega station wagon that I got from Jim as a hand-me-down. If it's warm I saunter like a cowboy, and if freezing I bolt like a whippet to the house. Traverse a small, scrubby patch of grass with cars zipping by just a few feet away, anticipating. Skip over the two porch steps and ring the doorbell. A few seconds, a half-minute, never very long. A muffled voice or two inside, questioning then argumentative. At once the inside door flies open. Kent there with an expectant energy, wavering between the darkness of the interior and the light outside, "Come in, come on in, it's good to see you!" I yank at the screen door and tumble into the house.

En route through the small living room, Kent's grandfather might be there watching TV. Grandpa always seems a little surprised, not so much at the fact of company, but that there is motion in his field of vision. His head tilts back, lips parted, eyes wide behind thick glasses. He nods slightly and swivels his head back to the TV. Slight smell of something like dust, a couple of padded chairs, nothing so deluxe as a recliner. Some photos displayed and a few ceramic items. It is not minimally decorated, but not overstuffed with fading memorabilia like my own grandmother's home. Visible through a doorway to the kitchen is yet more pleasant order, vinyl cushions on patio furniture and a screened-in porch frames a view to a backyard that I don't recall having ever visited. I say hello and get a nod or a short, polite phrase in return from Grandpa. Then Kent, "Come on up, let's go."

Three steps through the living room then a hard right up the steps to the attic. Everything a little better up here.

Kent's room is the entire second story of a one story house. The penthouse. The top of the steps emerge into the room, no door at the top, just a white railing to discourage accidents. Kent's bed directly opposite, a little window on each end, the slope of the roof encourage habitation toward the middle of the room. I know there were books, and there was usually a little pile of laundry, I don't remember what else. But what is important are the records. On a shelf that runs along one of the low sides of the room is a stack of LP's about six feet long. Miles Davis, Little Feat, Bootsy Collins, Kurt Weill, Leon Russel, Dylan, more. The mother lode. When I think of Kent, I think of his room, being there with him and one or three other people. I was not so privy to Kent's relationship situations. As a matter of fact, I would say that my social circle was not so big on the girlfriends or romance of any stripe for various reasons. So the main reason to visit Kent was to hang and check out his record collection.

Something about myself

I've been writing about mixing and making a CD. But that's not the story I really want to tell. That is just where I'm at. I don't know how to tell the thing I want to. I want to say something about myself, because I think it's important.

I've read a few books and they all seem to say that if you've got a story you should start at the beginning, whatever the hell that is.

Writing

Writing is a problem I can't always figure out.

axis of error

Mr. & Mrs. Brains

CD Art by Dewan

I spoke with Brian the other day, which is always good. He has agreed to do the artwork for my CD.

- What's up?
- Oh, I'm very excited to at last be finishing up on the basement! I spoke with the cement guy and he's going to come by this week to have a look at it. The only thing left is a bit of cement that needs to be broken out by the steps and I'm done.
- Then they pour?
- Yes! It's going to be so nice at last. I'll have a whole extra floor then, and room for my stuff down there, it's going to be great.
- It'll be brilliant to have a real basement with a ceiling higher than five feet.
- Oh, yes! I feel that all of the hard work will have finally paid off. I've been digging it out forever, but now that the end is in sight it just seems as if a tremendous weight is about to be lifted from my shoulders!
- I really love that. Congratulations, man.
- Oh, thank you! My new floor is almost here!
- What else is going on?
- Oh, just a lot of bullshit. My email has been acting up and that's why I've not gotten back to you. I just finally got access to things and saw your email there. I'm ready to get going as soon as I get this last piece of cement broken out of the basement.
- Alright, that sounds good.
- The Internet here is rather unpredictable. It usually works fine but then not at all for awhile. Then a bunch of emails will arrive all at once.
- Drag. Is it a dial up?
- Oh no, it's a high speed, but it just doesn't behave as it should sometimes.
- Who knows?
- It's worse than an enigma, it's just random misbehavior. Just when you think it's working ok it craps out in a completely unpredictable way. Fuck that!
- Fuck that!
- What a lot of bullshit it is!
- A whole lot! ... Did you get the songs and the templates?
- Yes, I just got them today. As soon as I finish digging I'll have a look at them. I'm so excited about my basement.
- Well, it is the very foundation of your house. You should be excited.
- Oh, I am. I really am. I've been anticipating this moment for so long, and now that it's about to become a reality I can barely believe it! Have you decided on a title yet?
- No, I'm not sure. I've sent you some options, but I don't know. I've been working on the music all by myself for so long, and now I'm ready for some company. The only person who has heard it all is Alison.
- Oh, well I'm certainly ready to have a listen and see what's what.
- That would be good.
- I can see why you'd be anxious to get to the bottom of things at last, after all this time.
- It's all good. I like figuring out how it will all be by myself, but I do like some socializing before presenting it to the public.
- Of course! It's dreadful to not know how it will play. And yet it's really the best thing to decide what you will do without the pointless meddling of others.
- It scares me.
- But you shouldn't be scared! Your music is fine! It's not so hard to make a thing that is good. It's only people who are filled with doubt, and who are concerned with what others think who will strive to fuck up your good work. And they won't even do it because they have opinions of their own, but because they're anxious about what other people will think. Fuck them! They will hear your songs and be critical, but who cares??? If they feel so strongly about it they should write their own songs, or even better, just go and fuck themselves. Who do they think they are anyway?
- Well, thank you for your support. It's good to get out in the world a bit after months of being introverted and all hidden in my studio.
- That's ok. I'll finally get a listen to your songs today and then I'll know what to do.
- Excellent. I'm glad to hear that the basement is almost done. It's been months and months since you started. I was glad to be able to help you kick it off.
- Oh, you were so helpful! I was in a very depressed state and I never thought it would get started. But you came along and cleared the way!
- That was a good weekend.
- There was such a jumble of crap down there, and you neatened it all up so that I could see more clearly the task that lay ahead.
- It was good to just come up and be in a little town for a change. I was exhausted from the day to day in the city.
- Well it was my gain, It was very fortunate for me to have you show up, just at that moment when things seemed so dark to give it a push.
- Cool.
- And now all that's left is the one little piece of cement by the steps. I'll go back down in a minute and get back at it. It's very persistent though.
- It's expressing itself?
- Yes, it's a very hard kind of cement. I pound and pound and it just makes little marks in it.
- You should rent a jackhammer.
- Really? You can do that?
- Oh yeah. Just call up a tool rental place, they're probably only about twenty bucks a day. Then you just pull the trigger and knock that shit out of there. Twenty minutes and you'll be laughing.
- That sounds wonderful!
- You can rent a little one, it'll probably be cheap.
- Oh, that would be fantastic!
- I guarantee you it will be. Twenty minutes to rent it, twenty minutes to knock it out. Forty total minutes.
- That would be a tremendous outcome!
- And then you could get on to my CD art.
- Yes! And then I could get on to your CD art. This is so exciting!

The Mix Continues

Listen loud, listen soft. A couple of troublesome details, a touch of hazy schmutz on the horizon.

1. The surdo. Ed talks about having an ideal stable of guitars that fill a precise musico-spiritual spectrum of tone and touch. Some of it's about the sound and some is the thingness of it. The ideal Ed stable includes a Strat. A dreadnought acoustic. An electric 12 string. An electric sitar. Certain indispensable amps. Stuff I can't talk about here. This list is sacred, hermetic and evolving, a hovering monad impinging on Ed's consciousness in a persistent manner that would be oppressive if he didn't continually refine the stable with acquisitions, deletions or tweaks. Each modification to the collection is accompanied by a deep, thorough audit and overhaul of the remotest edges of his soul.

My own stable is an overlooked ensemble of instruments, to be played by a to-be-discovered band of players who will one day accidentally wander into my apartment and be so taken with my brilliant and subtle collection of musical artifacts that they will commit themselves on the very spot to playing my songs, on these collected instruments, for my hardcore fans, forever. They include at the moment: baritone uke, acoustic guitar (steel), acoustic guitar (nylon), guitarron, banjo uke, congas, bongos, bass drum, selected cymbals and a gong, diatonic accordion, melodeon, marimba, harmonica, and let's not forget voice.

So, the surdo. I've got a great old bass drum that I bought at the San Francisco dump in 1983 for $2.00 with house paint applied to the heads to warm up the tone, but the stable has been crying for something authentically Latin. Once in Buenos Aires I saw a guy play a bomba, which is a big wood shell drum with goat skin head. I've been looking for the right one of those for years with no luck, but then I saw a surdo on craigslist for a good price. This is the Brazilian marching bass drum with a steel body and a goatskin head on the top. It's loud, very loud, and fun to beat upon. I got this instrument thinking it would be the ideal fit into the Latin world arrangements I've been digging on lately.

I marched it home and started recording, but rather than greasing the path to glory, it's tone once recorded is an enigma. I'm trying changes in arrangement, micing and eq to get it to work and I'm still searching. I feel pressure to finish the CD but this thing is bugging me, maybe I have to rethink the whole project. The problem is I can't yet hear how it fits into the mix. Is it like a kick drum? Is it a distinct voice in an arrangement or a certain something down there that gives it some warmth or power, or is it just adding a bunch of low-end muck? I can't tell if it's that scenario where I have to trust my ears and go back to the $2 drum or if I should be growing some new connections in my tormented brain to hear it properly. As a complicating factor, my downstairs neighbor totally blew his cork while I was trying to get just this one last take down. I never heard him pounding on the door because I was wearing headphones and I will not reprint the note he shoved under my door, but it was unkind. Through the acoustic barrier of my floor and his ceiling he could apparently not appreciate the wisdom of my replacing the original classic Brazilian bass drum beat (bahBOOM, bahBOOM) with a nice sold thwack on the 2 and the 4. And then the altered pulse with the hotter dynamics in the middle section. I'm really sorry man, but I did get the take. Hopefully it will drop into the mix ok.

2. The last song. It's so easy to write the first song. It is nothing, I write songs like this all the time without even thinking. Why not make a whole CD of them? The second song had been sitting there patiently for years, waiting for this moment. I simply plucked it from it's place and laid it neatly in an attractive spot on the disc. The third song was going to be used in a movie, but the young director foolishly chose to use a MIDI instrumental from his girlfriend's brother's website instead, I had merely to make a lyrical adjustment to the chorus for inclusion in my most newest and most amazing collection of songs to date. The fourth and the fifth songs were written on consecutive days on the subway; one traveling uptown and the other down. Their respective feels tastefully imply the orientation of the transit. How well I remember the sixth song! I was atop a breezy hill on some other coast and it came to me in a rush of pleasant insight. Thankfully I had my portable recorder handy to bag the moment for later use. The seventh is always a bit tricky, much like the weariest inning of a baseball game. I tricked the seventh song into existence by pretending to make a grocery list and casually scrawling a few significant phrases in the margins. I then "lost" the list only to "discover" it some weeks later in the inner pocket of last season's jacket. The eighth and ninth songs are inferior throwaways that I've buried in the middle of the CD in the hope that the listener will sort of zone out but not become annoyed and hit the skip button. At the tenth, the home stretch, I felt some apprehension, and acknowledged this emotion by recording it three times at different tempi and choosing the one in the middle. But now I'm at the last song, and as has been the case in the past, it is making trouble.

Though it will easily be the finest song on the album, it is behaving in a very coy manner. I thought the first impulsive take would set me up, and Bill says it's a great recording, but the singing is monstrously out of tune and the vocal abandon that seemed intuitive on the night of recording has by now revealed itself to be merely careless. Then I tried takes with Alison singing along to keep me company, but we sounded too fooken Irish. Fifteen or so takes in a fierce frame of mind, twenty more gentle, then sad, then puckish. Still no take. Takes in the morning, then try late at night. Sober, drunk, before the nap, after the nap, all no dice.

Keep on rolling my friend, keep on rolling. Either I will get it or it will get me.

Mixing

Ok, so I'm moving into a new area here.

I'm wrapping up on a new CD that I've been working on for awhile. I started recording the CD in June or so and I think around July I decided to do a push to finish it up. I figured I'd wrap the mixing by September, but here it is mid-November and I'm still pushing and changing and mixing. I keep thinking that I'll finish the mix this week, and then just in a few days and then by Tuesday. I think of myself as a responsible and diligent member of society, but in making a CD it seems that my word isn't worth shit. I suspect this is because a song is not a promise I've made to someone else but a promise I've made only to myself, and if I run a little behind I'm still good for it. Yeah, I'm good for it.

It also appears that a new theater in NYC has invited me to mount a production of a musical I wrote a couple of years ago. I'm very excited and also trying to keep a lid on my enthusiasm. I've gotten very positive, solid and authoritative signs from the theater that the show is on, but I haven't signed anything yet or been given any of the usual official commitments to do such a thing, a thing that requires a substantial investment of love and treasure from myself as well as the theater involved. I think it's all good, but you just never know. When I wrote the show it was a promise that I made to myself, now somebody else is making a promise to me. I know I'm good for it, but I don't know about them. I believe them, but I don't know.

I love music more than anything, especially performing it. Recording, writing, schmoozing, hearing other music, the whole and entire attendant ephemera of the life of music sometimes seems like a bunch of stuff I have to do so that eventually I'll get to perform a bit and some people will see me. I can't tell if this is shallow or if I'm missing the point of music, that listening and sharing are, I know, every bit as important as creating the music. I know that the most tiresome people to be around are those who broadcast but can't receive, and I don't wish to be one of those, but I will defer all manner of happiness for a chance to perform a pretty good tune.

Hello from the treehouse.

Frank, not blunt. Pithy, not reductive. Descriptive rather than judgmental. Reportage, not punditry.

Let's aspire to this for now.