I was trying to write this a few days ago, but life is so hectic now! Between having to work all day, spend time studying, tend to the garden (and eat lots of fresh artichokes in the process) and have time with my sweetheart, it seems like the day is 20 hours too short. In spite of that I have made progress.
This last Monday I finally finished all the recording for the CD. I did the vocals over the weekend, and with great perseverance and some luck polished off the last flute solos on Monday night.
I must have spent an hour and a half before I had a decent idea for the first four bars of the solo. From there I built it up piece by piece, like a long slow thought. Such is the case when your ideas outstrip your technique. One thing that was interesting to me was that at one point, I broke into a famous riff from a cha-cha hit song from when I was a kid. I don’t even know the name of this song, but if someone listens closely to the song “One Life to Live” when the CD is out, they will hear it.
This reminds me of my friend Scott that I haven’t seen in maybe 15 years. Back in the day, I played with him in a couple of bands. Scott was a really talented guy – solid pianist, excellent rock bassist and best of all, could play the crap out of a cornet. And he never needed to practice any of his instruments, he was that good. They call it gifted.
We were in a band called Piglatin, an avant-jazz band that featured a talented poet sort of speaking/intoning what I thought was good poetry, a bassist, a couple of percussionist that played found percussion, things like shopping carts and railroad ties, and Scott on cornet and myself on alto sax.
It was a great off the wall band. Whenever we played at clubs, we were so different than any of the other bands on whatever bill we were on. Its was really fun, people got off on it, and I only had to bring my horn.
Since much of the music was on the jazz tip, Scott and I had plenty of room to do solos, trading licks in the best punk-jazz tradition. I know, you didn’t think there was a punk-jazz tradition. Maybe we made it up.
Anyway, Scott and I got into this thing during the improv sections where we would both spontaneously start play theme songs from cartoons, sometimes TV shows but mostly cartoons. It was amazing. I have never before or since played with anyone in any band where I would start riffing and Scott would answer and it would just build and build and build, almost like we had one mind.
The only problem was the Scott was a junkie, although he denied that he was an addict since he didn’t hit, he just smoked it. Yeah, right. What this did was make him very unreliable.
After some time, it just got to be too much and it fell apart. Damn, whenever I think about it, I miss it and I miss him and maybe sometime I will have that feeling of being really really in sync with another musician, but somehow I don’t think it will ever be the same. At least, at least I know what its like. And I’m thankful for that.
Well, so you are saying, what is this about the CD? OK, just a tidbit: I spent some time last night working on the first mix, and I had one of those, oh shit moments where I wasn’t sure that I liked what I had done with the song. There is so much to think of with mixing, since the tone can change so radically with efx and compression and I found myself thinking, oh my god this sucks what the hell am I gonna do????
Somehow, I believe that I will probably endure many of these moments in the next month or however long it takes to complete. But I am not rerecording anything, not messing with the arrangements that it took me so long to complete. I guess in some sense I will never be totally satisfied with any piece of work I do, or only satisfied for a brief period of time. Push push push – that is what its all about, and even in the mixing I have to try and move myself and my concepts of sound forward. Evolve or die. I guess if it was easy, I just wouldn’t do it. I hope the end is worth all the means, I hope I move into a new plane of music making, live music, and yeah, selling my music to people that like it. Doesn’t seem too much to ask, does it?