my music
I’ve been holding on to this awful fear in the pit of my stomach for over a year now — that anytime the phone rings it’s going to be bad news about my grandmother. Maybe it’s why i hate the phone so much, how i always avoiding answering its ring and why i made sure to leave my cell phone safely ensconced within my old office building for the last two weeks … why i wasn’t surprised to finally pick it up only to hear a sequence a messages from my mother, each serving as a cold comfort as none quite claimed the worst.
I was caught, though, last night, live and on the line to my mother as she once again laid on this guilt, as if i know how to set aside my entire life and somehow make this all easier for her, or how to make my grandmom happier and not in so much pain, or how to do anything. The truth is that i don’t know, i can’t do anything, and every time my mother reminds me of how truly bad things are i see my grandmother and i convince myself that everything is okay.
I have finally been convinced now, though, that it is not okay. Sitting in the middle of the floor idly strumming my guitar and it all at once hit me that even though i made Elise promise to drive me over there tomorrow when her class is over that i missed out. I missed out on bringing Elise to meet her like i said i would, and on having her come to my college graduation, or even have her see me become successful or hold my children in some distant future. I realized all of that, and that maybe i have resisted dealing with it emotionally for all this time because i was hoping that somehow if i pushed it to the back of my mind and just kept working i would somehow make everything that she’s always dreamed for me come true.
What followed was a mess of tears and words and suddenly, two hours later, i’ve lost a box of tissues but gained a song so stupidly simple that i can’t help but keep crying as i have it on repeat because it encapsulates so very perfectly just how crushed this is leaving my life, and how much i just want to be able to have my college diploma and my successful life ready to bring with me tomorrow when i sit next to her bed, because i can’t think of anything else to give her (because she doesn’t really like songs all that much).
But, on the bright side, i’m a third of the way done my next Trio.
I spent all day worried about the notes that i fucked up on Mother Mother. Peter, i kept thinking, how could you post a Trio with notes that fucked up?. Well, i knew how; “Mother Mother” had been holding me up for over a week, and finally this morning i just woke up, tuned my guitar, screamed intermittently for about three minutes, and then wiped my hands of the Trio just in time for my directing class.
I walked to said class while listening to, for the first time in many many years, Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl. This was an album that, in my pre-adolescent life, was probably second only to the LPs in my Madonna collection when it came to getting the most spins, though i would be hard pressed to explain that phenomenon to you after a day of suffering through the ten-track atrocity that Paula passed off as a debut album.
I refer to it as such not because it failed to be a coldly calculated synth-fueled pop smash (it was), but because even with the best computers the late eighties had to offer and a multi-cultural multi-gender team of anonymous back of singers, Paula can still barely hit a solid note. It’s actually quite pathetic. Verses that i remembered being supple and sweet were instead slurred and sloppy, and vocal crescendos on choruses were actually a tiny, squeaky Paula being carried by a crashing layered tide of herself and said crack team of backup singers.
I can appreciate that some people aren’t the most phenomenal singers, but all through my walk to and from class i found myself wondering couldn’t they have gotten a better performance out of her? Obviously the album was destined for success whether it featured assured singing or not, but why settle for not? Why not train more, or record more takes, or pick a pop-model who can actually sing to sell your songs rather than a former cheerleader destined to be remembered more for her scripted anti-Simon quips than her amazing vocal abilities?
I don’t know that i’ve figured out the answers, but tonight i found myself absent-mindedly listening to my first Trio ever, and i realized that i really didn’t hit very many of the notes. I was singing, and supporting a little, and i had pitch, but i was not singing with the tuneful confidence that invites harmony, a band, or a record deal. If had i turned in a similar performance earlier today it would have been promptly thrown into the recycle bin. And, yet, three years later i find myself kvetching about a “so” on “Not So Bad” whose O wasn’t round enough, how Paula Abdul’s singing is nothing but unimpressive and contrived without the wonderful world of Pro Tools to augment it’s many Britney quality failures, and how the vowel i sing in the word “mother” makes me sound like i’m trying to remember how to vomit.
In a moment of absolutely clarity, i realized that the only thing i know how to settle for is progress. None of these three complaints would have even occurred to me three years ago, two years ago i wouldn’t have known what to do about them, and a year ago i would have settled for a few mistakes and called it a day. Each step represented a previously unimaginable improvement from the last, but at each junction i was just as imperfect as Paula.
So, essentially, i cannot wait until season five starts. And that’s a long way from now…
Trio: Season 4, #1
trio: season 4, #1
Not So Bad, Mother Mother, Relief
Not So Bad, Mother Mother, Relief
”Why finish a song when you can start a new one?”
It might sound silly to you, but to me and a lot of other songwriters it’s a question that comes up every day. It happens to be posed from my favorite living songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/arranger/producer, Jon Brion.
(Here’s where i was going to link to the excellent NYT article about him, but now you have to pay to read it. Which is sad, ’cause this was such a nice link-centric weblog post, but, oh well. Maybe i’ll shell out the $2.95 and mirror it here. Some excerpts are currently living here. Luckily, Izabelle is a freaking genius and reminded me that all of Drexel has a free subscription to the NYT, so here is a virtual clipping.)
Brion, a genius along the lines of Brian Wilson or Phil Spector, not only plays on and produces recent work from songwriters Macy Gray, Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann, and (my personal favorite) Fiona Apple, but also wrote and arranged the score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s latter two films, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. Oh, and he has his own (previously impossible to order) album, Meaningless, which apparently represents less than a tenth of his entire song catalog — because, if we only hear the recordings of his songs, we’ll never hear them “finished.”
Genius. Freakin’ genius. If i were to put together an all-star cast to record an album with, Brion would definitely be my number one, no exceptions, no substitutions, no replacements choice to be the producer. And, actually, maybe also the guitarist, pianist, drummer, string arranger, and backup singer as well.