Mourning After

My brother just Facebook messaged me two links to unreleased songs by the late, great musician Prince and all I could think was … meh.

It’s not that I didn’t love Prince.  I don’t know if I could deeply express how much his music and talent meant and inspired me.  When he passed a year ago last April I was devastated in a way I had never been by the death of a celebrity.  I cried for two weeks.  It hit home like no other had.  But maybe that’s the paradox of fame and the fan worship that accompanies it.  Learning how deeply you connected and had come to care for someone you really didn’t know.   Suddenly, I understood how all those Elvis fans felt decades ago.

I would equate his passing to how it felt to me personally with John Lennon’s.  It was a shock and loss that cut sharply across the arbitrary lines of separation we humans create for ourselves.  Of course, I could say that about Michael Jackson, too.  But Michael’s music as great as it could be never blew me away like Prince’s did (or Lennon with the Beatles and their groundbreaking output).  I was once a young aspiring rock musician.  And Prince was a musician’s musician who set the bar so high you exhausted yourself trying to grasp it.

Then in the days that followed his death there was a deepening sadness.  We begin to learn under that bad boy reputation and eccentric exterior was someone who had been quietly doing good deeds wherever and whenever he saw a need.  To those truly close to him he was a good friend and a funny cat to boot.  I already knew he was a great rock star, but how often do you hear of greatness in the most humane sense extending beyond that stage?  Done with the specific intention to avoid any fanfare.

Sure, he still had a reputation but it was not one of self destructive behavior we’ve come to expect from rock stars.  Or I guess we should say he just hid it really well.  But then how could the dynamic physicality of his performances not take their toll year after year, tour after tour?  With the revelation of his cause of death, was he no more than the poster boy (okay, extreme poster boy) of the sweeping epidemic of prescription drug abuse currently gutting much of what we term “middle America”?  (Hello, Minneapolis.)  Sometimes I think major shit has to hit the fan to get us all woke AF (Hello, Donald Trump is President?).  Sometimes … it snows in April.

His songs, however, were part of the story of my youth.  Just like all songs from the time I was about 12 to maybe 27 were the story of my youth.  They were the soundtrack of what was happening to my life during its biggest most turbulent growth spurt.  They gave a voice to emotions and feelings I couldn’t quite express in my own words.  They gave them a tone.   They gave them a beat.  They were brilliantly adept at matching whatever mood my young developing psyche could spew forth at any moment.  And I knew, in a span of about three and a half minutes per song, I was not alone.  Somebody understood.

But that experience is not unique to me.  It is not unique to my generation.  We didn’t make greater music than 'what the kids listen to these days!' (Well, maybe Prince did … but he was Prince.)  Any more than the generations before us bitched about how they made better music.  It just happened to be the sounding board for the collective consciousness of the group experiencing the most "feeling" at that moment in time.  Each generation gets to have that for themselves to only share among themselves.  And that’s what popular music should always be.

So hearing two unreleased Prince tracks decades later I find is not something I need in my life much any more.  I won’t relate emotionally in the same way I did between 12 and 27.  Musically, the style and production techniques sound of their era.  (Sometimes … things are unreleased for a reason.)  Better songs from him and others have gone on to influence the next generation of musicians to innovate, express, put their spin on it, their heart in it and be the collective conscious voice of their now.  Step aside, old farts.  Let them have that.  And don't worry.  If you don’t always get it, that's because not everything is always yours to get.

But hey, why not take an occasional break from flipping through the dusty photo album that is the soundtrack of your youth.  Listen in the present.  Listen to the present.  Listen and be present. Trust me, if you dig deep enough, you will find music being made as good as any that has come (and gone) before.

But, yeah, you're not likely to find another Prince.  Not for a long time.  RIP you ridiculously talented and hard working MFer.  

Fandoms Reborn!

Holy Moly!  It's amazing how some things never change.  It's also amazingly good that some things do.  Case in point here being me.  Age, wisdom, distance, perspective - all the benefits of experience.  All the benefits of traveling thru an experience and coming out able to recognize the 'dangerous road ahead' signs and pitfalls.  But it also means if you decide to travel down a similar road again, watching others take those dangerous road and fall into those pits.

So, here's my dilemma:  Do I say anything to them?  They'll listen but it's not likely they'll change their course.  Some things you just have to learn NOT to do by knowing what it was like doing them in the first place.

Fandoms Reborn isn't really about the old TV fandom I had the pleasure (and pain) of belong to for many years.  In fact, there's been a small bit of resurgence of interest in "that show" but from people who weren't part of the original hoopla.  I've had fun revisiting it through their eyes, but also being able to maintain a certain distance.  Now?  It's the joy of pure nostalgia and nothing more.  And I think that goes for all involved as well.

The new deal is another show which carried a lot of the seductive allure, on and off screen, of the the one that got me into trouble in the first place.  For a time I wondered if I may be visiting dangerous territory again.  But this time I'm a mere curious observer, keeping my attachments to a minimum and my opinions, more or less, to myself.  I sit back and watch the others hash it out in fruitless attempts to find something, anything to latch on to when very little is going on.  Then ripping each other to shreds in the process.

I do not miss those days one bit.  But part of me wants to let them know ... Kids?  You're all completely wrong and you're all completely right.  And you all need to completely chill the f*ck out and find something else to do until there's something worth talking about again.  It'll come around.  But ripping each other to shreds in the meantime?  Not cool.

I doubt any of this will find it's way to those I wish could read it, but at least I got it off my chest in some manner.

Amen.

Bands - Cyndi Vellmure and the Saboteurs

Cyndi Vellmure

The end of The Lula Stream was rough.  That was a tough band to get over and getting over it wasn't happening any time soon.  It was bad enough to feel left in a daze by it's abrupt demise, but now I had do a bit of soul searching.  Did I still want to play?  Am I getting to old for this?  Will I ever find another band I'm as passionate about?  The answers were a mixed bag.

The next phase came in a phone call from Lula Stream drummer Victor Varadi.  He was playing for a singer and she needed a bass player.  I'd learned from the band N.O.W. to beware of getting caught up in a situation where I didn't like the music.  But at that point I wasn't sure if I wanted to be in another band altogether.  Still, I told him I'd take a listen to her songs.  I liked what I heard.

 CYNDI VELLMURE AND THE SABOTEURS
(2004)

(Cyndi Vellmure - vocals/guitar/piano, Jack Wesley Sparks - guitar, Me - bass, Victor Varadi - drums)

Cyndi's a great singer and a strong songwriter.  She had a few gems up her sleeve.  Although this wouldn't be the first band where I wasn't the sole female (their were three of us in N.O.W.), there something great about being balanced out with the number of guys in the band for a change.  Maybe that's why this became one of the bands I had the most fun with.

Cyndi Vellmure and The Saboteurs
(Cyndi, me, Wes Sparks and Victor Varadi)

I think the upside and downside of this band is for the first time I didn't take it too seriously.  I was somewhat invested but not so intensely invested.  For Cyndi's sake I wish I were, but at the point I was dealing with a case of musical heartbreak and impending burn out.

One of the things for which I'll always be grateful to Cyndi and this band is being part of The Muse Project.  The Muse Project was a cabaret/burlesque/raunchy comedy variety show held at the Sunset Strip club King King.  Cyndi was one of the Muse performers and we, as a band, would often get to do one song as part of the show.  Then we'd get to sit at the bar and drink for the rest of it.  It was so much fun!


Playing "Pour Some Sugar On Me" at a Muse Project Show 


More about the Muse Project

San Diego music festival where
we played in a sex shoppe. Good times!

There were a number of factors that lead to our demise.  For me, I was getting burned out.  Age has a way of not making you want to drag your heavy 4x10 bass cab to a club on the Sunset Strip on a Wednesday at Midnight.  So when this band fell apart, I was a little relieved.

It would be my last serious band.  It's curtain call would lead to me focusing more on developing my own songwriting and music production. One project I'm proud of was taking Cyndi's "Boyfriend" demo above and creating a full fledged backing track for it.

The other was a song I wrote that was at least partially influenced by Cyndi and all the girls in The Muse Project.  I was just so in awe of their freedom and fearlessness to dance around on stage, being sexy and barely wearing any clothes.  There's something about being able to do that that means digging deep, knowing who you are and not being shy about revealing it to the world.  I wish I could be so bold!



Farewell and Adieu, Saboteurs...

Bands - the lula stream

You know, one thing I think all musicians are guilty of at one point or another is over-complicating their music.  Just because we may understand music at a different level than the average listener, we ourselves often want to hear something inventive and challenging.  The problem with that is we think the average listener should feel this way too.  Well, they don't.  And the sooner you learn that the better.  The best thing you can do is keep it simple and get over yourself.

the lula stream

(2002)

jason boles - guitar/vocals, jon soucy - guitar, laurie collins - bass/vocals, victor varadi - drums

Jason Boles

Drift, for me, was an good little band.  I just don't know if it was a listenable band.  Yes, there was something there.  As I've said, Jason is a phenomenal songwriter.  We would occasionally draw people in.  But at the same time playing with crazy time signatures, alternate guitar tunings, weird tempos and chord changes probably kept the average listener out.

Jon Soucy

Jason and Jon didn't wait too long to find another drummer.  They only needed to dip back in to the rich well that was former members of Water For Paul.  They called Victor Varadi.  Great move.  I had played along side Victor in the band LILA and we had clicked pretty well.  I had no idea he would become one of absolute favorite people to play music with ... not to mention just one of my absolute favorite people, period.  (And maybe it's no coincidence we share a birthday.)

Laurie Collins

The next surprise would be Jason.  We wouldn't be pulling out any old Drift numbers for this line up.  Jason had evolved.  He had stopped over-complicating his music and had written a bunch of new, amazing songs.  The Lula Stream was born.

Victor Varadi

See.  We even had decent pictures taken.  We also headed back up to that warehouse in San Francisco to make a decent recording with Bert Garibay.  Victor not only could play to a click, he insisted we as a band practice to one as well.  It was a smart move.  It made our live performances that much more impressive.  And, thankfully, the recording this time turned out pretty great.

The Lula Stream would be the band to end all bands for me.  But just as we were building some buzz, is when the floor would crumble beneath us.  There was no drama between any of the members this time around.  But there was something going on inside Jason's head and it wasn't good.

I don't think Jason never wanted to be the main focus of a band.  But since he wrote all the songs, that was sort of unavoidable.  Both Jon and I wrote songs, but I think we were both too afraid to put anything up against what Jason was churning out.

Then we had to contend with the one thing that often makes the best creative people so great - their demons.  Depression was getting the better of Jason.  At a time when we should have been building on the momentum we started, he decided he didn't want to play anymore.  It was a shock to all of us.

I say this all the time:  This is the band that broke my heart.  That remains true to this day.  It would be the last band I'd ever play in with Jason and Jon.  In fact, I don't think Jason, while he's still playing music and has become a really good producer, has been ever been the lead member in a band since.

Bands - Team Yellow

Bandless again. But I wouldn't be bandless for long. Drift would rise again.  Sort of.  At least my musical relationship with Jason Boles and Jon Soucy would rise again. And I'd be all the happier for it.

TEAM YELLOW

(2002)

Jason (guitar/vocals), Jon (guitar), Me (bass), Tim (drums)

You see, I'm no dummy. One thing I knew then and I know now is Jason Boles is one of the best songwriters you've never heard about.  He's phenomenal.  At the time we were in Drift he was writing a lot of stuff that would make musicians salivate.  Experimenting with different and unusual time signatures, writing with alternate guitar tunings, tempo changes, etc.  Add to that Jon, who is a monster guitarist, always finding the best inventive riffs to compliment what Jason was doing.

After Jim left the band, Jason and Jon called in their friend Gary Dean to play drums.  Gary is a great drummer, singer and sound engineer.  But he ended up not being a good fit for the band.  Plus the one gig we had with Gary, he ended up getting in a fight outside the bar with some drunk guy in the parking lot.

Enter Tim the drummer.  Jason and Jon had jobs in the video game industry at that point.  Tim was a game designer/programmer they met at work.  He and Jason became roommates, and Drift was reborn as Team Yellow.  That name derived as some sort of inside joke at their jobs. 

Tim on drums

Team Yellow would just resurrect the songs with did as Drift.  This time the one having problems with the band would be me.  I was having trouble connecting as a bass player to Tim's drumming.  His timing was off.  Oh, he could do all kinds of fancy fills and rudiments and whatnot, but when it came to basic timing he couldn't do it.  And I knew it early on.  I would get frustrated and feel I had the take on the burden of controlling the tempo for the whole band by myself.

Tim was a nice guy.  It was never anything personal.  Plus his ability to get some audio recording plug-ins in exchange for some recording time with a talented young engineer in San Francisco was a boon.

Me, Bert and Tim in the makeshift recording studio in a warehouse in SF

Probably the biggest dream of my life was to be able to record in a real recording studio. Well, this was the closet I'd got at the point.  We'd arranged to drive up to San Francisco for a weekend to record with engineer Bert Garibay.    We recorded in the warehouse office of a courier service, but something about that made it even cooler.  (Not to mention we basically "camped out" and slept in the warehouse all weekend.)

me officially laying down bass tracks

 

Bert Garibay

Tim

Jason

 Sadly, this recording session would turn out to be a major bust.  It would take Tim almost the entire weekend to get his drum tracks down.  The culprit?  His timing.  You can get away with stuff playing live that you can't when you record.  We even put him on a metronome and he could not play to the click.  The rest of the band only had a few hours on Sunday to get everything else down.  Needless to say, it didn't happen.

When we got back to L.A., Jason and Jon did the dirty work.  They told Tim he was out of the band.  That would be the end of Team Yellow.  But something even better would rise from it's ashes. The good thing about Team Yellow is I had become comfortable enough to start singing back up.  And although we mostly were doing Drift songs, Jason would contribute one new song, "Last Stop," that showed signs of his developing maturity as a songwriter. 

P.S. - back to Gary Dean being a great drummer, singer and sound engineer.  Somewhere after his brief stint in Drift, Gary and Jon formed a one-off duo called the Byl Gates Trio.  They locked themselves in our old rehearsal space and recorded some songs I absolutely adore to this day. 

Bands - Lila and N.O.W.

The tough thing about bands is having to contend with so many different personalities. You need everyone to get along.  That statute of limitations on that seems to be about 2 years, longer if you have any kind of success.  So, just 2 years for us!

For Drift, when Jason's (Boles) best friend Jon (Soucy) joined the band, he and Jim (the drummer) had an uneasy time of it.  Both very talented, both with very, very different personalities.  Jim became increasingly unhappy and called it quits.  That was the end of Drift.

I didn't like being band-less.  Especially since at that point I had only been in one band.  The good thing about being a bass player is we're always in demand.  Jim had found a couple other bands to play for and invited me along.

LILA

(2000)

Julie Dicterow, Jim Saint-Amour, Me ... and others.

I feel band for not remembering everyone in this band, but it was a brief stint.  I considered this more of a "gun for hire" situation.   Julie had been in the band Water For Paul with, of all people, our former Drift band-mate Jon Soucy.  When WFP ended, Jon made his way over to Drift and Julie took a stab at going solo under the name Lila.

Julie Dicterow

back up singers

Me

Jim Saint-Amour

Jim wouldn't stay around for very long for this band, but I stuck around for a bit.  Just long enough to play a few gigs with his replacement (and another former Water For Paul member) Victor Varadi.  As fate would have it, Victor and I would eventually become the rhythmic anchor for many future bands.

N.O.W.

(2001)

Me, Jim Saint-Amour ... and others

Another "gun for hire" situation.  I feel bad again for not remembering everyone in this band either. It was a band I was invited to jam with to see if I wanted to join.  After the jam session it was just assumed that I was their new bass player.  One of many lessons I'd learn. 

To be honest, from the get go I was not feeling this band.  I didn't like the songs.  But I was too shy or embarrassed or too much of a pansy to tell them I didn't want to be in the band.  The lead singer/songwriter just told me when the next practice would be and I kept showing up.

My time with this band was very miserable.  The last gig I played with them, I ended up laying on the ground to finish our set.  After that gig I quit, which lead to an unpleasant argument with the lead singer.  But I wasn't happy.  I wasn't being true to myself, and it was unfair to them because I wasn't giving them my best.

About the best thing to come out of this band was we got to play at one of Hollywood's legendary venues, The Roxy.  But even that sucked because it was a Pay-For-Play situation.

By the way, the acronym N.O.W. never stood for anything.  It was an attempt to be clever.  Kind of explains a lot.

P.S. I didn't put up any music for these bands because A) I don't have any for N.O.W. and B) the CD of material I have for LILA was recorded before I joined the band.  I'm trying to post stuff where I'm actually playing the music.

Bands - Drift

So I'm a little disappointed.  I'm currently in three bands and one of them set up a webpage with each members past band "credits".  First, they spelled my name wrong (gotta love that), then for my credit they didn't even reference the best band I had been in.  Not thrilled.

But that's what you get when you google instead of asking.  I guess there's not as much about my band history on the internet as I'd like there to be.  Which makes me sad because there were some gems among the bunch.

Here we go:

DRIFT

(1998)
Jason Boles -guitar/vocals, Laurie-Anne R. Collins - bass, James Saint-Amour - drums

Jon Soucy - guitar (would join later)

My first band.  Jim the drummer and I worked together. When we discovered we both were musicians, I told him I was itching to join a band.  I had spent most of my musical life writing songs and recording demos by myself up to that point.  Luckily, he was in a band looking for a bass player.  I volunteered, met his friend Jason Boles and begin playing in the first of many bands I'd be in with Jason.

Jason Boles

Jim Saint-Amour

Me

Our first (and my first) gig at Highland Grounds (RIP)

ye olde Crooked Bar (RIP)

Photo Op-ended

I want to relay this story for my cousin:

Back in 1982 I was a freshman in high school whose musical horizons were expanding.  I had grown up on a lot of R&B and Funk, but by now I had started playing guitar and developing a love for rock music.  Added to that mix were the intriguing punk and new wave bands you wouldn't hear anywhere else but KROQ.  Back then is when I first discovered the band that would eventually become my all time favorite - the not quite punk, not quite new wave, British "art pop" band XTC.

At that time their songs had been getting a lot of KROQ airplay.  So you can't imagine how excited I was to hear they would be playing gig at the Hollywood Palladium soon.  I so wanted to go to that show!  The only problem was I was too young to drive and couldn't think of anyone in my family who would take a 14 year old to a concert at a club in Hollywood.  And we're talking back in the day when Hollywood was grimy, nasty, bombed out, drug-infested, dangerous Hollywood!

It wouldn't have mattered anyway.  Three weeks before XTC's scheduled gig at the Hollywood Palladium on April 4,1982, the lead singer had a panic attack on stage in Paris.  They would perform only one more concert - in San Diego on April 3rd.  After that they would hang up their guitars, go back to England and never tour again.  Hollywood Palladium?  Cancelled.

Flash forward to the year 2000.  Luckily for me the band still put out albums.  They had disappeared off my radar after 1982 but I found them again a few years later.  Now they were going to be in L.A. again promoting their latest release at the (late) Virgin Megastore at Sunset and Crescent Heights.  This band, which has my favorite songwriter, favorite bass player and favorite guitarist, rarely left England.  This band whose songwriting craft and production I studied so intently was going to be just a couple miles from where I worked.  Hell if I was going to miss out!

So after work I drove to the Virgin Megastore and waited in a long line for a couple hours with one of those disposable drug store cameras in hand.  I finally get my turn to meet two of my all time favorite musicians in the world!  I was beyond cloud nine!  I knew an autograph wouldn't be enough for me, I wanted a photo with these guys.  Thankfully, someone graciously snapped a photo of me with each guy.  And I got to genuinely thank them for all the music they created that brought such joy to my life.

When I got back to my car in the parking lot, I had to sit there for a minute.  This had been one of the most thrilling moments in my life.  I was so happy.  I couldn't f*cking believe I met them.  I drove off with my camera planning to get the film developed soon.

Some time after that I'm finally getting the film developed.  I couldn't wait until those pics were ready!  But when I picked them up from the drug store...there were no pictures of this event at all.  WTF!?  Maybe it was the other disposable camera I had laying around.  But now I couldn't find it.  Somehow, after this most magical event in my life, I lost the friggin' camera!!!

To this day I have no idea what happened to that camera.  I never got my pics.  These guys went back to England, recorded one more album and then disbanded for good.  But you know what, I'm glad I did it.  I'm glad I summoned up the courage to even meet them.  I'm glad I got to tell them how much their music meant to me.  I just wish I had a photo of it lol!