see a drawing as old as the music

see a drawing as old as the music

see a drawing as old as the music

One of the rejected titles for this CD was Comparative Ligature. As if the play on comparative literature weren't arcane enough, I didn't discard it until I saw that the musical definition of ligature was the last of five in my dictionary. Way too tricky. Also considered were Headphone Sex, Mr. Sensitive [I also like Mr. Yesterday, but that name's taken], Song.doc and Like The Song Says. Perhaps I'll get to those eventually, but not before Burlesque Ives: The Oily Years.

Golden. Hill. John Ford. Ford. Cars. England. America.

My very first pop record was a retrospective: America's Greatest Hits. [I love seeing those words together, so I'm going to type them again: America's Greatest Hits. Perhaps later they'll release America's Most Wanted.] I don't think any pop act epitomizes the clay 'n' macramé, potted-plant, mary-jane zeitgeist and shifting sex codes of the '70s more than the group which calls itself, to my poetic and ironic delight, "America" [soon sharing the quintuple bill at a summerfest near you]. I mean, consider this line: well, I tried to make it Sunday / but I got so damn depressed / that I set my sights on Monday / and I got myself undressed / I ain't ready for the altar / but I do agree there's times / when a woman sure can be a friend of mine. I mean, okay, stay lame all year if you want, but sing about it?! Talkin' bout my Me Generation. When I start going on about my fascination with the cover art for this album -- a seemingly unassuming doodle that on further consideration suggests inflated tones of ego and dominion -- people tend to say I've got way too much time on my hands. I then chuckle in kind before going on to point out that the artwork was done by the late Phil Hartman [such was his career before becoming a skilled comic performer] and ruminate on his tragic murder at the hands of a gal named Amdahl from ultra-rural, Southwestern Minnesota, who apparently lost her American mind amidst the Ventura Highway, the validated parking and the valium.

You're gonna go. I know. Alligator lizards in the air. I didn't buy the record, actually [he said, defensively]. I "won" it by being the 15th caller to radio station KDWB in Minneapolis, one fateful night in 1976. [I was only 15. Too young to know.] I hang the word "won" in clothespins because I'm all too aware that it's a euphemism for unwittingly participating in an all-American marketing scheme that eventually drove a winning wedge between my money and myself. Touch-Tone phones were all the rage, and my fingers, nimble from studying trumpet and piano, took full advantage of this handy, time-saving technology [speed-dial was a score away]. I copped 52 records this way before disco got me thinking about rehab [around the same time I bought a 45 of -- can you believe it? -- Take Me to the River by this odd new group]. Once, on WDGY, they were giving away any record you wanted to every 11th caller. I copped seven times inside of an hour, using aliases to secure copies of double and triple albums I craved, not to mention Chicago Live, a ten-record, boxed orgy with a huge [bonus!] wall poster sporting a photomontage of the band in hues of orange and yellow which must've matched the shag carpeting in a million American homes. Shameless. Only as I write this do I realize this entire project is my qualifying confession. And I further confess that even today, The Dixie Chicks can futz with the oxygen levels in my blood.

Nine in the morning. September 2, 2002. Labor Day, and cold. The deadline I set for myself to stop working, stop recording, commit to a group of songs for this disc, and finish writing about them. So I've been torturing myself for days, writing myself into corners of confusion and disgust, trying to express a definitive position regarding creation, replication, distribution and consumption of music. I'm not even sure why I worked so hard; perhaps I was trying to convince myself of something, get it over with and move on [finally reached my shrink; we're gonna talk in 20 minutes]. I began with further ruminations on this live/recorded, original/copy question, and observed that John Philip Sousa [who lived and died in precisely the same time period as Thomas Edison] was adamantly opposed to the recording of music, prophesying "the death of concerts." But I wondered if he was merely afraid of losing money on the deal, having surely benefited from music's first technological advancements [notation, printing and mass distribution], yet failing in his faith for further developments. I was also going to appear scholarly by adding that Benjamin Franklin composed and printed topical songs at the age of 10 and sold them in the streets [one of his greatest hits was the true story about the collapse of a lighthouse, giving perspective to today's photo peddlers in Lower Manhattan], without letting on that I was actually quoting Burl Ives quoting Franklin's autobiography. Then there were these paragraphs:

I'm reminded of a lawsuit I once worked on involving Casio International, Inc. and the United States government. Apparently, imported "musical instruments" are levied at a higher rate than imported "electronic devices," and, in the dawn of the digital day [just ten short years ago], Uncle Sam wanted a bigger piece of Casio Pie. The distributors said, "well, yeah, it replicates musical instruments perfectly, but still, it's only an electronic device. I mean, look, we have to stuff it with chips [look!], and you still have to plug it in. You have to." Fascinating little piece of litigation. Mr. Moog himself testified at trial, going up against the inventor of the theremin [an instrument I once played for Mabou Mines at The Public Theater, in a spot which is now part of Joe's Pub. I'd love to perform in that spot again. Oh, and that reminds me. Confidential to Kevin Kline: it was me who ripped through your tenderest Hamlet monologues with my trumpet from downstairs. It's just the way the timings of our shows worked out. I'm sorry]. I don't recall what happened in the end. I think they compromised, deeming some of the gear "professional grade" [which makes me think the government ultimately kicked itself for opening the can of worms way too soon]. But I remember getting all excited over the question, coming up with what I called The Cowbell Defense: would the government seek a higher tax on imported farm implements just because they also were used as musical instruments? I thought it was a brilliant argument. Esteemed counsel for Casio didn't agree. I'm sure it cost him.

And this is a mere teaser for the wealth of debate [much of it useless, I think] over whether synthesizers, sequencers, samplers, DJs, etc. produce "music," and whether or not that music can be considered "live" even when it's triggered in "real time," and with or without an audience. Technology, seemingly more dynamic every day, forces the issue for whom it remains a dynamic issue ... but, I assert, technology has changed how we experience music once, and only once, and that was a long, long time ago. It was around the last time we tried to figure out how to pronounce a year with zeroes in the middle. Around the time Mrs. Bernard whined about being unable to sing the "old" songs. First, there was music. And we saw that it was good, and -- fiat memorex! -- there was its replica. The gramophone. That's it. The line was crossed then, and there haven't been any new ones drawn [although filesharing shows a trace]. Say what you want about MP3s and iPods [and musicians' union contracts]; you've had 100 years to draft your complaint.

Starting to argue with myself, I then conceded the apparent significance in the fact that new technologies in music delivery have been arriving sooner and sooner: "the gramophone edged out parlor and music hall performance; discs replaced cylinders; electrical recording replaced mechanical; radio killed the variety star; video killed the radio star; CDs killed vinyl [along with groovy liner notes and cover art, the losses of which have surely dampened sales]; and now iTunes, et al. have their sleek fingers at the throat of those pretty, "compact" [snort!] discs. Between each of these events, less and less time has passed. I've even heard the music itself died one day -- was it the day Sousa heard his first record? When Bing Crosby realized that a microphone enabled him to sing softly, silencing those noisome tenors with tronic nuance? When Buddy Holly's plane crashed? When a Harlem nightclub was raided? When payola rocked the radio waves? When Olivia Newton-John identified a jukebox as an instrument of torture? When MTV made its debut [now, there's a 20-year-old idea!]? When Tipper Gore saw her daughter dancing to Darling Nikki? [I'll bet it was the dance, not the song, that put her over the edge.] When a pop act called a "music factory" brought home from a music award show a little golden replica of the gramophone we have at home [which still plays the cylindrical hit single Gasoline Gus and His Jitney Bus]? When Napster lost in court? I can't remember."

I was trying to lay an argumentative foundation for a stellar conclusion that, in light of [1] the tug-of-war for industry control [corporations and artists going at it like sea anemones]; [2] diminutive delivery devices [they're working on the MP6, to be implanted near your inner ear]; [3] players and points of sale spreading like West Nile [Hungarian Idol? Starbucks? MTV8? Booksellers starting their own record labels? Mark my words. One day you'll be like me: at the Pizza Hut express counter within the Staples part of the Barnes & Noble wing at Ikea, droploading BDSM's Homo Muzzlem Fireman featuring Attention Defficit (the Jet Blue/Tommy Hilfiger mix) onto your MicroDisc for $3.79 quicker'n you can say Exit 43 off the L.I.E.]; and, of course, [4] Napster, or "file-sharing" [rarely have I been more excited and pleased to acquire music than when I harvested -- in a heartbeat -- songs from someone else's computer, i.e., life] music has finally come back home to the parlor, to the people. And then, sure, I was going to throw in another anachronistic quote from Burl Ives [or at least, his ghost writer, talking about the difference between "songs sung at us and songs sung by us"]. Yup. I was going to do all that. And I was going to fess up to the unwritten punchline to my meditation in Track 6 [these days, things happen much quicker ... the aftershocks of an idea come closer and closer ... they stack up on one another like sound waves in front of an airplane]. The unwritten punchline is: sonic boom. Explosion. "But the punchline remains unwritten," I wrote, "because as much as I think it threatens, the boom never comes. Not only is the explosion not sluggish; it's not happening. The wineglass never shatters in this commercial. The music never dies, in fact, it hasn't even changed. It's the same aquifer, used by the same groups for the same reasons; it's just mined in a million different ways."

Got the voicemail again. He'll call in two minutes. I know how he operates.

I thought I was onto something. I wrote and re-wrote and cut and pasted and cursed and made coffee and went for walks and lay down and looked for better Burl Ives quotes, and gradually, it occurred to me that music never really left the parlor, the people. I then concluded that the parlor [etymology: discourse] had changed. "Today, the parlor is where you can get a frappucino, a donut -- and a kicky compilation disc," I wrote, without the clothespins, only an hour ago, speculating that coffeehouse listening stations are just a couple of fiscal quarters away. [I'm proud to say that Ru Paul introduced me to Krispy Kremes in Atlanta 15 years ago. Get'em while they're hawt, guys. They're amazing, like little pancakes. Forgive the digression. Dropped something.] "It's taken up shop in former candy stores and can factories. But it also sports a logo: Dell. Intel. Mattel. Taco Bell. And it's nestled up on hard drives amidst family photos, spreadsheets and streamed porn." Interesting, but still, not the whole story. So I tried concluding that the people have changed, writing, only 35 minutes ago [before returning from my powernap to my powerbook], that it's "only a short leap from Johnny Cash to Eminem [who just turned in a great performance at an awards show -- where? Radio City Music Hall -- look at those words again] and from the original lyrics for Poor Boy [see the notes on Track 22] to P. Diddy [who just did the same -- oh, and I hope he does run for President. We could call him Resident P.]" This, too, failed to satisfy me, seeming contradictory, even. Any way I slice it, they're still racing out at the trestles. All this work -- somebody once told me capricorns think too much [I'm still chewing on that] -- to figure out exactly what it is that's changed, to explain to ... who? Me? ... what? ... that something about music has become more intimate to me. The file-sharing thing comes close, but no, that's not it. I can, and I will, finally conclude and express that the thing that has become more intimate about it to me is: me.

Me. And now, my CD.

Now I know why I've peppered this writing process with jokes about my parents and my "shrink" [actually, a whipsmart CSW I haven't seen in months. Music therapy rocks]. I've been laying the bass line for an epiphony [the "o" is intentional. Again with the smart jokes]. I've been dancing around the entrance to the bunker -- the humming, dark, defended, but often empty and powerless, certainly dumb and humorless place writers know and sometimes talk about. And I finally went down in, after figuring out on my own how to get there: you have to write and write and write and write until tears and fears start to interfere. And then, wet and afraid, you have to keep going. Anyway, I'm down there now. And I found a piece of paper that says exactly when the music died.

And just then, my shrink finally called -- the upshot of which is that if you want to know more, you're gonna have to pony up some cash. I ain't givin' it away [Farrar Straus Giroux: call me]. But I'll say this much: I'm looking forward to living life live -- 100% unproduced, 100% unedited, 100% real time -- any day now.

Okay, no, I don't.

You're not hallucinating if you think you hear churchbells during this song. The Westminster Chimes kick in here, courtesy of The First Congregational Church of Washington, CT [known affectionately as "The Congo Church"], the steeple of which glows in the dark outside my bedroom window. You're also not hallucinating if you think it affects my singing. [BONG. "Oh, gheez. For when. Wouldn't you know it. BONG. Maybe the mike's not picking it up. BONG. This never happens again. Oh, who am I kidding. BONG. Of course it is. Well, it'll stop soon. We'll have these moments. But it's not! BONG. What time is it, anyway?!?! To remember. BONG. The Bells! The Bells! But never ever again."] Of course, it would have to be high friggin' noon when I recorded the keeper. BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG. Well, at least they're almost in key, and kind of nicely timed [just like my singing].

I have another confession: this track is the one and only exception to my "real time, unedited" guarantee -- but only because I can't sing and play trumpet at the same time [try as I might]. The middle section -- featuring me on trumpet, the piano on auto-pilot, and the speech delivered by Lola's big brother Luc, another Connectikitten -- was recorded separately. Luc did a great job, especially since he felt like he was at the dentist's, only the dentist stuck a microphone and a horn in his face. Like the song says [it's all true], Luc is ten years old, the same age I began studying the trumpet [obviously, I stopped at some point. No, a precise point: exactly two years after the music died. Rode the fumes for a while]. I could barely make that C sharp. Ouch. And the "anesthetic, analgesic" properties of Chloraseptic can't help me anymore. [How funny is this: I actually used the product as a trumpeter long before Procter & Gamble flew me to Memorial Hall on Main Street in Cincinnati to fake my way through cankersore pain and the third movement of Haydn's Trumpet Concerto for a commercial that ran back in 1997-1998. I count five. Five sprays for instant relief that stays.]

Finally: the saddest, strangest damn thing happened the day I oiled up the ol' Getzen Eterna [that's the Doc Severinsen model, for any of you non-trumpeters out there] and started fooling around with this solo, hitting the "play" button on my digital piano, over and over, to accompany myself. I live and work in a large, Colonial country house that's used and visited by a number of people, some of whom I know, some of whom I don't. And there's history here, some of which I know, and some of which I don't. But the doors stay open all the time [in New York, sometimes I leave my door unlocked overnight, or even ajar, just because I can, or shouldn't, or must], and my windows stay open too. So it was shocking, but not entirely beyond possibility -- even at two in the afternoon -- to be suddenly approached at my piano that day by a crouching, reddened, obviously drunken man in jeans and a farmer's cap. He seemed to come out of nowhere, and didn't seem to notice that I was naked from the waist down [an important detail, because it inspired some humility, and comforted me, oddly, as it suggested he was way too drunk to do severe physical harm]. He looked miserable and scared, and struggled a bit before uttering three words I'll never forget. He didn't want to say them; I think he knew it was crazy, and selfish, and desperate and sad. But he indulged himself, and tears sprouted in his already glassy eyes as soon as he did. The three words were play the blues. It wasn't just a request, and it wasn't merely a whine, a child's whine, although it certainly was that. No, he begged me. He begged me with a haunt. Play the blues. Play the blues, which then became like the title of a nightmarish poem I sat through: sad, scattershot stories of Vietnam, an ex-girlfriend, hiding in the basement, arrest warrants, The VA Hospital, checking on the rabbits [obviously, he knew the place], squirreling away a stamp collection [more tears came at that point], one final day of freedom [don't tell no one I was here, as he started to back out of the room] and just ... wanting ... to hear ... the blues. So, please -- he repeated himself, bookending his pathetic poem -- play the blues.

That did NOT just happen, I said to myself, as I listened to him descend the stairs, only seconds after I'd finally opened my mouth and said good luck to you, friend. Take care of yourself, measuring my words and tone very carefully. My wishes were sincere; equally sincere was the subtext with which I delivered them: I see you're starting to leave. I like it that way. Please don't let the fact that I've finally spoken delay you. My subtext stopped just shy of have you noticed my penis? [It actually kind of hurt me that he didn't, amidst all that protracted intimacy. I mean, I'm straight and all, but I have my pride.]

That did NOT just happen. I couldn't play anymore; no way. I flipped on Trisha Yearwood [my blues are in the city], turned up the volume, grabbed a Sierra Nevada [flipping the bird to the irony] and called a person who, I correctly suspected, would know who this guy was and what to do with him. He's back at the VA Hospital now, and in my memory forever. I figure that he really had been hiding from the law in the basement, yet was summoned against risk by the sad complaint of my muted horn through the window [over and over, nestling nicely in his addled, scotched-up head -- for bygone hours come o'er my heart with each familiar strain]. Such is the power of music, I guess, a power that I've typically been quick to distrust and dismiss. I'm getting over that now, and this episode provided an important challenge. I am grateful for it. And I'm grateful for working in the buff, because otherwise the story would be entirely different.