wow, well, i feel a little bad about this. a good week since the last post. and what do i have to show for it. a little less broke, perhaps. but wearing my month heavily about the shoulders. and even now, as i write this, i am readying to go out and get some food. maybe browse for books.
its the end of July and i am staring down the barrel of 2008 with, seriously, great trepidation. whenever i do get the opportunity to sit down and work on my own music i don’t seem to have much to say. i feel a constriction in my mind. like a pressure. is it past? is it present? i can’t certainly say. the tension of knowing that for all that has come before, there is greater pressure to do even better in the future. and to say what? to sing what? to be whom?
but then, while driving through CT on I-95 the other day i had a revelation. clean the mirror, clean the mirror, clean the mirror. every piece of work, every gig, album, blog post, journal entry… they are all bits and pieces of the reflection of the artist. and with each attempt to get back down the path comes the necessary cleansing of the pallette. but what would happen if, say, with each attempt one created a finished product that never saw the light of day? here is this path full of the shattered detritus of unseen semi-miracles. how can the mirror be cleaned? there is mess everywhere.
like a cluttered desk, nothing can be done here. i need to make some room for the new shit.
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and so — to that end — begin the mirror cleansing series. hoping that by throwing out these things, i may find my mind a wider place. all these so many aborted foetuses! attempt upon attempt upon attemp to do each on to the best of my ability with those whom i deemed the best candidates as collaborators but almost everyone of them… snuffed out too soon. or finished, but never given the chance to shine. dead that. today we open up the annals and let the debris have its day.
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first up was an easy one. while, to be blunt, there is enough aborted material in here (my mind? my harddrive? my cd book?) to cause a right-wing riot — its best to start with the completed works. the ones that smacked of “almost finished” and then came to no future. the best example is the trio date: beauty in strangeness.
sometime ago i wrote about this in my other blog. to save you the trouble of having to read my tortured musings here i will post the actual musical content above this… in an entry of it’s own. you know… just as music. here i’ll satisfy my need to explain… by explaining.
sometime in the winter of 2005, i was living in the rectory. making my rent every month by some miracle of saving, hoarding, and wishing. i was otherwise living ostensibly on $50 bucks a week from Bard College for accompanying jazz singers. Esposito scored me the gig and to him i am eternally grateful. i’d most assuredly have withered away to nothing in those chill and lean days. i was drinking a liter of sweetened, but dark coffee every morning for breakfast (i know it was a liter because i would wake up, brew a pot and pour the entirety of it into my large green Nalgene. then go to Bard to borrow John’s office and practice. i know it was sweetened but dark because i know i couldn’t really afford milk — i mean at 22 who really needs milk? — but i had bucketloads of sugar). Zach Dunham was working on his studio engineer chops and asked me if i wanted to try and put something together for him to record in the spring. like… some music and a band…and play in the studio… free of charge? AND he wanted me to use the rhodes… i mean we’re talking hog heaven. i, of course, first imagine way too much at once. spent all my numerous free hours with a bottle of wine (was giving piano lessons by that point. a little more bread for the creature comforts: heavy cream, red wine, and various edible meats) and my Casio Privia. my original intention was to do a trio with singer and then an electric quintet with sax and trumpet (essentially the senior project Sorce Band… with trumpet instead of trombone). but something happened. i wrote too much material, spread myself too thin. couldn’t hear it. and one day i was thinking about the piece Dan Beiber had written for Zach in his moderation concert a year earlier (entitled: For Zach, Alive and Burning)… and then i stumbled across an old CD Kyle Gann had give me of Messsiaen’s Quartet Por La Fin Du Temps (or some such thing as that, he says)… and the glorious finally violin/piano duet. ah… sublime, for sure. and it hit me. a fenderRhodestrio. yes! spoke to zach about it. he was game. rhodes, acoustic bass, and trap set.
now… the perfect band for this vision. had to be fresh. had to be new. had to be challenging. when i think about it now… its so very simple. Dan, Constantine, and me. in the studio, for a good two days. perfect. the dynamic had a beautiful blend in my becurs-ed head. that, i’d been to see Constantine play a number of times around campus. always really dug his playing. ears like no drummer should ever have. inexplicable timing. and a completely impregnable demeanor. and he played with a sudden shifting shunting changing time. hyper… fast… slow… incredibly loud… incredibly soft. like a man with a wheel-barrow going slightly uphill and then slightly downhill and the back up… and then back down…and the way up… and the suddenly — BLAM! — down. meanwhile Daniel played and, likely still plays, like a man being dragged down hill by a very heavy wagon. the further a song goes the deeper, it seems, his store of energy. his willingness to play out. his intensity. already, this would be a potent combo (in fact, i considered trying to initiate a duet… but i am wiser now than i was then, i suppose. and then i couldn’t figure out how to create the musical context). then add to it, me. i play, almost always, like a man trying to push an ass up a very steep ravine. blame it on my lack of technical prowress. i’m slow. got big, slow, clumsy fingers. but… they seem to find the rear part of the beat of the beat pretty easily. so i let them fall there. fat, slow, and deliberate. so, really… we had the whole beat covered, i guess.
and then, it was just a matter of material.
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long story short: i wrote five pieces and arranged that tune of Dan’s. most of the songs were just expanded versions/forms of music from my senior concert: Beauty In Strangeness – my attempt to reconcile… well, much of what is in me. but, call it… over romanticism meets Sun Ra…; Leave Autumn (alone) – my extreme reduction of a John Esposito composition based on the melody of Autumn Leaves … backwards. that is, he turned it backwards. played it for us a couple of times. and i loved it. so i “sampled” without telling him for my senior concert. he was… surprised.; the pequod — essentially my sorrowful retelling of the story bits of Moby Dick. you know… but like… as if it were a level of some 8bit Nintendo game… like, i always think of MegaMan for some reason. underwater. its strange, i know. i apologize, i guess; and finally, the aptly named: trio (for the end of time) – is like what might happen if Messiaen and Ornette had jammed for bit. probably i was trying to emulate the terrific triple-meter masterpiece that was the Brad Mehldau trio playing She’s Leaving Home on Day Is Done. close? well, no. not really. but sort of its own, weirdo epic thing. which is probably, honestly, what i actually should have been going for. thank goodness for good collaborators.
for Alive and Burning, i basically just turned the chords around. slowed it way down. removed about half the changes. and kept Daniel’s beautiful melody, essentially, in place.
the only other track was an interlude Zach and I came up with to try and do some crazy mic-ing fo the rhodes. its… sort of worked… sort of didn’t… and we were basically being kicked out of the studio at that time. it was april 2006.
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later on, Zach did a quick mix of the tracks. all the blemishes still in tact. no splices or anything. some eq-ing, i’d bet. some compression? panning? not sure. he did his thing. and what remained. was this. which quickly… fell to the wayside. every now and again, i stumble across it. and i want to listen. and i’m pretty impressed with this thrown together conglomeration of individuals. it would have been cool to ever have played this music before an audience. it begged to be performed live.
i admire, more than anything, the three way counterpoint that comes through in the recording. the times sort of gliding in and out of synch. and yet, there is a remarkable — if somewhat forced — cohesion there.
today, i think, it might have sounded better with a real pianist. but wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for me. i am thrilled by the sounds herein. sorry — oh so sorry — that nothing came of them. and so… here i place them. part I of Cleaning the Mirror. i release this out into the world. in full form. though, not quite fully developed. not quite fully come of age.
may it bring you some… joy.
akie.
