Yours truly has been slack lately. I got bunch of stuff in the draft folder, but got me a full time job again so trying to get my schedule together again.
One way to prime the pump is to try and get back to my Haiku of the Day. So here ’tis:
Pointlessness is best
This Purpose Driven Life book
props up my table
For the past three years or so, I have been dealing with some serious loss of music/creative morale. I’m not sure if that’s such a term, but if not…patent pending!
This came about due to the loss of my close friend and musical partner-in-crime. I could write for hours about him, but I don’t know you people that well yet. The point is that losing a best friend is tough, but when they also interact with your most intimate creative thoughts as a valuable critic and contributor, you not only deal with the personal loss, but are reminded of that void when trying to express yourself.
Mostly this expressed itself with a significant enthusiasm gap. I would be extremely excited about a new song I’d written or playing a show and then it would just die on the vine. Before my pal died, I had completed an album and I have now spent the past three years listening to it and getting incredible depressed and thinking, “This sounds like shit.” It’s gotten to the point where I’ve asked some friends to listen to it just to give me an outside perspective because I don’t trust my creative self anymore.
The endless back and forth of the unreleased album and the anxiety about putting a guitar on and playing out again has really really depressed me. My inability to commit to my art has made me perceive every obstacle as a point to throw my hands up and be done with it. Just sell all my guitars, amps, and other instruments and fuck it. It’s a corrosive bitterness when you cannot tap into the creative part of your soul. That coupled with still doing work on the industry side of music has given me a rather bleak vision of music where everything seems to be completely focused on pimping and never focused on music.
I think about my friend a lot. When I had hit a pretty rough patch in my life earlier, I did sell just about everything. My Twin 65, my Rickenbacker 330, and a slew of great equipment. Before I got read of my Telecaster and my Marshall, he intervened and said, “Let me just hold on to this for you.” He was right and I was wrong. We went on to write and play a lot of great songs together. I know he wouldn’t want me to give up and, ultimately, I think stopping my creative life would be extremely damaging to me. So, I’m trying to be more proactive about this whole rock thing again.
The thing to do is Start Over. And I guess that starts with saying goodbye to all that came before. I’ll be releasing the last album he and I ever did even if it’s just on Tunecore. Here’s a preview track:
The rest is just to shed any expectations I previously had about my musical aspirations and just enjoy this. Enjoying things is not my greatest strength. I’m much better at brooding and letting things fester, but things have been festering too much in this area of my life for far too long. It’s time to remember what I enjoyed about playing music in the first place and reclaim that and get on with this part of my life.
Thanks for reading.
I’ve been a bit busy dealing with a job loss, job search, and other stuff lately. So, The Feast has been a bit quiet. One thing I’m happy to report is that people actually read my shit. Who needs more validation than that? My recent post on Greg Norton got some comments and it’s nice my opinions matter somewhat. I was contacted by a very nice guy from the Netherlands who told me about his Husker cover band named, appropriately, Husker Dutch. Hope you all enjoy it!
Being in a band is all about politics. Oh, you thought it was about the music?
Sure, it starts out like that. It’s the organizing principle. To make music and make your statement with it. But the minute you get two or three people in a room together, relationships begin to grow and become more complex every day. People define themselves against each other as well as changing in other ways. This is both the mystery and curse of bands. They are never the sum of their parts.
In every band, you have a breakdown of labor. On top of learning and playing instrument some people write the songs, some people sing, and others provide booking and logistical report. In successful bands (and I use that term loosely), all folks are working towards the band being the best possible representation of itself. However, it’s not a democracy. At best, it’s a benign dictatorship.
Why is that? Well, the people that write the songs generally call the shots just a little bit more. You have to have original material to perform. When it gets better and you have people clamoring for your songs, your power increases. This external feedback alters a bands chemistry. What once was a all for one and one for all dynamic is subtly altered. If you’re in an intense band like Husker Du, that pressure can be extreme.
Now, I’ve done a bit of touring with Grant Hart and I’ve met Bob Mould and read his memoir. Neither one of those gentlemen lack for opinions and perspective. They are strong willed guys. I’d hate to be in the middle of that. And that’s exactly where Greg Norton was. But to assume he had no personality is a big misread. There’s no way someone between those two opposites was some weak willed person. Rather, Norton had to be the balance in that band. That requires a whole lot of skills, particularly discretion and diplomacy. I think probably more than Mould or Hart did at that point in their lives.
Being a drummer or a bass player can be a thankless task. You help keep the beat and provide the foundation for the songs. Typically your reward comes along the lines of, “That guitar player is awesome.” A rhythm section’s competence is expected and not rewarded. A lot of times, you’re only noticed when you fuck up. Greg Norton is no bass playing slouch.
I’m not sure if it’s some kind of sonic revisionism that has gone for the past 25 years or so; but his bass playing seems to not get much respect. Unfortunately, some of that is from his former band members. Mould mentions it in his memoir with an anecdote about he and Hart recording their own bass parts after Norton initially provided them. on Candy Apple Grey and Warehouse. That is a real disservice.
Part of it is band nitpicking. If it’s your song, you obviously have an opinion of the parts being played and you may want something different than the bass player has provided. But using that control issue as an aesthetic justification is a bit shady. Yes, change them if you must, but don’t blame your bandmate of the past 6 or more years. That’s a decision that’s on you.
The whole message of the seems to be that Norton’s playing is sub par. I’d argue against that any day of the week. To my ears as a bass player and a fan of the band, he’s an integral part of the sound. The lines he comes up with and the timing of the lines are interesting and come more from Charles Mingus more than Dee Dee Ramone. His playing and Hart’s drumming really elevate Husker Du about their more popcentric peers like the Descendents. If Mould wanted the rhythm section he got in Sugar, Husker Du would not have the musical sweep it had.
Additionally, people seem to hold the production of the band’s SST output against Husker. Sure, it’s easy to pick on. The high frequencies on those records sound like frying eggs and the bass and drums don’t have much bottom end or presence, but it’s punk rock for god’s sake. You don’t hear that shit about Black Flag so either go after all the SST bands or stop singling one band out. The complaining underscores the real point which is that Husker Du DESERVED better production due to the strengths of the songs and bands.
Some of the other things Mould mentions in his book strike me as the same kind of crap every band member levels against another. It’s the most trivial stuff blown out of proportion. So, Norton likes to golf. Bob likes to bowl and Grant collects cars. I mean, come on. I can go pro or con on all three of those. Band members are like family members; they can say the most disagreeable shit to each other. The fact that this stuff gets public is where bands start sliding downhill towards breaking up.
Yeah, Norton could have gotten in there and been just as stubborn, assertive, and intense as the Hart and Mould. Would that have broken up the band earlier tho? If that’s the case Norton’s attempt as being the more relaxed peacemaker probably enabled Husker Du to function as effectively as it did. Bands are a whole lot more than who gets the songwriting and publishing credit. Greg Norton deserves as much credit as Hart and Mould as creating and pushing Husker Du too the great heights that band achieved.
As I get into this WordPress blogging thing, a few things occur. One is that who gives a shit. The other is that I’m probably about, what 10 years behind? (I had a freudian typo of “yeats”, but let’s not dwell)
Since people generally consume and consume content on the internets like locusts, it’s liberating to know that my voice will be drowned out by the volume of bullshit. It allows me to focus on what I like, which is just writing about whatever pops into my pea brain.
One thing getting older has done for me is allow myself to be far less earnest than I initially was in my late teens/early 20’s. You know that feeling, you’re on the center of the stage and the whole world is watching. And that’s a pretty annoying attitude to carry around with you for 20 years. Some folks never drop it and they’re even more annoying. Shit is hard enough that acting like you’re some special gift from God really wears the fuck out of people. Far much more interesting stuff comes from people that put their nose to the ground and dig in. You wanna produce something good? Or just talk about what you’re gonna do someday…maybe.
I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly stylish person despite many many attempts to try to like what others like. For example, Gram Parson. I just don’t get it, people. I’m sure he has his charms for others, but he always came across as a trust fund fuck up wanna be.
Another example, The Replacements drunk shows. If I showed up and ponied up my hard earned money to see a bunch of drunk 30 second covers from one of the greatest bands on the planet, I’d have to beat Paul Westerberg’s ass. Plus, the reunion thing. C’mon people, it’s over! There’s only two original members and they had that guy from Green Day play with them at some shows. I call bullshit.
So, this is my writing process. I rarely edit because I’m pretty lazy and don’t feel the need to reread what i’ve written. I’ll save that for my 33 1/3 book. Note to self: You should really work on that proposal. I do this writing for me and if I get better with practice that’s all I look for. A writer keeps writing no matter what because that’s what they are.
So yours truly got into Husker Du in a big way, but I would be remiss in not talking about The Bass Playing Thing.
Please take that image in because that, my friends, is what the first bass I owned looked like. The Kramer Striker bass is all its glory. Got it by washing dishes at a restaurant when I was 17. That was a shit gig, but I got the bass and it was really the first thing I had ever wanted enough to go through a completely degrading experience to get it.
Notwithstanding my total love of Husker Du, I was immediately more interested in the big kahuna of the South. In 1986, that was R.E.M. It’s pretty difficult to impress upon people why they were so important to folks who lived in the southeast region of the U.S.
To begin with, they were from Georgia. I mean, Georgia, for god’s sake. Prior to the 1980’s, that was Allman Brothers territory and the land of Jimmy Carter. You couldn’t expect anything relevant from there. But there they were. And for me, Mike Mills was one of the most profound current influences I had. They way he made R.E.M. sound, especially on those early records, cannot be overstated. They were tons of others who influenced me (and I’ll try and talk about them in later posts), but he was in a cool band that existed when I was 16 and I wanted to do more as a bass player than be Dee Dee Ramone.
Now, I never thought I would be in a band like R.E.M because they had impossible mystique in the 80’s. Once again, I felt like brown Hush Puppies on a black suit. They just seemed to have that certain je ne crois and I felt painfully awkward despite being inappropriately ambitious.
So, what did I do with that super cool Kramer bass? Practiced over and over again. That was the first thing I really loved that was completely mine to do with what I wanted.
What was is about Husker Du that made such an impression on me? One thing was simply their relatively normal appearance. People seem to forget before grunge came along that being in a rock band had a much more serious style component. The closest you came to normal wear was either in the hardcore punk scene (a scene Husker Du initially sprang from) or in the heavy metal scene. In both cases you had a jeans and t shirt uniform; however, the length of hair was the difference. Most of the time, to be an authentic hardcore punk guy, you had to have to rock the Kojack hair style a la DC straight edge. Not that there was a lot of straight edge in Roanoke. By the time I was cognizant of various subcultures; most punk rock folks had embraced various quasi forms of punk that bumped up against other musical styles. In 1984 and 85, you had a lot of skate punk in Roanoke. Mostly because of skating more than punk. That being said, I remember guys with Vans inking the words “JFA” on them and giving me shit for liking Hall & Oates. They just didn’t know how punk I was liking an uncool band…or something like that…shut up. To be honest, I preferred the guys who were into Metallica and Sabbath because they were less self righteous
But I digress. The point is that Husker Du wrote some kickass songs and were loud as god’s balls and look like guys I saw in the smoking block. They seemed indifferent to the whole look-at-me punk rock identity politics and kept their focus where it belonged. There was universality to their songs that surpassed most underground bands at the time. This is partly because being part of the underground in the 80’s really meant taking pride in your place because you certainly weren’t going to achieve Nirvana like success.
Husker’s Minneapolis competition, The Replacements, was a band I greatly admired, too. But while they had great songs about alienation and other great rock themes, they seemed impossibly cool in that New York Dolls, Stones, Heartbreakers vein. They didn’t have the avenging dork style of Husker, which seemed to be handed down from the Ramones.
Being a gangly lad, I didn’t have any obesity problems. But let me tell you, being a skinny guy in the south is a pain in the ass, especially in the early 80’s which was a far less tolerant time. If you weren’t tough guy, you were considered about unmanly and effeminate. And if you liked books, music, and art; let me tell you that could be grounds for an ass kicking. So, seeing two fat guys and another guy with a handlebar mustache blow out minds and ear drums was extremely rewarding. And the fact that the fat guys were gay and the guy everyone thought was gay was straight was a mind fuck I appreciated enormously. The Replacements seemed just way too traditional compared to that.
So, I spent an enormous time listening and practicing to my Husker Du records. And by “records”, I mean shitty Maxell 90 min cassettes because I didn’t have the money to buy all those records. And then I wrote my first song…which sounded exactly like Grant Hart’s Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely.
Clearly, I had a lot more work to do.
Your humble narrator grew up in the 1980’s. I don’t recommend that to anyone. We had Ronald Reagan, yuppies, and AIDS. About the only thing I remember positively about the 80’s was the great American underground music scene.
Of course, every teenager will grow up believing the bands they had growing up are/were the best. This is because teenagers don’t know shit. That and they have no experience yet. At that age, we’re primed to have a religious experience over a book, song, band, film, painting. Pete Townshend once compared the first moment to a person’s first fuck. There’s only one of those and you never forget it.
So, I’d love to say I was one of those super cool 10 year olds that listened to Minor Threat when they first came out, but I was living in Winchester, VA and I had no older siblings . My initial album purchases were Queen’s Greatest Hits and my mom bought me AC/DC’s Back in Black and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, people. And we listed to that stuff along with Rush, Ozzy, and some Maiden.
My dad was an accountant in Wincherster and after a couple of years living there, we all hated it. So, we moved to Roanoke, VA and lived in the county. By that point, it was the extremely glamorous year of 1983. Yours truly had entered the swampy long march called puberty. I was wrestling and running track for a bit and flat out sucking academically. I would probably attribute that to all the Hall & Oates and Phil Collins’ era Genesis I listened to.
When you are significantly uncool as I was, and am, you lean on your friends to learn about new things. By about 1986, I was beginning to get interested in playing music. Mostly playing bass. Why? Well, all my friends wanted to play guitar and they all needed a bass player. Plus, I thought (and I was wrong) it would be much easier than guitar.
Mostly, I got my hands on a crappy Cort bass via my pal Carl. Carl and his pals Steve and David had a “band”. And by that I mean they would drink beer in the David’s parents’ basement and play Motley Crue’s version of “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room”. This was augmented by the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove” and Metallica’s “Leper Messiah.” We’d all drink a beer and smoke cigarettes and feel pretty fucking cool.
So, my buds Pete and Lee and I had a “band” Which meant, I needed to learn to play the damn thing. So, I went and got lessons at Kelly’s Music on Brambleton Avenue. I learned a lot of classic rock stuff like the Beatles and Stones while Pete was a camp counselor in the summer of 1986.
One good thing about Pete being gone was I got to house sit which meant I raided his record stash. I had started getting into different music finally courtesy of my pal Todd who worked at Record Bar in Tanglewood Mall. I think the first purchases were Love & Rockets, Hoodoo Gurus, and Screaming Blue Messiahs. But it was all hit and miss.
Fortunately, Pete was one of those nuts that organized his lp’s and had them in alphabetical order rather than randomly jammed in a bookcase like I did. So, I started flipping through them and hit this record called New Day Rising. And that’s all she wrote.
Now, I had kinda heard of this Husker Du band before. We had a Record & Tape Exchange in Roanoke. They had Zen Arcade on cassette there and I don’t think it ever sold. I was fascinated and repelled by the album cover because of the crayola color scheme. “What in the fuck is this?” I’d also heard “Crystal” and that had really done nothing for me. But listening to Pete’s copy of New Day Rising (as well as Flip Your Wig) tore my head off. There’s never been a contest as far as my favorite band of all time. They were my Beatles.
And then I actually got to tour and play bass with one of my Beatles:
More coming to you Monday or so.
Phil
“‘But true love,’ he said, ‘godddamn true love is taking it out of you ass and sticking it in your mouth.'” – A Feast of Snakes
“Jeeeezzzussss” – Me, upon reading that.
I was 19 when I first read A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews. Needless to say, it left an impression on me. I’d read Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Robert Penn Warren in survey courses and high school; this was a different beast. And one I could see almost everyday growing up in Virginia.
Joe Lon Mackey, the protagonist of A Feast of Snakes, was a type of person, I encountered while growing up. Guys that had a moment of glory and then it all went to shit. All that’s left is burnt out dreams, drugs, alcohol, and pleasures that never quite last. I knew plenty of men and women like that growing up and still do. None of them have gone out quite as spectacularly (Joe Lon shoots up the place before the snake festival attendees throw him in a vat of rattlesnakes), but that’s just a question of degree.
I grew up in Blacksburg, Winchester, and Roanoke, VA before heading off to George Mason University in Fairfax. Consequently I knew a lot of aspirational people, but I also knew a large number of working class folks. I suppose some of them would be called rednecks, (depending on their lack of malevolence, I’d call them good ole boys).
Existential dread might not be the phrase they’d use when coping with life’s woes; but that’s what it was. And a lot of the time coping translates to getting fucked up and fucking shit up despite the fact you’re generally fucking yourself up even more. That’s where I came from and that’s where Harry Crews came from.
A Feast of Snakes is located in a small Georgia town and primarily revolves around a illiterate former high school football hero who now tends to rattlesnakes and the yearly rattlesnake festival. Everyone else has moved on. He’s got a couple of kids by a women he barely can stand while his high school girl has gone on to college. There’s a lot of good southern stuff in it. You got your dead mom. You got your castration. You got your ancient world sacrifice metaphor. It’s good shit.
The quote above that I pulled is great for shock value. In the scent, Joe Lon is pounding away on his ex in his family’s doublewide while his wife is being distracted by a baton twirl off outside. She’s probably only a few feet away while Joe Lon fucks Berenice as hard as he can before taking her in the ass. And after that is when we get that money quote. And Berenice is fine with the whole ATM thing. My middle class self says, “But…but…but…the germs!”
Now, it’s a pretty hot sex scene in some ways, but considering the other graphic sex scene involves a guy thinking about Treblinka to stop from cumming, I doubt it’s just about the sex. Joe Lon’s fucking Berenice while thinking about how his mother committed suicide after his father abducted her from her lover. He’s thinking about how fucked up his life is after high school football didn’t take him anywhere. How fucked up it is to be banging his ex while his wife and babies are outside. So, is there true love? Is there a better life for us all?
Back in the dark days of 1986, yours truly was a scrawny punk who desperately wanted to play on the football team. I wrestled in junior high and high school, ran track, lifted weights; but at the end of the day I still weighed 105 pounds if I was lucky. So, I ended up being an equipment manager for the football team at Cave Spring High.
Now, Cave Spring High was the worst football team in the Roanoke Valley. Apparently, that’s changed. Those fucks. Anyway, there was a defensive lineman named Kevin and he was a baaaaaad motherfucker. He had a blue 1981 Camaro Z28 and was the shit. He drive around with Quiet Riot, Crue, and Ratt blasting out of that fucker. He was The Shit.
More than anything, I wanted to be The Shit. I ingratiated myself to this guy to the point where I’d get the occasional lift after practice. Typically, he had a bottle of JD and a girl in the car with him. Man, I thought, this fucker has got it made.
Now, Kevin was kinda a badass, but he was also an asshole. He was cruel and I know he smacked around a couple of his girlfriends. I didn’t now this at the time, but heard about it after he dropped out of high school when he turned 17 and started working construction. But he roamed the halls and the football field like a blue light special Colossus. And what did it get him? Did those brief moments make up for the rest of his life? I don’t know, but we all wanted to be that guy heading down the road in that fast car. We never thought about the cost.
So, I figured after blogging became done to death, it was my time.
As the great Phil Venable has said (that would be me), “Shit don’t mean a thing unless you do it for no money.” And as he also said, “I’m 45 and ain’t got nuthin’ to lose.”
Truthfully, this blog, wordpress, whatever bullshit is an experiment for me. I have a degree in Anglish. I’ve written plays, poetry, nonfiction and make a living as a technical writer in the straight world. I was a freelance music columnist for the Chapel Hill News a million years ago. I was fortunate enough back in 2000 to get advance copies of major releases that I would sell at Nice Price Books for cigarette money. I dimly remember getting Radiohead’s OK Computer and a Linkin Park advance cd. My critical judgement was that I preferred the Linkin Park because they weren’t trying to shine anyone on with a load of pretentious bullshit. Some may disagree, but whatever.
Mostly what I’ve done with myself since I was 17 was play music in one shape or another. I always had a day job because playing music don’t pay shit unless you’re one of the Annointed. But it’s been a fun ride and I started a booking agency to help others.
I recently became a father to a beautiful baby boy. Meaning that getting out of the house for music is a rare occurrence. No big thing. That’s how it goes for the first few years
But I’m a whore for words and music and my lust for it needs an outlet. For now, here it is.
The title of this blog is taken from a Harry Crews novel. For those unfamiliar with him, here’s a link for you. I’ll expand a little more on my love for his writing in another post, but I always admired his brutal direct prose. It’s never sentimental, but it’s not some trashy shit either.
You can write a lot and never say shit. Hopefully, I’m not that kind of asshole.
Hope you keep coming back.
Phil
Phil Venable's Feast of Snakes 