On Delusion ( A Scream for Hope)

I cannot believe that there is a greater drainage ditch for the self disillusions of people than the creative world.  I simply cannot.

If you hold disillusions in other fields, say a doctor or lawyer or mechanic or cabinet maker, reality will show you very very soon that you are not what you think you are. However, in the (sigh) subjective world of the creative arts, it seems alternate realities are not just par for the course, but the majority vote. And I speak of this from experience, from seeing first hand what people think they are and what they ACTUALLY are and have it make life range from amazingly comical to the very definition of tragedy.

I write this after being spurred on via a conversation with my friend Jim who was livid about how he heard someone getting major press by writing an album based on a divorce they went through. Allow me to state that this anger of his has some weight to it. He met Jimi Hendrix, is friends with Joni Mitchel, was in Ornette Coleman's band, jammed with Jaco Pastorius and John Scofield on a regular basis, has performed around the world (including the then USSR) with his theater troupe, and has more teaching, composing, and performance hours logged in than 1% of the professional musician population. He was livid that such horrible work could get any recognition based on what it was ABOUT, not what it WAS. While this is nothing new in the commercial field of Music, it seemed to hit a nerve.

I defer any and all discussion about the theoretically romantic life of the artist and all it entails to the brilliant essay by the late great David Rackoff called "Isn't It Romantic?" in his book "Half Empty". The absolute brilliance of his writing shines a light on the life of a working creative person though he was a writer, not a musician. The same principles still apply. So, Mr. Rackoff, wherever you may be, I tip my hat to you.

As for own slice of the reality pie, I have auditioned and (thankfully only a few times) worked with many people whose idea of self  differs so radically from the rest of creation that even the late Timothy Leary on a bender would stop and say, "Uh, no. Please stop."  Yes, my friends, it is that bad.

It seems that the audition process is like light to the moth for the illumination of this sort of behavior. When I have had auditions for bassists, cellists, drummers and vocalists, over and over and over again, as if by some communication through the lot of them, they were out of their minds. And what was the common thread? One simple thing: they could not play what was asked of them. Allow me to repeat that with some added information: they arrived at rehearsal having heard the tunes and theoretically having practiced the tunes, but could not play the tunes upon arrival. No, wait. They could not come close to performing the tunes when they got there.

Now, the Music of The Post Modern Tribe and 4,000,000 Silhouettes is not prog rock, none of the parts are in need of some prodigy to enter the room. It seems that singing is the worst. Why is that? Well, it would seem to logic that if a singer hears the songs, tries to sing them at home, cannot do so, they would not audition. The same is true for drummers, bassists, and cellists. If you cannot play the Music at home, why do you show up at the audition?

I believe it boils down to several points, the first of which being that they believe they can actually perform the part with the added bonus that, if they cannot play the part part at the audition, there is something so amazing about their inherent talent that it will shine through their clumsy performance and they shall rise like the ghost of Van Gogh to show the world their originality and life altering voice. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE AMAZING!!!! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?!?!?

To be fair, when one auditions for anything, you are nothing more than a shoe being tried on. You may be a beautiful shoe with the right size, but you may not be the right shoe they are looking for. In the same way one cannot play proper tennis in a designer chukka boot, one cannot have a glorious tones alto sing Led Zeppelin. It is not a matter of talent, it is a matter of function. I have had amazing vocalists come to auditions, one lovely Austrian actress new to NYC comes to mind, who could simply not do what was expected. Not even close. She was wonderful and gifted, but where the disconnect was between what she heard and what she thought she could do was astounding.

Then there was the bassist who could barely keep up with the songs or the drummer who had to listen to the songs again at the audition after he choked on the parts. Surprise, he still screwed up the song even after the reminder. Or the cellist who decided to improvise on the written out cello parts before he had played the song once through.

But the worst, the absolute bastards, were the ones who would confirm the audition date and time, and then, after I rented the rehearsal space, never showed up. They would not call to say they were not coming. They would not email afterwards apologizing. They would just vanish.... until I put a different ad with a different email out and they would again reply to THAT ONE saying how great they were. No joke. To not even have basic human courtesy seems to be on par for the collision course.

In all my many years of auditioning, only one woman came in and did it right. Her name is Erin and she got there on time and prepared, but she told me right up front she could only do two of the five songs because that was all she had time for. Ya' know what? She hit those two songs out of the park. Later that day, after auditioning a woman who got to the audition 90 minutes late and who also decided to improv the vocals to a Led Zeppelin song by riffing on my shoes and playing lead guitar without asking, Erin was hired. While her time in the time in the band was short lived, she was always professional and did a great job. For that, I forever hold her in deep respect.

This is probably what fuels my anger the most: what the people who think they are professional are verses those who actually are professional. This is not the land of the television show based on "reality" nor is it the golden age of guitar based rock with a plethora of youth clamoring for new Music. This has to be something you love, not just like. This has to be something you believe in, not something you use as an escape from your life WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE IT. To be part of this tribe means that you will give blood for the cause, that it will not be easy but that you will treat the terms of the unspoken contract of the bond of musicians with greater respect than the best day job you could ever have. If you cannot do that, you are not on the team. You are a hobbyist, not a professional.

There are amazing bands out there who make great Music who have day jobs, but that is not the point. What is needed is for people to treat making their Music as seriously as they do their day job. If it is for "fun" and the standards of excellence are not there, fine. Seriously. There is no damn reason in the cosmos that Music should not be made simply for the joy of making it with friends and beer in the backyard. In fact, I think there needs to be more of that. People making Music verses listening to it for free and being passive about it. Music, for 99.99999% of its history has been live, not recorded.

But the line that separates the delusion from the reality is simple: sacrifice.  You have to love this life, not just like it. You have to sacrifice your own delusions about how great you are and practice practice practice till you are as good as you need to be. You have to listen back to that recording and go, "I suck. I have to work till I get it right." or "That great idea I had sucks. Gotta get rid of it and start over." We all need that glaring and unforgiving mirror of reality to shine on us so that we can be our best self. Yes, it is unbearably painful at times, but it is what it takes to be a professional.

Recently I did a wedding gig. We had to learn 31 songs and performed on all of them. (That's just the way the dice landed.) It was a huge amount of work and I spent hours alone in a room going over and over and over the songs. At the end of the day, the pay worked out to less than minimum wage due to paying my part for rehearsal studios, gas, and tolls. The time I spend alone in my back room going over songs seems to have no value, so that is not even part of the equation. I agreed to do the gig, so I did the gig. While there were a few falls on my part during the evening, all the major songs turned out well. We received praise from the wedding planners as well as guests ranging in age from 23 to 75.

Was it worth it financially? Was it "fun"? Did I have a great time? No. But once I agreed, I agreed and that is the end of it. It was a job doing what I have dedicated my life to doing. I did my best and was proud that strangers found joy in the team I was a part of. It was not about me, it was the team and it was a damn good team.

Years ago, just after my beloved friend Steve Hajdu Nemeth died of cancer, we auditioned a singer to fill his enormous vocal shoes. The only person to respond was a woman in her early 20's named Lizz. The audition went well and she was hired. She grew into a professional Musician who now fronts her own amazing band. Last year when I needed help at a show, she offered to help and it was great working with her again. Everyone was on the same page and we were back again making great Music. It went so well that we will be working a wedding this November as well as a blues album somewhere in the not to distant future. All of us know what we are in for, all of us know what we have to do, and all of us respect and like each other. This is a group of professionals.  This is amazing.

I once spoke to a famous director who used to work at an agency. He told me of the delusion and desperation that he would see day in and day out from people wanting to become famous. He told me of a story of a woman whose untalented child auditioned for something. He told them, very nicely, that he did not have anything for them at this time. The mother told the child to leave the office and wait out in the hall and to close the door behind him. She began to undo the buttons on her blouse while saying, "Mr. _________, I will do anything for you to give my child a chance." As this situation happened very often, he had a button installed under his desk that alerted the receptionist of what was going on. Immediately, the intercom bellowed, "Mr. ________, you have an urgent call on line one!" He would take the imaginary call as the secretary knocked on the door, the woman hurriedly buttoning up her  blouse.

Some of us don't have a buzzer. We just scream to God for them to leave.

There Does Not Have to Be any Art at All. (I'll let that sink in for a minute...)

Some things chill me to the bone.

I was having breakfast with a friend two years ago. He has a graduate degree in composition from Rutgers and made his money for many years as part of one of the most popular cover bands in Jersey. He stated that he believed that the free market should decide whether or not contemporary style classical Music survives or not. My jaw nearly dropped into my coffee. He said that the government has no intrinsic right to support the arts as it has since the WPA program. This coming from a man who spent years of his life composing contemporary classical Music and realized that he would most likely never hear his works performed by anyone other than maybe a rehearsal via an ensemble or a computer program.

The long time art critic Dave Hickey said in an interview that, in a nutshell, there is really no need for high art to exist for society to survive. From a Darwinian standpoint, we don't need all that to reproduce and sustain ourselves and our families. Think about it. Reallllllllly think about it.

Outside of the late Robert Hughes, Hickey is the only art critic I trust. He has no problem giving bad reviews and not liking things, which is rare in the art world. Too much money is at stake to anger anyone or call out the emperor's new clothes. That being said, he also liked stuff I cannot figure out, but his scope of art history is way bigger than most, so he has a different groove than most, especially me.

He agrees, like anyone else with a spine who was not bought out or drank the Kool Aid, that there is something seriously wrong with the art world. He has figured out its trick of making art a commodity first and an act of creative honesty and integrity second. Wall Street types and others with cash buy paintings of an unknown artist because they believe it will go up in price, not because they like it. The artist gets screwed in the short run if they succeed because all the stuff they sold before to pay the rent will go for twenty or more times what it was sold for.

But think about it, how many of you have any interest in buying a piece of art for yourself? Even one from the mall store that is a Ebola nauseating rehash of something of real beauty... how many? The visual arts are out of the reach of most, simply because of cost. Yet most everyone has SOMETHING hanging on the walls. There is that line between decoration and "art". And maybe that is it?

People are buying stuff as decoration that a generation or two ago was " contemporary art". It is surreal to go into one of those discount clothing/home furnishing places and see what people are buying, what is being expected to sell to people without any angst or thought. The public has caught up with the artistic thought of Andy Warhol, Christopher Wool, Mark Rothko, and others. While that may seem nice, where does that leave the contemporary artist?

In a word: screwed.

What has happened to art is similar, but not the same, as what happened to Music, though it happened earlier due to the financial forces precluding and being greater than the technological ones. Let us begin at the beginning, shall we? (All Music majors and art majors are not allowed to vote, sorry.) Right now, without a search engine, name me three living classical composers. Now, name me three living visual artists. Now, name me the popular Music styling of today. Take your time. I'll wait here in the desert of digital dust....

Okay. I am willing to bet that you could not name three living classical composers. You may have gotten Philip Glass due to his movie work and eternal presence on NPR, but who else? And how about those visual artists? Maybe Jeff Koons because of his recent deal with Macy's or maybe Julian Schnabel because of the movies he has made or maybe Matthew Barney because he had a thing with Bjork. (No fear, she wrote about it on her album "Vulnicura" released this year.) Now, onto that pop Music question. What is the main musical STYLING of today? Not, WHO is the top selling artist! What is the STYLE of Music that is the majority of the youth culture, say, like Nirvana and Pearl jam were in 1990?

There are several problems here. 

The first is that there really is no center to anything in Music due to the digital information age. This is because anything you want, including the past, is available for free online. There was a time that, within the scum of payola, new Music was distributed to the masses via a linear distribution system: the television or radio. If you listened to the radio, new things came on that you were introduced to and maybe you liked them. Dare I say, the same thing was true via the bribery cesspool that was MTV. You SAW new Music and maybe you liked it. But now, our desires can be fed with immaculate accuracy via the web. We make the decisions about what we may think we like. I say this knowing full well about Pandora, Spotify, Google, and Youtube giving you things THEY think you may like, but these are based on the linear calculations of what you already like. The real gem of discovery is found when someone else with a different well of possibility shows you things they think you may like. Personally, my late friend Jack Bennett changed my life by doing that. He let me borrow a stack of albums, one of which changed the course of my life as a composer.

Second, there is a HUGE disconnect between the "art word" and everyday life. It has grown wider and wider since the Scull art auction of the early 1970's. Outside of the childless Herbert and Dorthy Vogel who, on a normal income, collected contemporary art, who the hell goes to a gallery or to see new artists with the intent to buy? You cannot name contemporary artists because the 1% has consumed a-l-l contemporary art by being the only buyers of it as an investment. I have seen these deals go down and it is a disgusting process for both parties.

Third, there is no more "classical Music." The contemporary atonal composers have been the ultimate hipsters of Musical taste since about 1930, barricading themselves within the walls of the academic community and writing clever Music for beings who are too clever by half and hold concerts that look like an MC Escher self portrait: composers and clever people looking at composers and clever people who look up from their Music and see composers and clever people looking back. The harmonies and counterpoint of the "classical Music" people want to hear has moved to video games, the greatest money making entertainment of this new generation. Period. Did you know there was an atonal opera written for the book/movie "Brokeback Mountain"? I didn't think so. Why? Because even the critics who came out to see this hipster nightmare could not palate it. Want proof? In the debut in Spain, the work of Wagner was used as a warm up. WAGNER AS A PREPARATORY PIECE!

There is a deep disconnect between the arts and everyday people. The golden age of Rock Music has passed. The last movement of art, the minimalist movement, is gone. The minimalist movement in classical Music is past. With the past so easily accessible and desires so easily unchallenged, we have reached the point where it barely matters if the present were to vanish. People could listen to Music, read literature, and look at visual art from the past and never even know it was missing. Some people would catch it, to be sure, but the sea of creative objects is so vast that if it were to stop today, it would take a very very long time for us to examine what already exists that has yet to be seen, heard, or read,

A very very very very very very very long time.

The reality is obvious: there really DOES NOT have to be any "Art" at all from this day forward.

But we're still making it. I just hope people take it for what it is really worth.

It Never Was the Way it Was: Mythology and Rock Music

Collect a bunch of myths together and you come up with a mythology. When this mythology is either embraced or rebelled against by artists with a shared vision, you get a shift in thought, practice, and added historical prescience to the mythology. When a mythology is used as marketing tool and all its symbols created in bulk and given a retail price 50 to 70 % above dealer cost... it is dead in the water.

I am re-reading Bob Dylan's book as well as Patty Smith's amazing "Just Kids" and cannot help but feel that I got shortchanged, having been born just a bit shy and off of the mark. But then again, that is what myths do, don't they?

In its basic form, the myth of rock and roll is no different than any myth of fame in the performing arts. I'm not sure how far back in time this reaches but I would assume if you could get a job painting portraits or making music for a king or someone else in power then it was better than working in the fields until you died like everyone else in your family did. If you were good enough and fate was kind, you could get the hell out of your lousy life of simply trying to live and not die of some sort of infection before antibiotics were invented.

The first tale of fortune that comes to mind is Giotto who was discovered by the painter Cimabue. The child Giotto was a shepherd and, according to the legend, drew such life like pictures of the sheep on rocks, that the passing artist discovered him and took him off to study with the masters of the time. Poof! One minute you are in the fields watching livestock and the next you are in the big city drawing for the rest of your life.

Actors have similar stories. One out of the thousands is Winona Ryder who was simply eating a bowl of gazpacho at a local place when a casting director saw her and scooped her up into the acting world. Poof! One minute you are eating cold soup, the next you are calling Ethan Hawk to bail you out of a shoplifting phase.... or something like that.

Since comedians are, most of the time, the best tellers of the truth, the rock and roll myth is best shown in "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story". While the movie is a parody, somewhere along the line, everything in the damn film IS what we believe in as rock and roll.

So why do we need myths? BECAUSE THEY SELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is a general rule that is passed among those who work with creative types: the most talented people tend to be the nicest while the second tier will make your life hell. I think that most famous people who are talented ask themselves at one point, "Why the hell did I make it when (fill in name here) did not? And they are 100 times more talented than me!" To the truly gifted and hard working, this grows into a humility and gratitude, a grace blooms and a desire to just do better work, to be as good as those around them. To the UNTALENTED, that questioning is a cancer that eats away at them because they know they suck and have to do what they can to just stay where they are even though they cannot perform to the level they are expected. The wizard keeps pulling the curtain out of reach.

Failure is needed in this arena. I say this without any desire to have another human being suffer at the hands of idiots. But I mean that failure, which by definition requires attempting something, has a purpose. You learn to do what you do. The best of the best try to do better after each failure, the worst just blame everyone but themselves. Van Gogh never sold a work of art, though he would have given his other ear to do so. Still, with each painting he tried to be better and better at what he did. Every band, comedian, actor, and performer worth their salt goes through that phase of bad gigs. The Canadian comedy troup "The Kids in the Hall" played every week for a year at a place called The Rivoli, many times to three or so people. But they say that this was where they had a place to try and fail and hone their craft.

And that is the other inverted thorn of success. You awake one morning to being praised as a star for what you do but you did the same thing for years and nobody cared. You are the same person but the world shifted. That can lead to a serious mind screw that ends in either the seclusion of a recluse or an ego the size of Alaska.  If the world can shift so quickly in one way, what is the true reality of the situation? Am I the greatest artist in the world or someone who should still be selling jeans?

The myth of rock made many people for decades believe that if they just worked hard enough, they would be rock stars. Exchange the words "work" and "rock stars" to "love" and "loved back" and you have the paradigm of the Romance Industrial Complex. I believe this to be the the proof that the majority of Musicians are romantic idealists in one way or the other.

There has, however, in recent years, been a change in the myths of rock and roll, though the sum total may be the same if not greater. The rock and roll dream was this: a band is born, they rehearse and they are ignored in the beginning but then, locally, gain the attraction by the locals and then strangers. They are then noticed by some manager and/or some record company executive, rescued from the rest of the less talented struggling artists and taken into the guarded kingdom of the Music Business. From there they work hard and, after some failures and struggles, achieve the glory their talent so rightly deserves, making the lives of millions better by providing the soundtrack for their first crush, kiss, dance, etc. Their God given gift at last given its right place within the souls of the world and within the books of history.

As every episode of "Behind the Music" shows, the downfall is always awaiting the hero. But the machinations of the music business are a thousand times worse than what is shown. The "Behind the Music" tales always have something of a happy ending that perpetuate the myth. Why? THE PERSON WHO LOST EVERYTHING AND WHO WAS IN REHAB 10 TIMES IS ON YOUR TELEVISION AND YOU ARE WATCHING IT! They are still living the myth, but as the population of the religion age, the arc of the myths grow along with them. Instead of, "You can be a rock star," it now goes "You can be a rock star and screw up and lose everything and STILL be a rock star." Old age has made the rebel artists calmer and sober, more focused, have loving families, but, and this is a but BUT, they can still ROCK!

These days, the music industry cannot re-create the myths that were going strong up until, say, around 2000. Because of the digital age and their horrible mishandling of Napster's file sharing (see the book "Appetite for Self-Destruction" for the best detail of this), something new was needed to keep the religion going and before us it bloomed into a bouquet of mystical roses.

Since there is no money in signing an act to make money off of stealing their now non-existent record sales, the record companies created "360 Deals" where the record company gets a part of everything the artist does: sales, merch, licensing, live shows, you name it. If it makes money, they get a cut. So, while bands do exist and get signed, the idea of "making it" has shifted to youtube and all the singer shows on television. For the business it is  100% winning and for the artist it is a huge loss and a reverse of the trends that brought us great Music.

"The Voice," "American Idol," and all the other shows work off the same idea as reality television: get people who will work for nothing to do stuff while we make gobs of cash off of it. Television shows such as sitcoms and dramas cost money to make and hence the risk involved for the investment of the company. With the shows where the totally unknown singers go to reveal their hidden gifts to the world as well as the  people who let a camera crew follow them around to create a "reality" we can escape to, we are heading into dangerous territory with the value of what we call entertainment.

But, like the saying goes, the Truth rises. Shows like "The Wire" and "Breaking Bad" have redefined quality. However, the majority of quality shows are on cable or a service where you have to pay. But people ARE paying, so there is some hope.

Back in 1976, the BBC put on a series based on the Robert Graves novels, "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the god: and his wife Messalina". They were about the life of the Roman Emperor Claudius who was dismissed as an idiot due to birth defects but who came to be a very successful emperor after the assassination of his nephew Caligula. The series was an amazing work of art that still holds up to this day.

In the opening scenes of the amazing mini series, Aristarchus of Athens, after doing a performance for emperor Augustus, says to the servant who announces him,

"What a voice. Perhaps we should change places? Only the Romans can afford ushers with a voice like that. Did you have it trained?" 

The announcer, Thallus, states,"I was an actor, sir." 

Aristarchus: Oh, that explains it. Resting, are you? 

Thallus: No, Sir, I've given it up. Everyone's an actor in Rome, there just isn't enough work to go around. 

Aristarchus: And what there is goes to friends and relatives. It's the same everywhere. 

Thallus: The theater isn't what it was.

 Aristarchus: No, I'll tell you something else. It never was the way it was.

Yes, my friends, it never was the way it was.

Fractal, food, and 1976: The Ferris Wheel of Progress

Hi. I hope everyone is having a good start to the New Year. This is the point in time where one can't help but look both backwards and forwards, the momentum of the past cycle of seasons spilling one out on the pure white muslin of the possibilities ahead.

Right now I am typing this while watching the Ramones documentary "The End of the Century" which concluded filming just before Dee Dee Ramone died of a heroin overdose. One need not think too hard to draw a line between their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and him being found dead and alone in a hotel room just two months later. What's the possible line connecting it?

When watching the documentary, you realize that the Ramones seemed to solidify the religious myths of artistic life. They were all, by their own account, people that did not fit in and used their need to do something creative as a way out of their misery. Nobody was born wealthy, nobody got any breaks, and they started from just about nothing and, without compromising a single note, rose to change the world's view of Music. But just like any prophet, they were rejected by their own, never getting huge in America because (according to the documentary) the Sex Pistols made the face of Punk shocking, gross, and scary, then the media picked it up and the world feared punk rock. The record companies, who were at the moment  pushing "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" full tilt, bailed out of fear. The radio stations did the same. But, they were huge in every place else in the world.

Three of the four original Ramones died of cancer, as did their famed graphic artist, honorary 5th member and friend Arturo Vega. Dee Dee, as said before, died the tragic rock and roll mythical death, the exact opposite of a packed arena screaming for you, all alone in a hotel room.

I realize I tend to go off on a jag about how Music is in a bad state these days, but I need to be more specific. Music, beautiful and stunning Music, will ALWAYS be around. Why? It always has been around. The difference is that society seems to be walking into the sea of too many options where you always drown alone. The amount of independent Music released onto the public has grown to the point of a never ending monsoon. Everyone and everyone is either making Music or singing along to backing tracks OR desires to do so, the ratings of all the vocalist (NOT BAND) prime time TV shows the measures of the trend.

Looking back is a dangerous thing. In Henry Rollins' book, "Get in the Van" he talks about how on his first tour with Black Flag people were giving him hell and abuse in England about how it was better in 1976. This is 1981-1982, a time when many people would say things were amazing in the punk rock scene. The previous age is always better via the genetic mutation of romanticism.

How can one prove this? Well, I cannot think of any band I know that has the amazing rock and roll band feel, that epic thing of when you see a band and go, "Ooooooooh. What. Is. THAT?" I do not mean this as a slam to my beloved friends who do amazing Music, but I mean that the scene, at least here in New Jersey, is god forsakenly bad. The myth has drowned the present because the economics do not allow bands to do what used to be done. Plain and simple. Bars and promoters and lodges are afraid of getting sued and the cost in an insurance plan for one night is expensive and a pain to get. While there are places to play, there are not the number of places to play like there were. It seems to have bifurcated into absolutely pay nothing/nobody comes gigs and pay to play huge clubs.

Okay, before I go on any further, I think I should step side and make a few comments as to what makes a group of people doing a performance within a certain space truly "rock and roll". I am basing the following on personal experience and energy. (Note: I must note that one of the most intense rock and roll moments that changed my life, was seeing the indigo girls and Michal Stipe at the Beacon Theater in NYC in 1989. I had seen KISS,, Iron Maiden, Yngwie Malmsteen, Judas Priest, Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Metallica, Ozzy, and Queensryche before said revelation, so,.... think about it.) It was raw and as intense as hell. When Amy Ray sang her version of Dire Straight's "Romeo and Juliet" and screamed out the last half of the the last verse, the whole damn place stood still. It set the bar line for everything else that would come after it (except for Michael Hedges who threw the bar away, but that's another story.)

So where is that amazing rock and roll attitude, that rawness? I remember vividly seeing a comedy group at UCB in NYC years ago that literally blew me away. Just inspired me at the power of creativity. But more recently, I went with Chris to a small Argentinean restaurant in Pittsburgh. And there I saw it: the spirit of rock and roll in full, beautiful raw force.

The name of the place was Gaucho Parilla  and it was located on the far end of the Strip District only two blocks down from the uber-alt rock club that is within a former Catholic church, the Altar Bar. The proximity of the two does not seem to be like an accident.

The restaurant was not run down, it was not dirty, it was not dangerous. They had put in the time to make it look very nice on a small budget. The menu was on a well displayed and thought out collection of huge chalk boards, most likely done that way so they could change the menu on the fly. But when I stood in front of the counter is when it all hit like a baseball bat in the chest.

The crew at the restaurant were a band. They were blasting 90's grunge Music. They put all their money into the food. The guy at the counter was very friendly and skinny, helping everyone who came in decide what they may like by explaining the Argentinean dishes and spices. When he wasn't waiting on customers, he was stamping piles of new brown bags with a huge rubber stamp that had their name and logo. The cooks in back acted like hard asses with huge arms full of tattoos. They were the lead singers, the ones who held all the control and they knew it and wore it proudly. They rarely engaged in eye contact with the customers, though thew were friendly about picture taking. The chefs who were not doing meals were running around making salads and sides, packing bags, setting plates. It was run like a band in perfect form: nobody taking advantage of anyone else and all for the same goal. It was never about any one person, but about the collective result: to produce the most amazing Argentina inspired food you have ever tasted, and that was all they cared about. And, allow me to tell you, they delivered in spades. As we walked out and back to our car, I could see one of the main chefs, the most heavily tattooed and muscular, smiling and laughing with someone while having a cigarette with someone outside, like  a lead singer between sets at a club. I needed no more proof that this was where rock and roll had gone.

The pipe line that made rock Music great, allowed it to thrive to have a Golden age was that it could be rebellious, done on the cheap, and, if you were clever, fast, and lucky enough, you could make a living at it. You could do it on your terms and find your audience after rehearsing in your garage for a while. You played a bunch of lousy places over time, learned from people better than you, and then you put out a demo, got a following, and maybe got a record deal. Basically, by the 90's, we all figured out the dance moves. Now, the dance is owned and controlled by corporate. Music is not rebellious, but a commercial force that is embraced and marketed as such. The legend of rock and roll, while never truly pure in spirit, is now an accepted part of the culture and the rebellion is merchandised.

But that all began to slowly fall apart with the raising of the drinking age, then even faster with the rise of dance Music and DJ's that were cheaper (and finally just as artistically accepted) than bands, the rising cost of insurance and operating costs for bars and clubs, and the simple shift in technology to make electronic Music more easily produced and better sounding alternative than it ever was. ( I will not go near the societal rise of rap and hip-hop culture as it is too big a topic for me to touch here.) Rock Music based on real instruments that took many years to perfect and excel in execution, the style of Music based on human performance that could never be duplicated exactly twice, was not leaving the building, but as asked to take its things from its former corner office and go to a basement cubicle with all the other less money making forms of the creative arts. But before moving down to the florescent lit dungeon, it left a bunch of upstarts watching and admiring it's attitude and swagger in its prime. Enter Anthony Bourdain...

Okay, fine, Anthony Bourdain is NOT the world's first renegade chef and he is NOT the first chef to like rock Musc. But, he DID come out with a memoir called "Kitchen Confidential" that hit all the right buttons at the right time. Why did the book resonate so much with the wild crowd? Well, by his own repeated admission, Bourdain lived a rock and roll life style, complete with heroin addiction, alcoholism, debauchery,and lots of cocaine while being a chef in one way or the other. "Kitchen Confidential" tells the true stories behind the food industry which was pretty much unexplored through the prism of someone who had rock Music shape their life. He is a bad boy. He parties. He scores drugs at dangerous places. He has tons of money over and over then blows it on drugs. But Fate is kind to him and he keeps on getting gigs that eventually lead him to writing a piece for a New York magazine that gets him the book deal that really sets his career off into the stratosphere.

He says in his second book how amazed he is that all over the world young chefs with inked bodies give him the Ronnie James Dio finger sign (ya' know, the devil horns?) , hug him like a high priest, and smile. Bourdain is the father of the rock and roll chef, the people who want to to be bad ass rebels and do life on their own terms. The parallels between the legend of rock Music and this new movement are staggering. Like rock, it seems to be mostly male and the testosterone level in the kitchens is (and according to Bourdain, always has been) through the roof. It requires team work with central leader and egos that tend to go out of control. The pay sucks, the hours are long, and you need to apprentice yourself to death before you even get to make the pre-ordained menu, much less make your own creations.

But what hot me the hardest was the fact that this was a creative art and these people were willing to do whatever it took to become amazing at their craft. One could not make "Theory based" cuisine. You had to taste it and if you hated it, it was done. But just like Music, there were rebels who were doing odd things that were amazing, blending different styles and flavors to make these bizarre sounding but mind altering beautiful works. This was an art form that could only live in the performance, making it, literally, real. You cannot Protools correct a steak from well done to Medium rare. As he put it, you either know what the hell you are doing or you do not. There is no middle ground.

The youth are not stupid. They do not see new bands making money nor being appreciated. So, the souls that would have an small inclination to feed their creative and rebellious side through rock now spin towards the kitchen. While once you could entice your prospective love with a song, now you can do it with an entrée. There are countless cooking shows that feature many contestants and hosts that look like alternative rock stars. You can do this stuff at home with minimal money. Your friends can come over and enjoy your creation. You can even go to school for it. You can get a low paying job starting at the bottom in it. You can rise to become a superstar on your own terms. You can have all the sex and drugs and fame and celebrity via doing what you love. Or, you can open a small food truck and live the pirate chef life, doing exactly what you want and making about as much as an average house cat while listening to every single one of your favorite songs while you make your favorite dishes all day long and serving them to like minding folks you have found both through word of mouth and social media.

About 20 years ago, chefs, low level chefs who did not have their own TV shows, had no cache. You were a line cook somewhere, you had a gig and that was your lot. Maybe within the industry you could rise to internal fame, but all you were to the outside world was a cook. Someone who made stuff people ate. You, the chef, knew all the hard work it took to get there, the secrets behind the curtain, and you rose the damn ranks to stand tall in your field. Sometimes you sold out by working at a Howard Johnson's or a country club because you needed to pay the bills, you cashed in your creative hopes for a paycheck. Or maybe you worked your way up and, through twists of fate and fortune, you did make it to the point of self sustaining income via your own creative direction. You still worked like hell and were paid way less than those who sold out, but you did it. Or maybe, you just bailed. Got a job as a programmer or at an insurance company and you forever sit at your desk romanticizing the days when you were "completely free"and "not working for the man", forgetting all the while that you cursed God's holy name when you were on your seventh 12 hour shift making fries because the other prep chef did not make it in again and how your feet hurt and your back hurt and how you screamed that you wanted to get the hell out because this was not what you wanted to be doing with your life.

Now, to be a chef holds some cache. But all real chefs know it is still punishing work, a true labor of love because, to do it right, it takes a great deal of time and skill. The sense of pride they feel in their work is deserved as they are skilled artisans and master craftsmen. All of the men and women that pull it off should be paid and respected for their hard work. That seems a no brainer. Unless their is a huge technological leap, food will always be needed and have to be paid for. The devaluation of recorded Music is unlikely to have an exact parallel in the world of cuisine which shall hopefully forever be in analogue. And maybe the popular food scene is maxing out? Still, it seems to me that the food revolution is well under way for the United States. So when are the golden years? Now? Before? When was it "real" for being a chef?

Punk did not start in 1976. An ethos of collective rebellion by a small section of society has always been around. The largest and most well known template for punk Music was started by the Ramones who had their own influences and never called themselves punks. They just hated what was going on and made something they believed in. After touring England for the first time they set off thousands of teens to form bands whose success would eclipse their own many times over. For some, the golden time for punk was 1976, for others, it was seeing the Ramones play at CBGB for ten people after watching the band Television play. For others it was watching the Velvet Underground do the Andy Warhol multi-media experience "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable" back in the late 60's. And on and on. The best of times, it seems, is always a moving target within the same circle of time.

At rehearsal on Sunday with the Fractal Ensemble, I was blown away about what we were doing. Spoken word and Music in a way that I have never heard before. But all of us were having a great time, not a bad word or weak link in the chain. We all believed in this thing we were doing that had roots in what we knew, but was different than everything else without being off putting. All of us have worked very hard on our craft for many years and, if I may say so, earned our stripes. We never made a dime. We did it because we loved it even when we hated it at our worst shows. On February 6, we will be sharing the stage with the two time world slam poet champion of the world, Buddy Wakefield as part of our album release show that is also a benefit against human trafficking. We are truly looking forward to it.

Listening to the final mixes of the album, I could only think of the painter Mark Rothko statement after he had become famous and wealthy for his abstract canvasses. He had reached the brass ring of success, and this was what he said:

When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I shall not venture to discuss. But I do know, that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them.

All I can say is that I am very grateful to be within a golden age of creativity with people I deeply care about and trust.

The golden age is now.