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.
