The Kids are Alright.... or at least they were warned.

The following is a speech I just gave to the National Music Honor Society Induction Ceremony. I apologize for going a little over time. While I went off script, this is basically what I said. My deepest thanks to Ms. Majorie LoPresti for giving me the honor to do this.

 Speech for December 21, 2014

East Brunswick High School National Music Honor Society Induction Speech 

 NOTES TO SELF:

 Make sure your fly is zipped.

 Don’t wear that snakeskin jacket.

 DO NOT USE THE STEWIE VOICE!

 STAY ON SCRIPT!!!!!!

 Do not ask questions like...

 Who here has a favorite teacher?

 Who here remembers their first crush and the song that you forever tied to them?

 Anyone married? Did you have a wedding song? Do you remember what it is?

 Does everyone here have a favorite song or album?

Hi there. Hello. Yes, um, I,.... uh, yeah, hi. For those of you that do not know me, I am Michael Kovacs and (wait for screams of applause, etc then continue) thank you, and I am, no please stop screaming. Please stop. Thank you, I am flattered, but... what, oh, wait? Someone IS hurt? Please, can someone call an ambulance or is there a hematologic oncologist in the house? There is? Okay, great.

 Well, to continue! (Feel better, okay?)

 Thank you to Mz. Lopresti and all of you who asked me to be here tonight. This is a deep and humbling experience and all I can say is that I am deeply honored, though I really feel  like a third string basketball player getting a lifetime achievement award.

 I have thought about this speech a great deal, every day since being asked, and the only way I could figure out what to say is via lists so please bear with me.

 List  #1 John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon,  Albert Camus, Salvador Dali, Michael Jackson, Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen,  Steve Vai, Brian Eno, Eric Satie, Michael Hedges, Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, Sharon Spitalney, John Cage, Joseph Cornell, Amy Ray, Bob Mould, Mark Eitzel, Robert Moran, Thom Jones, Marie Howe, Buddy Wakefield

 Okay, this first list of people are the ones who changed my life, the ones who inspired me. Now that may seem overly simplistic, so let me take a moment to explain the gravity of what these people gave to my life. This list contains the names of the people whose work literally changed the direction of my life because they created works of such beauty, passion, and honesty that I could not look away. Some of these people on this list I am friends with. Others I have met. The majority, however, are as distant to my life as the planet Neptune.

 I am going to go out on a limb here and say that you, like me, had no choice in all of this, in the decision to follow Music as your passion. This is not the “National Young Welders Honor Society”  This is MUSIC and something or someone came along in your life that had your soul resonate like nothing else. If there are any young welders in the room tonight, please see me after this for some after school home improvements I think you can help me with.

 Say it loud and say it damn proud:Music changed my life.

 It did mine. It was the only thing I was good at when I was your age. Back then I was an overweight and way intense and idealistic high school student and I was pulled to guitar by curiosity and default and, I must be honest here, I was not the best in my class. But I did practice all the time because I was amazed by the seemingly insane magic that occurred when someone would play a song I loved.

 All of us here have one thing in common: Music chose us, not the other way around. Please, for the love of your own greatness, never forget that. Something inside you awoke when you heard some piece of Music. Never ever ever negate that. Why? Because THAT is your gift, what makes you unique and amazing. Not because of the gift you have but the fact that you rose to the challenge that the voice inside you could not silence.

 My heroes may not be your heroes. That does not matter. All that matters is that you had the courage , yes, COURAGE, to chose that over wasting your life in things that did not make you happy.... but more on that later.

  List #2) Arthur Braga, John Benthal, Br. Robert Ziobro, Br. Matthew Scanlon, Cary DeNigris,  Glenn Alexander,Noel DaCosta, Ari Voukdys, and Jim Oestereich

 This, my friends, is a list of the teachers who changed my life, and they are not all Music teachers. No. Some were French teachers, some religion teachers, some comedy improv teachers ... whatever. But all of them were great teachers. ALL OF THEM! But I must say one thing here before anything else..

 If you choose a life in Music, there is a very very very very very very very good chance you will be asked to teach the instrument you play for the simple reason that you play it. My deep deep fall on my knees prayer to you is this: Please DO NOT TEACH!

 I will let that sink in for a minute .....(lights on stage hookah)

 You, all of you, this amazing pool of talent, please hear me out. I need all of you to know that teaching is a skill you learn just like your instrument or welding or nursing or real estate sales. You very well may be blessed with the gft to teach but please, out of basic human respect for what is within the souls of your students, please take it seriously. I never ever ever wanted to teach for one reason": I was not 1% of any of the people in the above list. But someone by the name of Matthew Kloskowski said he heard I was good and wanted me as a teacher. I charged him next to nothing for three years and he became the youngest jazz guitar student on the roster of the famed guitarist Pat Lehey. I had no idea. I just taught in the shadows of my teachers. And all of you, EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU, owe it to the teacher or teachers who changed your life to be, at the very least, as good as them.

  Allow me  to let you all know now, we, as full time Musicians, are not respected by the masses unless we are, at the very least,wealthy and, to some extent famous. My grandfather carried with him the card of a master craftsman in shoe making. Give him a sheet of leather and he could, via his tools and skill, make YOU A PERFECT SET OF BOOTS OR SHOES. Perfect. Why? He was a master craftsman. That is all you and I can ever, and I mean EVER, hope to be, a craftsman or craftswoman, of Music. This, I hate to tell you here and now, is a trade, a skill, an artform like anything else. Painting is an ART.  Writing is an ART. Medicine, my fine feathered fellows, is an ART! If you want to call yourself a professional Musician or a composer, you must work as hard as a surgeon does to be called as such.

 What we do SEEMS easy, the same way putting in a new furnace or taking out an appendix or administering chemo SEEMS easy. I no way am I denigrating the skills of a doctor. But, and hear me out, my biggest nightmare is a world full of "artists" and "Musicians". I need, we all neeeeeeed, others who are NOT what we do.

 This thing we call "Life"?? What is it about? There are countless books and people paying six figures for seminars and retreats to see "who they are". Well, you know who you are because you are in this room tonight. You... You are a lover of Music.... a parent.... a teacher. This is WHO YOU ARE. Hands up, is anyone here a hobo who happened to stumble from a railway car for shelter and free food? Anyone? Okay, to all of you students, I ask of you the following: always remember to keep the place that Music holds within you sacred. Okay, now the tag line...

 I have beloved friends who are oncologists and pediatricians, and they LOVE Music. LOVE LOVE LOVE Music. Music is a part of their lives the same way air and the internet are. Their being SINGS with Music, either hearing it or, in their cases, performing is on guitar and flute respectfully. Music is in their souls and nothing can replace it. Nothing. However, they loved the art of Medicine more and excelled at it, healing countless people and winning many awards for their passion and service.

 If all of you follow a career in Music, all the better. But, and hear me out on this, it would seem to me standing here that Music is A PART OF YOUR LIFE.Please, never negate that. EVER. I stand here, a man who made Music the center of his creative life, but I have written a book, done comedy, and art. I cannot negate ANY of those parts of me because they are who I am. You, all of you, Music is a part of you. If you think this is a joke, ask yourself if you would rather be taking photos of spiders in the jungles in Brazil rather than playing your instrument or writing Music.

 Maybe, just maybe, you will want to do the spider/Amazon forest thing. Fine. If so, all I ask is that you do it with as much or more passion as you do Music. All you will ever have in this life, once you touch it, is the Truth of the Passion that makes you feel alive.

List #3) Lois Nettelton, Mary Ann Wilson, Mark Empire, Robyn Bauman, Pete Haider, Katharina Woodworth, Josie Coyoc, Peter Vajtay, Steve Hajdu Nemeth, Jilleyn Gordon, Christine Zadravec, Greg Gualtieri, Catherine Onder Caplan, Rebecca Tarlazzi, Lisa Kowalew, Ilana Kein, Elizabeth Kalfayan, and Christine Kossol.

 My friends, this is an edited list, and perhaps the most important list. I am truly humbled to be able to call all of these beloved to me, the last of which being my amazing wife.

 One day this past year, I awoke in a lucid moment and looked at those people who are beloved to me, those who have, for reasons I may never know, love me and call me their friend. I was stunned. Wait, no, I was actually floored at what I saw. These people in my life are way way way way more talented than me. I stand in their shadow. One date this past year, I looked around and truly saw the collage that were my true friends and loved ones. I have said and shall forever say that everyone of these people i way more talented than me. And they are. But, I am the most stubborn out of them all. the tortoise on Red Bull and Ritalin and espresso who kept walking towards a finish line they had completed long ago.

 You, and by which I mean all of us, are truly a reflection of our friends. Likes do attract and people can poison the well. In my life, I have been truly blessed to have beautiful and annoyingly talented people that I can call friends. They love me so much they will call me out on bad work and praise me for good. Such a blessing is a true blessing. I have people in my corner who are both stupidly gifted and honest that I am not allowed to let anything out unless they go, "Yeah.... that works."

 All but one of the people on that list are in some way famous for their work. I my view, they all should be showered with cash and professional recognition for how talented they are. Why Mary Ann Wilson, truly the greatest musical genius I have ever known is not able to buy her own island, is a cosmic mystery to me. All of the above people have written Music or produced some art that is miles beyond the majority of the garbage buffet that seems to always be the majority of what is out there. Still they persist, still they create. Still, they inspire me.

 If any of you are to become famous, always remember where you came from. Always. As alluded to before, you never chose this path. Also note, if the Bible. the Torah, just about all holy texts, the writings of the Marcus Aurelius, St Augustine, Shakespeare, Albert Camus, Steven Tyler, People Magazine, and Spongebob Squarepants have in common is that fame and fortune do not make one intrinsically happy. Over and over again, with annoying predictability, every Behind The Music Screams that message. And reality TV is  really the final stop on this self delusion. Who do you have more respect for: any Kardashian or your favorite band or maybe even the person you admire as a great local musical hero?

 Please have integrity, please I thank God every day for the honor of being taught by the late Noel Dacosta and the very funny Jim Oestereich. These two men demanded of me one thing and one thing only: do not compromise one single note. EVER. You are ALWAYS to serve the Music, not yourself. If you try to be clever or cute or flashy because you think it will make people like you, stop and do something else. All of you are better than that. And to this day I cannot do anything creative without having to answer to what they taught me.

 For the record, this is  not to say that everything you do is this torture and that you should agonize over every note or word. No. I would much rather listen to AC/DC or the Ramones than to cranky classical hipster Music that sounds like broken toys being hit with by mouse traps by a vision impaired clown with turrets.

 And, let me say it here. You may become famous and wealthy and loved by the masses. But if you are creative person, the greatest feeling you will get is the act of creating, that indescribable feeling that you know when it arrives in your soul. You band will break up, your manager will betray you, your fans may turn on you, no one will come to your shows after you have traveled 2896.7 miles to play a “big” festival. But if this is what you were called to do, the purest joy will come when you you are either playing with your band or simply writing alone in a room. That is all you will ever have, the joy of creating. And I don’t mean this tragically stupid “wow, life is so perfect like, when you create” it i like the best ad I am one with the cosmos”  No. It just feels good without the help of any herbs, liquids, or chemicals.

 Speaking of which, this super depressed, super tortured artist thing... let’s stop that here and now. You are not allowed to be a jerk because of what you have chosen to do. Period. Also, there is nothing romantic about depression, drugs or alcohol abuse. Nothing. I have lost friends, dear and beloved friends, to all of these. To watch someone you love and who has more talent in their small toe than you do on your best day after a full night’s sleep, suffer through these and then lose is... beyond language. Take care of yourself. Get help if you need it.

 There is a legendary jazz singer by the name of Tony Bennett who was going through a bad time when his career failed. He was doing drugs and booze and the whole bit. One day he went out to lunch and the former manager of the comedian Lenny Bruce was there. The gentleman said that the thing that killed Lenny was not the drugs, but the fact that he sinned against his gifts, the drugs killed what he had within him. That despair threw him over the edge. Being the good Catholic by Mr Bennett is, he took that to heart immediately and got his life together. Always protect your gifts, what you were given that brings you true happiness.

 Last List:
You, me,..... us.

 We are in this together. All of us.

 You are going to have days so bad you are going to want to tear off your head off your shoulders and throw it like a bowling ball into oncoming traffic. You are going to be filled with doubts, severe doubts. You will, after a bad gig or lesson, want to rend your garments and curse God’s holy name. Know that you are not alone in this. Support each other. Respect each other.

 This road is not easy but nothing that has any value is easy. Fate may be amazingly kind to you, but you will have to work and face disappointment. My aunt was the actress Lois Nettleton. She won two emmys and was nominated for tonys for her Broadway work. I grew up seeing her on TV and in the movies. But even she, after all these, awards and work, STILL got turned down for auditions and it always hurt.

 Your talent may or may not be rewarded by the recognition of the masses. This is all the more reason to do honest, good, uncompromising, and passionate work. And use your gifts for good. Make things that are beautiful. I do not mean videos of kittens riding a skateboard dressed like Johnny Depp. Your expression can be angry, happy, funny, whatever. AC/DC, Rage Against the Machine, Erik Satie, whatever, they all make beautiful things that are radically different.

 If you put yourself out there, you risk being hurt deeply. But know this, while failure is a deep wound, regret is a growing stone. Try to be your best self always. You are in this room tonight as a result of your decisions and the decisions of those close to you. Never ever forget that you did not make it by yourself and make sure you are grateful to everyone who helped you. Thank your parents, your teachers, all those who believe in you when you do not believe in yourself.

 I hope you learned something from what I said and I hope it inspires you to dig deep into the road that lays before you, one that will be unlike the majority of anyone you meet.

 While I loath quoting myself, I want to read part of a work I wrote that my ensemble performed at the New York City Poetry Fest. It was inspired by the leaving of a young woman who went here named Lizz Bailey. She is intense and amazing and was leaving for a new life in California. So I wrote something for her. Here’s the last part

 Everyday you will wake
planning hoping, wishing, but
most of all dreaming that any possible there
is better than the singular here.

 But in the end you will follow the truth
to thousands of stories you were
born to experience and to tell.
And you will see that it was worth it
all of it

 all of it

 but you cannot do that here
you must go,
now,

go.

 Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for this. May God bless you. Be good to each other.

It's Just Time After All, Right? (The farther you are from fine...)

Consumerism is the new religion and, unless you are Keith Richards, there is a reset button that happens every 24 hours. But you can get stuff for free, so that leaves the ticking clock. And time never waits, so, that is pretty much the last currency: time. The time you have to consume things.

There was a story about how the album is dying due the simple fact that nobody is buying it. If  less and  less people are buying albums that means that less and less people are willing to listen to it for free. So what the hell is going on with that? 

The album, or LP, came out after WW2 due to advances in, you guessed it, technology. Recording technology is simply that, technology which always changes. When the medium of recorded sound emerged, the most popular and viable format was the 78 RPM disc that held only a few minutes. The LP had the boost of being the medium of choice during the baby boomer generation as well as the generation after, the consumer based generations that had the time and money to indulge in Music that way. But the sale of physical recorded Music and the Music business that bloomed from it started around the sale of single songs. Things have basically gone full circle.

But there seems to be something deeper going on than simply a culture being used to a particular format of Music presentation. Why do artists not make Wagnerian sized epic five hour works? No need for CD's! Just download it to your iPod. Why not make songs that are 30 minutes long! Who cares about the single!?!? You can get it for FREE! And you can make all these songs for free (or damn close to it) via computer based recording systems! If the LP, the format that replaced the single, is dead, why have we regressed? 

In the days where Music had to be paid for, there was a personal investment in the Music. You had to spend money you made (money = time doing something you hated) in order to buy something you would spend more time listening to. Example: 3 hours of mowing lawns = 1 Metallica album that you play for 100 hours. Not a bad exchange rate. And there was that feeling that you cared enough with the Music, identified with something in the Music, that placed something personal in the exchange. I am not sure if the tribal sensibilities that divided middle school and high school are as severe as they were back in the day (hating One Direction not withstanding) and I am not a proponent of anyone being harassed simply by the Music they listen to, But it seemed that Music DEFINED who we were because it defined how we dressed and gave a common ground that we were all invested in. 

As far as I can tell, the grunge era was the last big cosmic explosion of an entire cultural shift that combined Music, dress, and an unspoken youth zeitgeist that exploded like a nuclear reaction when "Smells Like teen Spirit" and "Alive" were played on MTV (that unifying channel that helped destroy culture as we know it, but I digress...) It seemed that within a year, a tide of change was sweeping over the entire country and was being embraced by this majority of people that were simply waiting to be heard. They bought albums and they went to shows. This religious zeal had its inevitable tragedy when Kurt Cobain killed himself. (For the record, I was in the middle of Seattle walking around the University district when the news came out and, traffic kept moving. Cars did not screech to a halt, youths did not flee from their classes. When I overheard someone say Cobain died, I went to a news stand and picked up a copy of the only paper that had the headline as it was a late morning edition. Ya' know what the guy in his early 20's said to me, "Hey. Get 'em while you can. Probably gonna be worth some money." And .... scene.)

After that era, the digital age began to, for better or worse, fracture the lens that gave us the focal points. Marilyn Manson had a decent run as did Dave Matthews. But outside of pop stars placing more time on show, fashion, and dancing than on Musical strength, there has been nothing like it. Small pockets of interest show up and I am sure Ozzfest will continue to have tens of thousands of people pay $50 for parking for the next 30 years. Loud dance Music gatherings will forever happen because people will always gather to do drugs and drink and have sex with people they will never remember. 

Live Music will not die because it is a moment of gathering, a pocket of religious revival for those who, instead of kneeling down and meditating, choose to go into a slam pit and get out all their pent up frustrations and, let's face it, have fun while keeping ER staff amused. There is nothing like live Music, be it classical or metal or jazz or whatever. It is, at its best, a truly spiritual experience (on all points along the spectrum). And live Music is where Music has, by definition, always existed, so perhaps it speaks to something primordial. All religions have had it. All cultures have had it. The poet Marie Howe stated that she believes that mothers have almost always sung something resembling a lullaby to their babies. Singing, which is live Music, is simply part of who we are.

But recorded Music? 

We are in the digital age where once someone can access an internet connection, time becomes the scarcest commodity simply because we can spend all of our waking hours on the internet. ALL of them. Between videos, news, Music, games, etc., the immediate and infinite supply has dwarfed demand simply by the math. The amount of hours you could spend on the internet enjoying yourself, losing yourself, being somewhere you are not, being someone you are not, is greater than your ability to consume it. Time is the only currency.

Who the hell has time and patience to listen to an entire album where you may not like everything you hear? 

There are better things to do..... right? 

Harder Than Your Band Gig,( even worse than you think)....

I have just booked a studio to start recording some tracks for my solo acoustic album and the response I have seen via facebook has made me think. I am very flattered that so many people like my solo acoustic work and look forward to getting to hear some long overdue material. Yet, there is the other side of the coin that nobody really knows about that made me not record the album in the first place.

If one is not a classical musician, the odds of people a solo performer is very rare, and my solo performer I mean just one instrument, no vocals, and no backing tracks. (Bobby McFerrin, you are exempt.) If you have never done it, never gotten up there and performed by yourself without vocals, then you do not understand what it is like. And please stop saying that singing and playing is the same thing. It isn't and I know this because I do both.

For over a decade I played solo acoustic guitar in coffee shops, bars, nursing homes, colleges, more bars, more coffee shops, streets, schools, theaters, outdoor festivals, backyard parties, weddings, restaurants,and many other places that can be described as varying between proper and surreal. When possible, I followed the general floor plan of Michael Hedges, blending solo acoustic material and songs with vocals, mostly cover songs in the beginning.

I thought that, over time, I would get used to how naked it felt when doing solo guitar Music. I thought that maybe I would get used to the feeling of performing and it would not feel so weird. But that was not the case. Time after time, I would play a very quiet or intimate song like "Rachel the Innocent" or "Before You Leave" and, in the middle of it, espresso machines would howl or beer bottles/coffee cups would smash on the floor, or people, drunk and or sober, would be talking loudly during the whole thing, or the place would be empty. This was not the case every time, but it was the majority. And I realize that solo acoustic guitar cuts very close to the idea of a classical Music concert in context of the Music being the focal point of everything.

And perhaps that is the problem....

It is a horrible, really horrible feeling, to get up there and perform solo to noise and or apathy. I have spoken to other solo acoustic guitar players and they have said the same thing. Maybe, just maybe, it is easier to be ignored if you are getting paid, say like classical musicians do. All the while you are performing with noise and apathy all around you, you have the solace of going, "Well, at least I am getting paid." The corner is turned and you are now doing no more than a job. Artistic expression is out the window.

And I think all Musicians want to be heard. Keith Jarrett has been known to stop concerts if someone coughs. Charles Mingus, the jazz bassist, was known for getting violently angry when people would talk while he was playing.

But I did many years of solo acoustic work for little or no money and it became absolutely unbearable to play delicate songs for apathetic people. My more driving songs would work, but that was because I would play so hard and loud that I could not hear the world around me. And I know there are people who may say, "Who cares! Just play! Screw them!" Well, Captain Artistic Courage, I DID do that for many years and it wears you down. It is that simple.

When you play in a band, you are a team, a tribe, a gang, and you can just plow through your set and not give a damn. The songs just plow ahead. If you are in an acting company and the audience sucks, you just go though the play. If you are in an improve group, you just feel like hell and do the show.

But perhaps the closest thing to compare it to is stand-up comedy, which I did for a very short time. You need the people engaged. You need to connect and sometimes that is impossible. The late great Robin Williams said that there were some nights, even after he was famous, where he would just kick it on auto pilot and plow through the material because he could not connect with the crowd. But it is just about impossible to do stand up to an empty room.

But when you do stand up, you are using language. You start speaking and maybe someone will listen or connect with your stories. Music is not that simple because the universality of its language can make it harder to ignore.

And, when you are in a band, or even a duo, you have someone to turn to after the show and share the pain with, to get perspective on matters and laugh about it. When you do solo shows, it is just you, tearing down the PA, packing up the cables and guitars, putting it into your car and driving either home or to a really gross hotel. Trust me when I say, that emotional space is not the greatest place to be.

But maybe there are people out there who ARE perfectly fine with being ignored, laughed at, and/or think highly of playing to open rooms. Maybe there are people who are just giddy with excitement over simply being able to play ANYWHERE and ANY TIME for ANY REASON. Okay. Fine. But I am not one of them. When I do my solo acoustic work, I put myself out there, raw and open because that is the only way I know how. Once I stop doing it that way, I am stopping forever.

The years of solo acoustic guitar peaked in the late 80's/early 90's when the guitar itself was peaking. There were plenty of places that catered to such stuff and people had time and money to spend on it. It would seem that the arc of the new age label Windham Hill is a good gauge of the scene. At its peak, they had almost 5 dozen instrumental artists on their label that were not classical musicians. After being sold in 1992, the list dwindled to a handful. Wile one could say it was the "new age" tag that killed the label, I would ask that one look at how many non-classical instrumental albums are sold by any other style.

So why the hell am I doing the new album? Why am I going to spend hours and hours of my life and needed money that could be spent on many other things around the house? Do an album that I will most likely never recoup my money on at a craft I dedicated most of my life to?  It is because I still love it and cannot abandon it to neglect and silence. But it is strange to do a project and know with almost absolute certainty that you would rather have someone hit you in the foot with a ball peen hammer than perform the Music live.

In the end, the Music is greater than me. I am just the delivery system. I am deeply grateful that people like what I do, the intimate solo guitar (and cello) pieces that I create. I really do love the Music, but as I step into these waters again, I must admit, I am feeling more than a little nauseous at the memory of the seas ahead.

Music....Deep in the Heart of Nowhere

The night of a recent art exhibit of mine, I agreed to make another acoustic album my Music creative priority. I took my acoustic guitars in to the shop and they are getting ready to record. So now that I committed, I have a few things to say about the state of solo acoustic guitar.....

When I do a project, I have to start tuning my ears and brain to what I need to focus on for the time being. For example, when I was recording the album "The Growing Stone" I listened to the album "Blood and Chocolate" by Elvis Costello and the Attractions non-stop. Even though I came nowhere close, it was what I was trying to make my album sound like. So now I am listening to solo acoustic guitar Music. To be more precise, I am listening to Michael Hedges and the early recordings of Adrian Legg. 

People have asked why I have not released a solo acoustic guitar album in such a long time. Here is the absolute truth: I could no longer perform solo acoustic material for noisy and apathetic places. Period. For years i played solo acoustic material for empty cafe's and noisy bars (and visa versa) until it wore me down to the point where I simply could no longer do it. So why would I bother to spend months of my life and money I do not have to work on a project that I would never perform live? Band projects had some momentum behind them so I went to where the action was.

While driving around today and listening to "Live on the Double Planet" by Michael Hedges, I remembered that there was a time in guitar playing that was radically different from today where the guitar. and guitar based Music, is not part of the cultural landscape. Guitar exists, guitar is present, but there are no new guitar heroes and young people would rather DJ than be in a band. Country Music has taken the guitar and preserved it the same way that people who liked to dress up and dance in the disco era went to Michael Jackson after disco became a creative blight. 

Speaking only for the 1980's, I can say that guitar playing was not so much creative as it was a competitive athletic sport. It was Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads who started the ball rolling in the early part of the decade and then everyone took the concepts and ran them into the ground like a gopher on meth. Back then, you had to play faster and faster and faster and faster. The guitar solo on Michael Jackson's song "Beat It" was common cultural sound. THAT was the bench mark for guitar in POP Music. Go look at today's top 100 (do they still have that?) and tell me how the guitar sounds....

Heavy metal guitar playing in the 80's became a speed fest and you simply had to practice your scales till your fingers fell off. Hour after hour learning the modes and arpeggios and sweep picking. I even remember listening to Tony Macalpine's album "Edge of Insanity" while working on my guitar in my parents' basement. cursing the fact that I could not play that fast. 

But the cracks began to show in the speed scene. The Music of the later 80's was getting less glam and more unwashed with the arrival of Guns and Roses "Appetite for Destruction". The blues scale was rising and eclipsing the Phrygian Major scale was losing ground. The amount of notes per second was decreasing.Still, the way approaching Music via the guitar was left to right and up and down. If you knew your theory and fret board, you could see the patterns in everything. The Punk and alternative people had the passion and honesty that was lacking from pop metal, but their guitar playing was lacking in depth and technique. This is not a slam against them. Their Music was a rebellion against the technically perfect Music of the age and the focus was on sound, attitude, and lyrics. Seeing some of these bands changed my life... for the better.

But where could one find a guitar player who wrote great songs and was still pushing the limits of the instrument? Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you Michael Hedges.

Somewhere around my sophomore year of college, I started writing solo acoustic guitar songs. Why? I have no idea. I had been playing Randy Rhoad's song "Dee" for some time and "Dust in the Wind"was one of the fist big songs I conquered, but nobody have ever explained to me what the hell to do, how to make them work or whatever. For reasons I will never understand, I just started making these things up.

A few years prior, I had seen an article in the magazine "Guitar Player" about some guy who played acoustic guitar and, in the pictures in the magazine, dressed like a Woodstock hippie guru outtake. When I saw that he was on the Windham Hill label, my stomach turned. That was THE label for New Age "music" and I simply refused to go near it. Boring, bland, and brain blanching sounds were all I knew from them and I wanted nothing to do with the lot of them. But the article had strange twists in it about two hand tapping and classical composition. Still, I just tossed it off as trite and read the article on Vivian Campbell from Dio. (Look it up....)

My friend Mark heard my lame recording of this work and said he had just seen a guitarist at Ryder University that reminded him of the stuff and that I shoud check him out. When the name Michael Hedges arose, I got a little sick because I did not want to do anything remotely like New Age yet, here I was, being compared to it.

When he gave me a tape of the two albums "Aerial Boundaries" and "Watching my Life Go By", I was deeply surprised. The song "Aerial Boundaries" sounded really cool, a nice use of multi-tracking two guitars and a percussionist. But then there were songs like "Hot Type" that were out of left field and "The Magic Farmer" which was crushingly beautiful. The  album "Watching My Life Go By" showed that Hedges had a nice voice and some good songs. When I was old that the song "Aerial Boundaries" was done LIVE with ONE GUITAR I was floored. Literally dumbfounded. It was unlike anything I had ever conceived of as playing. There was one thing left to do.... go see the man live.

Thankfully he was playing at a club near where we lived called Club Bene in Morgan, NJ in October. My friend and fellow guitarist Joe went with me, not knowing what the hell to expect. The club was full of Grateful Dead fans and New Age types and, of course, guitar geeks. We took our seats nest to two guys who seemed to have been stoned since middle school. A comedian opened up and I felt so bad for him. I had just done my time as a stand-up comic and could feel the man's pain. It was a horrible crowd for such things but he stomped through his material and soon Hedges was on.

When the lights went down, the two men next to us pulled out two HUGE microphones and placed them on the table believing they were at a Dead show and were going to bootleg it in high quality. Joe and I looked at each other and thought the same thing, "What the hell?? There is no way this is going to last." Sure enough, in five minutes, management came over and they and there equipment were escorted out. Had they been a bit more discreet, say by maybe NOT putting the mics and their stands right on the table it may have helped.

Within seconds, my life changed. I could not take my eyes off the stage, off of this man who was doing things on the guitar that I had never even conceived of, making sounds that defied everything I had ever heard. What he was playing looked like what I played, but it sounded like a whole different creature. Everything I ever thought about the guitar was turned to dust. Nobody I had ever seen had ever played guitar like the man on that stage did. It was not a mater of learning scales and practicing picking. There was something so much greater going on, a depth of composition and Music that, for me, was light years away from the shredders I had been listening to. These were amazing songs! SONGS! Half way though the show I somehow remembered where I was and noticed my face was hurting and was wet. I had been smiling the whole time and crying. I had found an explorer who showed me a land I had no choice but to get to before I died. There was no turning back.

Every year after that, except for the times I was in Everett, WA and in school in Minneapolis, I went to see him play when he was on tour in the area. I brought friends who had their own minds blown when they saw him. I bootlegged a few shows myself and would listen to them over and over and over. It was like getting pictures from that foreign land every year.

This is not to say that every time I went I was on cloud 9. Michael Hedges got bored of doing guitar work and decided to play piano and sing on some songs, as well as play flute and djembe and do some atonal electronic Music he wrote in college... and walk around on stage in a yoga position while reciting "The Jabberwocky" in an odd voice. He would also tour with the frighteningly talented bassist Michael Manring. This deviation from the guitar his a peak when he decided to do what he called "A New Age Vaudeville" show. This included, the piano, the djembe, Michael Manring, the Jabberwocky Poem and... an Asian contemporary dancer improvising dance behind them while they performed, at times moving around the stage with a tree branch. Everyone in the place, having had to put up with more and more strangeness and less and less guitar for the past few tours hit a collective wall. When he finally did do a few guitar songs by himself without the dancer, everyone in the room felt less ripped off and a tad bit saved. The signals from the promised land of his Music were still coming in, though faintly.

After that tour, the crowds were not the same for him. This was made worse by the release of his album "Road to Return" that featured almost no solo acoustic guitar and oddly produced vocal songs that were stunning when he played them live with just a guitar, but fell horribly flat when he produced them with electronic drums and other synths. I did not give up faith, but I was deeply confused.

He finally came back to form with his last album, Oracle. I got it when I was in school in Minneapolis, walking around in circles for miles trying to find the record store. It was good but I can remember feeling that it was not what I had hoped. I wanted guitar Music that would make me want to play more! Inspire me!  Make me feel like dirt! There were some beautiful songs on it, but I remembered putting it away after a few weeks and listening more to Bob Mould, Alice in Chains, and Brian Eno.

When I got back from Minneapolis, the time came when he was back in New Jersey. I distinctly remember not wanting to go to the concert. I was tired, burnt out from stress, and frankly, did not want to pay good money and be disappointed by only hearing one or two songs I liked. I did not buy tickets. I told nobody. Finally, the day of the show, something told me to go. I was feeling like hell, but something just told me to go. So I called and bought an overpriced seat right against the stage. On my way to the show I forgot the tape recorder to bootleg it. Again, something literally dragged me back to get it.

The show was not full and most of us there seemed to be dreading another branch dance. This time he came out and played solo acoustic guitar. I remember feeling a bit creeped out by the S&M dog collar he was wearing around his neck. He was skinnier and in yoga gear, but plowed into the songs like a Panzer tank. It was amazing! It was obvious that he was hitting anther new level of playing. He had more energy than I remember him having when I first saw him. He closed the first set with the instrumental song "Ritual Dance" screaming so loud to himself that the mic on my portable ancient Walkman recorder picked it up. He was in the zone and flying high. It felt damn good.

He opened up the second set with an unreleased song called "Arrowhead" and my jaw dislocated from my face. It was a stunning work. He had taken everything he had done up to that point and moved to a new level. It involved tapping and groove, like a blend between his songs "Aerial Boundaries", "Rootwitch" and "Ritual Dance". He was hitting upon new ground and I was feeling great about it. I do not remember much more of the set, except that he did an amazing job with the rest of the set that was full of songs everyone wanted to/longed to hear.

After the show I stayed around and hoped he would meet his fans. Thankfully he did. Some guy before me, who was screaming out "Yes, Michael! YES!" after every song was in front of me. He talked to Hedges about how he liked apples that he got here last time, repeating, "Remember that! Remember last time out here! Those apples!" I could see that Hedges was, even in his adrenaline and otherwise buzz, was uncomfortable. So I walked up in my hat and tie and said hello.

"Hey," he said, "don't I know you?"

"Um, yes." I stammered, "we met about five times before. I sent you my CD last year."

He nodded and we spoke about Music and he signed his book of transcriptions. I thanked him again for being an inspiration as a composer and how it helped me. We spoke briefly about a woman he knew who saw me playing in San Francisco a year ago who knew him. He was friendly, albeit from another planet, and after a few minutes we parted ways.

Two weeks later he died in a car accident in northern California. It was a dark and rainy night and he took a turn bad and fell odd a highway cliff to his death. The workers found him two days after the fact.

Speaking for myself, when he died, it left the road in question. There would be no one out there ahead of all of us making their own mark in a new land. It was a horrible feeling. How the hell would I know what was out there if the guy who was beyond us all was gone?

I have seen and heard many many many many many many solo acoustic guitar players since then and I feel lost. It was not that Michael Hedges hit the guitar and made cool sounds and tapped and did strange things with the instrument. No. The equation everyone seems to get wrong is that he was a composer first THEN a guitarist. He wrote amazing songs that just happened to include techniques that boggled everyone's mind.

But it is time to take a step back. A few years ago, demos of his earliest work surfaced via Youtube. Honestly, there was nothing that amazing there. It was a shadow of what he would become. Thanks to Fate knocking and destiny answering, the contract he signed on a napkin when he saw Hedges perform in an empty courtyard at a place in Palo Alto, CA had a greater good.

These days I see people being praised for their solo guitar work because they are cute or nice or cut against some predisposed notion of their gender. In the end, it shall always be about only ONE thing: THE MUSIC.

After Hedges died, I did the album "firewalker" which was my best attempt at finding my way in the dark. It combined solo finger style guitar, pop songs with cello, a cappella vocals, avant solo cello with spoken word, and even some comedy. I love that record in so many ways because it was my way of trying to find my own place to exist in a land that was now without a leader.

So, as I try to get this new project in motion, all I can say is that I owe so much to Michael Hedges. I will never be him, never got to the heights he did, but I am willing to try. And, for the record, there is a blessing to not being able to copy someone. After one has hit the wall of failure in trying to duplicate a hero, all that is left is one's true self. Some people walk away. I am too stubborn for that. I just keep going.

It is really all there is...

A Golden Age of Music.... Take what you can get

Take what you can get within the Golden Age of Live Music.

I played a show on Saturday night, a split set between solo acoustic and full band back at a cafe I have mentioned here before. The owner was very nice, but again, no pay was given nor discussed. I knew that going in but did the gig to prep for recording a new solo acoustic record and to keep the band in touch with the Music. There will be a decent amount of shows coming up in the upcoming months and, while we all love each other dearly as friends, we all need to both rehearse the tunes and do them live, which is where the accidents can raise you shine brighter or dig a deeper pit of embarrassment. Like anything else, you either use it or lose it.

Most every book ever written about a life in the creative arts is about someone who is successful. This makes sense on a very practical level as who would you rather read about: The Life and Times of Picasso or The Life and Times of Bob Slogum? Yeah, there you have it. All narratives have the underlying thread that, no matter how lousy the point in the narrative, the narrative wins in the end by the simple fact that you are reading their book. So, if some former rock god tells you that they wound up playing in a cafe for six people, this is most likely after their exile from the spectacular kingdom of stardom, money, sex, and drugs and, by the mere architecture of the narrative, a stop on the way back into the kingdom via a different route. This return is executed by having made all the connections in their glory days and accessing them again in hopes of finding one thread back into the maze.

This is where that beloved chestnut of  "doing it because you love to do it" kinda hits a snag. Performance is, by definition is when an artist or artists performs for another person or group of people. If this situation lacks an audience, it is called a "rehearsal" and is not the same thing. Music is unique as it can be done in both performance and in private and still excel. The act of writing words is a private matter and, judging by the content of the internet, everybody and their hamster is now a writer of some blog or book or screenplay. You never have to leave your room to get published.

Strangely, the same thing is now true for Music, although the noose got tied with the computer as one need not perform Music live to put on a live show. The dubstep phenom Skrillex (Sonny John Moore) goes onstage with no more than a thumb drive to plug into the laptop provided. People love it and the man has made many many millions at live shows for hundreds of thousands of people without a callous on his fingers nor a node on his vocal chords. Live Music does not even need performance anymore, hence the thousands of lights and other visual tech innovations that make every EDM live show a visual orgasm. And, well, yeah, the drugs help too.....

So, if the Music making the most money live (EDM) is based off of a Music that does not need to be performed while on stage YET is considered "Live", where does that leave us? Sure, the computer could fail and things would still ride that "playing it dangerous" live feel, but does that count? It is a known fact that most live singers who do a full out uber-erotic Zumba class while performing simply lip sync and have done for many many years. Does their aerobics class count as a Music performance? Broadway now has many people lip-syncing to prerecorded tracks because it is physically impossible to hit all those high notes perfectly clear night after night. And, since Broadway is an investment, one must take the safe way and not lose ANY money and keep the people in the over-priced seats happy with a mechanically perfect performance.

I did not grow up in the days of the Golden Age of Live Rock Music. Recently I was at an orientation for a new job and the older men their were talking about all the glory days of the 1960's and 70's and how they used to play. The guy next to me had steady gigs, but he was in a Dave Matthews Tribute Band. Original Music was on nobody's plate.

 It seems that the general rule of this place of change rides along the fault line of technology and goes something like this...in reverse order.

Today, Music performed live instruments has been replaced computer based music with very little human performance needed. If there is a human performance, it is normally digitally modified to the mathematical standard of a passable representation of a performance. Computer adjusted performances that could pass as human performances have existed pretty much since the use of the Synclavier Music Synth and Computer in the 1980's. Computer pitch correction for live vocals was possible but very expensive. (1980's and 90's)

Live performance of Music was replaced by the multi-track recorder where separate parts could be layered onto each other with each performance able to be done again and again till the desired quality was  attained. The flip side of this was that performers of this Music now had a new standard to go by. You had to sound as good as the recording, the reference point of that the audience would have. This changed the landscape as Musicians had to deliver live performances on a whole new level as the expectations were different. (1960's onward)

Recorded Music in general changed the game. Once the record player got within the price range of the general public, records sold like crazy. People wanted to hear Enrico Caruso sing again and again that they made his 1904 recording the first million selling sound recording ever. The people wanted it and they got it. A few years later, the invention of the radio upped the stakes because now you did not need to own the recording to hear them. On could now be introduced to Music that they would never have been exposed to outside their travels in life.

Go back a few hundred years an you get vocal Music being replaced by the presence of stringed instruments. Technology made the 88 key tuned piano possible in Bach's time.

Keep going back several hundred years and you get the flip from written Music to Oral Tradition and improvised Music. Standardized Music notation was the first recording device, the means by which a piece of Music could be performed again and again with certain regularity. Before that, it was passed down from person to person.

As far as live performance goes, the beginning screw happened with the jukebox. If you have ever heard of the term "Juke Joint" it refers to Jukebox Joint, or a bar where there was a Jukebox instead of live Musicians. This was the big first swipe at live Music as every bar had a live musician in it. Granted these were not all high class establishments, but it was a place for live Music. Eric Satie wrote his most famous pieces, "Trois Gymnopedies" at a bar called "Le Chat Noir" in the Montmartre section of Paris.

When big bands were popular, musicians had plenty of gigs playing everywhere. But this changed with the advent of rock and roll and a small band taking its place. But there was money to be made where the jukebox did not reign. Bands could get gigs and people played around a great deal. You could even make a living at such a thing. Learn those damn tunes as good as the record and get out there!

It was the raising of the drinking age that did in live Music. Without going into the minutia, this was the beginning of Pay-to-Play. Bar owners saw a huge decrease in their revenue and in order to make sure they got their money, they made bands pay money to play their famous places on horrible nights to be sure they got SOME money in even if nobody showed up. In the end, it will always be about the money. Always.

There is still live Music at parties, but there seem to be less parties than there were years ago and if there is live Music, it is normally a DJ. The people throwing the party get to call the shots and if the people love EDM, then so be it.

The age I lived and worked through was in no way, shape, or form "Golden". It was, however, different. Even at my first real show as a solo acoustic artist in New Brunswick at Cafe News, I was given some money for the performance. Something. I think it was $25.. But I was learning my way and paying my dues and did not expect much. The road ahead was expected to be without much pay, but I knew that and it was my time for learning how to do this craft of performing and to learn more about Music in one show in San Francisco or Malta than I would via months of rehearsal alone in a room. Gigs were auditions for the next level, hoping Fate would arrive and transport one past the velvet ropes and onto the next evolutionary stage.

There were more places to play than there were now, though it was always a thorn in the eye to get a gig and everyone expected to have me bring people. Club owners sucked and all of us hoped that it would all be part of "paying our dues" till we got to the Promised land of some sort of deal. But one by one the clubs closed up and live original Music here in Jersey became a mockery of what it once was to the point right now where I cannot even find an affordable place to rent out to put on a show with friends.

And, yet, this is a Golden Age in may ways. There are 7 year-olds playing guitar solos that boggle the mind. Hundreds of thousands of people making Music and posting it. Instruments are more affordable and PA systems, when not run by a brain damaged troglodyte, sound better. People have access to more learning tools than before. The stakes have been raised because you have to be better than what can be seen on Youtube or whatever. And PLEASE let me now forget about recording gear! Digital has changed the paradigm. What would have cost a mortgage back in the day is now either an app or can be bootlegged for free onto a laptop costing less than the cost of a new sofa. Microphone technology has also made home recording painfully easy and of decent quality.

But will someone's home recording done on an iPad or laptop sound as good as  the Who's "Who's Next?" or Queen's "A Night at the Opera"? No. This Golden Age has its limits, as does every Golden Age. So, within this Golden Age, take what you can get.

 And may you have better luck than me....