My Back Pages

"Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ’neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now"

Bob Dylan - "My Back Pages" from Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964)

One of the grand cliches in rock journalism is the typical musician's response to a question about their earliest recollections of music - the music that excited them and helped to put them on the road towards becoming an artist. Invariably, the chain-smoking, leather-and-sunglasses-donning musician will offer some hipper-than-thou response to such a question - the type of response that demands that you believe that, yes, there may have been a group of seven-year-olds living in Omaha in 1983 that liked to hang around each other's basements listening to Iggy and the Stooges.

I suppose it might be fun to claim that I heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band while still in the womb, cried when Hendrix died, bought my first guitar after hearing Led Zeppelin's debut album, ditched school to catch Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue, caught the Sex Pistols mid-implosion during their ill-fated U.S. tour, and caught R.E.M. in Athens and Talking Heads at CBGB's way before they got signed to a major label.

Yeah, it'd be a great story.

Or maybe I'd attempt to lend myself some blues cred by tracing my lineage back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean through the British blues artists of the '60's towards the genre's origins in the Mississippi Delta. Or I could trace my soul and R&B roots back through Memphis and Detroit, speaking lovingly about discovering all the canonical Motown, Stax and Atlantic records during my childhood and ruminating on the virtues of the 1962 Fender Precision bass.

Oh, to quote Brian Wilson, wouldn't it be nice. It really takes such little effort to fabricate a credible-sounding history, and then to implant one's self so squarely within that fabricated musical lineage that one's authenticity becomes quite beyond the reproach of any mere music journalist. Short of engaging in any actual research - which, face it, is unlikely to expand beyond a mere Google search in any case - there isn't really any way of disproving such a story. If some hip riot grrl wants to hide the fact that she was a card-carrying member of the Leif Garrett fan club by concocting a tale in which her destiny was made clear to her after hearing, say, Janis Joplin (or any other artist she may have heard of and who, she might vaguely recall, is considered credible), there isn't much evidence that a journalist could discover, assuming they'd look, that would prove otherwise. Undoubtedly, the hypothetical riot grrl in this example would dread a follow-up question inquiring as to which of Janis' albums or songs had the most impact upon her, and, of course, she'd end up saying "um, I guess all of them, really" or something equally evasive in order to dodge that particular deceit-seeking missile. Hell, Jim Morrison got away with creating an entirely fabricated biography, one in which his parents were both deceased, and years went by before anybody thought to research the veracity of his claims.

So, I suppose, if I wanted to fabricate a more legitimate musical history, it would be easy enough to come up with an impressive pedigree, but I don't really feel such an all-consuming need to impress people. There is an inherant freedom in not having to answer to record companies, or marketing departments, or public relations people. I don't have to court the press or appeal to a certain demographic or maintain an image or track my popularity. I'm beholden to none of that. I mean, who gives a shit? I'm just living my life. I'm not attempting to create a legend or immortalize myself in some carefully-crafted mythology. Leave the bullshit for those who are willing to swim in it.

I suppose that the appropriate response to that last paragraph should be something along the lines of "okay, then why have a blog in which you broadcast yourself to the world?" It's a fair question.

Let me preface my answer by mentioning the fact that a few days ago I was on the web site for Rolling Stone magazine, and every other photograph seemed to be of a female singer named Rihanna. If one was to believe that an artist's significance was even somewhat proportional to their coverage in Rolling Stone, then one could easily be forgiven for assuming that Rihanna must be the most significant female singer in the universe at the moment. Yet a quick scan of Rolling Stone's album reviews reveals that the magazine's writers, while acknowledging her popularity, consider her to be somewhat mediocre. And yet there she is, smiling for the cameras at dozens of photo-ops, being seen with the "important" people to be seen with, at all of the "important" events. Rihanna certainly seems convinced that Rihanna is terribly, terribly important, and seems committed to convincing the rest of us of the same. Rolling Stone's photographers sure seem convinced, even if their music reviewers aren't.

Now I don't really mean to pick on Rihanna. I don't have anything against her specifically. Frankly, I don't really know who she is. I couldn't tell you anything about her career, and I seriously doubt that I've ever heard any of her songs. And I can say the same thing about Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and pretty much any of the pop stars that have been force-fed to the post-American Idol public. They don't speak to me, they don't speak for me, I don't think they value music as much as they value fame, and I'm just not interested in what they have to offer. Now I'm not so arrogant as to assume the my lack of interest in their music somehow justifies a belief that their music must therefore be objectively bad (like, unfortunately, so many other self-proclaimed arbiters of taste seem more than willing to do), but I'm not going to pretend to like something just because it is popular any more than I'm going to feign interest in something that I'm clearly not the target audience for in some pathetic attempt to appear hip.

So, um, how exactly does this relate to me and my blog?

Every one of these artists is the focal point of a cottage industry whose goal is to keep pushing the artist - the product - in front of the public. Rihanna's management wants nothing less than to put her in every magazine that you read, on every television channel you watch, and on every radio station you tune in to (assuming, of course, that you still listen to the radio). They want it to be impossible for you to not know who she is and take notice of everything she does. Pop stars are like terminators: they keep coming after you. It's what they do. IT'S ALL THEY DO!!!!

In contrast, I have neither the ability nor the interest in imposing myself where I'm not wanted. I don't assume that who I am and what I do is really that fascinating to anybody else. I don't have public relations people forcing me into your life on a daily basis. Any and all information about my music and my production process is located on this website and this website only. I'm documenting this process simply because it is important to me and I want to have a record of this moment in my life. This blog is a convenient way for me to do that. If someone sees that as excruciatingly narccisitic, I don't really know how to respond to that. None of us has any control over how people perceive us, and someone who thinks I'm a narcissist would probably think so regardless of the existence or non-existence of this blog. If you wish to beleive that what I write in this blog somehow compromises my character and/or my integrity, or that knowing too much about the artist compromises the perception of his work, well, hey, have at it.

The only advertising (if you can call it "advertising") I do for this site is when I let my friends on facebook know that I have a new post. I don't badger people to come and read it. And if they don't happen to log into facebook on the day when I post a link to this site, I don't keep following up and bugging people to come here. If somebody is interested in me and my music, I would prefer that it be because they genuinely are interested and come here by choice, not because I've broken down their resistance and refuse to be ignored. I'm not trying to catapult myself past anyone's defenses and into their consciousness.

Which, in a weird way, segues back to my original point about musical lineage. I know, I know, this post seems pretty disjointed right now but you'll just have to trust me that soon this will all make sense, and that these seemingly wild literery tangents won't seem quite so arbitrary. At least, that's my intention.

One's musical lineage can be determined through the use of two painfully obvious but woefully neglected criteria:

First, in order to want to create music, one must have had a passionate reaction to something that one had heard.

Secondly, in order for that music to have been heard, it must have been readily accessible in the environment of the listener. And most of the time, in order for the listener to have that penultimate "Wow, what is that?" moment, the music has to have been almost accidentally stumbled upon. So no matter how great "Astral Weeks" is, or no matter how popular Rihanna might be right now (at least in the U.S.), kids in Afghanistan aren't likely to be found grooving to them any more than kids in the U.S. are likely to become obsessed with the Drummers of Burundi.

When you consider all of the world's music, it is easy to see that, in spite of your belief that your musical taste is purely a function of your own choice, in truth your own personal musical taste is largely the result of the decisions made by numerous nameless, faceless people whose choices dictated exactly what was available to you. And by saying that, I'm not going all Oliver Stone on you. This isn't some crazed conspiracy theory that I've come up with, this is merely a the business model that exists whether we like it or not. The fact is, a very small percentage of the world's music actually gets recorded. Of the music that gets recorded, an even smaller percentage gets distributed. Of the music that gets distributed, an even smaller percentage of music gets promoted. Of the music that gets promoted, an even smaller percentage gets selected for broadcast towards an audience. And you made your musical selections from the infinitessimally small amount of music that survives that screening process. Regardless of whether you heard a song on television, radio, satellite, the internet, or from a friend, the screening process that took place before a single soundwave bounced down your auditory canal is daunting. Even the music that you can't stand had to survive the hazing process in order to disgust you.

Now, I consider myself to be pretty well-versed in the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, and many others. Citing any of these artists as influential to me would make me appear more credible as an artist, at least in the minds of those who insist on the importance of such things.

But I can't really claim any of those artists as the impetus for my interest in music. I discovered these artists later. Many of them, I discovered when I was well into my twenties and thirties. I was already writing songs before I knew very much about almost all of the artists listed above (with the exception of the Beatles, and even then my knowledge of them was far more limited than it is now), and had been interested in the notion of creating and performing music even earlier than that. My influences could only be counted from among the music that I could realistically have been exposed to. And such exposure was controlled and limited. If your musical DNA is established during the time in which your age is counted with a single digit, well then, I just can't claim any authenticity in the world of rock and roll at all. Not much, anyways.

A friend of mine in college liked to speak of us as the "children of the '60's." Well, there's a difference between merely being alive and actually being consciously aware of the world around you. Okay, so I was born in 1967, so, technically, the statement that I'm a child of the 60's is true. But the '60's ended when I was three years old, and it's pretty safe to say that I don't remember any of it. And even if I could remember any of it, I sure as hell wouldn't be remembering Woodstock or Monterey Pop. I would remember myself and all of my siblings being dressed in matching sailor suits and being marched off to attend church in a post-war white middle-class republican Donna Reed-esque world in which there was no such thing as non-conformity, certainly no counterculture, and definitely no such thing as rock music. It was highly improbable that I would ever hear anything in that environment that would ever have made me want to pick up a guitar.

Most of the musicians that I appreciate point to people like Elvis, the Beatles, and Hendrix as the people who inspired them to be musicians. Well, when I was a kid, there wasn't a whole lotta shakin' goin' on. The family record collection contained the likes of Doris Day and Tennessee Ernie Ford. My dad was never really intersted in music, and my mom's taste seemed to be based upon whatever my grandmother found at neighborhood garage sales. On the plus side, I got to know the music of Nat "King" Cole, but really, we had nothing but crap to listen to.

A few notable exceptions: a Disney record of the Hansel and Gretel opera by Humperdink was probably the first music that I really responded to in an emotional way. To this day, when I hear the opening strains of the opera I find myself transported back to the same emotional setting that I experienced as a child. Yet it isn't a childish place at all, in fact it's pretty complex and emotionally sophisticated.

My mother's record collection also contained a couple of albums by Arthur Lyman. Lyman was one of the keystone artists of the late-1950's "exotica" genre, assuming, of course, that he wasn't the central figure. Since I can only think of one other exotica artist, whose name I can't recall at the moment, I'm guessing that Lyman was the main guy. I'm also guessing that I have a fifty-percent chance of being correct about that. Exotica was a style of music that, I suppose, probably enjoyed its brief popularity in the wake of Hawaii obtaining statehood. It's sort of a mellow version of the music that you would hear while waiting in line to get into the Tiki Room at Disneyland. It consists of lots of vibraphone and other mallet-based instruments being played through some very heavy tremolo effects, and some interesting tropical percussion punctuated by the random, jarring shreiks and squawks of the band members as they attempted to mimic the calls of tropical birds and, I guess, some kind of monkey. In any case, the music was essentially "Bolero" for Eisenhower-era button-down republicans to get their groove on to, and I suspect that it was the soundtrack to the conception of myself and all of my siblings born prior to about 1970. Whenever I hear exotica, I feel an inexplicable urge to go swimming.

Lastly, and perhaps most amazingly, my mother had both a record by the Platters and a Buddy Holly best-of album. These were really the anachronisms of the whole collection. The Platters were out of place because, unlike Nat "King" Cole, they actually looked and sounded black, and the Buddy Holly record might have turned out to be one of my main musical influences if not for the fact that the vinyl surface of the record was so utterly trashed that what you heard coming from the record player sounded more like a black-box recording of Holly's ill-fated flight than anything resembling music.

So, sadly, while I have collected some of Buddy Holly's music since then, I can't really claim him as an influence, either. Like Merle Haggard and Dion DiMucci, I just barely missed that particular journey.

The unlistenable condition of the Buddy Holly record pretty much guaranteed that the only pop or rock music that was going to reach me was whatever could catapult itself across the twin barricades, each formidable in their own right, of both the generational gap and the mostly religiously-fueled propaganda that declared that rock music was fundamentally immoral and inescapably harmful to malleable young minds.

In my parent's house, these were pretty serious barricades. It would be a long time before I knew who the Beatles were, and if it had been left entirely up to my parents, I still wouldn't know who they were.

And no, I'm not trying to demean my parents by saying this. They were doing the best they could to attempt to raise us utilizing the information that was available to them. But like the little girl in Jurassic Park, operating under the assumption that every creature categorized as a "dinosaur" is as dangerous as a T.Rex isn't entirely accurate. However, religious zealots rarely feel obligated to qualify their remarks, and sometimes this can lead to broad condemnations being accepted at face value without the listener employing any rational congitive evaluation of the claims being made. This situation can, of course, be multiplied if one is led to believe that employing the rigors of critical thinking, particularly if used in the evaluation of a claim being made under the auspices of faith, is, if perhaps not as grievous as a sin, at the very least a culturally stigmatizing demonstration of disobedience. What tends to result is a confidently stated, inflexibly enforced belief that, once attached to religion, is perceived as infallible.

And religion was categorically stating that rock and roll was evil. In several churches, it still says so.

Well, who are we to argue with God?

(... to be continued in Part 2)