I think I’ve addressed this before here on the blog, but I think sometimes you live life, and sometimes life lives you.
You feel like you have choices when you’re living life.
You feel like you’re just following a to-do list if life is living you.
Right now, it really does feel like life is living me instead of the other way around.
To be clear – some of the most fantastic things have been happening the past few months, from my 50th Birthday with surprise visits from my parents and a cousin I hadn’t seen in years to a couple of wonderful trips to North Carolina and Atlanta to see friends and band reunions. And reuniting with my best friend from high school who I hadn’t seen in over 20 years and finally meeting his wife and wonderful boys. SO MUCH LOVE!
But even as it’s been great, everything’s been SCHEDULED. My wife and I haven’t really had good alone time because we have a little kid and no good sitters. Work has been relentless for both of us, and SUPER STRESSFUL for my wife. Gigs have been very sporadic (which serve as a nice salve for my psyche, so that’s not good).
Some days I feel like I’m just driving people places and then sitting in a room for hours on a computer cutting up voiceovers I’m not particularly pleased with and mixing with music that’s ALMOST right for the commercials while periodically being interrupted by questions that have often already been answered.
I’m sure a lot of people go through this stuff, and honestly, I’m usually fairly good at forcing myself to be present and not just muddle through. But right now? It’s not going great. So I’m writing this at 1:41am to kind of put it out there so I can move on from it and take more action in my life.
Recently for the day job I had to create a jingle out of some really questionable a cappella singing, so I threw that pitchy mess into Melodyne (a wonderful software for naturally removing pitchiness), and wrote and recorded music to match the flow of the melody (which was a VERY atypical arrangement). Shockingly, it turned out fairly decent. I had polished the turd to a fine sheen (and they ended up going with the original a cappella…go figure).
The good part about that was discovering how quickly I can throw together music that is a full arrangement (the cleaned-up voice, along with guitar, bass, and drums I played on my Korg X50 keyboard). It really inspired me to possibly use those same techniques to get my songs done and start using my DistroKid account to make them available for people to listen and/or buy on all the streaming services.
So I know I’ve said it before, but I really do think that I’ll actually be finishing some songs in the coming months, and probably releasing them in chunks as EPs on Spotify and stuff like that.
That is, if I can manage to stop letting life live me and turn that shit around so I’m living life.
Wish me luck!
And if you also feel like life has been living you, I feel you. And I’m hoping for your sake you can turn that shit around as well.
Take care, and Peace be the journey! TMS
Museday Mumblings (Vol. 76) – A Case of The Musedays
Well, it’s a Museday. The last time I posted was in late September. Clearly life is having its way with me right now, as I’m not particularly inspired to even blather on here on the blog.
This series was meant to be almost a meditation – every Tuesday (or so) I’d post about some topic, whether it be musical or otherwise (but mostly musical), and it would keep me creating and creative. But a few things happened over the last year or so that really messed with my desire to share much of what’s going on with me publicly. People who are too sensitive. Beloved friends slightly younger than me who died suddenly. The tennis match-like back-and-forth of worthiness and worthlessness that is being a sensitive artist.
I desperately want to WANT to create. I desperately want to FEEL like people I depend on for music-related things are all on the same page. But time creates distance, distance increases anxiety, anxiety breeds worry, worry breeds resentment. I’m not saying anything is REAL about how I feel about the various things I’m doing or my relationships with music stuff, but it’s definitely making me feel less motivated in general, and kind of depressing me (and thus keeping me from working on stuff).
But let’s take stock. Let’s have ourselves one of them certified, Erin-phrase-coined “Gratitude Adjustments”:
In 2022, I played a PILE of wonderful shows with my boys in Chandler and The Bings. And I played my roles as bassist and singer well in the vast majority of them, which makes me very proud. We had a great bonding experience with our trip to Laredo that was only sullied by a bad stomach bug which led to the very first time I’ve ever left the stage to vomit…and then vomited off the side of the stage out of the view of the crowd. It’s quite a story that’s quite gross, and if you’d like to hear it, I’m happy to tell it in person.
My solo shows were mostly pretty good, and I was VERY consistent this year, basically playing every first Saturday except for July. I love the venue, the staff is wonderful, people tip very well, and I really need to grow this side of my musicianship. I think it would be good for my development to have some bigger crowds to play to, though. So I’m going to work towards that in 2023, stacking up the wonderful venue I already play and maybe even finding some more…
I got some very cool new gear and some of my existing gear got an AMAZING update that inspires me to play more, which is good. I keep meaning to make videos about the guitar and little amp, but that’s another casualty of life in general. Just hasn’t happened yet.
My body has held up pretty well considering I packed on an extra 15 lbs this year. Going to do my best to get that off in triplicate this year, hopefully by my birthday in September. That might be too tall an order, but progress toward healthy living is most important. My health is paramount and I need to stick around for my kiddos.
To close this out:
I am thankful that I can still do this music stuff.
I am grateful that my health so far has remained pretty good (gotta figure out the heart flutter, but…)
I am hopeful that I can stay disciplined and make the necessary changes to lead a more healthy lifestyle.
Now that this is turning into a “Goals” post – completely unrelated to the fact that it’s a new year, mind you – my goals are now to get healthy, get better at playing the songs I perform, get working on my ear training and theory knowledge, get the worthy songs I’ve written recorded, mix the old ones that were already recorded better (and improve the performances if necessary), get some new songs together, release some new music (having one song on the streaming platforms seems kind of sad), get my goddamn ass in gear in general, and get some MONEY.
That’d be nice, right? Rent is EXPENSIVE. Shit, everything is.
Anyway, thanks for reading and I plan to get back in this Museday Mumblings habit again. Have a happy day whenever you see this, and may you stay healthy and safe.
Peace be the journey! TMS
Museday Mumblings (Vol. 68): Inspiration, Machines, Cranky Old Mofos
My musical mission thus far in 2022 has centered on a few things: Playing good shows. Getting my gear all in proper operation. Learning how to use my new tools (patchbay, Behringer X18 mixer). Forming inspirations into ideas into actual songs.
I’ve succeeded at the good shows part – I played great in both of my Bings shows, and at times was so locked in with Jay every bit of both of our performances made the other’s even better. Excellent crowd in San Antonio, too.
My solo show was a bit hit or miss, working my way through my first on-stage slow-motion anxiety attack. I couldn’t get air, which made it extraordinarily hard to sing. Then, hilariously, I used the altered tuning feature on my Line 6 Variax to play Wonderwall with a “Capo” on the second fret, and promptly FORGOT TO CHANGE IT BACK! So the next group of songs (Drift Away, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Always Something There To Remind Me, I’m A Believer, No Such Thing, and Hey Jealousy) were all played a WHOLE STEP HIGHER than I usually play them. Which made the whole “not having any air” thing even worse. And made it so I didn’t even end up playing one of my “standards”, the Turtles underappreciated classic “Elenore”, because there was no way in HELL I’d be singing that chorus in F#. I literally just stopped the song and moved on. I felt like such an unprofessional loser, and it ruined my evening. I came home a ball of nerves, and I think mildly freaked my wife out. Being someone who’s more of a depressive than an anxious person, it always freaks me out when the stress hormones get rolling, and it’s hard to recover. I think a pharmaceutical would have been helpful (perhaps a Xanax), but I don’t have that stuff. In the end, the venue was happy, and if I’m being honest with myself, even though I was falling apart inside, I still sounded pretty dang good. Just not as good as I normally would sound. I am kind of glad I didn’t record this one, though.
Moving on to the technical stuff – using the wonderful substance Deoxit, in the past few months I’ve cleaned the pots and jacks on a bunch of my aging things and it’s brought them back to life, particularly my “first guitar” – which technically was my brother Robert’s first guitar – now all it needs is to have its nut glued in properly and it’ll be a fun little pseudo-Telecaster to bang around on. I also cleaned up the pots on my basses, bringing them back to proper function, and even rescued a presumed-dead guitar wireless by merely cleaning the output jack. All I need now are some new strings on some of these guitars and basses and we’ll be in business.
Speaking of guitars and basses, I sold one in December. A Dean ML bass (looks kind of like the guitar Dimebag Darrell from Pantera used to play). It never worked for me, and it was a four-string, so I wasn’t using it, it was basically just collecting dust, and since I only paid $49 for it on a blowout sale at Guitar Center over a decade ago, I still made money on the deal, selling it for $100. I probably could have made more off it, but I just wanted it gone and the dude seemed nice.
Last Thursday I had to head down to San Antonio for the day job and on the way home decided to pop by the Guitar Center down there, and discovered a two-pickup version of my “#1” Sterling by Music Man Ray 5 bass that I use in Chandler and The Bings. I couldn’t believe it. More than that, it was on sale for the same price as I picked the #1 up for back in 2018 (that model has since gone up in price, and this version was even more). I decided to snag it. I couldn’t help myself! Pics or it didn’t happen:
She pretty.
It desperately needs new strings and a cleaning/set-up. But I already love it, and that’ll only make it more awesome.
Back in 2021 I got an amazing deal on a Behringer X18 mixer and am just now learning all the little things it can do. It’s going to be central to the new studio setup as I streamline and get things in order. It has amazing routing capabilities and some really cool built-in effects I can play with for doing live streams and stuff like that. This with the patchbay and my ATEM switcher will definitely enable me to do some really cool, interactive stuff from the studio in the future. I just have to get it all plugged up and learn how to make it all work together. I think my Edirol M-16DX, which has been my trusty studio sidekick for over 10 years now, will become the center of my live solo acoustic rig, making setting up and running all that much simpler, because it can live in a rack bag that I can keep set up and basically just plug my guitar and my vocal mic into it and still have effects and stuff I can use.
The last goal is inspiration – and translating that inspiration into new material. I’ve already written down multiple new ideas for songs – concepts more than phrases, really, but really good, inspiring starting points. And I’ve got a bunch more I’ve collected over the past few years that will be worked into songs. I might even use music that I liked from my old songs and replace the dodgy lyrical content with something based off these new ideas. (It won’t be the first time I’ve done that.) Time will tell for all of it.
I was listening to WTF with Marc Maron and his interview with John Mellencamp, and it was really fun listening to two cranky old motherfuckers talk about all kinds of stuff relating to John’s career, music in general, and how to exist on the planet. In fact, two of the aforementioned song ideas directly came to mind as a result of their conversation. So I’m already snagging that inspiration wherever it may show itself.
In summary, I’m excited for the new year at least as my musical experiences are panning out. I love learning new things and feeling energized when it comes to this stuff, so I’m very optimistic that if I make sure I’m investing time in this instead of sitting on my ass watching Rick Beato videos (not that those aren’t awesome), I’ll actually make some headway getting my shit together and creating things. I like the progress my friend Mandy has made with her dedication to live-streaming on Twitch, and I think maybe I’m going to try and make a Musical Schizo concert there a regular part of my week, once I decide on a day and time to do it and get more used to how all that live-streaming stuff works.
Thanks for reading, take care, be safe, and remember to love one another.
So I got me a patchbay. What’s a patchbay? Well, it’s a rackmounted (in most cases) device that allows you to have your instruments and interfaces all hooked up in a way that allows you to easily change their routing as you need. So if you have a bunch of guitar effects things, keyboards, whatever, you can have them all hooked up to the patchbay, and you can very easily plug them in to each other or into whatever inputs on your recorder, mixer, or computer interface you want to use.
So far, it’s not all the way hooked up, but I’m so stupidly excited about having everything hooked up and patchable from one place that it’s occupied a lot of my mental real estate related to music/production/etc. Thinking of the various ways I can get it hooked up, and what I’m going to patch into it, all of that…it’s so wonderful and exciting to me. And that’s very inspiring.
Finding new ways to work can be such a wonderful thing to light the fire around creating music. This new way to work really has opened me up to the possibility that I don’t have to get behind stuff and plug and unplug things to make them all available to me. I can just patch them on the front panel, or if they’re already hooked up to the specific input I need to use, just leave them there. It’s great and I really can’t wait to get it all set up and ready to go.
So find something that shakes up your workflow to get you inspired to get in there and make some music. It’s working for me. (Now if I could only do that with my songwriting…)
The first quarter of the year was pretty lame. Not a whole lot going on that was new.
Started back with gigs in May. (YAY!)
Joined an awesome Yacht Rock band but punked out because I had to accept reality the playing level expected didn’t fit with my current lifestyle. It still makes me sad when I think about it.
Blogged many, many times but got super inconsistent at the end of the year (depression does that to you).
Made many great improvements to my home studio building on all the great improvements from 2020. Hey, I figure if I live in this room for work, it might as well be decked out, right? Upgraded the live bass rig from a little HX Stomp to the HX Stomp XL, which has more footswitches. Very happy with the change.
Went to California for a family vacation. It was more of a trip than a vacation, because it was the opposite of relaxing, but it was wonderful to be back “home” and see some California family and friends. The Golden State is as much a part of me as anywhere else I’ve ever lived, and I still miss it. If I win a large sum in the lottery, I will buy property there.
Discovered great new music – Mammoth WVH’s debut album is EXCELLENT, as was their live show. I Don’t Know How But They Found Me (aka IDKHOW) somehow escaped me when they were the alternative music press’ retro darling a few years back, but now I know who they are (thanks to my bud Dennis) and dig the SHIT out of their stuff. They’re 80s in all the best ways, but current – if you like the idea of Duran Duran and The Cure having a baby, you’ll probably dig this.
Wrote ZERO songs. Didn’t even compose riffs or anything this year. Not sure why…just not all that inspired. I did do some livestream noodling.
Returned to the stage as a solo act thanks to my friend (and excellent livestreamer) Mandy Prater recommending me to the awesome people at 360 Uno.
And I think that’s about it.
Definitely going to get things set up in the studio in 2022 for easier musical creativity and make it a point to make stuff. I might even make videos of the process since I have that awesome-but-basically-unused live streaming mixer. And Bathroom Schizo videos!
Or not. Since I like to believe I’ll do creative things but I rarely come through because life and my mental state often get in the way. STAY TUNED!
One thing that’s definitely happening in 2022 is a return of the weekly format for the Museday Mumblings. I slacked hard in Q4 and I find that embarrassing.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful 2022! TMS
I talk a lot about my musical stuff here, and that’s obviously the point. But I’m going to go a little into my personal philosophy here for this one, and promote a new thing I’m doing. First, my personal philosophy.
I believe my fundamental purpose in this world is to be a kind person.
It sometimes doesn’t happen, because I am a human being, but I do my best. I want to leave this place better than it was when I got here. I want every interaction I have with people to leave them better in some way than when the interaction began.
In The Before Times, when I was in the office every day, every time I talked to my coworkers I would always make sure I learned how they were, then figure out a way to lift them up and make them feel better. On my best days, I’d leave them laughing and happy and feeling good.
I still do that in the limited contact I have with people now, which mostly consists of people I meet at my live shows and the occasional video meeting for work, or randomly at the store. I had some random dude start talking to me like we were old friends and used the same sort of techniques I’d use on my coworkers, and it worked great – he was happy and laughing when we parted.
I treat people with respect for their humanity, and approach them with kindness and love. I used to call it #leadwithlove but found out there was a leadership/marketing company already using that for a sort of different purpose, and I didn’t want it associated with them. But I’ve been looking for subtle ways to put a little more happiness and gladness into people’s lives, because it’s what I love to do. I love to be a nice person who makes people glad they met me.
In that spirit, I’ve launched a new endeavor, which will consist of some social media stuff and perhaps even a second blog focused on happy stories and spreading news of kindness and goodness that will hopefully make you glad you followed us. So check it out – it’s called “The Gladapult” and can be found on Twitter and Instagram – @gladapult and on Facebook as well (just search it – it’s the only thing that will come up because I literally invented the word – obviously a portmanteau of “glad and “catapult”).
Thanks for reading, and look out for a new Museday Mumbling this week.
Take care!
TMS
P.S. If you have any great personal stories that might make people glad, no matter how trivial, please feel free to share them with me and I’ll GLADAPULT them out there.
Museday Mumblings (Vol. 61): 10 Things I Didn’t Hate About 2020-2021
A few things that I’ve consumed “in these uncertain times” that I liked:
Greg Renoff’s two biographies – “Van Halen Rising” and “Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer’s Life In Music”
Toto/studio legend Steve Lukather’s autobiography – “The Gospel According To Luke”
Wolfgang Van Halen’s album Mammoth WVH and…
Mammoth WVH (the band)’s live show here at Emo’s in Austin last Thursday. Kid can PLAY…and he has a GREAT band. (Also weirdly met and had a nice chat with the guy from #1 on the list here (Greg Renoff) at the show. Crazy.)
Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian’s autobiography – “I’m The Man”
Ex-Black Crowes’ Drummer Steve Gorman’s amazing book – “Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes – A Memoir”
Pink Floyd/Toy Matinee/studio bassist Guy Pratt’s autobiography “My Bass and Other Animals”
Former Van Halen manager Noel Monk’s Van Halen autobiography “Runnin’ With The Devil”.
Pat Benatar’s “Between a Heart and a Rock Place” autobiography.
Toto’s “40 Tours Around The Sun” and “With A Little Help From My Friends” Blu-rays
I’m sure there’s more stuff I am forgetting that I’ve actually talked about on here, but these are the things I’ve read or listened to that come to mind right now as stuff that’s been enjoyable. There are TV Shows and Movies and stuff that have been pretty great, too, and I may make a list of that stuff as well (music-wise, I liked that first Billie Eilish movie and the Beastie Boys story on Apple TV+).
Anyway, take care, be safe, etc. Same old shit since March 2020. How the fuck are we now almost 18 months on and still dealing with this crap? Oh, that’s right, because America is STUPID and CHILDISH and SELFISH. And politicians care more about POWER than PEOPLE. That’s a rant for another place.
Growing up is interesting. All people do it. Even individual aspects of our lives grow at different rates and in different ways. I know that my tastes in music evolved much faster when I was a teenager and through my twenties as I discovered new things and “old” things sort of fell to the side. Now, I’m not as fickle as many people who consume music, so I still did love the stuff that I was sort of letting go for a while for the shiny new things, but often I just never listened to it again. And there were plenty of things got heard and cast aside because they didn’t hook me.
I find it a nice experiment sometimes to go back and listen to things that were lost or hated for whatever reason and see if the current version of me, removed from whatever cultural prejudice (it was/wasn’t cool to like it) existed at the time.
I’ve actually gotten a lot of joy finding things I missed over the years, and it’s almost more fun to rediscover something that used to be on my radar when I was younger. There’s a lot of stuff I just didn’t “get” that I now understand. Even three of my favorite bands didn’t hook me when I first heard them. Rush, Led Zeppelin, and Muse – all three I kind of either hated or was sort of “meh” on until years after I first heard their music, and now all three are constant musical companions and teachers.
Going back and listening to the albums I wore out as a kid has been almost universally fun. The recent death of Producer/Writer/Rapper/Piano Man Gregory Jacobs (aka “Shock G” and “Humpty Hump”) reminded me how amazing his group Digital Underground’s album “Sex Packets” is – truly one of the greatest concept albums not by a prog- or art-rock band, and one of the best I’ve ever heard in Hip Hop. It ain’t just “The Humpty Dance” – although that’s definitely there for you to enjoy.
Another great example I hadn’t really heard since I was about 14 but now pops back into the regular rotation is INXS’ album “Kick”. It doesn’t have a bad song on it. De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising” is another landmark that I listened to OVER AND OVER and that I appreciate even more as my musical tastes and experience have grown over the years. There are a few albums that I remember listening to a lot that I can’t really get through these days (Starship’s “Knee Deep In The Hoopla” is an EXCELLENT example – that thing is dreadful), but the adventure of listening to stuff that was sort of ubiquitous at one time in my life, long before my “musician ears” kicked in, allows me to appreciate them on a different level, which is mostly good.
In the age of Spotify, I’ve had a lot of fun creating playlists that include the radio songs of my childhood – some of which I hadn’t really heard since then. Stuff like “Heart Attack” by Olivia Newton-John. Or “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” by Melissa Manchester. “You Are” by Lionel Richie. “Self Control” by Laura Branigan. These are often “other hit” songs that people forgot that really have no home except on the weird “Jack” or “Bob” or other single-name, catch-all playlist radio stations, and even still, they don’t always show up there. There are a lot of songs that had similar chart positions to stuff that has endured like “Jessie’s Girl” or “867-5309/Jenny” but never really made it past 1984 in terms of being something people talk about or listen to. And a lot of them were pretty big hits! Sure, fans know the stuff, but in terms of the general population, most of it is lost to time. And I don’t know that it’s a good thing. But it doesn’t matter – because the journey to rediscovering stuff is a pleasure.
I’m generally not super open to a lot of current music, for a variety of reasons – many of them tied to the production styles (trap hats, autotune) and what I see as a general lack of excellence in writing and performing. The people who do impress me generally are special talents as singers or MCs, write their own stuff, and have a broader appreciation of music. Or sometimes it’s just an excellent song. But all of these feel rare to me right now, so it doesn’t encourage the searching. It is entirely possible that I’ll revisit this stuff in a few years and go, “damn, I like this – why did I think it sucked?” and that’s cool. That’s the beauty of having access to basically everything.
Think about stuff you liked as a kid – think about the last time you heard it. Maybe grab a few of those old albums that meant something to you that you stopped listening to for whatever reason, or stuff you hated and never really gave a chance, and and go back and give them a try. Hate them, love them, or “meh” them, it’s worth it for the nostalgia kick. I mean, even fucking Gerardo was fun to go back and check out for me. Color Me Badd, even. I still kind of hate them, but it was fun hearing them again, especially with my current ears.
Have a great rest of your week – go get your jab if you haven’t (it’s time – plenty of availability in most areas now), and take care of yourself.
It’s weird to be sick. I haven’t been sick in a long time. But whatever’s going on with me right now is…well, it just sucks.
I assume it’s not COVID, being that I’m all vaccinated and stuff and I’ve been Mr. Careful. It’s like my body has a cold. I don’t have a runny nose or anything, but I’m just – weak and hurting.
I felt alright for band practice yesterday, which was SUPER FUN even though it was kind of hard work, and we’re super excited to play our first big show back on May 1st (assuming the rain that’s supposed to happen all week is gone by the weekend, like the forecasts are saying). So, YAY Chandler and The Bings!
I watched a great tribute to Adam Schlesinger that Rachel Bloom posted on her YouTube. Makes me want to go back and do a actually good recording of my tribute song to him.
If you have time to kill, check the tribute out and maybe it’ll help you understand why I loved this guy so much…
Back to the couch. Have a wonderful day. I’ll have a Museday Mumbling for you tomorrow, probably. As usual, I’m not even sure what the topic is going to be, but hopefully I’ll come up with something interesting.
Most people who know me probably don’t know this particular fact about me, because I actually don’t talk about it much anymore.
I love Frank Zappa.
I love his crazy music. I love his family, especially Dweezil. I loved his crazy approach to guitar. I loved his obsession with being different.
Alex Winter (yes, THAT Alex Winter – “Bill S. Preston, esq.” himself) made a beautiful documentary that takes you on a trip through Frank’s life, telling it through unprecedented access to the Zappa Vault – Frank recorded as much as he possibly could of his life, his music, everything. There’s a TON of footage you’d never expect to see. It weaved a wonderful story, focusing on Frank’s music, but detailing how he related to his family, his musicians, the media, the music business, everything. It was fascinating to me.
Let me tell my Zappa story.
It all started when I was a little kid living in the Los Angeles suburbs – San Dimas, California, to be precise. Which I now realize is kind of crazy considering who made the movie. What a connection. Anyway…I heard this song “Valley Girl” on the radio. It was EVERYWHERE in 1982, including on a K-Tel compilation (“The Hit List”) that we got late that year (or perhaps sometime in 1983). The song was Frank’s only real hit, actually. It featured his daughter Moon Unit doing her best Valley Girl voice, in a time before people really talked about that as an American dialect. It was melodic, aggressive, and semi-dirty. It would cut between the refrain “Valley Girl” and Moon telling some story about something in the life of the titular teen in the verses, and then go into more detail in the band-sung refrain. I loved everything about it, from the bendy/slidey bass parts to the hyper-melodic choruses. It was weird and wonderful and so very LA. I don’t know that I really understood where it was all coming from, but the song stayed with me.
Cut to my senior year of high school. There was a kid a year behind me who was obsessed with really great guitarists. I can’t remember exactly the circumstances, but we were working on something for the school, and he had a boom box there, and he played two records: The first Extreme record, and Dweezil Zappa’s then-brand-new solo record “Confessions“, which just happened to be produced by the guitarist from Extreme, Nuno Bettencourt. Nuno was fast becoming one of my favorite musicians because of their second record “Extreme II: Pornograffitti”.
In the fall of 1991, I headed to college at the very large San Diego State University. The summer before, I had purchased the Dweezil Zappa record and that first Extreme record. I listened to them over and over. Especially Dweezil’s album. He had a song on there called “Vanity” that also featured his sister, and it got me thinking about Frank again. A few weeks into being at my very large university, I was wandering through the very large student bookstore at SDSU and one of the books they had there was this:
I HAD to have it.
It’s still one of the best books I’ve ever read by a famous person. It goes all over the place in scope, talking about everything from his life to music, business, politics, fatherhood – just tons of different topics, and I read it over and over. It just clicked with me in much the same way the comedy of my hero George Carlin did. He wrote things and said things that both confirmed what I thought, but expanded it in ways I never would have thought to think.
After reading Frank’s book, I was a fan. I hadn’t even delved that deeply into his music yet (at this point it was basically Valley Girl and Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow), and I just tried to find anything I could about him. I didn’t know a lot of people that shared this affection, so I mostly kept it to myself.
Then I moved to Pennsylvania and met a nice kid named Joel Niemann. He liked weird shit like Primus. I liked them, too, and because of our shared affection for Primus (who SUCKS – fans will get that), we became buddies, and I found out he liked Zappa, too. His friend from home, Brian, was way into Zappa, so I think he thought it was cool I liked him, too. Shortly after that I got the “Sheik Yerbouti” album, which featured a track that Joel used to sing that made me laugh called “Broken Hearts Are For Assholes”. Like the Dweezil record, I wore it out. The more I dig in to Frank, the more I find I haven’t even heard yet. He produced so much music in his shortened life that they’ll probably still be releasing “new” stuff for the next 20 years, and he’s been dead for almost 30 now. He died in December of 1993, and it actually broke my heart. I had just become a massive fan, and he was gone. Even worse, this same “love an artist and then they die almost right away” thing had just happened to me four years before that when Stevie Ray Vaughan died. When my daughter got obsessed with Michael Jackson in early 2009, I was extra sad for her when he passed just a few months later. But at least you always have the music.
Frank Zappa was a true iconoclast. A genius composer of truly modern music, rhythmically complex and dense, but performed with ridiculous attention to detail by the genius musicians he hired in his bands, and frequently sort of undercut by nasty lyrics or sophomoric humor. The pearl-clutchers in this country never quite got past that.
Despite his lack of commercial success in America, Frank was a truly American original, even though Europeans and Asians seemed to “get it” a lot better.
I’m not sure if he was too smart, too weird, or too filthy for “normies” to understand, but those three things are why Frank was so important to me and my development as a musician and a person. I joked to my wife Erin that if I were a table, Zappa and Carlin would be two of the legs. The other two would probably be Science and Mr. Rogers.
I highly recommend you check out The Real Frank Zappa Book and Alex Winter’s “Zappa”.
Spotify playlists for further listening:
A nice Frank Zappa playlist that doesn’t scratch the surface but features the songs I mentioned earlier plus some other cool shit.
The Hit List – That K-Tel record I mentioned earlier
