Posts tagged music

I love music in just about all its forms. But seeing it live is an experience in and of itself.

This summer I have been fortunate enough to be able to attend quite a few shows and just about every one of them has been great. As I get on in years my music tastes have matured but not so much that I’ve become closed minded like so many people tend to become. Instead I’ve opened my mind because I no longer see music simply as genres to pigeonhole my tastes into or as a way to define how I dress so I can be identified as a “rocker” or a “goth,” “raver” or a “rapper” and all that sort of crap. So I will go to just about any show if I can without regard to what people deem as a bad or good band – I will decide for myself.

Music is fluid and although artists themselves tend to play “rock” or “rap” they still borrow from other styles of music in small or big ways. You will sometimes hear a guitar in a Wyclef Jean song (i.e. 911) or some record scratching in an Incubus tune (Wish you were here) and so on. Music has a way of growing through the cracks like a flower in the sidewalk. I find that the artists who do really well and last the longest as solo or band acts are the ones that are led by a visionary person or group of people who are willing to take what they grew up listening to and break through and out of their genre by exploring music more as something grander than the sum of what makes their music sound like rock or rap or grunge or rave. You only need to look at OutKast and remember how Andre 3000 broke out of the hip hop mold that Big Boi stuck to like it was his job and measure their respective success after Speaker Boxx/The Love Below and you will get a a clear picture of who really changed the game.

Elvis did it when he took that forbidden “Negro Rock n’ Roll” and embraced it much to the chagrin of the gentrifying forces that were but much to the delight of his growing legion of fans. The Beatles, with McCartney and Lennon at the creative helm, did it when they broke out of the skiffle craze and began to grow into an institution in their own right before meeting Bob Dylan and encouraging him to carry on the torch by influencing him to electrify his folk guitar which would change Bob from a Minnesota Jewish boy into a superstar. Iggy Pop, The Ramones, Jonny Rotten and the punk movement at CBGB did it when they rebelled against the decadence of 70′s heavy metal and tried to bring rock back to its roots whether you liked it or not. And of course let’s not forget the brilliant Kurt Cobain who took the same punk spirit and rebelled against 80′s hair metal and helped start the grunge movement with TAD, Pearl Jam and Mudhoney. The common factor with all the above mentioned legendary artists is that they share the same tendency to “prune” the music tree. Like skilled gardeners they knew to simplify and cut away the fat so the plant could grow healthy again.

As you can see clearly, music has always been a big part of my life. My darkest hours have always been times when music was not around for me for one reason or the other. For me it is the fountain of youth and figures predominantly in my Holy Trinity of Happiness. When I go to a live show I make a night of it and am sure to hit all three parts of the Holy Trinity. I get my creativity, my love and my sustenance in one night. When the show inspires me and influences me I feel creative. When I go with good friends or feel touched by the band’s performance I get my love. And either before or after the show I like to have a good meal which always makes me jolly. When I went to see Rush at the ACC, my cousin Mike and our good friend Bradley took me out for a steak dinner at the Keg before we headed down to the show. Trinity fulfilled and gratefully so!

When I was in an up and coming band I was a complete music junkie. I even got back into rock journalism for the school paper just so I could grab all the free CDs I could. It was getting harder and harder to focus on school (even though I still managed to do well) and it was certainly getting harder to want to make time for a lot of the foolishness that goes along with college. As a performing musician I was so in love with my music and that feeling of complete freedom I got when truly expressing myself on stage that I stayed away from drugs and excessive alcohol. And believe it or not I was a rare breed of frontman that actually turned away groupie sex consistently while the rest of the band would be getting their rocks off like it was going out of style. For me, getting into all that noise would have destroyed my creativity and ability to express myself honestly. I didn’t want to write songs about how I felt when under the influence of something foreign. If I wanted to write about happiness I did who when I was happy. If I wrote a sad song I would shed tears as I wrote and my audience would feel it during a performance because they knew that something real was happening on stage. The thing for me was that the stage was my real home.

What’s that mean you ask? Well it has a lot to do with why I wear mirrored shades all the time. They are not meant as a fashion statement. So stay tuned for the next blog post when I will spill some of the beans on that. I may also throw up some lyrics that I would like to share with you.

Thanks for stopping by, now go see a show and #RockOn.

Since Bon Jovi was the last show I saw, here’s a little treat for all you Jon Bon fans.