I played this gig at the Lighthouse Cafe in Duanesburg NY. It was a fun gig, including some tunes off of the album, along side some ambient noise experiments. The two following acts are also on the video. The people were all very cool, which is always refreshing.
I can’t stop listening to Mehldau lately. I love his improvisational counterpoint. He has such a solid left hand, and great tone too. He blends jazz, classical, and rock so well.
The 50s had Beatniks who pioneered contemporary American counter culteralism, the 60s and early 70s had the hippies, the late 70s and early 80’s had punks. Is there still a need for a prominent counter culture? Does everyone from age 18-35 agree with our political system, or the social strata that comprises America? It seems as though my generation is either apathetic, or sees no need to make a statement about the current state of the world. Possibly we’re simply unimaginative, or socially stilted. Possibly we simply don’t need to anything.
In the late 40s bebop emerged in NYC. The then unknown Jack Kerouac would hang out and listen to Thelonious Monk play wild improv jazz that Glenn Miller deemed “degenerate” but revolutionized American cultures’ perception of music. Influenced by early NYC jazz players Kerouac went on to pioneer the highly individual anti-establishment sentiments that made up 50s counter culture.
In San Fransisco the Beat influence merged with their Renaissance and went on to spawn the hippies, with their “free love” and anti war ideology. They used folk music as a catalyst for their protest songs. Songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell went on to bring the music and ideology of this movement to larger and larger audiences.
This music bled into rock music as it progressed and took the shape of Cream, Big Brother, and Hendrix’s mind expanding psychedelia. As Vietnam progressed and became more desperate, so did the music and counter cultural ideology against it.
After Vietnam’s end, and rock had turned to excess, punk rock came to replace it. Vietnam gave way to the cold war (which it was a part of), and the disillusionment experienced by the Beat generation over WWII was mirrored by the same sentiment regarding that war. Punk stripped everything it touched of excess, and blatantly reveled in the nihilism that became increasingly apparent in society. Cuba pointed it’s missiles at the US, we sparred with Russia over the middle east, and threatened to fly atom bombs over the north pole to Moscow. With our imminent death from radioactive fallout imminent, figures such as Sid Vicious and Joe Strummer rose up to embody the “Fuck You, nothing matters” mind set their generation.
30 years after 1980 the US is still in conflict with the middle east. 9 years ago the twin towers were attacked as a result. Our political system is increasingly devoid of ideological diversity, and for the past 11 years the mean average income of American families has steadily fallen (more than 5% now) with no sign of improving (thus increasing the class gap, and slowly but steadily eroding the middle class). What music reflects this? What popular philosophies adequately address this? I am not willing to say that no one has, but there is no cohesion between people or groups who feel this way. Our generation, I fear, will pass by as a silent and apathetic one during a time when there is no need for silence or apathy.
Writing music is relatively easy. You follow a set pattern of chords, and while you have choices, the system exists. Not to detract from the art of writing music, but for me, in comparison with writing lyrics, music presents very few problems. Lyrics require an entire skill set that makes me uneasy at best. The issue starts at a very rudimentary level; what do I have to say? The things that impress me as important are relationships: my wife and I, my friends/family and I, God and I, myself and I. Saying that, though, aught to open an entire life time worth of material… but what to say about those things? Maybe it’s simply a matter of looking more closely at those, or making a point to ramble on my blog about them.
