August 23rd, 2006

I've stated this before: Though I play guitar and bass, though I sing and can even keep a beat on a drum-kit, my real abilities are with playing piano and keyboards. It's how I started my musical life (apart from singing) and it is the one constant in my life, besides computer software. And yet, despite the rather obvious conclusion that since I do it best I should be, um, doing it more, I have always had this perverse streak that wants to abandon or minimize my keyboard contributions to music and instead focus on strumming E-minor chords on my guitar, I don't know why, but that's just the way it is.

Or rather, was. I have been moving in different directions lately: I don't want to keep writing songs on guitar, going to the rehearsal rooms with Ken, recording them, overdubbing, then storing them on magnetic media where they will rot and gather dust. I've proved I can do that. I've proved that I am efficient, even. There's little more to that chapter, since there aren't throngs of screaming delirious fans lining up to hear me play them or get into Midnight Madness at their local CD store to buy a copy the instant it is available for release.

Or, more to the point, there aren't a huge volume of downloads of these songs, despite my making them all available completely free of charge. There are two CDs:

But now I want to start creating loops and beats. It's something of a departure for me.

And I'll tell you what has happened to change my opinion on looping: Some contractor at my work here finished his term, and right before he left he gave me access to his hard drive which was chock-a-block full of cruddy amateurs with millions of dollars of production: Ashlee Simpson, Avril Lavigne's latest, Kelly Clarkson, etc. And you know what I discovered? I couldn't tell the difference between them! If I closed my eyes, all I could hear was slick production and somewhere buried amongst professionally-played tracks by studio musicians was the singer's thin little voice all buoyed up by pre-processing, in-studio wizadry, and post-production—the musical equivalent of perfume, hairstyling, and trowel-fulls of makeup. It really didn't matter what crap was being sung because it was all so generically slick and homogenously uncreative.

And you know what? Nobody buying this shit cares. They'll listen to it five times, then it banish it to the bottom of a shelf or drawer where it will never be heard from again. It is like a blockbuster Hollywood movie: A throwaway piece of drivel that people escape to for two hours, then forget by the time they are home and snogging with their boyfriend/girlfriend on the couch.

And I know how these albums are made: "The people" attached to "the artist" get together and have some pre-meetings to discuss what "people" they want to assemble for "the project". Then all the right people are put together and discuss what they are after, just to make sure they are all "on the same page". (WTF?) Once that is settled, "the artist" meets with the "team of songwriters" and they all discuss issues and experiences from her childhood:

(Or whatever ... you get my point). Then "the artist" comes into the studio and is told exactly how to "sing" the "songs" that she "co-wrote" by an overbearing producer who is really just following orders from the committee formed to oversee "the project". Finally, the crap is produced into slick shiny blobs of excrement and they are pressed and shipped to retail stores in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, other members of "the artist's" entourage of "people" are busy arranging appearances on David Letterman, Saturday Night Live, Jay Leno, etc. And when the cheques start rolling into the various bank accounts, "the artist" rides limousines through throngs of screaming girls lined three-deep on the street to "performances" in theatres (or, if she's lucky, stadiums) where she dances and prances, and her voice is pre-recorded but nobody cares because the fans haven't yet caught on to how suckered they have been into this hype with no creativity or substance at all—just image and more image.

And it's that lack of creativity that is celebrated! Not thoughtfulness or anything as rewarding as a twist or unconventional turn to the music or the sound. So I figured that as long as I was trying to put together drums, guitar, bass, keyboards and vocals, I was still unconsciously on that track to Rock Musician, which is now the realm of cutie-pie girls and geriatric has-beens (a lá The Strolling Bones) now anyway. Ken and I spent a few years making two CDs-full of songs. Nothing wrong with most of them ... just that what I am striving for (and, to be truthful, falling a little short of) is so passé, it’s not even retro any more. For every Weezer, Strokes, and Radiohead there are 100 guys like me playing "Louie Louie" and "Good Lovin'" at the local pub for $50 a night and the occasional free drink slipped to you when the manager isn’t paying attention.

But I can sample sounds, and I can use my real God-given talent of piano and keyboards to do something different. Since I’m chasing and losing the competition to Ashlee Simpson et al anyway, I might as well pay less attention to that race, and enter a different kind of race—one that I would not be a chump for winning. Something that I can use my skills to do, not attempt to keep up and fail from a lack of ability. Something I can honestly say I gave a shot at because I wasn't a wannabe.

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