RE: Formal Music

[cbullard@HiWAAY.net (Len Bullard)]

Eh, well thanks to all for the complements
on the formal music bit.  A bored
mind is a terrible thing to waste, but
it is all I have.

Is music a language or rules?
Yes and yes.  We are talking about
formality, here, which in essence
is about agreement.  Two people
who agree that a John Cage piece
is music certainly can.  But unless
we want the most boring thread of
the entire history of LoveHounds,
diving into the debate of semantic
assignment is NOT a thread I want
to start.  I get enough of that doing
my day job.  ;-)

I thought Cage sucked personally,
but if engaging or enraging is what
one needs in their day, go for it.
You'll find me over in the corner
curled up with Kate Bush or
Gordon Lightfoot.  I'm pretty Victorian
as they go....   OTH, if Toad the
Wet Sprocket, the Gin Blossoms
or Mary Chapin Carpenter
are in town, get me a ticket.

Chet Atkins told me this in a dark
corner of a Hilton lounge one summer
night in 1975: "You want in this 
business,  write songs.  I can
hire a hundred good pickers for 
every good songwriter I find."  And
friends, the world is full of songwriters.
So what about Cage?  The questions
in composition are, what do you
want to say, to whom, and in what format?
You might only be talking to yourself,
and that's OK too.  It won't get
you a record deal these days or maybe
it will.  Maybe I should try that, but find
something that turns you to sound and works
and go with that.

Why do I think Kate should have
"trod the boards longer"?  It might
have changed her sound, it might not.
I don't know and I don't care.

It does cause a few things reliably:

1.  An almost psychic ability to read
a room full of people.  You can't survive
six days unless you have enough
empathy to read moods.

2.  Stamina.  It helps to know
what order to do songs in to both
keep an audience awake and keep
your voice from dieing in the second set.
You get stronger.  One tour at 21 or
22 doesn't teach one dip about it,
particularly why one goes home
and not to parties afterwards.

3.  Cooperation.  She is known
as *nice* but tyrannical.  That is
good and bad and good.  She gets
loyalty.  She drives herself
to breakdown.  Her compositions are
works of genius.  We love her, but she
hides herself away.  That's a hard love
to sustain.  It goes one way.

4.  The Undeniable Urge.  Once
you play in front of audiences long enough,
it becomes a lifelong addiction.  It
isn't the applause.  It's the energy.
You have to have played a few proms
to know what the intoxicating effects
of sweat, wet thighs, perfume,
beer, adrenalin, and hairspray are,
or what the joy is of singing their song
to them, and watching them fall into
each other's arms, do that night of
18 year old magic that only happens
once, and be the magicOne that becomes
forever a part of that.  Until ya been there,
ya just don't know, and that is what she
missed.

I just think it would have made her a little
more human, and although I'll get flamed
from here to kansas for it, I think that is
what is missing sometimes from her gig.

I'm just an aging guitar player who won't give
up a summer evening to the falling 
grace of a quiet saturday night,
who still thinks it a privilege to play an
old tune in the corner bar, who heard
a sweet voice singing, "if i only could,
i'd make a deal with god", and fell
hopelessly in love with that voice
and her shining eyes.... and knows
with a certain conviction, that voice
is all there shall be of that love.
I shall not be famous.  My work will 
have the life of a whispered promise
to a teddy bear, but this is not regret,
for so much pleasure has been mine.
All of it from music.  All of it.

Love, my friends.  It makes them fall in love.
And when that fails, it is comfort against the
unendurable.  In the end, it is what is the most
powerful and ephemeral expression, the
notes that rise and fall and die in air, and
live forever in a human heart.  What Kate has
missed, is the look and smell and taste of
human joy that comes back from a well-played
gig.  I wouldn't swap one night of Hammersmith
for what I've seen in a hundred bars and gymnasiums
on the faces of brides and children and old couples
dancing to an ancient standard we just happen to know.
I've seen and smelled and tasted human joy.  It is more
precious than gold, more powerful than applause,
and much too rare for the race that call this stellar 
rock home.  The language of love spoken
eloquently or in serene simplicity always has
the same message.  Put to music, it is a song of joy.

len
Len Bullard