For love or money (part three of four): The Lost Years.

(This is part three of a four-part series on how I finally starting thinking about what I am instead of what I want to be, or something like that. Sorry for the long post!)

Moving back to SF > planning to start a band with college friends >  bands I played in > IAC >  The Sharper Image > leaving the country and music behind

The long drive back to San Francisco from LA ended at my parents' house, which is about an hour south of SF. I stayed with my folks for awhile, a few months, at least, then moved into a house on the border of SF and Daly City. The house backed up against the 280 freeway and was painted a chipped, faded white and fronted by a small, struggling patch of grass. Inside, I remember shag carpets, which I did my very best to clean with a Rug Doctor. My housemates were two of my very best college friends, Jeff and Eric, who had helped me record several songs during my college years by adding their exquisite lead vocals and harmonies. Although I was definitely back on a Writer track, having read The Writer's Art and committing myself to finally really practicing the craft, music remained top of mind and my biggest dream, and Jeff, Eric and I planned to start a band. We never did. Eric wanted to go to med school, Jeff had plans to get an MBA then return to his home state of Minnesota and take over the family business and I, well, I didn't have any sort of long-term plan. It's not that I was a crazed musician hell bent on making it, damn the odds and the torpedoes, I just didn't have a plan beyond starting a band.

I don't remember how Jaco came to live with us, but he did, and lo and behold he had played the drums once. Could he play them again? He mused that maybe he could, got his kit, set it up and we jammed in the garage (see pic). Jaco was out of practice but obviously a total natural. My spirits soared and though I knew Eric was not interested, given his med school prep and girlfriend issues (a saga that ended happily), I got Jeff fired up, enlisted my friend and fellow GITer Mike Northcutt, who had also moved back to the Bay Area, agreed to play the bass and we were off. Our name: The Paupers. One gig into our career, we stopped. I can't remember why, but though we played well together and sounded good, it was not to be. Wait, I can, too, remember why we broke up. Jeff's MBA plan was coming into focus, Jaco wanted to become a bartender and Mike was too good for us (truly, he was, I don't hold this against him at all). Once again, everyone but me had bigger plans.

In time, Eric left for med school and Jaco left for... I can't remember, so, without any band ambitions to justify having a house where we could rehearse, Jeff and I moved into an apartment closer to downtown SF. But Jeff got accepted to Michigan and soon was loading his car for the drive back to the center of the country. Before we moved to the downtown apartment, I was working as a salesman in a stereo store, but not being so clueless as to realize that this was no long-term career, I was trying to do something new. I honestly don't remember what exactly, so that tells you how cool it was. 

I re-focused on writing. Clearly, the music thing was a dead-end, and while writing was still not the dream music was, it was a dream just the same and I was in need of a dream. "What now?" was a favorite topic of internal dia(mono?)log for me. I finally landed a new job at a company called Information Access Company. It was more of a reading job than writing --  I was paid to read magazine articles and index them by entering keywords in to a software program -- but in time, I was promoted into the Computer Database group, where I would read articles on the computer industry and write abstracts of them. Dull, to be sure, but I fancied myself an unsung Hemingway, as I crafted my spare, adjective free prose day after day after day after day... Once again, music reared its head and said, "What about me?" While I was still a lowly Indexer, a friend, Cory, who had a band, called me and told me their  guitar player had just quit and asked if I would I step in. I protested that I wasn't good enough, but Cory persisted and I finally joined The Distractions (see pic), a bar band with some ambition, in April of 1987 (I know that because Cory keeps good notes!). So there I was, by day indexing magazine articles and by night, about three times a week, playing songs like Midnight Hour, Happy and What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding. Cool, but there had to be more to life.

I forget how, exactly, but I started to hear about something called copywriting, and I set my sights on getting a job with an ad agency. I signed up for a night class in copywriting, and I liked it enough to take a second class from the same instructor, and while I was never the best student, I was also not the worst. Encouraged, I started combing the classifieds for writing gigs and one day, there it was. The Sharper Image needed a writer. It wasn't an ad agency, but I loved the Sharper Image catalog, I loved gadgets, I loved the idea of writing short, punch catalog copy. I applied and they sent me a copy test. I took the test, then they called me in and gave me another copy test, for which they paid me (ah, the good old days). I took that test. Then they called me in again and gave me another paid copy test. Finally, they called me in again and told me that of the 100 initially selected to take that first test, I was the one they wanted to hire. I think that was maybe the first day in my life I truly felt good about myself. 

The Sharper Image was everything I'd hoped. The gadgets were great fun, the pay was good and, most important, I was really, truly writing for a living. Still, music tempted me, and after the Distractions disbanded I joined an originals band with high school friend, Toby Germano. We were called Germano Warfare (see pic) and I am proud to say that after playing the Paradise Lounge in San Francisco, we were told by the owner that we would never be welcome there again because we were the  "loudest fucking thing" he had ever heard. Toby had serious talent, great songs and ambition and deeply hoped that Germano Warfare would go somewhere. I decided that if he was to really have a shot, he couldn't be dragged down by me, and so I quit the band and focused on my new job. It was the end of the 80s, though, and Sharper Image was losing relevance. People stopped buying baubles and soon the company was on the brink. I got my pink slip in January of 1990, I recall.

I took stock. I was in my mid twenties, and while still pretty much completely unsure about what to do for a living, Sharper Image had given me hope that writing was a real possibility. As always, the siren call of music was there, but more faint than ever. Most important, I had met a girl from Germany and her visa had just run out. With my new-found confidence in my writing abilities and my ever present uncertainty about what to do for a living and my congenital tendency to want a colorful, romantic life, I decided to follow the girl to Europe. My ticket was round-trip, with a three month limit. I was gone for four years.

NEXT: EUROPE AND BACK 

For love or money (part 2 of 4): College and L.A.

(This is part two of a four-part series on how I finally starting thinking about what I am instead of what I want to be, or something like that. Sorry for the long post!)

When I left California for college in Colorado, I still had no clear idea of what I wanted to DO in life nor did I know what to study. I remember feeling that I was leaving my music dream behind, it was a hobby now, a pastime, just fun. My new dream was to be a writer. I had fantasies of becoming the next Hemingway, but I was also keenly aware of the need to get real about life. I needed to prepare for a career and for reasons I don't fully recall, writing did not seem like a potential job. Maybe linking writing to making a living just killed the romance of it, I don't know; regardless, I did not think studying writing was a valid reason to be in college. Journalism would have been valid, because it's specific and career-oriented, but not plain old writing. Nowadays, of course, I wish with all my heart I could go back and approach college for what it truly is: that rare opportunity to simply learn about the world and delve deep into what you find interesting. But I cannot. So college, for me, became an extension of high school, a place where countless teachers tried to engage and teach me -- and failed because I was just not interested in what they had to say. Classes started an ended leaving not much knowledge behind, a year passed, twothenthreethenfour and... graduation. As amazed as I was to get into college I was equally amazed that I finished in four years. But now what?

I took stock. I was no closer to deciding what to do for a living, so I asked myself how faired the writing dream. The answer was discouraging. Despite four years of chance after chance to write a short story, a poem, something, I had written pretty much nothing, save for many papers about many books I struggled to even remember, much less understand and critique. But I had songs, lots of them, many of which I had recorded on my Tascam multitrack tape machine (pictured above, post-college, Whittier, CA). Was music my calling, after all? Were my writerly dreams and English degree just a detour? I decided -- with my parents' blessing and using the remnants of my trust fund, most of which had gone to college, as it should have -- to find out and I headed to Los Angeles and go to music school. Not a proper school like Berklee, mind you, but a place called The Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT), now called Musician's Institute.

At GIT a learned more about the guitar than I ever thought possible (it had seemed like such a simple instrument) but the most important thing I learned was that I was no guitarist. My deficiencies were deep and most likely impossible to overcome. The news was also less-than-encouraging for my songwriting. I knew in my heart that my songs needed to be better, but a review at GIT by Kenny Loggins of a song I had written called "The Upside of Down" confirmed some deep fears, and the one person I had actually tried to sell my music to had listened to a few of my songs and then turned to me to say, "I really hate music like this."

At some point, I sat down to write a letter to my sister about how things were going for me in LA. I wanted to write a letter that would convey both a sense of the place and a sense of self. I felt very lost, and writing the letter was going to be a grounding moment, but as I put pen to paper, I realized something even more troubling than my music worries: I didn't know how to write. Sad but true, I held a BA in English, yet I was unsure about what went into a basic sentence. How could this be? I was shaken, for now not only music seemed tenuous, but also writing, a skill I had always just kind of assumed was in me.

I put off writing the letter and headed to a bookstore, where I bought The Writer's Art, by James Kilpatrick, because, well, it just looked good. I can safely say that this book changed my life. It opened my eyes to so much -- grammar, style, Quality. Later, I bought Strunk and White, too, but it could not hold a candle to The Writer's Art. And from that day on, though I continued with my guitar studies and scattered attempts at writing songs, I would say I became a writer, not because I started writing stories (I did not), but because I started to think constantly about the craft of prose. And when GIT ended, I did not stay in LA to try to break into a scene that would not have me. Instead, in late 1986, after about 18 months arriving in LA, I drove out of the basin, the smog thinning as I gained altitude along 101, and when I crested the final hill, I remember seeing blue sky at last. Then I plunged into tule fog. And as I drove on into that dark, grey cold, I did not realize how metaphoric the sad, water-filled air was.

NEXT: THE LOST YEARS

For love or money? Part one of a four-part series.

(Note:  This is a re-reboot of an earlier post. I wasn't happy with the way the earlier posts were written; they weren't quite right. Argh! Sorry for being a little repetitive!)

Growing up I always wondered what I would DO for a living and the things that appealed to me most were things like money, fame and always getting the girl. In other words, while I wondered about what to do, I dreamed of the results more than the actual task. Because of this (and, let’s face it, not being all that smart was also a factor) I was a terrible student. The stuff I was being asked to study just all seemed so dull and irrelevant. I wanted to simply parachute into a position that afforded me wealth and influence and a beach house in Malibu.

Rock music seemed to be my best shot. I loved listening to it and loved playing it and it paid well. Unfortunately, I was no prodigy on the guitar. Almost as troubling, my singing voice could best be described as tolerable, my sense of rhythm and time were shaky and I had no self-confidence. I persevered, though. I played in bands, I tried to write songs, I worked on my guitar chops daily. Stardom remained elusive.

In my later teens, as the rock arena stayed just out of reach, I began to consider other potential occupations. College loomed and after that The Working World, and with rock and roll seeming to be a road to certain poverty, I needed a new dream. But what else to DO? Anything involving math was definitely out. Same with sports. I couldn’t draw… but I could write. Or at least I could write better than I could do most other things, which wasn’t saying much, but it was a start. And writing, like music, could lead to stardom, of sorts.

With my new-found sense of self, my gaze shifted from the rock arena to the writer’s desk. Specifically, Hemingway’s desk. Never mind that I had no ideas for novels, had never written much of anything I was proud of and hardly had the balls to drive an ambulance in war-torn Spain – or any other war, for that matter – I wanted to be like Hemingway. Dammit. I wanted to be the tortured artist, the pained soul who toiled over single words for days, who sought the Truth, who could delve deep into the human condition and come back with a very fine read, and yes, earn a serious paycheck and gain fame and allure for his troubles.

Thankfully, despite my bad grades and no indication whatsoever that I would ever amount to much, I was accepted to college, so against all odds, I was going to be given a chance to ponder writing and other notions for four whole years. College would be to me as Spain was to Hemingway, the place I became a different person, the place I would discover an inner, stronger, more talented me, the place where I would finally, possibly start to live my dreams.

Didn't work out that way.

NEXT: COLLEGE AND L.A.

New Year's Resolutions.

Perhaps if I publish these to the world, I'll feel a little more pressure to actually achieve them.

1) Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, at least 3 times a week.

2) Finish my album by the end of February. Songs will include, at minimum:

Demons and Saints

43 @ 22

Talking

Water Under The Bridge

Yo Yo (written with Tim Young)

I Got Drunk

Here Comes the Weather (written with Sam Bevan)

Money, Money, Money

That's Rock and Roll

Borderline Love (written with Dave Tutin)

3) Finish my album with Dave Tutin by the end of January. Songs will be:

Borderline Love (yes, this song will appear on both my album and this one)

The Forgotten Place

Easier Said Than Done

Waitress Blues

4) Learn how to use my damn camera. It's a Canon 40D and I use it as a glorified point and shoot, shameful.

5) Earn $1000 from music. How sad is that? But in today's culture of free, which teaches that it's completely cool to steal music, $1000 is actually ambitious.

I can't let 2009 end on a bummer of a post, so here'e one more.

Earlier today I posted about the fact that I just learned that I suffered a stroke either a result of my brain injury or as the thing that made me lose consciousness in the first place, and I just can't stand to the end this year, my frist year of being married, on such a down note, so here is a high note.

On Saturday, December 19, after munching dim sum, I headed over to Hyde Street for a session with Larkin Gayl. It was magical (at least for me!). Larkin has one of the best voices I have ever heard, and I consider myself to be immensely lucky to be able to work with her.

I first met Larkin when she came into to Hyde Street to sing Here Comes the Weather, the first song, as it turned out, to be completed for my album. Sadly, she was under a strict contract that forbid me from using her name, so I could not credit her properly for her performance that day. But now I can, because she opted not to renew her contract. So, just because I can,

LARKIN GAYL IS THE SINGER ON HERE COMES THE WEATHER!

And what a singer she is. Everyone who has ever heard HCTW immediately asks, with stunned reverence, "Who's singing?" I say Larkin and then point out that she has her own album, which people then buy. Always makes me feel good! (To hear HCTW, please use the player to the right!)

Anyway, on the 19th, Larkin did harmony work on two of the songs I co-wrote with my friend Dave Tutin (me/music, Dave/words) and her voice simply made the songs bloom. Dave Brogan, the lead singer on the songs, has a rough, dry voice with tremendous character and texture, while Larkin's voice is buttery smooth and rich. Together, their voices are like chocolate over a biscotti. Wait, that simile just doesn't do justice to the performance! Suffice it to say, I am very, very happy.

If the stars align, and Jupiter moves into the house of Venus and a certain volcano in India explodes and an eyelash I wished on awhile ago does what's right, the songs Larkin sang on recently will be released on an EP by Dave Tutin and me by February 1, 2010. Stay tuned!

And buy Larkin's album here if you haven't already!

Larkin on Amazon

Larkin on iTunes

My new status: stroke victim.

Yesterday, I went to see a neurologist. It was a follow-up visit, and I was expecting to talk about the Epley maneuver and other vertigo reducing therapies, plus get additional ideas on why my symptoms (vertigo, cold legs, twitchiness, etc) are so persistent. I had forgotten about the MRI and other scans I had sent to the doc in prep for my visit, but these are what he wanted to discuss, because he had spotted a stroke on my vremis, a part of the cerebellum thought to be "linked to the brain's natural ability to integrate and analyze inertial motion."

I felt a bolt of fear go through me, followed by a wave of melancholy.

He went on.

He said that he wasn't sure whether the stroke had caused me to loose consciousness back in 2006, when I suffered my severe traumatic brain injury or whether it was the result of the whiplash of my head bouncing off the bathroom wall, but regardless, the location of the stroke would explain the Parkinson's-like movements I sometimes exhibit, and the trouble have coordinating my movements in unfamiliar environments.

Sigh.

As with all things brain, there is no set treatment and certainly no guarantee of results for the treatments that are thought to maybe, possibly help, but on the doc's orders, I am awaiting delivery of a Tai Chi DVD. He also gave my some drugs, but I want to talk with him further before sallowing the first pill.

What a way to end the year.

Dear 1999 Jeff.

There's a blog event going on at Muscian Wages, for which seven music bloggers are answering the following question:

If you could go back to 1999 and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

I can't resist, especially because I am one to dwell on the past and play coulda/shoulda/woulda way too often.

••••

Dear 1999 Jeff,

This is going to be a little weird and by all known science, totally impossible, but I am you 10 years from now -- writing to you.

And I have some advice.

STOP FRETTING ABOUT MONEY
You have plenty of it, you make plenty of it, you will make plenty more -- and it will never be enough. Why? Because it's not money you want, or even what money can buy. You will learn this. The hard way.

ASSUME POSITIVE INTENT
You will pick up this tidbit of new age advice while in talk therapy, following a severe traumatic brain injury (yup, as bad as it it sounds). It's a gem of a tidbit and if you can remember to keep it foremost in mind as you deal with the world around you, you will spend a lot less time being mad and worrying about who's out to get you (most likely no one).

GET MARRIED
You will put this off for years and when you finally tie the knot, you will wonder what took you so long. And there won't be a good answer.

WRITE SONGS
You can do it. I know that every time you start a song you can't finish it, but you can. Here's how: as ideas start to coalesce into something more than just a jumble of words and notes, ask yourself what you are writing about. Try to make the answer reasonably specific. When you have it, place it at the top of your lyric sheet and when you get stuck, go back to it. Also, don't be afraid to modulate. Key changes are the key to good melody.

DRINK LESS
You're not in danger of becoming an alcoholic, but you drink too much. And what does it get you, save for a headache and regrets?

PUT MORE EFFORT INTO YOUR FRIENDSHIPS
You're good about family, but your friends tend to come in second to your job. Don't get me wrong, your job matters, but not more than your friends. Just try to remember this before cancelling on weddings and other events.

That's about it, I think. I know you wish I would tell you what stocks to buy, but I won't. And before you get all upset, remember point two above.

Jeff

For love or money? Part one of a three-part series.

When I was a kid, I confess I wanted to be rich and famous. My dream, in fact, was to be a rock star in the vein of McCartney or Lennon or Paul Simon. Why did I think this could ever be so? I didn’t really, but it was what I wanted. My chances looked bad: I was no prodigy on the guitar, my singing voice was best described as tolerable, my sense of rhythm and time were shaky and I had no self-confidence. I persevered, though. I played in bands, I tried to write songs, I worked on my guitar chops daily. Despite my efforts, stardom remained elusive.

In my later teens, as the rock arena stayed just out of reach, I began to consider other potential occupations. College loomed and after that The Working World, and with rock and roll seeming to be a road to certain poverty, I needed a new dream. But what else to do? Anything involving math was definitely out. Same with sports. I couldn’t draw… But I could write. Or at least I could write better than I could do most other things, which wasn’t saying much, but it was a start.

With my newfound sense of self, my gaze shifted from the rock arena to the writer’s desk. Specifically, Hemingway’s desk. Never mind that I had no ideas for novels, had never written much of anything I was proud of and hardly had the balls to drive an ambulance in war-torn Spain – or any other war, for that matter – I wanted to be like Hemingway. Dammit. I wanted to be the tortured artist, the pained soul who toiled over single words for days, who sought the truth, who could delve deep into the human condition and come back with a very fine read – and some money.

It was not to be.

NEXT: THE SHORT UNHAPPY LIFE OF JEFF, THE WRITER

Professional vs. confessional. Which am I? Which are you?

The other day I was reading an interview with Bob Dylan in which he described himself as a confessional songwriter, not professional.  His meaning was that he writes songs to say something not to get paid (although he clearly gets paid, a lot).

His distinction made me ask myself: which am I? Obviously, I’m not professional, as I make nary a dime for my efforts, and I am not motivated by money to write songs. But I’m not confessional, either, as I don’t write songs because I feel I have something to say. Instead, I write them because they build up inside, and I just need to release them, or they will drive me nuts.

So here’s the question: which are you, confessional or professional? In other words, do you pursue art for money or to say something or neither or both?

Technology is great. But only if you have the right adapter.

You've heard the word snafu. Although, you probably know this, snafu is an acronym for situation normal all fucked up. Throughout the making of my album, I can honestly say that I have not had many snafus. No, mostly things have gone right, and when they have not, a fix has been quickly found. Not yesterday.

There we were, me and Sam Bevan, all set to track Sam’s bass to a song called The Road Back. I handed Sam my trusty AKG headphones and then grabbed my cheap Sony’s ‘phones, so I could listen and offer feedback on Sam’s playing. Shazbot! The Sony’s needed an adapter to plug into my Pro Tools box. Calmly, I looked in the place I normally keep the adapter and it wasn’t there. No problem, I figured, I have more! So I looked in the place where I keep all my adapters. No dice. Well, I’ll just assemble one, I figured, using various other adapters. I mean, all I needed was to go from the 1/8” inch headphone plug to the ¼” Pro Tools jack. Surely, I had what I needed. But I did not. Another frantic search ensued yielding… nada. There was no time to go buy the needed adapter, as we only had about 90 minutes for our session, so there we sat, equipped with two basses, a direct box for tone, a Digidesign MBox 2 Pro, a MacBook Pro, a whopper of a hard drive, studio monitor speakers (which I haven’t figured out how to connect to Pro Tools yet), a 23-inch monitor, software plug-ins galore, a Shure microphone, two pairs of headphones and more cables than would be comical and yet we could not have an effective session, because we could not both hear Sam’s during tracking or playback.

We made the best of it, but did not get the final track. Sigh. In adland, there’s a famous IBM spot that ends with the punch line, “You need an adapter.” Truer words have rarely been spoken.

More thoughts on my image conundrum.

Yesterday I ranted for a bit about the absurdity of how musicians are using the word brand to talk about how they market themselves, but on further reflection, I get it: artist names can indeed become brands and be slapped on perfume, clothing and other stuff with huge financial benefit to the artist, so why not, especially in an age when no one seems to want to pay for music?

For me, personally, I am not seriously contemplating a line of fragrances or anything else right now, but I am very much pre-occupied with what to call myself. Because a lot rides on a name, I think. And my name vis a vis my music has issues. (Plus, it’s hard to pronounce, because even here in the Bay Area, where one of the main streets is Shattuck Avenue, when people see my name for the first time, they are flummoxed and invariably put the accent on the second syllable when it is in fact on the first).

Let’s say I decide to market myself under Jeff Shattuck. So, someone sees “Jeff Shattuck” and thinks, “Huh, now that is a rockin’ name, wonder what his tunes sound like.” Then he hits play. Maybe the song is Demons & Saints, and he thinks, “Hell yeah, I’m gonna a crack me a Pabst and listen to a few more.” He clicks on Love & Hate. He thinks, “Wait, is this the same dude, I’ve only had three beers, I’m not THAT drunk, what’s going on here?” So now he clicks “Here Comes The Weather.” The response: “What is this wimpy chick song about being all bummed out over a fight? Damn, I think something is wrong with my ‘net connection. Damn Comcast bastards. I want the ROCK. Shit, dropped my beer.”

See the problem? My songs are all sung by different people, so to market them all under one name, which connotes a single singer or at least a strong player (think Santana), sets the listener up to be confused. Less troublesome but still an issue, if you like one because of the voice, who’s to say you’ll like the others?

But what if I went with a faux band-type thing, a la Steely Dan? Honestly, this is what I have been most tempted to do. Possible band names are My Shirt Is Cool, Rocks and Sand, and TTUCK (a clever play my name, don’t you think?). I’ve created various CD covers with all these, they all seem fine, but, but, but… everyone I know says to just go with my name.

Perhaps if I were a true singer songwriter, I would agree that my name is indeed my best vehicle (save for the pronunciation issue). After all, if I were an artist in the vein of Paul Simon or Dylan (hah!), I could market myself under my own name and people would flock in droves to my web site to hear my voice, crashing the servers with their enthusiasm and being blissfully rewarded as they listened to stream after stream of my tuneful tenor. But, as always, reality is a little different from fantasy. And the reality is this: I can’t sing. Maybe even worse, my sense of time is about as good as brick’s (and no, I don’t mean I’m rock steady). As a result, I need others to sing and play my songs. This is not debatable.

So what should I do? Any thoughts? (Please use the player on the right to preview tunes, use the double arrows to jump to the next song, there are four available!)

Do I really need a brand?

When I was in adland,  the phrase I mumbled to myself more often than any other was, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Why?

Because in adland, people constantly debate things no sane person would ever debate.

A favorite topic: what is a brand? Now, keep in mind, this is like a manufacturing company arguing over the meaning of the word bolt. To their credit, however, adfolk know the foolishness of their ways, and call such exercises in redefining the obvious naval gazing (as in staring into one's belly button).

But now the music industry has got me saying YGTBFKM a lot

Why?

Because over and over again I see musicians talking about their brands. To their credit, however, they seem to intuitively understand that the word brand simply means image. Still, why is everyone using the word brand? What the hell is wrong with the word image? I think it’s a fashion thing, as in one word is in and the other is out. I also think it’s an indication of the total acceptance of commercial interest in music, and as a result, musicians wanting to adopt commercial marketing techniques

Now me, being a product of adland, I’m thinking, “Hey, I get this, I can DO this!”

So… what is my brand? How do I want others to perceive me? Am I a former big shot creative director who was tragically injured in some sort of massive accident resulting in a severe traumatic brain injury, but who has been neurologically rewired by said brain trauma to be a songwriting machine? Or am I just an everyday songwriter with odd twitches and who never plays live because of some sort of mysterious medical problem? Or am I an Apple project and not real at all but a long, complex string of computer code, soon to be dumped into a sophisticated robot being developed in Japan? Oh, the choices.

Any opinions? Votes for any of the above? Other ideas?

Next post: a more serious discussion of this serious -- truly, it is – topic.

How I make lemonade.

If you’re in advertising or were until recently, you’ve probably heard of a new movie called Lemonade, written by Eric Proulx, which is about adfolk around the country who have turned the lemon of being laid off into a sweet, refreshing elixir.

I cannot wait to see this movie.

True, I was not laid off in the traditional sense, but I did lose my job after my brain injury, and I can completely relate to the experience of losing one’s livelihood and career and even sense of purpose in an instant. More important, I can relate to the feeling of “waking up” to realize that there is a whole world out there beyond the typical cubicle of adland, a world that awaits and rewards creative thinking. Obviously, those rewards aren’t always monetary, but they are rewards just the same: a greater sense of well being, the luxury of spending less time in a state of fear, the joy of doing something creative (anything!) besides advertising. This last bit — the joy of doing something creative besides advertising — has been especially relevant to me. For I was not the classic creative director: I did not have a sheaf of unfinished screenplays in my desk, or a novel-in-waiting deep in my hard drive or a studio filled with finished and sketched paintings. I had advertising and nothing more.

But after my brain injury, I suddenly had something I hadn’t had in years: free time. And I mean truly free time. I was not consumed with worry about my boss’s Machiavellian streak, I was not fretting over campaigns past, present and future, what to do about the weaker players on my creative team, how to reward the stronger ones, whether I would ever win a Pencil or do a Superbowl spot, and on and on and on. Instead, in those early days, I worried about whether I could get to a toilet or bucket in time, should I have to throw up (a frequent problem), I feared stairs of all kinds, and I wondered, somewhat casually, when I would feel better (little did I know).

To pass the time I started playing my guitar more. Then something truly strange happened. Suddenly, I started writing songs. The first totally new song I wrote, one that did not attempt to build on a past riff or lyric, was Demons & Saints. I remember I was watching a DVD my friend Toby gave me about one of Tom Petty’s Fillmore runs, and mid-film I took a break to walk down the street to a get a cup of coffee at my local Peet’s. Walking back, I was struggling, weaving along the sidewalk, constantly touching trees and walls for balance despite having my trusty cane with me, and the line and melody for what would become the chorus of the song (almost verbatim!) popped into my head: “too many demons and two few saints”.

Every writer has his favorite instrument. Every photographer has his favorite lens. Every artist his favorite tool. For me at the time, my favorite guitar for noodling was my Steinberger. It’s small, never goes out of tune, sounds good unplugged and is comfortable to play when one is lying on a couch, as I mostly was. So when I was safely back on my couch, coffee on the table and guitar in-hand, I worked out the chords to the melody I had just heard on my walk home and then, and this is really amazing, damn near finished the music for the rest of the song. Before that fateful moment, finishing was never something I could do. I would get discouraged, get distracted (by an ad?), I would hit a wall. And the song would languish in limbo for the rest of eternity. But not this time. And since that fateful day, songwriting has been my lemonade.

I wish I could say I had INTENTIONALLY made the change from being all consumed by advertising to consuming lemonade, but I can’t. It just happened. For me, the catalyst was an accident, for others, chance of a different kind, but chance just the same. And all I can say to all of you out there who have been pushed from the creative castle of advertising, before you attempt to storm the castle once more, make a batch of lemonade, take a sip, and ask yourself if you really have to go back. More important, ask yourself if you really want to.

Oh, and visit http://www.pleasefeedtheanimals.com/, the blog that goes hand-in-hand with the movie Lemonade.

The myth of the lone inventor.

(Note: in adland, I often write short pieces to set up ideas. This post traces its roots to just such a piece, which, by the way, was rejected by the client withou so much as a comment!)

The solitary genius. We can all imagine his greatest moment.

He was alone at his piano.

Alone at her typewriter in a cabin in the woods

Alone amidst a sea of empty cubicles and darkened overhead lights.

But the lone inventor is a myth.

Worse, it’s a lie.

The true heroes are unsung. They are those on whose shoulders all so-called lone inventors have stood. Because while the ideas that fundamentally change and advance human culture might come to us when we are alone, they are born not of one mind, they are born of many.

Ideas bloom where people mix and coalesce,

where people cooperate and communicate,

where we isten to each other.

I’m thinking about all this now, as I near the end of the journey for completing my first album. I started the project alone and more or less hell bent on finishing it that way. Why? I wanted control, I did not want to be challenged, I wanted to do it my way.

What a fool.

Early on in the project, while not necessarily recognizing the bigger problem of trying to be a lone inventor, I switched gears. The catalyst: a talk with my friend Toby about the first session tapes. He pronounced them to be utter shit (my words, not his, but the meaning is the same). He was right, and so I started over, and built a team that I continue to work with to this day. In the years since late 2006, there have been a few key additions to the team, all suggested by earlier team players. And as a result, everything is so much better — the songs, the playing, the sound, everything.

I am deeply indebted to everyone who has worked with me on this. I could not have done it alone. No one could. And no one does, despite what you might hear or read.

Never mind the bollocks, here comes the Botox.

Michael Jackson’s legacy was alive and well last night at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25^th Anniversary Concert on HBO. And not in a good way, save for Stevie Wonder’s performance of Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel.” For way to many rockers looked Jacko-ghoulish, as a result of Botox and scalpels.

I only made it through U2’s set last night and plan to watch more of the show today, but of the folks I saw, precious few looked properly aged, and way more than I would have expected looked downright, well, MJesque. And the performers weren’t the only ones using technology: the performances themselves were so Auto-Tuned as to be interesting only for the “wow, that’s perfect” factor, which, of course, is not a factor in proper rock and roll.

All of this blasphemy was in full display in Jerry Lee’s thoroughly embalmed, show-opening performance of “Whole Lotta Shakin”. His face barely moved as he went through the motionless motions of the song. Happily, his utter lack of time could not be corrected fully and he sounded like utter shit. Which, honestly, was cool, but sensing as I could the complete castration of cacophony, I was properly worried that the rest of the concert would be more doctored than, yes, MJ. It was. Even Bruuuuce looked Botoxed to 10^th Avenue.

Thank god for Mick Jagger. He knew what was going on and it wasn’t rock and roll. So he called out U2 for being a “house band” and proceeded to deliver a positively Vegas-like performance that would have been embarrassing had it not been so clear that Jagger was thinking, “What a fucking joke.” And wrinkles? He brought every last hard-earned one and wore them proudly, albeit under what was most likely a wig.

Oh, and one other act was honest, I think. Simon and Garfunkle delivered a stunning Sound of Silence, and Paul Simon himself was the only performer I truly sensed was angry at the sad, unhappy concert unfolding around him, and he resolutely sang his parts LIVE and played his guitar LIVE while all around him, even right next to him in Garfunkle’s WEAK opening to “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, others chose to play dead.

Roll over Beethoven, indeed.

Oh, and Ozzie rocked.

"Om" meets "Oh Yeah!" Recording vocals with Toby in a yoga studio.

Yesterday rocked. Literally. Because at around 11:30 AM, I met up with Toby Germano, who’d driven down from Sonoma, and the two of us headed off to a yoga studio to record some vocals over a track called 43@22.

Toby and I have known each other since high school, and since we’re both in our 40s, that’s a long time. Back in the late seventies, we formed a few bands, then in the eighties there was another one, and finally in the 90s, I decided I so completely sucked at music that the best thing to do was to give it up. Despite my bailing on the band, Toby stayed friends with me (says a lot for the man’s character, which runs deep) and these days, nearly twenty years since I walked out on Germano Warfare, we are once again doing music together.

Things got refired in 2006-7, after I decided to finally record an album and Toby offered to me me pick a rhythm section (winners: Andy Korn, Sam Bevan) and play on some songs. To show my gratitude, I produced a four-song EP for Toby. In just a few days, Toby was done (that’s how he rolls), and the EP, called Inconsolable, soon appeared on iTunes and other places.

We then got to work on a few my tunes, but when it came time for Toby to lay down some lead vocals, things went a touch awry. We were at Hyde Street, Jaime Durr was engineering and the songs on deck were Demons and Saints and 43@22. First up was Demons, which Toby nailed, delivering a classic rock vocal performance that gives the tune a slight menace and keeps the overall performance feeling just on the tight side of loose. Then we cued up 43 and whatever vibe was hanging with us decided to step out and buy some crack in the surrounding neighborhood, never to return. We all left feeling good and bad, good about Demons and bad about 43.

But Toby took to playing the song live up in Sonoma, and in the process identified and rectified some melodic problems. He sent me a quick demo of how he was playing the song, and I knew right away we were ready to record again. This time, though, we would dispense with the big time studio. Instead, we used a yoga studio my yoga teacher told me about eons ago and where I now go to record vocal demos on days I feel up for singing (makes me very dizzy, so I keep the crooning to a minimum). For a mic, we used Toby’s Shure SM 58, plugged it straight into my M-Box 2 Pro, which was connected my laptop and we were… crap, Toby’s headphone cable shorted out and by the way where the hell was my Firewire cable for the external drive and oh a music stand would have been nice and why is Pro Tools behaving oddly and… we were off. The recording process was so fast, Toby and I communicating in real time and face-to-face (no control room window to get in the way), me running Pro Tools and not having to relay info to anyone else, we were done in about an hour and 30 minutes. And 43@22 finally came together.

I felt 22 at 46. Toby, you rock!

Manifest Shania. Or trying to decide when a song is as good as it’s gonna get.

Manifest Shania

Over the weekend, I was talking Tim Young, Guitar God, LA, about Water Under The Bridge, a song I’ve been working on for months. Tim and I, along with Tim’s wife, Eryn, have already recorded the song once, so Tim knows the tune well. Or he did. Because since those days many months ago, when Tim, Eryn, Jaime Durr and I recorded the guitars and vocals for the song, Water has changed course. The original version seemed cool, but something about it gnawed at me, and when I got a note from a friend, whose musical opinion I deeply respect (actually, I respect all of his opinions), saying, in essence, that the song felt monotonous, I knew he was right. What to do? Revise, revise, revise.

And revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise.

Not the whole damn song, mind you, just key parts, like, um, well THE CHORUS. Sigh, it’s been a rough road, and as I lamented to Tim about how I was constantly fiddling with the song, he intoned, “Manifest Shania.” I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained that Manifest Shania was a song he had worked to death ages ago. SIX MONTHS he spent on it, along with his band, which eventually broke up because of the stress caused by Manifest Shania.

All of which brings up an interesting question: how do you know when a piece of art is done? I mean, you can change, add and takeaway to your heart’s (dis)content essentially forever. For me, I honestly never really know 100% whether a song I’m working on is done, but mostly I think I find good stopping points. And unlike Manifest Shania, which was a gem to begin with and polished to a seriously high degree, my song Water Under the Bridge is still more coal than diamond-in-the-rough. And so as I continue to obsess over it, I think my motivation is sound: the basic idea for the song is one of my better ones and I really want to make it work and it's not working. Yet.

Oh, and as for Manifest Shania? It’s a KILLER track, really. Have a listen (player above), totally cool. I should be so fortunate with Water Under the Bridge… 

 

Why can't I be more like this plant?

I don’t want to be a vegetable, but, oh, to have recuperative powers of a plant.

Consider the above photo: two days before I took this shot, the plant you see was pronounced dead by Catherine. I could see why she said this -- well over half the leaves were yellow, and all were dish-rag limp, some draped over the edge of the pot, looking more like part of the pot than part of the plant -- but I knew otherwise. I have seen this plant come back from much worse, not once, but countless times over the many years I’ve owned it. More to the point, its suffering has always been because of my negligence, as I occasionally forget to water it, so I am not fooled by appearances. And sure enough, this time was no different. After Catherine tolled the bell, I grabbed a watering can, filled it, and over the next day, poured the entire contents of the can onto the plant. I also trimmed out the dead and dying leaves, leaving them in the pot, so the plant could feed on its dead body parts, as it got things sorted out. Now, save for a few missing leaves, which will be replaced, the plant is a picture of health. Really, here’s another shot:

Why can’t I recover like this? A few sips of water, and I’M BACK!

Sigh, instead, here’s my “sip of water”: first thing in the morning, 15 minutes with my feet elevated to force more blood into my addled brain; then 20 minutes of exercises to combat the possible presence of benign positional vertigo (BPV); head to China Basin for 1 hour of HBOT; back home for 20 minutes of Brainporting; more BPV exercises for 20 minutes; followed by another 20 minute Brainport session; and finally, one more set of BPV exercises. And I still feel lousy.

As I said, oh, to have the recuperative powers of a plant.

Those were the days. A tale of living for the music, friendship and finding the holy grail of bootlegs, Bob Dylan's Ten of Swords.

For memory, there's RAM, DRAM, SRAM, flash, disc and tape, and then there's Germanoum, the mysterious substance inside my friend Toby Germano's head. Germanoum remembers all and can recall anything instantly; oddly enough, performormace seems to improve with alcohol.

I mention all this, because the other day I got to thinking about how my bootleg hunting tactics have changed. These days, I simply go online and visit dimeadozen.org or fire up Limewire. But it used to be oh so much different. To make sure I would be able to describe the days of yore, I wrote to Toby and asked him to reminisce about how we both came to posess Bob Dylan Ten of Swords, the bootlegging community's ten-disc vinyl answer to the officially released Biograph. By the way, that's Toby holding his Tele outside the entrance to the studio we had in Whittier, which was just out back of our rented, mostly unheated storage shack, where we Toby, Mike Price (pictured inside the studio) and I (also photographed inside the studio) all lived.

At this moment, you might be scoffing at a lack of heat in LA, where it is always sunny and warm (not), but we lived there during one of the coldest years on record, when snow, yes, SNOW fell in Westwood. But I digress.

Rather than attempt to repeat everything Toby wrote about our quest for Ten of Swords, I'll just let his words do the talking. Toby, you're on: 

It all started with my obsession of collecting bootlegs back in high school. I was dying to get a copy of David Bowie's Santa Monica boot from 1972 (now officially in print) and asked everyone about it. When I was old enough to drive, I used to go to Berkeley and The Haight, seeking this elusive bootleg. I remember driving around with you visiting used record stores and accumulating lots of Stones and Zep boots along the way. Recycled Records and Chimera in Palo Alto were our favorite spots. I remember you buying a Lightning Hopkins album featuring SPIDER KILPATRICK, the same day I bought a Rolling Stones American Tour 1981 Soundboard box set. Finally I responded to an ad in BAM magazine (now defunct), with the tease-RARE TAPES SOLD. I called the guy, and a cheap looking list (on faded Xeroxed yellow paper) arrived in the mail a few days later. I ended up ordering so many tapes from this guy over a six month span that he finally invited me to his Palo Alto home one day. His place was really creepy, and I didn't feel comfortable at all. I think he was some kind of criminal running from the law. What came out of those couple of visits was great information from him regarding where he got a lot of his stuff: The Pasadena Swap Meet. Jump forward 4 years later, when Mike and I went to Pasadena, searching for a cool Talking Heads poster for Brenda's birthday. In a side alley at the swap meet, I found the record dealer, and bought Ten Of Swords, Kate Bush Live 1979, and Kiss Destroys Anaheim. These treasures, along with Brenda's poster, cost me all of the money I had at the time. My $20 weekly grocery budget began at this time, consisting of a Dexatrim 24 pack, a 6 pack of Lender's frozen bagels, Ralph's low fat cream cheese, and 2 cases of generic beer. A few weeks later, I seem to recall you came with me and Mike to Pasadena, and we got the guy's address who had sold me Ten Of Swords. You and I drove down to his bungalow in Long Beach, and you purchased it for (I think) $150. All of this must have taken place in the fall of 1985, because I remember

it being very hot, and football season was in high gear at USC and UCLA (I could never find parking when visiting Brenda at USC on weekends) and I moved back the Bay Area in Spring of 1986.

On a side note, when attempting to visit the strange Palo Alto man one day, his place was empty, a police KEEP OUT sign was posted, and yellow tape was everywhere. Peeking inside the place, the only thing I saw was an old rusted washing machine....

Germanoum. Amazing stuff.

Feeling like a rock star, living like a saint. WTF?

I've read countless stories of rock and roll excess, of nights spent drinking and days spent sleeping, and I confess, I romanticized them all. You can show me every picture there is of cirrhosis of the liver and tobacco stained lungs and yellow teeth and gin blossoms, and though I am throughly disgusted and dissuaded by it all, I still have a soft spot in my heart for the drug addled, hung over, confused rock star. I mean, those pictures of Keith Richards in the 70s? Man, that is rock and roll to me.

And yet, I have no constitution for drink and drugs. Worse, I don't seem to need them these days to feel like absolute hell. Take today, for example. I woke up feeling about as bad as one can feel and still not be in danger of death: a pain emanating from the back of my head deep into my left eye, my legs ice cold, a touch of nausea, tightness in my jaw and far more dizziness than usual. And what did I do the night before? Well, I confess, I did play my guitar a bit, I had a single glass of wine and I stayed up maybe a little later than I should have (reading High Fidelity). But, I also did my Brainport exercises, plus some other therapeutic things suggested recently by a neurologist. In other words, I kept everything in moderation and followed my doctor's orders and still woke up feeling like Keith Richards all too often looks.

Hell, who knows, maybe I am blessed. After all, thanks to my severe traumatic brain injury a few years back I apparently do not require copious quantities of booze, sand dune size piles of coke and injections of heroine to make me feel like utter shit, no doubt saving me vast amounts of money. On other hand, I can live like a pious monk and yet still feel like a God's worst sinner. And therein lies the worst of it: I get nothing but still pay the price. Hmmm, maybe there's a country song in that.