Quaint ramblings and occasional reflections of a journeying Aussie musician...

30 March 2007

Nice Little Life...

.....it's a nice life at the mo, this current 'transitional' phase I'm going through....not much to do during the daytimes....get up bout mid-morning, make myself a cawfee, never quite reach the amount of practice I always intended to do before running off to evening teaching in far flung fields and then a suprising gig or two or partying....it's a funny little window which is at times amazing and depressing at constantly bi-polar extremes....one day I'm totally sold on being a musician, next day I wanna give up, and back again and I'm already repeating myself from previous entries.....but then I wonder if that's what it's supposed to be like, those extremes, maybe only by embracing them fully, right now for the first time, can I get some sense of where it's all going.....
....my piano playing is changing rapidly for the better in so many amazing ways....things are just happening, stuff is coming out of its own accord, stuff I never thought I'd be able to do....for the first time ever, after eight years private lessons and a music degree and one two three four five six years out of uni, I feel as though I'm able (or at least have finally discovered the skills necessary) to actually play the piano, be at one with it, the material, the sound, the keys, everything. How could I possibly consider throwing it in?....
....but this nice little life at the mo has it's limits, and they're encroaching it's borders with quickening pace....decisions must be made soon...house, employment, location et al.....but the most important thing to remember is that it's all moving, and when things are moving, in a state of flux, that's when some of the greatest learning takes place....and as long as I'm committed to getting out of my nice cosy solitary bed in the mornings and embracing the day and everything it has to offer, then I know I'll be okay.....
....well, that's enough self-centred navel gazing waffle for this entry - here's the current media watch....

BOOK: Inner Game of Tennis - just finished Cloudstreet and all it's beautiful Oz imagery, so onto the next self help - since I opened it yesterday I can't put it down....offering alternate takes (as it were) on material I've already sifted through with 'Effortless Mastery', 'Everyday Zen' and 'Free Play'....looks like I'll knock it off in another cuppla tube rides as well.....

MUSIC: Monty Alexander - with Ernest Ranglin and Solo - mentioned that before, but also a little Aphex Twin and some organ stuff, Jimmy Smith, getting the basics together....

until soon friends,.....

23 March 2007

Jay And Silent Bob (of Camden Town)

....bidding farewell to D-Funk at Lock 17, J-Sax and I wended our way briefly by the side of the canal, across the bridge and down the unusually quiet high road. I was propositioned with skunk only the once last night, bit disappointing really, expected a bit more from the boys, and was quite displeased at the fact that not once last night was I called Charlie. What's the place coming to, I mean really....
All drink and no food makes Mike a moody boy, so we cross the bridge and head for the first dodgy pizza place we come to on the corner....
And the vibe is strong! Glowy christmas lights adorn the awning and 'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough' is blasting from somewhere inside. Eerily enough for Camden Town, the street is pretty quiet, no-one else is around.
And seemingly no-one is behind the counter. But there's a tall lanky guy drifting around next to us - trucker hat, aviators, stubble - who may or may not be working here. J-Sax and I are in the thick of muso talk but something is already seeming a little curious.
A moment goes by and no-one emerges....
"Don mine him man he's jes doin his fing yo no" says 'Jay'.
.....(all right, and who might that be?).....
All of a sudden, 'Silent Bob' backs out from no-where, moonwalking without a doubt, does the turn to face us - brown hat, collared white shirt, red jumper - speechless.
He's looking at us - another moment goes by....
"Orright mate, I'll have one of those thanks," I spurt out tentatively....
Bob dances off somewhere. Jay is back behind the counter, sometimes. J-Sax and I are still in the thick of it....
"This is a wikkid song!"
"Damn straight. The bridge bit with the fat brass....."
"This was with Quincy Jones, right?"
"I think so"
"It's not happening for Mike these days though is it...."
".....Yeah, it all went downhill after Quincy left...."
Bob dances back in front with a 'What would you like?' look on his face, still speechless. I pointed to a tasty selection and he whisks it off to the microwave. Jay starts talking to us....
"Man, this is the place to be on the High Road!" I tell him, and he's into it, I think. J-Sax agrees....
"Could I get some vine leaves too thanks mate?" I request from Bob, looking at the four for a pound sign. He whisks over and gives us each a free one. Nice! No four though, that seems a bit too much at this point.
'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough' is still blaring....
"Hey, did you hear that story about 'Billie Jean'?"
"No?"
"They're in the studio and Mike's done heaps of takes and just isn't getting it, and Q is drunk apparently, so he gets the irits, goes into the studio and beats him up!"
"No!"
"Yeah! and so Mike makes one more take and that's it! That's the one we hear!"
"Wow....talk about chill studio vibe..."
'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough' fades off.....and starts again? Bob must be really working on his fing.....
(.....This wikkid little Fellini-esque vignette playing before us is up there with that time I took a girl to 'Booty Wine' round the corner after hours, where the guy behind the till mutters another language through the half-shut roller door and suddenly a hand comes out from underneath with a six quid special in a brown paper bag....one asks no questions in a city of such mystery...)
....Bob whisks over from the microwave, gives me the pizza slice, goes back over to open the till and THEN comes back over for the money....and not a word, the whole time....
"Thanks boys, have a good one." Phew!
Camden Town, that kinda place....

22 March 2007

well...

...so I'm recording this demo on Tuesday, thinking that I've got all day Wednesday blocked out for teaching - I've been doing some through some music shops in the north and they've rigged me up a day at a 'school of religious character' - and I get this call from the teaching guy saying that the people at the school want to meet me before I start and can I come in this afternoon. They have to interview me before I start, meaning that if I don't come in this afternoon I can't start tomorrow. And even if I did, the pay isn't gonna get to me for another month anyway.....
....and there's that sigh, that weariness at the backwards inefficiency of this whole place, worn briefly from this new Londoner and shrugged off in an instant, but what of those who've lived here their whole lives?....
....yeah fine, I make the call and arrange an interview the next morning, speaking to Gerry who keeps going on about 'timewasting' students and how we have to get rid of them. Haven't even bloody met them yet!
So it's an early morning tube off to Totteridge and Whetstone, one of the quainter named stations and the second last stop on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line. The place is easy enough to find, a couple of brown wood buildings near a field on a private road. The electronic gate shuts in my face.
In this bitter cold we've suddenly had this week (after a balmy precursor to summer), I had to laugh. All part of the continuing adventure I suppose....
So I meet Gerry and Graham, seeming patriarchal moral overseers of the place with their Ultra conservative uniforms and haircuts and they talk me through the guidelines of the Brethren, the particular variance of Christianity that this school falls under.
No recorded music at home: radio fine, but none of that ghastly modern popular music. Beatles and Bob Dylan is fine, but then Gerry's lately had some reservations about them too, so maybe not. So I can show them something from a recording, but I can't give them one to take home or ask them if they're into anything at home - they won't be because they don't have any.....
So Mike, what's your background? And I go into this pre-fab rave blah blah honours music degree did you catch the honours bit blah blah taught in schools for over a decade variety of students blah blah but it's not my main thing of course (all the while screaming in my head SHOW ME THE ROOM, SHOW ME THE PIANO, SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!!)
They attempt some banter at the usual junctures and I'm so not up for it.
They hand me the guidelines of the school which I flip through on the tube home. Here are some highlights:

"...a way of life which is governed at all times in every detail by the Holy Bible"
"....The Theory of Evolution is regardes as a falsehood..."
"The Trustees regard occupation with, and the study of, computers damaging to the proper development of children's minds, and only serve to reduce and limit their thinking capacity to be conformed to programmes and the manipulation of a keyboard and screen. it is regarded that computers in many fields represent a misuse of physical and natural phenomena created by God."
"Brethren children have not gone on to study at Universities since the 1960s, but have suffered no loss through this...'

I'm still interested to see how this all turns out. Apparently music creation is very strong in homes among family members, and the previous teacher has left me a list of the students and where they're at and from a teaching perspective it sounds promising. Maybe the last minute interview request and week's delay set me off about it all. I'm taking the gig because financially, it'll pluck me from a potential pickle...
.....and don't get me wrong here, I have the utmost respect for anyone who chooses a religious path for their life.
It's just the social rules, the conventions, that get me, all those little restrictions and forbiddances, the details that people feel they have to impose on themselves and their families.
An essential part of my experience as a travelling freelance musician has been the observation of human experience. Branford Marsalis has been quoted a couple of times as saying that musicians are basically social commentators, and from my own limited experiences I've seen that the human experience is vast, so much more expansive than setting oneself and one's family to sets of rules derived from a book written long ago and far away.
It's the 21st century, it's suburban London. We shall see.....

19 March 2007

Requiem For A Dream

....I had this bizarro dream last night.....I don't seem to remember my dreams anymore and I don't usually tell anyone else my dreams, mainly because they turn out to be open-ended stories that go nowhere and the person you tell can never fully associate, but this is a bit of an exception.....
First of all, real life - Did the Belvedere last night again - it's a four hour gig, and as I said before, no soft pedal, it's a loud piano, and the diners are really close. The management came up twice in the first set to ask me to play softer - it takes me enough concentration to just play solo piano with a working time feel and good tone and interesting harmonic movement without someone bugging you from the side. Of course the more people that came the louder I was able to play. Oh yeah, and they interrupted my meal for me to play Happy Birthday which I have to say was pretty annoying.
So came home, stayed up a bit, some wine and Google Video, went to bed - and then I was in this sort of psychedelic Victorian era version of London, doing a gig in what looked like some department store, and I'd go to play a song and there was this woman in one of those massive curly Baroque wigs who was barking at me, really having a go at me about how wrong it was or how loud I was playing or it was the wrong song, so I would stop and try something else and she wouldn't let up.
So after about five attempts at songs, I blew my top, stood up and yelled at this lady, something about leaving (this version of) London and never working for her again. "You can't do that," she said, "you need to work here! This town's too small, you can't just walk away." "Watch me," I said, or words to that effect. And then she said the line, the kicker....

"You'll be doing these gigs for years!".......

That's what got me - imagine a Simpsons-esque echo of that line to end the dream and me suddenly awake sitting bolt upright in the bed.....
....damn, I gotta write and perform me some original music!.....

17 March 2007

Rocksteady

....the kiddies are doing my head in! There's only so much you can show seven year olds the C major scale without wanting to flip your lid and go screaming running down the street tearing your hair out....but I keep my patience....don't get me wrong, I enjoy teaching one on one and just as well, but just lately I've been feeling it a bit....
Practice is in remedial stages at the moment, trying to think around those barriers that for the first time ever I can see and feel quite clearly and distinctly....after Saturday's revelatory experience, various things are clicking in but the transmission, the signal, is still unclear and inconsistent. It's just as well Hanon is dead cause I woulda killed him by now, but then I put my own chromatic thing on it so I guess I'm to blame.....been practicing a lot of technique lately, fully knowing that technique is only as good as the message one wants to convey. And what might that be, pray tell?.....
Bit of a side note here - couple of books that have helped me on my path. 'Free Play' by Steven Nachmanovich (think I mentioned that one previously) and 'Everyday Zen' by Charlotte Joko Beck - the main thing I got out of this one is what is it SPECIFICALLY that holds you back? Identify it's details, and then you can overcome it......
Additionally, I'd like to put in an honourable mention for the album I'm listening to right now, Monty Alexander and Ernest Ranglin....after a long day of self-centred musician worries, I chuck this on and ivryting arie, nahmean?.....
For the first time ever I feel as though I know exactly what it is I want to do with the music and how to go about it. I'm just hoping that there are enough days left in my life to be able to get to where I'd like to get to. And there are still a couple of blanks in the equation. The big one is what. Still so bewildered by music and all it's forms, it's history, where it's been, where it could go, and what parts of it to take to call my own. Gotta start some where, right? Where might that be, pray tell?....it's the practicalities that get me too, continuing an intense study of an artform that disappears into thin air as soon as you create it while paying tax upon bill upon......
As always, it BAKES me that for the work I've put in, I'm probably never gonna earn a decent living off performing alone. And what bakes me just as much if not more is the thought of the guys who I know, some of them good friends, who have put TEN TIMES more work than I, who are far superior musicians than I, and they've got just as much struggle to deal with. No-one's got it easy in this business.
But then there's that little teaser, that thing that comes along out of the blue, that keeps you on it. 'We live in hope,' said an older muso I've played with recently, 'it's who we are.' More on that little story later.....
It's such a ridiculous form of existence, the carrot that disappears and reappears when you least expect it, where giving up and total committment aren't at opposite ends of the spectrum, they're in fact side by side, maybe even touching, like parallel universes.
'No, you've got it all wrong,' said jazz piano great John Hicks when drilled by students at a workshop about how to make a living after study, 'playing Jazz IS the reward.'
Right now, with my girlfriendless existence, playing Hanon after coming home from gigs, at least there's red wine, right?....

By the way, did my first gig on controller keyboard last night! at a local pub just up the road. After the Nord Electro arrived about a week ago, got a call for a dodgy pub trio thing for not much, so I hoiked my mini-amp into the backpack, Nord in a side sling bag thingy, and carried my four octave non-weighted controller keyboard (with more dials and sliders than you could poke a stick at) WITH ONE HAND as I strolled up the hill toward the pub. We were parked right on the bar and it was total blag session and I loved it. The Nord gave me all the fatness required, and best of all, at the end of the night I caught the bus home EASILY! No bazooka-carrying scarecrow on some military exercise changing tube lines across greater London.....heppy heppy daze!....

14 March 2007

...No More Mr...

...there's this thing, that's been following me round now for far too long....
....I was okay with it at the start, even adopted it, but too much has happened....
....it's gotta go....
.....I'm talking bout.....
.....the letter Y.....
....at the end of my name....
.....the ubiquitous....
.....mikeY.....

IT"S GOTTA GO!

....I mean, 'Y', why!?....
....sure, if you're on a personal list of loveables like my Mum and a SMALL number of some other friends, it's okay, I'll let it slide, but it's just been hanging around for far too long....
...it first appeared at the very first gig I went to check out in Canberra....there I was, after hours, underage, fresh off the bus in flannelette shirt and big purple shorts sitting near the door in case I got found out. My new mate Jimi, who'd sold the gig to me that afternoon, strolled off stage, saw me sitting there and said those fateful words....
...."I'm gonna call you MIKEY!".....
....and it stuck - he didn't even have to tell anyone about it, it just came around, became part of my Canberra identity.....
....'What is it that bothers you about it?' asked the Guru as we wandered St Germain in the early hours....
.....it's the little brother connotation, I explained, it doesn't fit in with the sophisticate city-dwelling musician image I'm trying to cultivate here....and instantly he jumped on it!....'We'll, maybe because you...'...and then the trail off....as is his want, playing with it, sending it back to me at every chance to bother and annoy me, a light jibe between friends....
....the other thing is, with my last name, it just doesn't swing. 'Mike Guy', two syllables, accented quarter notes, a product, almost catchy..... but 'Mikey Guy'? it's the triplet with the accents on '1' and 'a', that extra third, awkward loping syllable in the middle, like 'Hokey Boy' or 'Country Hick'....
.....consequently it's especially irritating in a professional context, being announced on gigs as such, being introduced at gigs and bars.....indeed, that same weekend, after repeatedly telling another friend to drop it, I'm dashing off stage into the darkness after the set and he announces me to the Paris audience as Mikey and straightaway the Guru is at me with it!....
....people might have got it from my email addresses, which I've recently changed so that doesn't happen, but it's STILL happening, with people that never knew me from Canberra and never had my email address!....
....IT JUST HAPPENS!....
.....will it ever leave me!? Will this urban sophisticate persona actually triumph? or will I forever be stuck with it and it's connotation, everyone's little brother?.....

The 'Y' must die!

12 March 2007

Perceptual

...it's nearly half midnight....i bought a bottle of red earlier this evening in an attempt to save some money on drinking, but it seems to have largely vanished and the resulting dehydration is stinging my eyes, but I'm gonna press on regardless....I've waited in the past for some sort of event to write but as I told Mr N, I'm on the net more these days than ever before but somehow blogging less....but not from now on! Be warned that in some ridiculous catch-up mission, some of these entries may drop back in time on occassion somewhat to certain musical touring and familial continental holidays.....

First, let me tell ya bout yesterday....

It started like any other day, coffee in the morning....I've gotten past the two cup threshold by the way. Since I became a social drinker, it's one which kept me up late and two which would keep me up all night, but now being the proud owner of one of those silver kettle things I've busted through to three, and as a result I don't seem to be sleeping as much anymore, increasing one's abilities to fit in those extra couple of hours a day of life in this burned out burb....
Student at 10, rehersal with singer at 12, some other silly errands and other stuff rumbilng on into the afternoon and all of a sudden I can't open my gmail account, meaning I don't know what time the new solo residency gig is on tonight. I ring my mate Lucky, who's done the gig before, and get a check on start time being an hour earlier than I expected....
So it ended up being the dash for cash, in the pinstripe suit, along Holland Park Road and round the corner on yet another London gig adventure to the Belvedere Restaurant.
Small place in the middle of a park, but classic West End old money - I thought I'd gotten used to this by now, dashing in to some venue absolutely dripping with history and pounds sterling, but the immaculate art deco trimmings and windows looking out onto some sort of fresco were too much to ignore. Brief introductions and polite laughter with the waiting staff ensued, and my four hour stint began.
It's a loud upright and the diners aren't far away, so I got told to play softer about three times in the first half hour. I ended up barely wiping the keys with my fingers....
And then, about three quarters through the night, it happened. And it didn't happen for two bars, or half a form. It happened for a good sizeable chunk of time, say half an hour, maybe even more, before the sadly inevitable fading....
It was all there - swing, legato attack, arched fingers, weight transfer through wrists, some new 'closure' of the inner wrists, no awkward random articulation, no fighting with the keys....I was watching it happening before me! Recognising that thing I heard on that album....new stuff was coming out that fit so well....I couldn't believe it....eight years of private tuition, four years of a music 'degree', six years of wilderness...and here it was, finally....
I left with the cash and literally RAN home to practise, and there was that inner glow, that smile on my face that transcended any momentary satisfaction. That same glow I've felt in those incredibly rare times throughout my life when an advancement is made, when the playing really happens.....driving back with my folks from saxophone lessons in Yass in high school when they'd never seen me happier, or that gig with Col and Eric and Lachlan at the Kurrajong where everything just CLICKED, when my friend of great intrigue pulled up at the lights on Northbourne and London Circuit, absolutely glowing....
"I'm so happy," said Phil Woods once, "I could take on a lion in a phonebooth with a toothpick!" On nights like this I know what he means....
It all connected up - musical content, self-confidence, detatchment, bodily awareness, accurate awareness of levels of focus....My idols, my friends who are much better piano players than I am, I'm still in awe as to what they do and how they do it but after I came home from that gig I KNEW what it is that I had to do, how I could play the piano and have it feel like I've always wanted it to, effortless, beautiful....
And of course, on my gig this very night with some other incredible muso friends, out from Oz for a while, it wasn't there....of course it wasn't! Why should it be? How could I deserve it to be? The intricate conection between all those things that you have to take care of when you perform wasn't entirely there for all of it...but it was for some of it. And that I suppose is what we hang on to, that's what keeps us going.
That's what keeps an average player like me at this whole thing. And lately, it's been wildly swinging between one day YYYYEEESSSS I will suffer poverty for the rest of my days in search of artistic freedom and creativity and satisfaction and the next day NNNNOOOOO what the hell am I doing what if I actualy ever wanted a family or to own a house why aren't I an orthodontist like my folks wanted me to be when I was still doing all right in junior high school!?....
It's the sweet torture of the muse....a female presence, undoubtedly, who only reveals to you the next stage, the next step of development, when you least expect it. You could be battling away on something for months, years even, and then something else random happens and you wonder why you're still at it and then the penny drops and you work out what's going on and you wonder well, maybe I will stick with this....for a while....