The Last Ship Has Finally Come In

I finally got Sting's first collection of original songs in about ten years: The Last Ship. I love it. (Don't worry -- this is not going to be a record review. I hate those.)

I haven't "loved" one of his albums in a long time -- maybe ever since 1993's Ten Summoner's Tales. My enjoyment of his work declined with every album since that one...until this one. Yet...I never got bitter.

Sting, doing a character from The Last Ship --
which will be a broadway play in September.

You know what I mean? Did you ever witness people who get downright mad when musicians they like put out albums they don't agree with or enjoy? -- as if it is a personal affront?

It is hard, granted, when one makes a personal connection with an album, not to look for that same level of identification out of everything after. Those albums become dear to us. I wouldn't be who I am today without Rush's Moving Pictures; Genesis's Seconds Out; Sting's Soul Cages and U2's Achtung Baby, just to name a (very) few. In the case of each of those artists, there have been scores of records that I disliked deeply or that I thought just didn't stand up to the "gems."  (I use only rock albums here -- it is a particular thing, the "album of songs" that cannot be compared to the mountains of other types of music I love.) But, though I might have disliked the directions these artists took, I never, as I said, got bitter. And I went right on buying their stuff.

Child Logic

A few days ago, I picked up my sons from something after school. As we were driving home, they asked me to put in the CD of a recording my friend Mark and I had just finished -- one that I posted about a few days ago.

They both like it, but my younger son (10) loves it -- wants to hear it over and over. After it played, he asked me:

"Dad, can we play this song this year while we are decorating Easter eggs?"

I told him that of course we could. Then, I wandered down the sun-flooded path of unraveling the logic of the small one. What connection, in his little head, made him say that? Is he a synaesthete like his dad? -- does the music suggest the bright colors or Easter egg dye to him? -- is he reacting to the closing section of the song with its use of the word "rise," whose phrase is lifted by choir chords and airborne strings?

Who cares? It made my throat lump up and it made my heart about seven minutes younger. And, you  know, for the first time, I am looking forward a process that I usually despise but that I smile through anyway:  dyeing Easter eggs.

The Bully Society

Some people have watched the film Bully and come out of it with inspirations -- ideas about how to end this sort of horrible mistreatment of kids by other kids in American schools. Some have seen it and gone through tissues by the box and have left screenings with temporary feelings of sympathy -- or maybe even of empathy. Others, like yours truly, walked out of it in an existential tailspin.

It is a documentary that chronicles the bullying of a few young people in a few towns. There is no narrator. What we get is a series of clips, images and statements by the people involved: parents who have lost children to suicide; parents who have children who are being bullied and the children themselves, who, for whatever reason, are being tortured by their classmates.

Alex

You know what I saw? First, I saw stupid adults who are the maintainers of a system that encourages kids to categorize one another and whose actions in response to bullying were so moronic that it was all I could do to keep from clawing the cushioning off of the sides of my seat. Second, I saw kids behaving in a way that causes me to question the very worth of mankind.

I watched a principal chastise a kid who was being tortured by another. The bullied kid didn't want to "shake hands" with his tormentor (of course, the bully was all too eager to "make up" in front of the principal). The vice principal told the bullied boy: "You're just as bad as he is." This same professional educator told the parents of a bullied kid that when she, herself, rode the bus on which bullying was taking place, the kids were "good as gold." (Thought bubble above moronic principal's head: Kids are bad. I ride bus. Kids are good. Therefore, problem solved.) These are some of the people to whom we are entrusting our kids.

Playing It By Ear

My wife and I, cutting-edge people that we are, are watching this hot new show called Lost. (I know, I know -- no cable, plus Netflix...) It's pretty cool, I guess. I have never finished an episode and thought, "Wow, that's brilliant." But I have also never been bored. The show is what a former Romanticism professor of mine used to call "chewing gum for the brain;" chewing gum with good, long-lasting flavor, but no real nutrients in it.

But that's not the point. Here's the point: Dominic Monaghan's character is a former rock star; a guy who was in a really low-intellect, poppy-punk kind of band called "Driveshaft." Or, as the character Hurley's friend puts it: "Driveshaft? More like 'Suckshaft'."

Charlie playing in a less than ideal acoustic environment. 

In an episode we recently watched, Monaghan's character, Charlie, is at the piano writing a song. And you know what he is doing? He is writing down notes. Do writers and people in general really think rock musicians and pop musicians write their music down like classical composers? Let me illuminate through summaralysis. (Yeah, I made that up.)

Classical and orchestral composers write their music down. This is so that a hundred or more musicians all play things that sound good together. Big band arrangers do this too, when you can find a big band.

Track One: "Waking the Sun"

On a frigid Thursday night in late December, I sat with two of my best friends in a nearly empty pub. We ate wings. (Well -- two of us. The other has a wheat issue. Something about the breading. I dunno.) We drank some good brown beer. (Well -- two of us. The other with the wheat issue...I think he had Scotch or something.) Anyway, we talked about many things: philosophy, psychology, and...music. Specifically, the music that Mark (the one without the wheat issue, but plenty of others, let me assure you) and I had created some months before. We talked about doing more.

Mark tends to stomp when he plays.
This is a problem with open mic's in the room,
so, one needs to be resourceful with solutions.

We discussed everything from doing a Christmas record, to pass down to our future generations, to putting together a totally conceptual, avante garde "sound tapestry" of studio magic. In truth, we didn't set a musical direction at all, really. But we did, at Joe's urging (the wheat guy), set a date to get together and write some music: January 11. If Joe hadn't been there, Mark and I probably would have drifted off into our usual vague existences. Thanks to Joe, we had a date on the calendar.

January 11th, a Saturday, came, and Mark showed up bearing coffee and donuts (and blackberry brandy, which he claims enables him to sing anything at any time of day, which appears to be true) and I threw a chord progression at him. In about twenty minutes, we had the backbone of a pretty good song.

My wife popped her head into the studio: "If you guys don't get together and do this one a month, I will kill you." (This meant, in Karenese, that she was pleased with what she had heard.)