The Rhythmic Aspects of Pop Style

            In as much as what has become the modern definition of popular music is not musical, its ploy merits study.  It is a very clever musical ruse that parades itself as being genuine.  Without true emotional effort and learned musical technique, pop falsely masquerades itself as stellar performance.  How is this accomplished?  It is simple.  The guitar traditionally has not been included in early music education for a reason.  The simple strumming of strings does not teach a potential musician how to count internally.  Anyone with basic physical coordination can move their hand in one direction and reciprocate over the strings of the guitar creating the traditional strum.  Unfortunately this rhythmic concept that is created is not representative of the spacing of notes found in European classical and American jazz music.   When 8^th notes are generated from this intimate, proximal, alternating gesture they are spaced too closely together.  The initial stroke by obligation of having to arpeggiate six strings is projected ahead of the beat.  What should be a single pulse becomes a flam that erroneously abstracts where exactly a traditional single attack should occur in other styles of music.  It replaces a solitary intellectually prepared attack with a grouping of two.  “Ta da!”  Quintessentially this is how modern pop is defined and performed.  Irresponsibly pop musicians do not count or feel time internally.  Instead they use the crutch of kinesthetics to fabricate a false representative feel of time.  The resulting feel, not the affective defining of rhythm, tempo, and time is stretched over the top of what traditionally would be a single downbeat.  The two 8^th notes that are produced both ahead and behind the beat are pulled together with tension rebounding one another like a teeter-totter.  It is interesting that while the spacing of these notes is too close to actually define time, the rebounding that is necessary in Swing music is present.  How much a guitarist flexes their wrist determines this amount of swing.  Hauntingly parallel to the unique characteristic of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the pop beat can be heard to swing and be straight at the same time creating an engaging result.  It is unfortunate that because thought, emotion, and soul are not involved, the resulting rhythmic concept inherently is incapable of producing a human feeling.  Traditional accents or syncopations are replaced instead with a smooth bed of repeating 8^th notes.  The most surprising characteristic of pop rhythm is that although it is insipidly sweet, some listeners perceive it to be rhythmically aggressive.  The genre of Techno exhibits this same quality.  Sonically it deceives the listener.  The strum motion of the upper arm pivoting at the elbow over the strings of the guitar cannot be found in any other obvious human motion except sex.  This is why pop rhythm is used as a foundation for porno music. While good for providing the backdrop of erotic sexuality activity, it kinesthetically produces no defined dance beat.  It does not breathe and allow the limbs to reciprocate freely.  Instead its strokes are forced and seeded with tension, the overt quality that pop aficionados seem to enjoy. 

            When a pianist attempts to perform in pop style, a stark and rude realization will occur.  The ease with which it is created on the guitar and bass is absent.  The piano also uses a reciprocating percussive action, but is it is not equipped with the upstroke emulating the strum of the guitar.  The pianist must wait for the key to reciprocate before again striking it.  This delay in Cristofori’s original piano action is what created the feel of early piano music.  It is interesting over the years that pop has found its way into the piano resulting in its subordinate technique.  The approach that resulted was a complete departure from the classical methodology of piano instruction.  Personally I have seen as many as five kinesthetic approaches to pop realized on the piano.  They all were surprising to me as a classically trained jazz pianist.  The first was stabbing fingers, fingers that were extended straight and hurled at the keyboard in a gesture simulating the early attack of the guitar strum.  The second was curled fingers, fingers that were curled inward toward the palms as tightly as possible minimizing the motion necessary for repeated notes.  The third was penguin arms, forearms that were held stationary parallel above the keyboard with the fingers free to dangle limply on the keys.  The fourth probably is the most common and can be characterized by the playing of Sir Elton John.  Unlike traditional musical grooves that require a tightening of the muscles to define strong rhythmic patterns, pop uses a loose body movement undulating alternately between the arms.  Stevie Wonder must be credited as the most masterful of this purveyor pop keyboard music. 

            What must be understood is that traditional musical rhythms and their notation do not lend themselves to the pop approach.  The grift that has been created in commercial music is that by choosing pop for musical performance, all other traditional rhythmic styles will be discarded.  Any musical style that has emerged, been developed, and found its way into print must be re-interpreted to be performed in this derivative style.  This interpretation abandons the more engaging feels of what once were viable and popular forms of dance.  It substitutes a base, derivative, artificial time feel that is incapable of engaging movement in the human body.  For this reason people do not dance at pop concerts.  Instead these concerts represent the glorification of the pop artist, the sentimental masturbation of the public, and the generating of revenue. 

            It should be possible for pop and artistic music to coexist.  The lines of demarcation clearly should be defined.  The artistry of real music never should bear Jesus’ cross of persecution.  Artistic music is necessary for the sustenance of humanity, and it cannot be replaced with cheap, shallow, shortsighted fodder intended for the consuming masses. 

A Brief Survey of Unmusical Music in the Cruise Industry/Obli Gada the Hun

            Nearly a decade ago I began working as a pianist in the cruise industry.  After opening the musical “Footloose” at our local regional theater, the phone rang with an offer to play in the orchestra for Carnival Cruise Line.  Ten years is enough time to have amassed a substantial chapter in one’s musical and personal history.  My Carnival tenure only lasted three years, because it became apparent not only to me that the ship’s orchestras possessed no interest in nurturing piano talent.  Often they were drunken debacles of a myriad of musical rejects that spent the majority of their non-drinking time disguising their disinterest in music.  Only an occasional Musical Director exhibited an interest in broadening their mind with a vast vocabulary of musical styles.

             Over a decade later now it is easy to understand this disinterest.  A vast vocabulary of musical styles means a vast vocabulary of potential emotional responses to tempo and rhythm.  No one was interested in exploring their emotional psyche and its musical counterpart on a ship.  It was easier to play in the one style generated by the computer and relinquish any potential emotional connection to the audience. Historically music abstractly has been preserved with and by this emotional engagement.  On the contrary and with reinforcement from the cruise industry, non-musicians deface the aesthetic of music to coerce their audiences into submission.  It is the quintessential definition of The Old Razzle Dazzle.  Described in the lyrics of this savvy theatrical song, “The Old Razzle Dazzle” describes the vocation of most cruise ship musicians.  Real musicians with talent and understanding of the human condition are not attracted to the slave-like labor afforded by cruise companies.  The sharing of a closet in which to live, the eating of scraps of gristle and bone for meals, and the earning of low wages make the filling of cruise musician positions a paltry crap shoot.  There are few real musicians left. 

            One exemplary Musical Director comes to mind when retrospectively surveying my unmusical cruising experiences.  I will call him Obli Gada the Hun.  Could that pseudonym mean he improvised his own oblique melissma at Royal Caribbean reinforcing his skewed, neurotic, musical opinions?  Obli Gada was the fomenter of the inherent battle that will supervene when capable musicians are interspersed with marauding ones.  Also he typifies the Republican Party’s political tactics over the last few decades.  When one cannot win on a level playing field, you slant the field in your favor. 

            When I worked under Obli Gada he would not allow me to play instinctually.  His insecurity dominated the orchestra with overbearing playing or directing.  He kept me in a box as a whore performing in the most subordinate and compliant manner.  I didn’t know this at the time.  Having re-established contact with Obli recently, it became perfectly clear.  This man was a narcissistic slanderer, and I was continuing to be his dupe.  After thinking about it for several weeks, I decided I no longer had to listen to his misguided, false, and antagonistic opinion.  It was over.  I wrote Obli a message objecting to his continued insults.  Subsequently he rejoined with one last round of condescending rhetoric then selfishly terminated his communication with me.  In the final moments of our interaction he proved again his continued depravity.  I was saved!

            Although I have not spent much time thinking about what he continued to say, it is worthy of reflection.  Obli Gada continued to profess I quit the cruise industry and leave my job to non-musicians like him.  This was not an option.  Let me make this clear.  This was my Musical Director.  Never did he allow me to express my knowledge or talent of music for the company.  He continued to suggest years later I quit my job.  Is this the kind of supervisor the cruise industry relishes, one who is threatened by his charges and attempts to maintain authority by berating the employees his company and he should embrace?  The answer is no.  Luckily his tainted colors bled through, and Obli lost the position of MD. 

            I did have to ask myself the question why Obli seemed to think I had a high opinion of my musicality.  Was it perhaps because of instead of being able to reinforce my musical worth on the job, I had to tell him of what I was musically capable?  Why hire musicians with talent and use them as whores?  There is a simple answer to this question, but it did not become apparent to me until later in my tenure with Royal Caribbean.

            The answer to this question is in an increasingly Stalinist America the public has lost their similitude with the artistry of live music.  Napster created this grift.  America’s love affair with the histrionics of Rock and Roll was quelled, when Napster began giving away the music for free.  Single-handedly Napster replaced the music industry with the personal computer.  We began to burrow into our own sensibilities leaving the democratic fellowship of live music in our wake.  Serially fueled by Karioke our narcissistic needs became more important than a communion of souls tendered by artistic music.  American popular music in one fell swoop became Professional Wrestling.  Campy sentimentality overtook the need for volatile emotional musical expression.  Compliantly America’s listening public digressed into the expendable income of selfish, tepid, gadget-buying adolescents. 

            Napster was the watershed entrepreneurial maneuver of the century.  A driving force of America’s economy and a crucial shaping of American popular culture were impotent.  America, a once thriving Mecca of music industry, transmuted into a non-mainstream ideology dotted with future wireless, P.C. based, personal entertainment devices.  Live music that traditionally had been venerated as sexual intercourse became hackneyed and was ceded in lieu of masturbation.

            It is interesting to study this transformation of American values.  Many social, cultural, and political edicts have contributed to this spinning of America’s traditional ideals.  Most easily they can be defined as conservative attempts to restrict the mobility of new money.  After decades of government antitrust legislation the grassroots movements that built America’s socio-economic foundation were starved. Old Money  flexed its muscles and strangled America’s once opportunity for economic freedom. 

            The other answer to the musical question is now that musicality has been abolished the fight for musicality will become the product.  In an eerie parity to novelist George Orwell’s Big Brother, cruise lines are content to humiliate their musicians in public for its entertainment value.  No longer is producing an artistic musical product the goal.  The goal is to spectate the fight for musicality against a corporately produced projection of musicality.

            How did Obli singularly oppress my musical instincts on the job?  The easiest method was to reduce my opportunity to play.  This subversive motive is the antithesis of a cruise musician’s job description.  While it is true cruise lines only are interested in music as revenue and do not understand musicality, they are content to insist you work.  Conversely it can be surprising to work on a ship where the Executive Committee understands it is more lucrative to prohibit the orchestra from playing.  From a layman’s point of view this is advantageous.  From a musician’s point of view this is an extreme disadvantage.  Not only does one become disassociated from one’s genuine vocation, it is extremely boring to bide time on a vessel dedicated to the superficial entertainment of cruisers. 

            In essence the language of music can and should be an elevating constituent of the cruise experience.  Historically this is what the aesthetic of music has done.  It through its unique and sophisticated language attempts to create the appropriate affective moments otherwise missing from the canning of thousands of guests in a large, floating, metal container. 

            How over the short history of the cruise industry has music become misrepresented?  The surprising conclusion is the cruise industry is responsible for the unmusical indoctrination of its employees.  In their futile attempt to utilize the craft of music as a commodity, their lack of understanding of music as art has inaugurated a subordinate music system adevoid of meaning.  Traditionally music never has been metronomically quantized from a computer to emulate a musical performance.  Stealthy over time this aberrant product called tracks began to replace the library of traditional listening required by accredited music schools.  Fledgling musicians began to absorb their musical proclivities not from America’s recorded lineage of popular music, but from this derivative, colloquial, corporately produced fraud. 

            Tracks consist of a vague, narrow, elementary interpretation of musical style.  They are lacking the fundamental element that potentially brings life and feeling to music, rhythmic clave.  While clave predominantly is used in Afro-Cuban music to define two particular rhythmic patterns (3-2, and 2-3), it better can be used to describe any number of rhythmic patterns found in American popular music.  These patterns most often are found in bass and drums.  Styles of American music specifically can be distinguished by these patterns, their accents, and their rhythmic orientation in relation to a strict metronomic pulse.  It is possible to play ahead and behind the beat, and different instruments in the rhythm section often play in different places.  These crucial nuances that determine the feel of the music carelessly are omitted in cruise tracks.  Instead a base, simplistic, rudimentary 8^th note pulse is used instead incapable of producing a particular rhythmic feel.  As one can imagine changes of rhythmic feel that should coincide with different emotional responses conspicuously are absent in tracks.  This shell of rhythm allows for the unskilled performance of music with no representation of time. 

            Possibly at one time it was understood in the cruise industry tracks actually never should be heard.  They were meant to be an anodyne when musicians could not perform their jobs.  Over the years and with negligence the tracks became the core of ships’ musical performances.  Orchestra musicians were disenchanted with this situation and consequently resorted to the only method with which to navigate this humiliating professional musical experience.  They began to drink on the job, because it did not matter if they played or not.    

            This shipboard administrative neglect fostered the misrepresentation of musicality in the cruise industry.  It spawned the burgeoning of a breed of compliant,Yes Man, musical whores who are more content to succumb to corporate pressure than remain true to the musical aesthetic.  Ultimately the cruise companies suffer from a perceived lack of humanity, a loss of revenue, and a jaded reputation.  Cruise companies began to negate this beleaguered musical product by firing many of the bands that could not play authentically.  Downsizing the orchestras was the next step to musical vindication.  The process will continue until a new breed of vital, talented, and feeling musicians is found.  It is not likely to happen anytime soon.  America’s once vital music industry has been usurped by the personal computer.

            How exactly can musicality be restored?  A complete understanding of the term Popular Music is necessary.  The etymology of “pop” is an abbreviation of the word popular.  Defined musically popular is commercial, accessible, tuneful music originating in the l950’s.  What exactly is this?  If surveying America’s complete musical history, Stephan Foster must be credited as the first successful composer of American popular music.  “Old Suzanna,” sung to the strum of a banjo on a riverboat pier, easily provided an identity for a pop turn-of-the-century America.  Americans found surplus revenue and began to purchase pianos for their parlors.  Tin Pan Alley capitalized on this cultural trend and began to compose and publish sheet music for personal performance in ones’ homes.  Later during the Jazz Age American popular music was weaned from the folks.  Mainstream commercial music was born, its genealogy in the minstrel music of the Southern slave plantations.  Was it Bob Dillon’s protesting lyrics and harmonica playing, the nonsense syllable of Do Wop, the vocal straight tone of Asturd Gilberto’s Bossa Nova, or MUZAK that came to be known as “pop” in the 1950’s and 1960’s? 

            All of this history aside the modern day connotation of popular or pop is different.  Historically it is inaccurate. The significant influences of America’s Ragtime, Swing, Delta and Urban Blues, R&B, Soul, and Gospel music cannot be ignored.  Because these genres are artistic it can be concluded Popular Music has became a term used for music as a commodity excluding its artistic elements.  It is intended to be shallow and devoid of moving feeling.  How is this goal accomplished in commercial music?  The ingenious formula was to exclude the piano as a generator of rhythm.  Instead it uses the rudimentary and easily obtainable strum of the guitar.  The guitar, unlike a piano, is a folk instrument and thus accessible to the masses.  One does not have to possess an inordinate amount of musical technique and knowledge to strum a guitar.  Conversely it takes years of lessons and practice to play the piano in its European tradition.  The accessibility of the guitar is the major defining element of the modern definition of Popular Music.  As the guitar became the fundamental rhythmic generator of the music, its style began to be refined.  Music producers like Tin Pan Alley again capitalized on this cultural trend and began to market a refined version of it to the masses.

            The British Rock Invasion of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Led Zepplin countered the pop formula with a more personal rhythmic feel.  Rock widened the “pocket” of pop’s stiff, regulated, metronomic pulse and allowed a looser and more swinging beat.  Rock ‘n’ Roll was born with its genealogy in Swing and never looked back.

             In the last decade only has “pop” found its way back into mainstream popular music.  The negativity of “Rock-umentaries” on the VH-1 television network have exposed the unfortunate consequences of what became a drug obsessive lifestyle of  touring.  Just as early American prohibition attempted to legislate morality, politicians such as Tipper Gore reprimanded the hedonistic lifestyle of Rock ‘n’ Roll music.  Consequently that once compelling atmosphere of live music shrunk into prepackaged “pop” acts.  They are conceived, defined, and controlled in corporate high rise offices.  Fortunately the authentic music they replaced continues albeit less commercially beneath their feet in “Indy” America. 

            What is the result of this emasculation of American music?  The loss of revenue from MTV, VH-1, and BET, record sales, and advertising on television and radio are substantial.  Money that once flowed through these viable venues now privately is held by the wealthy in banks in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland.  American music is controlled by these few.  The unskilled strum of their guitar has lost its colloquial charm.  America and the world are hungry for a more potent and humanly satisfying music. 

            To revitalize the economy the difficult decision to be made by the affluent is again to empower the common man.  Without their ingenuity to earn social status rather than inherit it, there will be no music. The Popular Music of the wealthy has reached rock bottom.  Without human, emotional, and artistic sacrifice there is nothing.  Obli Gadda the Hun, Napster, and they have raped and pillaged America.  She desperately needs to march to the beat of a different drummer, and that drummer needs to swing!

A Different Drummer

            Marching to the beat of a different drummer always has been suspect.  It seems only artists have the gall to begin such a revolution.  America her last two decades has become weak, apathetic, and uncaring.  I take pride in the notion after hearing Rick Santorum speak on C-SPAN months ago, I knew only he would be the viable Republican presidential candidate.  Iowa it seems, throbbing to the beat of a “new” drummer, also cast Santorum above the ridiculous lot of soap-box-shouting, media present, seemingly conservative Republicans.  A small victory was won in my head.  Many things I think and feel are diverted by modern day society.  Often I feel guilty for being a college-educated man.  Often I feel guilty still for possessing the possible love of a woman.  Often I feel guilty for feeling a need for heterosexual interaction, love, and sexual fulfillment.  If I weren’t careful I would begin to believe 2012 would be the seeming end of the world.  I am not sure how in America the “good guy” became the “bad guy.”  I am tired of feeling guilty for being good, but my conscience predicates I should.  Still I receive no tangible reward of which I am aware.  Still in deep emotional pain, thwarting the imminent result, I persevere.  I feel alone with little spiritual fulfillment.  Only my brain serves me on task daily not to drop its guard allowing me to become an uneducated manipulated putz.  It is your brain that drives the truck.  It is your brain, not your dick, that creates that drum beat. 

Shallow America

            After returning from Europe for six months, it has taken me longer than usual to remember my normal routine.  America is not helping.  It is apparent that American television has digressed.  Every time I turn on the tube I see neo-Republican soapbox shouters caught in an endless loop of stale, uninteresting, pretentious commentary.  Why is it they are always shouting?  Why are they always whirling their bodies around like Shakers and Quakers seemingly speaking in tongues?  If I hear one more panel speak about the state of the American economy...  We’ve got it.  You don’t need to tell us anymore about what you don’t know.  We don’t need to see any more bad news.  What we need to hear about is innovation in business, manufacturing, or the arts.  What we need to see is a return to America’s grassroots movement embracing things that are meaningful, righteous, and giving.  What we don’t need is shallow commentary trying to squeeze a dime out of the American people.  There are too many channels.  There are too many networks.  There are too many devices.  The simple task of finding a program has become monumental.  There are mirror channels now.  One is HD and one is not.  Why have both?  I prefer a basic set of 60 or so channels provided by a satellite.  That used to be Direct TV, and I remember experiencing it in Black Mountain, North Carolina at a Comfort Inn.  There on the tube was everything I needed to stay entertained.  These days I find myself watching only a few networks.  Their content veritably is grassroots.  “Moonshiners.”  “Storage Wars.”  “American Chopper.”  “Swamp Men.”  Why is it these particular kinds of programs are interesting?  There isn’t a lot going on, but their concept deals with a grassroots level of humanity.  They are satisfying, because the people in these shows are doing things Americans always have done and enjoyed.  There is both a visceral and spiritual satisfaction that comes from pursuing a cause and then reaping the reward.  What makes it better is that it is not cyber.  It is not cerebral.  It is tangible, and that means satisfying the human psyche.  America’s wealthy slowly over time have robbed Americans of the infrastructure that used to satisfy some of these desires.  We used to have clean, natural, drinking water.  We used to have clean natural air devoid of electromagnetic waves.  We used to have clean space to stretch our legs.  Now it appears America is going Communist.  I never knew what that looked like until I went to Spain.  Then I began to see long flat expanses of governmental-like housing.  There were metal fences.  There were courtyards.  There was dirt.  There were few trees.  There were few people.  It looked like a Communist camp.  America is becoming increasingly Communist.  If Barak Obama is a socialist, and that would not be bad, he is not responsible for the wealthy in America’s charge to communize the United States.  Are not our freedoms as both humans and American citizens being violated?  Did not the Patriot Act violate our right to privacy?  Does not the legislation Imminent Domain undermine the essence of the American Constitution?  Why would we elect former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich president?   All ready he has proven he is capable of failing to implement a “Contract with America.”  He proved he could shut down the federal government.  He has lied to his wife and his republic.  If we the people do not being to see what is happening, it may be too late. 

What's the Bottom Line?

I am tired of being mind fucked.

The Future American Economy

            For survival’s sake we as human beings have to be flexible.  I have found the older you get the more flexible you must become.  Actually in my life compromising my life long musical ambitions became the norm.  In music always one had to be competitive to stay ahead.  I learned this early or rather just worked hard because it was the thing to do.  You could either drink beer and smoke pot, or excel in some particular field.  Because I have been a musician since childhood it seemed normal to try to excel in music.  Luckily my background and training paid off and my diligent dedicated labor kept me ahead in the musical game.  I was able to begin playing “gigs” and making money from playing music.  I never made a conscious decision to be cocky.  You just had to be to be competitive.  When I moved to the Midwest from the American South, I received a rather rude awakening.  The acclimation that took place over several years was one that was socialist.  The musicians in Columbus were not concerned with being told how good you were.  They were honest and genuine enough to want you to be a part of their fraternity, because there was a common thread.  You all loved music.  That love was what allowed you to become a part of their community and thus “gig.”  I learned a gigantic lesson in sincerity.  Over the years it became boring to me to concern myself with self-promotion.  I had had so much of myself over the years, I was not interested in hearing myself tell anyone how well I played and that someone should give me a gig.  I begin to pursue music because it was the right thing to do.  What could that mean?  The right thing to do is part of the Protestant Work Ethic.  We work hard as men, because it was why we were put here on this earth.  Our job is to succeed.  It is right to continue to learn, be creative, and be productive.  That is why I do music.  I have forgotten in America the field of commercial music is a dog eat dog scenario.  I had been involved in academia for almost nine years.  I wasn’t having to compete in the “real world” for recognition as a musician.  I had paid my dues.  Now that I no longer immediately am involved with academia, the rules of engagement seem to have changed.  The game has changed.  Above all the music has changed.  The kind of music I was taught and to which I listened was personal.  It allowed for personal expression.  If the music performance didn’t have your soul in it, you would fold.  It would become very cold.  You no longer would be playing music in public.  Now the game is to be flexible.  The game is to compromise.  The game is to not play like we played by my learning.  If you do you become an outcast for not lowering yourself to the lowest common denominator.  Recently I have been trying to become re-motivated about music.  Because I have been a professional musician for over twenty years, I play well.  Because I have studied music at the doctoral level I know a lot about music.  I can’t help it.  When I play I feel like I am stepping on people’s toes.  Is this because of the weak economy?  Is it because people are too uneducated to get what I do?  Is it that people have become so self-centered that they no longer are able to stop what they are doing and listen to someone else’s opinion?  Karioke was the beginning of the end for professional music.  Whoever decided that people should try to perform musically, no matter how un-trained they were, should be shot.  There was a time when music attempted to be artistic.  It attempted to transcend.  With these efforts came communication and communing with the public.  Now music sucks up to the public and sacrifices its artistry in a lame excuse of entertainment.  It has been emasculated.  This trend must be a component of P.C., a premise that has become a joke, but stealthy still is dictating our lives.  Slowly in America the freedoms and ideals human beings have forged and prolonged are being replaced with communist ideals.  We are being manipulated over time to become mindless, soulless, money-spending androids.  The reason why the economy in America is in the dumps is because we have no product.  Moving money around, while it worked for a while for many who became rich, no longer is a viable source of income.  The money all has been received, and those who have received it certainly are not putting it back into the American economy.  It is laundered in some Grand Cayman bank and sent elsewhere.  America has been abandoned, and I for one wish those rich people with the money would shut the fuck up.  There is no way the economy in America can be re-fueled by the poor.  It takes money to make money, and  those small business loans and credit lines have been absorbed by those crafty rich.  Until people are employed, a product is produced sold and bought, and that money circulates, there will be no revitalization of America’s economy.  The Grassroots roots program that started America will have to return.  Maybe the disappearance of those crafty rich is what is necessary.  History shows what is to come. 

What Actually is the American Economy?

            Twice only in my short life have I experienced mental illness.  Mental illness can be stealth.  In certain ways it can be more difficult to understand and treat than physiological illnesses.  That is why we have psychology and psychiatry.   What do I mean by “mental illness?”  Perhaps the term mental illness is inappropriate jargon.  If one becomes off balance in their daily routine for some unknown reason, is this mental illness?  Mental illness better clarified would mean an ailment or affliction that sustains the test of time.  It is not a temporary navigating of the stormy seas of everyday life.  It would be something that sticks around.  In professional terms that would be categorized as “chronic.”  Some deviant situation that recurs for a length of time likely could cause mental illness, because the mind loses the ability to remember what is healthy.  It would be often in the evolution of man the human mind and body have enabled themselves to survive by the process of accommodation.  When faced with a non-changing environment within which we are forced to operate for financial sustenance, our minds can accommodate the situation by adapting.  Upon scrutiny we may alter our moral or ethical codes to justify our economic freedom.  Is this freedom worth the social and psychological freedom we pursue as human beings?  More astutely characterized is this “American” freedom worth the psychological price?  We cannot be so shallow to recognize many other global cultures are not afforded any civil liberty, so the boundary between human and civil liberty must be defined.  One could use the United States Constitution as “ground zero.”  That could be why many foreign cultures seek asylum in the United States.  They understand, respect, and admire the rights outlined in our Constitution.  Sociologically the challenge is to understand human rights and how they have been defined and implemented by different political regimes.  What is an unacceptable environment?  In the field of labor, an entity that Abraham Lincoln considered synonymous with America, unions were organized to mitigate conditions of labor.  Today the term “labor union,” like many things in non-mainstream America, can elicit bipolar responses.  In recent decades America politically has become more polarized.  The term “mainstream” has gone undercover leaving the defining of our own society to ourselves.  We have become forced to become better educated on our own to survive in an increasingly hypocritical and often evil socio-economic construct.  Once afforded government-provided amenities have vanished.  With them has vanished our quality of life forcing us to buy the creature comforts our country once provided.  This has become the “New American Economy.”  We are living off one another, not for one another.  Ironically and erroneously Republicans shout, “Socialist” at our President, when their already-rooted communist economic infrastructure is the enemy. Grass roots artistic and intellectual aesthetics have become disguised and decreed unimportant.  We are experiencing a modern “Dark Ages” perhaps or perhaps not fueled by a teetering economy.  It is the prospectus of this economy that should be in question.  

An Artistic Healing of Neurosis

            Upon watching Woody Allen being interviewed by Jay Leno, it became perfectly clear that his comedy is a metaphor for Jewish neurosis.  A light bulb went off in my head!   I have been asking myself the last month how I am going to understand and heal my own neurosis.  His answer was comedy.  Over the decades after the obtainment of security (personal wealth) he was able to use his neurosis positively as a motivation for creativity.  Although misunderstood many would be surprised to know upon study artists do the same thing.  “When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade!”   The argument presents itself that neurosis should not be necessary for great art.  Upon study it could be proven easily that it is this unresolvedness often that prompts attempted healing by use of artistic metaphors.  Artists study and understand, synthesize, and abstract their aberrations into artistic renderings.  The thorough study and expunging of their afflictions in the present helps to cure the eventual, longer lasting, emotional effects the neurosis may cause in the future.  What is interesting is, “Will an artist have able material with which to create if there is no such rift?”  Consequently are artists naturally and openly sentenced to lives of continual neurosis? 

            The primary and painful step in the healing process is attempting hypothetically to understand its cause.  A hypothetical or disassociated survey of one’s own history attempts to quell painlessly neurosis’s symptoms.  The artistic process on the other hand may use the emotional unrest of neurosis and funnel it into creative impetus.  While it could be understood traditionally only good emotion is used as motivation for art, history has shown that also art has been used for catharsis.  The film Goya’s Ghost provides a perfect example of such art.  The argument could be presented that creativity which is intelligently and skillfully channeled may only be an attempted diversion or escape from  neurosis.  It is now that the subconscious mind is brought into play.  As synthesizers humans should not be expected cognitively to understand the total minutia of their own psychology.  If we were then the Romantic period in art and literature may not have ever existed.  A balanced combination of Classicism and Romanticism could be viewed as a suitable recipe for the healing of neurosis. 

Music Neurosis

            Psychiatry in music?  What could that be?  There exists a valid vocational field, Music Therapy, that would define how most people define the music listening experience.  They seek something from the music.  They want something to happen from the music.  How could this experience become reversed and the listener would begin to need therapy for his music experience?  It doesn’t make sense.  What could be strong enough in the field of music performance that could cause a seeming neurosis?  What is neurosis?  

            The simplest example of created neurosis would be from child molestation.  There exists something so abnormal it would be easy to fathom the devastating effects it would have on a child’s temperament.  Not only does it maim the child’s natural sexual development, it would affect his or her trust of the human species.  That is severe.  What synonym possibly could exist in the field of music that could be strong enough that it would vanquish one’s trust of the human beings?  That is what occurred to me over the course of a six-month musician’s contract aboard the ship the Adventure of the Seas.  Although I knew ahead  of time for what I was in store, I went anyway.  Successfully I made it through the half-a-year albeit with two written warnings and a mediocre three-out-of five Evaluation.  Two weeks before my sign off date I offered to resign to the Musical Director.  

           Again what could bring such dire circumstances that a musician would want to terminate their own source of income?  The answer is continual, repeated, public humiliation.  How could a musician working aboard a cruise ship experience something akin to a beheading in a public square for governmental insubordination?  While maybe to the guests it didn’t appear I was being tortured, I was.  How do you say?  How can you say?  “You must be exaggerating.  You must be creating this drama in your own mind for some selfish reason.”   What possibly could transpire in a band that would cause neurosis?  It seems silly. 

            I will try to explain.  The most important aspect of describing this eventual neurosis is trying not to let it sound like a proclamation of complaints.  Everyone has shortcomings in their lives and jobs, but no one enjoys listening to anyone complain unless they are in a similar situation.  Then the voicing of grief can be cathartic for both parties.  

There was a fair amount of this on the Adventure also.  I tried not to be a complainer.  After almost four years of clinical depression over twenty years ago, I healed myself.  I learned how to use my mind to control my feelings.  The adverse side of that coin is now healing is calling for a change of environment or vocation.  I feel like I do not deserve this grief, again.  I literally have paid my dues for years.  Continually I have prostituted my skill, knowledge, and experience for a menial musician’s job.  Now that job has harmed my psyche.  The trust of humanity I found with God’s help and the potential feeling of love seems to be gone.  I am wary, unhappy, and skeptical.  Although I can stay distracted with the help of my mind, my soul and sexual longing both are extremely empty.  Once I was able to fabricate both from within myself.  Now because I have been abused like a stray dog for half a year, I am damaged goods, again.  Damn!  That is why I am writing this missive.  Healing. 

            My loss of trust in humanity is based upon shortcomings that were present in my professional job.  Consistently I had to look out for myself on this ship.  The amenities that were due everyone else were not afforded to me.  One past aspect of my musical study was synthesizers or electronic music.  Academics call it Electro-acoustic music.  I built a very sophisticated music production studio in my home in Columbus on a shoestring budget.  I was anal retentive about sound quality and cleanliness.  My three racks of vintage synthesizer modules were manicured and braided like a princess.  The audio and A.C. cables were separated and run neatly with wire ties.  The modules ergonomically were placed in the rack to provide ease of access.  Above all, there was very little noise in final stereo audio buss.  I produced 12 CD’s of material in this home studio over the course of two years and am extremely proud of the work.  I need to market it.  Imagine after this meticulous and methodical keyboard-oriented project studio, coming to a ship and finding a fifteen year old digital piano on stage.  I am supposed to satisfy the requirements of a professional studio musician-like job with a bare bones, weighted key, anachronistic digital piano with bad key contacts? 
            When I worked on this ship previously, the Musical Director and I fixed seven Roland RD-700 digital pianos.  Together we learned how to disassemble them and substitute an intact plastic key carriage from a “donor unit."  Two years later I was playing the same instruments.  They all had one bad stereo jack, noise in the volume slider, or bad notes resulting from worn-out key contacts.  The new Kurzweil keyboard was sitting in the orchestra pit flawed from the factory.  It would just turn itself off spontaneously.  That was $3,000.00, and wasted egg on my face.
          During this six months I shuffled from one Roland digital piano to another trying to fix them myself on the fly.  Near the end of this contract the new main theater sound technician (who ended up being a novice proven by continual mistakes mixing the shows) told me I no longer could use which keyboard I needed.  Five days before I was to sign off the ship, the interim Musical Director had the audacity to ask me to program (for the third time) one production show into the instrument finally I declared was the fittest for the theater.  (I had to walk up five flights of stairs and carry this instrument by hand into the theater.)  Also I had to execute this incognito, so I would not be scolded by the Production manager.  Utterly this was ridiculous.  No wind player would be subject to such a disturbance.  No one ever would ask a saxophone player to play an instrument of the Production Manager’s choosing.  That is absurd, yet this is what I endured while being cast a troublemaker.  My  desire to make the music in the theater as professional as possible was met with scorn.  On this particular vessel your job as a pianist was to kiss the asses of those who were supposed to help you.  They were children and should be fired.  Instead they lost the most experienced orchestra pianist in Royal Caribbean’s fleet.  Tough luck.
        I suffered on these instruments every set.  The majority of my attention was focused upon keyboard set up rather than playing the music.  Five percent of my job actually was spent thinking about or enjoying music.  That was why I had to leave this position. 

            The second disservice I endured was the misuse of a thirty-thousand dollar Yamaha acoustic piano.  It was a quality instrument, but only once was I able to exploit its true potential.  Because the Ampeg bass amplifier sat at the end of the piano, the resonant cavity of the piano became a bass bin.  The sound technician did not understand how to isolate these instruments.  For six months I endured  no stage volume and the sound technician unable to turn the piano up in the house.  My job became to be a puppet.  The theater staff were not concerned with what I played or how I contributed to the music.  As I began to understand this ruse, I could not muster the energy to comply with such a feeble job description.  The ship was not enjoyable enough to lower my musical guard and become a pawn in a rag-tag music fraternity.  I was employed to play music and not act the fool.  Am I a cad for this reason?   Maybe others could have shucked and jived and taken the money.  I was too bored. 

            Slowly, as I reflect, the realization that no one ever had my back was insulting.  I have encountered lack of technical support before.  It is common on ships.  The stage technicians are underpaid non-skilled labor.  They are not professional sound technicians.  Unless you forge a friendship with them, they will do shoddy work for you.  You get used to that. 

            Each time I had to gather my own stand lights and music stand and carry them to the Promenade, my resentment grew.  Clad in a tuxedo I had to in front of expecting guests adjust the keyboard bench, set my levels, and set up my music stand and lights before thinking about or looking at the set of music I was about to play.  This Promenade set caused my eventual neurosis.
        Each time I played this set it felt like torture, because the bass player was an irresponsible alcoholic.  Often he played drunk or hung-over.  While several times I was able to force a good performance out of him sonically by demanding it with piano volume, the majority of  time his lack of technique merely created a vacuum.  If one cannot use their fingers with skill, and they play at a loud volume then the attempted time feel or "groove" is a muddled pile of shit.  He did not play time with his fingers, as most ship bass players do not.   I am a solid bassist myself.  They do not count or feel time when they play.  They glide their fingers over the strings in an illusion or masquerade of time.  It nearly is impossible with which to play, because there is no time.  Notes are not being executed in time.  The attacks of notes often are way ahead and way behind what should be the beat.  The bassist does not even listen to the drummer.  They play "in spite" of each other.  Imagine having to play in the middle of this mess. 

            Something I came to understand was “pop feel" is not masculine.  It is the feminine.  It strives to create a vacuum.  It is the opposite of any music I have played, enjoyed or studied, and it became my job description.  It was called “suck.”  "Suck" on purpose.  Purposefully "suck" any vitality out of your music performance.  "Suck" up.  It was "suckish," selfish, childish, half-assed masturbation.  It was gay.  "I was in a gay band."

            I, a former teacher and bandleader of the great jazz saxophonist Chris Potter, almost with a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition, and a player of trumpet, electric bass, and keyboards had begun to be expected to "suck" on purpose.  I could not relate to the guests with the former confidence I had had.  I was prevented from relating to women with my musical voice.  I could not use my music performance as an expression of anything I thought or felt.  Completely I was emasculated with music.  The other players knew it, and they laughed because they knew what situation they were creating.  The bass player would tell you to your face your job was to bend over, smile, and take it up the ass.  This was my gig on the Adventure of the Seas. 

Ms. Saigon at CFRT

            Ms. Saigon has been around for quite a while.  I had never seen it.  I have played some of the music in cruise ship production shows, because I recognized a few tunes.  I did not do any mental preparation before seeing the show.  I did remember upon seeing the people-filled lobby, it takes some effort to absorb “live” musical theater.  It never is like a movie, where you can just relax and enjoy the drama.  Navigating the other patrons in my eyes is the largest obstacle to overcome when trying to enjoy a play. 

            I found out upon entering the theater the orchestra was on stage.  “Oh. Chicago,” I thought.  What was the purpose of that?  Then I noticed there were virtually no sets on stage.  There were only chairs on either side like two jury boxes or better yet, choir pews in a church.  For me this set the stage for what was about to transpire.  It would not be a run-of-the-mill musical.  It would be more like a straight play with music.  Then when the lights came down and the music began, I realized it was an operetta.  Like Les Miserable it was all music with no spoken dialog.  Then Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell came to mind.  It was kind of rock music with a little oriental flavor sprinkled in.  I didn’t like the first act at all.  The music seemed boring, vanilla, and long-winded.  It was bad Andrew Lloyd Webber.  I felt the characters were portrayed accurately.  Then I realized I had to meet and build a relationship with each character before I could begin to enjoy the show.  First there was a stoic quiet seventeen-year-old Vietnamese girl who was being forced to sell her body for money.  How could I empathize with her without a better setting of the scene?  I realized Ms. Saigon was a “Broadway” depiction of fairly serious subject matter.  It was attempting to do two things, reveal a truly dramatic story and entertain a theater audience.  It was Chicago, Oliver, and Sweet Charity in one.  There were similarities.  First Engineer reminded me of Fagen.  Instead of instructing degenerate boys how to “pick a pocket or two,” he was instructing young Vietnamese women how to have sex for money.  At the culmination of Act II he cemented the similarity to Chicago.  Engineer created a prospect of the story with a rousing solo production number called “The American Dream.”  “This was the lawyer in Chicago,” I thought to myself.  He was the comedic relief, calculated as such.  That felt like an old television show with a clown coming on intermittently to relieve the tension.  That works.  Then Cabaret came to mind.  A narrator was hosting the show.  That also works.  Immediately at the start of the show it is necessary quickly to set the scene.  There is no foreplay for the drama.  Ms. Saigon begins with a loud, aggressive, brothel scene except the drama is being played in front of a theater orchestra.  That was strange.  It made it intimate.  How could the mood be set for a sultry, sexy, alluring whorehouse in this environment?  It is a lot to expect your audience cold to warm up to such an intent.  People are eating or working or just living, and then immediately they are projected lingerie-clad young women gyrating on chairs.  Normally as an adult male I should enjoy this.  In a “theater” show where I am more accustomed to serious themes being explored, it was difficult to accept such a gratuitous offering.  I tried.  Still because I am fourty-nine, watching neighbor’s children doing local theater does not push my buttons.  I watched the G.I.’s dance with the girls and felt absolutely nothing of what they were intended to feel.  It was like watching high school kids spoon.  I was too old and did not have the time to waste dredging up a feeling that I knew would be pointless.  I watched hypothetically as the main character seemed to fall in lust with the young seventeen-year-old Kim.  I could be sympathetic to the situation, because I too had done the same thing.  I would never be so juvenile to fall in love with a prostitute, because it wouldn’t be love anyway.  It would be lust, or love based upon physical desire.  I have learned my lesson over time that this is not love.  For a helpless G.I. stationed in Vietnam, it is plausible he could be that naïve, like Radar in the television series M*A*S*H.  To solidify their purely physical attraction they kissed a lot on stage.  I find this also difficult to watch, because it does my psyche absolutely no good whatsoever.  Why would I want to watch this on stage?  It is personal and boring to me. 

            I began to understand the story as it approached the conclusion of the first Act.  Then a completely new and seemingly strange Tinkerbell-like character stepped from stage right.  She appeared while Kim reflected at her miniature romance alter which appeared repeatedly throughout the show.  Now there were two Kims, but one was wearing a black negligee and was surreal.  Upon reflection Ms. Saigon did attempt to offer you clues to its disguised unfolding story.  That was smart but also needed.  The music was not sufficiently strong to carry the play without sets.  It needed an ensemble of things to bring it off, and some of that was sheer effort.  Without getting distracted I must admit I was grievously disappointed in the pianist.  (Being a professional pianist myself for the last ten years aboard cruise ships, I am equipped to be able to make a value judgment about musicality.)  I felt the rest of the orchestra was capable, but this man failed to deliver the goods at the keyboard.  He did what most every pianist is doing these days, skating over the performance with no tactile connection to the piano.  His sound was thin, devoid of tone and bass, and flaccidly performed.  His limp waving wrists proved there was no physical connection to the music, only cognitive.  You could feel it.  Better yet you could not “feel” it, because there was nothing to feel.  Admittedly he had his hands full conducting the long and complex score.  Trying to cover both bases is too much for one person, but that often can get you the gig.  A solid, heart-felt piano performance was needed to bring the show up to CFRT standards.  I longed for both a bass fiddle or guitar, and a solid, meaty piano sound.  The piano truly was piano in this show, too much so.  It played a solidly subordinate role to the overpowering woodwinds.  That will be the drawback to placing your orchestra on stage.  I wondered again at the logic of it.  Did they not want to deal with sets?  The scenic designer at CFRT is top notch.  I remember a scene from Miss Saigon in a ship show that had the couple in a lofted treehouse- like bed.  It was effective.  This truly was a strange setting.  The sound quality was poor.  While the actors did need to be miked to be heard over the on-stage orchestra, the sound quality through the speakers was both harsh and often distorted.  I came to realize the show could have been produced acoustically.  That would have been fine.  By the end of the second Act, volume levels did reinforce this was a rock opera. 

            After suffering through the first Act, finally I began to be able to “feel” what was happening in the show.  It was a tough nut to crack and more attempts are needed to polish this retro piece.  I never thought a sole alto saxophone would provide the much needed warmth the show required to be intimate.