Haven’t gotten a new tattoo in more than 10 years. 
20
Feb
12
Follow-up: New tattoo
List of efficacious rock n roll stage attire
This is an exhaustive list of attire permissible to be worn by the participants of a rock n roll show in all of its various permutations. Straying from these guidelines is possible, but not advised unless you have achieved “Master” status. Only you will know when that status has been achieved.
Leg wear:
- Jeans:
Bob
Blue or black, perhaps other colors, but never green, never acid washed or otherwise artificially distressed. No relaxed fit. Tightness to taste, but be mindful that dozens of people might be looking at you and take their mental health into account. Also, if you have a flat butt, avoid flashing the crowd your plumbers crack by never bending down for anything. Keep picks on the mic stand or amp. Learn to adjust pedals with the tip of your shoe.
- Corduroys are OK, pending aforementioned no green rule, (although with cords, anything is possible).
- Slacks:
Well, this is a tough one and case-based. If you have a cool pair of suit pants and that works for you, then ok, but stick with dark colors, pinstriped if patterned at all. Pinstripes are thinning and you can never be too thin to rock.
Torso garb
- T-shirts: There’s a lot of leeway here. Use discretion. Tightness rules applied to jeans apply here, but some like a little gut peeking out. With T-shirts, it’s kind of a if you can rock it, then rock it. Anything can be ironic and we all know that irony is the height of comedy.
- Blazers: The top consideration here is enough room through the shoulder. If you can’t cross your arms in front of you, then reconsider the blazer. Nothing sucks worse than restricted motion on stage. Also, be aware that blazers are heavy and therefor, hot; they may not be appropriate for all styles of rock.
- Button shirts of most any derivation. You have carte blanche here, but be wary of patterns and materials. If a 50-year-old man would wear it to work in his insurance office or on a vacation, beware.
- Jackets:
Leather, denim are permissible. Satin jackets are not, unless you’re applying the aforementioned irony “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Members-Only also falls into the irony category, but not as egregiously. Warm-up jackets are permissible, but perhaps genre-determined. You must also consider possible damage that could be caused by jackets. If you don’t play an instrument and you’re in a band that means you’re a dedicated lead singer and you have other, more pressing problems. - Belts. Again, anything short of rope is fair game, but be careful about instrument damage, unless you’re from Texas. Then all bets are off.
Headwear
Headwear is usually dependent on fluctuating fads than other pieces of clothing. As a general rule, I say no to headwear, but extenuation circumstances such as male pattern baldness tend to make headwear preferable. Depending on genre, cowboy hats may be permissible, but never leather. Please see the list of “Don’ts” for a full list of head wear to avoid.
Jewelry
Another tough one. In some genres of music, jewelry is very important (various stripes of metal, for example). For others, jewelry can become a identifier (Ringo Starr’s rings, Flavor Flav’s clock necklace). If you decide to wear jewelry on stage, you have to own it. If you can pull it off, then go for it, but I advise against earrings in this day and age unless you’re a pirate.
Footwear
- Sneakers: Generally, yes. There’s one caveat: absolutely no white leather cross trainers or running shoes. Nothings says “My Mom Bought These for Me” or “I’m really a 46-year-old accountant” than white leather sneakers. Stick with the classics: Chuck Taylors, Vans, Puma, Adidas and similar and you’ll be safe. Avoid running shoes that look too expensive or over designed and basketball shoes other than Chucks.
Leather: Doc Martins of any style and other makers that approximate any of these styles. Cowboy boots are also OK, but beware intricate patterns or colors other than black or brown unless there’s a “Jr.” at the end of your name. Beware of suede shoes. These have gone in and out of fashion over the years, particularly the Wallaby design. Unless you’re 100% sure this is the material for you, avoid suede. Also, suede doesn’t take beer and other liquids spilled on it very well and if you have a can of Scotchguard in your home, there’s no way you can be a rocker anyway.
Those are absolutely the ONLY types of footwear allowed onstage at a rock show.
Accessories
You can accessorize as desired. Scarves, bandanas, wristbands have all shown rock n roll efficacy, but avoid headbands unless you’re Keith Moon. And you’re not.
Hair
If you’re lucky enough to have it, wear it how you like, but no mullets, no pony tails, no highlights.
Clothing that offends the rock gods:
Under no circumstance should any of following articles of clothing be worn on a stage for any reason. There is no bend to these rules. Break them at your own peril. If you are in fact a moonlighting 46-year-old accountant or your mother still buys all your clothes, you have my sympathies, but I hate you because you probably have better gear than me.
No Shorts, especially no jean shorts (aka, jorts). This is about respect. People came to hear you play music. You are not delivering pizza or working a summer job at a second-rate theme park. Put n pants and suck it up.
No overalls. If you’re not performing on an episode of Hee Haw (and you’re not) or just in from detassling corn, you have no reason to be wearing overalls. Yes, they are comfortable, but again, suck it up and have some respect.
No khakis. The rock stage is not your job as a legal proofreader. Take off those ill-fitting symbols of servitude.
No cargo pants. You don’t need ten different pockets to carry stuff.
No sandals. Seriously, look at your feet. Jesus H. Christ. The only time you should wear sandals is in the shower at the YMCA.
No fedoras: We had enough of zoot suits and fedoras with that annoying swing craze of the late 90s. It’s just not time yet.
No porkpie hat/wifebeater T combo: Face it, you’re a 25-year-old from Naperville, IL. You are not the long lost son of an unknown bluesman. That clothing combo just makes you look like an extra in a period film that will never get made.
No trucker baseball hats. I know, you bought a ton of these in the early 2000s, but get over it. Keep them long enough and maybe they’ll come back around, but my advice it just to burn them in a safe environment away from children and pets to protect them from noxious fumes.
I’m sure I’ve left some stuff out, so be sure to add on.
Coming soon: Instrument dos and don’ts!
I have to say that I’ve been pretty unexcited about a new Wilco record for a long time. They really haven’t made a record I loved since A Ghost is Born and that was almost ten years ago. But I have to say, first time through this stream, I’m really into what I hearing. The tunes finally sound energetic and multi-dimensional again. No more angular naval gazing and flat recordings and arrangements. Finally some aural candy that seems to actually fit in the context of the tunes. And now eponymous songs. I may actually buy this one and not download it, listen for a week and get mad at the suck.
Thanks for coming back to me, fellas.
Wanna hear the new Wilco? It’s streaming @ wilcoworld.net.
So I recently “acquired” 37 folk/rock albums. I’d been kinda jonesing for something I’d never heard before, which is kinda a difficult order to fill. I’m going to do my best to go through them all and maybe report on them as I go along.
Right now, I’m listening to Gerry Rafferty’s debut solo record, “Can I Get My Money Back.” 
It’s actually kind of a revelation. It’s mostly mid-tempo folk/rock, with a feel similar to Dennis Wilson’s “Pacific Ocean Blue” in places (but better than that record songwise. I’ve never bought into that record.) and The Band, with a little English folk feel thrown in. If you only know Rafferty because he’s the guy who wrote “Stuck in the Middle With You” and you loved that song in Reservoir Dogs, you kinda owe it to yourself to “find” a copy of this record and check it out. It’s strong from start to finish. For those of you who are into that sort of thing, it’s on Spotify.
1991. It was kind of a golden age. Of course, everyone probably thinks of their salad days as golden, but things were amazing in Morgantown, WV in 1991. There were fantastic bands in town of all kinds, a great club where we all played, a couple of fantastic record stores, we’d started our own record label and the compilation we released was actually garnering some recognition. We were young and figuring it all out in a little cocoon that was just the right amounts of dangerous and nurturing.
This is how I remember Nevermind coming into this world: Collectively, we all knew Nirvana. Many of us were members of the SubPop Singles Club (a mail-order subscription to a monthly series of 7 inches), and we’d all heard Bleach. I remember thinking that it was kind of primitive and unformed compared to other SubPop bands like Mudhoney. Like Nirvana was younger and hadn’t yet found their thing. I didn’t really like Bleach all that much.
Then we heard that they signed to a major label. Sacrilege. Heresy. It was agreed upon tacitly that whatever came from this selling out would be terrible, pap, compromised by virtue of how it came to exist. We didn’t know what was about to happen.
Christie Muncie and me in what had to be the summer of '91
Someone, I think it was Christy Muncie, got an advance copy of the record ’cause she worked at the radio station. She seemed to be everywhere in those few weeks before the record came out, playing that cassette over and over. It’s hard to remember exactly when I first heard it. I recall specifically being at a party at the Satan Sister’s house and Christie put it on the boom box. I wanted to hate it. I know others among us did too, but as that music spooled out into the summer night I couldn’t deny that it was something really special. In many ways it was like the perfect version of the music that our generation had been trying to make. I can’t say what others felt, but for me, Nevermind marks the first, and perhaps the only, time in my life where I heard music take a great leap forward into something new, different, that transcended every expectation–for the audience and the artist, I imagine. It became the soundtrack to our lives those few weeks before the rest of the world claimed the album and the band and took them away from us.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter that the rest of the world got to experience Nirvana and that record. At least, not entirely. There was a sense of pride, that they were a part of my extended family and they had done something amazing. On some level I was excited. My life and the lives of a lot of us in Morgantown started to change that summer. We were fringe dwellers for most of my high school and early college years, hated by the popular kids, feared by parents and misunderstood by the town in general. We were “Dry Housers,” a derogatory name taken from the name of the by-then-defunct all-ages club attached to the bigger bar. Post-Nevermind, we went from being harassed by the frat boys to getting paid to play their parties. It wasn’t a bad deal. And we had Nirvana to thank for it. They made us cool.
So now it’s twenty years since Nevermind was released. I find myself melancholic. Not just because I relize I’m twenty years older than I was then and that means that I’m old, but also because of what’s happened to music in those twenty years. It’s hard for me not to think that Nirvana, like Peter Frampton before them, upset a delicate balance in the music industry. At the time, the indie labels and the underground network they were a part of, were a thriving ecosystem that very consciously spurned the “big time.” I desperately wanted to be “big time”, but I understood that that world was playing by its own set of rules and the rules were working. I don’t begrudge Nirvana or anyone else accepting any opportunity placed in front of them. I would have done the same thing and probably not have agonized that much about it, at least not the 19-year-old version of myself. Kurt, Christ and Dave could have never imagined that what happened would have happened. Sometimes that’s just how it is.
But in the end, Nevermind was the beginning of the end for the music industry, or maybe the last nail in the coffin. I remember being around label folks in New York during the mid-90s post-Nevermind glut where it seemed like any band that was half-way decent could at least have a conversation with a couple A&R people. I watched bands like the Old 97s get signed to huge contracts basically from the stage at Brownies. And I’m not saying they didn’t deserve it. But underneath it all, even then, I could sense the desperation. Grunge would run its course. There had to be The Next Big Thing. And if there wasn’t, the money would run out. There was the thought in some industry circles that maybe The Next Big Thing was alt.country. But it wasn’t. The money ran out in spectacular fashion. The record industry couldn’t (or wouldn’t) see the digital age coming. The Next Next Big Thing didn’t materialize and the whole house of cards collapsed.
This was not, I repeat not, Nirvana’s fault. They did their job. They made an undeniably great record that transcended every expectation and spoke to people on levels that can’t be fully explained. They made art. But in the end, art and commerce cannot exist on the same level. Commerce wants predictable outcomes. Art does not. Art will always fail commerce and commerce will suffer terribly for it while art will continue on. Art knows pain. Commerce seeks comfort.
But none of us knew this in the summer of 1991. That summer we were blessed with the opportunity to watch Nirvana and Nevermind soar in to the summer strata. It was glorious to watch them go.
OK, I’m about to out myself as a huge dork right here, but screw it: I think this is one of the best songs about the commercialization of music ever written. It speaks of innocence and loss, greed and honesty. There, I said it. There’s no other song I can think of that encapsulates the irony inherent in the sale of the feeling of freedom and youth more than this song.
Other thoughts about Rush:
1. Best power trio ever in rock.
2. Many will think I’m insane, but Geddy Lee has one of the best voices ever in rock (The power! The range!!)
3.Yes, at their worst the songs can be terrible (The Trees, most of 2112), but at their best they are smart and don’t pander (song that is the subject of this post).
Begin the day with a friendly voice,
A companion unobtrusive
Plays that song that’s so elusive
And the magic music makes your morning mood.
Off on your way, hit the open road,
There is magic at your fingers
For the Spirit ever lingers,
Undemanding contact in your happy solitude.
Invisible airwaves crackle with life
Bright antenna bristle with the energy
Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free
All this machinery making modern music
Can still be open-hearted.
Not so coldly charted, it’s really just a question
Of your honesty, yeah, your honesty.
One likes to believe in the freedom of music,
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity.
For the words of the prophets were written on the studio wall,
Concert hall
And echoes with the sounds of salesmen. Of salesmen. Of salesmen.
Alexi Murdoch-Towards the Sun:
I’d never heard of this guy, although I guess he’s been around for a while. His stuff kinda reminds me of John Martyn or Nick Drake, or guys like that, with a little bit of an indie bent, although not so indie that the irony grates on me like tin foil in my mouth. A huge plus is that Mr. Murdoch does not sing with the adenoidal while that seems so poplar with singer/songwriter’s these days. Not I hint of that terrible Bright Eyes keen. Not a moment of Ryan Adams’ maudlin whining or the ad nauseum braying yo-ho-ho sea shanties of the Decemberists.
This is the first new (to me) artist I’ve come across in a long time that didn’t wear me down to the point of anger after a few listens.
Check him out. He’s bitter music snob approved.
14
Apr
11
Cool internet music gadget
OK, I’m thinking of new ways to make my next record. There are some super cool apps on the iPad that I’m exploring but today, through the time-wasting wonder of Facebook, I found this (Thanks, Dan). Don’t say I didn’t want you when you end up losing an hour or two of productivity. Also don’t be surprised when loops like this show up on the next Sad Iron Music record.
OK, so i decided to slim down my set up a little while back, get a new, more updated FW interface with more pres onboard and hopefully an upgrade in overall sound as well.
I did a lot of reading and decided to try the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. My setup is an iMac with a couple external FW drives and a LiquidMix 16 at the back end, with the interface the first part of the daisychain. It took a while to get the LM16 to play nicely with my set up when I first got it and that made me nervous about bringing in a new piece, but I went for it anyway. My previous (and current..more on that to come) interface was the 828MKII, which I bought when it was first out in ’03. It’s served me well for many years now, always been solid and never let me down. But I know there are issues with the converter/sound quality. I thought about a BLA mod, but was reluctant to spend the $$ on a piece that’s going on eight years old.
So in comes the Saffire Pro 40. At first, everything was great. It recognized the other FW devices straight off and seemed to play well. But after a while the thing cut out while still hooked up. All the devices were present, but no sound. I found if I exited the LM16 software, audio came back again. I could restart Logic and the LM and all was fine. Until it happened again. Which it did. More and more often. Also, there were times when the interface wasn’t recognized in the audio setup of my machine at start up. Power cycle the Pro 40 and it would come back. Fine for another couple restarts, and then this would happen again.
I contacted Focusrite. They were really helpful when I had trouble with the LM, so I was hoping this could be resolved. I have to say that Andy over there was helpful as much as he could be. I got some suggestions, like unplug all the other FW devices and see if it happens. Which I did, and it didn’t. But it would happen again as soon as the other devices were present again. They also recommended I change the FW buffer in the Saffire mix software, which I did, and change the buffer on the LM software. Which I did. Still the problems persisted and all the while I was becoming more and more filled with dread each time I sat down at the computer. No way to enjoy new gear.
So I’m taking the Saffire Pro 40 back, even though I was really impressed with the sound quality overall, especially for the price. I knew in my heart of hearts that it was a bridge too far to hope that I could get a $500 interface that would be a great upgrade for my set up and be problem free… If you’re looking for an inexpensive interface what sounds great, this is a great box, as long as you don’t want to daisychain a Liquid Mix.
And now I’m on the prowl again for a FW interface. I need something that will give me access to at least 14-16 inputs at once with either. I’d like to stay pretty close to the feature set of the 828, since that’s what I’ve already built around. I don’t have a lot of outboard stuff, but I really need the LM16 to work. I’ve come to rely on it heavily for EQ and compression.
So I’ve put up a poll to apprise you of the choices I’ve been considering. Some are standalone boxes, some are mixers with FW. I’m really intrigued by the new Mackie Onyxi series, but am wary of Mackie’s flightiness when it comes to their interface products. They seem to release and then drop products faster than my junior high girlfriends dropped me.
Similarly, I’ve coveted the A&H Zed R-16, but $2000 might be too much for me to spend right now.
If you all feel inclined, I’d love to hear your experiences with any or all of these pieces of gear and your opinions on where I should go.
You should also feel free to tell me to stop screwing and with something that works and keep rocking. But rest assured, I’m rocking still despite these problems. Nothing stop the rock.
Which interface?
Motu 828MKIII
M-Audio 2626
Yamaha N12
Mackie Onyxi 1620i
Other (please explain).
Let me know what you think in the comments.
_________________
New music: www.sadironmusic.com
Studio site: www.sadironstudio.com
18
May
10
The Voice: Levon Helm
OK, so it’s been a while since I got here. I broke my finger (slammed it in the car door), finished up teaching for the semester, and now I’ve got the end-of-the-semester-letdown cold. Feeling like shit, can barely put a thought together, typing with only a few fingers, but I had to get in here and say something about the record that’s been helping nurse me back to health since this past weekend: Levon Helm’s “Electric Dirt.”
Those who know me know Levon’s been a hero of mine for a long time. A few years back, when he had throat cancer, I nearly wept at the loss of his voice. That loss meant that all the voices from the Band were gone. A couple times, I went to see him play in New York, just drumming, and that was enough. He’s, for my money, the best American drummer that has ever played rock n roll. But I have to admit, I missed the voice. I missed it like I miss my grandfather. That it wasn’t there seemed cruel, but sometimes the world is cruel. Levon seemed happy. He was having fun on the skins. I was happy to still have him in the world.
But still, there’s that moment in The Last Waltz, when the band’s turning the chorus of “Up On Cripple Creek” around to go at it for a final time, and Levon just tears the notes from his throat; I’ve watched that moment dozens of times and it makes me shiver and I start to cry. Every time. There’s been a lot written about what music does to us, how it works in our mind and why we respond to it. I’ve thought about it a lot myself, especially now that the veil’s been lifted and almost everybody has been dissuaded of the idea that being a musician is a way to make a living, let alone get rich. Why do I keep coming back? Why does that moment bring tears to my eyes? The best explanation I’ve come up with is that it’s real. Not real, as in Levon’s tapped into a vein of himself, an expression of joy in music and individuality. It is that, but that alone wouldn’t make Levon’s voice what it is. It’s archeological, in some way. When I hear that voice I feel the past, I feel the present, I feel the connections that still exist between them. It’s a rare artist that has that connection. And again, Levon is not putting it on. It can’t be considered on his part. There’s a great story connected to the making of The Last Waltz, where in post production the rest of the group and the guests were pulled into the studio to fix the flubs that were rampant in the original recording of the night. But the Band was broken up and, by many accounts, Levon was fed up, sick of all of it, and he refused to fix anything. So the performances in the film are his original performances. They are perfect. So perfect it scares me. He is a vessel of music, a transmitter of something greater than himself.
After I had mourned the loss of his voice and moved on, it was back again, braying out from my speakers anew. Rough, hindered, but still the transmitter it had always been. I listened to “Dirt Farmer” quite a bit and I loved it. I was just glad to have him back again, like a dream where I get to talk to granddad one more time and he tells me everything’s OK. Dirt Farmer was a quieter record, mostly acoustic, and it was good. But I longed to hear Levon rock again. I didn’t know if it would happen. But it has.
Electric Dirt came out several months ago and I have to admit that I put it in my iTunes queue and didn’t even listen to any of the samples. I was afraid. What if it wasn’t any good? What if the voice wasn’t there? But this past weekend I needed some healing and I went for Levon, hoping for some comfort. And oh did I get it.
Electric Dirt is the record I’ve been dreaming of for a long, long time. For me, The Band was diminishing returns after the self-titled “brown record.” There were glimmers on each record, but you could hear the decline. The lone front-to-back bright spot in that later period comes from Rock of Ages, a live record released in 1972. That album, more than any other, shows the power the Band had. The Last Waltz pales in comparison as a musical artifact.
Greil Marcus, in a book about Dylan, The Band, and the Basement Tapes, made the claim that somehow Dylan and The Band were tapping into what he called “the old, weird America,” an America that existed in a time when we were still a very regional nation, where past was still as much a part of the music as the present, perhaps even more so. It was “folk” music, passed down by rote from generation to generation, altered slightly with each iteration, but remaining tethered to its roots. With the advent of recording technology, the radio, MTV, the Internet, much of that has been lost. In my experience, younger musicians have no connection to where the music the love and listen to came from, which is sad, but a conversation for another post, for sure.
To bring it back to Electric Dirt, somehow Levon and crew (including his daughter Amy and long-time Dylan guitarist Larry Campbell again in the producer’s seat) have picked up where Rock of Ages left off and brought the whole thing to a new level. It is a mash-up of Allen Toussaint New Orleans-style horns, mandolin, guitar, hill tunes, blues, rock. It is that old, weird America once again. It has that connection deep in this confused, many-cultured soil that most artists have no idea they are missing. And at the center of it all is that crack of the snare drum that only Levon can elicit, and the voice, glorious, piercing, challenging us to listen, to follow, to learn. It is weakened, but not weak. And that has made all the more the ghost of musics past, the connections we must not forget if we are to retain our souls. I would say that the voice is better now than it ever was.
This is real music. Real American music. It burns like a fire, in the night, in the dark, waiting for some weary traveller to come and comfort in its warmth and see truth in the burning of its coals.
