rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

GET HAPPY: COMFORT & JOY IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

     OK, picture this. Yr on a long, winding country road in the middle of nowhere, Colorado. Set back from the road is a small, wooden building, built in 1891 by newly arrived Danish settlers as a meeting hall. This night a group of men are loading amps and speakers and drums out of their pickups. There's no other structures as far as the eye can see, just a steady stream of headlights coming towards the building like the last scene of 'Field of Dreams. Ok, not that many cars, but you get my drift, right?

     The occasion is a Xmas/New Years dance at the Dane Hall, just on the outskirts of Fowler, Colorado where me and Kenny, our friends Jay, Melvin, Tom and Dennis are gonna set up and play a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll for some townfolks. To say that we're loose is something of an understatement. We have no band name (at one point I introduced us as 'Jay Fosdick and a bunch of other guys), we've rehearsed just once and we're all reading chord sheets on stage.

     Only there is no stage, just 6 middle aged guys with guitars and drums making noise in the middle of nowhere as about 200 people dance and laugh and visit and share. Share their lives, the news of the day, food and, dare I say it? something very nearly approaching the good will of the season that I keep hearing about.

     In a small town like Fowler (population 1,200 SAAAA-LUUUUTE!!) everybody ''knows' everybody. That is we all have preconceived notions about the merits of those we see, but rarely, if ever, talk to. I suppose to a lot of the more upscale Fowlerites, I've been perceived as something of a lowlife. I don't deny the charge outright, I certainly have some lowlife tendencies, but like everybody in the world I've been misunderstood as I've misunderstood others. No biggie.

     But this night I really felt like part of a community. Besides playing exceptionally well (a  surprise considering our lack of rehearsal), our little band was the receipient of so many compliments; some by folks I swear I've seen cross our Main Street, just to avoid (some of) us. Props must be given to our fearless and nominal leader Jay, for having Kenny and I (2 long haired, 'off the grid' Fowler characters) in the band. Jay is a very successful rancher, as well as being a member of one of our town's oldest families, in a town that values it's oldest families. By giving Kenny and I the opportunity to do what we do best, that is play music, he gave us the chance to bee seen in a different life by the folks I'd written off, mostly, as White Power Structure types, who were vague enemies.

     So maybe all this disapproval is all in my head. Wouldn't be the first time.

     Anyway, we played Yr Cheating Heart and Jambalaya and Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain and such and the townsfolk waltzed and 2 stepped. Smiling and laughing all, the crowd literally ranging from 8 months to 90 years old. There wasn't one occurence to mar the night. No drunken brawls, nobody yelling 'You guys suck!!! (I've seen other bands deal w/this. It's never, of course, happened to me personally) not even the typical drunk guy wanting to show me how to play 'Indian Reservation'. A charmed night. One to renew faith in human nature.

     As readers know, I've been in a Christmas Depression roughly 2 times the size of my soul lately and I am happy to report that playing this dance, being given a chance to do something well, for a change, has lifted that particular veil. At least for a while (old A.A. adadge, that applies to sensations both good and bad: This too shall pass), nothing llasts forever but I'm gonna ride this wave as long as I can. 'cause I feel good this morning. Good about life with all it's vissic, uh, vissicut.. er, oh, ups and downs, OK?

     Vignette from the night: About 2/3's through the 1st set, when most bands keep the tempos slow and the volume low until the old folks shuffle home, my man Jay turns to me and calls out 'Johnny B. Goode'. I suggest we wait till later, but Jay just gives me his zipper grin and say's 'It'll be alright.'  I trust him. So, after counting off, we storm into the song, Jay's acoustic guitar more distorted than mine. Dennis' drums rolling like a subway car rolling down an endless flight of stairs, Tom's pedal steel crying in crystal cascades of impossibly high rolling waterfall noteflurries, Melvin's sawing his guitar in half and Kenny's beard is boppin like his bass, the whole floor's rolling. While hitting the doublestop chorus riffs and singing the ancient refrain 'Go, Johnny, go!' I notice, sitting in a row on a bench to the left of me, the group of preadolescent girls who had been sitting politely but bored through the country material, now clapping their hands, bopping in their seats and singing along with the chorus.

     Getting happy. The power of punk rock. OK, maybe this whole 'life' thing has it's good points after all.

Happy New Year from me, Buster, Bleeker, MacDougal and all the ghosts and ganders that haunt punk rock blues. I'm stealing a riff (again) from my friend Carl and will be back soon w/my top 10 records of all time.

peace and noise,

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 18:08 | link | comments (1)

GRINDING THAT CHRISTMAS AXE: THE FIRST WORD IN NOEL IS 'NO'.

     OK, I've been set for weeks to write a classic anti-Christmas diatribe, I mean sharpening my verbal knives in the service of tearing apart the myth of peace on Earth and Good will to men in a world clearly on fire, etc., to savage the commercialism that we all pretend to hate but support in greater numbers year after year. I was gonna go after all the classic Chrismas tv specials and Christmas music and, in particular, the dangers of raised expectations of a life and world better than it is, perhaps better than it could ever be. All because of twisted history and the kind of mass-marketing seldom seen. Thousands of years of spin and conditioning, resulting in massive credit card debt, not to mention the death machines of Jihadists and Crusaders,

     Boy I was gonna give Christmas hell. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that any kind of response to this manufactured holiday, whether passive or aggressively for or against, gave the day too much power in my life. Kinda like how I feel that being an Atheist w/a capital 'A', you know - going to meetings and debating on websites, was just as futile as being a card carrying Believer.

      Not that I don't still resent the charades being played out constantly in the 'spirit of the season', it's just more like 'who cares'? Nobody's gonna cut down their Christmas tree 'cause Byrnes hates Christmas, but that's not the point. I've gone on record time and time again stating that I wish I could feel the comfort other folks find in family, religion and, yes, Christmas. But I don't. Full stop. I've always felt that Christmas, like religion, was, if not a pure invention, then certainly a contrived combination of cultural assimiltaions, performed at the sword, developed over time to tranquilize the masses while the State and Church did what they wanted to anyway. Much like today! And I eventually decided I wanted no part of it.

     But, again, who cares?

     On December 25th I will have dinner w/friends because they invited me. I'm working the day before and the day after, so to me it's just another day off. But December 28th!! Now that's different. On that night I will be playing guitar w/friends at a 'Pre-New Years Dance' at a local meeting hall. We'll be playing mainly old school country music. We're not real good, but we're a lot of fun and especially enjoy playing together. We rehearsed last Saturday night at another local hall and it was a wondrous night. The snow was falling lightly, me and Kenny ran across the street on break to the convenience store for coffee where Amanda gave us all the donuts that were being 'written off'. So the rehearsal turned into a very small feast and we laughed like fools and made music like the amateurs we are.

     The 'leader' of the group, Mr Jay Fosdick had recently lent me the cash to get a guitar and small amp (Squier '51, Vox AD30 VT, for those who know) and this night was the first time I got to 'take them for a walk', so to speak. After about 1 1/2 hrs of old school country, Jay called for 'Down in Weezeanna', or as most of us know it, 'Johnny B. Goode'. Kenny kicked it off on bass, Dennis slammed the drums and I banged out the famous intro, and just for a few seconds, there was no Christmas doubt, no fallen idols, no criminal presidents, no unjust war, no massive starvation, no hate, no pain, no shame, no regret, just the wings of that song taking off and away, taking us with it.

      I know that's just as futile as believing in Christmas, but, damn, it felt good.

    

    

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:47 | link | comments (9)

ANOTHER CHRISTMAS CAROL

   Iggy Scrooge walked quickly, hands jammed in the pockets of his black leather jacket. Snow swirled like spastic dancers in the glow of the streetlights. It was the night of December 24th and Iggy was on his way home from his job at Master Harby's Music Store. The distant strains of Christmas songs came from the various homes he passed, causing him to walk faster and curse under his breath.

     "Damned Christmas songs..... artifuckingficial happy bastards...."

     ...and the like. Coming to the door of his studio apartment, he saw that some well-meaning friend had placed a wreath on his door. As he reached to take it down, the wreath shimmerred and morphed into a face that Iggy knew. It was the face of Iggy's father, slowly shaking his disembodied head back and forth.

     "Ignacious', the voice spoke, sounding like broken glass in a blender, ' Yer still a worthless punk, but even you deserve this warning. Do not enter this house tonight, lest ye be visited by...."

     Iggy tore the wreath from the door and flung it into the nearby dumpster for a metaphysical three pointer.

     'Great just what I need a Christmas acid flashback....'

     Thinking his errant drug use had come back to fuck with him, Iggy's mood turned a fouler shade of foul as he entered his apartment. His dog Chester ran up to greet him but, sensing his 'master's' mood, he slunk back to the corner where Lexington and 57th, Iggy's cats, had wisely retreated. Cats can sense hostile misanthropes through closed doors, it's a proven fact. Iggy slumped on the sofa in front of the tv and clicked through the dials, looking for something dark. A police drama, maybe, with one of those villians capable of the kind of unspeakable, but ever-escalating evil and cruelty that had become the rage in recent years. But all he could find was some component of the whole 'Rudolph the Snowman Has a Wonderful Life at the Bell's of St Mary on a Silent Night When Christ was Born Brought to You by Wal-Mart' school of holiday cinema that put his teeth even more on edge than usual.

     57th, a small grey male tabby and the more naive of Iggy's cats, leaped onto Iggy's lap and nuzzled his chin, purring loudly as if to ask 'What's wrong?'. Iggy, who professed to hate everyone and everything all the time did have a soft spot in his heart for animals, especially this cat, who was innocence with a tail.

      "Well, little boy, I'll tell ya what's wrong', he spoke, and not unkindly, ' Dad's down because of all this Christmas stuff. You don't understand it 'cause yer a cat, and that's part of why I love you. But us humans with our big brains and superstitions have to set aside one day where we pretend to be better than we are. Or at least we used to pretend. Anymore it's too much trouble to even do that. We throw ourselves this little party, declaring it to be the birthday of this guy who was born, like, 2000 years ago and was the son of God and died to save us. But you know what? It's all a load of hooey and most of us know it and don't even care.'

     57th pulled his ears back, looking so quizzical that Iggy had to laugh.

     "No really. Listen: Historians, or as we call them, the 'winners' 'cause the winners always write the history, right? Historians say that this guy wasn't born on December 25th, and even though we supposedly started counting time all over again starting at his birth, historians say that he was born in August 4 B.C. And this guy is the 'C' in 'B.C.'. Ridiculous, right? Anyway, December 25th was chosen as the 'official' birthday of this guy by the wife of the Emperor Constantine because it was the alleged birthday of her favorite god. Favorite pagan god, at that. As a matter of fact, or as close to fact as we guessing humans get, the whole Christmas concept was built upon the Solstice celebration of the pagans. I think it was called Saturnalia, but I'm not sure. But, boy, these Christmas people are sure, all right. Sure that their boy is the son of God and that their God can beat up everybody else's God and they're determined to make this country, our country, adhere to their beliefs. Yeah, I know that's a generalization, but I'm feeling general tonight.'

     At that point what looked like a smoke bomb went off in the apartment and when the smoke cleared there stood three angels, coughing and looking a little seasick.

     'Oh great. What the Dickens are y'all doing in my acid flashback?' Iggy asked.

     The smallest of the angels spoke first. 'We were sent to teach you the true meaning of Christmas."

     'Aren't you supposed to come one at a time?'

     The larger, bearded angel answered. "Ordinarily, yeah, but while we were in the green room playing cards and waiting to go on, we been watching and listening to you.', and apparently reading Iggy's mind he continued, 'and, yes, reading your blog. Again, ordinarily we'd go through the whole riff of taking you back in time and exploring why you're so unhappy, then fly you down the street to see all yr neighbors enjoying the true spirit of the season and, when that didn't work, my friend Slick here,' he pointed to the impossibly tall, black cloaked angel to his left, 'would fly you into the future and show you your grave and you'd swear to be good to avoid dying alone and unloved and we'd all go back to the base and gear up for another year.'

    'But you're not doing that because......?'

     The one called Slick answered for them. In a pleasant British accent. 'Because we don't think scaring you into becoming a 'good' person is valid. That by bringing about a transformation, any transformation no matter how well-intentioned, through supernatural means is nothing less than spiritual terrorism and me and the boys have had enough of it. OK, so maybe you're unhappy, miserable even, but you've come to that misery through your own experience. You've past the point of blaming anyone other than yourself and you've shown a rare strain of decency through the way you treat your dog and cats. You're not much fun to be around at Christmas, granted, but your stance is honest. Besides, we're kinda sick of being the bad guys in this ridiculous morality play."

     'Oooooooooh', said the small angel, who'd been leafing through Iggy's record collection, ' An original copy of 'White Light/White Heat'! Let's boogie.'

     So that Christmas Eve in a just imagination, Iggy and the angels danced with the cats and dog to the strains of 'Lady Godiva's Operation' as the snow fell in waves upon the fooled and the fallen alike.

 

Merry Christmas from all of us at punk rock blues.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 22:10 | link | comments

GUITAR NOTES: THOUGHTS ON MAGNETS, WOOD AND WIRE

     Earlier this week I received an email from a cyber-aquaintance I regularly argue with on a nearby Christian-themed messageboard. Through  some overzealous routing by a mutual friend, distressed that the board was 'down', I received this message at my personal email address. This message, among others, was sent not only to myself but to various other 'members' of the board and they all related to what records we'd been listening to recenlty. My aquaintance, Jim, (I'd call him a cyber-friend but, basically I don't like him) sent a post singing the praises of Rush. To which I sent a somewhat snotty reply, being the farthest thing from a Rush fan in many, many counties.

     Basically what I said was 'Xians are one thing, but I gotta draw the line at Rush fans'. Tongue planted firmly in cheek I sent the message, thinking it would go to everyone on the list, but apparently my C.A. Jim was the only one to get this reply. And he got a little mad. Going to the newly ressurrected (ironic, huh?) mesage board later that day I found a reply from Jim which asked me the following, very good question.

     "Oh", it read, "and I suppose the guitar player in the Sex Pistols is better than Alex Lifeson?"

      Well, my first reaction was a less than subtle 'Hell, yeah" and I eventually replied about as much, but it got me to thinking, as the best cyberwarfare is wont to do. Now, I've been playing guitar for, oh my goodness, 35 years or so and I have a certain amount of technique and, as a rabid student of this music's history from both a musicological as well as a socialogical perspective and I've come to the conclusion that technique, while admirable, is less than even half the equation when it comes to making music that moves people.

     I'm not immune to the realities of Rush's musicianship, hell I know a good technician when I hear one, it's just that Rush, and 'prog rock' in general - with the possible exception of King Crimson - leaves me cold. Plain and as simple as that. However, the 3 to 4 chord manic bashing of, say, the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones, resonates in glory from the garage of my heart and soul. While I completely understand Jim's (and others') perplexity at my preference of a Jones to a Lifeson, mainly because the converse is true in my little world; how can anyone not like the Sex Pistols etc., I just don't share, among many, many other things with Jim, the conviction that more technique makes for a better guitarist.

     So what makes a great guitarist? To me it's a matter of trust. Is the player giving me all he/she's got and does he/she mean it? See technique is, by definition, quantifiable and measureable. Can the guitarist play 32nd note triplets against a 7/8 time signature? While sweep picking arpeggios? How developed is his/her sense of harmony? Like anything else quantifiable and measureable,  attaining the higher reaches is very, very difficult, but can be done by anyone with the manual dexterity, time and willingness to expend the effort. Yes, you too can be Yngwie J. Malmsteen with enough sweat equity!

     But as we all know (except for Yngwie himself and several counties in Florida) Yngwie has been releasing the same record for, what? 25 years now? Admittedly these records are filled with flawless neo-classical guitar playing, but unfortunatley in the service of songs that even a Neanderthal would call throwbacks. I purchased an Yngwie record, 'Oddyssey' I think, about 20 years ago and never made it through the entire record. While I did indeed marvel at the fretboard gymnastics the young Swede is obviously capable of, the novelty wore off rather quickly because, under the flash and melodicisms was very little beyong sub-Bad Company sexual rhetoric and chest thumping, mind numbing heavy metal.

     There, I've said it. Heavy Metal. The whole scene is rife with technically (more than) adept guitarists who have been spinning the same wheel for far too long, at least by my reckoning. Randy Rhodes? Same thing. Brilliant technician, but I can't sit through 2 verses and a chorus of Ozzy's pathetic bleatings to get to the guitar solo. Context, as the man said is everything, and try as I may, I cannot remove the solos from the songs and appreciate what so many 'technical' guitarists have been throwing down for years now. All because all the technique in the world will not, cannot, make any difference if the player is out of ideas and treading once again over well traveled territory.

       Now having said all that, I have to mention the exceptions that proves the rule: ACDC have indeed been releasing the same record for over 20 years, as have bands like the Ramones and ZZ Top. The difference is, I like ACDC's record, as well as the Ramones' - still not wild about ZZ Top - and while Angus Young has technique up the wazoo (especially his vibrato, criminally under-rated), he never sounds like he's playing just to look at his fingers. There's a heart connected to the scales and runs in Angus' case, in Johnny Ramone's case and in Billy Gibbon's case. They each tell their own story (as does Lifeson, I suppose, just that his story tells me nothing) and work withing a pre-chosen framework. Hey, not all of us can have the stylistic breadth of, say, Chuck Berry, but Berry brought more to the table than playing guitar  like a-ringing a bell. He brought poetry. Yngwie J Malmsteen (Millionaire, I own a mansion and a yacht!) simply doesn't.

     Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, much like Johnny Thunders before him in the New York Dolls, brought the Chuck Berry vocabulary into a new world, kicking and screaming and serving new purpose. Far from the almost country/western gait of 'Maybelline' or even the street corner sway of 'Personality Crisis', the guitar on 'Bollocks' burned like an electrical storm and served notice to a complacent rock and roll (lulled to a virtual sleep by megalithic, bloated bands like Zeppelin and yes, Rush) that a new sherrif was in town and it didn't give a rats ass about technique, because communication was key. Connection was key. Breaking down the artist/audience barrier was key. And while watching a vastly 'better' (more technically proficient) guitarist might be more impressive in a generally athletic way, rock and roll is art and as such needs to tell the listener something other than 'I'm a better guitar player than you."

     So yes, I think Steve Jones is a 'better' guitar player than Alex Lifeson because I feel that what he brings to the world is better, as in more good, more righteous, if you will. There's more emotion, to me, in the roar of a player who's barely holding on to the song, but means it from every fiber of his being than the thousands of hours of dweedly dweedle commited to time by players like Lifeson and Malmsteen. Again, as a guitarist, I do appreciate technique in the service of something higher, such as can be found in the work of Steve Vai (a very spiritual cat, his weedwhacking tells a story, at least to me.), Eric Johnson (a beautifully lyrical player, very Bill Nelson although, much like Nelson, I wish he wouldn't write lyrics.), the ever-amazing Jeff Beck (as Richie Blacmore once said 'He's got notes on his guitar that just aren't on mine!), the undeservedly obscure Richard Thompson (think Mark Knopfler will balls), Robert Fripp ( the thinking man's rock player) and the list goes on. Well, actually that's about it on technically adept players for me.

      But when, say, Neil Young is bending that high E string on the 21st fret for the 25th time in 'Cortez the Killer' I don't care about technique, I am moved by the power of that solo. When Lou Reed knelt down in front of his Peavy Bandit in 1983 at the Bottom Line urging waves of feedback to flow over our heads, yes, anyone could do it, but he did and I was moved by the power of that solo. When Sonic Youth in all their glory, bash and smash detuned Fender Jaguars into submission and create a whole new sound, I am moved by the creation, not the means by which it was created. Hell, Bruce Springsteen's played things that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, something neither Lifeson nor Malmsteen have ever been able to do!

     And if I live to be 199, I'll never 'get' Rush, but then Jim'll probably never 'get' the Sex Pistols either so I guess we're even.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:05 | link | comments (3)

WRITING WRONGS: DEATH, METTLE AND A SEASON IN HELL

     OK, first thing: I want to apologize for getting so maudlin in that last post, but those feelings had to go somewhere and the motime universe is where I feel the safest to express my intermittent lunacy. I'd like to thank the friends who emailed me with words of encouragement and want to take this opportunity to let them and you all know that my talk of suicide is just that; talk. I have not the nerve  to end it all, although this time, after Dwayne's passing, I think I came as close as I ever have to considering it dispassionately and that scared me and so: the post, knowing the calvary would come to my rescue. Again, thanks. Besides, one look into Buster's brown eyes and I know I'm not going anywhere.

     Which is part of the problem as well as a saving grace.

     Not going anywhere is another of those double edged swords. The comfort of a routine vs. the burden of an endless grind. The satisfaction of survival vs. the bitter taste of failed dreams etc. When all else fails (and when I get in these states all else fails considerably) there's Buster, Bleeker and MacDougal. 3 lives, entrusted to me via fate. They don't know why we're out of food (Got paid yesterday and we all have food, so don't think I'm going all Sally Struthers on ya here. 'It's enough to make an angel cry' my Aunt Fanny.), they don't know why 'Dad's' crying over phone commercials. They just know I'm upset and do their best to cheer me up just by being themselves and, more importantly, somehow trusting me enough to not run away. My house is a home because of them and if that sounds pathetic, then I'll take pathetic.

     So Dwayne died and, in all my self-centeredness, I failed to mourn the passing of a fellow human being and saw only parallels to my own sad existence. An existence that I define as sad, and make so by what I choose to dwell on and what I choose to allow to run my thoughts. It is sad that Dwayne passed, but to take that event and use it as fuel for another self pity expedition dishonors the man's memory and basically does neither me nor anyone else any good at all.  So to Dwayne: I'll miss ya and I hope you found something better on the other side.

     As for me, I gotta just suck it up and move forward and not let the Holidays exert undue influence. Bemoaning the commercialization and perceived hypocrisy of celebrating peace and love in a world that's clearly on fire does nothing to change those things. The only thing any of us can change is their reactions to whatever stimuli's coming down the pike and I'll do my best to change mine and not let things push me to write such overly depressing posts such as 'DWAYNE'. I can't make any promises as I am a dark writer at times and have to let those demons out after all. Just wanted to let all and sundry know that such blatherings are like a spiritual house cleaning for me and, as such, could be viewed as a positive, if not essential, move from the darkness into some kind of light.

     So, let's see if we can all get through this emotional rollercoaster called the holidays together 'cause I, for one, have proven time after time that I can't do it alone.

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 18:22 | link | comments (3)