Seems a pattern is emerging.
As a 15-year-old, I ruled Shurlington Little League one glorious summer day when, in a playoff game against our arch-rivals, The Marlins, I clubbed three home runs off three different pitchers. We won, but before the final score was tallied, my glory was marred when I ran back to tag first on a routine grounder and collided with the runner. Though I got up and finished the game, my post-game trip to the ER revealed I'd torn the ligaments on my ankle.
Last night, I had flashbacks to sandlot glory. After grounding weakly up the middle for a single in the first inning, I came up with a runner on in my next at-bat and skyed a high fly ball that got just enough push from the wind blowing out to carry over the right-center field fence. Next at-bat, I got up under another one but hit it a little more solidly into a tree beyond the left-center field fence. Two home runs.
The way the rules run in co-ed recreational softball (it's a bit like calculus... or waiting tables at Waffle House, which I have another story for another time), one team can only be ahead of the other by one home run, which meant we couldn't hit another unless they did first or it'd be counted as an out.
Instead of going yard, one of their ladies sent a low liner screaming into the outfield where I was. Okay, maybe it wasn't screaming, but when it took an unexpected hop and hit me in the gonads, I swear I heard screaming.
Actually, I didn't feel anything at first. It was like stories I've heard about getting shot. I didn't notice the pain until after I'd picked the ball up and thrown it back to the infield. Floco asked, "You alright?"
That's when I felt like throwing up. That all too familiar knotting pain that crawls up the spine and winds around the guts.
Very next pitch, some big hoss hammers one my way. Thank god I didn't have to move much because I was barely able to straighten up at that point. Had he put it six feet on either side of me, I might have just stood there and watched it roll.
My next at-bat, the effects were lingering but in passing. I knew I couldn't go yard again so I tried chopping down on the ball and managed a little double.
By this point, we'd come from behind, thanks to some timely hitting by Floco "hot like the sun, wet like the rain and fast like the Flash" Torres, and Doug Rohme who conjured a totally shocking standing triple out of his hamstrung arsenal.
Defensively, we'd tightened up, with Leslie and Stacey anchoring the corner outfield spots, Steph and Steve turning in solid stopping power up the middle, Tabitha "Stretch" Walker hauling in everything with ten feet of her at first, and Hannah "the Helmet" Marney taking over catching duties while Jessica Stinson takes a vacation. Oh yeah... over on third, even Andrew Blascovich was impressive, making four straight outs by himself. Tricky ones too, involving guile, agility and tagging runners who'd wandered too far from the bag.
On one particularly awesome series of screw-ups, Floco overran a ball and I threw it into Steve who whipped it in to Blascovich just off the bag. He turned hard and slapped the runner (girl) in the face with it in his glove. It was a Face-Tag for the third out.
In the final inning, up by a run, we had some defensive lapses but recovered in time to stop the bleeding and keep them from getting too far ahead. The score was 12-11 heading into our last at-bat.
And we very quickly notched two outs. But then Face-Tag hit a squibber in no man's land for an infield single. Then Stephanie, who eats line-drives for breakfast, delivered a laser right down the first base line. Picasso couldn't have painted it better.
I was up with two ducks on the pond and two outs. If I accidentally hit another homer, the game was over. They were playing me deep but towards right because I'd been going opposite field. So I decided to pull one and ripped one over the left fielder's head. Two runs scored. A triple. Game over. MIA goes to 10-3.
And this morning, my balls still hurt.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Grandma's Hands
We were supposed to have handled this for her, but Mammaw couldn't let us amateurs desecrate this Mother's Day meal, so she kept checking in on my stirring. As she did, I realized that I hadn't spent much time with her in the kitchen unless it was in line for the grub she's cooked. I hadn't watched her.
It was fascinating to me. Just the little bit she did, the subtle touches.
There were four pots on the stove. Two full of the rice we made, one where tea was brewing for the three gallon dispenser that'd fill the family, and another with ground beef in a curry gravy. This is the heart and soul of our family dinners: curry and rice. I grew up thinking everyone ate it, like the other foods we enjoyed: pot roast, mac n cheese, mashed potatoes. Didn't realize that this dish, like my mom and Mammaw's lives before me, were different than most. It, like their histories, were rooted in Africa, which itself was marked by other cultures. Namely India by way of Great Britain.
"The one thing you're doing that you don't want to do is keep stirring the rice," she said to me. She took a small clump and tasted it. "It's done."
And we left it be, putting the lid back on. The curry was still a little soupy but burning on the bottom because I wasn't stirring it. And I had it on high. Mammaw bumped me out of the way, grabbing the controls and adjusting everything calmly but quickly, telling me how to be of real help. My little world shifted in the ten seconds she took charge. I felt like I'd just watched an astronaut radio back to ground control, turning knobs on that multi-million dollar panel, displaying the poise of someone who trained endlessly to keep cool under pressure.
She still surprises me, which says a lot because she set the standard for surprise so high.
Their house was (and still is) adorned with the knick-knacks of world travel, especially the sort of things that a little kid's imagination runs wild with: the skins of exotic animals, spears, drums, masks, totems, and a mounted water buffalo head. And they came with stories of native head-hunters, of close-encounters with rhinos and buffaloes (like the one on the wall), of pistol packing and elephant guns, and giant snakes.
One of my favorite pictures in this whole world is of my Mammaw holding a rifle, standing resolutely with my mother as a little girl hidden behind her skirt. At their feet, a 15-foot snake missing its head.
The same woman that fed me chunks of honey and granola, calling them Scooby Snacks, who let me and my buddy Frank dig a swimming pool in her backyard, who tucked sheets on the couch so I could take a nap (but who would get mad if I put my shoes on the same couch), had also blown the head off of a monster snake.
Because my granddad, Pop, was in Africa for months at a time, we hardly saw him. He was something of an irregular curiosity for me. And we really only saw my paternal grandparents at the holidays and birthdays. So Mammaw was the super-grandparent, caring and compassionate, but also a bit of a bad ass.
And on Sunday, a Mother's Day, she made something that seemed so simple--stirring food--into an artform. I was humbled. The food had always been artful, but now I'm aware that the process is its own event.
On the way to her house, Heather's visiting friend, Beth, ran through the names and relations of my immediate family and asked "Is there anyone else?" Dozens.
"Yeah, but don't sweat it."
As I told her later, I was eight or nine before I had it figured out. There are routinely between 15-25 people at a family dinner.
Looking around the room at my siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins, and the little kids running around, I realized something else: this didn't exist before Mammaw. Not just in a biological sense, but I'd taken the closeness of my family for granted like I had taken the curry and rice for granted. (Everyone's this close, right?) Futher, this semi-regular gathering from points across the state wasn't a tradition she'd passed down to us. It was something she'd invented.
She's the center of our family. Our sun. We revolve around her. And her cooking. It's something she did so artfully that we followed her force of personality without struggle or resistance. Mammaw did something that is, in truth, really hard and made it look easy... more than easy: natural.
It was fascinating to me. Just the little bit she did, the subtle touches.
There were four pots on the stove. Two full of the rice we made, one where tea was brewing for the three gallon dispenser that'd fill the family, and another with ground beef in a curry gravy. This is the heart and soul of our family dinners: curry and rice. I grew up thinking everyone ate it, like the other foods we enjoyed: pot roast, mac n cheese, mashed potatoes. Didn't realize that this dish, like my mom and Mammaw's lives before me, were different than most. It, like their histories, were rooted in Africa, which itself was marked by other cultures. Namely India by way of Great Britain.
"The one thing you're doing that you don't want to do is keep stirring the rice," she said to me. She took a small clump and tasted it. "It's done."
And we left it be, putting the lid back on. The curry was still a little soupy but burning on the bottom because I wasn't stirring it. And I had it on high. Mammaw bumped me out of the way, grabbing the controls and adjusting everything calmly but quickly, telling me how to be of real help. My little world shifted in the ten seconds she took charge. I felt like I'd just watched an astronaut radio back to ground control, turning knobs on that multi-million dollar panel, displaying the poise of someone who trained endlessly to keep cool under pressure.
She still surprises me, which says a lot because she set the standard for surprise so high.
Their house was (and still is) adorned with the knick-knacks of world travel, especially the sort of things that a little kid's imagination runs wild with: the skins of exotic animals, spears, drums, masks, totems, and a mounted water buffalo head. And they came with stories of native head-hunters, of close-encounters with rhinos and buffaloes (like the one on the wall), of pistol packing and elephant guns, and giant snakes.
One of my favorite pictures in this whole world is of my Mammaw holding a rifle, standing resolutely with my mother as a little girl hidden behind her skirt. At their feet, a 15-foot snake missing its head.
The same woman that fed me chunks of honey and granola, calling them Scooby Snacks, who let me and my buddy Frank dig a swimming pool in her backyard, who tucked sheets on the couch so I could take a nap (but who would get mad if I put my shoes on the same couch), had also blown the head off of a monster snake.
Because my granddad, Pop, was in Africa for months at a time, we hardly saw him. He was something of an irregular curiosity for me. And we really only saw my paternal grandparents at the holidays and birthdays. So Mammaw was the super-grandparent, caring and compassionate, but also a bit of a bad ass.
And on Sunday, a Mother's Day, she made something that seemed so simple--stirring food--into an artform. I was humbled. The food had always been artful, but now I'm aware that the process is its own event.
On the way to her house, Heather's visiting friend, Beth, ran through the names and relations of my immediate family and asked "Is there anyone else?" Dozens.
"Yeah, but don't sweat it."
As I told her later, I was eight or nine before I had it figured out. There are routinely between 15-25 people at a family dinner.
Looking around the room at my siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins, and the little kids running around, I realized something else: this didn't exist before Mammaw. Not just in a biological sense, but I'd taken the closeness of my family for granted like I had taken the curry and rice for granted. (Everyone's this close, right?) Futher, this semi-regular gathering from points across the state wasn't a tradition she'd passed down to us. It was something she'd invented.
She's the center of our family. Our sun. We revolve around her. And her cooking. It's something she did so artfully that we followed her force of personality without struggle or resistance. Mammaw did something that is, in truth, really hard and made it look easy... more than easy: natural.
Friday, May 08, 2009
return to the land of manliness
There was a long stretch in my life, a few summers at least, when I was convinced there was nothing I couldn't fix with a six gallon air compressor and a 16-gauge finishing nailer. And though I'm really out of practice with either, I have never stopped wanting my own. That tool-lust stirs with every trip to Home Depot, as I pass through the hardware aisles--as casually as possible, pretending I don't want an angle grinder even though I don't know what they do... besides grind at an angle--eyeballing the objects of my infinite desire like a jilted lover watching his old flame hold hands with his new replacement.
It creeps Heather out, I think.
Well, Home Depot had a sale and the Honey-Do list was growing. Between the two, I came away a much richer man. Six-gallon air compressor and 16-gauge finishing nailer? Oh yeah, and that's not all. Racked up a set of cordless power tools: circular saw, sawzall and a screw gun. Came with two batteries, a charger and a bigass canvas bag, convenient for storing or transport.
And as if that weren't celebration enough, my lady took me to see Wolverine battle Sabretooth and various other bad mutants on the big screen. Oh it was an awful, terrible action flick with gratuitous violence, machismo-cheesy dialogue and characters broadly painted with the most archetypal of human emotions... and its only real flaw is that the producers wanted a PG-13 rating so the violence featured limited blood and the only real swear came when Wolvie said he was gonna cut off Sabretooth's "goddamned head".
Despite that, for no less than 24 hours after exiting the theatre, I believed I could kick someone's ass... or build them a house. I wanted to chomp on short cigars and grow a beard. It felt like a great day to wear a plaid flannel shirt and say things like, "Torque." I stood back and surveyed my land of manliness, which I'd crafted over the past month in a series of home repairs and improvement: laid new floors in the kitchen, trimmed the back door so it don't stick, pulled up 500 lbs of concrete and relaid a walking path in the front yard, and scraped the hillside clear of years-old mulch, pine straw, brush and bushes. Just cut the grass and trimmed the hedges. Soon, I'll install a bathroom light with a built-in fan.
Why? Well... because I'm a man and that's how a man shows his love of home and honey... and because she's having a "goddess party" and wanted the place to look nice so... you know.
Doesn't matter because I also conned her into letting me get a new 42,000 BTU grill with cast iron grates and a side burner. I've been making my coffee on it every morning. Black as midnight. Stirring it with the brush I use to knock off the charred remains of last night's porterhouse steak. Life is good. I have a nail gun, and when I can figure out how to justify it, I'm gonna get a framing nailer too.
Then maybe I'll look into those angle grinders...
It creeps Heather out, I think.
Well, Home Depot had a sale and the Honey-Do list was growing. Between the two, I came away a much richer man. Six-gallon air compressor and 16-gauge finishing nailer? Oh yeah, and that's not all. Racked up a set of cordless power tools: circular saw, sawzall and a screw gun. Came with two batteries, a charger and a bigass canvas bag, convenient for storing or transport.
And as if that weren't celebration enough, my lady took me to see Wolverine battle Sabretooth and various other bad mutants on the big screen. Oh it was an awful, terrible action flick with gratuitous violence, machismo-cheesy dialogue and characters broadly painted with the most archetypal of human emotions... and its only real flaw is that the producers wanted a PG-13 rating so the violence featured limited blood and the only real swear came when Wolvie said he was gonna cut off Sabretooth's "goddamned head".
Despite that, for no less than 24 hours after exiting the theatre, I believed I could kick someone's ass... or build them a house. I wanted to chomp on short cigars and grow a beard. It felt like a great day to wear a plaid flannel shirt and say things like, "Torque." I stood back and surveyed my land of manliness, which I'd crafted over the past month in a series of home repairs and improvement: laid new floors in the kitchen, trimmed the back door so it don't stick, pulled up 500 lbs of concrete and relaid a walking path in the front yard, and scraped the hillside clear of years-old mulch, pine straw, brush and bushes. Just cut the grass and trimmed the hedges. Soon, I'll install a bathroom light with a built-in fan.
Why? Well... because I'm a man and that's how a man shows his love of home and honey... and because she's having a "goddess party" and wanted the place to look nice so... you know.
Doesn't matter because I also conned her into letting me get a new 42,000 BTU grill with cast iron grates and a side burner. I've been making my coffee on it every morning. Black as midnight. Stirring it with the brush I use to knock off the charred remains of last night's porterhouse steak. Life is good. I have a nail gun, and when I can figure out how to justify it, I'm gonna get a framing nailer too.
Then maybe I'll look into those angle grinders...
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Unified Macon Theory: What stays in Macon, dies in Macon
This won't make sense to some of you, at least the part where I'm authoring it. It'll seem contradictory and maybe even contrary to my previously stated beliefs. Hopefully the rest of you will get it.
There are three reasons why I believe so strongly that some of the players in our current music scene will make a significant impact on the music world-at-large (and thusly, the world-at-large). No, reason number one isn't that I believe in magic, or that it's because there's something in the water (though I do believe in magic and think there's something in the water... something magic in the water).
In fact, these three reasons are the same three reasons why I think historic Macon musicians have had such an impact on the world of music, thusly the world.
#1) To be a remotely serious musician in Macon, Ga, means you have dedicated yourself to your music because you know no one is listening, which, in turn, means you're going to be more concerned with your craft than whether or not the people here like it. You probably have more than a little confidence in yourself, which doesn't hurt.
#2) Having relegated yourself to the outskirts of the local population, your friends are likely going to be other remotely serious musicians from whom your learn and take some motivation. Your clique is probably pretty tight and most of your conversations are, at some point or another, about music. Your passion is becoming your life fully.
#3) Being a remotely serious musician in Macon soon leads you to one inevitable question--"How serious am I?"--and depending on your answer--if it is "very serious"--you're then led to another question: "How do I get the fuck out of here?"
The same thing that seems like a problem in Macon is probably what has given Macon its place in history, its advantage over other places like Atlanta, LA or New York. You THINK you're serious about music when you uproot and head to LA, but trying to get someone to pay attention in Macon, you've got to be serious then, right?
More than that, there's the issue of your competency. Just because you're serious (or you think you're serious) doesn't mean that you're any good. In most cases, good just means you've been working on it. Talent or talentless, nothing good comes without practice. In other words, it doesn't matter if there's something in the water here because all the water in the world won't make you worth listening to. So you can go to LA or New York because you're serious (or think you're serious) but if you're in Macon for a little while, you'll find yourself consumed by your music.
Consider Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-Hour theory. He says to be an expert means you've put in 10,000 hours into a subject. For Bill Gates it was computers. For the Beatles it was music. Before they broke big, they spent 10,000 hours at their chosen field.
Think about Little Richard on the Chitlin Circuit, in the bawdy houses and nightclubs performing with drag queens and piano players. Just to eat, he was putting in days and days of shows every week, and the hours started racking up. Same for Otis Redding. Think about how many church services, how many of those talent shows, how many Hamp's Hops... the hours piled up.
You might not know this but Otis Redding didn't sound like the Otis Redding we know today back when he was sweeping those talent shows. He was doing Little Richard knock-offs and Sam Cooke covers. That's why he won them--he did a good job impersonating artists the crowd knew. It wasn't until he started hanging out with Johnny Jenkins (or so Jenkins says) that he tried to break away from that because Jenkins told him to find his own voice, and supposedly, with the help of Johnny's guitar-playing,
Otis did just that.
That's that community of outsiders. It's how the Allman Brothers were formed. Go ye forth and make a jam band out of what you find. Boom! Those outsiders came together with their different influences and made some music stew.
And I don't know if I really need to explain reason number three, but I will elaborate. It seems simple enough to get out of Macon, to pick up and leave town, but it isn't. (Both Little Richard and Otis Redding both recorded on the West Coast before going broke and having to return to Macon.) If you're smart that drive to leave will motivate you to do whatever it takes to be successful because that is your best chance at leaving.
Look at Emmett Miller. I know he's not a popular example because he's most widely known as a blackface minstrel singer, but he is considered an important figure in American music and he is from Macon. And he does illustrate my point.
He so wanted to leave town, to join the minstrelsy circuit, that he dropped out of school and started hanging out with black people so he could be more "authentic". Yes, his caricature of them is absolutely deplorable, but at the turn of the century, when the predominant form of popular music (i.e. - pop music in the early 1900s, which prevailed for nearly 100 years of this country's 233 year existence) was blackface minstrelsy, and white folks weren't supposed to mingle with black folks, he had to be dedicated to what he was doing if he was going to go that far. (By the way, the first all-black blackface minstrelsy group was also formed in Macon, a few decades before Emmett Miller got famous.)
For Otis Redding, it meant serving as Johnny Jenkins roadie on a trip to Memphis because Jenkins and the Pinetoppers--not Redding--had the recording contract with Stax Records. He loaded and unloaded the band's gear and begged (or pestered) the Stax crew until they let him record his song with the 30 minutes left on the session.
I see these parallels now with the folks making music in Macon, GA. I see a handful of passionate and dedicated musicians doing nothing but making music and hanging out with other people who make music. You should already know their names because they're playing here so much. And I see most of them eyeballing the bright lights of the big city. That is as it should be because the only way they'll ever realize their dreams will be to try it out somewhere else.
Every show I go to now, I'm thinking about whether or not it's the last time I get to see them here, in the grungy little dive bars, in the ill-suited night clubs, in the basement of an "event center". I don't see them stopping here, not because they're greedy and want lots and lots of money, but because they just want lots and lots of people to be able to hear what they've done.
There is no doubt in my mind that one of these people (and probably more)--Floco Torres, Oh Dorian, Al K!NG, Rolybots, Nomenclature, City Council, Citizen Insane, Abby Owens, etc., etc.,--will make a big splash when they jump into that big pond. No doubt in my mind at all.
The weird part is that this is sort of an argument against supporting the music here. Or maybe, if you squint your eyes and tilt your head, it's just another way to tell you all that it's happening whether or not you like it, support it or even know it exists. In another 20 or 30 years, it'll just be another wonderful facet of our city's cultural contribution that isn't utilized to make the city better, which means in another 20 or 30 years, another crop of musicians will emerge.
And so on and so forth, ad nauseum. Amen.
There are three reasons why I believe so strongly that some of the players in our current music scene will make a significant impact on the music world-at-large (and thusly, the world-at-large). No, reason number one isn't that I believe in magic, or that it's because there's something in the water (though I do believe in magic and think there's something in the water... something magic in the water).
In fact, these three reasons are the same three reasons why I think historic Macon musicians have had such an impact on the world of music, thusly the world.
#1) To be a remotely serious musician in Macon, Ga, means you have dedicated yourself to your music because you know no one is listening, which, in turn, means you're going to be more concerned with your craft than whether or not the people here like it. You probably have more than a little confidence in yourself, which doesn't hurt.
#2) Having relegated yourself to the outskirts of the local population, your friends are likely going to be other remotely serious musicians from whom your learn and take some motivation. Your clique is probably pretty tight and most of your conversations are, at some point or another, about music. Your passion is becoming your life fully.
#3) Being a remotely serious musician in Macon soon leads you to one inevitable question--"How serious am I?"--and depending on your answer--if it is "very serious"--you're then led to another question: "How do I get the fuck out of here?"
The same thing that seems like a problem in Macon is probably what has given Macon its place in history, its advantage over other places like Atlanta, LA or New York. You THINK you're serious about music when you uproot and head to LA, but trying to get someone to pay attention in Macon, you've got to be serious then, right?
More than that, there's the issue of your competency. Just because you're serious (or you think you're serious) doesn't mean that you're any good. In most cases, good just means you've been working on it. Talent or talentless, nothing good comes without practice. In other words, it doesn't matter if there's something in the water here because all the water in the world won't make you worth listening to. So you can go to LA or New York because you're serious (or think you're serious) but if you're in Macon for a little while, you'll find yourself consumed by your music.
Consider Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-Hour theory. He says to be an expert means you've put in 10,000 hours into a subject. For Bill Gates it was computers. For the Beatles it was music. Before they broke big, they spent 10,000 hours at their chosen field.
Think about Little Richard on the Chitlin Circuit, in the bawdy houses and nightclubs performing with drag queens and piano players. Just to eat, he was putting in days and days of shows every week, and the hours started racking up. Same for Otis Redding. Think about how many church services, how many of those talent shows, how many Hamp's Hops... the hours piled up.
You might not know this but Otis Redding didn't sound like the Otis Redding we know today back when he was sweeping those talent shows. He was doing Little Richard knock-offs and Sam Cooke covers. That's why he won them--he did a good job impersonating artists the crowd knew. It wasn't until he started hanging out with Johnny Jenkins (or so Jenkins says) that he tried to break away from that because Jenkins told him to find his own voice, and supposedly, with the help of Johnny's guitar-playing,
Otis did just that.
That's that community of outsiders. It's how the Allman Brothers were formed. Go ye forth and make a jam band out of what you find. Boom! Those outsiders came together with their different influences and made some music stew.
And I don't know if I really need to explain reason number three, but I will elaborate. It seems simple enough to get out of Macon, to pick up and leave town, but it isn't. (Both Little Richard and Otis Redding both recorded on the West Coast before going broke and having to return to Macon.) If you're smart that drive to leave will motivate you to do whatever it takes to be successful because that is your best chance at leaving.
Look at Emmett Miller. I know he's not a popular example because he's most widely known as a blackface minstrel singer, but he is considered an important figure in American music and he is from Macon. And he does illustrate my point.
He so wanted to leave town, to join the minstrelsy circuit, that he dropped out of school and started hanging out with black people so he could be more "authentic". Yes, his caricature of them is absolutely deplorable, but at the turn of the century, when the predominant form of popular music (i.e. - pop music in the early 1900s, which prevailed for nearly 100 years of this country's 233 year existence) was blackface minstrelsy, and white folks weren't supposed to mingle with black folks, he had to be dedicated to what he was doing if he was going to go that far. (By the way, the first all-black blackface minstrelsy group was also formed in Macon, a few decades before Emmett Miller got famous.)
For Otis Redding, it meant serving as Johnny Jenkins roadie on a trip to Memphis because Jenkins and the Pinetoppers--not Redding--had the recording contract with Stax Records. He loaded and unloaded the band's gear and begged (or pestered) the Stax crew until they let him record his song with the 30 minutes left on the session.
I see these parallels now with the folks making music in Macon, GA. I see a handful of passionate and dedicated musicians doing nothing but making music and hanging out with other people who make music. You should already know their names because they're playing here so much. And I see most of them eyeballing the bright lights of the big city. That is as it should be because the only way they'll ever realize their dreams will be to try it out somewhere else.
Every show I go to now, I'm thinking about whether or not it's the last time I get to see them here, in the grungy little dive bars, in the ill-suited night clubs, in the basement of an "event center". I don't see them stopping here, not because they're greedy and want lots and lots of money, but because they just want lots and lots of people to be able to hear what they've done.
There is no doubt in my mind that one of these people (and probably more)--Floco Torres, Oh Dorian, Al K!NG, Rolybots, Nomenclature, City Council, Citizen Insane, Abby Owens, etc., etc.,--will make a big splash when they jump into that big pond. No doubt in my mind at all.
The weird part is that this is sort of an argument against supporting the music here. Or maybe, if you squint your eyes and tilt your head, it's just another way to tell you all that it's happening whether or not you like it, support it or even know it exists. In another 20 or 30 years, it'll just be another wonderful facet of our city's cultural contribution that isn't utilized to make the city better, which means in another 20 or 30 years, another crop of musicians will emerge.
And so on and so forth, ad nauseum. Amen.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Mouthin off...
(This is the long overdue posting of my long ass response that I wrote {and sent to the appropriate people} to an editorial in the Mercer Cluster, which stated we have no music scene and then blamed it on the lack of bands and venues. While I agree we have some work to do, my belief is that what we lack is fans. Wow. That's probably all I had to write... whoops. If you feel like reading three pages of my ranting, get down on it.)
Mr. Brown, Editors, et. al,
Loved the April Fools Day stories. Good satire. It is unfortunate that Eric Brown's piece about the Macon music scene wasn’t conceived in a similar vein. It would’ve been closer to the truth if it had been.
It’s disingenuous for Brown to name Nomenclature and then say they moved away and think that’s an accurate or even adequate description of what’s happening here, as if the only good band left town. The problem here is folks here don’t look for local music so they don’t know that there is anything good.
So what Brown accidentally illustrates is one of the major and generally unaddressed causes of our chronically sick music scene: uninformed opinions have become the prevailing wisdom, having spread like a fungus that colors public perception so that it becomes a "reality".
In other words, one of the reasons our “music scene sucks” is because so many people think our “music scene sucks”.
Just as it is hard for a “dirt-poor college student” to “create an award-winning venue”, it’s hard for a dirt-poor musician to bust his and/or her butt when no one’s showing up because they’ve already decided that there isn’t a music scene worth supporting. (The musicians, however, continue to.)
To avoid making this a totally subjective argument about taste, just look at one of this year’s Bearstock posters. The bulk of the opening acts are local, spanning a variety of styles and sounds, and there were many more from which to choose. The bands that made the cut (and most of those that didn’t) all play frequently, so the real question is why didn’t Eric Brown know that they existed?
Until recently there haven’t been enough fans to support local bands to make it a financially reasonable prospect for venue owners to showcase more local talent, which means the scene wasn’t very visible. But that’s changed. All the good venues—limited as they may be—book a healthy dose of local bands.
Even though local bands sometimes suck at promoting their shows—whether humility or laziness—they do play often enough that, if you’re looking for live local music, by now, there are no good excuses not to have seen Floco Torres, Citizen Insane, Trendlenberg, Rolybots, Al K!NG, Oh Dorian, Abby Owens, Magnificent Bastard, City Council or the dozen others I could name.
UNLESS… A#1) you’re scared to frequent the venues where they play, or B#2) you don’t actually like music enough to go see someone that doesn’t already have an album on a major label.
So now the question is: Do you REALLY want more “interesting and experimental” bands? If so, forget about learning an instrument and starting a band, as Brown suggests, just be “interesting and experimental” yourself. Be adventurous enough to see what already exists.
Folks like to compare Macon to cities with a thriving scene, but they forget one of the most crucial elements: FANS! In places like Athens and Atlanta, people will go see music for the sake of seeing music. And then… then the bands have to work to steal attention away from other bands. Our bands compete against prime time TV and the hordes that only go out to get drunk and get some booty.
Brown asks: “So how to fix this problem?” My response is stop being a part of the problem. If you look for good local music, you’ll find it. You’ll become a patron of the Hummingbird and the Capitol where regional and national acts play. You’ll know that the biggest strides in the local music scene haven’t been made by The Refuge (though I love JJ Weeks and his crew) or at Jittery Joes (where I sit typing this). It’s in the cracks and crevices downtown, like the Golden Bough, the Macon Venue Project, Envy and the 567 Cafe, or even uptown at Rivalry’s, the Shamrock and CJs.
Honestly, I don’t even like all the music here, but I don’t have to. I support what I like and try to be nice to everybody else. There is enough going on here that that’s all you have to do. It isn’t a charity. It’s like anything else, you might suffer through some crap to get to the good stuff, but regardless of how well it matches what you like, there is plenty to choose from—far more than most think.
I’m not trying to invalidate everything Brown wrote or even to take jabs at him, but I believe there are some serious issues to address before the blame is aimed at a supposed dearth of musicians or venues. Remember, we’re all still driven by very simple market realities: supply and demand. There is a dearth of demand. That’s what must change next.
Or maybe we just need to admit we’re not really THAT interested in local music, that we just want bands like The Flaming Lips and Death Cab for Cutie to play Macon so we don’t have to drive to Atlanta. If that’s all this is about then we’re just displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of music business, and the problem remains the same. Those bands don’t play here—not because there aren’t local bands to open up (see who’s opening for Gym School Heroes and Chester French) or because there are no venues (we have spaces so small they only fit 30 to those big enough to hold thousands)—but because they cost tens and tens of thousands of dollars for a performance.
And really, that’s only a problem because “no one” pays to see live music here. Ludacris didn’t sell out the Coliseum and Dwight Yoakum couldn’t even fill the much smaller City Auditorium. Our problem is the absence of real music fans, and the money they generate, which funds it all.
I used to think like Eric Brown (and scores of others)—it’s Macon, not me. Then I became the nightlife writer and later the editor of The 11th Hour, and watched what happens here. I'm now the publisher of Georgia Music Magazine, which is housed by the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, a tourist destination that should be treated like a blessing to this city but is, instead, ignored by locals and the officials they’ve elected.
But it isn’t all bleak. For the past three years, I've been on the board for Bragg Jam, a music festival which is hitting its stride. I’ve been a part of the Bearstock selection committee for the past two years and think it’s about to cement its place in the community. More people are warming up to live music here.
To push it more, I helped start The Local 478, which tries to facilitate growth in local music scene with showcases and concerts. With the help of local musicians, I'm putting together Monkeywrench Music Club, a multifunctional space where bands who can't get booked elsewhere can play, where bands who have nowhere to rehearse can rehearse, where they can get their mail, copy flyers, burn CDs and meet other musicians. This summer, we're going to release the first wave of albums on Random Family Records, a record label whose roster is entirely made of local talent.
You can see why I might be a little sensitive about this, but beyond my obvious bias, I hope you see the much deeper lesson: if you’re looking for good local music, you can find it. I have. And with that, I’ve found a lot of great people, crazy stories and the kind of fun I never thought possible here. All I had to do was look.
I agree with Brown when he writes, “By creating a closer community of bands in the Macon area, you can guarantee a better music scene…” I agree because I’ve been watching it happen for the past couple of years, and I hope that now that you all know it exists, you’ll support it. That’s the piece we’re really missing now.
To that end, I would be honored to introduce Eric Brown and the Cluster editorial staff (and anyone else who is interested) to a wide spate of the talented musicians ranging from indie rock to hip-hop and all sorts of stuff I can’t begin to classify. We’d love to see you be a part of building this music scene because I truly believe that history is about to repeat itself in Macon, that there are some names in the lineups around town that will eventually join the list of celebrated Maconites.
See it for yourself. Come out to Rivalry’s this Friday night to check out three of the best bands in Macon, swing by the show at Monkeywrench on Saturday, April 11, or wait until Bearstock and see even more in action. If you still feel like the scene is “far away” then it’s just a matter of your taste being bad. (Just kidding… no I’m not.)
Mr. Brown, Editors, et. al,
Loved the April Fools Day stories. Good satire. It is unfortunate that Eric Brown's piece about the Macon music scene wasn’t conceived in a similar vein. It would’ve been closer to the truth if it had been.
It’s disingenuous for Brown to name Nomenclature and then say they moved away and think that’s an accurate or even adequate description of what’s happening here, as if the only good band left town. The problem here is folks here don’t look for local music so they don’t know that there is anything good.
So what Brown accidentally illustrates is one of the major and generally unaddressed causes of our chronically sick music scene: uninformed opinions have become the prevailing wisdom, having spread like a fungus that colors public perception so that it becomes a "reality".
In other words, one of the reasons our “music scene sucks” is because so many people think our “music scene sucks”.
Just as it is hard for a “dirt-poor college student” to “create an award-winning venue”, it’s hard for a dirt-poor musician to bust his and/or her butt when no one’s showing up because they’ve already decided that there isn’t a music scene worth supporting. (The musicians, however, continue to.)
To avoid making this a totally subjective argument about taste, just look at one of this year’s Bearstock posters. The bulk of the opening acts are local, spanning a variety of styles and sounds, and there were many more from which to choose. The bands that made the cut (and most of those that didn’t) all play frequently, so the real question is why didn’t Eric Brown know that they existed?
Until recently there haven’t been enough fans to support local bands to make it a financially reasonable prospect for venue owners to showcase more local talent, which means the scene wasn’t very visible. But that’s changed. All the good venues—limited as they may be—book a healthy dose of local bands.
Even though local bands sometimes suck at promoting their shows—whether humility or laziness—they do play often enough that, if you’re looking for live local music, by now, there are no good excuses not to have seen Floco Torres, Citizen Insane, Trendlenberg, Rolybots, Al K!NG, Oh Dorian, Abby Owens, Magnificent Bastard, City Council or the dozen others I could name.
UNLESS… A#1) you’re scared to frequent the venues where they play, or B#2) you don’t actually like music enough to go see someone that doesn’t already have an album on a major label.
So now the question is: Do you REALLY want more “interesting and experimental” bands? If so, forget about learning an instrument and starting a band, as Brown suggests, just be “interesting and experimental” yourself. Be adventurous enough to see what already exists.
Folks like to compare Macon to cities with a thriving scene, but they forget one of the most crucial elements: FANS! In places like Athens and Atlanta, people will go see music for the sake of seeing music. And then… then the bands have to work to steal attention away from other bands. Our bands compete against prime time TV and the hordes that only go out to get drunk and get some booty.
Brown asks: “So how to fix this problem?” My response is stop being a part of the problem. If you look for good local music, you’ll find it. You’ll become a patron of the Hummingbird and the Capitol where regional and national acts play. You’ll know that the biggest strides in the local music scene haven’t been made by The Refuge (though I love JJ Weeks and his crew) or at Jittery Joes (where I sit typing this). It’s in the cracks and crevices downtown, like the Golden Bough, the Macon Venue Project, Envy and the 567 Cafe, or even uptown at Rivalry’s, the Shamrock and CJs.
Honestly, I don’t even like all the music here, but I don’t have to. I support what I like and try to be nice to everybody else. There is enough going on here that that’s all you have to do. It isn’t a charity. It’s like anything else, you might suffer through some crap to get to the good stuff, but regardless of how well it matches what you like, there is plenty to choose from—far more than most think.
I’m not trying to invalidate everything Brown wrote or even to take jabs at him, but I believe there are some serious issues to address before the blame is aimed at a supposed dearth of musicians or venues. Remember, we’re all still driven by very simple market realities: supply and demand. There is a dearth of demand. That’s what must change next.
Or maybe we just need to admit we’re not really THAT interested in local music, that we just want bands like The Flaming Lips and Death Cab for Cutie to play Macon so we don’t have to drive to Atlanta. If that’s all this is about then we’re just displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of music business, and the problem remains the same. Those bands don’t play here—not because there aren’t local bands to open up (see who’s opening for Gym School Heroes and Chester French) or because there are no venues (we have spaces so small they only fit 30 to those big enough to hold thousands)—but because they cost tens and tens of thousands of dollars for a performance.
And really, that’s only a problem because “no one” pays to see live music here. Ludacris didn’t sell out the Coliseum and Dwight Yoakum couldn’t even fill the much smaller City Auditorium. Our problem is the absence of real music fans, and the money they generate, which funds it all.
I used to think like Eric Brown (and scores of others)—it’s Macon, not me. Then I became the nightlife writer and later the editor of The 11th Hour, and watched what happens here. I'm now the publisher of Georgia Music Magazine, which is housed by the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, a tourist destination that should be treated like a blessing to this city but is, instead, ignored by locals and the officials they’ve elected.
But it isn’t all bleak. For the past three years, I've been on the board for Bragg Jam, a music festival which is hitting its stride. I’ve been a part of the Bearstock selection committee for the past two years and think it’s about to cement its place in the community. More people are warming up to live music here.
To push it more, I helped start The Local 478, which tries to facilitate growth in local music scene with showcases and concerts. With the help of local musicians, I'm putting together Monkeywrench Music Club, a multifunctional space where bands who can't get booked elsewhere can play, where bands who have nowhere to rehearse can rehearse, where they can get their mail, copy flyers, burn CDs and meet other musicians. This summer, we're going to release the first wave of albums on Random Family Records, a record label whose roster is entirely made of local talent.
You can see why I might be a little sensitive about this, but beyond my obvious bias, I hope you see the much deeper lesson: if you’re looking for good local music, you can find it. I have. And with that, I’ve found a lot of great people, crazy stories and the kind of fun I never thought possible here. All I had to do was look.
I agree with Brown when he writes, “By creating a closer community of bands in the Macon area, you can guarantee a better music scene…” I agree because I’ve been watching it happen for the past couple of years, and I hope that now that you all know it exists, you’ll support it. That’s the piece we’re really missing now.
To that end, I would be honored to introduce Eric Brown and the Cluster editorial staff (and anyone else who is interested) to a wide spate of the talented musicians ranging from indie rock to hip-hop and all sorts of stuff I can’t begin to classify. We’d love to see you be a part of building this music scene because I truly believe that history is about to repeat itself in Macon, that there are some names in the lineups around town that will eventually join the list of celebrated Maconites.
See it for yourself. Come out to Rivalry’s this Friday night to check out three of the best bands in Macon, swing by the show at Monkeywrench on Saturday, April 11, or wait until Bearstock and see even more in action. If you still feel like the scene is “far away” then it’s just a matter of your taste being bad. (Just kidding… no I’m not.)
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