Personal or Cultural, What to Write About

It is not the best of times. Fortunately, it is not the worst of times, but depending on your political slant it can certainly seem that way. While I save my political observations for my other blog, Yeah, I don't think that's right, it's hard not to notice the great discord between parties, regions, and people. Within this environment, the artist has to decide where to direct his/her energies; personal or social. My last 2 projects, We Three and Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory), were personal takes on topics involving love, loss, memory, and how they affect us over time.
However, in my Seattle period, 1984 to 1991, love songs and anything personal were rare offerings-I had my fill of all that in the Denver/Navy period of 1978 to 1984. My preference and interest were in writing about social conditions. Apologia and its predecessor, Life Without Chickens, are social commentary albums with topics such as AIDS, status as a vehicle in both private and public, religion as examples.
I find these topics far more interesting and as such they tend to be the direction I take when I write; this starts with the composition of the music and the effect they have on me. This has always been so, even with love songs, which for me are forever informed by the cultural forces acting on us, and this is true of the songs on We Three and Whispers. 
It is because of cultural and political forces that writing about them seem like a natural thing to pursue. What makes it interesting, productive in the sense of having a say; even enjoyable, whether they have any impact, and that they would presents its own hubris, is having a means of personal expression on a public matter or condition. If nothing else it is a marker of our times, an expression of our views and struggles.
And while there is importance in our own internal turmoil and joy, there are all the factors either imposed or embraced that clarify that turmoil. Every genre has its point of reference, of the influences, again cultural and political, that inform what they're trying to say.
So, the project I'm working on now, titled Primitive Desires, will move in a social direction. In some ways it will be a counterpoint to the earlier albums and the fact that while much has changed, much has not and certain topics like race, gender, and privilege continue to burn as we struggle to come to terms with how they are changing and changing us.
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This week's song, Life of a Child, is an instrumental from Life Without Chickens. 

It's a simple piece played on a Korg Poly-800 with 3 parts. It followed Highway Tune and was meant as a kind of elegy to that song, of childhood and its remembrance and loss. The chord progression was something I kind of stumble on; it reminded me of classical pieces I'd listened to, and if I remember correctly, I put it all together in an afternoon. I find it a sad beautiful piece.
You can hear it here, www.mrprimitivemusic.com.

©2018 David William Pearce






  

The Magic of Doing Whatever Trips Your Trigger.

As I've mentioned in this blog before, there are any number of individuals and businesses out there to help you get people to love you and what you do. I've written about this previously, mostly in amusement, because there is a fairly rigid architecture in appealing to the masses. There is also the not so insignificant fact that not everything will have mass appeal. As an example, name the last sludge metal song to make the top 10 in any category other than metal which is in itself quite diverse. That means that for all your hard work, assuming your genre is anything other than pop music, your possible fame is limited.
This first assumes the product, the music, is good.
Beyond that is image, drive, talent, and a willingness to scrap till the day comes when fame, and hopefully fortune, find you. It's deeply tempting...and it's a lot of work...
...with no guarantee of success.
And for a good number of us it's not worth it.
To those who fight the good fight, I'll listen and pay attention as much as time permits; I'll pass along what I can and be as supportive as I can. Just don't rag on me if it's not my thing.
Not everyone makes music for the money or the fame, or long for the opportunity to be ripped off, lied to, misrepresented, and then forgotten. Yes, those things happen; it's part of the business.
I like doing my own thing, making my own music however I want. I control it all, good or bad. Does that make me a control freak? Absolutely. It also means that no one else owns my art; no one else takes a year's worth of time and effort and tells me it's not right for the market, that I've peaked, or missed my moment; there's none of that.
And I'm ok with that. I made this decision long ago before I was married, had kids, all of that; I have no regrets. All the music I've made is me. It's not the product of the market, or market surveys, or the latest trends; I like it that way. Not everyone will like it; if fact many may dislike it. I'm ok with that too.
There's nothing wrong with being content to express yourself periodically at an open mic just as there's nothing wrong with being in a cover band, or a hillbilly mashup. There's a lot of wonderful music out there that you'll only hear if you seek it out or happen upon it. That's ok.
Do what you want and have a good time. It works for me.

This week's song is Highway Tune, from Life Without Chickens,

It's a song that deals with the effect of suicide and war without actually stating that out loud. Rather it's referred to anecdotal form by the voice of the lyric in remembrance of the things said and the things implied that go unfulfilled; of the loss felt by that. Musically, the song is something of an anomaly in that it is the only acoustic guitar song that I did in that period. The guitars were recorded  through a pickup mounted in the soundhole and then feed through a Effectron 2 effects unit.
You can hear it at www.mrprimitivemusic.com.

©2018 David William Pearce

Adventures in New Music Pt 1-Greta Van Fleet

Rather than endlessly drone on about what I'm up to musically, which isn't always wall to wall good times, I thought it would be fun to go on about other things such as the state of music, the biz, and of course, new music, as in do you, Dave, listen to any new music?
I do.
Not as much as I used to because like all dinosaurs  my mind is filled and befuddled by the sublime to the dross of nearly 60 years of listening. But I do try to check out new stuff, at least to me; there will be established bands or performers I didn't know about so in truth I'm simply acquainting myself with their catalogs, like I did with Ms. Swift late last year.
With that said, let's start with the band, Greta Van Fleet, rock and rollers from Michigan whose sound either charmingly or alarmingly evokes one of the titans of the 70's, Led Zeppelin. I first came across the band in Guitar World magazine, as they made reference to the Zep in their short blurb introducing the up and coming band, while again asking the proverbial question of whether this augured the return of Rock 'n Roll. I won't go into that subject too much other than to restate my belief that the golden age of Rock has passed and is as likely to regain its place in our greater culture as Jazz is.
Having read about them, I then got into their 8 song EP; an album is due this year, and upon hearing the singer, Josh Kiszka, the first thought I had was,

What would Robert Plant think?

To say the kid sounds like Plant is like noting an orange is orange; it's eerie to say the least. That the band sound very much like early Zeppelin is, of course, its selling point because anyone who hears these guys for the first time will wonder out loud if this is a long lost Zep album.
It's not.
Now, if you step back and just listen to it, it's a fun EP, lots of energy, the songs are fun, the mix or variety of songs is good-young bands sometimes have the habit of regurgitating the same song over and over, and the musicianship is good and appropriate for the genre of rock their investing in. The guitarist, Jake Kiszka, twin of Josh, admits he has been studying Jimmy Page, though he hasn't reached the depth of Page's understanding of the blues and the traditional English sounds that Page grew up with. The production certainly mimics the sound of the early Zeppelin album, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing if that's what you're shooting for. Sam Kiszka is the John Paul Jones of the group playing bass and keys, but the EP doesn't shine too bright a light on whether Sam is quite in Jones' league, but then again he's only 18; there's plenty of time for that. Danny Wagner is the drummer who smartly does not try to prove he's John Bonham, a path only fools tend to tread.
Would I recommend a listen? Absolutely. Like I said, it's a a lot of fun.
The bigger question is where they intend, or where their management intend to take them. Sounding like Led Zeppelin is fun in small chunks, but as a career path it's a dead end, not least because Jimmy Page is a jealous guardian of all things Zeppelin and would not be amused by any real attempts to ride his coattails. So we'll see.
You can find them at gretavanfleet.com.

This week's song is as you might expect from the recently released album, Life Without Chickens.

Leftside,Rightside is a Jazz influenced song about image, about how we long to see ourself, our relationships in the context of the society we live in. Look at us versus them; see how we are different, special; how we stand out against all the millions of others crowding the street. It was my critique of all the commercials meant to lead us to one look or another and the attitudes that go with a particular look. The production is simple, guitar, bass, drums, and voice.
You can listen to it at www.mrprimitivemusic.com.

Thoughts on a Life Without Chickens

On January 5th, I released a sixth album, Life Without Chickens.

The album was recorded in 1986, from the beginning of May to the middle of June, the fastest I've ever recorded an album's worth of music. For reasons unknown, I thought I'd spent most of the first part of the year making it, but was in fact recording No Love Here, it's predecessor. And as I did not stop in those days, I then moved right into Apologia, which I finished at the end of '86. Three albums in 12 months. I then took a break and didn't record in 1987; I don't remember why.
What I do remember is thinking that Chickens was something of an outlier and because it was on the opposite side of Apologia, which is my favorite from that period, on the master tape, I only listened to it now and again when I didn't want to rewind the tape- oh, to all the love people ascribe to analog!
It was only a decade later when I started listening to it; all of the recordings in truth after not listening to them much at all, that I began to better appreciate what I had done and what direction I was going in.

I know how strange that sounds.

But, my habits at the time were such that once a song was finished I moved on to the next; when I had enough for an album- this was gaged by having completed 45 minutes of music, give or take-I moved on to the next project. I didn't spend a lot of time ruminating on what direction or what kind of music to work on.
That's not entirely true but is representative of how memory deceives us.
I started recording on my Tascam 244 4-track cassette recorder in late 1983. From that point until 1991 I recorded 8 albums of music. By the beginning of 1985, I had a fairly good handle on how to get the most out of the machine given its and my limitations. And by the end of 1985/early 1986, I had decided to minimize the number of voices on any one song-voices being guitars, synthesizers, drums/percussion, bass, and vocals. I found I got a much cleaner, more open sound by limiting myself to basically being a quartet. This also made recording easier by limiting sub-mixes, bouncing tracks, etc. It didn't keep me from lamenting the limitations I was under however. I had also decided in late '85 that I would not be doing any love songs or songs that had to do with me personally; I wanted to write about life, society, social conditions; stuff like that, as well as expand my musical horizons.

Life Without Chickens is the truest embodiment of that. Musically, it is more of a jazz album than rock even though the instrumentation isn't classically jazz, no horns or pianos. This is evident from the first song, a 15 minute three part instrumental that is connected by a bass line. I was heavy into Miles Davis at the time and I subconsciously took a cue from his early 70's work. The following songs deal with AIDS and our fear of it; the artifice of relational presentation, in other words worrying about how we're perceived by others socially; isolation, war, and loss; religious hypocrisy; the idea that we must fall into or belong to rigid class structures, and the corruption of prophets.
Weighty stuff, all to a less structured musical pallet.

The more I listen to it the more I like it, which wasn't true 30 years ago, and for an 80's album, it doesn't sound that way, which pleases me as well.

This week's song, Do Unto Others, is from Life Without Chickens, and it is a meditation on walling ourselves off out of fear, of that leading to persecution, of turning away from kindness or care or knowledge. It was written in response to the AIDS epidemic which claimed the lives of too many, including friends, and our willingness to close ourselves off, to judge without knowing the facts, and be manipulated by fear mongers.

You can listen at mrprimitivemusic.com on the home page under This Week's Song.

The dreaded "Year in Review"

It was, given some introspection, a very good year! It's important to note that for nothing good can come from what I impart to you without that understanding! And yes, I'm ripping off Dickens.

Creatively, there was the new album, Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory), and at this point in life-I'm not exactly a Spring chicken-it's always good that there are new ideas and songs flowing rather than regurgitations of the past or, more politely, retreads of songs done better. Whispers, while not perfect, and what is that's interesting, allowed me to pursue different ideas and themes that would not have occurred to me all those years ago.

That said, I still like the old stuff and have continued to release it. Both PearceArrow and Ice Flows were released to wide acclaim or its equivalency and on January 5th, the prequel to Apologia, Life Without Chickens,

 will be released. I also plan to release Desperate Mothers and Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch this year.

But that's not all!

New projects include Primitive Desires, a meditation on life in the 21st century which will be all new music, and I'm finally going to record a releasable version of Winter, a album of songs from the early 80's that never progressed beyond demos, but are a favorite of mine and it needs to be finished.

I also plan to write about music and all that entails from my thoughts in general to what I'm listening to and cogent commentary on why everything new is terrible (wink, wink, nudge, nudge; know what I mean...) 

This week's song is from Whispers, To The Life. The song is about relationships and how they evolve over time through memory. The idea, as you listen to it, is that this could be about any number of relations; of those still together, of those apart; of those between lovers or between children and parents; that whatever we once thought, time has irrevocably changed how we see those relationships for good or bad. Lyrically there are impressions of moments past and present, of desires never quite sated, and of longing for a kind of closure and connection.

Oh, and may the new year be as wonderful as you can stand.