Which Guitar to Play?

Seems like a odd question to ask.

Originally, I was going to write about roadies, or more precisely, the joy of setting up for a show, which in my instance and for many performers I know, is the performer, but...

Shows for now are kaput.

So, we'll focus on the phenomena of guitars going in and out of favor.

As you can see I have a few guitars, 14 to be exact. And I justify have that many because they're all a little different in tone and texture, so when I record, I have a lot of choices. That's my rational.
Interestingly, and this is the point of post, is that often, some guitars go out of fashion and get played little if at all. This seems terribly unfair, which is silly, as they are inanimate objects, but we personify everything, so why should guitars be any different?

Take the guitar above as an example. It's a Peavy T-60, that I bought in Hawaii in 1982. I had been in Denver for recording of the album, PearceArrow, and the studio had one and I took to it. So when I got back to Hawaii and was out shopping, I bought it. The salesman impressed on me that it was like a Fender Telecaster, but less expensive. Naturally, at that time, it being the new guitar, I played it quite a bit, if not exclusively.

But over time I bought other guitars, and it slowly ended up being played here and there, but not often.

Oddly, what brought it back into regular play was my going back and re-recording  the album, Winter, where the original demo tracks were recorded with the Peavy. And when I was gearing up to play some of the Winter songs live, I found I liked using it for the lead parts.

In the meantime, the other guitars bide their time waiting...

I sometimes worry about that, that I'm neglecting them. Makes you wonder about guitars in those big collections.

©2020 David William Pearce.

What to Sing

I've often wondered if what inevitably causes people to drop out of open mics and performing, and this is particularly directed and singer/songwriters, is the constant need for new material. It takes a lot of work to write songs, and time to create a catalog of songs to perform. I have 35 in rotation out of 110 recorded songs. The ones I don't perform, so far, are either tough to perform with just a guitar, or a little out there for open mics...

Maybe if I do more extended shows...

But I feel for those getting into this and only having a small number of songs and not wanting to play them over and over sometimes for the same people-we tend to go to the same events across the city. It's nice to have something new.

There's also the pressure to be something of a machine when it comes to writing, which is harder than you might think. I go through writing cycles where I write a lot in a short time period, but it's by no means regular, so I'm thankful I have older material to bring out when I feel I've been playing the same stuff over and over.

It also makes me think of how quickly bands and singers come and go either because all they had was that one hit song, or labored to recreate the magic that propelled them into the mainstream consciousness to begin with. Even multi-hit bands, groups, individuals are always dealing with what's next and whether it'll be as good or better or worse than what came before and whether they've had their run and are now consigned to only being remembered for their greatest hits and little later.

Which brings us to the pressure to continually produce "content", soas to stay relevant in the public eye, i.e. one's fickle fans. This is a common bromide now from those who counsel and advise people in the arts, music particularly. But creating something interesting and meaningful is rarely machine like, as I mentioned above, and even those who can, often produce the same thing over and over, with a change here and there to distinguish it from last weeks output.

Sometimes it all seems like too much.

I think I'm rambling.

Take care.

©2020 David William Pearce

More Thoughts on the end of Rock N' Roll as We Know It

Rockers are petering out.

Yet they still sell!

As has been lamented in these last years about the end of rock 'n roll, along with the rise of rap and whether modern pop is a bellwether of the music to come or more of the pap that many believe it to be and has been for nigh on a half-century, is, if one looks closely, the ginormous influence and effect of the titans of the rock biz on all the younger bands and players who must exist within the confines of what the legendary rockers created, and to fight for whatever air they can find in the rocken-verse.

Which brings us to the two articles listed above that show how the dinosaurs of rock continue to dominated and vacuum up the concert dollars and remarkably, continue to sell records-yes, records, in this the 21st century. How is a nube to make any measurable leeway in such an environment?

Though it should not be taken lightly; I certainly don't being up there in years, time and tide is slowly winnowing out the big players on the concert circuit, putting pressure on promoters to makeup the lost revenue. Sure The Biebs and Billie Eilish will pull in their fans, but those fans don't have the discretionary pocket money that doe-eyed boomers do for their geriatric musical heroes and a willingness to buy all manner of ephemera that their kids will one day have to make sense of, and dispose of.

That's a lot of cash money falling off the table.

Then there's record sales, yes-as I said before-records. According to BuzzAngle's 2019 report, who are the top selling rock bands? The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac. The only non-classic rock band to make it: Nirvana.

Pop did ok with Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, who had the best-selling vinyl record, as well as Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra. Total album sales included Elvis, and for the sake of some sense of sanity, Springsteen and Metallica. The youngest rock band on the list? Tool, who have been around for 20 years.

I find all of that remarkable, but not surprising. The question all this poses is what going to happen as more of rock elder generation dies off. As the Guardian articles notes more and more of rock's legends are giving up touring because it's too grueling: it killed Tom Petty! Kiss, Ozzy, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond (alright, they're not considered rockers in the classic sense, but you know what I'm getting at) have called it quits.

Maybe when the oldsters are out of the picture and not longer taking all the light, new bands will take their place.

Maybe.

©2020 David William Pearce

Practice

Love to practice? Who doesn't?

One of the shibboleths in life is you don't get better without practice. It doesn't matter the discipline or activity or sport: you've got to put in the work. There isn't a revered musician, athlete, writer out there who didn't put in the time. Even with those rare skill sets or genes, or whatever you ascribe to gifted individuals, it wasn't enough: there had to be practice. Whatever you think of Kobe Bryant, he was obsessive about doing the work to be the best basketball player he could be. The same is true for Charlie Parker or Van Cliburn.

Now does that help when you're my age and attempting to be something you've never been, a lead guitarist, in your performance life?

It does, I guess, and is unavoidable unless you don't mind being terrible in front of friends and strangers. I'd prefer not to be terrible.

Ths doesn't mean I haven't ever done any lead work; I have, but I've rarely played a lead line during a show-it's tough as a one man band. And that matters; if you haven't done it, you don't have it your head, which directs your fingers, which allows you to be great, competent, or terrible.

So, it's practice, practice, practice.

©2020 David William Pearce

I Want to Hear It Again!

A thought occurred.

As the above photo shows, I was recently at the Seattle Symphony's performance of concertos by Beethoven and Mozart. Both spent their creative lives in Vienna. Beethoven because his native Bonn was a mess, and for Mozart because that's where the prestige and money was. During the pre-concert talk, it was noted that Mozart was more popular in Prague than Vienna, that while The Marriage of Figaro had middling success in Vienna, it was incredibly popular in Prague.

That got me thinking.

In this day and age of recordings and streaming, being able to hear a favorite song, or opera, again and again is easy. Even back in the dark days of the 70's, when you had to troop down to the record store and hope they had what you wanted, once you acquired the single or LP, you could listen to it until you were sick of it, found something new, or the record player failed.
For me, I had to because what I really liked was never played enough on the radio while dreak like, Billy, Don't be a Hero, or Seasons in the Sun, seemed to be played all the time. Better to buy the record and listen as much as I wanted to what I wanted.

But what did they do before recording?

Say you scored a ticket to The Marriage of Figaro in Prague and were blown away? What then? There was no buying the record or hoping to hear it on the radio. No going on Spotify and adding it to your list of favorite operas. If fact, it was near impossible to even score the score, assuming you had any inkling or talent for reading a musical score and hearing it in your head.

You're doomed, man!

I suppose if you had the money and the time, you could score a ticket to every performance, but if all you could afford is the one time... that's all there was. Otherwise you were out of luck.

What does all this mean? Well, if it has to mean anything, it's that modern life has a few upsides like being able to listen to the Eagles or Billie Eilish over and over till your ears bleed.

©2020 David William Pearce

Rutles vs Beatles

Let us give our attention now to plain facts and the opinion of others as we delve into this period of debate.

Ok, so debate is probably the wrong word. How's this, let us now juxtapose the Beatles at their weirdest to the Rutles, a band whose legacy will last a lunchtime.

Does that help? Probably not.

A little background. Magical Mystery Tour was the BBC TV show the Beatles put out in 1967. It came on the heels of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and was broadcast on Boxers Day. It did not go down well. Like A Hard Day's Night and Help, the Beatles previous 2 films, Magical Mystery Tour, is the Fab Four running around having a good time with a busload of tourists. Unlike those first 2 films, it's weird, and at times, incomprehensible. It's a great film to see high.

Watching it, you find yourself sensing a lot of deja vu: a flight through the countryside with the land bleached in different colors and hues (2001, A Space Odyssey), John Lennon shoveling heaping amounts of spaghetti on a table (Monty Python's The Meaning of Life), and stopgap photography galore (too many to mention). oh, and no plot.

The Rutles, are a parody band, making fun of... the Beatles, and the era of running from crazed crowds of teenaged girls. It started as an SNL skit and morphed into a film. The Rutles are the most famous fake band after Spinal Tap.

The common tie is Neil Innis, who recently past away, as he is the only songwriter to have songs in both films! His first band, The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band-yes, you read that right; it was the 60's remember-is in the film and their first single was produced by Paul McCartney. His song for the show was titled: Death Cab for Cutie, which is the name of a band from these parts.

You can't make this stuff up.

Both are parodies of a kind, be it weird road trips or very famous bands doing weird things. The commonality is the music, which might surprise some, but, at the time, the Beatles were pushing their music through its psychedelic phase, while Innis' parodies of the Beatles oeuvre are spot on and more loving than ironic.

If you have some time to kill or are bored, I highly recommend both.

©2020 David William Pearce

More More More...

Are you ready for the new year? Am I?

I ask this rhetorical question because I've found myself in a rather interesting place. After an eventful and productive 2019, I'm less anxious about rushing into more and more, even if that's what the scribes and sages in the biz say one must do.

And it's not like I've got nothing in the tank. There's a wealth of new songs that I put on hold to finish the album, Winter, and I've still got the monthly open mic, which I host, and a number of shows lined up in these early months.

But I have to admit that as more people become aware of what I'm doing-Which is the whole point of this, right?-there is the supposed need to constantly be doing doing doing more more more that I'm not as interested in. And if I stop, I'm back in the dustbin of anonymity.

And who wants that?

But there is something to be said for taking a break. I haven't touched the recording equipment since March, which is the longest stretch since I took up recording again in 2015. Plus it's new, so there's the learning curve to go with it. The other part is that the music is quite different from Winter and I want to make sure I do it the way I feel it needs to be done, which for me means turning it over in my head again and again.

That too can get tiring.

And as a rationale for doing nothing, it's not like I have a big organization or label to support, so if I do nothing people become unemployed. I don't need that weight hanging over me. That leaves me in no-persons-land of wanting to get to it and wanting to take an even longer break.

Some of this is made more problematic by the fact that as a performer, I'm starting to hit my stride. Hate to lose that.

Feeling sorry for me yet? Yeah, me neither.

Should probably get to it.

Happy New Year!

©2020 David William Pearce