The Nuance: Blog

I think this picture cuts right to the heart of what I'm about to say.  Now, for the record, I'm just thinking out loud here.  I am no one of any great importance but for that very reason I am the voice of the common man, the voice on the street if you will.  To paraphrase Bob Marley, only the people on the bottom, those without a lot of earthly possessions to distract them from reality, really know what's going on and are therefore legitimately connected to the pulse of the people. Now, I've noticed something lately that I'd like to share with those of you who care to read such things.  Granted, most everyone who listened to music in high school thought that their particular era was by far and away the best age in music and it all went downhill from there.  But, and here's the rub, just what if because of a lot of reasons ranging from pre-corporate take over of most of the radio station programming to the saturation of the market via the internet, you really were in a position to witness the last death rattle of good music available to the masses.  What if it really did all go downhill from when you were considered the ideal Mtv demographic?  Can anyone argue that music has evolved right along with the corporate creature feature it's become in the last few years?  Oh, I think not.  And here's exhibit B:  In case you weren't aware of this, they cut out most art and music programs from the general educational curriculum in grade schools quite some time ago.  Therefore, there's this whole younger generation coming up that weren't really exposed to music in their formative years.  Imagine the caliber of something like professional tennis if kids didn't take up the sport until high school...You see where I'm headed with this?  Now this generation has graduated from the amateur ranks and gone pro.  So what kind of music are they playing?  With an entire century's worth of recorded music to draw from, where did they look to for inspirado?  The most soulless form of music ever known to man and womankind...80's music.  And why would they be gravitating towards the ebonics equivalent of music?  It's not because of how hard it rocks, yeah pretty sure about that.  It's as simple as this: It is E-A-SY to play, especially if you've been playing your instrument for all of 3 years.  Watch any of the new groups playing on the Tonight Show, or Carson Daly-the bass players are all playing the same Kim Deal Pixies bass line.  And who's the Stevie Ray Vaughn, guitar hero of this generation? This guy...

Now here's where my theory turns a corner.  Stay with me here, I'm going somewhere with all of this.  A while back I had what alcoholics would refer to as a moment of epiphany while listening to this old 80's tune that I have a fond association with by Echo & the Bunnymen.  Now, the song is just what it is, but listening to the lyrics with a fresh set of ears I realized that this song is a very, very thinly veiled ode to cocaine.  It's all right there, plain to hear for anyone with a set of ears, but in the sixth grade I hadn't yet connected those dots with the white chalked up lines so-to-speak.  That's when the flash of lightening went off: Most, if not all of the 80's music was written, performed and from what I'm told by extremely solid sources that lived through it, unofficially sponsored by cocaine.  Not exactly something that anyone over the age of ten couldn't put together on their own I know, I know.  Now I hate to admit it, but there was some real music made with soul and genuine passion in that time period.  It's pretty few and far between good solid albums during those ten years, but it's there if you look really really hard.  You ever look at the pictures of the great Miles Davis in the 80's?

Not exactly the pictures that Columbia Records wants you to remember as the definitive images of a musical icon.  Evidence that even the solid artists that had been stellar in other eras had a rough go of things there in Miami Vice years.  And here we are again, a good 19 years later and they're back like a tumor.  Usually when something goes around, it comes back in a slightly more stylish if not practical kind of way.  Say for example, bell bottoms-the next time around they weren't made with a lot of baby blue polyester for a very good reason.  But the 1982 revival of late doesn't seem to have made much headway in improving what was a very ugly fashion sensibility the first time around.  Am I wrong?  And how does a revamped musical style get worse unless it's made by lesser musicians doing their rendition of live karaoke?  I'll tell you how!  I think it's because they aren't properly inspired.  Now, I'm with Nancy on just saying no (most of time), but I think if these kids did their homework they'd invest in a little Colombian nose candy, put on their INXS albums, and get it right, at least the important musical side of it.

Matt and I must have mentioned thebandnuance.com about 37 times each over the course of these two television interviews and true-to-form, those bastards down at the news studio left all of our shameless band plugs on the cutting room floor. "So I'm here rehearsing for our upcoming gig with the bandnuance.com and out of nowhere, there's green flames and people fighting in the streets, GIANT CRAZINESS. So naturally I did what anyone in the bandnuance.com would've done: I went to get the other guys from the bandnuance.com to come outside and check this out." You get the picture. But check it out: www.cbs13.com/video/?id=57364@kovr.dayport.com What kind of world do we live in when an up-and-coming, not to mention ridiculously hard-working blue collar band witnesses something like that and can't even get some publicity out of it? Will the media leave the death of the king of Pepsi-pop alone long enough to acknowledge that the tallest band from Sacramento is working on putting out thee new album concurrently as I write this? It's the future of music I tell you! Hopefully, none of us in the band will have to go out the way Mr. Jackson did to get to get the album the necessary coverage that it will deserve. Like any good cliffhanger, I will leave you with the news footage for now and relay the real back story, my own unauthorized tell-all version of what really went down that fateful night, when I return to keep you current on all the newest and latest with the band waging the war of peace, love and rock n roll, day in, day out. Until then, know that no one in the band, including the cat, was seriously injured that night. The fire wielding nunchuka guy...well, I can't say the same for him. It's a bummer man, what can I say?

A long time ago in a town far far away from this one, a friend of mine picked me up in his buddies car, a Chevy Nova I believe it was, on the way to a class we were both taking at the time. He asked me to get something out of the glove compartment, I can't remember what it was now, but in digging through all of the paperwork and other miscellaneous items I came across a bottle of Grey Poupon. This I found very puzzling at first and proceeded to ask my friend why it was in there. He didn't take his eyes off of the road but replied with a slight air of wisdom in his voice, "Because you never know...you just never know". Those words made an indelible impression on me, even to this day. That phrase reverberates in my head from time to time while looking both ways crossing a one-way street, taking extra precautions while rescuing an inured animal or just accepting that free meal, even if I'm not all that hungry. You might wonder where all of this is going and you'd be correct for doing so: I have no idea either but then again, you just never know...

Getting a chance to catch a band live that I've been listening to most often in my headphones lately is a real cool thing when they're good at and enjoy playing music.  For all intents and purposes, it doesn't matter who the band was for this particular tale and they definitely don't need my endorsement.  Maybe a sign of the times but it was unlawfully cheap to see them on a Saturday night.  And I didn't even have to drive so there were sure to be many many drinks before the night was over. Alas, I digress-there I am up in the balcony type structure they've got set up there for the sound guy and anyone else willing to brave the notion that heat does indeed rise...up from the crowded bar down below and into where it is that I'm trying to get a lazy bird's-eye-view of the band. I love this band and they look like they've played this gig or countless others like it a million times before and it has all the makings of another Saturday night in Shangri-La. Then, Guiness in hand, just as I'm thinkin, "I know all the words to this song" I accidentally get to thinking about this incredibly morose tidbit of information that someone dropped on me like Nagasaki earlier in the day. Long blog entry short, this voice from the past, not just any past mind you but my own, comes full circle back into my consciousness in the most random of ways. Now it turns out that this particular voice...I'd more or less counted on being out there the way one takes for granted that the sun is coming back up tomorrow morning-had been informed recently that it wasn't allowed to perform anywhere else anymore, other than maybe the shower. Now, we've all got friends that have significant others that don't let them out too often-or not as much as they used to; we all know those terrible people and agree that even the traffic would be better served if they just stopped breathing. Trouble in Paradise begins when there was this voice out there that inspired me to eventually find my own and I was banking on it always being out there doing what voices like hers did best: Translating what the person is feeling on the inside of their very souls in a way that is literally music to the rest of our ears. And there I am thinking about what is now only a ghost of a voice while I should be listening to the living music down below. This voice, that at an early age had so much gunpowder potential behind it that it made those of us that heard it realize it was scary good and immediately wonder how it could belong to someone, anyone, so young.  Now, this same voice is literally no longer allowed out of the house. And by literally I mean figuratively. But seriously, I can't seem to get my head around that. I'm told that the people closest to her still, can't either. The only one who seems to be cool with it is the owner of said voice. And you know what, come to think of it, that doesn't make much sense either. The voice I remembered would not, and at times could not, be shut up. I heard a different voice coming through the speakers earlier today singing the words to an old song that I'd heard her sing a long, long time ago and wondered if it were just coincidence or the law of convergence. I'm still not sure what that's all about.