This afternoon, the cancer got Levon. I thought he had it beat. Yesterday, he was in the final stages of the disease. Today, he was gone. Goddamned cigarettes. Guess there was no undoing the damage. What a waste.

Levon Helm somehow took on the role of an American folk hero while he was still fairly young. I can hardly believe how it stuck over the years. I went to a Ramble at his barn back in 2005, and even though whatever I thought I’d find there never appeared, today, I’m glad I went.

The mythology of the Band was something the fans of the group always wanted to believe. From the sound of their records, to their versatility, to the photographs that were published, to the mountain folk fantasy to their lyrical images, I can’t think of anything about the Band that didn’t set them apart from everything else that was happening when they started recording.

The image of the Band might never have come to life without that twangy voice of Levon’s. I read somewhere that what made Levon such a remarkable singer was that he truly sang in his own voice. It wasn’t like British rock, which in many cases the accent just vanishes. Levon’s persona validated the whole thing. Without him, I don’t know if songs about the Civil War would have worked.

Levon was a casual leader and even Robbie Robertson looked up to him. They had been estranged for years, but I read in the New York Daily News yesterday that Robbie went to see Levon on his deathbed when he heard that time was running out. I think the reason that little tidbit warmed me so much was because I knew that they were like brothers once. I couldn’t claim to know the reasons, but it didn’t seem right that they had that feud going on for so long. The connection the guys in that group enjoyed is something I’ve never experienced. I hope I get my chance at that kind of brotherhood before I’m through.

I’ve loved the music of the Band and I always appreciated the essential contribution of every member, but there was a magic about Levon Helm that transcended his musicianship. In The Last Waltz, there is a scene in which Levon commands a power that you can only associate with fictional characters, but he was playing himself. I’ll always remember it. He’s knowingly recounting a tale of the Midnight Rambles he went to as a kid (which the Stones only wish they could’ve seen). What’s conveyed in this segment never fails to knock me out. He’s the real thing, with nothing to prove to anyone, he takes care of his own, and the eyes just dare you to doubt him. You don’t have a chance.

Click the image to see the video. (It couldn’t be embedded.) Watch the way Levon owns it. Watch the match. He lights the match. Like a big brother, he lights Robbie’s cigarette first. Then, in no particular hurry, he finishes his thought. The flame burns. Even the wind waits for Levon. He’s got all the time in the world.

This piece is about FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) and using the codec to compress audio. It is not about fracking, which is an environmentally irresponsible process by which complete assholes fracture shale in the earth to release natural gas.

I’ve recently acquired a new music player that plays not only MP3 files, but also FLAC files. I may be somewhat late to the party on this, but I have arrived. The cool thing about the FLAC format (other than being open source) of course, is that audio compressed using the codec loses no fidelity during the compression process. You may have heard a million times that MP3 is a lossy compression format. Depending upon the bitrate you choose for MP3, your resulting program material can sound great or lousy. Nevertheless, I don’t have to care anymore, because I’m a FLACing man now.

Arguments have been made that most people can’t hear the difference between a CD and an MP3. That’s probably true, however, I’m not most people. I’m all about nuance. It’s a blessing and a curse. For example, I’ve just come off a month long debacle created by the ordering of new prescription eye glasses. Most people use polycarbonate lenses. In fact, many opticians don’t stock anything else. Most people are buying them. They are lighter and thinner and shatterproof for kids. However, they distort my vision. “A small percentage of people have difficulty with them,” they say. Guess who?

So I can hear more stuff in my recorded material than most people. Nice that I can now take those nuances with me everywhere I go. The only real effort is re-ripping my CD collection, but I’m just ridiculous enough to find real value in doing so. Lossless. The word suggests the way I want to live. Who would would want to live with loss? You don’t want loss in your account balance or your music, do you?

FLAC is sublime. It’s compressed, so it takes up less space, but your ear sacrifices nothing. Every day, I hear more studio edits, broken reverb tails and untrammeled dynamic range. It delights me to the core and makes me fun at parties. Here’s one for you: at the end of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, the “Oh ooo oh ooo oh ooo you’ll know…” is punched in. Can you believe that? I couldn’t either. The climax of the tune before it floats away at the coda and they did an audible vocal punch! Never heard that on the radio or the MP3. (Of course, now I can hear it on the MP3, but it took a newly ripped-FLAC for me to get hip. And I am. I am hip.)

So if you’re a freak like me and you want to dive headlong into the FLAC life, you gotta do four things:

1. Get yourself a player that can handle FLAC files. There are more now than there used to be. I think some iPods may play them, but here at the New Aquarius Clubhouse, Apple products are verboten, so I wouldn’t know.
2. Get yourself a media player program that likes FLAC. I’m using MediaMonkey now. (Not an endorsement, I’m just using that one now.) I can rip FLAC and tag too. You can get a half-assed codec to trick Windows Media Player to play FLAC, but it will be unsatisfactory, especially if tagging and album art are important to you. As a denizen of the New Aquarius Clubhouse, they should be. As I understand it, no self-respecting audiophile would ever admit to using WMP by choice.
3. Complain openly and often about how places like Amazon don’t sell music in FLAC format.
4. Celebrate the fact that all of my music is available in FLAC format if you buy by download, so you can hear it just as I did, and be the coolest person at the party.

Why are you still sitting there? Get seriously hip. Get FLACing. That is all.

I used to be part of this theatre company that did ensemble pieces. An ensemble piece is one in which there is no “star” per se. In the big Broadway tradition, you have your star roles and your chorus. In an ensemble piece, everyone in the cast gets a song and pretty much has the same significance as a character, story permitting. We did many rock musicals from the 70s and 80s. Good ensemble stuff.

One season, this company got a new director. It was the first of many changes to the original group that would ensue over the years. As a “getting-to-know-you” exercise, the guy pulls out what I gathered was some acting class thing. He told the cast to line up along the edge of the stage. Then he asked them to respond to a simple (seemingly simple) request:

“Give me one word that describes you.”

It was a real Chorus Line moment. I was a pit musician, so I was there, but I didn’t do the actor stuff. I just got to be in the back of the theatre and observe. The director called on each person, in turn, down the line. Now, I don’t remember if it had to be the word or just a word, but damn it if it didn’t speak volumes…

A good friend of mine was one of the first to respond. He said, “Brilliant.” I could have predicted that one. Still, in one word, he told us about his confidence, his insecurities and his willingness to push you to make a decision about him. Not unexpected from the actor, improvisor and general ham that he was.

Another response was from an actress I knew as fairly hung up and not out to make a real go of it. The extent of her ambitions in the theatre never seemed more to me than a strong desire for involvement. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. She once described herself to me as “high maintenance,” but this time, she only had one word. Turning slightly upstage, and cocking her head bashfully like a girl less than half her age, she said, “Friendly?” She actually delivered it as a question.

The only other one I remember was from another actress that I didn’t know that well. The most I knew about her was that she was a real pain at board meetings. It seemed like she was the one blamed for strife all the time, and mostly when she wasn’t around. Her word? “Determined.” She acted hers out too. Head straight, shoulders back, almost standing at attention.

All of the mannerisms of the people on the stage were probably exaggerated to break the tension, but I think it was all part of the exercise. Sharing even one word of self-assessment with a large group can be rough. When I heard it being described, I thought I understood where the exercise was going. Though I never had the reservations that someone not involved in the arts might have had, dismissing it as touchy-feely crap, I had my doubts that a single word could do the trick. But then, the words taht came out seemed so dead-on. Most of the people in the company were my friends, so maybe the words they chose served simply to reinforce characteristics of which I was already aware. I’ll never know if they made the same impression on the director as he got to know them too.

Nevertheless, I’ve come to think that the One Word exercise is a good way to check yourself. How am I doing in my life at the moment? What is my word? Do I like that word? If not, what can I change about my life so that next time, I can choose a better one? Conversely, maybe you have a great word. – How I’ve progressed! I think I’ll treat myself to yet another birch beer! - Stuff like that.

Like I said, I didn’t get a chance to play the game. I thought about it all the way home that night and finally hit upon my word: Tortured. Nobody gave that one. I’m sure of that. It would have been awesome though. I’d have submitted my own perfect delivery, cowering in mock agony.

Those were some dark times back then.

Some days, I still get stumped for a better word. (Lights fade to a soft blue as I shake my head ruefully…)

While cutting a guitar track recently, I discovered that my damn Fender Pro Junior tubes were going microphonic again. I love the sound of that amp, since it does some nice power tube overload in a more controlled setting for recording, but it just eats tubes! Maybe the tech who re-tubed it last just didn’t bias it correctly. I don’t know. For whatever the reason, I get a sound and gain structure and then I start hearing that tell-tale resonance. The tubes were making that dreadful noise again.

What could I do? I couldn’t call up my assistant and get him on the case. He was on vacation. :~) I didn’t have another amp like that one at my disposal either. With a heavy heart, I considered using an amp simulator. An amp simulator is a device or piece of software through which one can play an electric instrument, like a guitar or bass, and connect directly to a sound system or recording console. The simulator makes the instrument sound as if it’s plugged into a miked amplifier.

For the non-technical, it should be noted that in most recording situations, an electric guitar is almost never plugged directly into the console. The sound coming off most electric guitar pickups is pretty lousy. The transients will knock your head off and the tone just dies in your arms. Amplifiers round off those transients and add the color that we have all come to know as the sound of an electric guitar on record.

There are notable exceptions, but the direct sound is very distinctive. You can hear it on most any Motown record. The guitar on “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin, though layered, is also direct. Compare those guitars to the miked amplifier sounds on “Back Stabbers” by the O’Jays or “Misty Mountain Hop” on side two of the same Zeppelin album.

For reasons of physics that I won’t get into, an amp simulator comes pretty close to the real thing. The feel for the player can be different, but the sound of the various simulators available seems to be getting better all the time. So why, you may wonder, wouldn’t I use them regularly? I could plug my guitars directly into my recording console and get any sound I wanted, at any level I chose, with almost no effort. I wouldn’t disturb the neighbors. I wouldn’t have to set up mics. I’d never need to lift a heavy amplifier again. Anyone listening to my records would never know the difference.

The reason is that a great sound with minimal effort presents a moral dilemma for me. Recording music is an art, as much as the creation of the music itself. You’re not just slapping a microphone in front of a sound source and pressing Record. Nuances like the mic you choose, where exactly you place it in relation to the source and the room in which you do all of this make all the difference in the rendering of your sonic statement. It takes know-how, experience and discipline to do it right.

I don’t auto-tune my vocal tracks. I don’t quantize my sequences. I never work with looped phrases. Twenty years ago, an engineer plugged me into his new rack-mount Tech21 Sansamp unit for an overdub. His rack was right next to a perfectly good Marshall half stack and I just exploded! I only use amps! Don’t you respect that? (I’ve mellowed since then.) Now, faced with equipment failure, I was at the same creative crossroads. How could I call myself a producer if I just dialed up whatever guitar sound I wanted and wasn’t directly (no pun intended) responsible for its every detail? I DO care about art. I’m an ARTIST, damn it! Oh the humanity.

Well, much like the letting go that allowed me to use synthesizers, which was the realization that with them more of my music gets made than without, which is the whole point, I went with the simulator and finished a great-sounding track.

It turns out that the amp simulator I used provided an unimaginable level of control. You could choose the mic you wanted to simulate, where you would place it in front of the virtual guitar amp, the size of the room in which you recorded your amp and where you wanted to place the microphones in that room to capture the acoustic environment. Hell, the virtual amp even hummed! There were plenty of creative decisions with which to ease my guilty conscience. The only decision I didn’t have to make was whether to proceed with microphonic power tubes.

Maybe they’ll add that to the next version!

“I just can’t… stand myself!” – Bruce Springsteen, live version of “Fire”. 1986

Over the last five years or so, I’ve really questioned the value of being an American. During that time, I’ve come to believe that the classic images and ideas that are used to reinforce the “greatness” of the United States are platitudes. Land of opportunity, the American dream, the pursuit of happiness and fill in the blank were drummed into my head ever since I was kid. When I hear President Obama come anywhere near one of those images in a State of the Union address, it rings false in my ears.

In the cold light of the modern United States, all of that nonsense seems to have to taken the form of an incredibly sinister system of propaganda. It’s almost as if the president has to parade those long since eroded ideas out in front of Americans as a Pavlovian trigger, lest they completely shut off for good or just burn the place down. As long as somebody blows a trumpet and rattles off a few of those grade school platitudes, we’re still in the United States of America. It’s like Dunkin’ Donuts. As long as they have a few on a rack, they don’t have to rename the place and lose the brand identify they’ve built. But everybody, save a few old folks maybe, knows that their business is coffee now. Everybody’s in on it. It’s just another absurdity we don’t waste energy thinking about.

In my darkest moments, and in those of many disillusioned people I know, I devise a new American dream: To be free of my house, whose value is the same as it was probably sometime in the 90s. To acquire the means to gather up my family and leave this country. To sleep well in a place where what the American Congress is ruining today might not affect us, where bankers aren’t working closely with them to screw us, where the infrastructure isn’t crumbling, where excuses are not the most valuable currency of all and where the collective psyche of the people around us has yet to buckle beneath the weight of just one… more… lie…

Sorry. I’m back.

“The only thing that counts in the end… is Power. Naked, merciless Force!”  – Ursus, Beneath The Planet of the Apes. 1969

It’s easy to become cynical when your government seems to be run by Ursus. You know, it’s even worse than Ursus. At least he didn’t lie about it. No. The American government commands the human herd by deceit, stealing the fortunes of their freedom and security a penny at a time. Perhaps it’s a function of my age and experience, but it does seem that overnight, an American needed to be an economist, a lawyer, a millionaire and a captain of industry to keep from being a rung in the ladder of someone else’s success. American success has become purely the domain of the unscrupulous. Such regrettable innocence. I’m so ashamed. What the hell did I expect from a country whose national anthem is about bombs for chrissakes? And a rewrite of a drinking song to boot?

Between the Occupy Wall Street movement last year, the current uproar about the internet being at risk with SOPA and the IP Protection act, and any number of Congressional inadequacies being brought to light every month, maybe it isn’t just me. God, what a mess. What now?

“One change always leaves the way prepared for the introduction of another.” – Niccoló Machiavelli, The Prince. 1537

“Here’s comes a change, and another change, and another change, and another wave of change…” – Todd Rundgren, “Pulse”. 1981

Perhaps the veil is dropping. Perhaps the innocence is finally over. My country and my government are a mess and I’m in the middle of it. There’s no way to understand the whole thing before acting. Like any mess, the only way to clean it up is to start. Whatever’s closest to you will suffice. Get dirty. Make mistakes. Just don’t do nothing.

I must do what is in my power to do. I write to my representatives. I write this blog. I dedicate my music and my songs to the ideas that I believe need to be heard. I vote with my dollars. I’m selective about the businesses I support. I’ve pulled my money out of banks. I forego needless luxuries. I strive to think for myself. I look over both shoulders. I do whatever I can not to get taken. I educate myself. I complain. I make noise. I raise my child to learn truths that can protect her.

I can’t change everything. But I may be able to play into the change of one thing, paving the way for another.  I’m not proud of my country, but I’m still sick of it belonging to someone else.

A little over a decade ago, I went to this quack psychologist. He took my insurance and he was local. Since I had no mentally ill friends to refer me to anyone else, I gave him a whirl. It didn’t take long before I gave him the slip. The first thing that bothered me about him was that he was kinda creepy. He was tall, heavyset and gray, white-haired even, but with these black eyebrows. He had a build whose maintenance was clearly dependent upon a sedentary lifestyle, which wouldn’t have been so bad if he didn’t wear these white short-sleeved dress shirts like an electrical engineer working on government contracts circa 1967. The thing is you could see that his arms were going to atrophy, and not because of any inability to move, but because he was kinda milksoppy. The worst part was that he only referred to himself as Dr. Cisco, never by his first name. He would meet me at the door for sessions and he’d have to shake my hand. Always the dead fish. Always. It got so I was trying to avoid the interaction after a few sessions. It just made me so uncomfortable. Once he looked down at me (Christ, he was tall) with kind of smirk after my body language suggested that I wanted to get into the office without the customary greeting. Like one of my ancient aunts from Brooklyn, he said, “You don’t shake hands?” Talk about oppressive… From this distance, the cat was the poster boy for neuroses, but what the hell did I know then?

The only thing I learned from this guy, other than that seeing a therapist who doesn’t gain your trust is like talking about your life with someone on the bus, is that your dreams are you. He would ask me near the end of our sessions if I had any dreams. I would describe the images and he would tell me what some of the major symbols usually represented and he would draw connections between them and the experiences I’d confided to him about my waking life. In retrospect, it was more like fortune telling than therapy, because to understand the dream, I think you have to understand the person having it, but I still got a kick out of it. I told him about a dream I had of driving on a long two lane road with many hills and bends. He told me about how it was my life journey, my path. Made good sense to me. I also dreamt that my house was on fire, but I still walked down another street to avoid the commotion with the fire trucks. This one was perfectly in line with a guy going through a divorce.

I soon grew tired of the weekly parlor game with the Cisco kid, but the dream thing still interested me. However, the practice of dream interpretation becomes a bit more punitive if you make the mistake of asking your five year old what she dreamt of. Now, every day when I wake up, it’s like being asked for the goddamned report. “What did you dream about, Daddy?” How many times can you say “hot dogs and doughnuts” before she catches on? Last week, I told her about an actual dream I had in which Batman was dating Angie Harmon. Not Michael Keaton Batman, Adam West Batman. Not being hip to either character, she simply refused to accept it as real and pressed me for the truth. I’m just not up for this sort of thing before I’ve even gotten out of bed. Her dreams are always about kitty cats and puppies and her friends and stuff. Hell, where’s the analysis in that? I already know that stuff about her. What’s the point?

I’m still trying to figure out how Adam West Batman could get anywhere near a woman like Angie Harmon. And more importantly, why in my dream did it upset me so damn much? To hell with that shrink, man.

I suppose it’s not very exciting to most people. However, it’s exciting to me. You see, when you’d visit my site previously, you’d be loading it from a server in Canada. Now, it’s a server in the US, controlled by someone who might just appreciate my business. I’ll let you know about that.

In the meantime, if you use Netfirms to host your site, maybe you should stop.

Let me know if you think my site is faster now…

Since I’m opening the show at Salem Roadhouse Cafe this Saturday, my set will be short. It’s a stretch to do the hard sell when I only get 20-25 minutes onstage, but I didn’t want to say nothing about it. I thought it might be more fun to watch a video than to read an online announcement, so here goes:

Come to the concert. There will be cookies. Everybody likes cookies.

On Saturday, October 8, 2011 at 7:30pm, I’ll be performing solo at Salem Roadhouse Cafe. The cafe is in the basement of Townley Presbyterian Church, 829 Salem Road, Union, NJ.

I’ll be opening the show, so it’ll be a short set. I’ll be playing guitar and piano and performing some new songs for the first time. This will be my first solo engagement in years. I didn’t think I’d ever play alone again, but I was grateful to have been invited based upon my performance at the cafe with another band. I’ve done a great deal of auditioning and rehearsing with other musicians over the last years, but I seem destined to play solo for the moment. Regardless of the configuration, it feels good to be getting out.

This concert will be taped for television. As I understand it, I’ll be interviewed before I go on. Oh, how I love to talk about myself! :~)

I was supposed to do play this venue last November, but I had to run out and rush my daughter to the hospital with symptoms of anaphylaxis. Now that her allergies are known, I’m sure I’ll get to play this time. I hope I see some friends there.

Copyright is one of those weird things in which some people just don’t recognize absolutes. In definition and in principle, copyright seems clear enough: The creator of a work or the person to which copyright is assigned has the exclusive right to control the use of the work. Copyright includes not only the right to copy and distribute the work, but also to adapt the work. The odd thing is how even after everything that’s occurred with file sharing, copyright can be so recklessly ignored by musicians. One might think that musicians, in their passion for the art, would recognize the value of intellectual property, but it seems that a good number of them suffer from the popular misconception that songs belong to everyone.

They don’t.

On YouTube, it’s entirely commonplace to see videos of musicians performing “covers.” It’s usually someone with a guitar or keyboard performing for the camera. While I understand the value of promoting oneself with video, most of these “cover” videos violate copyright law. We all learn and play songs by our favorite artists. That’s how most of us learned to play. However, as soon as you upload a recording of yourself performing those songs, whether for fun or profit, if you don’t have a license to do so, you’re violating the law. (Actually on YouTube, you’d need a sync license, since a video goes with it.)

YouTube gets itself off the hook by having you swear that you own the content you’re uploading. They’ll even take action if a copyright owner complains to them about a violation. They suspend accounts all the time. There’s the other thing about them asking you to say that they don’t have to compensate you for your video being played, but at least you’re in control. No one’s making you upload your video for free public viewing. Regardless of whether you’re making money or even want to, I think you have to respect the value of creative works and the laws designed to protect them. Without copyright, we’d be culturally bereft.

There’s an ethical question at play and a good amount of self-policing when it comes to copyright law. Fortunes have been made because it can be so easy to get around it. To put it in the simplest terms, I know how hard it is to write songs. When I see a video of a “cover version,” I’m not thinking about the performance. I’m thinking about licensing. I can’t help it.