All in Music
When I told people I used the same treadmill as John Mayer, my celebrity experience received mixed reviews. Some folks were wowed, wanting to know everything. Who used the machine first? Did we exchange words? Fluids? Was his exercise program set at an incline? Did he have BO, and if so, how was it?
Because one morning the troubled woman seemed calmer, and I thought I might have a chance to get some information, build some rapport.
Because she asked me if I had any children and I responded an immediate “yes”.
Because then she suddenly shook her arms at me, and yelled “your children will die, die, die.”
I had a severe post-partum depression in the summer of 2013, after my younger son was born. That was around the time The National released their album Trouble Will Find Me. Every song hit me straight in the feels and filled me with sorrow. And yet, I kept listening.
Wes was just as impressive on-stage playing with many of the top-name jazz musicians, one of his most famous being the John Coltrane/Eric Dolphy Sextet for two weeks in September 1961, although no recording was made of this colossal group. In addition he led a band that incuded three members of Miles Davis’ 1959 Kind of Blue group: Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums.
Sir, despite what you might have been thinking, that ticket scanner will not get you into future concerts. It’s not like an all-access pass. I cannot imagine the look on the ushers’ faces if you try to hold out a scanner for them to scan.
We sang that song 200 times that day, progressively turning down the vocals on the karaoke machine until our voices were the only ones belting out “Gonna have a good time tonight/ rock and roll music gonna play all night.” This singing brought me closer to that man whom women adored, whom I adored for different but not too dissimilar reasons than they did.
I’m here to talk about my body navigating pop culture, where most of the bodies are skinny and beautiful, or at least smaller and more proportionate than mine. I don’t see myself represented on television much. Most of the time, if I do, it is either through the lens of someone bigger than I am or a black archetype: a maternal figure or an abused teenager.
“Sure.” I held my breath and unzipped my gig bag, lamenting my lack of a hard-shell case. Then I kneeled on the floor, right beside the New Releases display, and launched into a derivative funk riff I’d been woodshedding for a few weeks. I played it far too fast, but with some flashy 7th chords and percussive strumming, I thought it sounded like I halfway knew what I was doing.
It’s also true that even after only one listen I recognized that this was one slipshod record. To that point in his career, Marc Bolan had not been known for sophisticated composition, or even for bothering to write both a verse and a chorus in his songs (bridges were not to be imagined). Even by that low standard, however, the songs on this record were half-written.
➢ I want to have control.
➢ I wonder what I am doing here.
➢ I want my skin to make someone cry.
The next few practice sessions were marvels of focus. The band cut down on its smoke, its beer runs, and began to resolutely practice parts at home. Carl refined his chord voicings; I practiced the fast runs over and over again; The Big Man put a new battery in his metronome; Thomas gargled saltwater, did daily warm ups, consulted his old choirmaster about vowel placement; Jim busted open the Well Tempered Clavier. The night before the performance even Cosmos arrived on time.
From the start Charles was playing single-note solos on the guitar, although this was not common for guitar players at this time. The guitar was traditionally a rhythm instrument, not intended for soloing. Nevertheless, Charles started out playing the blues, and one of his favorite tunes in his early playing years was “St. Louis Blues.”
We talked about the challenges of marriage and about dreams that had gone unfulfilled. “Will I ever be more than a mother?” I asked her. “You already are,” she answered. Katie played Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” an inspiring song about resilience.
But something Del Rey could not have seen coming from her vantage point in 2019 was that she might actually call the apocalyptic elements in the landscape of 2020– with startling accuracy— to the point where I’m half-convinced, though the song is called “The greatest,” she likely thought, whimsically, of adding a parenthetical title “(life in a disconnected zoom call),” not yet knowing what it would mean.
But this time was a little different. Younger me wouldn’t have understood the dedication from Suzanne. She wouldn’t have understood the song lyrics in the song Suzanne wanted to dedicate to George, which means she also wouldn’t have understood what kind of “good times” they shared if the song choice was any indication.
I listened to “Blind” five years ago during a December separation, and now I’m listening to “Blind” again during another December separation. I’m Nietzsche’s spider creeping in the moonlight. I’d been traveling towards this moment for twenty-nine years—but I’ve already been here, and I’ll be here again, over and over, forever.
Like many nineteen-year-old hormone-infested introverts I had an unlimited capacity for darkness and despair – provided it was someone else’s darkness and despair, which I could check in and out of at my convenience.
“You guys look like a couple of drowned rats!” Grace looked us up and down. She was like a den mother: “Have you eaten? Do you want a pizza?”
The night of nuance ends as it always does: with the ceremonial get-to-the-fucking-car-and-out-of-the-congested-parking-lot. “Angel of Death” begins and much of the crowd starts speed-walking out of the amphitheater, toward their vehicles, to avoid the outpouring (onslaught?) of fans.
The Allman Brothers believed they were performing at their peak, and their “natural fire,” as Greg called their performances, needed to be brought to the music world’s attention in a full-force concert played and recorded in front of a live audience.