575. Golden Blunders

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Since I’d last visited Sarah her career had taken a couple of leaps and turns. (I forgot to say: we did go out to dinner once or twice when she came to LA but nothing of consequence to report there.) She’d moved into a new apartment: this one on Central Park East, and not a sublet, so it had a lot less stuff in it and felt a lot less homey, but she hadn’t been there very long. She assured me she’d fill it up with things soon enough. She was going out on tour that coming summer, North America and Western Europe, and she had this plan she was going to come back with souvenirs from everywhere she’d been.

“You seem skeptical of the idea,” she had said.

“No, just trying to think if I have any souvenirs from the tour at all.” Besides T-shirts, which I seemed to pick up everywhere. I held up my left wrist. “Some of these things I accumulated on the way.”

We were in the VIP room at Limelight, where she had become sort of a regular, and it was quiet enough to hear what each other were saying. She ran her fingers over the things I had on: a friendship bracelet made of purple and black string that a fan had made for me, the beads that Native American woman had given me, a black leather one with a silver snap I’d picked up in Spain, a couple other things like that. I’d thought the beads were lost after the explosion, but no, someone had set them aside for me and I’d eventually found them and put them back on. I’d been accumulating stuff on that wrist ever since.

“Because they hide the scars?” she asked.

“There’s not much in the way of scars now.” I looked to be sure what I was saying was true. It was: there wasn’t much to see unless you knew to look for it. The same was true on my face: there were a couple of streaks where the skin was discolored on my cheek and near my eye, only visible in certain light. “The only one I take off sometimes is the leather one because it’s not a good idea to get it wet. The rest you can’t really take on and off.” The friendship bracelet was knotted on, for example.

Right, but I was going to tell you about the existential crisis part. Let me see if I can remember how it started.

I can’t. I don’t remember exactly what I said. But I was crowing about the deal with Artie and how pumped up I was about that. Now, remember that underneath it all I was still upset about Ziggy going solo. The combination led me to say something idiotic like, “Thank god I stuck to my guns. You know what pulled me through this? My integrity as a musician. Part of me almost says Wenco could keep the money–the validation is the thing.”

“Validation?”

“Of instrumental solo work? Yeah, there’s something really validating about that. Possibly worth more than the twenty grand they’re paying me.”

“Easy to say when you’re not in debt or scrounging for lunch money,” Sarah pointed out.

“True. But it’s weird, you know? It all happened so fast.”

“But it didn’t. Look at how many years it took you to develop those chops, learn to compose, build your studio skills, and make the connections! Think about it, Daron. It’s years of work, it just happened to come together now.”

“Huh. True. And it’s weird because part of me almost doesn’t care what art they put on it, what they think it should be called, and part of me cares even more than usual, because this one is mine, really mine. It’s my ultimate proof of… of… something.” I had been drinking, which was not doing wonders for my vocabulary or my common sense. “And I don’t need any dancing or singing or costume changes to prove it.”

That was the line that did it. I said something like that. And I didn’t even realize it at first that I’d really offended her.

“What, are you going to break out the tux and do a concert hall recital tour?” she asked, her voice sharp with sarcasm. “Or do you never have to leave the home studio again?”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but–”

“Who’s going to listen to this album?”

“I don’t know. I used to work in the Jazz section of Tower. Random people did come in and buy out of the New Age section but not that many.”

“So it’s Muzak.”

She said it like an insult, which I took it as, since who the hell wants to be thought of as Muzak? The words “Muzak” and “integrity as a musical artist” didn’t go together in my brain. “It’s a lot better than Muzak.”

“Is it? Sounds like it’ll be used as background music in those stores where they sell crystal jewelry. How do you know it’s better?”

“What do you mean, how do I know?” I didn’t understand why she was attacking me. “Because I’m good. Because I wrote something and played something that was really, really good, Sarah.”

“And your definition of good is ‘doesn’t need costumes or dancing’?”

“What?”

“Obviously, the only reason music that utterly lacks integrity exists is because we bother to dress it up with vacuous idiocy to fool the masses into parting with their money. Isn’t that what you’re saying?”

I guess that was what I was saying, because my reaction to that was, “They’re going to throw Ziggy into the studio with a bunch of anonymous backing musicians. Jordan Travers or Jellybean Benitez or whoever is going to rewrite all his songs–or outright write them for him–and then they’re going to put him on parade with backing dancers like a trained elephant!” I may have shouted this. “For a quarter million a night. To make back the millions they spent.” I flashed on this thought: if he wanted to kill himself at the end of two months on the road with Moondog 3, what was he going to be like at the end of six months in a one-ring circus? Ugh. But I didn’t get to pursue that thought because Sarah was in my face.

She crossed her arms, but I don’t think it was because she was cold. She was terribly underdressed for early December in New York, wearing what she described as a “sheath” dress. It was sleeveless and didn’t come halfway down her thighs. I didn’t know what part of the dress the “sheath” was, but right then she was sharp as a dagger. “You think I’m a trained elephant.”

“No, of course not,” I said automatically.

“Listen to yourself, Daron. You just put down everything I’ve worked so hard for.”

Yes, I had. Shit. “Wait. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Well how the fuck did you mean it, then? You find it demeaning to go on stage and perform for people?”

“No, of course not. I love playing live.”

“But you think going out as a rock band and going out with a stage production are different?”

“Um…” I should have shut up and said I’m sorry, but I tried to dig myself out of the hole. “They are different underneath. The priorities are different.”

“Music over money? I don’t think so.”

“No no, I mean… how important the music is in the scheme of things. In a rock band, it’s everything. It’s the raison d’etre. It’s…” I felt it was important to try to nail down why it was important to me, in light of what I’d been telling Ziggy. “It’s the songs you would have written even if all you did was play them in your garage to your dog. The expression so important you couldn’t live without getting it out.”

“Oh. So it’s okay if the music is an expression of what you are, and not just something you’re getting paid to do?”

“Yes.” The second I said that, I realized two things: 1) Yes, that was exactly the difference between what I wanted to do with Mooondog 3 versus what I would do if I took a job playing with Ziggy’s faux band. 2) No, that’s ridiculous: I just put down every working musician on the planet. “Wait.”

She tapped her fingernail against her forearm, waiting for me to pull my foot out of my mouth, or my head out of my ass.

“You know that isn’t what I mean,” I said, trying to figure out how to reconcile the two things I felt.

“Yeah, those poor saps in Broadway orchestras, and singing on the stage, too bad they’re not real musicians,” she said. “And those guys in symphonies, for that matter, such frauds for playing all that music by famous composers. The only pure music is clearly the music you keep to yourself because the second you make a buck from it–”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I know it sounded like it, but… give me a second. I mean, come on, how many times have you heard me say that I respect anyone who can make a living from music. Even in genres I don’t particularly respect.”

“Hypocrite,” she said.

I was really in over my head on this one but I kept trying to make my point. “Oh come on. The Broadway musical is a completely bankrupt artistic form.”

“Is it? Is that why sixteen million people paid up to two hundred bucks a pop to see it last year? Because it’s, ahem, bankrupt?”

“There’s nothing new to be done artistically in Broadway musicals! Have you seen some of the things they’ve tried to turn into musicals? It’s a fucking formula. It’s a…”

“Twelve bar blues isn’t a formula?”

“Um…” How could it be I felt something so strongly but couldn’t explain it so I could make her see it? “There’s a difference between a format and a formula. A sonnet isn’t a cliche. A love poem about roses probably is, though. Surely you can see that.”

“And what makes rock different?”

“Okay first of all there is cliched, bankrupt rock. Huge swaths of poodle-hair metal for example. Spinal Tap proved that. Some things run their course, they should go extinct if they don’t evolve.”

“Is classical music dead, then?”

I sidestepped that question. “The whole reason M3 was forced into the ‘alternative’ corner is because we didn’t conform to the formulas. Because we tried to achieve something artistically and BNC found that too much of an effort to sell. So you know what? Actually I’m fine with the ‘alternative’ label. It proves they can’t fucking label me.” This came out a lot more vehement than I expected. This was probably the wrong time to be venting my anger about BNC.

“It’s called a record label, Daron.”

“Label shmabel. It’s just another fucking hand of conformity trying to crush me, Sarah. Every time I think I’ve escaped it, wham, another one comes down!”

“Is that all it is? Rebelling against your suburban upbringing? Wow, that’s really fucking original. Not a cliche at all. You know what says angsty whiteboy pain better than anything else? Anthemic guitar solos. That’s so so much less of a cliche than a big Broadway number, oh yeah right.”

Oh shit I’m in trouble, I thought. I’m having a fight with a friend, like a serious, we’re-both-mad-and-upset kind of fight, and on top of that, fuck, if she’s right, and I think she is… something in the bedrock of my self-identity is crumbling away.

And that always sucks.

Even if it’s necessary.

Even though I was putting the brakes on in my brain, my mouth was still going, which goes to show how upset I was. “I don’t do those piece-of-shit anthem solos and you know it.”

“Tell yourself that if you need to, but I thought you were over lying to yourself. I think you’re saying all of that to justify what’s happened and the choices you made that led to it.”

“Oh yeah? I’m pretty sure you’re saying what you’re saying because you’re about to hit the road with a fifty-person entourage, wearing a rhinestone-studded bra.”

She slapped me. I deserved it.

In fact, “I deserved that, didn’t I,” I said. My eyes stung as much as my cheek.

She fumed at me. Projectile fuming.

“Let me… let me think about this for a minute.”

“You do that.”

It was going to take me a little while to figure this one out. She went to the ladies room and I wondered if I could straighten it all out in my head before she got back.

Not likely, I know.


dgc_swag(We’ll soon be ready to ship Kickstarter fulfillment packages! So I’m asking now, if anyone else wants to be in on the shipping, place your orders now for the following:

Daron’s Guitar Chronicles Omnibus 1: Compiling chapters 1-200 of DGC (ebooks 1, 2, and 3) into one huge paperback. $25 including shipping in the USA. (Overseas, contact me for the shipping price.)

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16 Comments

  • Stevia333 says:

    Whoa! Holy c**p! I’ve been having that crisis since I was around 14 (I’m now 19 years old)…
    Anyway I never wanted to be stereotyped/labeled and always preached equality. However to not be labeled requires knowledge of labels, and then once I did that I started labeling others & labeling others is the exact opposite of what I wanted for myself. When I realized that, it did create an identity crisis (basically for me it was between a reformer vs a bigot in my case, but you have to come up with the names for yourself as we all have different values). Anyway what has helped me is thinking that everyone has 2 sides. The ideal self and the real self. Strive for the ideal self, but know that the best we can do is probably just be aware of the real self & try to modify it towards the ideal self.
    Once one basically realizes all this it kind of marks the end of innocence (at least in my understanding of that phrase).
    However for someone like you, Daron or anyone who relates to this, it can sometimes be tough to be able to figure out the definitions of your real and ideal self. So good luck because it sounds like you got a rocky road ahead of you. Hope this helps! If this story is in the retrospective sense, I’ll be hoping not too much trouble happens, before you get footing again. If not well the sentiment still applies.

    • daron says:

      Yeah part of what’s thrown me for a loop is I know this and yet somehow I didn’t realize I was still clinging to it. My life’s been a battle against labels in so many ways, too.

      It takes a while to sink in.

  • chris says:

    So… this professional/artistic split between Daron & Ziggy…I was reading Rolling Stone this weekend, and there was an article about Pink FLoyd, and a new release with no vocals. The split between Waters and the band that happened decades ago, never going to completely heal…interesting that they didn’t consider trying to bring him back for this project, but also didn’t consider replacing him and working with another singer. When I read that Gilmour was releasing without vocals and no tour support…the best quote, “I believe when I’m dead and buried my tombstone will read “In not entirely sure the band’s over.””

    • daron says:

      That’s fascinating. I’d say hilarious except I can’t really laugh at that.

      They just did a reunion tour of The Wall, though, didn’t they? So it’s like they can get along for certain things, but not others.

      I need to stop thinking about this right now before I get too depressed to breathe.

  • Lenalena says:

    Go Sarah!

    I am not sure I would have remained as eloquent while as pissed off as she must have been, so you go girl!

  • Stacey says:

    I kind of feel like I want to start rallying for a chapter or short story from Sarah’s POV now 😉

    But wow, you really stepped in it, Daron!

  • Jude says:

    I just hope this wasn’t in public or there’s gonna be photos all over the National Enquirer. (Still, I suppose a public spat is a great beard.)

    • daron says:

      Semi-public, I guess. In the VIP room at Limelight they’d probably bash the face in of any paparazzi photographer but that wouldn’t stop gossip from spreading.

      I hadn’t even thought of that. (But Sarah probably did.)

  • Kunama says:

    I don’t know what’s going on with your site, but it was inaccessible from the au for about a day.

    • ctan says:

      Yesterday morning all the ceciliatan domains were flaky, but it cleared up before we could identify a spam attack, and then all last night NSTAR had the power off in our neighborhood, so no electricity or Internet for anyone! Fun times.

      So far so good today, though.

  • s says:

    Go Sarah! She’s got your number, Daron. Hehe

  • Megs says:

    This discussion makes me think of a radio interview I heard a while ago where they were discussing Max Martin (see Wikipedia for general bio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin) and the fact that despite having written 21 #1 hits on the top 100 Billboard charts since 1999, he didn’t win a song writer award until 2015. And the guy on the radio (sorry don’t remember who it was) suggested this is because despite the fact that many big names of the past, including Elvis, used song writers, in general we don’t like to think about the fact that good musicians may not be writing their own music. That, like you Daron suggested, unless it is their own music they are selling out or it has less value.

    And maybe my perspective is just because I played classical violin for 13 years and certainly never wrote any of my own songs, but it got me thinking about how it is weird to feel they need to be attached in popular modern music. Especially since that attachment isn’t true for all music genres, and it is definitely not true for other forms of creativity. For example it is silly to even imagine saying a children’s book only has value if the author also drew the pictures. Also it missed amazing opportunities for great music. For example my favourite version of Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah is a version done by K D Lang (another great Queer musician, who is to be fair also a great singer songwriter, but I think you can understand the point) http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7oZN2eTgvVs

    • daron says:

      Thumbs up k.d. lang.

      I feel like Max Martin has been the best-kept secret of the music business, or was for a while–now you hear his name all the time. Part of that might have been that a lot of his early #1 songs were with female “pop stars” that no one expected to write their own music but the general public didn’t really care who wrote them. Certainly people in the record companies knew he was a hitmaker. Boy in a Band did a video about him actually: https://youtu.be/D2DHuugaxWk

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