There's no way to describe what I do. Its just me. - Andy Kaufman
Andy
was an absolute original. An uncompromised artist who marched through
his short, strange life to the beat of a very different drummer. - Marilu Henner
Andy Kaufman is one of my heroes. I'm old enough to remember him on
Taxi when the show was on TV for reals and not on re-runs. I remember
his foray into pro wrestling but it wasn't until my late teens that I
really got a sense of what he was really about. That's what I want to
talk about today.
The Midnight Special was a pretty big show back in the day. If you
remember NBC's Friday Night Videos, this was its predecessor. You would
think that not knowing if you're ever gonna get another shot on national
television you would want to come out swinging with your best
material, but I love how he just uses the opportunity to sing, "I
Trusted You!" for almost 4 minutes. That takes balls as big as church
bells.
The kind of people I like to be around are intelligent, creative,
highly original and unique in the way they live/think/act/whatever, and
not afraid to show it.
I never told a joke in my life - Andy Kaufman
I
don't like being around people who feel the need to conform to whatever
the average consumer is into. People who buy whatever television and
top 40 radio tells them to. People who are afraid to stand out. Afraid
to rock the boat.
People who read whatever Oprah Winfrey tells them to. People whose idea
of going out for Chinese food is Panda Express. People who go to the
mall to buy anything. People who call radio stations to make requests.
People who watch movies only because it has cool cars, guns or explosions in it.
Ok, I've alienated enough people, you get the idea, haha.
I just don't understand the need to conform, to be like everyone
else. Its a completely foreign idea to me. I mean when you put your happiness in other people's hands, when that person leaves so does your happiness.
I've been different ever since I was born. I'm a first generation Mexican-American but I can barely speak Spanish. Too white
for the mexicans, to mexican for the whites. Not a whole lot of us out
in the upper middle class suburbs of the 70's and 80's, and definitely not alot of us in the private catholic
schools we went to.
They let me know immediately that I was different from everyone else.
I remember my first day there when the Principal decided that from now on I will be called Joe, instead of Jose because that would be easier for the other kids. These Irish nuns were not in the business of turning kids into Creative, free-thinking, original, people who question authority, religion and governments. But instead of desperately trying to fit the suit, and
be like everyone else and conform, I chose to stand alone, and be proud
of who I am. "Yeah I may be different and a bit weird, but thats me,
take it or leave it and at least its a lot more real than the trip I see
you on."
Ok I'm done writing now, and since I don't know how to end this nice and neatly, I'm just gonna go now.
When
Hunter S. Thompson ran for Sherrif of Aspen, Colorado he purposely
shaved his head just so he could call the opposing candidate, "My Long
Haired Opponent."
Maybe I'm just getting old, but in my opinion the state of rock guitar in modern music these days is in pretty sorry ass shape. Just because you have a distortion pedal and a de-tuned guitar doesn't make you some badass on the guitar.
And I don't care how damn fast you can play either.
Just because this douchebag is the world's fastest talker doesn't mean that he's actually saying anything INTERESTING.
Just because someone can type 100 wpm doesn't mean that they can write a best selling novel.
BOY YOU SAID IT CONDESCENDING WONKA!
I'm sure there are plenty of people who will tell me how wrong I am, and how friggin awesome people like Yngwie Malmsteen are. Well I met that dude on his tourbus. I saw him yell at his wife while he watched tv with no shirt on while his gut hung over his leather pants. Believe me, there was nothing awesome about that dude. (That's a true story.)
I would be suprised if any kids these days could actually play "Stairway to Heaven." It's an awesome song. Complex, chord changes, melodies, different guitar styles throughout the song, a rising sound and a classic solo.
People always joke that the song is too basic, or overplayed, or anyone playing it immediately comes off as too pretentious
I'm calling Shenanigans on that line of thought.
It's so overplayed supposedly, but I can't remember the last time I heard anyone play it.
Too basic? Think real hard guitar players. When was the last time you heard anyone play that song and it sounded even halfway descent.
The song has developed that ridiculous reputation over the decades because its usually one of the first songs most rock guitarists try to learn to play. And after Waynes World it just became part of the universal consciousness to hate on the song. Then every guitar shop had to have that same "No Stairway" sign to show how cool they were too. I contend that this is largely the doing of your local guitar store know it alls who just got tired hearing newbies play it over and over again at the stores while trying out their gear. Once it got that rep as a song that only newbies learn, then it no longer became cool to play. No self respecting guitarist could be caught dead playing it, especially after the Wayne's World movie. How can you have any street cred as a band or as a guitarist if you're playing Stairway? After all thats a beginners song! Thats like a concert piano player doing Chopsticks.
But actually it's not like that at all. That's what I'm trying to f*cking tell you.
The reason most beginners (at least when I was first learning, I'm not too sure about kids these days) try to learn Stairway is not because it's easy or basic, but because it's a complicated song, it's got fingerpicking, some complex chords that you don't hear in most other rock songs, a bad ass solo that covers almost the entire fretboard and a hard driving section at the end. And also because it's an awesome song, and it sounds cool as hell.
Begining rock guitarists don't want to start out learning the basic shit. We want to hit the gates running and start playing the cool sh*t right away. Hell, the first song I attempted to learn on the guitar was "Dee" by Rhandy Rhoades! I could barely play a C chord and I'm trying to play Dee, and I can't even read tab.
That's why Stairway to Heaven has been unfairly hated on by the so called "guitar elite," who can't bear let themselves have anything in common with the uncultured beginners of the world, and have tarnished the reputation of one of the most perfectly crafted rock songs ever, just to make themselves feel better at other people's expense.
And yeah I'm sure there are plenty of people who can make just as strong of an argument against everything I've said. If you want to do that then go ahead, and congratulations, you've just proved yourself superior to someone who's mentally ill and was just recently released from a mental hospital.
If you can actually play, its very hard not to copy other things that you hear. But we couldn't copy anything because we couldn't [play] - Roger Waters
I've been playing guitar almost 30 years now, but I've always had problems composing original material.
I used to overthink things and believed that I needed to study everything about music, and theory, and deciphering sheet music before I could be qualified to write a song.
William Mann who was a critic for The Times [London] wrote the following about The Beatles:
one gets the impression they think simultaneously of harmony and melody, so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and ninths built into their tunes and the flat submediant key switches so natural in the Aeolian Cadence...
John Lennon was reported to have said, Aeolian, cadence? sounds like a type of bird.
I was a child of the 70's & 80's. I grew up in era of Heavy Metal, and people like Eddie Van Halen, and Yngwie Malmsteen (who I met once but thats another story), who are technical geniuses. Everything I grew up hearing taught me that if you can't play at a 100mph then you are not a worth a damn as a guitar player.
My musical heroes include people like John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Kurt Cobain just to name a few. If there's one these people have shown me is that Creativity and Originality are also important too, and you don't HAVE to be a technical genius to be a successful musician. I never wanted to be one of those flashy, technical dudes other than to just fit in with all the other musicians I knew. Fact is I can't play that fast, nor do I want to. Hell I can't even THINK in notes that fast, much less play them.
Ok so you don't have to be a musical theory genius and a technical wizzard to be a songwriter in modern music. My next idea had to do with inspiration and God. My thinking was that some people are just born or destined for greatness or have been born with this "personal hotline to God/The Universe" and either you have that or you don't.
Afterall, Paul McCartney wrote Yesterday from a dream he'd had. Keith Richards wrote the riff from Satisfaction after waking up from a dream he had as well. Iggy Pop has talked about how if he can't get a song completed in under 10 minutes then it just gets thrown out.
And yeah I know what some of you might say, that yeah his music sounds like it was written in under 10 minutes, but hey man, some of those old guitar riffs are heavy as hell, and Lust For Life? thats just one of those tunes you just can't get out of your head.
And Mozart, being a technical genius, wrote the following to a friend once about how easily musical ideas came into his head:
When I feel well and in a good humor, or when I am taking a drive or walking after a good meal, or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know, and I have nothing to do with it. Those that please me I keep in my head and hum them.
Inspiration is a funny thing. You only have it when you're not expecting it, and if you look for it, you'll never find it. I've come up with a couple descent guitar riffs of my own. Everything I do is acoustic, and my style, if you could call it that I like to describe as "Pink Floyd Floyd on Heroin."
The couple descent guitar riffs I've come up with on my own always happened by accident. Whenever I sit with the guitar with the attitude of, "ok I will now create a cool riff around which I will write an awesome song." it never happens. The only cool original things I've done, have always happened when I'm just playing in the moment and my mind is clear of objectives or goals or ideas. And there's something about the nightime too. Its weird but I could never play or write anything original during the daytime.
So what have we learned today?
You don't need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of music to write music.
You don't need to be a technical wizzard to be an awesome guitar player than songwriter.
For a lot of people (myself included) originality is much more important than technical ability
Inspiration is wonderful and special but ultimately not required. What's the proof? There are thousands upon thousands of awesome rock songs but only one Yesterday. Just because you didn't write it in some awesome dream, doesn't mean it can't be cool.
The truth is, songwriting is a craft, and like any other craft its something that requires time, and hard work to master.
I always wanted to write, but I always figured it'd be no good unless somehow the hand just took the pen and started moving without me really having anything to do with it. Like automatic writing. But it just never happened. - Jim Morrison
Yeah Mozart was a genius composing Symphonies at age five, but he didn't compose anything good until he was sixteen and had been playing his entire life. Thomas Edison said genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Yeah Paul McCartney was 23 years old when he wrote Yesterday in his sleep, but he been writing songs since age 13. 10 years of practice and hard work set the foundation for Yesterday. In fact all The Beatles were all seasoned professional musicians that played thousands of gigs before anyone ever heard of them.
So the reason I've never been able to really write any of my own material is mainly because I never actually worked at it. Kind of like Jim Morrison's quote, I thought if just didn't automatically happen there was no point in trying.
Sometimes I also think that I maybe learned too much early on. My teens were spent learning theory, practicing flashy techniques that I didn't really want to be doing anyways and learning classical guitar. Like Roger Waters said at the start of this thing, sometimes I think that if I wasn't so concerned with sounding like how I thought I should sound so people will like me, that it would've forced me by default to be more original since I would've lacked the technical ability to simply mimick what I was hearing around me. There is some precedent to back up that statement. George Martin the legendary producer of The Beatles, once said of Paul McCartney:
I have often been asked if I could've written any of The Beatles tunes, and the answer is definitely no; for one basic reason, I didn't have their simple approach to music. I think that if Paul, for instance, had learned music 'properly' - not just the piano, but correct notation for writing and reading music, all the harmony and counterpoint that I had to go through, and the techniques of orchestration - it might well have inhibited him...once you start being taught things, your mind is channeled in a particular way. Paul didn't have that channeling, so he had freedom, and could think of things that I would've considered outrageous.
And there's another thing too. I just don't have a driving urge to be creative. Sure I could practice and learn how to write a descent song, but I just like to play. I don't have a need to express myself musically the way someone like John Lennon has that driving creative urge. I don't have that burning in my soul that all my musical/artistic heroes all had. John Lennon had something to say, I don't have anything to say. I just wanna play the damn guitar.
I'm just not a songwriter, I'm a guitar player, plain and simple. The only times I've ever felt like writing something original have been situations where I'm trying to impress a girl, or the real rare occassion that I meet another musician that I get along good with and we collaborate.
I do very well with a songwriting partner. When it comes to playing or writing with others I've always favored people I get along with and am comfortable around and shares my same views on music and art versus some dude who just has a good rep a singer or guitarist. I'm descent at coming with an intro or a riff, but not so good when it comes to melody and song structure. If I run into anybody I can collaborate with so that I can focus on my strenghts then I'm all down for trying to be creative.
If not thats cool too because hey, I'm just the guitar player.
