Saturday, July 29, 2006
"Me and Mike Watt playing Guitar"
Watched the Minutemen documentary, "We Jam Econo," the other day. I am re-psyched on these guys. Such timeless music. And Double Nickels on the Dime is one of the greatest records ever. But what it mostly made me think of is playing music with Christopher. I've been fortunate in that I've basically only ever been in bands that have been populated with my best friends. I'm not really sure how else to make music (though I guess I will learn when I get to Portland). Being in That's All She Wrote with Christopher was very much like taking all of the experiences you had as a teenager, adding a dose of broadened musical taste and making a band out of it. There's something about being in a band, and all the component parts of that (practicing, writing, touring, etc), with people you love and you've known for a long time that elevates the experience to another level. Truly a beautiful thing. So if some day it's possible I hope to be able to make music with Christopher again.
The End of Fire&Flux
A couple of weeks ago Fire&Flux played what may be its last show. I would like to think this is not true but we'll be living 2000 miles apart so that makes it rather difficult to get together. That said, Rich is still planning a tour for us some time in the winter. Sounds good to me.
The last show was pretty fantastic. Christopher came down from Providence to play and Chris J came in with his new girlfriend Teresa. Some other excellent individuals came out too. We played well I thought though I don't know if it sounded as good to other people as it felt to us. It was a pretty intense set with some really screaming sections. Chris took 200 pictures of the event so it's rather well documented.
Throughout our set I did my best to forget that this was it, this was the last time we're going to play together. Improvised music really requires one to focus in a way that other doesn't - at least for me. So focus is always an issue and always something I'm working on. Those moments when you can forget yourself are the best moments of playing. And living. In scenarios like this, when there's substantial subtext to the playing, it's hard to get your mind in the position of only thinking about music.
Christopher's set was awesome. Intense and beautiful like all his music. Some dude got on stage afterward and tried to embarrass him though. I kind of flipped out at him afterwards cursing him up and down. There was definitely a part of me that wanted him to hit me so I could feel free to hurt him. It's the same thing as always: he hurt me (by trying to hurt Christopher) so I wanted revenge. There's part of me that thinks this is totally wrong and part of me that thinks people have to know what they can't get away with.
So it was exhilarating and sad and fun and exciting. Enough people showed so that I could give Christopher a non-embarrassing amount of money to get home with and we all left relatively happy. And then that part of my NYC life was over.
The last show was pretty fantastic. Christopher came down from Providence to play and Chris J came in with his new girlfriend Teresa. Some other excellent individuals came out too. We played well I thought though I don't know if it sounded as good to other people as it felt to us. It was a pretty intense set with some really screaming sections. Chris took 200 pictures of the event so it's rather well documented.
Throughout our set I did my best to forget that this was it, this was the last time we're going to play together. Improvised music really requires one to focus in a way that other doesn't - at least for me. So focus is always an issue and always something I'm working on. Those moments when you can forget yourself are the best moments of playing. And living. In scenarios like this, when there's substantial subtext to the playing, it's hard to get your mind in the position of only thinking about music.
Christopher's set was awesome. Intense and beautiful like all his music. Some dude got on stage afterward and tried to embarrass him though. I kind of flipped out at him afterwards cursing him up and down. There was definitely a part of me that wanted him to hit me so I could feel free to hurt him. It's the same thing as always: he hurt me (by trying to hurt Christopher) so I wanted revenge. There's part of me that thinks this is totally wrong and part of me that thinks people have to know what they can't get away with.
So it was exhilarating and sad and fun and exciting. Enough people showed so that I could give Christopher a non-embarrassing amount of money to get home with and we all left relatively happy. And then that part of my NYC life was over.
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