Ouch. That’s Hot.

This summer, I finally made it to a show.

The first time Perry came to my town was with the original Lollapalooza line-up at the idyllic Blossom Music Center.  I was invited by a gal I was kinda dating.  Hindsight being 20/20, I think I wish I had been dating her a little more.  She was cool. Cooler than me.  (Speaking of nothing shocking…)  But my intimidated 16-year-old self stuck his head in the sand and his fingers in his ears when the invitation came.  Jane’s represented a secret world of clove-smoking art students, clad in weird black xl t-shirts emblazoned with letters like PIL and KMFDM and XTC.  I had yet to crack the code, let alone be initiated into the scene.

But I think I’m glad I waited.

That first trip was marred by reports of blasphemy and nudity and a sloppy set cranked out by a band about to blow.  Seems Perry’s a better man these days.  A little Torah never hurt anyone, eh?  He was certainly in high spirits in the ‘burgh this June, bouncing around the stage in his lamé and lycra-infused fashions, peeling off a layer a tune as he proved that 50 ain’t too old to rock and roll.  Did I mention that he’s 50?  Goodness.  Stamina.

I’d witnessed Perry do what Perry does once before with Porno For Pyros a long time back.  But I’d never sat at the feet of my all-time-guitar-hero Dave Navarro (sorry, Edge,) nor had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the elusive Eric Avery ’til now. I’ve often watched the Three Days documentary DVD which commemorates one of the last big tours featuring Flea on the four-string.  This was a different experience.

Of course, Flea played the parts flawlessly, sliding effortlessly from supple to spank.  Eric didn’t care about that.  He wrote the damn parts in the first place and he was gonna play ‘em any way he wanted.  This meant pounding it out while stomping out a tribal tantric circle dance like an Iroquois warrior preparing for the fight, clad in direct-from-1991 combat boots and cutoffs.  No poofery for this fella.  While bass players are often unjustly remaindered to the periphery of the 8×10 glossy, hiding behind the ego(s) up front, this band never would have happened without Eric giving Perry a platform on which to wail.  He’s the most essential Jane; here’s to détente if not reconciliation.

It was good to finally make it to a show.  It was great to see the band in fine form after all these years.  And it was pleasing to look around at the beer-sipping crowd of 30/40-Somethings politely comparing notes while respecting each other’s space to enjoy a civilized conert.

We all got older, but Jane’s stayed the same.

It’s happened before.

Last time, the tears filled my eyes and spilled over the broken shards of all my shattered dreams as they lay splintered on the hard-tiled floor of my new hard-won, respectable existence.   I’m a little better off these days.  This time it was just a shrug and trip to the hardware store for a tube of Titebond.

Last time, I had a pro patch-up by the formidably talented Mike Cox (if you’re in c-bus, look him up.)  This time, I knew the scars were to be permanent and unavoidable.  Time to embrace the beat-down/beatific patina of warts-and-all life and DIY.

As long as I can keep on pickin’, it’ll be alright.

A few weeks back I was setting up some microphones for one of my Not-So-Pro (TM) recording sessions and thought I’d test out some settings and make sure that the cords and the cables were humming along and making the right connections in the right directions and otherwise gettin’ the electronics all ready and warmed up to jump and jive and hoot and holler before the real musician arrived.

Thought I’d test it by doing a little bit of recording of my own.  For old time’s sake it seemed like a good moment to revisit a two-chord creation of Chicago’s one and only Blue Meanies, a second-rate third-wave ska band that still holds a nice little spot in the back side of my heart for playing a part in the old fun times when I used to romp around with Sarah and with Steve and with the suburban punks of dirty downtown Elgin, where the AA meeting hall would play host to dread-headed and tattooed teens who would pogo and skank till the floor boards would creak and crack and the the mic stands would topple and tables would spill the merch on the sweat-wet floor.

And we were there to hear this drummer named Jay, a guy that I used to work with in the summers and who had a place up in St. Charles with his brother.  I went over and I dropped him off and there were girls there, lovely girls in the prime of early lithely adultlife with summer-sunned shoulders and confidence and swagger and smoking cigarettes and they were beautiful and there were books being read and sketches being sketched and there was music being played and I said “uh, hi.”

And then I said “bye” and I drove away and that was about the end of that , but then I went up with Sarah and with Steve to see the band and they were opening for the Blue Meanies and the Blue Meanies were doing everything that they could to get that party started, as it were, and we rejoiced.

And they played a song that was not so much ska but a little more funk and they pressed it on pink vinyl and pink vinyl sounded pretty cool for 3 dollars, so I bought it and brought it to College and J (not Jay) put it on the Vortex (the Vortex being a Salvation Army Store-bought turntable taped up with the guarantee “Work Good”.)  And he dropped the needle on the record and we worked out the chords and gosh we played that thing a lot at all the college student-union and rec-hall and dorm-basement gigs.  Sometimes with flute and sometimes with sax and sometimes with harmonica and sometimes with whoever happened to grab the mic and it’s still stuck in my head all these years later with its vaguely suggestive title which only suggests things to someone who’s like 19 and totally sheltered but really wants to get out because he stood on Jay’s front porch and he saw girls and they were beautiful and he thought “maybe some day.”

Anyway, here’s the song as I recorded it a few weeks back.

A friend of mine recently announced that he was giving up the Internet for Lent, with the exception of necessary e-mail and a brief window on Sundays to actually read the electronic content that must be read.  I found this odd.  I start every day by looking over a dozen blogs, a few news sites, and a little app called Facebook.  Everyday, including Sundays.  Why?  Because I’m afraid I’ll miss something.  I want to be in-the-know, so I subscribe to a dozen magazines, spend an hour a day “keeping up on things” via the magic web and scratch my old-school itches with a daily walk to grab the morning paper still stuck in the frozen slush at the end of the driveway.

Now, you’d think this would lead to a mind filled with interesting facts and informed opinions on the greater good for the greatest number of mankind.  However, the cracked cranium of Grant Wentzel is really just an un-indexed pit of half-remembered half-truths battling about for a moment in the mental sun.  And like a board meeting with a bunch of budding bigshots, it’s the loudest, brashest, and most bombastic butthole that gets the floor and carries the vote.

A love of learning and a catholic disposition is a lovely thing, but I’ve really got to re-evaluate my motivation for such unfiltered consumption.  This informational gluttony is more about the Fear of being left out and a futile quest for Power and Control over the great unknown.  My mind is left crapulous, constipated.  There’s Anxiety in it, and I need to let it go.

Many hold that a laissez-faire, free-market economy is by far the best if driven by the self-imposed principal of Enlightened Self-Interest.  Obviously, “enlightened” is a hard word to define, especially when faced with competition from the “unenlightened” that might sink your business and ruin everything you’ve built if you’re not similarly cut-throat and compromising.  But is it too much to ask of the Masters Of The Universe to stop and ponder the real cost of their actions?  Anyway, I’m not one to get into politics or economic theory on my blog (above my pay grade, as it were) but I’d like to break stride and re-post an entry by my dear friend Kingtycoon Mathoslah:

Senator:

I would like to take a moment to register my request that you do not allow the president and the treasury secretary’s plans to come to fruition. Please take a moment to understand why I might adopt a position seemingly in variance with the public good.

Look: Presently the lingo and the catch phrase seems to be wall street versus main street. Perhaps as an educated person, a Senator no less, you can see the foolishness of the dichotomy. Really what is at variance is this - those of us who are the victims of financial malfeasance & who will pay for it – and the perpetrators. For decades there has been no main street- so far as I can see the entire country has been placed at the mercy of the global free-marketers - People without any scruple or an ounce of goodwill for their countrymen. I live in Cuyahoga County where the damage done by those who thought it better to gamble on China or India rather than reinforce the position of the American People is readily observable. We have been taken advantage of by manufacturers led by financiers who have seen the growth of stock value as a greater good than the good of their own country and people. We have seen that Wall Street will tolerate any amount of carnage in the insignificant provinces – that is, any place that is not New York City or Washington DC. We have endured a longstanding attack on our society by the few and unspeakably wealthy. Now they require not just that our region’s economy collapse, not just that we serve at their pleasure in the workplace – but that we support them totally when their reckless mistakes have unpleasant repercussions for them.

Go to the Slavic Village and see what bankers have decided to make of the state of Ohio – go and see how they have taken cruel advantage of desperate people. Go and see what the president is now asking for the taxpayers to subsidize…

The financial services sector has never been anything but a house of cards- a precarious arrangement of gambling balanced by greed – it’s at the very least distasteful to decent people – but currently it’s been made the heart of our entire republic. Currently we are at the mercy of markets that have worked against every part of the American polity in favor of expanding the wealth of the few.

Please don’t make me pay for the destruction of my region, my city and my country’s principles.

Thank you.

The silence is deafening!

My impish corner of the blogging empire — a little half-moon of qwerty merriment emanating from the central vineyard — has taken some hits lately.  [Further documentation here and here --ed.]  I suppose that my M.I.A. status, both online and geographically, would place me squarely on the presumed casualty list.

But nothing can be further from the truth!  I’ve just been lost.  Lost in a wilderness of my own making.  Lost in a hazy half-light of murmuring responsibilities and flickering fears.  Anxieties and agitations. Split-minded sputtering.  Stuttering. Wet-fish flopping on the rocks, one gill in the water, one in the air, watching the sun skirt the horizon, unsure if it’s dusk or if it’s dawn. All of which doesn’t lend itself to creative thinking.

And without dipping my tongue into the Well Of Creation, without slaking the urge to see words and sights and sounds rise up ex nihilo before me, I’ve got nothing else to give.  If I cannot create, I can only consume.  If I cannot feed my mind, I revert to feeding my belly.  My belly’s been happy.  [Thankfully, Grant just joined a gym --ed.]

So, now that I’ve broken the silence and tested your unearned patience with my navel-gazed rambling, here’s a little fun:

A bunch of British Lego-heads have been making album covers out of Legos and posting them to a flickr site here. The visual pun on the title of Kate’s album made me smile.  I hope it does the same for you.  More blogging to come!

Perhaps I’m going about things all wrong.

In the last GQ there was an article about the necessities and excesses of the hyper-trendy green movement. It was mostly fluff, bouncing between the dire results of every Indian & Chinese owing an internally-combustible car, and the ridiculousness of buying a shiny new hybrid-SUV because somehow you’re going to save the earth by stretching each gallon of gas another mile or two.

Nothing new there, but there was a quote from one Bjorn Lomborg that made me wonder about my approach to life:

“The reason we’ve done so well as a civilization over the past 300 years is specialization — I don’t fix my own computer, I don’t produce my own TV programs. I do very few things, but hopefully I do them well.”

And then there was this quote from my friend John’s blog:

“When I grow up, maybe I’ll learn to say “no” to things that fall outside my talents, skills and giftings. I know for a fact that God has not equipped me to be a travel agent. I shall never again be the one responsible for flight plans, fund collections or any of those kinds of details related to a missions trip. I’m just not good at it.”

I’ve always been one to try to go it alone, fix it myself, make it happen on my own terms. But when I look at both my domestic and professional life, I see mostly loose ends that I could fix if I had the time, but I don’t have the time. I’ve got no time for anything. And then these self-inflicted responsibilities just start stacking up and choking out any space to do what I’m actually kinda good at.

For instance, I’m massively behind in my attempts to get a new e-commerce platform up-and-running. It would/could/should be a good thing to do, and it’s plum necessary in my line of work that I continue to evolve this “solution” to keep up with the times. However, I’ve never felt any desire to hang out with a database, let alone tweak the code to get it to jump through my hoops. Now, I’ll stay up all night tweaking the layout of the user interface. I think that’s fun.

Am I less of a man for hiring some help? Why my lack of faith in the word “team”? Does this all go back to a childhood kick-ball game gone bad? The blacktop broiling under the summer sun. The bounce of the ball, the dodge, the jump the crash, the burn, the Sears Toughskin corduroy jeans not tough enough. Argh!! The iodine!!

Feeling better… I think I’ll go make some calls. Go team!

I’ve had this Theory bouncing around my head for awhile, and as I haven’t posted jack-squat on this here sweet blog o’ mine in many moons, I’ll let ‘er rip:

From time to time over the last decade or two, I’ve been a part of a Band. You know, a Band: One of those loosely defined collectives of musicians who build up a virtual family of their own making and then proceed to bitch and squabble with one another in more perverse and pervasive ways than any dysfunctional clan of inbred hill-jacks on Jerry Springer.

We’ve fought over women; we’ve feuded over money. We’ve brawled about where to play, how to play, what to wear, and what to say. We’ve clashed when we drank too much and snapped when we didn’t guzzle enough. And for what? For a few positive write-ups here and there. For a chance to be the Cool Kids for a moment in another of a one-in-million short-lived and ever-mutating Scenes. And, yes, we did it for the Music.

There’s nothing quite like those moments when it all comes together. Whether it was funk or punk, whether it was sober or drunk, the promise of the sublime was often so close at hand. Every once in awhile Heaven would touch Earth. That was a good place to be, and it made up for all of the above.

Hexed as I am, and having learned nothing from the past, I’m bound to repeat this accursed cycle of love and loss again before my time is up.

So I must ask: Who among you is worthy to join hand-in-hand with me on this noble quest to Rock ‘n Roll Nirvana? With whom shall I scale the sacred walls of this Electric Valhalla?

(Back to my Theory:)

To make it in a band, you’ve gotta earn 10 Points. There’s 2 ways to score on this game of rock. (So we can all play!) The first 10-point scale is one of musicality (aka, “How much do you rock?”) The better you are at your given instrument, the more points you can earn. If you have other talents, like the ability to produce non-cringe-inducing background vocals, you can earn bonus points. Knowledge of music theory and a studied musical palette round out this category.

The second 10-point scale is one of amiability. If your company is worth keeping, you can tally up your quota here. If you’re a fun guy, you get points. If you can keep your composure and a good attitude at a 2am gig on a Tuesday attended solely by the bartender and her luckless boyfriend, you get points. If you’re hardworking and responsible as well, you can really rack up the bonus points.

Got it? Let’s clarify with a few practical examples:

You really need a keyboardist to propel your punk-rock up and over the next new wave, but alas, none are to be found. You turn to Craig’s list where you find a classically-trained vintage moog-loving (and owning!) eccentric who lives across town. On the 10-point scale of musicality he’s, yes, a perfect 10! However, the guy’s a pain in the arse who’s pretty sure your Duran Duran tribute act is beneath him and does his best to let you know that he’s capable of so much more, thus scoring no points on the second scale. However, he’s already earned his 10 points suggesting chords, fixing harmonies, and re-writing the bridge and introduction of your first big single. He’s in!

You really need a keyboardist to propel your punk-rock up and over the next new wave, but alas, none are to be found. You decide that the bassist’s brother (who’s always hanging around rehearsal anyway, fetching beers, hauling gear and cracking jokes) might do. So you buy an old Roland on e-bay and give him a shot. He sucks, but with practice, can push the keys your tell him to push more or less with the beat. Although he failed to make it on the board musically, his “good-guyness” (and wacky on-stage antics) earned him a 10 in the second round. He’s in!

I like to think I’m about a 5 or 6 on each scale, giving me a blended 10. Sure I can play a bit, but I can also be a bastard. And sure, sometimes I miss a cue I’ve rehearsed a thousand times, but I can usually laugh at myself when I do.

All that being said, I’d rather work with an overall decent guy than a hot-shot musician. No one’s getting famous around here, but you can miss out on having fun pretty fast.

(This blog shall return.)

However, the Love Boat of my life has hit an iceberg of Exciting and New and I must attend to the burst bulwarks before my cup runneth all over my Client’s vintage white-shag rug.

That really pisses ‘em off. Every time.