Ten questions from Nyx # 10 Your music may be considered "controversial" or "lewd" by others. Will this be an influence on your musical creativity in

10.Your music may be considered "controversial" or "lewd" by others. Will this be an influence on your musical creativity in the future?

I don’t see how it could influence my musical creativity. I don’t attempt to be controversial or lewd, I just say what I mean. The Lawyer song has a lot of “F” bombs in it. But Lawyers do seem to FUCK YOU OVER as a general rule.

The simple fact is if you say ANYTHING you will offend SOMEONE. Even speaking pure gibberish will piss some people off. Say what you want to say, and if people are offended, at least you have just cause to offend them.

Christmas miracles do happen, 250 citizens in the Zorch Nation

Yesterday at Tantalus, we finally crossed the 250-member target I said I wanted to reach for Christmas. Thanks one and all for the support and I hope to prove worthy of that support.

Ten questions from Nyx #9 What do you consider your greatest achievement in music?

9. What do you consider your greatest achievement in music?

Well, I’ve won awards, been covered in critical acclaim, and sold a bunch of records. But my greatest achievement in music is simply doing it in such a way I have a modicum of security. This is something a lot of more famous people can’t claim. My life is good, I have a pretty good idea where my next meal is coming from, and I don’t have to tour just to have a cash flow.

Music is a pretty weird way of life. Seem most go broke and end up doing the 9-5 thing. A few get rich, but fewer still find some security later in life. I guess I’m lucky.

Ten questions from Nyx #8 What do you consider your greatest obstacle in music?

8. What do you consider your greatest obstacle in music?

People.

That is the short and very pointed answer to that question. Of course I should probably embroider that a bit so I don’t come off as cynical.

People are the primary recipients of music. People are the primary creators of music. Both have serious issues.

The vast majority of people in the world have music in their life. But they are very ignorant of what makes up good music. This is analog to why people eat McDonalds when, while it’s edible, it’s not really good food.

Most people are comfortable with what they know musically. When I was playing in a cover band I noticed people would rather have you do a horrible job playing a song they know, then listen to a flawless rendition of a good original song.

How do people become familiar with music? Mostly via radio. I don’t listen to the radio at all anymore. I find most of the current music absolutely homogonous. It all sounds the same. Even singers in current bands all seem to have the same voice. The reason most music sounds the same is because the men in suite figure if band “A” sells very well, band “B” should sound as much like band “A” as humanly possible.

Frankly, artist development is history. The current rage is exploitation of the young and hopeful. Simply subscribe to the current sonic, fashion, image orthodoxy and perhaps the men in suites will use you to bolster their quarterly reports.

Of course this bring us from the consumers of music (or McMusic), to the creators.

Most musicians are incredibly derivative. They pointedly sound like the musical credo they subscribe to. I saw a guy playing the other day and for some reason the woman running the show sent me a copy of his song list. He had a good number of original songs,and a big pile of song he could cover. All the cover songs sounded alike (ahhhh, McMusic strikes again), but even more disappointing, his so-called original songs sounded just like his cover songs. This guy is very popular, because people are musically ignorant.

Let me try to explain what makes a person a musical artist with an analogy.

Most people can speak. Most people have a vocabulary. But few people are poets. Poets understand the power of words and the emotional resonance they have. Yes, most people can string together words that rhyme, but rhyming words do not a poem make.

Many people can play a musical instrument and make something resembling music. This is their musical vocabulary. Perhaps they can sing in pitch. But they really don’t understand the intangibles of music. They have no distinctive voice. This mean they really have no business playing music. Music is supposed to be an art form, not a craft.

Allow me to put forth examples some artist I’ve seen in Second Life that strikes me as actual musical artist.

POL Arida. Hell I could be the president of the POL fan club. He provides powerful words, dramatic music and a drive that keep things fresh. Nobody sounds like POL but POL.

Peregrine Singh. I’ve really just started coming to grips with this guy. I frankly don’t understand how he does what he’s doing, but it doesn’t matter, he’s freaking brilliant. There are plenty of guitar player wanking off, but Peregrine seems to be able to spew forth musical ideas with manic glee.

Blindboy Gummo. There is a part of me that doesn’t want to like Blindboy. He seems too popular to be cool. But fuck it, I love his originals. He’s got a quirky Blues/pop hybrid sound that is just amazing. Nobody sounds like the Hedgehog. I actually have a long-standing show following Blindboy at Bay Vista. If Blindboy ever drops that gig, I won’t be showing my face at Bay Vista again. Dropping in early to catch his show is my prime motivation.

Oh yeah, lets not forget Zorch Boomhauer, that guy is freaking amazing.

Ten question from Nyx # 7. What do you find more rewarding, writing music or performing it?

7. What do you find more rewarding, writing music or performing it?

This is quite a challenging question. I’ve spent most of my life as a songwriter, and I’ve enjoyed that very much. However my songwriting method is different from most. Songs kind of rattle around in my head for a while, then I kind of sit down and figure out how to play them. Music and lyrics come at the same time; the words are linked to the notes.

Once I have a verse and a chorus, the basic structure of the song is all laid out. A second verse, maybe a third is added. Perhaps I’ll drop in a bridge. But I never really sit and hack around on the guitar looking for a magic progression or volley words about with a rhyming dictionary.

The end result is often quite interesting. Most of my songs are in an odd key. Many have rather oblique time signatures and on occasion I’ve dreamed up a song with a composite time signature.

Now I’m not suggesting this is some kind of magic. While there is talent involved, a good deal of the musical sophistication is due to my upbringing. As a very young child I was inundated with constant music. My grandfather, whom the family lived with when we first came to America, was a jazz musician and the greats were constantly being played on the Gramophone. When there were no records playing, my grandfather would be playing, either alone or with some of his “Hot Jazz Cat” acquaintances.

On the other side of the musical coin, my dad made sure there was a good deal of Irish music being played. Back then it was not referred to as Celtic music, it was Irish music.

I’m sure my Father had every record the Clancy brothers ever made.

I was nurtured as a sapling in a home where the modes mingled with the modal, and this makes for an interesting spawning ground for musical ideas. Mix in the fact, my English teacher Mothers penchant for leaving poetry books lying about; you have a fertile field for a young songwriter to develop in.

What am I trying to say here? Well, writing songs for me is part of my life. Driving down the road, cooking dinner, taking a shower or tucking my princess into bed, musical ideas are bouncing around in my head. The songs are on the vine, and all I have to do is harvest them when the time is right. Yes, I find it rewarding, but not as in, “A job well done”.

When the song is ready, I undergo the painful experience of trying to figure out how to play it. This is the one draw back to writing songs this way. Some of the cord changes are not as 1,2,3,4 as I might hope. And it seems as if each song has a specific key. It takes a while to “Decode” the song. But I don’t see this as song writing. But rather the larval state of a performance.

And now my answer is crystallized. Songwriting and performance are all part of the same process of making music to me. The song isn’t really written until it’s performed, and it isn’t really performed until it’s played for people, and both are amazingly rewarding.

Ten questions from Nyx #6 Have you written a song specifically for your daughter or do you intend to?

6. Have you written a song specifically for your daughter or do you intend to?

Well I have composed an instrumental for her called “Lilly’s theme”. And when she was one-year old I did a composition using samples of the sounds she made as the interments, called “Baby Boo”.

I have written a song that she inspired, but changed the name because I didn’t want her to grow up being the girl in a song.

Ten questions from Nyx # 5 What advice can you offer to those interested in becoming successful musicians?

5. What advice can you offer to those interested in becoming successful musicians?

Well, I am a successful musician, but only because I choose to define my own terms for success. Rich and famous, I don’t know much about, but I’ll offer a few observations.

It takes ten years to get good at something. Mozart started composing when he was 12, but nobody really plays those pieces. When he was 22 he started setting the world on fire. Good music takes time. Mastering an instrument takes time. Understanding music takes a lifetime. You really can never take it all in, just small slices at a time. The longer you are involved the more you come to understand.

Don’t be afraid of the business end of the music business. Most musicians tend to think, if I get a manager, I’ll be set, I can just concentrate on the music. While that might seem like a more perfect world, no matter how well meaning your manager may be, unless you are intimately involved in the plan for your career, your career might end up somewhere you don’t want to be. Managers look at things from the business end, they don’t take into account the musical/artistic requirements unless you make them clear as crystal.

Avoid the word “No”. That word ends conversations, and close doors. Of course there are times you want conversations ended and doors closed, but the more you say “No” to other people, the more likely people are to say “No” to you.

Also, use the word “Yes” with great discretion. People like to say “Yes”, and like to hear “Yes”, but “Yes” is a commitment, remember that.

Expect to succeed. Even when you fail, you find out what doesn’t work quite successfully.

Talent is great, but ambition and commitment get the job done.

Ten questions from Nyx,#4 Are you teaching Lilly how to play the guitar?

4. Are you teaching Lilly how to play the guitar?

When Lilly was 3, she got a Ukulele for Christmas. She still has it and plays it all the time. Of course, her concept of “Playing” is a bit different from yours or mine. She plunks away merrily and sings her heart out, making up songs on the fly.

I’m often invited to her room, and she stands on the bed and puts on a concert for me.

She wants a pink guitar for Christmas this year. She often reads me her wish list and always at the end is, “and a pink guitar”. She says this with a very serious look on her face and her tiny index finger extended to punctuate the point.

Ten questions from Nyx, #3 Besides guitar, what other instrument(s) can/do you play?

3. Besides guitar, what other instrument(s) can/do you play?

I started life as piano player, and I still play from time to time. The reason I don’t play it on Second Life is because I don’t really own a piano, just a MIDI keyboard and a sampler that has a good piano sample. I can’t get the sampler program to run while running Second life and winamp for a stream, so I don’t use it in performances.

My first music job was pianist in a recording studio.

When I was 12, I saw Johnny Cash on TV. He was signing a song, all dressed in black, and I remember him slinging his guitar behind his back, walking up to the mic to say something. I don’t remember what he said into the mic, I don’t remember the song he was singing before he slung his guitar back, but something about that moment made me think, “I’ve gotta get a gee-tar, that is bad ass cool”.

My Father had a friend, Fred Sommers who was much like the grandfather I never had. I actually had two grandfathers, but Fred was like...actually interested in me as a person. He made me a guitar (or Gee-tar) with his own two hands. He really didn’t know how to make a guitar, but wanted me to have one, and figured it could not be that hard. I recall it had masking tape position markers on the neck, and thumb tacks to hold the strap on. But it did have a strap, and for weeks I was walking around with the gee-tar slung behind me Johnny Cash style.

When I tried to actually play it, it spilt down the front. Seem it could not handle being tuned to pitch. But I still remember that guitar and thanks Fred for being a cool old man.

Getting back to the actual question, I play the Keys, Guitar, Bass, Drums, Banjo, Mandolin, Dobro, and Harmonica.

If you want to know how well I play these instruments that is hard to say. I seem to be able to get something musical out of all of them. Any performances recorded are me playing. And I’ve won awards for playing the Guitar, Banjo, and Dobro.

Ten questions from Nyx, #2. Who would you consider "your inspiration" to pursue music as a career?

2. Who would you consider "your inspiration" to pursue music as a career?

I have this theory about people that have musical careers. You don’t really decide to devote your life to music. It’s just some kind of genetic fluke.

I’ve seen plenty of people say, “Hey, I’m going to be a professional musician”, but after a few years of banging your head against the wall, you end up in a more reasonable line of work. A good number of these reasonable people are still friends of mine and quite amazed I’m still pursuing music as a vocation.

I can honestly say I’ve given the 9 to 5 lifestyle a test drive a few times and it never really suited me.

I’ve been involved in music as a profession since 1977. That was the year I released my first record. I’ve seen good times, and suffered some bone grinding poverty, and I’ve worked in just about any capacity you can think of in music. But when all is said and done, there never was a question of doing something else. Music is my love, my life and my calling. It is the boundary that defines me.

I’m not doing this to get rich or famous. If I were I would have moved on decades ago. While I manage to earn my crust of bread, it’s never been about money at all. There is intoxication in music that nothing else can match. I can think back on a million instances when I knew this was where I belonged. On stage at some bucket of blood shit hole bar, or listening to the playback of a recording, magic transcendent moments of answering the call of my life.

Ten questions from Nyx. #1 What brands of guitars do you use during your SL live events?

A while back I asked the members of the Zorch Nation to submit questions for an interview. So far, only Nyx has answered the call. I'm going to answer her ten questions one at a time in serial form here on the blog. The full interview is almost 3,000 words, so lets take it one question at a time.

1. What brands of guitars do you use during your SL live events?

When I started out in Second life, I was playing an Alverez RD205CE. This is the guitar that fell off the guitar stand and broke it’s neck. It was the guitar I was planning on growing old with, but such is life.

Thanks to the swift and generous aid of the Zorch Nation, I was soon playing an Ovation Celebrity, and that is the guitar I play the standard tuning portion of my show with until this very day.

A few months after buying the Ovation, I started messing around with songs using DADGAD tuning. For a while I would retune in the middle of the show and this would wreak havoc on my strings. Once the show started going 50% standard tuning, and 50% DADGAD tuning I decided to buy a second guitar. Of course, I didn’t have much money to spend on this instrument. I picked a Rouge model RAGCEQ from Musicians friend.

I suspect most musicians know about Musicians friend and the Rouge line of musical instruments. They aren’t the best, but they are affordable. The guitar is a 000 body acoustic/electric. Small, easy to handle and actually sounds good. It’s not particularly finger friendly, but works well for my style of playing in DADGAD. I basically bash the hell out of it. So far it has not exploded into a pile of toothpicks.

A footnote, the majority of “Songs in the key of Green” are in DADGAD tuning, and all the DADGAD songs are played on the Rouge. It doesn’t sound like a cheap guitar on the recording at all.

The Jester inn’s one-year anniversary and my 300th performance in Second life

Sunday really started out spotty. I had played four show on Saturday and Sunday morning I was not really feeling fresh and focused. Just between you and I, I really need to get a performance schedule that is a little more reasonable.

During a 9 AM show at WAM-TV, I was contacted about playing the Jester inn’s one-year anniversary party. Way to wait until the last moment guys. I was asked if I could play a 30-minuet set at 2 PM, but I was scheduled to play a benefit for “Toys for Tots”, at 2 PM so I asked if I could go on around 3:30 PM instead. The organizer, Dres Forder said, “Yes sure”.

Okay 1:30 PM rolls around and I show up early for the Benefit. Seems nobody is actually in charge on site. I inform a woman wearing “Event Hostess” tag I’m the guy scheduled for a 2 PM performance and she informs me I’m not. According to their calendar I’m suppose to play there next week. Well you know what? Fuck you people. I’m tried about getting dragged all over for Charities. Yeah it’s a good cause and for the children and all, but they should not have fucktards running an event for good causes.

Anyway, suddenly I can play the Jester Inn event. Not only do I have time to play, I can actually attend the event and see the other people playing there.

I’m not kidding when I say the Jester Inn one-year anniversary party was the best time I’ve ever had in Second life, and to put a cheery on top, because the Toys for Tots gig was a wash, it turned out to be my 300th scheduled performance in Second life. Talk about wicked cool.

The performers playing made up a show I’ve actually been thinking about for a while. POL Arida, Blind Boy Gummo, and Zorch. Then after the featured performers were done, Dres Forder played a few songs, as did Phemie Alcot. It was good music front to back, didn’t have to turn off the stream once.

As good as the music was, what was more compelling was you could just tell how much it touched the heart of everybody’s favorite “Rock Chick” Harrie. She kept saying, “You guys have restored my faith in Second Life”.

Hey everybody seem to get at their wits end with the bullshit Second life can heap on you. It’s nice to have a chance to tell someone how much you appreciate what they do, and how much they mean to you. Yes it was a big crowd, but it was a crowd there for Harrie. The performers where there to play for the woman that had always been there for them.

About mid way through the even, everybody piled on to a table for a group picture. I was in that pile too, well, standing in back of the pile, but part of it nonetheless. Somehow, I could not help but feel like it was a picture of victory. The Jester Inn, and Harrie thrive. They thrive because she only books the music she likes. It’s the one venue I can think of where I never see a horrible act. Harrie proves it can work, and all the people in the pile agree.

This is my best day in Second Life and I’m so proud I could be part of the pile.

Looking back at November

As always, I’m fascinated by number, so let’s see what the numbers say about November. Did I have something to be thankful for?

The web page had 77 unique visitors in November; this is up from September’s 52 visitors. Not bad, go ZorchBoom dot com.

MP3 downloads show a total of 272 files downloaded for the month of November. The breakdown is as follows.

White and black 9 MP3=108
200th Show song collection 7 MP3= 28
Songs in the key of Green 8 Mp3= 112
Black and white 2 MP3= 22
Single of the moment 1 MP3= 2

I guess I’m not a singles artist no matter how you serve it up. I’m kind of surprised that “White and black” made such a strong showing. I’m suspecting people that own “Black and white” are picking up its sister collection.

Once again if you wonder why I make a point to share the numbers, it’s because sometimes you can get lost in feelings. I often feel as if I’m stuck in a rut. But I can remember a time when I played “The artic circle dock” and had five people in the audience. Two of which were staff and the other three were a few people from a venue checking me out. At this point, my shows are generally better attended.

At least during the days.