I'm still here....

I have left but never for long. Living in my home town was not in my plans but here I am. Merrick N.Y. is not a great place to be if you have a non standard view on the world. Growing up here I always felt foreign and from another time. It could be my upbringing and the influence of my mother’s family but I have always pictured myself living in a more open minded place. Its funny how things end up. I have developed this saying, 'The harder you throw the apple from the tree the closer it lands.' This sums up my growth through adolescence into my 20's. I just wanted out. I traveled around going to concerts and seeing the country  but I had my fill early of the lack of comfort. I guess i copped out. But driving back from California in a van with no heat in the dead of winter while quitting a hefty cigarette habit, not to mention being infested with crabs, was the straw that broke the back of this camel. My wife and I came very close to pulling up stakes and moving to Colorado, a decision that leaves me wondering to this day.

So we moved to Long Beach N.Y. instead. After a few years we started looking for a house. We looked everywhere but Merrick but in the end we found a house down the block from my folks and in a day it was done. We weren't even looking there. Along came my daughter and the rest is history. Time marches on and after 17 years I am now looking back. We have made friends here but something is missing. I believe we all have that. Those close relationships that were forged in times of intense, idealistic, do or die times, where the smallest of issues could be all or nothing in a young person’s mind. I remarked this morning to my wife about the 16yr old drama how it was so easy to put it all down on a thought , worry, love or belief. It was the blinders of youth. At the ripe age of 47 Cat Stevens’ Father and Son rings truer than anything.

Typing this, what is reveled is my missing of the connections that fostered the image of what is best in me. We all have a picture of ourselves at our best. I am working on being in the moment and trying to make this me, the one tying now, the one I like the best. Maybe some of this is lost promise or a romantic view but the me of today left some stuff at some fork that he needs to reclaim from the lost and found.

This is me breathing.

None of this is regrett. I think about this for time to time, today I saw a post on Facebook detailing a friends reading of her travel blog at a San Francisco bookstore… Travel.. San Francisco… Both have been few and far between over the past 2 decades. Time has a habit of getting away with you. I saw a quote the other day that went something like this. I don’t want to live the length of my life I also want to live the width. I do have many things that make my life pretty wide but this subject is lookin’ pretty narrow in the shadow of my life. I guess I can do something about that. I have a bunch of miles. It’s time to get out to Boulder to see friends, maybe SFO as well. It would do Suz and I some good. Its been very hard to put action to words like that, I hope putting black to white helps me get out of the gate and down this path. I could do with sleeping on a friends couch. There are so many scattered over the country and in other countries. Time and motivation has been a big enabler. We used to have these big bashes in my backyard. All of out friends, bands, food drink. These yearly rights re affirmed much of the parts that seem to be missing. Time to resurrect The Fest at Chez Egert. Stay tuned to see what happens next J

Musical Journeys #1

I have had so many influences in my varied taste of music. Some came out of rebellion others came as if being reeled back in after a rebellion. You know your parent’s music is never cool until it is. There are times where my immediate tastes have been explorations of things I knew and others still influences I only knew by name. During the latter my growth is musical tastes would make their greatest strides as I would voraciously and repetitiously listen to these influences and become fascinated by their stories and how they evolved musically. I would be remiss to not mention that finding the music of these influences by the current listening fad broadens my horizons all the more. It is hard for me to focus deeply into these new musical excusions in a way that has me emerging as an expert on the lyrics or song names of my at that time current obsessions but I try.  I am in the midst of one of the largest spurts in my musical expansions. It is almost like an out of control oil spill engulfing without prejudice everything it its path. This has helped me evolve to one truth for me. Wilco Is my favorite band.  If Jerry Garcia Came back I would prefer to see Wilco…

For those who know me I have been a dead head for most of my life. I love a bunch of Jam bands. I have been a devote of Little Feat, The Allman Brothers band, King Crimson, Modern Psychedelic, Opera, Classical, Punk , Funk the list goes on but I feel stronger about Wilco than any other band. There completeness in musician ship, song writing, production and live performance are unequaled.  There is such a balance. They take chances. I have listened to some much ‘Art House’ music that was nothing but chances poorly attempted with the expressed purpose to create a fan base that likes the music for what seems to be intended reason of making  them feel superior to others because they ‘Get it’,  even though it is SHIT created by shit players narcissistically saying ‘like this and you will be cool.’ I want to be careful to not throw all performance artists and true visionaries into this category like Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen or Laurie Anderson the list goes on. What strikes me about Wilco is that they take musical chances not to just take an obvious chance.  They are so well calculated and executed. It’s not noise here it is an integral message of the song. It comes off as a psychological sub textual conscience in the form of a backdrop to the more concrete Lyrical and melodic message. The ebbs and flows of this orchestration and performance would be akin to a Movie for a blind person, where the scapes created serve as the auditory color and pictures to the message of a song or performance. This is done so well on record but is all enveloping live. It is at times shocking, many times arousing and always strategically place. I can’t stress any harder that everyone needs to see Wilco Live.

The band is full of virtuosos.  I will go on record to state that I believe Jeff Tweedy is the greatest living American song writer. I would consider Tom Waits a performance artist so it would be hard to just pin him as a song writer. No offence meant here Tom.  I could wax about Tweedy but I won’t. He is a very serviceable player and has a great knack at making space for the band. He is truly inspirational in his deliver as a solo act as well, but Wilco as the unit it has evolved into today, is like a beautiful handmade car where all the players, workers, craft the parts that make the whole with mastered expertise. Each has vital solo work. When brought together as a selfless unit they create a confluence of sound which is nearing perfection. What can I say about Glenn Kotche We are talking about one of the most understated drummers who has mastered the spaces in between. I have played in bands and all too often the drummer just doesn’t know when not to play. Glenn is so economical but can be Bonham on a dime if he needs to be. He is a true percussionist who contributes the underlying canvas for the band. I couldn’t picture anyone else there. John Stirratt Goes way beyond being a base player . Completing the sold pocket is the easy part here. He is a tremendous song writer. Please check out his solo works with Pat. He brings an improvisation to his playing while holding down back ground vocals. His stage presence is infectious. Having a Multi instrumentalist so at home on Keys or Piano like Pat Sansone enables the band to not only recreate the feel of the recorded song but free’s the band to broaden the sound scape to the point of a full wave of sound , which soaks the listener to the bone. Mikael Jorgensen on Keyboards contributes so much of the melodic undercurrent while being so much a part to the wild card aspect of Wilco’s performances. What is there to say about Nels Cline widely considered by those who matter as one of the most innovated virtuoso’s on guitar? I wish I could just discuss guitar pedals with him for a few days. His ability to soak every piece of sound consistently from all of his percussive guitar accessories is jaw dropping.  His control of what is the most complex set up I have ever seen is mind boggling. I would only wish to be able to constantly recreate signature sounds which all feel as if they are a happy accident, but after watching show after show reviles them to be meticulously carved elements, birthed on a dime and on call. Never monotonous always inventive but like the great modern Jazz player he is scripted for effect to round out the movie…

I do love all of Wilco’s music but they just keep getting better. It is so unbelievably rare to find artists who can get past the big success they have created and still stay vital. Some switch things up just as a Fuck you to their fans or other s how do it because they don’t want to get penned in anywhere. But Wilco’s evolution as a unit tells a great musical story. The current record “The Whole Love” better than most and takes them into the future un encumbered by what comes before. It is obvious that all the music they have done is still vital for them. I guess they do play some songs to please the crowd but I have yet to get the feeling that they would prefer to be doing anything else. Wilco is a band firmly entrenched in making art for their own pleasure this ideal salutes  a deep appreciation to their fans, Granted there are always people who want a band to keep churning out the same stuff as a nostalgia to what completes the box they tend to put the band in but by and large moving forward most Wilco fans would agree that the best is yet to come.

Times have changed….

Grandma, Mom and me

Man how times have changed. I was a teenager. It’s been said that I still act like one from time to time. I remember that time vividly. I fought horribly with my dad. I went to my Mom when I really wanted something. I was always trying to scam something. I was self centered but I was smart enough to know where the lines were. Every word, deed, action, omission and confession had some value it was a form of currency. I worked. I made some money which I quickly spent on going out or concerts, but around the adults in my life I was always conscious of what would these things bring me or how could it hurt me. That was my and, for what I observed, my friends form of teenage narcissism.  Granted we had a different life. We were left to our own devices. Our parents cared but it was more a like a - don’t get caught don’t go to the gas chamber - type of parenting. We had freedom, enough to hang ourselves but if managed correctly we were just left alone. I have noticed today that we as parents have a strangle hold on our kids freedoms. I think it was born of what we knew about what could really go wrong and a product of how scheduled our kids are today. Compound this problem with how crazy our society has become about school performance and long term success that we have become so fearful of what’s out there and of how will these kids who we do everything for going to survive?  What we have really done to our kids is taken away any chance for them to build some street savvy.  That form of innate knowledge of the currency we knew innately. It made us able to be successful and also to get by when we should be falling.

This comes so apparent to me in my dealings with my Teenage daughter. I would not wish 16yrs old on anyone. I love her so and can see how amazing she can be but she plops down self imposed roadblocks to getting what she wants. I’m not saying that I want foster lying and insincerity in my daughter. Her fierce opinionated damn the rest attitude is admirable at times but I think we failed to teach the lesson my Mom taught me early on about doing for myself and getting what I wanted. There were 2 constant sayings in my house growing up. One was to have come from my mother’s father the other from her mother.  

Grandma Goldye and Grandpa Dave

The first was used when I didn’t know what to do with myself. Granted today kids don’t know that feeling but it instilled the belief that I was on my own on figuring things out. I need to use my head no pun intended to placate myself. It was “go bang your head against the wall” Any time I went up to my mom and said I am bored or I don’t know what to do out would come this saying. The first time she said it, I must have been 3, I did it and came back to her and asked why And she told me that this is what her father would say to her when she asked that question and she learned that when he said that to her he was really saying: ‘Don’t ask me figure it out for yourself’.  I never asked her again, why did you say that to me?, but it took me until about 9 to stop going to here to ask for ideas. Slow learner I guess.  This manifested itself later on in my ability to self start.

The second Saying was: ‘You get more with sugar than you do with vinegar’. My mom would say this to me whenever I demanded anything or had a fight or disagreement with my friends. She said her mom use to say that to here and as one of the golden rules it has served me well. It made me a good sales person, sensitive to others needs and more often than not has given me the ability to get most of what I want through life. I have not taught these lessons well in this case.  

I share so much with my daughter. The love of music to be sure is the first. She really enjoys going to concerts and here musical tastes are leaning towards mine. I could be the best thing that ever happened to her regarding her ability to go to and get to the concerts she wants. I had been able to get these messages through to her she would be at a concert every week. LOL. I give her every opportunity and she keeps shooting herself in the foot. I floated out to her that if she would get up and be downstairs by a certain time for two days that I would go on line at ticket release and get her tickets for a show she would die to see,. She didn’t even know that Bon Iver was coming to NYC. She would be in school and unable to get on line for the mad ticket dash on Friday at 10am. I would have done it for her. As predicted she blew it. She came down and said I planned on being down but I fell back to sleep. She said this as if it was our fault. I felt bad for her inside but she needs to learn these lessons. She needed to get the currency of doing and getting. I feel like this is the biggest lesson I can teach her because it carries over to everything. It will affect her in her college, work and home life forever. 

This all happened this morning but it rears its head regularly. I can only hope that these little failures in getting what she wants will help her learn the lessons sooner than later. Armed with this she will go far without it I fear she will just bump into walls moving forward.  It’s tough love but I don’t know what else to do. I am not punishing her. I am giving her the opportunity to earn something and hopefully she gets it soon.

Wingteam Powers Activate!

The school year is winding down and I am getting ready for the summer to arrive. The summer is a special time around my house as it is exceedingly quiet. My family makes the exodus at the end of June and I am pretty much on my own 5 days a week at home for  the better part of 2 months. I go up to the sleep away camp my wife works at on the weekends, yet it is a very special time in our marriage. We get a small break. It’s a time to spread out and take up the whole bed. A time to recharge the batteries by becoming reacquainted with us as individuals not just a pair involved in a mad dash to complete a list. At times it feels like there are boulders being tossed in front of us during the scramble. But during the summer we gain a healthy appreciation for each other. This post will be one of many that come up on this general subject leading up to the summer and hell most likely during the summer too. As I started typing the intro I started thinking about the freedom I have during the approaching season. I plan for and romanticize this time all year. Invariably the first thoughts on this subject is live music.  It seems like I pack most of my concert going into this time.

One of the things I miss most about being unencumbered is going on the road and seeing shows, touring around the country. This was the thing I loved most growing up. It’s also the thing that sat me up, straitened me out and put me on the path I am today. I guess you can’t be on the road forever. It just takes too much out of you but dipping my toe into those waters here and there during the summer makes me feel whole.  My revolving crew of partners in crime, The Wingteam, as I so lovingly refer to them, seems to understand this very well. We hit a couple of  festivals over the summer and about a show a week during the week. Mountain jam, Gathering Of The Vibes, Further shows, Moe., Wilco, Antibalas the list goes on.  The best of them for me are the ones that include travel. I say this not from the perspective of the music played but the process and devolving of the trip you take, the road you ride and the completion of the circle from what seems to be reality to fantasy and back to reality again. We meet so many people. Some are just like us and some are still living the life. Others have taken the life and incorporated it into the next stages of their life and are living off or near off the mainstream grid.  I am a people person. I love to watch them and interact with them. The masses at these events are just the greatest movie I have ever watched. Much of my daily life disappears and what is left is a sea of personalities.  Love it… I will be sending some entrees from the events and post shows. Look for them in time. I will try to post some pictures and music from them as I get them.

Let the summer start already! Look for my posts covering the rest of the summer doldrums.

Spew

Well first weekend passes with no post. It was a busy one with:

·         Friday night dinner with friends at the Orient

·         Saturday house work, guitar practice and 70^th Birthday Celebration of my mom Risë. Lots of fun at City Winery seeing Nancy Griffith. I will touch on this later

·         Sunday More house work and up keep , guitar practice and Band Practice.. Will definitely touch on this again

I guess the thing that now sticks out for me as I wrote the list is how much as adults we are still children. Granted we cope with responsibility and most of us have learned to play fair most of the time. Most of us have not shaken the self centered thing completely. Going to the City Winery with my kids, wife, Father, Mother, Sister and Uncle highlighted what kids can be like as I still felt the need to separate my 12 and 16 year old. I would have hoped that they would be able at this point to grasp the concept that this was their Nana’s night not theirs and that they could suck it up without incident. I am not going to cross over and start playing the blame game but suffice it to say you ARE still a kid when you can’t manage to sit for a few hrs and just chill. If your disappointment causes any slight irregularity to throw you into provoking a fight or to perseverate on how much this ISN’T where you want to be you need to eat some humble pie and STFU. This touches off my feelings about us as adults. How do we handle things like this between us? I have come to the conclusion that sometimes there is little or no difference between us and our kids.

As I have stated in a previous post, I am in a band. It is a band of characters. Some of whom don’t do well with not being in charge. I want to make sure to be clear that I do not absolve myself from this discussion. We have all come to this with expectations, desires and a feeling of what we want to do. This can come across as an entitlement or a righteous indignation about how, what, when and why things get done. Things can get heated and opinions run deep and strong. There are a few controlling factions and an obvious competition between two members, DRAMA. I have noticed with my kids that being 15 or 16 can be defined by drama so to can it is if you are ‘40 something’ and in a band. Understand that we as a band can play some songs but we are by no means professional. Nor are our chops tight. I don’t want to sell us to short as individually we are OK and together we are growing but we are not Pro’s.  The band is a major compromise on all levels as we each are compromising what songs we play. Just know that if some of the songs we play come on the radio while driving I would not avoid an accident to turn them off or as like Bob did in let’s make a dope deal 2 I would be yelling for the Cleaver. 

 Cheech & Chong's - Let's Make A New Dope Deal!

There are also expectations of us to play gigs that we are obviously not ready for. We might in the future but now we need to focus on getting good. Be that as it may 16 year old girls have nothing on guys in the 40’s for drama or for wanting things their way.

As an adult it boils down to things be tenable. It’s all a compromise no matter what you are involved in. If you exist in a world where you don’t have to compromise you become insulated and eccentric and I don’t mean in a good way. You become hopelessly narcissistic. You will find that unless you own the people around you they will disappear. Compromise has its limits and everyone’s lines are drawn in the sand at different places but we all have them. At a certain point we find the acceptance of others needs trod too much on our own and we have to make choices. I think about this a lot as I feel like I make a bunch of compromises regularly and at times they provoke anger and or hopelessness in me. I have been trying to pay attention to my limits and to be conscious that I have them in an effort to reduce the strain reaching those put on my soul.  I am sure that others are compromising for me to but the question still remains how far you compromise before you are just giving in? Giving in and letting go can be healthy but if that is all that you do you become a door mat. All relationships have them. Getting past them to a healthier sincere give and take where you really want to compromise for the other is where I want to be. This extends way past others. It’s funny I find that the toughest compromises I make are the ones I make with myself. They usually are me keeping me from growing and becoming or doing what I need. This blog, whatever it is, finds me not compromising with myself any longer over taking actions creatively or with finding release. I am finally taking my own advice. At some point the posts will turn from self realization to creativity but for know you are going to have to just tolerate my spew

Minus 5 - Family Gardener 

Enjoy the above Clip ... Minus 5 Great band not just because Jeff Tweedy is in it :-)

Impetuous

Ok so it’s started, but, why really? I find it interesting how my get up off my ass initiative works. So many of my friends are highly organized planners. You know who you are. They think through every decision. Explore it from every angle. No choice is made lightly. I don’t really know how happy they are with their choices long term but these people are pretty convincing in there conviction not so casually attained. I have tried to show this kind of discipline in some choices and have found that it rarely made a difference in the outcome. I have relied on my gut for as long as I can remember. I’m not saying it always works. I have made some really fucked up choices. I think it’s my inner 13 yr old who drives me this way. So it is.

While typing this I had this ripping through my head I guess it captures the essence of it for me… Disturbing huh..

After I completed my first entry I started thinking about why I actually opened up word and started typing and it was obvious that there was some impetuous, some genesis which pushed me. The fact is that most all of the things I do (which give me satisfaction or pleasure) are due to this. There were times in my life when I thought it was the spirits of my Grandmother and Grandfathers guiding me; other times, it felt from hindsight  that I was on a wheel repeating these things over and over through time, (Hippie logic born what seems like a lifetime ago) and moments where the choices represented some distraction I needed. I have thought long and hard about the latter over time and have written something on this and will post that here some day. That was the only real complete essay, not from school, I have ever written prior to this. Yet, this decision doesn’t feel like any of that. It opened my eyes to a new thought of things that guide me. When I started typing it felt as if a big bubble had just burst. I was not aware of the bubble but after the fact it was plain as day. It took a pin to burst it and it was and influence of looking a particularly bad blog. It made me think Hell I can make a blog this bad and if he can do it so can I. The paradigm shift was instantaneous. All the fears, lack of how/ what to do and blockage just want away. I have yet to open this to the public but I will at some point. Hence, you will get a chance to see a bunch of ramblings that will hopefully define the structure of all this.

I am finding that conversations on Facebook are giving me food for thought. I would guess that at least for the short term much of what I post here will come from those sparks. That impetuous to put it down in words has come from these external nudges that crack the outer shell, the boundary between the inner me who is active and creative and the outer my who can be quite stagnant. If ask most people they wouldn’t describe me this way because I am always building, cooking and tinkering. It’s hard, very hard to shut me up about the things I am doing but in reality there is so much more whirling under the surface. I know to most of my friends I seem tireless and always on the go, driven to hyper focus on whatever fancy has caught me for that particular period of time but in reality it is all the same thing. I have that yearning to be creative and tend to be distracted… That includes being distracted from my distraction. I am versed in more shit than most and this propensity has confined me to being a master of none. I hope that this process helps focus me to lean more towards the commitment of taking my music and writing past the dabble, and into the deap…

And So It Starts...

I guess you have to start somewhere. I felt it was about time to embark into narcissism with a blog. I have always wanted to write. It’s always been an ideal and a golden calf that I never got off my ass and just did it. Don't know if it was because I thought I couldn't or if I just was living a lie in my head about it. I mean the movie in my head  always stared me as a writer , musician and free thinker but as I take inventory I am realizing that I am one deluded fuck. I am finally getting off my ass…. (I will say this once, just give me freedom with my verbal grammar and we will get along just fine.) I am trying to be creative here!

So I am finally in a band again.  It is a tremendous compromise. I am not doing what I want in it but have promised myself that I will come to accept this as a means. I will go on more about this at another time but it is tangential to my writing issues.  I want to write music too, so my ramblings will cross over I guess. I have always had the best lines to songs ripping through my head as I drive. Being a scatter brain and not writing these down just makes them lost forever. I have to make some rules for myself. If any of you who will never read this have any recommendations past just write um down as they come I am all ears. I am very conscious of the fact that this forward progression coincides with changes in my life.

I am thinking in a different way. I have shed some negative shit in my brain and am doing the ‘Taking stock thing’. There are some pretty face cringing memories I am looking back on and I am determined to try to learn from my mistakes. I had a chance to live a creative life a few times but my lack of ambition and my propensity to couch lock has conspired to put me at this cross roads. Hell I make no illusions that I will be some famous pop star or celebrated author… I would be very content to look backward with a smile not a grimace… I guess I have a bunch of remembrances which are laser etched like one of those ultra precise photo's scenes of NY on the corner of Broadway and 45th st., hocked for $20. These embarrassments flash by regularly, pretty much my significant plague and gift. These darts are just microseconds in duration but there none the less. Don't think that I am so together about them that they will make it into these pages but what I am hoping to do is to replace them with thing I don't instantly turn away from.

 What will follow on these pages, hopefully more often than not; will be my musings and ramblings. Experiences, recipes, songs, reviews, rants, performances, prose and profanity… If you are offended so be it… More often than not It will be just me A