Category: Music

Art

Lake

I should be working on the short story I’ve been struggling with, but instead I want to say a few words about art and talent and memory.

Greg Lake of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and (briefly) Asia has died. He was 69 and he had been fighting cancer.

The first time I heard a piece of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, it was Knife Edge, from their first album, and a bolt went through my brain.  This was the “other” band that mattered to me–suddenly and thoroughly, the cadences, the depth, the compositional holism, the instrumental proficiency, the temerity of three young guys to challenge Bartok, all of this displaced the light-hearted, Bazooka Joe triviality of so-called pop music that saturated the airwaves a the time.  We had that or the  in-your-gut near-chaos of Jimi Hendrix and the grime-laden street patina of the Rolling Stones, and now, above it all, musicians who not only had the chops but the historicity and grasp of the psychological possibilities of infusing contemporary rock idioms with the incision and deep-boned depth of what we often mistakenly call classical music and make it speak to a new generation.  They elevated what was in so many ways a toy in musical form to something that could take us out of ourselves in the way Beethoven or Mozart did for people so many of us neither knew or respected at the time.

The period lasted from about 1967 till 1975 or ’76.   In that less-than-a-decade near geniuses made musical pronouncements we are still responding to if only to try to deny or reject, and the best of them were represented by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.  Condemnations that they were “pretentious” mean little in an era where pretension is embodied more by attitude than talent.  A major “star” styles himself by not smiling and mouthing polemical inanities better known than the music he produces, this is a form of pretension, but one that elevates nothing, reifies nothing, establishes nothing beyond a sullen narcissism.  Perhaps ELP was pretentious, but those who criticize them for that understand little about real pretension, which is a mask hiding an empty space.  Maybe ELP were pretentious, but if their pretension masked anything it was a room filled to bursting with ideas and exuberant joy in musical experimentation.  It contributed.  If it made some feel inadequate or small, well, that was not ELP’s fault.

Greg Lake, in his ELP years, possessed a magnificent voice, a gift for phrasing that bordered on the operatic, and deftness of interpretive innovation that was a match for Keith Emerson’s volcanic expressionism and Carl Palmer’s controlled hyperkinetic rhythmic adventures.  They were evenly matched and magnificent and I am ever so grateful to have grown up to the soundtrack they provided.

Take note.  Brilliance has moved on.

 

Literature

K.C. 2016

Worldcon is over, I am home, weary and pumped and amazed and frazzled. So much happened, it is difficult to sort it out and deal with it cogently.

This may have been the best worldcon experience I have ever had. Barring the first one, way back in 1984, in L.A., when Donna and I roamed around gawking at all the startling stuff and sitting in panels listening to the writers we were reading and finding books in the dealers’ room Walden and Dalton just didn’t stock, the worldcons in between have been mixed bags for us, often fraught with my anxieties of trying to become a pro writer and feeling alternately despairing and enthusiastic.  Whipsawed.

Not so this time. Almost from the minute I set foot in the convention center I found myself treated with a collegiality I’ve experienced before but never so thoroughly and consistently.

Over the course of five days, I interacted with peers and pros and fans at nothing but high levels of sometimes ego-boosting wonderfulness.

Hotel Room View, K.C. May 2014The best part was finding old friends I didn’t expect to be there. One in particular, a man I met way back at the very first convention I attended, Archon 6, and with whom I’ve had almost no contact for several years, was standing in the dealers’ area. Like a mirage or a ghost, I stared at him a few moments before realizing that, yes, Ed Bryant really was there.

IMG_20160818_144507440Ed is a short story master. He has several collections to his name and the stories are wonders.  He was kind and patient to a young wannabe who often did not know how to take advice.  He’s been suffering poor health for some time and I never expected him to show up at a worldcon, but we spent several hours together in conversation, a now cherished experience.

The other face I did not expect to see was that of Daryl Gregory. IMG_20160817_151258280 Daryl has over the last few years become something of a Big Deal, though he would probably dispute that. It wouldn’t matter to me in any case, as we are Clarion classmates and I know whence the droids are buried.

He was in company with his new companion, Liza Groen Trombi, who is top person at Locus Magazine these days.  It was a pleasure to make her acquaintance.  We all went out one evening for dinner, ending up in typically dramatic fashion almost caught in a thunderstorm.  One of those evenings when I glance about for the camera crews and wonder who is in charge of special effects.

IMG_20160819_195816097The principle motivation for my attending turned out to be one of the best parts. As I said in an earlier post, I had not intended going. But then my agent, Jen Udden, told me she would be there and wanted to meet, so plans changed again.

IMG_20160818_123756154I am especially glad about this. You can work with someone long distance a lot and work perfectly well, but a face-to-face makes a difference.  It adds a layer and validates opinions.  I have no idea what she came away with, but I am even more confident that I’m in excellent hands.

We met for lunch at a Kansas City great, Jack Stacks BBQ.  I’d never been before.  It’s in the freight yard area adjacent to Union Station. IMG_20160818_135511766 I had a bit of a scramble getting there, but made it almost exactly on time (I hate not being punctual). They seated us on the patio and we proceeded to overeat on some of the best barbeque around.

We cabbed back to the hotel and she introduced me to some of her other clients. I reconnected with Maurice Broaddus, whom I’d met several years ago in Ohio.

My panels were all well-attended and produced the kind of discussion I look forward to.  The Generation Starship one in particular, in company with Gregory Benford and Pat Cadigan, was a learning experience as well.

I am, as it has turned out, getting too old for the party scene.  For one thing, my hearing is not what it once was.  If the crowd is too large, I have difficulty sorting out individuals.  This was especially hard at the TOR party, which was thunderous.  (Someone had a decibel meter app and said it was about 110 db.) But I had to go to Roomcon and hear Bradley Denton in his role as Bland Lemon Denton, play along with Caroline Spector, with extra vocals by Sherri Dean.

IMG_20160818_211534561The Marriott bar was watering hole central. Meet-ups for dinner and other excursions most often took place there.  The SFWA suite was also in the Marriott and it was trhere that I saw the live feed to the Hugo Award ceremony.  Though not all, I came in late.  But I saw enough to feel very positive about our field.  The rockets went to deserving writers for exemplary work.  Despite the bellyaching of certain factions in the genre, this year’s winners show how much the work has grown and developed and, if I may say so, matured.

However, George R.R. Martin’s Hugo Losers Party was still the place to be afterward. George had rented a restored movie palace, The Midland, nearby. Attendance was invitation only.  I managed to get in (thank you, Paul Burns) and stayed through George’s handing-out of the “Alfies”—Hugo substitutes for those works which had, by some lights, been unfairly pushed off the final ballot this year by the manipulations of a disaffected element.

IMG_20160820_222726814The Midland is incredible.  George spared no expense.  The bar was open (courtesy of Random House) and the attendance was…well, let’s just say that no one was sorry to see that element mentioned above be offered a rising finger of salute.

All in all, it was a great party.

I stayed through the Alfie’s, but had to limp back to get sleep.  I got to meet some great people, thoughIMG_20160821_240057633 (4), including Marguerite Reed, L.E. Modesitt, Charles Coleman Finlay, and on and on and on.

The band provided for the night’s festivities was new to me but apparently a K.C. fixture, the Black Crack Review. I asked someone what kind of music they played and was told it would be a blend of George Clinton and Sun Ra.  They did not disappoint.

IMG_20160820_233423556Sunday, like every other last day of a worldcon, was both pleasant and melancholy.  I did a podcast interview for SciFi4Me, ran around saying bye to too many people to name, did my autographing session—which was another egoboost, as I had a queue waiting when I arrived—and my last panel, on interstellar colonies (which complemented the earlier one on starships, though the consensus this time was generation ships simply will never happen).  I did not stay for closing ceremonies, but instead return with my hosts for a wind-down dinner at their house.

Monday morning I hit the road for St. Louis and made good time.

There are several takeaways from MidAmeriCon II, which was not without its controversies.  I will discuss one of those later.  But one of the biggies for me was a renewed sense of welcome and excitement.  The possibilities of doing new work and being part of what I’ve always considered the best kind of fiction.  I’m pumped.  Just wait for this new novel.

 

Art

Passing of Giants

I cannot adequately tell you how I feel right now.  My insides are being roiled by a gigantic spoon.

Chris Squire, bass player, co-founder of in my estimate one of the greatest musical groups to ever grace a stage, has died.

A brief report of the particulars can be read here.

I have been listening to, following, collecting, and appreciating YES since I first heard them late one night on my first stereo, a track being played as representative of an “underappreciated” band.  That status did not last long.  A year or two later, they were a major force in what has been called Progressive Rock, a label with some degree of oxymoronicalness in that, not a decade before their advent, all rock was progressive.

Rather it was transgressive and altered the landscape of popular music.  By the time YES came along, divisions, subdivisions, turf wars of various arcane dimensions had become part and parcel of the scene, and there were those who found YES and others like them a transgression to some presumed “purity” of rock music that seemed to require simplistic chord progressions, banal lyrics, and sub par instrumental prowess.  As Tom Petty once said, “Well, it was never supposed to be good.”

Well, I and many of my friends and millions of others, across generations, thought that was bullshit, and embraced their deep musicality, classical influences, and superb craftsmanship. They were a revelation of what could be done with four instruments and a superior compositional approach and as far as I’m concerned, Punk, which began as an intentional repudiation of actual musical ability, was a desecration of the possibilities in the form.

Chris Squire and Jon Anderson met and created a group that has since become an institution, with many alumni, that challenged the tendency of rock to feed a lowest-common-denominator machine.  Nothing they did was common, expected, or dull.  Some of it failed, most of it elevated the form, and all of it filled my life with magic.

The ache felt by many at the loss of George Harrison is the ache I now feel at the loss of Chris Squire.  He was brilliant.

There may be more later, but for now, here is an old piece I wrote about YES.

Absurdity

Time Capsules

On Thanksgiving, we spent the day with my parents.  While there, they handed me a stack of prints and a pile of negatives I had completely forgotten about.  Most of them are crap.  They’re from 1971 for the most part and I was in the early stages of trying to learn photography.  I was shooting a LOT of film and about 99% was ultimately junk.  But this is the way I learn.  I dive in and do a great deal of whatever it is I’m trying to do, largely ignoring instructions and books, which I consult only when I’m so hopelessly lost that I admit to needing expert help.  It’s an absurd way to go about it, but when I do finally learn something it stays learned.

Anyway, among the negatives I found a couple shots my dad took of me at the keyboard.  At this time I still hadn’t made up my mind what I wanted to do or be.  Music was always a possibility, a big deal, but it turned out not to be.  However, I had aspirations.  (When you’re that young, you think you can do it all.  At one time I simultaneously wanted to be an actor, a musician, a photographer, and a writer, and saw no reason why I couldn’t.  The acting has, subsequently, faded completely from my list of ambitions.)

So, here I am being…well, I was getting my Keith Emerson on, clearly, as well as the serious composer bit.

 

Me As Emerson, 1971, b&w

Me As Composer, 1971, b&w

Seems I couldn’t read my own notation…

Art

My Personal Hall of Fame

This is purely personal pique on my part, but in the recent round of nominations for the rock’n’roll hall of fame, YES was one of the bands being put forward.  I would like to be able to say “much to my surprise” they didn’t make it.  But I’m not surprised, just disappointed.

Which is silly, because I could not care less about the hall of fame.  I know what I like, a lot of it was at one time on the fringes of mainstream, things I choose now still tend to be under-the-radar kinds of things (though much less rock than in previous decades), and I still have my loyalties.  To be sure, there are bands I kind of listen to now, having at one time been massively devoted to (for a week or a year), and wonder what I found so wonderful about them.

But there are a handful I never tire of, especially not the work done in their heyday.  And YES is one of them.  I fell in love with that sound four bars into the first song I ever heard of theirs and even though they’d recorded some duds, made a couple of records of incomprehensibly bombastic ambiance, by and large, overall, I still love them and when they release a new album I buy it, unheard.  Even in their worst, I find things of transcendent beauty scattered throughout.

I’ve written about them before, most notably here , and I don’t really have anything new to say.

Except that I found, here and there, some commentary on the intraweebs concerning their nomination that was mean-spirited and depressing.  I thought, are we still doing that after over four decades?

KISS made it.  Good for them.  They worked hard, they have a large fan base.  I can’t stand them myself, but it’s a big world, room enough for everyone.  If I wanted to, I’m sure I could get downright eloquent about how I feel that sort of music did nothing but lower the general I.Q. and bring down the standards of music.  But it wouldn’t be just about KISS and it wouldn’t be just about certain strains of rock music.

But YES seemed to have made enemies back in the day, people who believe any attempt at elevating the genre above anything more than the old 3-chords-and-a-bridge formula was somehow a betrayal of “authenticity.”  People who turned to rock because they despised classical (or more likely because they didn’t “get” classical) and not only tore at the reputations of YES but at the very idea of progressive rock as a movement.  It doesn’t make sense to me, but…

But music is too personal for the kind of total condemnations or complete annointments it often elicits.  I love YES but I also love Santana.  Not only that, but I’m inordinately fond of Mozart, Schubert, and Howard Hanson.  Not only that, but I’m a devotee of Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Joe Pass.  I love Vangelis as well as Jimi Hendrix, and Joe Satriani is to my ear as much a virtuoso as   McCoy Tyner or  Immanuel Ax.

Such are the inductees into my own hall of fame, of which YES has been an honored member since 1970.

Thank you for indulging me in a brief declaration of personal taste.

Art

That Which I Hold Sacred

I’ve seen this a few times now and each time I am taken somewhere wonderful and know what it is to be inside joy. I’m in tears every time. It makes me feel so damn good to be human!

This is where it’s at for me.

Absurdity

Mid Life

That’s optimistic.

So recently I turned 59.  It doesn’t feel much different from 58, or that from 57, but since I often still feel 35, it occasionally jars.  I have little to complain about, save for a nagging sense of lack of time.

I’d been toying with getting an electric guitar for years.  A frivolity I could not quite talk myself into for a long time.  I have a terrific acoustic guitar which I do not play as well as I should, but which gives me a great deal of pleasure pretending to play well.

There are some things you just can’t mimic on an acoustic, though.  It’s like trying to play Deep Purple on a spinet pianola.  It lacks gravitas.

So an opportunity came my way and I threw common sense to the wind and bought a delightful Epiphone Les Paul.  Not the one I’d had my eyes on for many years, but it’s a Les Paul.  (Yeah, yeah, I hear the purists kvetching over in the corner, but it ain’t a Gibson, like that makes all that much difference.  Well, it does, by several hundred dollars.)

Which necessitated getting an amplifier.

I have a good friend in Jefferson City who is something of a musician (actually, he’s a very good musician and graces me with a willingness to jam on our infrequent visits) who knows people.  Sound people.  I told him what I’d gotten and he said “Come on out and we’ll fix you up.”

Fix me up indeed.

Me and My Axe, Oct 29, 2013

I’ve been out of the music biz too long, I didn’t even recognize the name—a Line—but it’s a gem.  50 watts, all the bells and whistles (well, at least more than I’ll master in the next several years) and by pure serendipity the color scheme matches my axe.  It came with a pedal board, too, which, for the price I paid, astonished me.

I have every intention of getting down to it and learning some songs.  I’ve been playing it almost every day since I brought it home.  It is loud.  We have installed it in my office, so I can close the door, and Donna can enjoy it through the walls and floor.  It’s more than I need.

I did not buy the Ferrari.  I’m having a much more modest midlife, er, crisis.  More a midlife ruffle, really.  Despite my complaining, I’m a reasonably happy guy.  Hell, I’m still alive, which after last year’s little contretemps is a very positive thing.

I’ve been finding online lessons.  Stumbled on a guitar player of some considerable merit who does instructional videos, although I can barely keep up.  (He tends to assume you already know the rudiments.)  So I thought I’d put one here just to show you how far out of reach my aspirations go.

Till I started surfing for this kind of thing I’d never heard of this guy.  (Told you I’ve kind of been out of it for a while.)  Turns out he did a turn with Asia.  Yeah, Heat of the Moment Asia, but an incarnation with only one original member, Geoffrey Downes.  I’m trying to imagine what they must’ve sounded like with this guy.

Anyway, I’m dipping into his how-to vids.  He reminds me a lot of Ian Anderson.

Anyway, I must now get back to the start-up of my second half-century.  Stay tuned.

Art

Two More Tomorrow

Two more shots of The Men of Tomorrow, courtesy Jarek Steele of Left Bank Books.

 

Men of Tomorrow in concert
Men of Tomorrow in concert
Mood Soloing
Mood Soloing

Might use this last one for some kind of avatar somewhere.

 

blog

The Men of Tomorrow

So, the other night, the 22nd to be exact, I committed Public Performance.  I had help.  Two brave musicians, both of whom are better at their respective instruments than I am at mine, joined me to play jazz-like music at the Mad Art Gallery where Left Bank Books and other St. Louis Independent bookstores celebrated World Book Night.  I mentioned this in a previous post.

The main event of the evening was an on-stage interview conducted by author Curtis Sittenfeld of author  J.R. Moehringer.

Here we see Left Bank’s Shane Mullen introducing them:

Speakeasy

The interview was great.  Lively, informative, and Moehringer is very entertaining.  Afterward came author signings, aimless milling about, imbibing (cash bar) and…us.

 

Men of Tomorrow

This event was the brainchild of Left Bank’s co-owner, Jarek Steele, who approached me one day at work a few months back and said, “Hey, I have an idea…”  I said yes.  Then later, I thought I said yes! Am I out of my mind?

This entailed gathering other musicians, rehearsals, and then renting a keyboard.  I had to learn a few new pieces, Rich and Bill had to figure out how to play along with the bizarre manner in which I play.  I have to admit, our first rehearsal was not promising.  My handicap is that I don’t usually perform with a group.  99% of what I do, I do solo.  That is a very different discipline than ensemble.  I had to overcome some bad habits (a couple of which I failed to overcome, but hey, nobody noticed), and get some chops down better than I’ve done in some time.

A word about the keyboard.  This detail almost ended the project before it began, because my piano is not portable.  Not really.  After calling around, I found MidWest Music.  These folks rent instruments.  Yes, they had a digital piano available.  They told me the model, I checked out a couple of demos, it seemed perfectly suitable.  Donna and I went out to set it up and…

Well, they had a brand new instrument they wanted to showcase, so I got an upgrade to a Roland RD-700nx.  Yes, I’m linking to the demo video so you can see why I had the musical equivalent of a one-night-stand with this.  I likened using this piano for this gig to taking a Ferrari to the supermarket.  It was far more instrument than I needed that night.

We showed up nameless.  I was asked by our events coordinator if we had one.  No.  One night?  A one-off?  A couple of things passed through my head, but…no.

Shane named us.  Suddenly we were “Mark Tiedemann and the Men of Tomorrow.”  After a moment of “Aw, come on!” I started to think, “Hey, that’s not bad. “  By the time we went on, I decided to ask him if we could keep it.  You know, just in case this ever happens again.

It has been a long time since I played at all seriously in front a room full of people I didn’t know.  It kind of surprised me how nerve-wracking it was.  But…

I always know when I’ve done okay because I come away from the performance with almost no memory of what I did.  Mistakes and just plain bad performances I remember with a clarity that cuts, but if things go more or less well, there’s just a hazy wash of “Yeah, I was there” and not much else.

I want to thank Rich and Bill here for making me sound as good as we did.  Bill is an exceptional drummer.  I can say this because he took the weird and rather undisciplined rhythms I play, made them his own, and glued the performances together.  Rich is an exceptional guitarist.

So that’s how my week started off.  How’s yours going?