Music Writing by Carson Arnold
Music Writing by Carson Arnold
STEVE GILLETTE AND THUNDER DAYS
I remember burning eyebrows, standing once in a small doorway with Paul Flaherty before he shuffled on stage with his sax and other jazz virtuoso bug-eye, I chipped in and piped: "eh, why's the jazzoline gotta be so avantzine?"
(hoowhohoowho?)
"Or," I paraphrased, "why all the damn noise?"
"Well, see," he began, "take for instance birds. If you walk outside and listen to them, you'll see they follow no apparent structure. They-".
Blah-blah-blah. A hot rash swarmed me. I thought, "now christ, that doesn't sound right, does it?" As if we don't exist?!! Who's in charge here? What rows, what goes, what flows. Tis' nothing if we say 'tis nothing, and poof! on we go! A nursery rhyme you may discover scrolled in the hole of a guitar.
"Gjrfigj!"
"What's that?"
"Nothing".
Just then, a lynx, I was foamed into an incredible hallway light-show. The first- don't know why- being an infested area punk band by the name of Dead Ratz who, I swear, must have an unlimited fountain of blank tapes, for every time I gull into the free-bin there they are- DUDE!- complete with each cassette pasted with a strand-of-hair in the inside jacket. Disgusting jizz, but perfect, and I borrow 'em as lee-baby blanks for hoppers. The other, a kid I met, coincidentally circa the same venue I danced with Flaherty, who traveled a satchel 'n journals of his own poetry depicted and inspired for "you know either as hand-outs or to buy or something you know go ahead you can read some if you want I don't care my name's Alex by the way yeah".
"Yeah. Yeah, this ain't bad, it ain't bad," I replied, shaking through the pages of young, roadway pollen. "You ever get into Robinson Jeffers?" And as he traced, I wandered yonder to quickly catch the reflection of what music has been jibed to ultra imitate all this glorious time- you birds, you traffic, you smoke, you girls- extended in the watery shadows of a shaded windshield, but had somehow missed it all from this acute angle, knowing then, from the rattling mosaic, that the whole bowl was increasingly too difficult, if not a nuisance, for the average to grasp beyond the genuine, the common, the observed. Ah, leave it to the shadows oh rusty one. "Hold on, Alex, we gotta run".
KILL THE RICH!, the building read. Pat your cheek and scream NOW! and see oh how many pigeons fly 'bout, and if indeed that crows up yer good structure farewell. "But what's all this have to do with Steve Gillette?" I asked aloud.
"I dunno. Leave me alone," I replied back, groovin' up to the three words on brick. "Something, though. I can feel it movin'. I can see it all happening NOW..."
Later, my head and discreet Satie fumed through the pop aisles of greeting cards and capsule delights where I casually dolted next to a ballerina mother and her knee-high infant boy, both sorta twirling in their own peril and love. They wore slippers. "Oh honey, don't touch those cards like that, be gentle!! It's hard to make those. I know cuz' I was card-maker for twenty years, okay?" Whoa, that drew the edge. Slammed into the angel of The Beatles' "All To Much", and off the dying-camel of its feedback, I was thrown to bones, spit the fantasia, picked up the donkey tone and dialed-
"Steve Gillette?"
"Yes?".
"Not bad. Carson Arnold. Wonderin' if you'd care to talk about your debut- the...'67 Vanguard record?"
...And you hang up some forty minutes gone, chew the pace, paste the chew, count your toe-nails, and whistle some favorite tune she once wore. After flappin' 'round a bit, some day later or whatever maybe git cushy and pop up some professional weld that jots off a little like this:
"Diagnosed with terminal folk, Steve Gillette hums the heart. His 1967 Vanguard debut was an understated jewel, creeping through the ferns of acoustic rosebud, feathered by a barren voice of lovely loneliness. With the help and fanfare of pals like John Denver and Linda Ronstadt, Gillette emerged off L.A's golden folk varsity, where The Byrds, Steve Young, and other peavey acts assembled throughout coffee-houses to stage the envisioned nectar of a short, but monumental dream. A leafy deluxe was born as Gillette accompanied himself under a guitar and other seldom visitations of bass and electric players including jazz bassist- and Spike's dad- Bill Lee. Strode post a partial success, Ian and Sylvia would numerously cover his song 'Darcy Farrow' as Gillette stumbled for fertile ground. Greenwich Village would turn the..."
"Who wrote this," I paused, "a writer?" It's all bogus, ya' know. At least short of anything that indicates MUSIC, BABY!! It makes us smile 'ahh, weren't those the sunny days', inevitably forcing us to bellow out: Next! NEXT IN LINE!! Nah, it'd be a cheap suit to coop over Gillette's seeds of tender harp, Doc. A vernacular draft of...Am I...talking to myself?"
Yes you are, cuz' see here, folk is out. That's the gum truth. Its apex, sadly, an inventory bargain, and worse, like jazz, a mild sedative from the great, charging bugle. Posters drawn everywhere, "Come enjoy the rich New England tones of Stephen Knapp. Tickets $10, $5 in advance." Everyone I talk to, "Hey, so do you know of any places up there that will gig a folk duo or anything? Are there any?" Walk out the door a few paces, "Carson! Holy shit, it's like two years it's been!! Yea', you get baked, hippie kid?? Tonight! we get BAKED! Come on over, dawg, you'll be the happiest man alive!! You'll get baked, I swear!! Yea. Music!! Why aren't we famous by now, man?!?" Jesus. The blush, lather ode surfing within and under the two-wheel symphony of Gene Clark or Mary McCaslin appears to now compass in a lagoon of limbo, if not starvation, checked in under the name THE WORLD THINKS WE'RE SAP BUT I KNOW I GOT LOVE. Man, hearing even The Airplane now whale of "you stand there/your long-hair-flowin" is almost an eros illusion of a floating, indistinct, distant world- dryland if you may- lost beneath the hissing freezer of Radiohead and other cold, arctic, digital epiphany (music more sexless than marathon bicyclists and Zappa's dead at the same time?? No way! Cry me this: what are these Oxford dorks doing that early Peter Gabriel hasn't already done? Eat yer hype, spit it out, and cook me up a guitar!). Nah, folkers, your best ticket-to-ride is to dig a ditch, climb inside, wait ten years, and with luck considering, maybe some eccentric division of some other eccentric company will cuff you up off the nostril of cult-bazooka and paste ya' as the "REAL DEAL, BOHEME FOLK! SYD BARRETT, SKIP SPENCE, WOODY, AND ROSCOE HOLCOMB ALL ROLLED INTO ONE!! A HOT RECOMMEND! LAST SEEN WANDERING THE HALLS OF A DES MOINES PSYCHIATRIC WARD!! I WET MY BED FOR THIS!! WICKED!!!!!- CARSON ARNOLD- H(EAR), 2009." That thing they call volk- avant-volk, experiment in volk, or whatso in its present lunar poop- that's in. It's on the racks like a torn band-aid; hot and trot and interesting and exciting and hip and chili-dog and discord and arty and beer. Yah, we love it, not cuz' it intertwines the nature and ability, but cuz' it identifies the pack and the broken howl rarely sought. Nevertheless, very little is music, if you get my drift. It's twinkling noise dressed in trousers. Africa nor the U.S nor the world will be rescued with this stuff...it'll instead perish in style. But dont'cha know I'm down with it, though? I'm cool, I love it, I get it, peace and love, but why-
(Deep in a Des Moines psychiatric ward) "I'm a mess, Doc. Listen, in proportion to the weathered, melting splinters of if not luscious folk, much of anything else preceding seems a tip-toe grimace away from the cracked-hands of the yokel and the passion of the strummer and-".
"Whoa! Huh??...Slow. What do you think this all means?"
"...I guess, I ain't too keen on throwin' it all in a tomb, you know. Where's beauty? You got the new-wave, you got the old. Pass the old along, it all looks corny. The new-wave: oohh/aahh, yummy-fummy, you know? Like here, Steve Gillette just mailed me his recent material and it's all great and humble and disciplined, but, you know, you're almost disappointed cuz' you want it to be all so hip-a-roony...What happened to us?"
"Hmm. I'm not a music lover...Is this why you're here then? Why you came?"
"Partly. Yeah...Jesus, can I leave now?"
"And go write an article about Steve Gillette before you wigged out and rambled yourself insane about volk? Go right ahead, the door's behind you. Bye now, don't be a stranger!"
"...Doc, Jesus, the door's locked!!!"
"Oh, just jump out the window then".
3...2...1...(A Story For The Free Napkin) If you happened to be drifting through Paris during its early sixties, you may have skipped past Steve Gillette somewhere in the fog of street musicians and vagabonds, kin to it all, traveling a guitar to the ruins of Berlin and back along the stellar of packin' a dollar-a-day in the side paths and shadows awoke. Like my friend and I will commonly say to one another at occasions of bloody mass, "Man, we gotta get outta this place, TODAY!!", Gillette was one more kid, a college drop-out, in mash 'n onion for vision without penalty. Forty years later, he refers to the excursion as a fun ride with his pal of the time, where a few months of street-sweep influenced his beginning songs, now presently abode in he and wife Cindy's personal label Compass Rose Music, where Gillette confesses his musical anthem of like-minded folk shines brighter than it ever has throughout his career. A heart pours even when he and his bros. later formed their own versatile bar band; poolin' home, 3 AM, unloading the drums half dead, alley dumptruck looming 'round, headlights mumbling, "what-in-the-hell-am-I doin'-with-my-LIFE! ma??" Yea', I can feel that. I have felt that. Some escape, some don't. Others you see astray. The songs you write. A son outta an ancestral mouth of lawyers where his pa shared a passion for rag mama music but stumbled on the clef of his son pursuing folk to stone. Gillette's bicentennial "Darcy Farrow" would be a dramatic span off his sister's near fatal accident with a barnyard horse. Soon adopted into the trolley of the Village Vanguard over in Greenwich Village, his rough 10x10 apartment would be a crow's glide 'round the corner from it- a distance between, and supposedly across the street from a kingpin mafia parlor- a shady, creme hallway dawned the lane where Gillette's cover-photo was induced by trailblazer Mark Roth, its sparse Annie Hall results, unappetizing to the record company, later stimulated by the waterose 'delia design of which Gillette shares his late misconceptions for. Yes, I like the album. Although a record of aerial fur, and randomly releasing several more through time, his confidence was constantly tampered in attempt to establish his own legend and place within folk's vast archive. Archive? Industry. After awhile it consumed if not taunted the man, and like many, was forced to briefly veer his songwriting punctuation into the tinker-toys of commercial wash 'n rinse off the Willie Nelson/Waylon Jennings country rebel bam, producing stuff only for the D.W.I of popular hits. Most likely this was, as some might say, crap, of which he admits was a doldrums time of recollection...Everything else, sugar, lies 'neath the music...And nah, darling, west-coast it was, but Huntington Beach's folk-clave and warehouse The Golden Bear was the magic, born by tall acts of Judy, Dylan, and an infamous yearling Gillette. A once sparkling club was dissevered during the 70's toke o' coke crackdown of disco, its flat lot currently toppled 'neath the plastic sheath of strip-mall lotion running along side the tar diamond of the rolling pacific highway. I know this place from old family, locomotive steam; many a ramblin' napkin there. And as Gillette admits his friends keep bricks of The Bear in token of its hey-dey, even to a paranoid chap like me, the brisky, blown candle of music and love can still be heard and swept underlying in the unfolding balm of ocean, peer, and endless gaze. The 60's? "It did seem," began Gillette, "the 60's happening was exciting and very promising and then it all of a sudden seemed to shift away from that...commercially into heavy electric and eventually into disco...And yeah, I really felt the 60's was over and all kind of lost." (The End?...you ain't dead yet)
I was once told if David Axelrod farted I'd probably print it as some scroll of philosophical wizz. "Man, it never crossed me, but I'll keep it in mind," I replied back. I could do this, I might do this, but I probably won't...there's already a lot of that goin' round. All the same, it might be five strokes funner than Gillette's old label Vanguard. Now, I love Vanguard; tons of music a la carte, rocking-horse, jug-band, plate o' beans. But dig, when a telemarketer calls you today, do this:
"Hello, Mr. Arn-old?"
"Hmm."
"This is Gloria of Verizon, how are you today, sir?"
"Hmm."
"I'm calling on behalf of-"
"No, sorry, I'm not interested. Now, Gloria, remember this name: STEVEGILLETTE!STEVEGILLETTESTEVEGILLETTE!AAHHH!!I'MONFIRE!!!!
Click. Don't worry, surely Gloria will remember it. She'll come home, think about it. If not then, tomorrow. Someday travel up to New England for a cousin's reunion, stop at a cute place for balloons. Little Timmy wants to pop by next door to 'Ray's Cd's Shack'. "Mom, it has cool lights, look!" Gloria quickly comes back to escort Tim out cuz' the 'ol ma and pa store didn't have balloons nor should Timmy be alone for really who knows who Ray is. Suddenly catch the word 'local', see the name 'Steve Gillette', and the rest is, Where have I heard that name before?/where have I- oh yeah. You could obviously do this for anybody. I know of a few hungry trumpets; Vegas-songwriter Jackie Carlyle or spooky-plum punks Chicken McHead or even my three musician friends Billy/Bert/Monroe and all their uncles too, the composer Ketelbey, for christ sakes! Whatever, you freak!! Who cares. Point is, this holistic way of promoting would be far more successful approach to Vanguard's wet-rug vouch for their own baby-Gillette. His grandchildren might say during show 'n tell, "Well, LA knew him at least! He said Chicago had a good scene later on. Everywhere else just knew of him, I guess." No way, Vanguard- records for the connoisseur, sweet home of Buffy, Baez, Kweskin, Monteverdi- given' the 'ol third-rate caboose to a fellow sibling, a friendly brother?? Wasn't there a law against not busting fame and fortune when signed to the three V's- Vanguard, Virgin, Verve? Apparently not, but then again, I've always been under the impression the whole 'gization is run by a bunch of nuns anyway, simply 'cuz they ain't cool but amazingly produce cool, diverse music, seemingly complimenting themselves as conservatives, sashin' as if a royal-flush indeed swims hidden beneath their pockets, swaggering' with that next hit, toke, and sensation...oh yeah, baby, we got tunes. Comin up the top of the hour, that was Country Joe, here's a little John Hurt now, little song called "Candy Man"...Bastards. They smother with you with 'smarts', don't they? Agonizing. It's like the rest of the prestigious art-world, with the audacity to throw a few 'neath the rug- but haha, we got 'em covered. At the dark close of each day (as it is now) we take a lemon taxi, frosting and blaring with wet-confetti tones that only the organ dungeon of old Elektra could be responsible for. That type of 'love ya/burn ya' serrated edge to rock that Vanguard (the B&B of labels) was all to insensitive to attribute. I say, We don't need your banana intellectual given Rock, Folk, whatever the chance to comment the blankets of its own deathbed! The on-going problem, mate. "I'm a garbage-man, but I ain't garbage", sings someone I wish I knew. Elektra did in fact tail Gillette aside from faithful rumor outta LA, but I suppose jerks they are too, told him blankly, we're not impressed, kid, and threw a private copy 'cross the desk of The Doors' debut, soon to volcano a chimney of psych jet jumbo. Promise of future, thoroughly interrupted. If the valleys of Rounder and crew had toe-nailed Gillette, the results would be incredible lumber, if not logs. None of that grassroot-bong "tryin to meet the standards of the mainstream with the help of a few hush jazz players." Nah, the sand-castle sings a lonely one and only we can prevent the tide; face bottom folk, no instruments grinning, all stains allowed. He was, after all, good. We left the deserteen opus to Townes Van Zandt and other whiskey drifters, the feeling of utmost visibility and earth we gave to the swingsets of Gillette, the lyric and voice, like watching one hemlock top sway in the ugliest of storms and days of thunder. Mozart was there, too. And Gloria. "Moments you could hum could hum you," sings another.
"Steve, listen," I would say if I were his producer then, "we're gonna set you up in a one-room cottage, or maybe your place back in Greenwich, and record this thing. What? Uh, there won't be any other instruments, so just bring that guitar, preferably that old Martin you got way back during your teens, although you do have a choice if you want to involve Tom Campbell on a few numbers or not. I know Buffy Marie playing coat-hangers ain't gonna do too much. You know, it's either the forest or the city, and I've talked to your landlady about recording you at the bottom of her stairwell there, and she's willing. We could also try doing it live at the Vanguard as well. Anyway, forget about everybody for now. Look no farther than the acoustic. Wander 'round a bit. What? No, no, fame's a swollen tease."
Especially, Doc, the ones caught in the fish-hook but never quite die. Gillette, his music, life, and industry hang-ups, contests with this short piece I once wrote but never found body until now:
-that's what I said. Anyway, there's a bootleg I own that a twelve-year old girl conveniently taped of the {Smashing} Pumpkins live at the Mullins Center, Amherst, Mass. during the cold eve of January 28th, '97. With the audience screaming like painted sea-gulls the band sounds about as coked out and fried as music worthy of fifteen million records will perform. Each closing song rises into a motley distortion where Corgan screams WE LOVE YOU!! Real lame. An excerpt: "We'd like to play a song you probably skip over every time you get to it on your cd." Dig: the songs jam twice as fast than usual, if not three times. Hyper ain't the word. Royally cracked is. And take yer other icons for instance. Dylan, for one, a demigod by now, but ironically the divine tunes he's writing, to the People he's writing for- Mr. Jones, blue eyed son- are the same folk he's forced to bar his doors from so he won't get wound up a) killed b) kidnapped c) raped d) interviewed e) sued... the alphabet counts on forever, even after his obituary the madness extends. And we, the people, continue to listen to him flavoring and thrilling along as we get a) fired from our jobs b) dumped from girlfriends/boyfriends c) crash cars d) get sued, arrested, bankrupt, overdose, whatever, and e) occasionally fall in love...All until one person goes completely bazerk and hunts him down and strangles, JESUS!!! But we love him. And out on the streets silently lurks a far more ruined bruise, souls draggin' about with sick confidential information that can only be whispered outta the ear-shock range that they indeed wrote "Blowin' In The Wind". What kind of-
"You playing music these days?" I asked my friend a few days back.
"No, not at all. Not really...You?"
"No. Writing, I suppose. No music...Feels good, huh?
"Yeah. It does". A bad silence struck. Damn. We had once been proud to embellish in our heavy-metal youth. "Why not play all night?" we used to ask. A girl played saxophone on the street, birds by her side. And to Des Moines and all pianos in between, I yelled, All STEVEGILLETTES!All STEVEGILLETTES! Put this fire out NOW! But my call couldn't be completed as dialed, and instead, played the record for the very first time, waited, and listened.
--Carson Arnold - July 27, 2003
copyright 2003 Carson Arnold
H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews and articles written by Carson Arnold. As an independent writer and musician living in the woods of Vermont with his family, Carson widely encourages one to submit their art, writing or any interesting piece of material that you would like to share. H(ear) is accepting both promos and demos for review or any other valuable music-related subjects. If you wish to make a comment or would like to receive H(ear) weekly by email please contact Carson at [email protected]
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