New York, New York

 

Back to the old school; US press briefly takes note of Groundation; The dreaded music biz and what it’s really all about; wedding band fan club.

 

 

If Nostradamus had appeared to me in 1983 while I was riding around in my parents’ Toyota listening to UTFO and told me that I would, at the advanced age of 42, be opening for round-the-way rapper Big Daddy Kane and Full Force, the producers of “Roxanne Roxanne”, in New York, I would have laughed in his medieval face. Nonetheless, Groundation pulled into Times Square around seven o’clock on Friday evening and parked the old RV in front of B.B. King’s Blues Club on 42^nd Street. When the NYPD inevitably wandered up, they were so impressed we were on the bill with some of the Bronx’s hip hop laureates, they put away the citation book and let us park there all night. I have to admit there was a rather strange energy in that club, I imagined I was damn near the only person in the world that thought Groundation and Big Daddy Kane together were a good bill. Heartbreakingly, we had to drive out before the famous rapper took the stage in order to get to our next destination, outside Boston.

Nobody parks on 42nd on a Friday night except OGs.

 

I snuck “Autumn in New York” into my solo on “Hebron”, but I felt like I never really touched ground in the real city. As most folks know, Times Square in no longer a real part of New York City. When I first visited that neighborhood it was swarming with transvestites and hustlers, but all that’s been replaced by monumental corporate neon. It’s as bright as Disneyland. Main Street USA on steroids. Still, for my money, New York City is the greatest city on the planet. It’s pretty much solid excitement, it’s everything you want available for you all the time. It makes people, it destroys people; in my opinion it’s the real face of this country.

The tour manager never sleeps.

This weekend Groundation’s name appeared for (almost) the first time in the mainstream American press. The constant roving nonsense of the entertainment industry is going to be cluttering up our yard for a while. There are going to be some lawyers and whatnot. If you’re a Groundation fan I probably don’t have to say a word about it; if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you will soon enough. There’s important business going on for us that’s been a long time coming. When drama comes calling, be prepared to stay up late my nanny used to say. Rest assured, as a group we stand firm in the face of Babylon’s turmoil.

Besides Dave Matthews, the Black Eyed Peas were the most famous headliners at the OutsideLands festival where Groundation kicked off its coast to coast US tour. I hoped to get backstage, but security didn’t like my bracelet, so I took a couple of pictures of Fergie and Will.i.am over the fence. Then Gabriel, the cat I was hanging around with, started chatting with Jeff Coffin the current saxophonist for the Dave Matthews Band. He got us past security, but we were stopped again at the stage. I walked around and watched from out in the crowd for a few minutes, but decided to have dinner rather than watch their show on an empty stomach.

Big time, small time, independent, or major label contracts. This is what they talk about in music business trade magazines like Billboard. Serious business, people; Big money business. If you like to eat sausage, you should avoid learning about how it’s made, and the music business is no different. If you really love music, learn to play, learn to jam, play in a band, get as good as you can and play shows. Sing and dance with your friends and family, especially your kids, have fun, express yourself, celebrate life. That’s what music’s for. Looking at the pictures in Rolling Stone or playing Rock Band or watching the 100 Raunchiest Backstage Scenes on VH1: these are pale shadows of the raw, untapped energy of music. Though it is idolized and fetishized on an unprecedented scale, people have surrendered music in their own lives, leaving it to professionals. Sometimes it feels less like a joyful expression and more like a talent show held in a shopping mall.

In fact, it’s worse than a talent show, it’s a popularity contest. Meanwhile, the music itself is buried under mountains of words and images, sealed off inside iPods, TVs and computers, like a chocolate cake wrapped tightly in plastic. But despite all that, it speaks for itself, in its own unintelligible language. We can’t escape its fascination. It’s an essential element in all our social occasions from playing “taps” at military funeral, to church services and weddings. If there is a god, music is the language in which he would speak.

I’ve performed at my share of weddings, including my own, and while some musicians consider this kind of work debasing, I’ve always loved it. The pay is good, the food is good, and you get to provide the one thing people crave the when they’re savoring the joy of life: a spirited Kool and the Gang Medley.

Weddings are bread and butter for many musicians, and an honorable life it is. For every band like The Peas and Dave Matthews there are thousands of dues payers out there. And there are the little vocal groups, the garage bands, the streetcorner cyphers, and the weekly karaoke regulars: people who never play their guitars through anything louder than a pair of headphones.

In all honesty, to quote an old friend, I love my job, and it’s a luxury to be able to say critical things about a tradition that’s put food on my table for years. The music business even put my wife through graduate school. Humbleness is the only appropriate attitude when speaking about music, whether you’re a student or a master. People in the jazz community like to talk about how important it is to “support jazz music”. The way I see it, the suggestion that music needs our support is like saying that the earth needs our support to continue orbiting the sun. Though humans and parrots are the only species on the planet known to respond to music, it is a fact that music exists whether we exist or not. Music is an infinite matrix of complex physical manifestations of energy, an extraordinary symbolic system which our strange brains are profoundly attuned to. Why is this true? Who knows? Who cares? Enjoy it to its fullest, just like you should other pleasurable things in your life.

Enough for now. Keep in touch, people. Thanks to those of you who voted for my writing contest entry. I’m not going to win it, but I enjoyed giving it a fair shot. Burlington, Vermont, you’re next. See you tomorrow night. 

‘Diesel’ David Chachere

September 20^th, 2009