Finally Outright Copping Some Style

I've long been in resistance to claiming styles to describe my musical efforts. In truth I didn't "have" a style or influences in the beginning. I fumbled around for years trying to deny all the jazz that I'd soaked up after playing in the dreaded high school big bands. Some people look back on their time in those outfits with nostalgia; I look back and see myself cringing thinking that unfortunately playing in one was the only way my parents would allow me to play music. I was probably wrong or maybe not regardless I knew at the time that I had no interest in pursuing a career as a jazz musician or composer.

I clung to all of my nascent musical instincts and kept them in hiding through the musical meat grinder that was the Berklee College of Music. There's a place where you can really lose your inspirational shit - any shred of naive brilliance or creativity awaits a pantheon of soul crushers with all kinds of negative bullshit up their sleeves. Eh- Berklee had some good stuff - I can't say it didn't - but there really was such a thick leviathan of fear/intimidation and attitude that one had to wind their way through as a student - we really should have been the ones getting paid to attend.

I was a decent sax player - but between a shitty student model horn and a lack of strong affinity with the complex harmonics of be-bop jazz I was fucked as an alto sax player in the context of Berklee. I related more to the fucked up sax lines I heard over Psychedelic Furs tunes than those Charlie Parker lines I memorized. I wanted to play rock and roll - most any flavor would do - so while at Berklee I picked up electric bass and with the assistance of Danny 'Mo' As In Motown' Morris learned to play r&b bass lines. I was saved. But still styleless ..... Berklee was so much about imitation that I never absorbed r&b and took it to a place where I could call it my own. At least I wasn't completed alienated stylistically from what I was playing.

Post Berklee I struggled to establish some kind of style for myself as a songwriter. There'd been a seeming explosion of pop female singer songwriters all doing the 'angry edgy chick' thing - think Alanis Morissette, Tori Amos and PJ Harvey. I'd gone straight to the source in my discovery of Diamanda Galas. I ran across her recordings while I was working at Tower Records on Mass Ave in Boston and then via a girlfriend at Barnard College in New York City. She had power that Tori, Alanis and PJ couldn't dream of and I wanted to align myself with her. On top of that Diamanda's musical background is based in jazz and I could identify with that and she'd grown up in sunny California and escaped to create a fascinating and dynamic (to say the least) career for herself as a proud member of the avant garde.

The problems with copping Diamanda's style - at least in my head - was that a) I don't have the insane "virtuosity" that she wields as a weapon b) I know her and feel like somehow given that I can't match her virtuosity I'm asking for a ass beating copping her style. These thoughts did not however stop me from screaming like a banshee while singing for the band 'The Never Meter' from '97-'99 here in San Francisco. Maybe I should trace this influence back to Yoko Ono - on second thought - nah.

With hindsight I realize that I'd put myself under immense pressure as a young musician/writer to come up with something *new*. Why something new? A handful of ridiculous factors the most pressing of which was the $79,000 bill that my parents laid on me (and have since rescinded) for my education at Berklee. I figured I had to get right on the edge to make enough money and/or notoriety to use to pay off my debt; bring my vocal insanity vis a via Diamanda Galas into a rock context that could be commodified and I'd be golden. Ahhhhh - the logic of a 24-27 year old.

Oh and did I fail to mention the fact that somewhere between 7-11 years of age I thought I was the reincarnation of Bach or Beethoven and was here to create some kind of musical innovations. I can't remember which one I thought I was - but I did. I told John Lurie about this one night hanging out at his place watch re-runs of Rosanne - his response "maybe you are." My life just can't get any better.

Okay so now years later - no band, barely starting to write again over the last six months, and *still* struggling to understand how people chose to be (if they in fact actually do chose) influenced by style and how they use style as a guideline to write music. I suppose in truth, I've got style, I can probably play just about anything, all those years of improv over changes pay off in my facility to just fucking play.

I'm taking an electronic music class through Cellspace and while we're basically just a little over 1/3 of the way through the course it's fascinating to me to learn that all these electronic styles have very specific idiomatic qualifications. I don't know why this strikes me as odd - but it does. I suppose having grown up deeply entrenched in the style of jazz I never really took the time to think about how people learn to play a certain style of music - but in order to do so somehow, somewhere one needs to learn what tempos, rhythmic patterns and structures typify a music. This is a no brainer - so why did I just somehow magically expect myself to *know* this stuff and never give myself the space to learn it. I guess if you grow up thinking you're Bach you're kind of fucked in the 'space to learn' department. Never considered that - in fact I think I relied on that idea so that I wouldn't have to learn - I'd just *know*.

Oy - well now I'm in a better position to cop style - and I'm going to relish in the learning, picking and choosing.