{"id":19201,"date":"2013-06-19T00:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T04:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=19201"},"modified":"2013-06-19T02:01:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T06:01:14","slug":"50-for-50-love-and-hate-across-the-wrinkles-on-my-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/50-for-50-love-and-hate-across-the-wrinkles-on-my-hands\/","title":{"rendered":"50 for 50: Love and Hate Across the Wrinkles on My Hands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/moyer.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19267 aligncenter\" alt=\"moyer\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/moyer.jpg\" width=\"405\" height=\"304\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/moyer.jpg 405w, https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/moyer-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 405px) 100vw, 405px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Happy birthday to me. I have turned 50 years old.<\/p>\n<h1>50.<\/h1>\n<p>Before receiving my AARP card a couple of weeks ago, I had been thinking my 50th birthday would mark the beginning of my middle-age period. Statistically speaking, though, I should have gone middle-age crazy 10 years ago. I&#8217;m two thirds gone if I&#8217;m reasonably lucky. Shit.<\/p>\n<h1><em>Saigon&#8230;shit&#8230;<\/em><\/h1>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bwL2h2iLWak?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>So, I&#8217;ve blown my middle-age period feeling like an overweight man in his early 30s, but with the frequently curmudgeonly attitude of a septuagenarian. No sports car. No hot tub. No Tommy Bahama shirts. No island getaways. No golf. Just more records and guitars and rehearsals and recording sessions and baseball games and family and friends and food and <em>Dugout Chatter<\/em> on Rock Town Hall. There could have been worse ways to spend one&#8217;s 40s.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m 50, and despite the aches and pains of my first season with neighborhood friends in an over-35 baseball league I&#8217;m in consciously better shape than I&#8217;ve ever been in my life. Even when I was a kid and playing sports as frequently as the day allowed, I only played to compete. I was never conscious of my body and how prepared it was for whatever game. <em>Stretch?<\/em> Sure, when there&#8217;s a close play at first I&#8217;ll stretch like Willie McCovey. <em>Jog?<\/em> Only if the coach makes us. <em>Lift?<\/em> Sure, a hoagie or a cheesesteak\u2014or both\u2014to my mouth.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to share some really deep thoughts about reaching this milestone and how it relates to who I am as a music lover, but I&#8217;ve realized that no matter how happy I am with my life, when it comes to music I still hold to many of the same views about things that most people would not stop to consider. Even some fellow music lovers wonder how I can hold so deep a LOVE or HATE for specific musical details. Just last week my close personal friend and drummer, <strong>Townsman Sethro<\/strong>, was learning the arrangement for a new song with me when he stopped playing a rhythm on the ride cymbal and said, &#8220;Wait, you hate when I do that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What do I hate?&#8221; I asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You hate when I do this,&#8221; he said, as he tapped out a fancy, dancing pattern on the ride cymbal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Do I hate that?&#8221; I asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You hate everything,&#8221; he said lovingly.<\/p>\n<p>It actually sounded good at this particular point in the song, so I told him to carry on with it, but to avoid not getting too cute. Only in rare cases, I suddenly realized, am I cool with what I consider to be a &#8220;cute&#8221; pattern on the ride cymbal.<\/p>\n<p>Much is made about the kinder, wiser, gentler moderator I&#8217;ve become since launching Rock Town Hall with a group of like-minded friends in November 2002 (when I was only 39 and probably acting like a mature 26 year old), but time has not broken me of some of my didactic approach to musical experiences. On this, my 50th birthday, I will share 50 didactic thoughts on the first 50 musical topics that come to mind. Enjoy, learn, and thank you for your part in making my life about as much as I could have hoped it would be.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Cymbals.<\/strong> Crash cymbals are great for punctuating a key lyrical hook or musical shift in an arrangement, but they should be used with extreme caution. Don&#8217;t play the crash like it&#8217;s a ride cymbal unless you&#8217;re Ringo Starr on an early Beatles record, on which it sounds like he&#8217;s squirting an aerosol can.<\/p>\n<p>The ride cymbal is the best of all cymbals, especially when the drummer plays straight quarter or eighth notes. Rare masters, like Levon Helm and Topper Headon, can get away with playing trickier parts the ride. Headon and Al Jackson Jr. (on Al Green&#8217;s records) could even get away with playing fancy parts on the most dangerous of all cymbals: the hi-hat.<\/p>\n<p>The hi-hat works best with quarter and eighth notes. We&#8217;re talking rock &#8216;n roll, for the most part, so let&#8217;s not worry about measures divisible by 3 or other odd numbers. A swinging, slightly swishy hi-hat, with the cymbals fairly close together, is a lost art. I encourage future generations of drummers to recapture this art, but the current crop may be wise to stay away from this approach. If you really want to record a song with this style of hi-hat playing, let me know and I will hook you up with my old friend and guitar partner John Quincy Nixon. He could play that style better than any real drummer I&#8217;ve ever met, no offense to my close personal friend and drummer extraordinaire, Sethro.<\/p>\n<p>In case there&#8217;s any doubt, gimmicky cymbals, like those tiny upside-down Chinese splash cymbals, should only be used if you want to make listeners laugh. I can think of only one song that uses that cymbal to a positive musical effect, Captain Beefheart&#8217;s &#8220;Sheriff of Hong Kong.&#8221;<\/p>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6Rrw5zr1dN8?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p><strong>2. Snare drum.<\/strong> No drum better gets to the soul of music like the snare. This applies to all forms of music except, I believe, classical, which rarely employs the snare and is, therefore, one of the least-interesting forms of music on the planet (although not half as bad as opera, which mixes a lack of backbeat with the most annoying style of singing known to humankind). Like the ride cymbal, the snare should be a steadying, nourishing force. Think of Charlie Watts&#8217; snare in &#8220;Beast of Burden.&#8221; He plays each beat as if he&#8217;s laying down the meaning of life. In plain English, or whatever the listener&#8217;s native tongue may be. It&#8217;s perfect and perfectly recorded, and it&#8217;s one of his last performances before he started doing that exaggerated thing where he refuses to hit the hi-hat whenever he&#8217;s hitting the snare drum. The snare and the hi-hat can coexist, as the greatest beat on earth, the 4-on-the-floor beat, bears witness.<\/p>\n<p>Fills on the snare are loaded with more dangers than might be expected. At all costs avoid the momentum-changing &#8220;shave-and-a-haircut&#8221; fill. It&#8217;s hard for me to explain, but next time you hear a drummer doing it you&#8217;ll see my face grimacing\u2014or worse, the face of <strong>Townsman E. Pluribus Gergely<\/strong>, who has threatened to shoot a drummer over that fill. Flams are funny and probably fun for drummers to play, but mostly they&#8217;re funny, in a not always productive way. Beware the desire to hit a flam on the snare. The best snare fills are usually in the flow of the song&#8217;s rhythm, with longer fills tumbling over into the next measure. The long, evenly paced snare fills of Pete Thomas (Elvis Costello &amp; The Attractions) are the best in the world. For a drummer who wasn&#8217;t flashy or thought of as innovative, The Kinks&#8217; Mick Avory also made great use of the snare.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Bass slides and octave leaps.<\/strong> Let&#8217;s move the spotlight away from the drums for a moment. There are few quicker ways to my heart than a descending or ascending slide and\/or octave leap on the bass guitar. These move hit me in the gut like a settling glass of Brioschi after a large Italian meal. James Jamerson, Paul McCartney, and Bruce Thomas (Pete&#8217;s rhythm section mate in The Attractions, kidz) perform these moves with more gusto and creativity than any bassists in history, but even more humble bassists like Bill Wyman and Paul Simonon have given songs a warm belly rub with these tricks. Use them, bassists. Make your instrument throb and swoop when the space allows.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4. Lead vocals.<\/strong> There are many valid, effective ways to deliver a lead vocal. Just watch it if you&#8217;re gonna go &#8220;fake tough.&#8221; Who doesn&#8217;t like to act tough, and why shouldn&#8217;t we, but make the act stick. John Cougar Mellencamp, for instance, actually isn&#8217;t that bad, but he tries too hard to sing tough. His voice says, &#8220;Let&#8217;s you and me take this outside, bud,&#8221; but I think he&#8217;d quickly try to play peacemaker once the two of you were alone in a dimly lit alley.<\/p>\n<p><strong>5. Keyboards.<\/strong> Synthesizer technology has come a long way since the &#8217;80s and the dreaded Yamaha DX7 and other synths that made big washes of cotton candy chords. Back then I felt synths had no place whatsoever in music unless they were making noises &#8220;native&#8221; to their technology, that is, the blips and bleeps that early synth practitioners like Eno and Allen Ravenstine coaxed out of them. Sometime around 2005, I came to terms with their use, even when they are used to sound like real instruments. However, few things are more pathetic than seeing a real piano player playing piano on a synth in any live performance. Even a real piano player I can&#8217;t stand, like Billy Joel, should not be reduced to playing a fake piano. Roadies, haul a real piano on the road.<\/p>\n<p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p><strong>6. Bon Jovi.<\/strong> Since they first got popular in the latter half of the &#8217;70s, I have confidently shared my belief that Journey is the worst band in the history of rock. It turns out that during my Too Cool for School 1980s I managed to barely hear an entire song by Bon Jovi. In the last year the song &#8220;Living on a Prayer&#8221; has become a staple of both the Classic Rock station AND the Oldies station on my dial in the Philadelphia area. I always knew how the chorus went, but I did not realize how bad the entire song was. That song blows! In the last year I have decided that Bon Jovi is the worst band in the history of rock. At least Journey <em>tried<\/em> to make good music. You know they were sharing sincere bro-hugs the night they worked up the arrangement for &#8220;Wheel in the Sky.&#8221; Bon Jovi&#8217;s music sounds like it was made to accompany soda commercials. What did those guys do after laying tracks for &#8220;Living on a Prayer,&#8221; rub steroids on their dicks?<\/p>\n<p><strong>7. Afghan Whigs.<\/strong> This cruel joke the world has been playing on me has <em>got<\/em> to stop. If these guys even made actual music, I might deem their music worse than Bon Jovi&#8217;s. What the hell am I missing, and please leave out adjectives regarding how sexy and dangerous and whatnot Greg Dulli is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>8. Guitar.<\/strong> I play guitar, and I&#8217;m not very good at it. What lessons can I share regarding the guitar? Few. Stay with cool, classic brands. Avoid unnecessary points on the guitar&#8217;s body. Make sure your guitar&#8217;s neck has a headstock. When you play your guitar, try to keep your feet as wide as your shoulders. Don&#8217;t stand there with your ankles together, like a ballerina.<\/p>\n<p><strong>9. Vinyl.<\/strong> I don&#8217;t care how much better some digitally remastered, Japanese-scented digital file sounds: vinyl is better. Holding something in your hands is cool. Album covers are cool. Trying to get the album in the insert sleeve back into the album cover without everything bunching up is cool, at least when you succeed in doing so. Knowing that the vinyl has traveled around various turntables is cool. Hearing the pops and scratches keeps you on your toes, keeps you wanting more. The good thing about wanting\u2014and not getting\u2014more is that you don&#8217;t get so much that you have to do stupid things like dig through trash bins in hopes of finding 2 extra measures of guitar chords picked up on a room mic that you can insert into an already PERFECT record like the original release of The Velvet Underground&#8217;s &#8220;Rock &#8216;n Roll&#8221; in some pointless effort at documenting the artist&#8217;s &#8220;true intentions.&#8221; Director&#8217;s cuts almost always get it wrong.<\/p>\n<p><strong>10. Science.<\/strong> There&#8217;s a fine line between taking a &#8220;scientific approach&#8221; to writing and arranging rock &#8216;n roll songs and getting one&#8217;s head up one&#8217;s ass. I think artists owe it to themselves and their listeners to push forward and try mixing in some unexpected chords or dedicating themselves to some arbitrary structural device that may broaden rock&#8217;s horizons. Even horrible failures are worth it if some terrible idea eventually gets tweaked by a future generation and saves us from a lifetime of 12-bar blues.<!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RhrazLdZgSs?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve read this far, I won&#8217;t burden you with my next 40 entries. I love rock &#8216;n roll the only way I know how: with tough love and my own expectations for how I like to live my own life. On my last day driving to work as a 49 year old I cranked up my favorite album of all time, Elvis Costello &amp; The Attractions&#8217; <em>Get Happy!!<\/em> I was flooded with memories. Before the album was released I bought an import double-single\u2014or was it a 4-song, 7-inch EP\u2014I don&#8217;t know if I even own it anymore.\u00a0I bought the record at a pretty cool record store that used to be at Cottman Avenue, near the intersection of Roosevelt Boulevard and next door to a Northeast Philadelphia branch of the Library, the same place where, around the same time, I took out Television&#8217;s <em>Marquee Moon<\/em> to investigate and then loved it so much that I never returned it. Sorry, Philadelphia Library: in this case, crime paid. Anyhow, if memory serves the Costello EP had &#8220;Getting Mighty Crowded,&#8221; &#8220;High Fidelity,&#8221; &#8220;King Horse,&#8221; and something else, maybe &#8220;New Amsterdam.&#8221; I&#8217;d already been living on Costello&#8217;s first 3 albums, but the advance songs on this EP resonated more deeply than ever. The rhythms were clearly indebted to the Motown and Stax records of my childhood. Ghostly backing vocals and organ parts piped through the throbbing bass and driving drumbeats. Like a musical Reese&#8217;s Peanut Butter Cup, Beatles&#8217; psychedelia bumped into Booker T &amp; The MGs at the intersection of Abbey Road and McLemore Avenue. &#8220;High Fidelity,&#8221; in particular, blew me away. Costello and the band took the structure and passion of The Four Tops&#8217; &#8220;Reach Out (I&#8217;ll Be There)&#8221; and ripped off all the pleasantries and hope of a Motown hit. It was a rare case of the White Man taking the Black Man&#8217;s music and making it more authentic, more to the heart of the matter.<\/p>\n<p>Along with the aural delights provided by the album&#8217;s 20 power-packed tracks, <em>Get Happy!!<\/em> helped fuel my desire to kick it out, drive ahead, and stake my turf. It wasn&#8217;t a roadmap to Winning Friends and Influencing People, as the more peaceful, cosmic Beatles albums I cut my teeth on provided, but it was what I needed in my late teens as part of that final push to manhood. To this day there&#8217;s no album I listen to that more clearly demarcates the start of My Identity. Now I&#8217;m deep into this beast I wanted to be, and it&#8217;s all right.<\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/50-for-50-love-and-hate-across-the-wrinkles-on-my-hands\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/50-for-50-love-and-hate-across-the-wrinkles-on-my-hands\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/50-for-50-love-and-hate-across-the-wrinkles-on-my-hands\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/50-for-50-love-and-hate-across-the-wrinkles-on-my-hands\/4\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">4<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy birthday to me. I have turned 50 years old. 50. Before receiving my AARP card a couple of weeks ago, I had been thinking my 50th birthday would mark the beginning of my middle-age period. Statistically speaking, though, I should have gone middle-age crazy 10 years ago. I&#8217;m two thirds gone if I&#8217;m reasonably <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/50-for-50-love-and-hate-across-the-wrinkles-on-my-hands\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[133],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}