What You'll Find Here: Music, Movies and Me

Since May 1976, I have written in journals. When I have nothing particularly resonant to say about my own inner turmoil, philosophic ramblings, sexual peccadillos or whining on about the state of the world around me...I have always fallen back on reporting the cultural time consumption that takes up in inordinate portion of my daily goings on.

In the 40+ years since my first concerts seeing Children's Symphony presentations on Sundays at the Pasadena Civic or The Hot Jazz Society's monthly Dixieland romps in an old meeting hall on the edge of the L.A. "River" across from Griffith Park, I have been sold heavily on the magic of live music. As Neil Young so aptly put it, "Live music is better bumper stickers should be issued."

Growing up a few orange groves and canyons length away from Hollywood also contributed greatly to my family's addiction to movie going. From the time I was a small there were weekly trips to the drive-in theaters that dotted the landscape, or the local Temple theater for the Saturday matinees. Once in a while we'd drive the 12 miles into Hollywood and see something in one of the magnificent old movie palaces like Grauman's Chinese, the Egyptian, The Pantages or later the Cinerama Dome. My dad loved Westerns and War movies, as if he didn't get enough shoot-'em-up as an L.A. County Sheriff in his day gig, my mom adored musicals and comedies. My brother and I loved them all.

At SDSU, I played in my first gigging band and began booking concerts on campus as part of the well-funded Cultural Arts Board, kindling for my future life in and around music.

So it's not surprising that my first jobs out of college were working in local video rental places (which were all the rage) or managing a couple of Sam Goody record stores in Mall's on the East Coast where we marveled at the new CD format and sold the first home computers and video games (yes Commodore and Pong and Atari).

So these are really just extensions of all of those journal entries talking about the great new movies I was seeing and LPs/CDs I was listening to.

Though iPODS/iPADs, apps, smart phones and downloads now make music and movies accessible in your own pocket, there is still nothing like sitting in front of a stack of speakers with a room full of people swaying to music created before your eyes. Nor is there anything that works quite so well for me to escape the real world and all of it's pressures just outside than two hours in a dark theater, absorbing the stories flickering across that wide screen as they pull you into their world.

But a really good taco runs a close third...

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

I attend some fascinating concerts...in my dreams...



1:35am

Dream –
The first half of the dream is gone but it was long and outdoors…

I’m on a street corner. Nighttime. I walk across the street into a small parking lot between two older, brick storefront, mid-block. I am talking to someone who is telling me a story they heard from, “You know that guy that lives out here who is a bit messed up but otherwise cool.”  A white rental van starts up in the space I (alone now) am standing in front of. There are two guys, 20s, brown hair, typical looking, in the front seat looking suspicious, like they’ve just been caught smoking pot or something. One talks to me and I hear them even though he doesn’t look to be yelling and the windows are all rolled up. He was asking directions. I point how to get out of the lot the back way, through a chain link fence. 

As I watch them pull away, to my right, something moves. I seem to know it’s the “messed up” street guy I was told about. He’s young, mid-late 20s. Blond and bearded, tall and looks clean. He’s pushing a weird sort of gondola on wheels covered with an Army-green canvas. He says hello as if he knows me and we walked out the driveway toward the sidewalk. When we get there we see my friend Greg Bierman who is also going to the concert/rave/event (?). We go right on the sidewalk and we are on Duarte Road, across the street from the back corner of Hinshaw’s in West Arcadia. We stand at the traffic light talking about the concert. Someone presses the crosswalk button and we wait. As we finally cross, “Messed Up Guy" leaves his gondola there at the corner. “No one will bother it.” We cross the street and Greg is checking little address numbers on the glass doors of Hinshaw’s and finds the right one. “This is where it is?” I say, surprised. “Yeah, it’s in some kind of conference room.”

We walk inside. It is a pretty luxurious seeming room. Everyone is dressed fairly nice and I see a lot of faces that I recognize. Back East music scene people. I am, of course, naked but have a soft yet roughly textured olive covered blanket, lightweight it seems but overflowing, wrapped over my shoulders covering everything nicely except my chest hair. I feel sure that someone will notice my odd raiment but no one does. My ex-wife, Lynn, looking basically like she does today, has reserved a flat, highly polished very low table. Japanese, on which we are to sit on little cushion. I wonder if “Messed Up Guy" will sit with us and I wonder if he will stink.

She is sitting just behind this table on a stool. To our right is a guy standing at a tall soundboard. It is a young Joey Calderazzo (which is weird since the group billed is Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette and others and Joey is also a pianist). He speaks softy to the crowd, asking everyone to now be quiet and they take their seats. I ask Lynn what the news is and she says, “Not good. Kidneys.” The implication in the dream is that it is a diagnosis she just got back. I decide to not tell her about my health. “No Ed?” I whisper instead and she shakes her head side-to-side which makes sense for I know I was just with them somewhere and Ed was going to be working at home that night. She steps off the stool, gives me a hug and comes around to two of the places (cushions) facing the stage. I think, “Good, I didn’t want to sit hunch-necked and backwards all night.”

As the music softly starts, a light short acoustic piano figure is followed by a very quiet woodwinds wash and then some bowed acoustic bass. Subtle and atmospheric sounds with very little movement. People are sitting low, on the floor in front of us and I wonder if I will be able to stay awake through this since I got no sleep the night before. I consider asking her to poke me if I snore but it is too quiet to talk and I’m sure she would poke me anyway. She turns and whispers, of course, “Nice blanket.” Hahaha. That’s my girl.

In front of us is a not quite opaque curtain made of what looks like soft roughly textured material pleated thickly like a theater curtain. It is lit softly from in front and behind. The impression is that the musicians are behind it playing. There are strongly lit big squares or perhaps projections of rich color on the curtain. I somehow know that the piece of music is titled “Journey in Three Colors”. I wonder if the screen will ever go up. I surmise that this could be Jarrett being elitist, or pretentious or it could be some kind of sense-experiment where the colors are controlling the music or vice-versa. I also consider that if we never see musicians just a curtain, Lynn might bail, people may boo or start getting rammy and chatty since the music is so soft and static. I’m very curious to see what happens. I realize that we are more reclined than sitting up straight, our legs out before us. I hope I can stay awake.

On the screen is what at first looks like a list of songs or credits as if on an album cover but when I look at the left column, I realize it is sort of like poetry that describes the color and action of the story while mentioning what the instruments represent. It seems to be changing in real time to the sounds being heard. Unfortunately, I can’t retain the opening lines of the poem.

In the dream, I wake up and I am in another part of the room looking in another direction, at a different more traditional stage set up. I'm sitting in another group of chairs/stools with Greg and a woman who is my date or someone I am dating who also happens to be there. The room behind us is crowded. There is a stage in front of us, which seems off to the right and on a wall perpendicular to the previous stage. Singing in front of a royal blue rich velvet, gold-trimmed curtain is Merle Haggard and to his left is a tall, balding guy playing a bass guitar. Merle is holding a trumpet in his hand, fingering though not playing it. He is singing the line from Emmylou Harris’s song <that I actually played in my gig earlier yesterday>, “I was Feeling Single, Seeing Double / wound up in a whole lotta trouble. / But today I’ll face the big fight / ‘cause I really had a ball last night.” When he repeats the last line, he comes to the C#7 chord and really emphasizes the trumpet as if meaning “Here’s the chord…pay attention,” towards the bassist who misses the note but plays one that almost works. The song ends and I hear him say top the bassist off mic, “That was that C#7 I warned you about.” The crowd claps excitedly and Merle walks off the stage.

I see him walk out onto a balcony off to the right of the stage. It’s like a high school gym balcony with tall wooden folding bleachers filled with people standing and applauding. Merle is walking along the front with a large entourage of people. At first I think he is going to sing from there with a wireless mic but he is walking across the front of the balcony toward the exit on the right. It must be break time. 

From where I stand, somehow looking down on him, though it seems like more of a close-up camera angle than what I should be seeing from where I sit below, he is wearing HUGE light blue dungarees. So are his entire entourage (about 7-8 guys). The POV I am seeing is only their legs and you can’t see their shoes because the flare of the pant legs are so huge. Like rapper/rave boy jeans. A couple of them are dragging behind them what look like fake big ball and chains, like prison guys of old, coming out from under these huge pant legs. The music being played to their exit is a big band version of Merle’s famous prison song, “Mama Tried”.

I turn and Lynn is across the room getting up from her seat. The seat next to her where I had been sitting is filled by someone I don’t know and I feel bad for it seems I must have left her sitting there to go say hello to someone between acts and fell asleep and never gone back.

I feel horrible about it and literally wake up on the couch having fallen asleep at 7:30 last night when I got home from town. I had laid down for a nap and set my cell phone alarm for 9pm. I remember hitting the snooze key 5-6 times and I guess it finally gave up on me. I had finally got up at 1:30am and had to jot this dream down before I lost it. Now, I’ve some editing to do on my father’s new art book and need to watch this movie, MY IDIOT BROTHER that my cousin lent me tonight and wants to get back back on his way to work at 8am today. I’m wide-awake, after 6 hours of dreaming.

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