The End of Europe?

Usually I don't write about politics or world events in this blog but I wanna talk about a Time Magazine article I read this morning. Rana Foorohar's The End of Europe. 

In the article, Ms. Foroohar is basically saying that the age of prosperity is over for Europe and the western world and the symptoms of this are the current economic meltdown. This kind of writing pisses me off for lots of reasons, but mostly because she's supposed to be smarter than me and she's ignoring a few basic realities of the European Union and the western world in general.

First and foremost, when immigrants stop flooding into North America and Western Europe by the hundreds of thousands and start going in the other direction (ie. INTO places like Iran, China, Pakistan, India etc.), you can seriously start talking about the decline of the entire western way of life. For the time being, people from around the globe are packing themselves and their children into boat hulls, truck trailers and freight trains just to get out of the crappy place they come from and live in the supposedly declining west. This is an important point that journalists seem to like to ignore, because it unravels every argument about what a failure the western way of life is.

Second, the European Union (and subsequently the euro currency) is an extraordinarily bad idea and has been from the very beginning. The reason the European Union is, was, and will be a doomed entity is simple. No one runs it and no one votes for it.

To my understanding, the EU has a central bank that has some control over the supply of the Euro. But the EU has no democratically elected governance. The EU is essentially run by Germany and France by default. Those are the only 2 countries that can sustain the currency and the union in any meaningful way. On this,  Ms. Foorohar and I seem to agree.

The reason why that's a bad idea is because Spaniards and Italians didn't have a vote on the subject. And for that matter, neither did the Germans or the French. Somewhere in Spain and Italy and Greece, there are responsible, hardworking people who are NOT interested in handouts from Germany and France and who ARE interested in being in control of their own economy and holding their own government responsible for its relative success or failure. This, by the way, is one of the nice benefits of living in the western world - you can hold your elected officials responsible for the crap they pull.

But the way the EU works now, there's no one to blame. How does an Italian voice his displeasure to German leaders for considering a bailout of Italy? How does a French voter make it clear to the government of Greece that they need to get their financial house in order? The answer of course is that he/she isn't able to do anything like that. And that creates a bizarre, unfair and undemocratic situation where German politicians are going to decide the fate and future of the Spanish people (for instance). History has shown us time and time again that this kind of disconnect between power and responsibility is always a very very bad idea. It leads to disharmony on all sides.

Third, I don't like the implication that the demise of the EU would somehow rob Europeans of "the dream of multiculturalism". This is a bullshit viewpoint. Multiculturalism doesn't occur when a government decides it's time to make it so. It occurs when people from various racial, ethnic and geographic backgrounds come together in one place and build a prosperous society. It's not something you can force into being by symbolically throwing a big hug around everybody in Europe. The only thing governments need to do to foster a pluralistic society is a) avoid creating laws or practices that sort people by their religion or skin colour and b) get out of people's way when they want to make money. Despite the best efforts of bleeding hearts here in Canada and in Europe, this is exactly what's going on everywhere in the western world. We have multiculturalism. It is not a dream. It's real and we built it.

What needs to happen in Europe is they need to rip off the euro band aid as quickly as possible and get back to the clumsy but superior pluralism of Europe as a continent, not a union. Each country's government must be first and foremost responsible and accountable to its own people within its own borders. And too bad if international corporations have to spend a few extra bucks converting currency. Would you rather have to change your money when you cross the border, or would you rather have no money to change at all?

Retired? At 35?!?!?!

Not quite.

I posted last week on my Facebook account that I was "done with live performance" or something along those lines. What I mean to say is I'm done chasing gigs around. I'm done calling booking guys and dealing with their incredibly flaky and annoying ways. I'm done with bar owners and their penchant for not writing ANYTHING down and not remembering who the hell we (the brothers from other mothers) are.

I will however come out of this quasi-retirement for weddings, cottage parties, pool parties, etc. If you call me and you've got a small-to-medium entertainment budget, we're your acoustic party rock duo.

http://www.facebook.com/thebrothersfromothermothers

5 week old paranoia...

So we had a kid about 5 weeks ago. We pretty much means my wife did it and I posted it on Facebook. The first few days were crazy. Up was down, down was left, no sleep. But we got out of the hospital in one piece and everyone was just fine. He ate, he slept, he breathed. Just what we wanted.

But then came week 4. Not so much with the sleeping. And the eating was happening ALL THE TIME, but not as calm as before. So clearly the first time parents went into overdrive. Rampant googling of colic, normal sleeping patterns, normal eating patterns. Is he okay when he only sleeps for 20 minutes at a time? When he cries even when he's been fed?

So we tried the gripe water (yeah, I spelled that right). We tried the moving his feet counter-clockwise to relieve gas. We tried taking him outside, bringing him inside, feeding him right away, waiting to feed him. We tried the football hold, the pillow, the gripe water, and I said that already! Just nothing but crying and flailing and crying. Do you know how it feels to have the person who's whole life you're responsible for be suffering and you can't do a thing about it??

Is this some kind of digestive disorder? Did we accidentally have him looking at the tv screen when the ad for the next slasher flick came on and now he's traumatized? Am I holding him "wrong"? Is he pissed off all the time and will this some day come out when he's 22 and a meth addict and we're bailing him out of jail and he says, "Dad, why didn't you just figure out what was bothering me at 5 weeks, my life could have been totally different and I wouldn't be here right now picking scabs off my face and playing Frogger all day"?

And then we gave him a hat.

Problem solved.

"Kids will change your life forever"

I suppose this is true. Certainly everyone around me who has kids enjoyed pointing that out to me over and over again (for my own good I'm sure).  I have a feeling that the more emphatically that advice is given, the more the giver regrets what they lost when they had kids. But for a second, look at the OTHER things in your life that change you and your outlook on the world around you. I haven't been the same since the Oilers traded Gretzky, or since I saw The Shining, or since Gary Cherone joined Van Halen.

Every significant moment or experience in your life changes you permanently, so it's no surprise that having a kid does as well. The thing is, I simply don't care. For example: I used to get up at 6:30, have a coffee and breakfast and watch Sportscentre for a half hour before I went to work. I haven't done this since Nik was born, and I don't miss it. I used to play guitar for 4 or 5 hours at a time, and I don't do this anymore either, but it's my own fault. The less TV I watch at night the more time I would have for music, so it's not my kid but rather my own lack of discipline that steals my time away.

But I do have one piece of advice on this point. Don't have kids until going out at night (every week) gets kind of boring. There will be a day when you walk into your favorite Friday night hangout (mine was The Brunswick House in Toronto) and you'll look around and say to yourself, "Meh, this isn't really for me anymore" (this happened to me when I was 25 and going out to bars just never had the same allure after the Brunny lost it's warm glowing warming glow). Be honest with yourself when this happens. Don't repress the forces of change. You'll be much happier for it.

If you have kids AFTER this point in your life, you can let your mind rest easy knowing you've missed nothing of your youth. If you have kids BEFORE this point, then yeah, you're gonna have to assume you missed some stuff you would have otherwise liked to do. So if you're 18 and still partying like a mad man/woman, wrap up the monkey. Simple as that.

Now also keep in mind that I have an excellent wife, a fairly decent job, lots of generous family and friends, and I live in a city that's clean, safe, and cheap. Having a kid under these circumstances should not be that hard, and it' isn't.

And yes, I AM different, and it HAS affected my life and it HAS thrown off my sleep and my schedule. But I don't care. Even in the 3 weeks I've been a dad, the rewards far outweigh the sacrifices.

The Happiest Day of My Life

When I was in High School, and I had a rough day, I would always tell myself that soon I'd be out of there and wouldn't have to hang out with a bunch of people I didn't like. Then I got to University, and was always broke and struggling to pass my classes (which were pretty damn hard by anyone's standards) and I'd tell myself that soon I'd be a University grad and I could have a job and be done with all this difficulty.
Then when I graduated University, I got a job I didn't like very much, still struggled with money and didn't like the work, the people OR the pay. So I left and proceeded to bounce around to various jobs, some of which I liked but didn't pay, and some of which I disliked - and still didn't pay.

The entire time of course I was trying to succeed as a musician. More precisely, I was trying to make a popular rock band. It's a difficult trick to pull off - particularly if you don't know this one immutable fact about life (which I didn't): Being good at something, even if you're demonstrably better than almost everyone around you, means absolutely nothing if you haven't got luck on your side. I never realized this consciously until years later when I read Malcolm Gladwell's excellent book Outliers. Without paraphrasing the entire thing, I'll say that it showed me that even the most successful people (musicians among them) got where they did not because they were good, but because they were lucky. That's not to say they WEREN'T good. Just that without luck, talent doesn't matter.

Just this month I've turned 35, been laid off from a job I've had for little more than 2 years, bought a house, have a baby on the way and today realized that I'm gonna have to buy a car that I can't afford and will almost certainly hate because the one I have is a money pit. So I'm once again financially under the gun, but with one important difference. Unlike when I was young and ambitious, I now have no reason to believe that my life will ever be financially comfortable. Based on my history, I will never be what psychologists call "self actualized". In short, I'll never have peace of mind about myself and what I've achieved in my life. This comes from having lots of potential and talent but having almost nothing to show for it.

But I digress...

I started thinking, "Have I EVER had peace of mind in my whole life?". I wondered, have I ever felt like I had lived up to my ambitions and achieved the goals I had set for myself when I started playing music? Yes. I had. I felt fully vindicated and at peace for one day. And I remember the exact date.

It was March 29th, 2008. It was a Sunday.

The Ryde was the band I was in at the time, and after nearly 3 years of practicing, playing small clubs and having near misses with labels and agents, we had finally played what I thought would be the gig of our lives. We opened for a (now forgotten) band called Rides Again (the names are ironic, I know) and just blew them out of the water. In fact, we decimated the entire place. No one wanted to follow us on stage. And what's more, a rep from arguably Canada's biggest talent agency was there and couldn't stop telling us how great we were. To boot, I found out the rep was himself a good friend of a guy I knew in University. It looked like the table was set for us to actually make a go of a real career in music. The following day was a feeling like I had never experienced.

Every one of the thousands of hours I had spent practicing the guitar, finding the right band, working the business side of indie rock (which I HATED doing) felt like it was worth it. It felt like I had spent my life in pursuit of something real and possible and that now it was all going to unfold like I wanted it to. I spent the day with my girlfriend (who is now my wife), we had a nice long walk in the morning, a great breakfast, a whole excellent conversation about the night before. It was a totally great day. I was truly at peace.

Clearly, I don't have to tell you that it didn't work out like it was "supposed to". That was the band's peak and everything we did after that seemed to be marred by bad luck, poor decisions and bitterness. Despite repeated attempts to reach him, the rep wouldn't take our calls and when we ran into him a few weeks later, barely remembered who we were. And to make a long story short, I'm now a laid-off electrician.

Not that there aren't up-sides.

I have a wife I love and who undoubtedly loves me (I mean, shit, she must because my life since I've known her has been just a freakin roller-coaster, and not in a good way). I live in a city I like, in a really great house with my wife's sister and her husband (my best friends). I'm healthy (as far as I know) and as I write this, so is my unborn son.

But I tell you, the low days are pretty hard to deal with.

Classic Albums Documentaries on Youtube

I've had a couple of days off work so I've goofed around a bit with my recording software, just trying to learn the ins and outs of Cubase. And in between actually getting stuff done, I've been watching episodes of Classic Albums on Youtube. I watched the one for The Who's Who's Next album, as well as Rush's 2112 and Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon. I don't know why I like them so much but they're all really interesting to me. Having the musicians explain or dissect their process really gives you a peek into their genius, and ironically, it makes them look like just regular dudes who happen to written some great songs.

The thought that keeps occuring to me tho is this: None of these guys made these records while having to hold a day job. In fact, these classic moments in music came after YEARS of practice, performance and preparation. So many resources of time and money went to these guys so they could practice their craft without being encumbered by the worries that the rest of us have to deal with on a daily basis.

And really, I think that's why it's been so hard for me to get going on my own recordings. It must be easy to focus and concentrate when you know that there are thousands of people waiting to hear what you're going to come up with, and when you know your music is at least going to have a shot at being exposed to a pretty large group of sympathetic listeners.

It's quite another thing to write music, and to really put your heart and soul into it, to try and dig out all the emotion that you can when you know whatever you come up with is going to be pretty much ignored by everyone outside your family and close friends. THAT is a tough deal. I mean, I'm even writing this blog right now just to get some thoughts out of my head and "on paper" so to speak. But I'd be foolish to think that any more than 3 people will actually read this.

It's a pretty sad place to be in, really. When you THINK you have so much you want to give to the world, but it will never get past your own circle of friends.

The Four Seasons of Rock

Hey there blog readers,

So it's been another weekend working on turning Vivaldi's Four Seasons into a rock composition, and I thought I'd start this blog to keep whoever's interested updated on the process. There'll be detail about the process of deciphering the actual music in the original piece and getting it into guitar format, the recording equipment I'm using, some copies of my notes, and other such things. But as this is the first blog, I thought I'd tell you why this whole project occurred to me in the first place.

I think we're in the winter of rock 'n roll. It's looking very much like guitar rock is dead or dying (there's LOTS of reasons for this, but that's the subject of another blog), and if it's going to recover and take back it's place as THE culturally important music of the western world, there's gonna have to be a spring-like rebirth. I ponder pop culture a lot. And while I was doing that very thing, a thought about the rock timeline popped into my head. You could look at the history of rock music as going thru 4 distinct phases.

Phase 1 are the early years of rock, starting with Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis (and you gotta include blues and gospel in there too) and moving into the Beatles. This is the Spring of rock and roll. The beginning. The Beatles on Ed Sullivan was the catalyst for thousands of kids to start bands. And in a way, that era after WW2 is the beginning of modern media culture as it coincides with the wide popularization of TV.

Phase 2 is the Summer of rock. This starts somewhere towards the end of the '60's (maybe Woodstock is the first day of summer?) and goes thru the entire 1970's. Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Who, Hendrix, Pink Floyd and even acoustic folk like Dylan, CSNY and that ilk. This is probably when guitar rock was at it's most creative and intense.

Phase 3 starts with 1978 and the release of the first Van Halen album. Over the past decade, VH has eroded their own legacy so much that their influence on hard rock is VASTLY under-rated, but from what I read and hear, when Van Halen was released in Februrary 1978, it signaled a change not only for the sound of guitar rock in the following decade, but it changed everything about what kind of person was interested in that kind of music. Despite the fact that their first record was actually considered too heavy for the average rock listener, it attracted EVERYONE to guitar rock, and the genre became the most popular form of music in the world over the next 15 years. So this signals the end of the summer and the beginning of Autumn, with the year 1984 being a kind of labour day weekend of rock (I know this doesn't exactly fit the sequence of events on a calendar, but allow me this one stretch of the concept). This season starts with Van Halen and includes ZZ Top, Guns 'N Roses, Def Leppard, Ozzy Osbourne's solo career, and Metallica.

The Winter of rock creeps in with Nirvana and truly arrives with the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994. Even tho lots of people see the grunge era as a rebirth of guitar rock, I think Nirvana's success took the wind out the sails of the genre. It became cool to NOT know how to play and sing, and that very quickly killed the grass roots live rock scene ("who want's to see a band that sounds like crap? Let's all just go to a dance club and get laid there.."). On top of that, Cobain killed himself at the height of his popularity, before he could become old and irrelevant, and that basically cast his whole career in bronze and made the legacy of his persona and his music untouchable. To this day, most guitar rock is low on skill and full of what I like to call "fake anger". It isn't about escapism or enjoyment, it's about how bad life is. North American kids don't have any REAL problems as compared to people growing up in, say, Africa or Russia or Iraq - you know, places where violence and starvation are everywhere. To this listener, angry and bitter rock coming out of the richest most prosperous generation in the history of the world seems a bit low on honesty.

ANYWAY... that's the winter of rock: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden (the first wave of actually kinda talented, unique artists) and then their pathetic offspring: Bush, Creed, Puddle of Mudd and 17 years of crapulence, the most recent example being Chad Kreuger's fiefdom of 3 Days Grace, MDD, Nickelback, Thornley, etc.

So there it is - the four seasons of rock! Tune in next time where I actually talk a little about how I'm turning the Vivaldi piece into a reflection of this whole 55 year cycle of guitar music.

Cheers!