A female friend that I communicate with via IM just told me, a few minutes ago, that I have bad taste in women, and that the ones I have my eyes on right now will end up breaking my heart.
I replied, "They ALL do that. They all end up breaking my heart... even the good ones. I'm used to it by now."
She had no reply to that one except to say, "That's not true."
I don't know-- I found the exchange to be somewhat poignant.
I've been looking at old posts, trying to see where I'm going wrong. It all started to go downhill in September, when I met up with Eve again.
Time to disappear, maybe?
Monday, January 31, 2005
MUSIC DAY
What goes up must come down, right?
Friday night saw me stressed and maxed to my limit. Paulie has been riding me like a Palomino trying to get the last-minute details done regarding the press packet we are designing for the animation; I received calls from two bands that I am in, their respective hiatuses ending around the same time; everyone has been adjusting to new schedules and routines, myself included; and I started to feel like I should pull one of my patented Disappearing Acts, where I go off by myself and don't make any contact for a week or so.
Just when I was sure I was going crazy, I stopped and realized something: I'm already crazy.
Not to trivialize the plight of those with genuine mental illnesses, but I've always known that I'm a bit off my rocker. Five planets in Aquarius attest to this. I can function fine in society, but my neuroses and deep-seated narcissism make it really difficult to do so with ease. I was raised by a manic-depressive father and my mother aka "the emotional whirlwind". I was addicted to phenobarbitol by age five.
I'm not using these as excuses. I'm just stating facts.
But that's why I am only suited to be an artist-- creating something is a pacifier for me, the only way to subdue me without having to drug me, feed me, or fuck me.
I needed to do something crazy, but not too crazy. I don't want to be locked up in an asylum. I just needed to break out of my rut.
And I did.
Saturday was my Music Day, a day where I got up knowing where I had to go and what I had to do, and it was all creative for the most part. I walked out of the house with my bass in my hand (I still haven't purchased a proper carrying case) listening to "Rebel Rebel" in the MP3 player. I made it to Elle's place around 1pm, ready to drop basslines.
Elle and I worked for a solid hour, interrupted only by her neighbor asking her if she wanted to go to a movie later on. Then, Katie showed up, ready to get down. She and Elle had been up all night, recording song ideas in Pro Tools and drinking a lot of coffee.
I threw down some vintage fuzz-guitar on one punkish tune that Katie had written, and I also slung my bass on a few tracks. I am the type of player who does what you tell me, but sneaks in the real good shit when you're not looking. The girls were wowed by my contributions, and I was bashfully appreciative.
Katie was still amped from the night before, and her energy was infectious. Up until that point, however, I still didn't know her very well, and this was the first time I'd seen any of them in some weeks. But Saturday was different, because it was also the day that I agreed to help Katie move stuff out of her storage space and into her new apartment.
Peter, Paulie's brother, aided me with his truck as we made the trip over to the storage. It took us about an hour to load and unload the goods. Then, Peter busted out with some sushi as we sat around and talked about music.
Katie is like a hyperactive child, giddy from inspiration and never without a thing to say or an idea to flesh out. She is a million laughs, and also demonstrates a streak of untouchable genius. All I could do or say was not enough against her onslaught of words and opinions, in-jokes and flights of fancy, out-loud ruminations and too-much-info ravings...
She was very grateful for our help, but then I had to go to a rehearsal with ICON, one of the bands I was playing in last year. This was our first rehearsal for 2005, and I was curious to see what was going to happen.
"See if you can stop by Elle's again after practice," Katie said, jazzed at the results of our collaborations earlier.
"Well, I have to see Eve tonight," I said, "but if it ends early then, sure, I'll call you two."
Eve and I had plans Friday night, but she was "too tired" to deal with me. We re-scheduled for Saturday, but things are still weird between us. She has been stressed out more than usual, and I was going temporarily nuts for a spell. But I also sense her pushing me away, and it makes me mad. I am mad because that's all she does with everyone in her life-- she pushes them away when she's sure she doesn't need anything from them. I offer her my help and my time, but now she doesn't want it, when she needs it most.
Stupid pride. I should know, I'm a pretty proud person myself.
I had an explosive session with ICON. We tried working on the old set, but it wasn't happening. We tried new songs, though, and they were fucking incredible. The guitars were as hard as sliced steel, the drums were the cascade of garbage cans raining down from a rooftop in perfect rhythm, and my bass was the grunts and groans of a balrog emerging from the depth of sub-Hell...
I called Eve, and she said she would meet me at my place. Buddha, the drummer for ICON, had to leave in a hurry and dropped me off at my apartment, just in time to receive Eve.
Eve first and foremost handed me the last bits of retouching that she had to do. There was a bit of finality to it, as if this was the last thing she was ever going to do for the project.
We drank some brews, smoked some pot and watched The Simpsons. Then, she told me that Dick, her ex, had come to her door the night before. She had to fend him off by threatening him with a crowbar. He went away, but not before saying that he had his friends following her, in addition to himself.
I didn't know what to say. At this point, it's obvious to me that if she continues to pussy-foot around, she will never get rid of him. I wonder if she even wants to get rid of him. There's nothing I can do, and she hasn't asked me to help, and if I offer my help she pushes me away...
I reassured her that she had a place to stay if things went down badly, but how will that solve anything? All I know is, something would've definitely happened if she and I had kept our plans for Friday, because I would've been there to deal with Dick. But there's a part of me that wonders if she called off our plans after she dealt with him...
It doesn't matter-- I can see that she is pushing me away, because I've known her for over 13 years. But, unlike those days of old (when we were both kids) I have grown up some, and I managed to live without her, even as she haunted me out of every corner of my eye...
Maybe this is the end of our chapter. It would be nice to leave it on a high note. And even though things are weird between us, at least we are on fairly good terms.
So, if she wants it the way it was before, then who am I to protest?
If this is how she wants it, then it was nice while it lasted. Oh well. It's not like we were dating or anything like that.
And, you can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved.
We were silent, as we watched TV, only laughing occasionally. Then, inexplicably, she got up and said she had to go. Is she still punishing me for not giving her credit on a cartoon that she has only contributed to in small ways?
If I were attached to her, then her departure would've devastated me. But life is hard, and it's tough, and it has no pity. If you're not prepared to deal with the unfair aspects, then you shouldn't even leave the house.
So, while her leaving was a definite rejection, I still had options open to me. I called Katie and Elle, and they picked me up, and we worked on music until 2am.
And I made friends with Katie that Saturday evening. She may be a bit of a dynamo but she is also a new face, a fresh perspective, a different person than the people I usually meet. I'm still out of her league, I think, but she made me smile and laugh more times than I care to admit.
I think she has a better idea of who I am and what I am all about. She noted my annoying habit of referencing everything with useless trivia: "Oh, that sounds like Blondie circa Parallel Lines" or "That song has got The Velvet Underground written all over it" or "Ever heard of Papas Fritas? This reminds me of that..."
She also noted that I am 31, not in my mid-twenties. I look young, what can I say? I still get carded for alcohol in liquor stores.
She forced me to define what it is that I bring to the band. I was at a loss for words, for the first time. I knew what I wanted to say, but couldn't get it out. She playfully mocked me for not being forthcoming. I laughed-- if she only knew how much of a chatterbox I could be...
I finally said, "OK, you can put on the website that I have an elastic, intuitive style..."
"Cool," Katie said. "I put down that your 'bass interpretations' were part of our sound... is that corny or what?" She laughed at herself and her refusal to be embarassed by anyhing.
Then, she drove me home. We listened to the songs in her car. We bonded. She even asked me about my own demos, which we hadn't had any time to check out. But I was somewhat touched-- she actually asked me about my own music. Elle has never done that; Holly certainly never did, and only after I made her listen to a CD of mine did she ever offer any feedback; and even though I've shown Eve how to play the bass, she has never asked me about my music either.
That means something to me. For even though I am a man, I do possess feelings... very sensitive feelings. And one of the reasons why I refrain from showing emotions is that I am surrounded by selfish people who all want a piece of me because of my quiet reticence, my refusal to hog the spotlight, my insistence on being fair.
And when I don't measure up to what they want from me, they are quick to write me off.
I went home and slept, waking the next day to take it easy. I called Eve, and she said she was going to spend Sunday with her family. Fine. I called Bro Man, and showed him how to use his sampler more effectively. He and I worked on music and watched Chapelle's Show all day.
I'm still trying to make him a dope MC. Progress has been slow but steady. I'm loving every minute of it.
Katie reminded me that sometimes it feels good to work on music for free. It also helps that Katie (and Paulie, who talked to Elle about her musical goals) pushed Elle into another direction, one that is a little harder, edgier, with more attitude and with a darkness that I can really dig.
And, of course, I am crazy, for doing what I do, for doing it all for free, for letting people bug me about credit this and deadline that...
That never goes away. But what does eventually disappear is the insecurity of living this life, with all of its uncertainty, all of its unpredictability, all of its insanity...
When I'm playing bass and two beautiful girls are smiling and joyful because I'm hitting all of the right notes, then who needs to be validated with birthday gifts and kisses?
Hell, if I'd been jamming all weekend around the time of my birthday, I wouldn't have been depressed at all.
And now, to add to my rejuvenation, I find that I have $100 extra in my paycheck, thanks to the extra long pay schedule for this month.
I'm ready to take on the world, and anyone who wants to bring me down is just going to have to try harder... and even then, they'll have to give up after a while, because I'm not stopping.
Not for a minute.
Friday night saw me stressed and maxed to my limit. Paulie has been riding me like a Palomino trying to get the last-minute details done regarding the press packet we are designing for the animation; I received calls from two bands that I am in, their respective hiatuses ending around the same time; everyone has been adjusting to new schedules and routines, myself included; and I started to feel like I should pull one of my patented Disappearing Acts, where I go off by myself and don't make any contact for a week or so.
Just when I was sure I was going crazy, I stopped and realized something: I'm already crazy.
Not to trivialize the plight of those with genuine mental illnesses, but I've always known that I'm a bit off my rocker. Five planets in Aquarius attest to this. I can function fine in society, but my neuroses and deep-seated narcissism make it really difficult to do so with ease. I was raised by a manic-depressive father and my mother aka "the emotional whirlwind". I was addicted to phenobarbitol by age five.
I'm not using these as excuses. I'm just stating facts.
But that's why I am only suited to be an artist-- creating something is a pacifier for me, the only way to subdue me without having to drug me, feed me, or fuck me.
I needed to do something crazy, but not too crazy. I don't want to be locked up in an asylum. I just needed to break out of my rut.
And I did.
Saturday was my Music Day, a day where I got up knowing where I had to go and what I had to do, and it was all creative for the most part. I walked out of the house with my bass in my hand (I still haven't purchased a proper carrying case) listening to "Rebel Rebel" in the MP3 player. I made it to Elle's place around 1pm, ready to drop basslines.
Elle and I worked for a solid hour, interrupted only by her neighbor asking her if she wanted to go to a movie later on. Then, Katie showed up, ready to get down. She and Elle had been up all night, recording song ideas in Pro Tools and drinking a lot of coffee.
I threw down some vintage fuzz-guitar on one punkish tune that Katie had written, and I also slung my bass on a few tracks. I am the type of player who does what you tell me, but sneaks in the real good shit when you're not looking. The girls were wowed by my contributions, and I was bashfully appreciative.
Katie was still amped from the night before, and her energy was infectious. Up until that point, however, I still didn't know her very well, and this was the first time I'd seen any of them in some weeks. But Saturday was different, because it was also the day that I agreed to help Katie move stuff out of her storage space and into her new apartment.
Peter, Paulie's brother, aided me with his truck as we made the trip over to the storage. It took us about an hour to load and unload the goods. Then, Peter busted out with some sushi as we sat around and talked about music.
Katie is like a hyperactive child, giddy from inspiration and never without a thing to say or an idea to flesh out. She is a million laughs, and also demonstrates a streak of untouchable genius. All I could do or say was not enough against her onslaught of words and opinions, in-jokes and flights of fancy, out-loud ruminations and too-much-info ravings...
She was very grateful for our help, but then I had to go to a rehearsal with ICON, one of the bands I was playing in last year. This was our first rehearsal for 2005, and I was curious to see what was going to happen.
"See if you can stop by Elle's again after practice," Katie said, jazzed at the results of our collaborations earlier.
"Well, I have to see Eve tonight," I said, "but if it ends early then, sure, I'll call you two."
Eve and I had plans Friday night, but she was "too tired" to deal with me. We re-scheduled for Saturday, but things are still weird between us. She has been stressed out more than usual, and I was going temporarily nuts for a spell. But I also sense her pushing me away, and it makes me mad. I am mad because that's all she does with everyone in her life-- she pushes them away when she's sure she doesn't need anything from them. I offer her my help and my time, but now she doesn't want it, when she needs it most.
Stupid pride. I should know, I'm a pretty proud person myself.
I had an explosive session with ICON. We tried working on the old set, but it wasn't happening. We tried new songs, though, and they were fucking incredible. The guitars were as hard as sliced steel, the drums were the cascade of garbage cans raining down from a rooftop in perfect rhythm, and my bass was the grunts and groans of a balrog emerging from the depth of sub-Hell...
I called Eve, and she said she would meet me at my place. Buddha, the drummer for ICON, had to leave in a hurry and dropped me off at my apartment, just in time to receive Eve.
Eve first and foremost handed me the last bits of retouching that she had to do. There was a bit of finality to it, as if this was the last thing she was ever going to do for the project.
We drank some brews, smoked some pot and watched The Simpsons. Then, she told me that Dick, her ex, had come to her door the night before. She had to fend him off by threatening him with a crowbar. He went away, but not before saying that he had his friends following her, in addition to himself.
I didn't know what to say. At this point, it's obvious to me that if she continues to pussy-foot around, she will never get rid of him. I wonder if she even wants to get rid of him. There's nothing I can do, and she hasn't asked me to help, and if I offer my help she pushes me away...
I reassured her that she had a place to stay if things went down badly, but how will that solve anything? All I know is, something would've definitely happened if she and I had kept our plans for Friday, because I would've been there to deal with Dick. But there's a part of me that wonders if she called off our plans after she dealt with him...
It doesn't matter-- I can see that she is pushing me away, because I've known her for over 13 years. But, unlike those days of old (when we were both kids) I have grown up some, and I managed to live without her, even as she haunted me out of every corner of my eye...
Maybe this is the end of our chapter. It would be nice to leave it on a high note. And even though things are weird between us, at least we are on fairly good terms.
So, if she wants it the way it was before, then who am I to protest?
If this is how she wants it, then it was nice while it lasted. Oh well. It's not like we were dating or anything like that.
And, you can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved.
We were silent, as we watched TV, only laughing occasionally. Then, inexplicably, she got up and said she had to go. Is she still punishing me for not giving her credit on a cartoon that she has only contributed to in small ways?
If I were attached to her, then her departure would've devastated me. But life is hard, and it's tough, and it has no pity. If you're not prepared to deal with the unfair aspects, then you shouldn't even leave the house.
So, while her leaving was a definite rejection, I still had options open to me. I called Katie and Elle, and they picked me up, and we worked on music until 2am.
And I made friends with Katie that Saturday evening. She may be a bit of a dynamo but she is also a new face, a fresh perspective, a different person than the people I usually meet. I'm still out of her league, I think, but she made me smile and laugh more times than I care to admit.
I think she has a better idea of who I am and what I am all about. She noted my annoying habit of referencing everything with useless trivia: "Oh, that sounds like Blondie circa Parallel Lines" or "That song has got The Velvet Underground written all over it" or "Ever heard of Papas Fritas? This reminds me of that..."
She also noted that I am 31, not in my mid-twenties. I look young, what can I say? I still get carded for alcohol in liquor stores.
She forced me to define what it is that I bring to the band. I was at a loss for words, for the first time. I knew what I wanted to say, but couldn't get it out. She playfully mocked me for not being forthcoming. I laughed-- if she only knew how much of a chatterbox I could be...
I finally said, "OK, you can put on the website that I have an elastic, intuitive style..."
"Cool," Katie said. "I put down that your 'bass interpretations' were part of our sound... is that corny or what?" She laughed at herself and her refusal to be embarassed by anyhing.
Then, she drove me home. We listened to the songs in her car. We bonded. She even asked me about my own demos, which we hadn't had any time to check out. But I was somewhat touched-- she actually asked me about my own music. Elle has never done that; Holly certainly never did, and only after I made her listen to a CD of mine did she ever offer any feedback; and even though I've shown Eve how to play the bass, she has never asked me about my music either.
That means something to me. For even though I am a man, I do possess feelings... very sensitive feelings. And one of the reasons why I refrain from showing emotions is that I am surrounded by selfish people who all want a piece of me because of my quiet reticence, my refusal to hog the spotlight, my insistence on being fair.
And when I don't measure up to what they want from me, they are quick to write me off.
I went home and slept, waking the next day to take it easy. I called Eve, and she said she was going to spend Sunday with her family. Fine. I called Bro Man, and showed him how to use his sampler more effectively. He and I worked on music and watched Chapelle's Show all day.
I'm still trying to make him a dope MC. Progress has been slow but steady. I'm loving every minute of it.
Katie reminded me that sometimes it feels good to work on music for free. It also helps that Katie (and Paulie, who talked to Elle about her musical goals) pushed Elle into another direction, one that is a little harder, edgier, with more attitude and with a darkness that I can really dig.
And, of course, I am crazy, for doing what I do, for doing it all for free, for letting people bug me about credit this and deadline that...
That never goes away. But what does eventually disappear is the insecurity of living this life, with all of its uncertainty, all of its unpredictability, all of its insanity...
When I'm playing bass and two beautiful girls are smiling and joyful because I'm hitting all of the right notes, then who needs to be validated with birthday gifts and kisses?
Hell, if I'd been jamming all weekend around the time of my birthday, I wouldn't have been depressed at all.
And now, to add to my rejuvenation, I find that I have $100 extra in my paycheck, thanks to the extra long pay schedule for this month.
I'm ready to take on the world, and anyone who wants to bring me down is just going to have to try harder... and even then, they'll have to give up after a while, because I'm not stopping.
Not for a minute.
Friday, January 28, 2005
"JFK II: THE BUSH CONNECTION"
There's this thing circulating online...
A pirate DVD or something...
I already know what it's all about, being the conspiracy hobbyist that I am...
I already know who it implicates and for what reasons...
I don't care to argue whether it is propaganda or not, whether it's true or not...
I just love the fact that, when you pop that puppy into your DVD player, instead of an FBI warning instructing you not to copy it, you see a placard encouraging you to copy it and pass it on...
Just like Fahrenheit 9/11, there isn't much new info contained in the movie. It's just a compilation of information. It may seem new to you, but not to me, thanks to my obsession with all things political. It's up to the viewer to decide whether they believe it or not.
Right-wingers and red-staters are revelling in their victory, making claims that people like Michael Moore "failed" in their mission to usurp the status quo. Well, when the underground documentaries and homemade exposes start swelling online and in the streets, it's obvious that the right-wingers didn't even know what Moore's mission was to begin with-- hopefully, this isn't the last we'll see of such movies.
Nowadays, anyone with a computer, some equipment, and some know-how can make their own propaganda. Moore has helped launch a thousand other Moores, a thousand Oliver Stones and Errol Morrises.
See it for yourself, make up your own mind. I've already argued it online, so don't bring it to me unless you wanna see me go ballistic.
One last thing: Last night, as Paulie and I were recording the Audio Commentary for the cartoon DVD, one of his friends who works as a road manager for a certain gangsta rapper who recently gave up smoking weed but went back to it (bow wow wow yippee yo yippee yay) was hanging out as another friend, who was a staunch Republican up until recently, was raving about this pirate DVD that I mentioned earlier.
I made a comment along the lines of, "Y'all don't even know the half. These people are lowlife motherfuckers."
The road manager dude looked at me, nodded, and said, "Their time is coming soon. They'll get theirs, you can bet on it."
And I smiled.
When the dude left, I gave him a pound and a hug. He didn't know how much that little bit of verbiage helped me out. It was like hearing that there is hope, even if it isn't grounded in anything real or tangible.
So I say unto you, before you embark on your weekend: Just remember, their time is coming soon. They'll get theirs, you can bet on it.
There's hope.
HAVE A NICE WEEKEND
A pirate DVD or something...
I already know what it's all about, being the conspiracy hobbyist that I am...
I already know who it implicates and for what reasons...
I don't care to argue whether it is propaganda or not, whether it's true or not...
I just love the fact that, when you pop that puppy into your DVD player, instead of an FBI warning instructing you not to copy it, you see a placard encouraging you to copy it and pass it on...
Just like Fahrenheit 9/11, there isn't much new info contained in the movie. It's just a compilation of information. It may seem new to you, but not to me, thanks to my obsession with all things political. It's up to the viewer to decide whether they believe it or not.
Right-wingers and red-staters are revelling in their victory, making claims that people like Michael Moore "failed" in their mission to usurp the status quo. Well, when the underground documentaries and homemade exposes start swelling online and in the streets, it's obvious that the right-wingers didn't even know what Moore's mission was to begin with-- hopefully, this isn't the last we'll see of such movies.
Nowadays, anyone with a computer, some equipment, and some know-how can make their own propaganda. Moore has helped launch a thousand other Moores, a thousand Oliver Stones and Errol Morrises.
See it for yourself, make up your own mind. I've already argued it online, so don't bring it to me unless you wanna see me go ballistic.
One last thing: Last night, as Paulie and I were recording the Audio Commentary for the cartoon DVD, one of his friends who works as a road manager for a certain gangsta rapper who recently gave up smoking weed but went back to it (bow wow wow yippee yo yippee yay) was hanging out as another friend, who was a staunch Republican up until recently, was raving about this pirate DVD that I mentioned earlier.
I made a comment along the lines of, "Y'all don't even know the half. These people are lowlife motherfuckers."
The road manager dude looked at me, nodded, and said, "Their time is coming soon. They'll get theirs, you can bet on it."
And I smiled.
When the dude left, I gave him a pound and a hug. He didn't know how much that little bit of verbiage helped me out. It was like hearing that there is hope, even if it isn't grounded in anything real or tangible.
So I say unto you, before you embark on your weekend: Just remember, their time is coming soon. They'll get theirs, you can bet on it.
There's hope.
HAVE A NICE WEEKEND
Thursday, January 27, 2005
CHICKEN McNUGGETS
Probably the number one question I get from anyone concerning my blog is:
"Does Eve read your blog?"
No, she doesn't, thank God. Her job doesn't allow her much web-surfing time, and she doesn't have Internet access at home. But I wonder what she would say if she ever found my blog and read what I've written. I think she'd be pissed at first, because she would see it as a violation of her privacy. However, I've been wise to not give EVERYTHING away... and of course, it's all just my version of events anyway. If there's one thing Eve accepts about me, it's my out-of-control ego and the way I tweak things in order to fit my artistic agenda.
For example, I'm not afraid to make myself look bad, because it adds a dimension to my blog persona. When I was "Sex McGinty", I would go far out of my way to offend and put people off. But writing as "James", I am less inclined to use this blog as a bully pulpit or an attack forum.
As a rule, if someone reads my blog, I don't refer to them in detail. I learned my lesson regarding this early on-- it can be a terrible thing to know that you are being referred to on a blog that the whole world has an opportunity to see.
Luckily, I'm not read by a large number of people. The count has never gone into triple digits, as of this writing.
*/*
The hardest thing for me is to let things go. I got banned yet again from the Los Angeles version of Craig's List, after harassing someone. I was doing so good, not posting, not starting shit for a spell. But then last month, my nemesis-- a guy who calls himself "G______" --started posting again, and I went after him. I had him on the run-- you see, through strange circumstances I ended up with that guy's personal info one day. He sent me an e-mail and I had his real name and where he was posting from, so I did a very very bad thing and I posted his personal stats on CL RnR.
I guessed he complained to them, because I was banned instantly, and all of my posts were deleted.
To top it off, he's been gloating about "winning" the battle between us, which makes me mad because he basically tattled on me, like a little kid. Of course, it wasn't very mature of me to out his true identity, but this dude was claiming he knew who I was, and when I dared him to out me, he backpedaled.
God, I need to get a life... fighting with computer geeks online is like snatching bags from little kids on Halloween.
*/*
Thanks to all those who have been to the animation site. I expect to re-vamp the entire site in less than a month. I've been doing it the hard way-- someone is going to give me a copy of Dreamweaver, which will instantly fix at least half of the flaws that are present.
Thanks also to those who gave advice and tips-- I read every e-mail I get, and I take it all to heart. No one has given me spurious advice or unrealistic opinions. It's good to know that the people who still read this ragtag blog are generous with their expertise and their knowledge.
In the radio biz, I have become acclimated to engineers and techies who don't want to share their know-how. They are scared of being replaced or passed up by quick learners. They treat their jobs and duties like Masonic rites, trade secrets that can never be revealed to the unilluminated.
Personally, I think it's wiser to make allies and to encourage people to learn more. Not everyone in the biz is an info hog. I give mad props to those who are truly helpful, who have nothing but good intentions and my best interests at heart.
Those are the people who, if this animation thing takes off, will not be forgotten by me. I never forget what people have done for me, even if (as I explained in yesterday's post) I sometimes don't seem to give proper credit where it's due.
*/*
One of my all-time favorite personal hip-hop moments was way back in the mid-'90's, well after the Black Love years had faded.
I was at a Cal Arts party, having been invited by Sharky's younger brother, who was attending the school. At one point, an MC was up on an outdoor stage, busting rhymes. The MC was skilled, in the sense that his rhymes were witty, and his flow was the standard backpacker style that is popular in the underground-- the kind of flow where the MC is trying to stuff as many words as he can into one verse.
His mic handling was hindering him, however. The way he was holding the mic, no one could hear him or make out what he was saying. I asked someone in the back if anyone could bust a verse, and he said, "Sure." So I waited my turn.
The one thing I noticed was that no one was engaged by this MC. I think it was because he sounded like everyone else, or perhaps he just couldn't be heard through the PA system. He was competent, at least in my estimation, but the crowd was not responding. And if you ask me, that's a shame, because as Rakim once said, "MC to me means 'Move the Crowd'"...
So when I got up on the mic, I instantly started my shit off with some Ol' School shiznit:
"Throw your motherfuckin' hands in the aaaaaaiiiiiirrrrr
And wave 'em like you just don't caaaaaaarrrrrree
Sombody say HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
Everybody said "Ho!" and raised their hands in the air. My voice carries very well, so everyone heard me loud and clear. The work was halfway done.
Then I recited an old verse I'd written from my high school days, a verse that was meant to be a parody of gangsta rap. I was always fascinated with the fact that these so-called "gangstas" were rapping about crimes that, most likely, still fell under some sort of jurisdiction. I mean, what is the statute of limitations on a gangsta rap verse anyway?
Couldn't their rhymes be used against them in a court of law?
So this is how my verse went:
"Eight O' Clock on the corner of Slausson
I have beef and I'm gonna start tossin' up
suckaz who step in my path-- they feel the wrath
when I pull the motherfuckin' trigger and laugh
Saturday, June 5th, 1989
You already know the time
In the morning I contemplated yelling out a warning
before I smoked the motherfucker..."
Note that I already used 'motherfucker' twice, and the last line of that verse didn't even rhyme!
"...But no, that would give me away,
So I pulled out the 9 millimeter and the A-K
I grabbed a clip and put it in my gun
The registration number read 6-7-5-zero-3-1
I got out of the car, it was a brown sedan
The license read R-double-Z-4-ten
I stood across the street from the liquor store
There was going to be an all-out gang war..."
Hold on, wait a minute-- it gets better.
"I had on some Reebok Pumps and some Levi's
a blue tank top and a hat to disguise
myself as I loaded up to clock on that sucker
Premeditated to the motherfucker
I shot that fool in the chest then I ran for the car
'cause the cops would be lookin' for a crook
so I booked and I drove to my secret hideaway--
Twenty-two Twenty-two Twin Oaks Way
All I remember was a flash of red
as I put the murder weapon underneath my bed
and I kept it there ever since that day
The fingerprints matched and so did the DNA
I didn't mean to leave my wallet as a clue
I shoulda popped the guy with the camera too
And even as I ran for the border
I got stopped by a TV reporter..."
And so on.
The rap ended with me getting away scot-free, despite giving an interview with a news crew, taking out a full-page ad in the Times, and basically confessing to a vicious gang murder. I thought it was pretty funny at the time, and the crowd was all into it. They applauded me, much more than they applauded the other MC, who I thought was pretty good and deserved more accolades.
However, when you're an MC, you're the Master of Ceremonies. You gotta make the crowd love you. You won't be able to win everybody over, but you still have to try.
Later on, Sharky's younger bro informed me that a few girls he was hanging with were upset at my rhymes. They thought I was actually promoting gang violence.
I laughed and said, "The rest of the crowd was diggin' it. Weren't they paying attention to what I was actually saying?"
I guess there's some things you can't learn in college...
"Does Eve read your blog?"
No, she doesn't, thank God. Her job doesn't allow her much web-surfing time, and she doesn't have Internet access at home. But I wonder what she would say if she ever found my blog and read what I've written. I think she'd be pissed at first, because she would see it as a violation of her privacy. However, I've been wise to not give EVERYTHING away... and of course, it's all just my version of events anyway. If there's one thing Eve accepts about me, it's my out-of-control ego and the way I tweak things in order to fit my artistic agenda.
For example, I'm not afraid to make myself look bad, because it adds a dimension to my blog persona. When I was "Sex McGinty", I would go far out of my way to offend and put people off. But writing as "James", I am less inclined to use this blog as a bully pulpit or an attack forum.
As a rule, if someone reads my blog, I don't refer to them in detail. I learned my lesson regarding this early on-- it can be a terrible thing to know that you are being referred to on a blog that the whole world has an opportunity to see.
Luckily, I'm not read by a large number of people. The count has never gone into triple digits, as of this writing.
*/*
The hardest thing for me is to let things go. I got banned yet again from the Los Angeles version of Craig's List, after harassing someone. I was doing so good, not posting, not starting shit for a spell. But then last month, my nemesis-- a guy who calls himself "G______" --started posting again, and I went after him. I had him on the run-- you see, through strange circumstances I ended up with that guy's personal info one day. He sent me an e-mail and I had his real name and where he was posting from, so I did a very very bad thing and I posted his personal stats on CL RnR.
I guessed he complained to them, because I was banned instantly, and all of my posts were deleted.
To top it off, he's been gloating about "winning" the battle between us, which makes me mad because he basically tattled on me, like a little kid. Of course, it wasn't very mature of me to out his true identity, but this dude was claiming he knew who I was, and when I dared him to out me, he backpedaled.
God, I need to get a life... fighting with computer geeks online is like snatching bags from little kids on Halloween.
*/*
Thanks to all those who have been to the animation site. I expect to re-vamp the entire site in less than a month. I've been doing it the hard way-- someone is going to give me a copy of Dreamweaver, which will instantly fix at least half of the flaws that are present.
Thanks also to those who gave advice and tips-- I read every e-mail I get, and I take it all to heart. No one has given me spurious advice or unrealistic opinions. It's good to know that the people who still read this ragtag blog are generous with their expertise and their knowledge.
In the radio biz, I have become acclimated to engineers and techies who don't want to share their know-how. They are scared of being replaced or passed up by quick learners. They treat their jobs and duties like Masonic rites, trade secrets that can never be revealed to the unilluminated.
Personally, I think it's wiser to make allies and to encourage people to learn more. Not everyone in the biz is an info hog. I give mad props to those who are truly helpful, who have nothing but good intentions and my best interests at heart.
Those are the people who, if this animation thing takes off, will not be forgotten by me. I never forget what people have done for me, even if (as I explained in yesterday's post) I sometimes don't seem to give proper credit where it's due.
*/*
One of my all-time favorite personal hip-hop moments was way back in the mid-'90's, well after the Black Love years had faded.
I was at a Cal Arts party, having been invited by Sharky's younger brother, who was attending the school. At one point, an MC was up on an outdoor stage, busting rhymes. The MC was skilled, in the sense that his rhymes were witty, and his flow was the standard backpacker style that is popular in the underground-- the kind of flow where the MC is trying to stuff as many words as he can into one verse.
His mic handling was hindering him, however. The way he was holding the mic, no one could hear him or make out what he was saying. I asked someone in the back if anyone could bust a verse, and he said, "Sure." So I waited my turn.
The one thing I noticed was that no one was engaged by this MC. I think it was because he sounded like everyone else, or perhaps he just couldn't be heard through the PA system. He was competent, at least in my estimation, but the crowd was not responding. And if you ask me, that's a shame, because as Rakim once said, "MC to me means 'Move the Crowd'"...
So when I got up on the mic, I instantly started my shit off with some Ol' School shiznit:
"Throw your motherfuckin' hands in the aaaaaaiiiiiirrrrr
And wave 'em like you just don't caaaaaaarrrrrree
Sombody say HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
Everybody said "Ho!" and raised their hands in the air. My voice carries very well, so everyone heard me loud and clear. The work was halfway done.
Then I recited an old verse I'd written from my high school days, a verse that was meant to be a parody of gangsta rap. I was always fascinated with the fact that these so-called "gangstas" were rapping about crimes that, most likely, still fell under some sort of jurisdiction. I mean, what is the statute of limitations on a gangsta rap verse anyway?
Couldn't their rhymes be used against them in a court of law?
So this is how my verse went:
"Eight O' Clock on the corner of Slausson
I have beef and I'm gonna start tossin' up
suckaz who step in my path-- they feel the wrath
when I pull the motherfuckin' trigger and laugh
Saturday, June 5th, 1989
You already know the time
In the morning I contemplated yelling out a warning
before I smoked the motherfucker..."
Note that I already used 'motherfucker' twice, and the last line of that verse didn't even rhyme!
"...But no, that would give me away,
So I pulled out the 9 millimeter and the A-K
I grabbed a clip and put it in my gun
The registration number read 6-7-5-zero-3-1
I got out of the car, it was a brown sedan
The license read R-double-Z-4-ten
I stood across the street from the liquor store
There was going to be an all-out gang war..."
Hold on, wait a minute-- it gets better.
"I had on some Reebok Pumps and some Levi's
a blue tank top and a hat to disguise
myself as I loaded up to clock on that sucker
Premeditated to the motherfucker
I shot that fool in the chest then I ran for the car
'cause the cops would be lookin' for a crook
so I booked and I drove to my secret hideaway--
Twenty-two Twenty-two Twin Oaks Way
All I remember was a flash of red
as I put the murder weapon underneath my bed
and I kept it there ever since that day
The fingerprints matched and so did the DNA
I didn't mean to leave my wallet as a clue
I shoulda popped the guy with the camera too
And even as I ran for the border
I got stopped by a TV reporter..."
And so on.
The rap ended with me getting away scot-free, despite giving an interview with a news crew, taking out a full-page ad in the Times, and basically confessing to a vicious gang murder. I thought it was pretty funny at the time, and the crowd was all into it. They applauded me, much more than they applauded the other MC, who I thought was pretty good and deserved more accolades.
However, when you're an MC, you're the Master of Ceremonies. You gotta make the crowd love you. You won't be able to win everybody over, but you still have to try.
Later on, Sharky's younger bro informed me that a few girls he was hanging with were upset at my rhymes. They thought I was actually promoting gang violence.
I laughed and said, "The rest of the crowd was diggin' it. Weren't they paying attention to what I was actually saying?"
I guess there's some things you can't learn in college...
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
TRUST
I have been resisting the urge to write about my birthday for a number of reasons:
1. My birthday is that peculiar time of year where my sense of humility mixes uncomfortably with my healthy ego. I find myself wanting to advertise my birthday but nauseated by the fact that I am insecure enough to announce to everyone in earshot that my birthday approaches.
2. I see my birthday as a litmus test. If I don't say anything and someone remembers my birthday, in my mind they pass the test. However, even the best of us (myself included) forget birth dates, and so I have no one but myself to blame if a friend of mine is so preoccupied with their own life that they forgot to wish me well.
3. My self-esteem is damaged enough that sometimes I wish I'd never been born at all. And now, with the added weight of being 31, I am increasingly finding little joy in the passage of time. I mean, I like being in my 30s, but only for the remaining part of the year.
4. I often feel that birthday celebrations are more about the people around you than for the actual birthday person. Many times (this year included) I feel as if I didn't even have to be in the room for everyone else to have a good time.
5. It's been hard to top my 21st birthday year, documented recently in one of my hip-hop posts. That was a lot of fun. I've had some decent runners-up (including a 26th birthday hummer that made my eyes roll in the back of my head) but nothing has ever superceded turning 21 at the exact moment that my band was taking the stage.
So, with all that in mind, let me tell you how it went this year.
Celebrations started Friday, the 21st. I went to work, expecting to hear from Eve later on. I hadn't had a chance to hang out with her one-on-one all that week, even though we'd seen each other a few times. We worked on the cartoon at the shop and I gave her a computer to take home so she could work on certain things; we also went out for dinner on Nona's birthday with Paulie and company. Thursday, I didn't talk to her at all, because she had her acting class to attend.
I called her around 7pm, but she didn't pick up. I decided to call her right before I left work. If I didn't hear from her, I would just go straight to The Garage. Half an hour later, as I was getting ready to leave, I called again. She didn't pick up. I left her a message, telling her where I 'd be.
I got to The Garage, and was greeted with a warm welcome by Paulie and Nona. They had some cool gifts for me: a can of Life Cast, a plaster mold maker used for special effects in horror movies, and three DVDs-- Chappelle's Show First Season, Dr. Strangelove Special Edition, and a double-disc collection of classic B-rated horror movies starring Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Jack Nicholson.
I was feeling good until I realized that Nona and Paulie thought my birthday was that day. When I told them it was the following day, they felt a little awkward. I didn't mean to rain on the parade, but it seems that people can never remember the actual day. They always think it's the 21st or the 23rd. I mean, how hard can it be to remember the 22nd? Two twos? The anal-retentive analytical side of my brain goes crazy pondering it.
I felt even worse when the night progressed and Eve hadn't even called me. Peter, Paulie's brother, gave me a ride home and I checked my messages-- no word from her. This was making me heartsick, because she knew that I was going to be up in Lancaster the following day, and that I wouldn't be around on the weekend. I knew she didn't forget my actual birthday, because she was the one person I'd actually talked to about it. Specifically, I'd told her not to make a big fuss about it.
By "big fuss" I meant that she didn't have to buy me a gift, and I meant that sincerely. However, I was expecting at least a voice mail wishing me well. She didn't have to buy me anything, but the least she could've done was call me.
I figured that maybe she was busy and was planning on calling me the next day. So, with the help of some Xanax, which I've been using the re-adjust to a normal daytime schedule, I got some shuteye.
*/*
The next morning, no call from Eve. I tried phoning her a few times-- no answer. I felt desperate, calling someone on my own birthday to remind them. My insecurity grew, and suddenly it dawned on me that maybe I'd done something wrong. Of course, I'm a guy, so I had NO IDEA what it was that I had done.
Being the overly curious fellow that I am, I wracked my brain trying to figure it out, retracing my steps throughout the week, trying to find a clue. No luck. I left her a message as I stood waiting for the Metrolink, ready to go to the desert to see my family.
That brought upon another depressing thought, revolving around my family. They made the move up to the desert town of Lancaster years ago, and they like it up there. I'm fine with that, but whether or not I have a car, they never make an effort to come down and see me. They never offer to do that. I find myself taking the train on my own birthday to see them. I thought about my hooptie and how it broke down as I was on my way up there, to celebrate my niece's birthday last November. Considering how worthless I was feeling, those thoughts only made it worse.
By now you can probably guess that, for all my bravado and tough talk, I am incredibly sensitive to these types of petty slights. Once those thoughts are in my consciousness, they are remarkably difficult to purge. I probably need counseling or therapy, because these feelings have plagued me all of my life. They influence me on almost every level; hence, my enthusiasm for art-- creating is one of the few instances where I can forget that I often feel insignificant and small.
When I arrived, my younger brother picked me up in his Astrovan. A sense of jealousy ran through me-- I know for a fact he didn't have the money to get the van. My mother, who spoils him rotten because he is the youngest child out of all the children she had with my father, once again deferred to him, because he is a Leo male and therefore extremely self-centered and demanding. No offense to any Leo females out there-- I'm singling out the Leo males because every one of them that I've ever met are insufferably conceited motherfuckers... even my lil' bro, whom I love very much. Leo females tend to be flamboyant but very rarely self-consumed.
Anyway, when I arrived at my mother's house, I was surprised to find that no one was around. My mother was out shopping; my older brother and his wife were coming back from Vegas, a trip they made at the last minute; my stepdad was home, but he was working in the back yard; my younger brothers were around for a bit, but they were ready to go to their friends' houses; and my sister was on her way over.
If I'd known that they were going to be late, I would've taken a later train. I started to feel invisible, like I could've just phoned it in and nothing would've changed. Maybe next year I'll set up a satellite feed, so they can just turn on a TV switch and voila! There I am!
Eventually, my sister showed up, and I felt some much-needed love from my niece Emily. She asked me if it was my birthday and I said "Yes, it is." She gave me a hug and a big kiss, because she likes to celebrate birthdays. At one point, Emily started a play-fight with me, and I accidentally broke the arm of her Barbie doll (in my defense, she was swinging it at me like a mace). The fact that she didn't think anything of it was incredible to me. Of course, I fixed the arm and promised her a new one, but I suspect that Emily is used to breaking the arms off of her Barbie dolls...
Later on, my nephew Michael and his dad showed up-- more love, more happiness. I think the reason why people have children is because they definitely cheer you up when you are feeling down. My nephew made me laugh with his utter cuteness, and I threw him up in the air repeatedly, as he giggled deliriously. My mood started to improve, and I was feeling okay.
A hearty dinner and some cool gifts ensued, after my mother and my older brother showed up. They kept grilling me about who I was seeing, and I started to feel sick again. I tried to explain my situation with Eve, and of course all the typical questions were asked:
"Why didn't you invite her up here?"
"When are you going to settle down and get married?"
"Why do you always push the girls away like that?"
"Doesn't she know it's your birthday?"
I had no answers, only grief. My family mistook my reticence for a wish for privacy and dignity, but the fact is I still didn't know why Eve was avoiding me. If I'd known, at least I could've talked about it with them, but they were too busy ribbing me, thinking that I was just being coy.
Talking with my mother and stepdad after everyone else went home, I realized that my trust issues extended far beyond Eve and anyone else in my life. My mother is a wise woman, and somehow she knew exactly what to say to me, even though I didn't tell her what was bugging me. By the time I was ready to go to sleep (without the aid of Xanax, mind you), I didn't feel so alone and unloved.
I mean, I know people love me and care about me, but try telling that to my fractured emotions. They are always willing to believe the worst.
*/*
The next morning, I woke up early. The night before, in a moment of happiness and weakness, I promised my older brother that I'd go to church with him.
The sermon was cool, but it didn't speak to me until the very end, when the guest pastor informed the congregation that they are never alone and unloved, thanks to Jesus. Now, whether or not you believe in God or Allah or nothing or whatever, it is always remarkable when a sermon taps into my recent thought patterns. Not all sermons have that power-- some of them are as boring as August is hot. Maybe because I was searching for some type of leverage for myself, it made me open to the words of this pastor.
This is the strength of religion, and if you don't need to go to church to feel this way, then more power to you. This was my first church visit since I don't know when, and even though I don't regularly go to Sunday services every week, there are times when a trip to the chapel instills me with a sense of familiarity and perspective.
I spent most of Sunday with my brother and my sister-in-law. While she shopped, my brother and I played video games in an arcade and watched portions of the Eagles/Falcons game on a TV, with all the other men whose wives/girlfriends were busy browsing through the stores.
My older brother and I are very close, and he always knows how to make me feel better. We regress by several years when we get together, and his wife is a really funny and smart person, so her prescence only adds to the vibe.
My father wanted to see me, so my older brother invited him up to his house, so we could all watch the Patriots/Steelers game. There was a solid hour of aggressive politics debating, and it almost got out of hand. Luckily, nothing was said to spoil the moment, and soon we all called a truce and decided to watch the rest of the game.
Before the end of the game, I called Eve one last time. I was going to be back in the Valley soon, and I wanted to see if maybe she was around. This time she picked up (probably because she didn't recognize the number) and gave me a cold response: she was at her father's house, watching the game. She said she wasn't going to be home until late, and that I should call her tomorrow.
I hung up without saying 'goodbye'.
My father drove me home, and I unloaded my gifts and took them inside. In addition to clothes and money, I received an easel and a gift certificate to Michaels art supply store. I checked my messages-- tons of calls from well-wishers, including Sharky, whom I'm supposed to be on the outs with; I called some of them back, depending on the hour, and then Bro Man called and said he was coming through to hang out.
Eve hadn't called me all weekend.
It got so late that I told Bro Man he could crash on the futon in the living room. After downing two beers and smoking countless pipeloads, I still couldn't get to sleep. Another Xanax did the trick.
*/*
Bro Man left in the morning, and I made my way to work. I was feeling incredibly low, wondering what I did to incur Eve's wrath. Work took my mind off of the situation, but finally, after resolving to not call her, I gave in and left a message on her cel phone:
"Hey, it's me. Just calling to see what you're up to. Also, I just want to be honest here-- I know I told you not to do anything for my birthday, and I meant that. But I'm really upset about you not calling me. The least you could've done is left a message while I was out. Maybe you were busy, I don't know... I don't know what I did wrong, but I'm not mad, just very disappointed. Anyway, I guess I'll hear from you whenever you are ready, so I don't know if I will see you later or not. Bye."
She called me back immediately. It turns out that the reason why she was upset at me was because of something I'd said during Nona's birthday dinner. I was asked by Nina, Nona's sister, if I had drawn the cartoon all by myself.
My reply was, "Well, me, Paulie, and Peter." Then I realized that I'd left Eve out, and added, "Eve is helping out as well."
That's what pissed her off.
She told me that she was so upset about being marginalized that she did everything in her power to not rip my head off the following evening, when were at The Garage working. Over the weekend, she talked to her mother and her brother about it, and calmed down enough to speak to me about it rationally.
You see, we've been over this "due credit" thing before, and she gets furious over it because she has been ripped off and patronized for so long that it makes her see red. She has a complex about being perceievd as "arm candy", and I know this because we talked about it when we first met over 13 years ago. Over the years, various employers and collaborators have made her feel like she is "just a girl", a pretty face not to be taken seriously.
"When you said that to Nina," Eve explained, "my heart sank. I mean, if you're not going to speak up for me, then no one will."
I apologized profusely, glad to know what the problem was, relieved that she was still talking to me. I took all the blame for that slip-up on my part. I understood her anger, and suddenly the fact that she didn't call me on my birthday seemed irrelevant.
"Maybe you don't know this," she went on, "but when we are together, no one sees me. They see you, and what you are about. You are the man, you know what I mean? Not like Tarzan-Jane, but more like you are the one who people listen to, the one with the plan. The Man. They don't see me, so in a way I am a part of you-- but not like an appendage or a Siamese twin. I guess what I mean is that I am overshadowed by you, and if you aren't there standing up for me, it makes me feel like I'm just being used, like I'm just some chick that you have around for company's sake. And I will not accept that, not anymore. I spent nine years with someone who made me feel like that. I've spent my whole life, my whole working life, dealing with sexist motherfuckers. I know you are not sexist, James, and I know you care, but it taps into my insecurities when I hear it coming from you. It's not supposed to come from you."
"Eve," I said, "I've tried my hardest to not take you for granted. You should know by now that I wouldn't do that to you. I know, I say stupid things, I make sweeping generalizations and I should probably think before I speak, but I'm trying to work on that. It won't happen overnight but I'm working on it. I'm still learning. Just have faith in me, that I will not leave you in the lurch at the crucial moments." My voice cracked with emotion, and I had to pause in between my sentences to keep from breaking down.
The thing about it is, she has every right to be mad, just as much right as I had to be upset at her not calling me on my birthday. These are issues that seem so petty, so trivial, and yet they mean a world of difference to people like us. In my case, it stems from a lifetime of being ignored in a different sense-- I just spent two blog entries describing my band experiences and how I'm still not taken seriously by people I've played with; in Eve's case, it is a deeper problem, because she is a woman, and women by and large get the short end of the stick, no matter what.
This may sound odd, but this may be the single most important birthday gift I have ever received. Why? Because I know I am a narcissist, and that I have a horrible tendency to make the people in my life feel like they don't matter. If you were to ask any woman who ever cared for me in any sense, platonic or otherwise, they would definitely have at least one story to tell about me where I was so blind, so clueless as to what was really going on that they wanted to strangle me for not knowing the value of a relationship.
It is my Achilles' Heel, my inability to make a woman feel 100% secure, like she can totally trust and rely on me. Normally, women take me to task for those types of screw-ups, making a scene and all that, but when does enough become enough? How many times must I be told how to act before they get exasperated and give up on me?
I told Eve, "You should've said something to me. If you had pointed it out right then and there, everyone else would've agreed with you and put me on the spot. And I would've deserved it, and I would've taken back or amended what I said."
She replied, "That's not the point. We've been over this before, remember? The time you played that gig at the Knitting Factory? You wanted me to videotape the show, and then I overheard you saying to your guitarist that Bro Man was going to do it? It made me feel like you have no trust in my abilities, and it really hurt. And you still didn't get it until later on, when I had to spell it out for you."
"Okay," I said, "I can't promise that it will never happen again, Eve, because half the time I don't even know I'm acting like that. But I will do whatever it takes to remind myself, to watch what I say before I say it. Bad habits die hard with me, but they eventually die, and I just don't want it be too little too late. And I also don't want to seem like I'm kissing your ass either, giving you credit that you didn't earn. I know that annoys you too..."
Eve laughed, a welcome sound to my ears. "Yeah, that's true. But anyway... I'm sorry about all of this, I know it probably seems dumb to you, or stupid... And I'm sorry for not calling you on your birthday."
"It's okay," I said. "And it's not dumb. Now that I know why, I understand."
*/*
I stopped by her place last night. She is momentarily carless-- it's in the shop, due to an accident she got into recently. Last night she told me the damage and repairs would run her close to $2000, which made my jaw drop. So much for our plans to up north this month-- even if I were to fund the adventure myself, she wouldn't have any money left over to make the most of it. I guess we'll have to wait until later on in the year.
We drank, watched DVDs, and smoked. I made an amorous play, but she was too tired to reciprocate. Either that, or she is still trying to teach me a lesson. It was no big thing-- I just waited for her to doze off, then I popped my last Xanax and before long I was in a slight coma.
She woke me this morning and drove me home-- apparently, she has a rental car, but only for a few days. She had failed to mention this to me last night when I took the bus over to her place-- once again, making me pay for my insensitivity.
I don't think it's unfair, though. If I didn't love her, if it weren't for the fact that I have made this mistake with every woman in my life countless times before, if it weren't for the fact that it is a terrible thing to put anyone through, then I guess it wouldn't mean anything to me. But I know what it's like to feel invisible, to feel marginalized and patronized, to feel like my opinion doesn't matter.
In the past, I would just write it off as "crazy bitch drama" but in Eve's case, she didn't make a scene or chew me out. She waited patiently, all the while keeping the anger below the surface. She talked about it with her family, so that she wouldn't lose it when it came time to talk to me. And this is the only demand she has made of me ever since we reconnected. If I can't learn to balance something so simple, then maybe I don't deserve her love, or ANYONE's love.
And, if she didn't love me, it wouldn't have made any difference to her, no?
God, I'm trying, I'm learning every day. I've got a lot of bad habits to break, a lot of patterns to change.
Anyway, that was my birthday weekend. I didn't get everything I wanted, but I did receive something that I really needed. I didn't even know I needed it. And hopefully, I will make the best out of it.
Here's to the future, and all that it holds.
1. My birthday is that peculiar time of year where my sense of humility mixes uncomfortably with my healthy ego. I find myself wanting to advertise my birthday but nauseated by the fact that I am insecure enough to announce to everyone in earshot that my birthday approaches.
2. I see my birthday as a litmus test. If I don't say anything and someone remembers my birthday, in my mind they pass the test. However, even the best of us (myself included) forget birth dates, and so I have no one but myself to blame if a friend of mine is so preoccupied with their own life that they forgot to wish me well.
3. My self-esteem is damaged enough that sometimes I wish I'd never been born at all. And now, with the added weight of being 31, I am increasingly finding little joy in the passage of time. I mean, I like being in my 30s, but only for the remaining part of the year.
4. I often feel that birthday celebrations are more about the people around you than for the actual birthday person. Many times (this year included) I feel as if I didn't even have to be in the room for everyone else to have a good time.
5. It's been hard to top my 21st birthday year, documented recently in one of my hip-hop posts. That was a lot of fun. I've had some decent runners-up (including a 26th birthday hummer that made my eyes roll in the back of my head) but nothing has ever superceded turning 21 at the exact moment that my band was taking the stage.
So, with all that in mind, let me tell you how it went this year.
Celebrations started Friday, the 21st. I went to work, expecting to hear from Eve later on. I hadn't had a chance to hang out with her one-on-one all that week, even though we'd seen each other a few times. We worked on the cartoon at the shop and I gave her a computer to take home so she could work on certain things; we also went out for dinner on Nona's birthday with Paulie and company. Thursday, I didn't talk to her at all, because she had her acting class to attend.
I called her around 7pm, but she didn't pick up. I decided to call her right before I left work. If I didn't hear from her, I would just go straight to The Garage. Half an hour later, as I was getting ready to leave, I called again. She didn't pick up. I left her a message, telling her where I 'd be.
I got to The Garage, and was greeted with a warm welcome by Paulie and Nona. They had some cool gifts for me: a can of Life Cast, a plaster mold maker used for special effects in horror movies, and three DVDs-- Chappelle's Show First Season, Dr. Strangelove Special Edition, and a double-disc collection of classic B-rated horror movies starring Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Jack Nicholson.
I was feeling good until I realized that Nona and Paulie thought my birthday was that day. When I told them it was the following day, they felt a little awkward. I didn't mean to rain on the parade, but it seems that people can never remember the actual day. They always think it's the 21st or the 23rd. I mean, how hard can it be to remember the 22nd? Two twos? The anal-retentive analytical side of my brain goes crazy pondering it.
I felt even worse when the night progressed and Eve hadn't even called me. Peter, Paulie's brother, gave me a ride home and I checked my messages-- no word from her. This was making me heartsick, because she knew that I was going to be up in Lancaster the following day, and that I wouldn't be around on the weekend. I knew she didn't forget my actual birthday, because she was the one person I'd actually talked to about it. Specifically, I'd told her not to make a big fuss about it.
By "big fuss" I meant that she didn't have to buy me a gift, and I meant that sincerely. However, I was expecting at least a voice mail wishing me well. She didn't have to buy me anything, but the least she could've done was call me.
I figured that maybe she was busy and was planning on calling me the next day. So, with the help of some Xanax, which I've been using the re-adjust to a normal daytime schedule, I got some shuteye.
*/*
The next morning, no call from Eve. I tried phoning her a few times-- no answer. I felt desperate, calling someone on my own birthday to remind them. My insecurity grew, and suddenly it dawned on me that maybe I'd done something wrong. Of course, I'm a guy, so I had NO IDEA what it was that I had done.
Being the overly curious fellow that I am, I wracked my brain trying to figure it out, retracing my steps throughout the week, trying to find a clue. No luck. I left her a message as I stood waiting for the Metrolink, ready to go to the desert to see my family.
That brought upon another depressing thought, revolving around my family. They made the move up to the desert town of Lancaster years ago, and they like it up there. I'm fine with that, but whether or not I have a car, they never make an effort to come down and see me. They never offer to do that. I find myself taking the train on my own birthday to see them. I thought about my hooptie and how it broke down as I was on my way up there, to celebrate my niece's birthday last November. Considering how worthless I was feeling, those thoughts only made it worse.
By now you can probably guess that, for all my bravado and tough talk, I am incredibly sensitive to these types of petty slights. Once those thoughts are in my consciousness, they are remarkably difficult to purge. I probably need counseling or therapy, because these feelings have plagued me all of my life. They influence me on almost every level; hence, my enthusiasm for art-- creating is one of the few instances where I can forget that I often feel insignificant and small.
When I arrived, my younger brother picked me up in his Astrovan. A sense of jealousy ran through me-- I know for a fact he didn't have the money to get the van. My mother, who spoils him rotten because he is the youngest child out of all the children she had with my father, once again deferred to him, because he is a Leo male and therefore extremely self-centered and demanding. No offense to any Leo females out there-- I'm singling out the Leo males because every one of them that I've ever met are insufferably conceited motherfuckers... even my lil' bro, whom I love very much. Leo females tend to be flamboyant but very rarely self-consumed.
Anyway, when I arrived at my mother's house, I was surprised to find that no one was around. My mother was out shopping; my older brother and his wife were coming back from Vegas, a trip they made at the last minute; my stepdad was home, but he was working in the back yard; my younger brothers were around for a bit, but they were ready to go to their friends' houses; and my sister was on her way over.
If I'd known that they were going to be late, I would've taken a later train. I started to feel invisible, like I could've just phoned it in and nothing would've changed. Maybe next year I'll set up a satellite feed, so they can just turn on a TV switch and voila! There I am!
Eventually, my sister showed up, and I felt some much-needed love from my niece Emily. She asked me if it was my birthday and I said "Yes, it is." She gave me a hug and a big kiss, because she likes to celebrate birthdays. At one point, Emily started a play-fight with me, and I accidentally broke the arm of her Barbie doll (in my defense, she was swinging it at me like a mace). The fact that she didn't think anything of it was incredible to me. Of course, I fixed the arm and promised her a new one, but I suspect that Emily is used to breaking the arms off of her Barbie dolls...
Later on, my nephew Michael and his dad showed up-- more love, more happiness. I think the reason why people have children is because they definitely cheer you up when you are feeling down. My nephew made me laugh with his utter cuteness, and I threw him up in the air repeatedly, as he giggled deliriously. My mood started to improve, and I was feeling okay.
A hearty dinner and some cool gifts ensued, after my mother and my older brother showed up. They kept grilling me about who I was seeing, and I started to feel sick again. I tried to explain my situation with Eve, and of course all the typical questions were asked:
"Why didn't you invite her up here?"
"When are you going to settle down and get married?"
"Why do you always push the girls away like that?"
"Doesn't she know it's your birthday?"
I had no answers, only grief. My family mistook my reticence for a wish for privacy and dignity, but the fact is I still didn't know why Eve was avoiding me. If I'd known, at least I could've talked about it with them, but they were too busy ribbing me, thinking that I was just being coy.
Talking with my mother and stepdad after everyone else went home, I realized that my trust issues extended far beyond Eve and anyone else in my life. My mother is a wise woman, and somehow she knew exactly what to say to me, even though I didn't tell her what was bugging me. By the time I was ready to go to sleep (without the aid of Xanax, mind you), I didn't feel so alone and unloved.
I mean, I know people love me and care about me, but try telling that to my fractured emotions. They are always willing to believe the worst.
*/*
The next morning, I woke up early. The night before, in a moment of happiness and weakness, I promised my older brother that I'd go to church with him.
The sermon was cool, but it didn't speak to me until the very end, when the guest pastor informed the congregation that they are never alone and unloved, thanks to Jesus. Now, whether or not you believe in God or Allah or nothing or whatever, it is always remarkable when a sermon taps into my recent thought patterns. Not all sermons have that power-- some of them are as boring as August is hot. Maybe because I was searching for some type of leverage for myself, it made me open to the words of this pastor.
This is the strength of religion, and if you don't need to go to church to feel this way, then more power to you. This was my first church visit since I don't know when, and even though I don't regularly go to Sunday services every week, there are times when a trip to the chapel instills me with a sense of familiarity and perspective.
I spent most of Sunday with my brother and my sister-in-law. While she shopped, my brother and I played video games in an arcade and watched portions of the Eagles/Falcons game on a TV, with all the other men whose wives/girlfriends were busy browsing through the stores.
My older brother and I are very close, and he always knows how to make me feel better. We regress by several years when we get together, and his wife is a really funny and smart person, so her prescence only adds to the vibe.
My father wanted to see me, so my older brother invited him up to his house, so we could all watch the Patriots/Steelers game. There was a solid hour of aggressive politics debating, and it almost got out of hand. Luckily, nothing was said to spoil the moment, and soon we all called a truce and decided to watch the rest of the game.
Before the end of the game, I called Eve one last time. I was going to be back in the Valley soon, and I wanted to see if maybe she was around. This time she picked up (probably because she didn't recognize the number) and gave me a cold response: she was at her father's house, watching the game. She said she wasn't going to be home until late, and that I should call her tomorrow.
I hung up without saying 'goodbye'.
My father drove me home, and I unloaded my gifts and took them inside. In addition to clothes and money, I received an easel and a gift certificate to Michaels art supply store. I checked my messages-- tons of calls from well-wishers, including Sharky, whom I'm supposed to be on the outs with; I called some of them back, depending on the hour, and then Bro Man called and said he was coming through to hang out.
Eve hadn't called me all weekend.
It got so late that I told Bro Man he could crash on the futon in the living room. After downing two beers and smoking countless pipeloads, I still couldn't get to sleep. Another Xanax did the trick.
*/*
Bro Man left in the morning, and I made my way to work. I was feeling incredibly low, wondering what I did to incur Eve's wrath. Work took my mind off of the situation, but finally, after resolving to not call her, I gave in and left a message on her cel phone:
"Hey, it's me. Just calling to see what you're up to. Also, I just want to be honest here-- I know I told you not to do anything for my birthday, and I meant that. But I'm really upset about you not calling me. The least you could've done is left a message while I was out. Maybe you were busy, I don't know... I don't know what I did wrong, but I'm not mad, just very disappointed. Anyway, I guess I'll hear from you whenever you are ready, so I don't know if I will see you later or not. Bye."
She called me back immediately. It turns out that the reason why she was upset at me was because of something I'd said during Nona's birthday dinner. I was asked by Nina, Nona's sister, if I had drawn the cartoon all by myself.
My reply was, "Well, me, Paulie, and Peter." Then I realized that I'd left Eve out, and added, "Eve is helping out as well."
That's what pissed her off.
She told me that she was so upset about being marginalized that she did everything in her power to not rip my head off the following evening, when were at The Garage working. Over the weekend, she talked to her mother and her brother about it, and calmed down enough to speak to me about it rationally.
You see, we've been over this "due credit" thing before, and she gets furious over it because she has been ripped off and patronized for so long that it makes her see red. She has a complex about being perceievd as "arm candy", and I know this because we talked about it when we first met over 13 years ago. Over the years, various employers and collaborators have made her feel like she is "just a girl", a pretty face not to be taken seriously.
"When you said that to Nina," Eve explained, "my heart sank. I mean, if you're not going to speak up for me, then no one will."
I apologized profusely, glad to know what the problem was, relieved that she was still talking to me. I took all the blame for that slip-up on my part. I understood her anger, and suddenly the fact that she didn't call me on my birthday seemed irrelevant.
"Maybe you don't know this," she went on, "but when we are together, no one sees me. They see you, and what you are about. You are the man, you know what I mean? Not like Tarzan-Jane, but more like you are the one who people listen to, the one with the plan. The Man. They don't see me, so in a way I am a part of you-- but not like an appendage or a Siamese twin. I guess what I mean is that I am overshadowed by you, and if you aren't there standing up for me, it makes me feel like I'm just being used, like I'm just some chick that you have around for company's sake. And I will not accept that, not anymore. I spent nine years with someone who made me feel like that. I've spent my whole life, my whole working life, dealing with sexist motherfuckers. I know you are not sexist, James, and I know you care, but it taps into my insecurities when I hear it coming from you. It's not supposed to come from you."
"Eve," I said, "I've tried my hardest to not take you for granted. You should know by now that I wouldn't do that to you. I know, I say stupid things, I make sweeping generalizations and I should probably think before I speak, but I'm trying to work on that. It won't happen overnight but I'm working on it. I'm still learning. Just have faith in me, that I will not leave you in the lurch at the crucial moments." My voice cracked with emotion, and I had to pause in between my sentences to keep from breaking down.
The thing about it is, she has every right to be mad, just as much right as I had to be upset at her not calling me on my birthday. These are issues that seem so petty, so trivial, and yet they mean a world of difference to people like us. In my case, it stems from a lifetime of being ignored in a different sense-- I just spent two blog entries describing my band experiences and how I'm still not taken seriously by people I've played with; in Eve's case, it is a deeper problem, because she is a woman, and women by and large get the short end of the stick, no matter what.
This may sound odd, but this may be the single most important birthday gift I have ever received. Why? Because I know I am a narcissist, and that I have a horrible tendency to make the people in my life feel like they don't matter. If you were to ask any woman who ever cared for me in any sense, platonic or otherwise, they would definitely have at least one story to tell about me where I was so blind, so clueless as to what was really going on that they wanted to strangle me for not knowing the value of a relationship.
It is my Achilles' Heel, my inability to make a woman feel 100% secure, like she can totally trust and rely on me. Normally, women take me to task for those types of screw-ups, making a scene and all that, but when does enough become enough? How many times must I be told how to act before they get exasperated and give up on me?
I told Eve, "You should've said something to me. If you had pointed it out right then and there, everyone else would've agreed with you and put me on the spot. And I would've deserved it, and I would've taken back or amended what I said."
She replied, "That's not the point. We've been over this before, remember? The time you played that gig at the Knitting Factory? You wanted me to videotape the show, and then I overheard you saying to your guitarist that Bro Man was going to do it? It made me feel like you have no trust in my abilities, and it really hurt. And you still didn't get it until later on, when I had to spell it out for you."
"Okay," I said, "I can't promise that it will never happen again, Eve, because half the time I don't even know I'm acting like that. But I will do whatever it takes to remind myself, to watch what I say before I say it. Bad habits die hard with me, but they eventually die, and I just don't want it be too little too late. And I also don't want to seem like I'm kissing your ass either, giving you credit that you didn't earn. I know that annoys you too..."
Eve laughed, a welcome sound to my ears. "Yeah, that's true. But anyway... I'm sorry about all of this, I know it probably seems dumb to you, or stupid... And I'm sorry for not calling you on your birthday."
"It's okay," I said. "And it's not dumb. Now that I know why, I understand."
*/*
I stopped by her place last night. She is momentarily carless-- it's in the shop, due to an accident she got into recently. Last night she told me the damage and repairs would run her close to $2000, which made my jaw drop. So much for our plans to up north this month-- even if I were to fund the adventure myself, she wouldn't have any money left over to make the most of it. I guess we'll have to wait until later on in the year.
We drank, watched DVDs, and smoked. I made an amorous play, but she was too tired to reciprocate. Either that, or she is still trying to teach me a lesson. It was no big thing-- I just waited for her to doze off, then I popped my last Xanax and before long I was in a slight coma.
She woke me this morning and drove me home-- apparently, she has a rental car, but only for a few days. She had failed to mention this to me last night when I took the bus over to her place-- once again, making me pay for my insensitivity.
I don't think it's unfair, though. If I didn't love her, if it weren't for the fact that I have made this mistake with every woman in my life countless times before, if it weren't for the fact that it is a terrible thing to put anyone through, then I guess it wouldn't mean anything to me. But I know what it's like to feel invisible, to feel marginalized and patronized, to feel like my opinion doesn't matter.
In the past, I would just write it off as "crazy bitch drama" but in Eve's case, she didn't make a scene or chew me out. She waited patiently, all the while keeping the anger below the surface. She talked about it with her family, so that she wouldn't lose it when it came time to talk to me. And this is the only demand she has made of me ever since we reconnected. If I can't learn to balance something so simple, then maybe I don't deserve her love, or ANYONE's love.
And, if she didn't love me, it wouldn't have made any difference to her, no?
God, I'm trying, I'm learning every day. I've got a lot of bad habits to break, a lot of patterns to change.
Anyway, that was my birthday weekend. I didn't get everything I wanted, but I did receive something that I really needed. I didn't even know I needed it. And hopefully, I will make the best out of it.
Here's to the future, and all that it holds.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
"UBER MC"
After Black Love ended, I moved into an apartment with my buddy Sharky. We moved into a place in North Hollywood but we were promptly asked to leave due to our late-night soirees, jamming on guitars with our friends while high, banging on makeshift bongos and singing songs about tacos.
We ended up in Sherman Oaks with a manager who played a mean electric guitar. Talk about kismet!
That was when the idea for Sherman Locs first germinated. Sharky left the apartment after a year to go work at a university in Spain, teaching conversational English. I ended up getting a one-bedroom place in the building and started creating a home studio.
I was working at the radio network, learning how to edit with audio programs such as Sound Forge. Sometimes they would sell used equipment, and I came up on some doozies: a 24-channel tascam mixing board and an 8-track reel-to-reel tape machine, all for the unbeatably low price of... $40! Yes, $40.
When I decided to upgrade my studio wares and go digital, I sold the board and the 8-track for $800 on eBay. That's a $760 profit!
My forte during the Black Love/Oral Syndrome years was making beats. Paulie would find the samples, I would supply the drum patterns. I became so good at making beats that, on occasion, I could fool real drummers by telling them the beats were made by hired session players. Sometimes I would spend hours with the headphones on tinkering with snares and bass drums, perfecting the rhythms and the nuances.
My drum machine of choice is the Boss Dr. Rhythm 770. An offshoot of the legendary Roland R-8, Dr. Rhythm provides an easy-to-use interface with user-friendly functions such as Real-Time Playback as well as a plethora of presets and drum sounds.
Yes, the MPC series is superior, but I like the Dr. Rhythm-- it's portable, hooks up easily to any recording scenario, and is MIDI compatible. The only way the MPC has a leg up on a regular drum machine is that the MPC is also a sequencer and a sampler. To equal this, I bought a cheap 8-bit DJ sampler and hooked it up to my drum machine. It did the job satisfactorily, although 8-bits is really nothing, fidelity-wise.
As I started to experiment with making my own beats and writing rhymes, I met up with Down Low. Sharky introduced us before he left to Spain, but it turned out that I knew Low's older brother in high school, and so we had a bit of a prior connection. Low plays guitar, and so at first the two of us were getting together, smoking kush mixed with a strain of pot known as "The Kevorkian". Our jams were stony and hazy, and we were churning out at least a song a day.
Then, one day, whilst drinking heavily, Low and I started to bust rhymes. Low had no experience other than years of internalizing the collected works of every great gangsta rapper from Tupac to Master P. Meanwhile, it was refreshing to be the better rapper for a change. It gave me confidence to try some of my written rhymes on for size. Our early sessions were comprised of Low and I trying to shock the other, or trying to make the other laugh.
After a while, as friends started to frequent the pad/studio, it seemed that almost everyone wanted a chance to bust out on the mic. Evenings spent hanging out and watching the Lakers evolved into freestyle sessions, and pretty soon Low and I were amassing more rhymes and beats than actual songs.
As a joke, we referred to ourselves as the Sherman Locs, which is funny if you know what Sherman Oaks is like. It's quite simply the least gangster part of the Valley, which has a rep for being hopelessly suburban and upwardly mobile as it is. The ghetto it is not, and the notion of gangster rappers in Sherman Oaks was too humorous for us to pass up.
Bro Man, always a huge rap fan and a connoisseur of spoken word, started sitting in on the sessions. As noted in an earlier post, Bro Man is not exactly the deftest rhymer out there. He takes long pauses between verses and breaks out laughing at some of the hyperbole (for a while he started every rap with a variation on the concept of being born in a mental institution) but his voice was great.
If only he had a sense of rhythm, I would say to myself whenever Bro Man took the mic. Then I remembered the late great Eazy-E, and how he didn't know how to rap until Dr. Dre and the rest of his NWA crew coerced him into learning the verses for what became the song "Boyz N Tha Hood". I suddenly had an idea: if I could record Bro Man's flows onto my 4-track recorder and then dump his vocal track into a program like Pro Tools or Wavelab, I could edit his raps and make them on time. Then, he could take copies of the tracks home and learn them as if he were listening to his favorite rap CD or cassette.
And so the idea of The Syllabeast came about. And now, I give Bro Man "MC homework" so that he can bone up on his skills. I want to create an Uber MC, a Frankenstein monster who can rap.
This is my mission, my goal. If I can make Bro Man a better rapper, then my work on this planet is done and I can die a fulfilled human being.
We ended up in Sherman Oaks with a manager who played a mean electric guitar. Talk about kismet!
That was when the idea for Sherman Locs first germinated. Sharky left the apartment after a year to go work at a university in Spain, teaching conversational English. I ended up getting a one-bedroom place in the building and started creating a home studio.
I was working at the radio network, learning how to edit with audio programs such as Sound Forge. Sometimes they would sell used equipment, and I came up on some doozies: a 24-channel tascam mixing board and an 8-track reel-to-reel tape machine, all for the unbeatably low price of... $40! Yes, $40.
When I decided to upgrade my studio wares and go digital, I sold the board and the 8-track for $800 on eBay. That's a $760 profit!
My forte during the Black Love/Oral Syndrome years was making beats. Paulie would find the samples, I would supply the drum patterns. I became so good at making beats that, on occasion, I could fool real drummers by telling them the beats were made by hired session players. Sometimes I would spend hours with the headphones on tinkering with snares and bass drums, perfecting the rhythms and the nuances.
My drum machine of choice is the Boss Dr. Rhythm 770. An offshoot of the legendary Roland R-8, Dr. Rhythm provides an easy-to-use interface with user-friendly functions such as Real-Time Playback as well as a plethora of presets and drum sounds.
Yes, the MPC series is superior, but I like the Dr. Rhythm-- it's portable, hooks up easily to any recording scenario, and is MIDI compatible. The only way the MPC has a leg up on a regular drum machine is that the MPC is also a sequencer and a sampler. To equal this, I bought a cheap 8-bit DJ sampler and hooked it up to my drum machine. It did the job satisfactorily, although 8-bits is really nothing, fidelity-wise.
As I started to experiment with making my own beats and writing rhymes, I met up with Down Low. Sharky introduced us before he left to Spain, but it turned out that I knew Low's older brother in high school, and so we had a bit of a prior connection. Low plays guitar, and so at first the two of us were getting together, smoking kush mixed with a strain of pot known as "The Kevorkian". Our jams were stony and hazy, and we were churning out at least a song a day.
Then, one day, whilst drinking heavily, Low and I started to bust rhymes. Low had no experience other than years of internalizing the collected works of every great gangsta rapper from Tupac to Master P. Meanwhile, it was refreshing to be the better rapper for a change. It gave me confidence to try some of my written rhymes on for size. Our early sessions were comprised of Low and I trying to shock the other, or trying to make the other laugh.
After a while, as friends started to frequent the pad/studio, it seemed that almost everyone wanted a chance to bust out on the mic. Evenings spent hanging out and watching the Lakers evolved into freestyle sessions, and pretty soon Low and I were amassing more rhymes and beats than actual songs.
As a joke, we referred to ourselves as the Sherman Locs, which is funny if you know what Sherman Oaks is like. It's quite simply the least gangster part of the Valley, which has a rep for being hopelessly suburban and upwardly mobile as it is. The ghetto it is not, and the notion of gangster rappers in Sherman Oaks was too humorous for us to pass up.
Bro Man, always a huge rap fan and a connoisseur of spoken word, started sitting in on the sessions. As noted in an earlier post, Bro Man is not exactly the deftest rhymer out there. He takes long pauses between verses and breaks out laughing at some of the hyperbole (for a while he started every rap with a variation on the concept of being born in a mental institution) but his voice was great.
If only he had a sense of rhythm, I would say to myself whenever Bro Man took the mic. Then I remembered the late great Eazy-E, and how he didn't know how to rap until Dr. Dre and the rest of his NWA crew coerced him into learning the verses for what became the song "Boyz N Tha Hood". I suddenly had an idea: if I could record Bro Man's flows onto my 4-track recorder and then dump his vocal track into a program like Pro Tools or Wavelab, I could edit his raps and make them on time. Then, he could take copies of the tracks home and learn them as if he were listening to his favorite rap CD or cassette.
And so the idea of The Syllabeast came about. And now, I give Bro Man "MC homework" so that he can bone up on his skills. I want to create an Uber MC, a Frankenstein monster who can rap.
This is my mission, my goal. If I can make Bro Man a better rapper, then my work on this planet is done and I can die a fulfilled human being.
Monday, January 24, 2005
BLACK LOVE & THE ORAL SYNDROME: The Conclusion
Things were looking up for our group. People liked us and came out to see us play in droves; record execs, A & R reps, and producers were interested; George Lyons was delighted to have us appear once a month, even though The Roxbury was the kind of club I tried to avoid when I was out and about.
I remember some of the skanks at that club, cozying up to me when they thought I had blow on me. They high-tailed it out of there when I informed them that I only smoked bud. These girls felt pot was beneath them-- it was either cocaine or no-caine in their world.
It didn't matter to me, because I was still seeing Eve, and I was faithful. Then, she broke up with me. I was suddenly free to see whomever I wanted to see. That's when I met Anna, through mutual friends. Anna was a completely different person than Eve, and she helped me get through the breakup period.
That's also around the time that things started to go sour with the group. Up until recently, I was always willing to place the blame solely at the feet of the rappers, especially Donald and Johnny, whose friendship was tested by some dramatic bullshit. But as I look back on it, we just weren't ready. We thought we were ready, but we weren't.
The problems really started when we decided to go into a professional studio to cut some tracks. Paulie and I were the only ones making any real money, and the burden of coming up with funds fell upon us. We were able to scrape up $500 to get three songs done on 24-track reel-to-reel tape at a professional home studio located in Granada Hills.
The sessions turned into a party, much to the chagrin of the engineers, who didn't appreciate hangers-on and people smoking blunts in the vocal booth. I was totally embarrassed at the whole situation, because it seemed to me like a bunch of people acting like rock stars when we really hadn't done shit yet.
I have never been content to assume that stardom is a given-- yeah, it's fun to act like you're a star, but that's only after you've done some hard work. The same thing happened later on, in the band with Holly Golightly. What is it about singers or vocalists who think that it's more important to live the rock and roll lifestyle than it is to practice and produce professional-quality music?
Soon Donald and Johnny would pepper their conversations with talk of "When we make our first mil" and "I want a stretch limo with a TV and a sauna"...
Ronnie didn't have his head in the clouds, but there were bigger problems with him: it turned out that the kid was functionally illiterate. He was only a few months younger than me but he couldn't write or read to save his life. This is a big problem, especially if you are a rapper-- you need to be able to at least read and write. Unless you're Biggie Smalls memorizing your rhymes in your head, a rapper that doesn't read or write is pretty much useless.
Ronnie more than made up for it, though, with his engaging prescence and positive attitude. Out of all of the rappers, Ronnie was the most fun to be around. Ronnie taught me the virtues of hooking up with plain chicks, a sensibility that I would implement later on, well after the band was done-- dude was handsome and loved women of all shapes and sizes; no pussy snob was he. Eventually he ended up having a baby with a girl who was a knockout, a former model with legs for days and light eyes. I guess the law of averages really does work, because some of the women Ronnie used to roll with were not the kinds of women that rappers tend to pursue.
Johnny had a girlfriend also, an aspiring R&B singer whose father had a studio. Donald was hanging out with his "Nubian queen", a girl who had a temper and an attitude. Paulie wasn't interested in getting laid-- he just wanted to make music and money.
We ended up with some halfway decent demos from the studio sessions, but Paulie and I were disappointed. The rappers had complained about the sound mix and wanted changes in the EQ, which I protested-- I knew that what we were hearing on the playback monitors was not an accurate representation of how the final songs would sound. That didn't sate Donald and Johnny, who pushed for a more bass-heavy mix. Even the engineer, a long-suffering fellow named Phil, agreed with me, but Johnny and Donald were putting the pressure on, despite the fact that they contributed nothing in the way of money to the sessions.
Of course, the demo was too bass-heavy, but Donald and Johnny didn't apologize or feel any remorse. They ended up blaming Phil, who only did what he was told to do.
This is when I started to realize that my opinion didn't matter for shit in this band. Johnny and Donald would pout and act like little kids until they got their way, and anything I had to say was roundly ignored. This was infuriating, especially when someone they respected would agree with me-- all of a sudden, they were willing to listen to my ideas if someone else voiced them.
This also reminds me of my recent experience with Holly and the band. Many ideas and suggestions I had were treated frivolously, and only when someone who had "clout" echoed my ideas did anyone take them seriously. I guess I'm just too mellow, or maybe I don't push hard enough to get my way. Or maybe I'm not as selfish as other people are.
Maybe I should be more selfish and ego-driven. But then, my art would suffer.
*/*
Ronnie's mother was acting as our manager for a spell, but she couldn't commit to it full-time. We ended up hooking up with some monster named Andre, a former security guard for The Roxbury and a former NFL draft pick whose career ended in the Atlanta Falcons training camp-- he twisted his knee before he had a chance to start the season, and that was it for him. The dream of being a pro baller was over, and much like Marion "Suge" Knight, whom he resembled physically, he decided to get into the rap game.
Andre, at first, was solid and cool. He bought us a van for gigs; he bought the rappers custom jerseys and he bought Paulie and I some sleek windbreakers; he lined up shows at places like The Martini Lounge, The Probe, and the Hollywood Athletic Club; he arranged for a photo shoot with a professional photographer.
He wanted us to sign with him, but we couldn't agree to his terms. He wanted us for three years, at 20%, which was too much for us to give up. Splitting 80% five or six ways was going to be a chore, and 20% is much more than managers are supposed to take.
Soon we discovered that Andre, once again in comparison to Suge Knight, was doing some highly illegal shit to finance his enterprises. It was one thing to sell weed, but running guns and selling crack was something that made us wary of Andre's involvement.
Ironically, the band was hitting a creative peak. We rehearsed regularly, getting tighter and tighter and tighter. We changed the arrangements on some of the songs, bringing out jazzier elements. We started hearing about bands like The Roots, who were doing what we were doing. This made us feel like we were on the crest of the new vanguard, like we were poised to blow up.
For me, it's never about following trends-- it's about breaking new ground. I was happy as hell to be in a band that was doing the kind of stuff that later on would be de rigeur on the scene. Grunge was fading, and we would play shows where grunge bands sharing the bill would literally give up playing guitar and switch to spinning vinyl or playing with samplers. By the time the group was over with, half of the musicians I knew had abandoned grunge and started toying around with electronica and acid jazz, areas we had been flirting with since our inception.
When the rigors of hauling our equipment in the A-Team van (as we came to call it) became too much, we would book an occassional "rappers only" show, where we would supply Black Love with a DAT or CD with our original beats, so that we could get exposure in the more traditional hip-hop venues like Flex on Tuesday nights in Hollywood. This tactic was somewhat successful, because we were able to tap into more conventional rap audiences by playing to the rules of the underground. Donald, Johnny and Ronnie would take the stage, do a quick show, and Paulie and I would watch from the crowd, gauging the reaction. The crowds loved the music, and we were confident that we had something good going.
We started to meet movers and shakers, from Channel Live to Evil E. We were garnering buzz. We started to get a rep around town for being a kick-ass live act.
But then, things really started to decline.
We found out that Andre never paid the photographer for the session. This sucked, because we really liked that guy, and he was cool to us. Bad karma. Plus, he wouldn't give us the negatives until he saw some money from Andre. On principle, Paulie and I didn't put any money forth, because we knew that if we did it this time, it would become a repeat offense.
Andre had told us that we didn't have to pay anything while we were with him, but Paulie and I saw things differently. As far as we were concerned, Andre was dangling carrots in front of us but not really doing anything of substance. We knew it was because we wouldn't sign his wack contact. We figured that we would just wait it out until Andre had no choice but to take 10% and give us more freedom to work with outside producers.
But then, the typical drama that plagues every band at one point or another set in: a bitch got in between Johnny and Donald. Or rather, two bitches.
Donald's "black queen" was becoming the Yoko Ono of rap, whispering things in his ear because she saw dollar signs. This caused friction between Donald and Johnny, but it wasn't until someone burglarized Johnny's girlfriend's father's studio that shit went down. Johnny accused Donald, who was always broke and always conspiring to jack someone for money or equipment, of masterminding the burglary. This offended Donald, and the two had a major falling out. Johnny, of course, took his girlfriend's side, and Donald was too busy being led by the nose by his girlfriend to set the pride aside. The former best friends were no longer speaking to each other, and it looked like the band was ready to self-destruct.
By the time we hit the Roxbury stage for what would be our last show, tensions were so high that they were manifesting during the stage show. That night, I had promised a radio show host that we would let his two female dancer friends shake their rumps on the side of the stage. I did this because he was going to play our music on his show. The radio show wasn't a big thing, but it was radio play nonetheless.
I forgot to tell everyone in the band about this decision, and so during the third or fourth song Donald couldn't help but notice two white chicks bumping and grinding on the stage. In the past we'd had trouble with drunken groupies crashing our set, so Donald stopped the band mid-song and went into a tirade. He kicked the girls off the stage, and we re-started the song.
I was fucking livid, but I think about that whole incident now and realize that it was actually kind of cool. If I had been in the audience instead of on stage, I think witnessing something like that would've been exciting, extraordinary. I cooled off after some of my friends reassured me that the incident added spice to the show. Some of my friends even thought that it had been planned.
That same night, some guy who worked with me at the telemarketing firm I was using as a day job had shown up. He came to the front of the stage and passed me a lit blunt. I toked it, and was surprised to find that it was real bud. I passed it to the guys in the band, and they were equally shocked. You see, a few months earlier, Donald almost got us thrown out of the club for smoking a blunt backstage with his girl, and now here we were, in a crowded club, playing music to a throng of wasted partyers, smoking weed in front of the entire place!
The after-party was a celebration of my birthday mixed with the joy of finishing yet another live gig, but in the air that night was a finality, a sadness indescribable. I know it sounds trite and corny to say it, but I think everyone knew that it was all over-- this was our peak. It wasn't going to progress and go further than this. Donald and Johnny were becoming even more strained, and Paulie and I were burned out on trying to keep this show on the road. Andre virtually disappeared from sight, and when our drummer told us that he was going to go to New York and take film classes, we knew that the ride was coming to a complete stop.
It officially ended when George Lyons called us the following week. Paulie had to be the one to field the call. He told me that when he informed George Lyons that the group was done, there was silence on the line. George Lyons then asked Paulie if there was any chance that we could get the group together for one last show. Paulie, ever the pragmatist, told Lyons that it wasn't likely.
Paulie told me that George Lyons sighed and hung up promptly.
*/*
I know that Paulie was so disillusioned by the whole thing that he gave up on music for a long time. We eventually moved out of the North Hollywood apartment and found a spot in Sherman Oaks with my friend Nona, who later went on to be Paulie's girlfriend. By that time, trying to get Paulie to work on tracks was like pulling teeth, and in the summer of 1996 I moved out of that place and into my own spot in Sherman Oaks.
Paulie, now in a relationship with Nona, went back to aircraft school and got his pilot's license. He ended up spending his time dabbling in off-road vehicles. Sometimes he would work on music, but he was pretty much done with rap. Only recently has Paulie ever expressed any hurt over the Black Love experience-- about a year ago, before he and I embarked on this animation project, he let loose with the following:
"We were this close," he spat. "Man, we were the hottest thing. We were the shit! Fuckin' Johnny, fuckin' Donald..."
Ronnie ended up moving to Lancaster with his model girlfriend, where they raised his kid. I would bump into him and his cousin every now and then, and the love was still there, but then we would go our separate ways and not see each other for a spell.
Johnny and his girl went off to do their own thing, but they eventually broke up. He still works on music, most notably with Tha Giftshop, his latest group. The last time I saw him was very recently-- his brother was getting married, and there was a mini-Black Love/Oral Syndrome reunion at Johnny's pad where he held the bachelor party. The only person missing was Donald.
No one knows what happened to Kool Don Farrar. The last time I saw him was not good-- shortly before the group died, Donald received a devastating phone call from a family member informing him that his sister was shot to death by her fiancee, who later turned the gun on himself. I have never seen a grown man in such pain as Donald on the day he heard that news. It was an inconsolable grief that probably changed him for the worst. He went back to Boston to see his family, and rumor has it that he stayed there, got hooked on crack, and is on the streets.
I am really saddened by that. If that is true, it is such a waste. For all of Donald's faults (and he had plenty) I was also inspired by his creativity. I meant it when I said that he was Charlie Parker with words. If ever the term "street poet" meant anything, it was in relation to Donald's rapping. I don't think I will ever meet an MC with the skill that he had, ever again.
Wherever you are, Donald, I hope that someday our paths cross again, in a positive way. There's so much unfinished business. I listen to those tapes every now and then, and they are still potent. Time has not dated them. They are more original and vivacious than three-quarters of the dreck that is on radio today. One reason why the songs still pack a punch is because we made them during the era before Tupac and Biggie died, when MCs rapped about things other than bling bling and hoochies and thongs and Cristal. The underground was overground, and lyrically MCs were raising the bar on what could be said in a rap. Musically, we were pushing boundaries, not just trying to sound like The Neptunes or whoever is the hot producer of the moment.
Donald used to instill consciousness in his raps. Johnny was the ladies man, the sex symbol of the group. Ronnie was the wild performer, enthralling the crowd with his ceaseless energy. Paulie and I were the mad scientists, concocting unholy grooves in our lab, making asses shake and MCs salivate as they clamored for a spot on our tracks.
I shake my head as I write this. The opportunity squandered, the talent wasted, the memories fresh and vivid. I still love hip-hop, and I pay tribute to that time in my life by writing my own rhymes, making my own beats, trying to encourage others to find the voice that I discovered in myself years after the fact.
I learned many lessons, but I also realize that I have many more to learn-- my experience with Holly Golightly has shown me that I am still too passive when it comes to my artistic visions. I shouldn't take a backseat to anyone, because unlike everyone else I am not doing this for some sort of glory or recognition. I don't care about making tons of money-- I only want to make enough to survive comfortably and to be able to keep creating art. I don't care about being hip, because the hippest thing a person can do is to follow his or her own instincts, despite what everyone else thinks is cool. And I certainly don't care about what other people think, because otherwise I would've given up on all forms of art completely by this time.
I told myself years ago that if I have not gotten anywhere signficantly by the age of 35, I was going to pack it in and stop creating. I'm 31 now, and that leaves me with four more years to go. And I think I mean it-- I don't want to be some middle-aged gloryhound, trying to resuscitate a career that never was. I've seen too many people doing that, and it depresses me, because nowadays entertainment is a young person's realm. The money people want twenty-somethings and teenagers that they can manipulate and exploit. Art Alexakis from Everclear notwithstanding, it is rare to see anyone pushing forty who is breaking out with something new.
I still have my writing, which is something that improves with age, if you ask me. And I have set myself down the path to become a painter-- I just need to buy brushes and paints, and I'm ready to go. My mother gave me an easel this past weekend, and I have some canvases. Paulie, who bought me the canvases, has faith in my ability to produce some good paintings. Right now, he is sort of like my sponsor.
Maybe while I'm painting, I'll play the Black Love/Oral Syndrome tapes. Maybe it will inspire me to create some type of ode to the early '90's, specifically between 1993 and 1995, when I was on fire and putting everything I had into my art. Or maybe it will inspire me to keep pushing forward, remembering the past so as to not repeat the mistakes made in haste and out of insolence.
Maybe.
I remember some of the skanks at that club, cozying up to me when they thought I had blow on me. They high-tailed it out of there when I informed them that I only smoked bud. These girls felt pot was beneath them-- it was either cocaine or no-caine in their world.
It didn't matter to me, because I was still seeing Eve, and I was faithful. Then, she broke up with me. I was suddenly free to see whomever I wanted to see. That's when I met Anna, through mutual friends. Anna was a completely different person than Eve, and she helped me get through the breakup period.
That's also around the time that things started to go sour with the group. Up until recently, I was always willing to place the blame solely at the feet of the rappers, especially Donald and Johnny, whose friendship was tested by some dramatic bullshit. But as I look back on it, we just weren't ready. We thought we were ready, but we weren't.
The problems really started when we decided to go into a professional studio to cut some tracks. Paulie and I were the only ones making any real money, and the burden of coming up with funds fell upon us. We were able to scrape up $500 to get three songs done on 24-track reel-to-reel tape at a professional home studio located in Granada Hills.
The sessions turned into a party, much to the chagrin of the engineers, who didn't appreciate hangers-on and people smoking blunts in the vocal booth. I was totally embarrassed at the whole situation, because it seemed to me like a bunch of people acting like rock stars when we really hadn't done shit yet.
I have never been content to assume that stardom is a given-- yeah, it's fun to act like you're a star, but that's only after you've done some hard work. The same thing happened later on, in the band with Holly Golightly. What is it about singers or vocalists who think that it's more important to live the rock and roll lifestyle than it is to practice and produce professional-quality music?
Soon Donald and Johnny would pepper their conversations with talk of "When we make our first mil" and "I want a stretch limo with a TV and a sauna"...
Ronnie didn't have his head in the clouds, but there were bigger problems with him: it turned out that the kid was functionally illiterate. He was only a few months younger than me but he couldn't write or read to save his life. This is a big problem, especially if you are a rapper-- you need to be able to at least read and write. Unless you're Biggie Smalls memorizing your rhymes in your head, a rapper that doesn't read or write is pretty much useless.
Ronnie more than made up for it, though, with his engaging prescence and positive attitude. Out of all of the rappers, Ronnie was the most fun to be around. Ronnie taught me the virtues of hooking up with plain chicks, a sensibility that I would implement later on, well after the band was done-- dude was handsome and loved women of all shapes and sizes; no pussy snob was he. Eventually he ended up having a baby with a girl who was a knockout, a former model with legs for days and light eyes. I guess the law of averages really does work, because some of the women Ronnie used to roll with were not the kinds of women that rappers tend to pursue.
Johnny had a girlfriend also, an aspiring R&B singer whose father had a studio. Donald was hanging out with his "Nubian queen", a girl who had a temper and an attitude. Paulie wasn't interested in getting laid-- he just wanted to make music and money.
We ended up with some halfway decent demos from the studio sessions, but Paulie and I were disappointed. The rappers had complained about the sound mix and wanted changes in the EQ, which I protested-- I knew that what we were hearing on the playback monitors was not an accurate representation of how the final songs would sound. That didn't sate Donald and Johnny, who pushed for a more bass-heavy mix. Even the engineer, a long-suffering fellow named Phil, agreed with me, but Johnny and Donald were putting the pressure on, despite the fact that they contributed nothing in the way of money to the sessions.
Of course, the demo was too bass-heavy, but Donald and Johnny didn't apologize or feel any remorse. They ended up blaming Phil, who only did what he was told to do.
This is when I started to realize that my opinion didn't matter for shit in this band. Johnny and Donald would pout and act like little kids until they got their way, and anything I had to say was roundly ignored. This was infuriating, especially when someone they respected would agree with me-- all of a sudden, they were willing to listen to my ideas if someone else voiced them.
This also reminds me of my recent experience with Holly and the band. Many ideas and suggestions I had were treated frivolously, and only when someone who had "clout" echoed my ideas did anyone take them seriously. I guess I'm just too mellow, or maybe I don't push hard enough to get my way. Or maybe I'm not as selfish as other people are.
Maybe I should be more selfish and ego-driven. But then, my art would suffer.
*/*
Ronnie's mother was acting as our manager for a spell, but she couldn't commit to it full-time. We ended up hooking up with some monster named Andre, a former security guard for The Roxbury and a former NFL draft pick whose career ended in the Atlanta Falcons training camp-- he twisted his knee before he had a chance to start the season, and that was it for him. The dream of being a pro baller was over, and much like Marion "Suge" Knight, whom he resembled physically, he decided to get into the rap game.
Andre, at first, was solid and cool. He bought us a van for gigs; he bought the rappers custom jerseys and he bought Paulie and I some sleek windbreakers; he lined up shows at places like The Martini Lounge, The Probe, and the Hollywood Athletic Club; he arranged for a photo shoot with a professional photographer.
He wanted us to sign with him, but we couldn't agree to his terms. He wanted us for three years, at 20%, which was too much for us to give up. Splitting 80% five or six ways was going to be a chore, and 20% is much more than managers are supposed to take.
Soon we discovered that Andre, once again in comparison to Suge Knight, was doing some highly illegal shit to finance his enterprises. It was one thing to sell weed, but running guns and selling crack was something that made us wary of Andre's involvement.
Ironically, the band was hitting a creative peak. We rehearsed regularly, getting tighter and tighter and tighter. We changed the arrangements on some of the songs, bringing out jazzier elements. We started hearing about bands like The Roots, who were doing what we were doing. This made us feel like we were on the crest of the new vanguard, like we were poised to blow up.
For me, it's never about following trends-- it's about breaking new ground. I was happy as hell to be in a band that was doing the kind of stuff that later on would be de rigeur on the scene. Grunge was fading, and we would play shows where grunge bands sharing the bill would literally give up playing guitar and switch to spinning vinyl or playing with samplers. By the time the group was over with, half of the musicians I knew had abandoned grunge and started toying around with electronica and acid jazz, areas we had been flirting with since our inception.
When the rigors of hauling our equipment in the A-Team van (as we came to call it) became too much, we would book an occassional "rappers only" show, where we would supply Black Love with a DAT or CD with our original beats, so that we could get exposure in the more traditional hip-hop venues like Flex on Tuesday nights in Hollywood. This tactic was somewhat successful, because we were able to tap into more conventional rap audiences by playing to the rules of the underground. Donald, Johnny and Ronnie would take the stage, do a quick show, and Paulie and I would watch from the crowd, gauging the reaction. The crowds loved the music, and we were confident that we had something good going.
We started to meet movers and shakers, from Channel Live to Evil E. We were garnering buzz. We started to get a rep around town for being a kick-ass live act.
But then, things really started to decline.
We found out that Andre never paid the photographer for the session. This sucked, because we really liked that guy, and he was cool to us. Bad karma. Plus, he wouldn't give us the negatives until he saw some money from Andre. On principle, Paulie and I didn't put any money forth, because we knew that if we did it this time, it would become a repeat offense.
Andre had told us that we didn't have to pay anything while we were with him, but Paulie and I saw things differently. As far as we were concerned, Andre was dangling carrots in front of us but not really doing anything of substance. We knew it was because we wouldn't sign his wack contact. We figured that we would just wait it out until Andre had no choice but to take 10% and give us more freedom to work with outside producers.
But then, the typical drama that plagues every band at one point or another set in: a bitch got in between Johnny and Donald. Or rather, two bitches.
Donald's "black queen" was becoming the Yoko Ono of rap, whispering things in his ear because she saw dollar signs. This caused friction between Donald and Johnny, but it wasn't until someone burglarized Johnny's girlfriend's father's studio that shit went down. Johnny accused Donald, who was always broke and always conspiring to jack someone for money or equipment, of masterminding the burglary. This offended Donald, and the two had a major falling out. Johnny, of course, took his girlfriend's side, and Donald was too busy being led by the nose by his girlfriend to set the pride aside. The former best friends were no longer speaking to each other, and it looked like the band was ready to self-destruct.
By the time we hit the Roxbury stage for what would be our last show, tensions were so high that they were manifesting during the stage show. That night, I had promised a radio show host that we would let his two female dancer friends shake their rumps on the side of the stage. I did this because he was going to play our music on his show. The radio show wasn't a big thing, but it was radio play nonetheless.
I forgot to tell everyone in the band about this decision, and so during the third or fourth song Donald couldn't help but notice two white chicks bumping and grinding on the stage. In the past we'd had trouble with drunken groupies crashing our set, so Donald stopped the band mid-song and went into a tirade. He kicked the girls off the stage, and we re-started the song.
I was fucking livid, but I think about that whole incident now and realize that it was actually kind of cool. If I had been in the audience instead of on stage, I think witnessing something like that would've been exciting, extraordinary. I cooled off after some of my friends reassured me that the incident added spice to the show. Some of my friends even thought that it had been planned.
That same night, some guy who worked with me at the telemarketing firm I was using as a day job had shown up. He came to the front of the stage and passed me a lit blunt. I toked it, and was surprised to find that it was real bud. I passed it to the guys in the band, and they were equally shocked. You see, a few months earlier, Donald almost got us thrown out of the club for smoking a blunt backstage with his girl, and now here we were, in a crowded club, playing music to a throng of wasted partyers, smoking weed in front of the entire place!
The after-party was a celebration of my birthday mixed with the joy of finishing yet another live gig, but in the air that night was a finality, a sadness indescribable. I know it sounds trite and corny to say it, but I think everyone knew that it was all over-- this was our peak. It wasn't going to progress and go further than this. Donald and Johnny were becoming even more strained, and Paulie and I were burned out on trying to keep this show on the road. Andre virtually disappeared from sight, and when our drummer told us that he was going to go to New York and take film classes, we knew that the ride was coming to a complete stop.
It officially ended when George Lyons called us the following week. Paulie had to be the one to field the call. He told me that when he informed George Lyons that the group was done, there was silence on the line. George Lyons then asked Paulie if there was any chance that we could get the group together for one last show. Paulie, ever the pragmatist, told Lyons that it wasn't likely.
Paulie told me that George Lyons sighed and hung up promptly.
*/*
I know that Paulie was so disillusioned by the whole thing that he gave up on music for a long time. We eventually moved out of the North Hollywood apartment and found a spot in Sherman Oaks with my friend Nona, who later went on to be Paulie's girlfriend. By that time, trying to get Paulie to work on tracks was like pulling teeth, and in the summer of 1996 I moved out of that place and into my own spot in Sherman Oaks.
Paulie, now in a relationship with Nona, went back to aircraft school and got his pilot's license. He ended up spending his time dabbling in off-road vehicles. Sometimes he would work on music, but he was pretty much done with rap. Only recently has Paulie ever expressed any hurt over the Black Love experience-- about a year ago, before he and I embarked on this animation project, he let loose with the following:
"We were this close," he spat. "Man, we were the hottest thing. We were the shit! Fuckin' Johnny, fuckin' Donald..."
Ronnie ended up moving to Lancaster with his model girlfriend, where they raised his kid. I would bump into him and his cousin every now and then, and the love was still there, but then we would go our separate ways and not see each other for a spell.
Johnny and his girl went off to do their own thing, but they eventually broke up. He still works on music, most notably with Tha Giftshop, his latest group. The last time I saw him was very recently-- his brother was getting married, and there was a mini-Black Love/Oral Syndrome reunion at Johnny's pad where he held the bachelor party. The only person missing was Donald.
No one knows what happened to Kool Don Farrar. The last time I saw him was not good-- shortly before the group died, Donald received a devastating phone call from a family member informing him that his sister was shot to death by her fiancee, who later turned the gun on himself. I have never seen a grown man in such pain as Donald on the day he heard that news. It was an inconsolable grief that probably changed him for the worst. He went back to Boston to see his family, and rumor has it that he stayed there, got hooked on crack, and is on the streets.
I am really saddened by that. If that is true, it is such a waste. For all of Donald's faults (and he had plenty) I was also inspired by his creativity. I meant it when I said that he was Charlie Parker with words. If ever the term "street poet" meant anything, it was in relation to Donald's rapping. I don't think I will ever meet an MC with the skill that he had, ever again.
Wherever you are, Donald, I hope that someday our paths cross again, in a positive way. There's so much unfinished business. I listen to those tapes every now and then, and they are still potent. Time has not dated them. They are more original and vivacious than three-quarters of the dreck that is on radio today. One reason why the songs still pack a punch is because we made them during the era before Tupac and Biggie died, when MCs rapped about things other than bling bling and hoochies and thongs and Cristal. The underground was overground, and lyrically MCs were raising the bar on what could be said in a rap. Musically, we were pushing boundaries, not just trying to sound like The Neptunes or whoever is the hot producer of the moment.
Donald used to instill consciousness in his raps. Johnny was the ladies man, the sex symbol of the group. Ronnie was the wild performer, enthralling the crowd with his ceaseless energy. Paulie and I were the mad scientists, concocting unholy grooves in our lab, making asses shake and MCs salivate as they clamored for a spot on our tracks.
I shake my head as I write this. The opportunity squandered, the talent wasted, the memories fresh and vivid. I still love hip-hop, and I pay tribute to that time in my life by writing my own rhymes, making my own beats, trying to encourage others to find the voice that I discovered in myself years after the fact.
I learned many lessons, but I also realize that I have many more to learn-- my experience with Holly Golightly has shown me that I am still too passive when it comes to my artistic visions. I shouldn't take a backseat to anyone, because unlike everyone else I am not doing this for some sort of glory or recognition. I don't care about making tons of money-- I only want to make enough to survive comfortably and to be able to keep creating art. I don't care about being hip, because the hippest thing a person can do is to follow his or her own instincts, despite what everyone else thinks is cool. And I certainly don't care about what other people think, because otherwise I would've given up on all forms of art completely by this time.
I told myself years ago that if I have not gotten anywhere signficantly by the age of 35, I was going to pack it in and stop creating. I'm 31 now, and that leaves me with four more years to go. And I think I mean it-- I don't want to be some middle-aged gloryhound, trying to resuscitate a career that never was. I've seen too many people doing that, and it depresses me, because nowadays entertainment is a young person's realm. The money people want twenty-somethings and teenagers that they can manipulate and exploit. Art Alexakis from Everclear notwithstanding, it is rare to see anyone pushing forty who is breaking out with something new.
I still have my writing, which is something that improves with age, if you ask me. And I have set myself down the path to become a painter-- I just need to buy brushes and paints, and I'm ready to go. My mother gave me an easel this past weekend, and I have some canvases. Paulie, who bought me the canvases, has faith in my ability to produce some good paintings. Right now, he is sort of like my sponsor.
Maybe while I'm painting, I'll play the Black Love/Oral Syndrome tapes. Maybe it will inspire me to create some type of ode to the early '90's, specifically between 1993 and 1995, when I was on fire and putting everything I had into my art. Or maybe it will inspire me to keep pushing forward, remembering the past so as to not repeat the mistakes made in haste and out of insolence.
Maybe.
Friday, January 21, 2005
BLACK LOVE & THE ORAL SYNDROME
My 31st birthday is tomorrow. I can't help but think of what I was doing ten years ago around this time.
I was taking the stage at a club called The Roxbury. Yes, the same Roxbury that Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan's Watabi Brothers used to frequent. It no longer exists-- in its stead is a bar and sushi grill known as Miyagi's.
Our band had taken up residency at The Roxbury. The booking was handled by a character named George Lyons. George was young, suave, good-looking, and loved to make money. He reminded me of Kyle McLachlan for some reason. He really dug our music and was no fool-- he saw how many people our band brought in to The Cellar, which was the bottom level of the club where all the unsigned bands played.
George Lyons believed in us enough to let us invite our guests for free, because all of them were drinkers and would head straight for the bar. That was the first big lesson I learned about playing live music:
It doesn't matter how good you are, or what kind of music you play; if you can get every one of your guests to buy at least two drinks from the bar, then you will be very popular on the club scene.
Saturday, January 21st, 1995: our last gig as Black Love & The Oral Syndrome. We didn't intend for it to be the last show, but it was. After that night, the band imploded, and we were all burnt out and discouraged by the lack of communication that went on within the group.
That night, I turned 21 at the stroke of midnight. Up until that point, I had to wait outside the clubs or make promises not to drink any alcohol if I wanted to play. I wasn't the youngest member, but it was still a thorn in my side up until I turned legal to drink. As I look back on it now, it was a rite of passage for me, my initiation not only into the early phase of adulthood but an indication of where my future path would head.
As I took to the stage, with my blonde imitation Rickenbacker underneath my arm, I was very tipsy, very high, and very happy. A sea of people were waiting for us to bring the noise. We were becoming notorious at The Roxbury for siphoning the crowds away from the second level dance floor or the third level VIP lounge. Hootchie skanks were into us, and even though it wasn't my scene at all I could tell that people liked our energy and our sound.
When George Lyons announced us and the floodlights went on, I had a slight out-of-body experience. I had to ask myself: How the fuck did I get here?
*/*
Two years prior to that night, if you had told me that I was going to be playing bass in a hip-hop group, I would've looked at you like you were smoking crack.
Not that I didn't love rap, or try to sneak in some handwritten verses in-between sets with the garage bands I was kicking it with; not that I didn't keep my pulse on the latest rap albums and groups; not that I didn't want to explore the methods of creating the kinds of rap beats that producers like Dr. Dre or DJ Premier were making at the time...
It's just that I didn't know anyone who was serious about that kind of shit. Hell, I didn't know anyone who was serious about anything. In the bands I was in, I was always the one who wanted it more than life itself. I was the one pushing people to go above and beyond, and of course I know now that not everyone is wired the same.
So when you meet someone who is just as serious as you are, everything tends to fall into place.
Fast Eddie, the guy who first let me touch a set of bass strings, christened me "Oral-B" after a rehearsal with our metal/punk/high-school band. He thought the name was funny, and so did I. At the time, everyone was doing the single surname initial thing: Eazy E, Schooly D, Spoonie G, Heavy D, Cool V, Hi-C... either that or they were stealing their names from consumer products, like Ice T or Mack 10 or Smif 'n' Wessun.
That band morphed into Stone Buddhas, but that didn't get anywhere either. I was out of high school, unemployed, leeching money and meals off of kind-hearted girls and sympathetic homies, and spending my time either going over to Eve's house in the dead of night to sneak her out or partying with my buddies.
College was not something that appealed to me. I wanted to live a real life, not some deferred simulation of what life should be like.
It was then that I met Purple Paulie through some mutual friends. Paulie was three or four years older than me, and had his own apartment. He was also "the man with the bag" and so me and my friends would spend our jobless afternoons hanging out at his pad in North Hollywood, smoking weed and acting foolish.
Paulie played guitar and listened to hard rock bands like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, but he was also curious about rap music. I told him that I could rap, and he asked me to bring my 4-track cassette recorder over to his place. I had a microphone and a primitive drum machine, and he and I would fuck around and make joke songs. He would get me lit and set me free on the mic, where I would go on for half an hour learning to flow.
Back then, my style was mad wack-- I've come quite a long way, believe me. But it was the beat-making process that had the both of us staying up late, trying to emulate the newest producers and their tracks.
Paulie was honest from the get-go-- he only wanted to make money off of rap. "It's so simple," he said. "Anyone can do it. These rappers are making tons of dough."
"Yeah," I said, "but it's not so clear-cut. These guys are good at what they do, and rap audiences know what's dope and what's wack. We have a ways to go before we can start making money off of this rap shit."
I gave Paulie an education on hip-hop: what sounded good, what sounded booty, what was acceptable and what was merely a passing fad, who the most respected MCs were and who were the flashes in the pan. I also showed him how to work the 4-track recorder and gave him some tutorials on how to produce tracks. He took to it like a madman, and by the time I was sharing the apartment with him, Paulie had turned into a full-fledged studio rat.
After a while, I stopped going out all the time. I got a job to pay my share of rent. I didn't hang with the homies anymore, because they didn't have any serious goals in mind. They were content to hang out, party, and blow their money on bars and movies and concerts... and weed. The only times I saw my friends were when they'd stop by to smoke or purchase bags.
However, I heard rumblings through the grapevine, mutterings about how I was "Paulie's bitch", how I had turned on everyone and changed as a person. This really hurt me, because I didn't feel like I had become a different person at all. Rather, I had found a focus for my aspirations, and if it meant that I was going to have to put on hold all the silliness and slacking, then so be it. Besides, Paulie and I were having just as much fun, dropping acid while learning how to manage a 24-channel mixing board and things like that.
Paulie was just as serious as I was, and he was sometimes even more serious than me. Paulie went out and bought a sampler and learned how to use it. He and I split the cost on a real drum machine and started learning how to program beats that didn't sound like colliding tin cans.
The only thing that wasn't right was my rhyming. I still didn't have the knack. I was struggling with the fact that my voice was too nasal, and that my flow was too stilted. My lyrics were getting better, but the delivery was stale and uninvolving.
After about a year and a half, Paulie and I had become pretty good at making hip-hop beats. We still jammed on rock songs, but more often than not we found it was easier to make a beat using the sampler and the drum machine. We started to audition drummers but they were few and far between.
Then, we met some rappers.
*/*
First we met McQueen, a former thug who was trying to stay out of jail. He introduced us to Johnny Love, a former sax player for local ska band The Specks and an aspiring MC. He in turn introduced us to Ronnie a.k.a. "Rist", a tagger and breakbeat dancer who knew how to toast in a Jamaican patois: "Ja-fakin" is what we called it, since Ronnie wasn't really a Rastafarian.
Johnny and Ronnie brought in their mentor, a roughneck from Boston named Donald. He went by the name of "Kool Don Farrar", and he was the best rapper I have ever had the privilege of working with and meeting.
Donald was amazing. He was like Charlie Parker with words. From the moment he entered our apartment and picked up a mic and started busting, I was in awe of his talent. He was a skilled writer; he was an unmatched freestyler; he liked to talk and he could never shut his mouth for a moment.
Donald was constantly writing and re-writing rhymes. He encouraged Johnny and Ronnie to become better MCs. He was intimidating, intelligent, and raw.
He had a lot of problems as well. Anger management, alcohol, and a bitterness towards anyone who wasn't black. Donald could be an insufferable prick and a pain in the ass to work with sometimes. But as an artist, he was a shining star.
I learned an important lesson about rap music from Donald, one that has stayed with me until this very day. I once asked Donald what was the secret to his flow.
He looked at me with a dangerous grin and said:
"It's all about words that rhyme."
That's all he said. And then we jammed with him, Paulie manning the sampler, myself running through beats that I had pre-programmed, and Donald on the mic. We would play this game where Paulie and I would try to throw Donald off, by either changing the tempo completely or stopping the track dead or pulling out some off-kilter jazz time signature shit, and Donald never fell off.
I mean, never. Lord knows we tried, and he would laugh if we came close, but the boy was too fucking good. A never-ending stream of words poured out of him, some of them memorized lines that he would re-incorporate into his free verses, some of them completely new inventions of his consciousness, all of them dazzling displays of poetic street rhythm, half-improvised and half-calculated.
This was the "New Jazz" that Shock G of Digital Underground spoke of, the collision of the Old Players mentality and the New School of rap artistry. I've played with lots of cats over the years, lots of good players, musicians, singers, and rappers, but the magic that we created with Donald, Johnny and Ronnie during those years was so intense, so inspired, that I look back with a romantic view upon those days, a rose-colored perspective on an era that seems to me so long ago and yet not that long ago at all.
Paulie and I were known as Oral Syndrome. The name was the mashing of my Oral-B moniker with Paulie's handle, Syndrome. Johnny, Ronnie, and Donald were calling themselves Black Love, taken from the incense of the same name. So it made sense that we were collectively known as Black Love & The Oral Syndrome.
Our angle was that we were going to do our shows with a live band, consisting of Paulie on guitar, myself on bass, and whoever we could find on drums. At the time, the rap scene in L.A. was as follows: an MC or two, a DAT tape or a CD, and nothing else. We had an instant edge on every group out there by having live accompaniment. This tactic bridged the gap between people who thought rap music was just "noise" and rap fans who were sick of the same old shit, who were sick of going to shows where the CD skipped in the middle of the gig.
My friend A-Dogg, late of Stone Buddhas, was recruited to play the skins in our group. We had to strip him down and basically teach him how to play less. Less was more, in our eyes. We took away his toms and crash cymbals, leaving him with only the bass drum, the snare, the high-hat and the ride cymbal. It was a trap kit, really. We instructed him to keep the beat steady, with the occasional flourish here and there. It took him a while to get it, but he did.
There was a lot of turmoil in the group, of course. Six motherfuckers, comprised of three African-Americans, a Mexican-Japanese, a Persian and a Jew? It was tough sometimes. In fact, our first gig almost went down with a different line-up: The rappers had a falling out with us, and so we auditioned some female MCs for a pay-to-play show at The Whiskey on Sunset Boulevard. A-Dogg was still on the fence about playing with us, so we had a different drummer. But the chicks spilt with half of the tickets, and the Black Love guys came back into the fold.
That show was about as good as first shows go, but a friend of Paulie's saw us at that show and pulled some strings so that we could play the late great Al's Bar. Like The Roxbury, Al's Bar is no more, but it was more to my liking. The outside of the place was graffittied up and down, and a lot of punk bands passed through there. By this time, A-Dogg was with us, but he and Ronnie and I had to wait outside the venue because we were underage. We played that Halloween show to three people, which gave us a chance to fuck around and experiment with our stage show.
And, of course, a booking agent was there, and she knew George Lyons from The Roxbury, and she knew that he wanted something hot for his weekend nights at least once a month.
Our first Roxbury gig paid the six of us $50 (for the whole group, not per person), two free drink passes each, and a free BBQ Chicken Pizza from the kitchen. George Lyons liked us so much that he had us play once a month. We played every month for a little over a yar.
And so it was that, ten years ago this weekend, I played my last gig with Black Love & The Oral Syndrome, after a wild year with enough drama and turbulence to ground a DC-10. We played other gigs during that time at other places, but the Roxbury shows were the ones that I recall the fondest.
Maybe I'm coming off as an aging musician who is merely reliving his salad days, but I don't care. I am so proud of what we did as a group, because it came from our soul, and it was fun, and I learned a lot about life, music, and business. Not many regrets in regards to the experience. I grew up in those years, and I can safely say that I'm kind of glad we came close to making it but never quite got there... because knowing what I know about us now, I'm positive that we would have let money and ego get to us, and we would've been chewed up and spit out by the industry, just like so many other young artists out there.
I still have countless tapes of the North Hollywood sessions, of the live shows, the studio tracks, the insane rehearsals and the fuck-around vamps. One of these days, I'm going to put up a site devoted to the greatest rap group that never was.
But first, let me tell you the rest of the story, because it doesn't end here.
NEXT WEEK: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE UNDERGROUND IN LOS ANGELES...
I was taking the stage at a club called The Roxbury. Yes, the same Roxbury that Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan's Watabi Brothers used to frequent. It no longer exists-- in its stead is a bar and sushi grill known as Miyagi's.
Our band had taken up residency at The Roxbury. The booking was handled by a character named George Lyons. George was young, suave, good-looking, and loved to make money. He reminded me of Kyle McLachlan for some reason. He really dug our music and was no fool-- he saw how many people our band brought in to The Cellar, which was the bottom level of the club where all the unsigned bands played.
George Lyons believed in us enough to let us invite our guests for free, because all of them were drinkers and would head straight for the bar. That was the first big lesson I learned about playing live music:
It doesn't matter how good you are, or what kind of music you play; if you can get every one of your guests to buy at least two drinks from the bar, then you will be very popular on the club scene.
Saturday, January 21st, 1995: our last gig as Black Love & The Oral Syndrome. We didn't intend for it to be the last show, but it was. After that night, the band imploded, and we were all burnt out and discouraged by the lack of communication that went on within the group.
That night, I turned 21 at the stroke of midnight. Up until that point, I had to wait outside the clubs or make promises not to drink any alcohol if I wanted to play. I wasn't the youngest member, but it was still a thorn in my side up until I turned legal to drink. As I look back on it now, it was a rite of passage for me, my initiation not only into the early phase of adulthood but an indication of where my future path would head.
As I took to the stage, with my blonde imitation Rickenbacker underneath my arm, I was very tipsy, very high, and very happy. A sea of people were waiting for us to bring the noise. We were becoming notorious at The Roxbury for siphoning the crowds away from the second level dance floor or the third level VIP lounge. Hootchie skanks were into us, and even though it wasn't my scene at all I could tell that people liked our energy and our sound.
When George Lyons announced us and the floodlights went on, I had a slight out-of-body experience. I had to ask myself: How the fuck did I get here?
*/*
Two years prior to that night, if you had told me that I was going to be playing bass in a hip-hop group, I would've looked at you like you were smoking crack.
Not that I didn't love rap, or try to sneak in some handwritten verses in-between sets with the garage bands I was kicking it with; not that I didn't keep my pulse on the latest rap albums and groups; not that I didn't want to explore the methods of creating the kinds of rap beats that producers like Dr. Dre or DJ Premier were making at the time...
It's just that I didn't know anyone who was serious about that kind of shit. Hell, I didn't know anyone who was serious about anything. In the bands I was in, I was always the one who wanted it more than life itself. I was the one pushing people to go above and beyond, and of course I know now that not everyone is wired the same.
So when you meet someone who is just as serious as you are, everything tends to fall into place.
Fast Eddie, the guy who first let me touch a set of bass strings, christened me "Oral-B" after a rehearsal with our metal/punk/high-school band. He thought the name was funny, and so did I. At the time, everyone was doing the single surname initial thing: Eazy E, Schooly D, Spoonie G, Heavy D, Cool V, Hi-C... either that or they were stealing their names from consumer products, like Ice T or Mack 10 or Smif 'n' Wessun.
That band morphed into Stone Buddhas, but that didn't get anywhere either. I was out of high school, unemployed, leeching money and meals off of kind-hearted girls and sympathetic homies, and spending my time either going over to Eve's house in the dead of night to sneak her out or partying with my buddies.
College was not something that appealed to me. I wanted to live a real life, not some deferred simulation of what life should be like.
It was then that I met Purple Paulie through some mutual friends. Paulie was three or four years older than me, and had his own apartment. He was also "the man with the bag" and so me and my friends would spend our jobless afternoons hanging out at his pad in North Hollywood, smoking weed and acting foolish.
Paulie played guitar and listened to hard rock bands like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, but he was also curious about rap music. I told him that I could rap, and he asked me to bring my 4-track cassette recorder over to his place. I had a microphone and a primitive drum machine, and he and I would fuck around and make joke songs. He would get me lit and set me free on the mic, where I would go on for half an hour learning to flow.
Back then, my style was mad wack-- I've come quite a long way, believe me. But it was the beat-making process that had the both of us staying up late, trying to emulate the newest producers and their tracks.
Paulie was honest from the get-go-- he only wanted to make money off of rap. "It's so simple," he said. "Anyone can do it. These rappers are making tons of dough."
"Yeah," I said, "but it's not so clear-cut. These guys are good at what they do, and rap audiences know what's dope and what's wack. We have a ways to go before we can start making money off of this rap shit."
I gave Paulie an education on hip-hop: what sounded good, what sounded booty, what was acceptable and what was merely a passing fad, who the most respected MCs were and who were the flashes in the pan. I also showed him how to work the 4-track recorder and gave him some tutorials on how to produce tracks. He took to it like a madman, and by the time I was sharing the apartment with him, Paulie had turned into a full-fledged studio rat.
After a while, I stopped going out all the time. I got a job to pay my share of rent. I didn't hang with the homies anymore, because they didn't have any serious goals in mind. They were content to hang out, party, and blow their money on bars and movies and concerts... and weed. The only times I saw my friends were when they'd stop by to smoke or purchase bags.
However, I heard rumblings through the grapevine, mutterings about how I was "Paulie's bitch", how I had turned on everyone and changed as a person. This really hurt me, because I didn't feel like I had become a different person at all. Rather, I had found a focus for my aspirations, and if it meant that I was going to have to put on hold all the silliness and slacking, then so be it. Besides, Paulie and I were having just as much fun, dropping acid while learning how to manage a 24-channel mixing board and things like that.
Paulie was just as serious as I was, and he was sometimes even more serious than me. Paulie went out and bought a sampler and learned how to use it. He and I split the cost on a real drum machine and started learning how to program beats that didn't sound like colliding tin cans.
The only thing that wasn't right was my rhyming. I still didn't have the knack. I was struggling with the fact that my voice was too nasal, and that my flow was too stilted. My lyrics were getting better, but the delivery was stale and uninvolving.
After about a year and a half, Paulie and I had become pretty good at making hip-hop beats. We still jammed on rock songs, but more often than not we found it was easier to make a beat using the sampler and the drum machine. We started to audition drummers but they were few and far between.
Then, we met some rappers.
*/*
First we met McQueen, a former thug who was trying to stay out of jail. He introduced us to Johnny Love, a former sax player for local ska band The Specks and an aspiring MC. He in turn introduced us to Ronnie a.k.a. "Rist", a tagger and breakbeat dancer who knew how to toast in a Jamaican patois: "Ja-fakin" is what we called it, since Ronnie wasn't really a Rastafarian.
Johnny and Ronnie brought in their mentor, a roughneck from Boston named Donald. He went by the name of "Kool Don Farrar", and he was the best rapper I have ever had the privilege of working with and meeting.
Donald was amazing. He was like Charlie Parker with words. From the moment he entered our apartment and picked up a mic and started busting, I was in awe of his talent. He was a skilled writer; he was an unmatched freestyler; he liked to talk and he could never shut his mouth for a moment.
Donald was constantly writing and re-writing rhymes. He encouraged Johnny and Ronnie to become better MCs. He was intimidating, intelligent, and raw.
He had a lot of problems as well. Anger management, alcohol, and a bitterness towards anyone who wasn't black. Donald could be an insufferable prick and a pain in the ass to work with sometimes. But as an artist, he was a shining star.
I learned an important lesson about rap music from Donald, one that has stayed with me until this very day. I once asked Donald what was the secret to his flow.
He looked at me with a dangerous grin and said:
"It's all about words that rhyme."
That's all he said. And then we jammed with him, Paulie manning the sampler, myself running through beats that I had pre-programmed, and Donald on the mic. We would play this game where Paulie and I would try to throw Donald off, by either changing the tempo completely or stopping the track dead or pulling out some off-kilter jazz time signature shit, and Donald never fell off.
I mean, never. Lord knows we tried, and he would laugh if we came close, but the boy was too fucking good. A never-ending stream of words poured out of him, some of them memorized lines that he would re-incorporate into his free verses, some of them completely new inventions of his consciousness, all of them dazzling displays of poetic street rhythm, half-improvised and half-calculated.
This was the "New Jazz" that Shock G of Digital Underground spoke of, the collision of the Old Players mentality and the New School of rap artistry. I've played with lots of cats over the years, lots of good players, musicians, singers, and rappers, but the magic that we created with Donald, Johnny and Ronnie during those years was so intense, so inspired, that I look back with a romantic view upon those days, a rose-colored perspective on an era that seems to me so long ago and yet not that long ago at all.
Paulie and I were known as Oral Syndrome. The name was the mashing of my Oral-B moniker with Paulie's handle, Syndrome. Johnny, Ronnie, and Donald were calling themselves Black Love, taken from the incense of the same name. So it made sense that we were collectively known as Black Love & The Oral Syndrome.
Our angle was that we were going to do our shows with a live band, consisting of Paulie on guitar, myself on bass, and whoever we could find on drums. At the time, the rap scene in L.A. was as follows: an MC or two, a DAT tape or a CD, and nothing else. We had an instant edge on every group out there by having live accompaniment. This tactic bridged the gap between people who thought rap music was just "noise" and rap fans who were sick of the same old shit, who were sick of going to shows where the CD skipped in the middle of the gig.
My friend A-Dogg, late of Stone Buddhas, was recruited to play the skins in our group. We had to strip him down and basically teach him how to play less. Less was more, in our eyes. We took away his toms and crash cymbals, leaving him with only the bass drum, the snare, the high-hat and the ride cymbal. It was a trap kit, really. We instructed him to keep the beat steady, with the occasional flourish here and there. It took him a while to get it, but he did.
There was a lot of turmoil in the group, of course. Six motherfuckers, comprised of three African-Americans, a Mexican-Japanese, a Persian and a Jew? It was tough sometimes. In fact, our first gig almost went down with a different line-up: The rappers had a falling out with us, and so we auditioned some female MCs for a pay-to-play show at The Whiskey on Sunset Boulevard. A-Dogg was still on the fence about playing with us, so we had a different drummer. But the chicks spilt with half of the tickets, and the Black Love guys came back into the fold.
That show was about as good as first shows go, but a friend of Paulie's saw us at that show and pulled some strings so that we could play the late great Al's Bar. Like The Roxbury, Al's Bar is no more, but it was more to my liking. The outside of the place was graffittied up and down, and a lot of punk bands passed through there. By this time, A-Dogg was with us, but he and Ronnie and I had to wait outside the venue because we were underage. We played that Halloween show to three people, which gave us a chance to fuck around and experiment with our stage show.
And, of course, a booking agent was there, and she knew George Lyons from The Roxbury, and she knew that he wanted something hot for his weekend nights at least once a month.
Our first Roxbury gig paid the six of us $50 (for the whole group, not per person), two free drink passes each, and a free BBQ Chicken Pizza from the kitchen. George Lyons liked us so much that he had us play once a month. We played every month for a little over a yar.
And so it was that, ten years ago this weekend, I played my last gig with Black Love & The Oral Syndrome, after a wild year with enough drama and turbulence to ground a DC-10. We played other gigs during that time at other places, but the Roxbury shows were the ones that I recall the fondest.
Maybe I'm coming off as an aging musician who is merely reliving his salad days, but I don't care. I am so proud of what we did as a group, because it came from our soul, and it was fun, and I learned a lot about life, music, and business. Not many regrets in regards to the experience. I grew up in those years, and I can safely say that I'm kind of glad we came close to making it but never quite got there... because knowing what I know about us now, I'm positive that we would have let money and ego get to us, and we would've been chewed up and spit out by the industry, just like so many other young artists out there.
I still have countless tapes of the North Hollywood sessions, of the live shows, the studio tracks, the insane rehearsals and the fuck-around vamps. One of these days, I'm going to put up a site devoted to the greatest rap group that never was.
But first, let me tell you the rest of the story, because it doesn't end here.
NEXT WEEK: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE UNDERGROUND IN LOS ANGELES...
Thursday, January 20, 2005
WHAT HIP-HOP MEANS TO ME
At the risk of alienating the small cadre of readers who frequent my blog, I am going to go on today and the rest of the month (at length) about a subject that, believe it or not, means a lot to me.
Rapping. Being an Emcee. Freestyling. Rockin' the mic.
There are plenty of reasons why I want to address this topic, chief among them my quest to turn my good friend Bro Man into a dope MC. Bro Man has a great voice, but is possibly the least rhythmic African-American I have ever encountered. He can't dance, doesn't sing very well, and can't rap to a beat to save his life. Of course, this doesn't make him any less black-- it just means that he comes off, in the eyes of The Other, as an "Oreo".
I've had plenty of fun at Bro Man's expense. A favorite joke of mine was that he wasn't even an Oreo-- "You're more like a Hydrox" I would say, and the fact that he didn't get mad and attempt to beat me down is a testament to both Bro Man's tolerant nature and the irreverent crux of our friendship.
You see, I'm not exactly the poster boy for La Raza either, seeing as I have a tenable grasp of espanol and sound more like the Valley kid that I am than some miltant Chicano. However, I've always identified with black culture, and so rapping and hip-hop music is as important to me as any of the art forms I indulge in regularly.
Oddly enough, I wrote my first rap in 4th Grade... as a homework assignment!
Mr. Watnik, our 4th grade teacher in the Magnet school I attended, was an unorthodox instructor, to say the least. I know I talked about him in the past, but those Archives are long gone. Here's a refresher.
He would play guitar for us on Fridays, handing out lyric sheets so that we could sing along with the hits; he read "The Tell-tale Heart" to us and at the climax of the story he tossed a cow heart into the middle of the room; he had us write parody songs a la "Weird" Al Yankovic; he taught us the "Flea Fly Flow" song and also informed us about "E-O-Eleven" and Warm Fuzzies/Cold Pricklies; he performed Steve Martin's brilliant Flea Circus bit for our amusement, and changed the way we thought of the phrase "I have an announcement to make"; and he invented games with names like "Dada" and told tall tales about finding his twin brother in New York-- he used a poster of Che Guevara to illustrate his point!
In addition, he devoted one semester to teaching us about the properties of propaganda, and another semester dissecting our judicial system... and we were in 4th fucking grade!!
Anyway, Mr. Watnik had us bone up on the U.S. Presidents. To do this, he defined "rap music" for us. Although I'd heard rap music before that time (circa 1984) I had never had anyone break it down to its essentials. Up until that time, I just assumed it was party music, the kind of stuff my older brother listened to, the kind of stuff that got played on the late great KDAY AM.
I think I was one of the few kids in that class who knew about rap music. Mr. Watnik wanted us to write rhyming verses about a U.S. President, and then come into class and recite the rhymes to an instrumental track. We picked names from a fishbowl, and I landed "Tricky" Dick Nixon!
So you see, I've been politically active since grade school...
Anyway, that was the first rhyme I ever wrote. I can brag about rapping since the 4th grade now, and often times I do throw that nugget into my battle rhymes.
Since I have excellent diction and no trace of an accent, people assume that I'm a square. That is my greatest asset when rhyming against foes or with casual friends. Little do they know that years of writing poems and rhymes has given me a vocabulary that can cover all the bases. And my love of all forms of rap music has given me enough ammo to dismiss wannabes and poseurs.
I love the shock that registers on the face of a clown who thinks I can't rhyme. I can't tell you how many ciphers I've been in, where someone thought I was reciting written raps that I had memorized. Of course, to dispel this notion, I would concoct a freestyle verse right there on the spot, and that would put pressure on even the tightest MC. I have lost my share of battles, but I always come away with a smile on my face, because everyone leaves the circle knowing that I can at least bust a decent flow, even if I'm not the best out there.
My hip-hop heroes, in no particular order:
RAKIM-- In my opinion, he is the greatest rapper of all time, but
that's the beauty of hip-hop-- there is no real answer to the question "Who's The Greatest?". Actually, let me take that back-- the only logical answer for any MC is "I Am The Greatest", which is why braggadoccio is a huge part of rapping, and which is why there is no one MC who captures all of hip-hop in one identity. However, if I had to pick one, Rakim would be the man. His voice, his style, his menacing prescence... all MCs after him followed his rough formula.
LL COOL J-- For a while, he was played out, and he hasn't had a decent flow on a track since "Mama Said Knock You Out" which wasn't all that to begin with. But those early albums are some of the wildest, most vicious streams of hip-hop jawing that were ever committed to wax. He calls himself The Greatest Of All Time, and because of his longevity-- and the fact that he has won every rap beef that has been brought to him, from Kool Moe Dee to Canibus --it's safe for him to say it.
KRS-ONE-- The Apostle Paul of Hip-Hop, KRS-ONE went from being a lowlife street urchin/tagger to an up-and-coming take-no-prisoners battle rapper to the philosopher/teacher/elder statesman that he is today. The senseless murder of his Boogie Down Productions partner DJ Scott La Rock sparked a fire under KRS' ass, one that hasn't died down at all. A maddening, walking contradiction at times, KRS-ONE never ceases to amaze me with his knowledge, wit, and pure microphone fury. Also, he has one of the best voices in rap music.
CHUCK D-- When I first heard Chuck D, he scared the shit out of me. Like KRS-ONE, he has a great voice, and his rhyming style is almost Cubist-- the lyrical Picasso. But it was the Red-Black-and-Green politics that caught everyone by surprise. Intelligent, powerful, with a voice that can make you want to burn down a liquor store, Chuck D has never sold out nor has he lessened his rage. And speaking of rage, Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against The Machine owes his whole rhyming identity to Mista Chuck.
MELLE MEL-- I had to take it back to the days of wayback for a bit, but ironically Melle Mel is the one ol' school rapper that most non-rap fans know-- he is the man who authored both "The Message" ("Don't push me'cause I'm close to the edge / I'm tryin' not to lose my head / a-huh-HUH-HUH-HUH!") and "White Lines", a surprise college-radio staple. Possessing a smooth-as-silk voice and a party-loving demeanor, he also was capable of capturing the urban struggle with such lines as "It's like a jungle sometimes / it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under."
SLICK RICK-- A.K.A. "The Ruler". A direct influence on Snoop Dee-Oh-Double-Gee, Slick Rick first caught my attention on a 12" single, "La-di-Da-di" b/w "The Show". Unfortunately, original versions of that classic single are hard to find-- because of legal entanglements, certain sections of the songs where Slick Rick sang lines from old pop tunes have been edited out for good on later pressings. But I still remember the magic of hearing "La-di-Da-di" for the first time, which was only a long, uninterrupted story-rap by Rick accompanied by the superb beat-boxing of Doug E. Fresh. One of the few MCs to make an English accent sound dope as opposed to fey.
ICE CUBE-- While all of my white friends in Junior High were digging on the suburban appeal of listening to Public Enemy, I was getting NWA tapes from the kids in my 'hood. NWA was scarier than Public Enemy or X-Clan, because it was real-- in fact, I think NWA, for all its fantasy violence and mayhem, was the beginning of the whole "keep it real" ethic in rap. You see, if you lived in a bad neighborhood, overrun by gangs and crack dealers, then NWA's "Fuck The Police" was the real rallying cry. Public Enemy had "Fight The Power", but to inner-city youth, the Power was the cops and anyone who was trying to kill you with a choke-hold. Ice Cube emerged from the group as the poet laureate of Los Angeles gang culture, and he hasn't made many missteps since then. One of the most gifted writers in rap, akin to pulp novelist Jim Thompson, he also has an unmatched talent for finding the most potent-yet-offensive way to convey a message in his songs.
THE BEASTIE BOYS-- Okay, before you ride me for being PC or wanting to be all-inclusive, keep a few things in mind. (1) The Beasties did more for rap than a lot of other groups-- they spread the message out past the New York boroughs and into everyone's homes. (2) They were able to say some crazy shit on record and get away with it, because they were goofy whiteboys-- listen to NWA's first album and count the number of Beastie Boys samples Dr. Dre used. (3) More than their mentors RUN-DMC, The Beasties made the rock-rap connection palatable. Ad Rock is still one of my all-time favorite MCs, because of his voice and the cleverness of his rhyming. And yes, I liked To The 5 Boroughs, no matter what anyone else thinks.
RUN-DMC-- If you can call The Beasties the Buddy Hollys of rap, then RUN-DMC were the Chuck Berrys. They wrote the book, tore it up, re-wrote it, and watched generation after generation flip the script up and down. They were the first rap group to look like they were from the streets-- no rhinestone-studded leather pants and fringes for these three Queens natives. They were the first rap group to have a full-length album. They were the first to go platinum. They were the first to rock arenas. They were the first to do almost everything that rappers today take for granted. And, with the recent loss of DJ Jam Master Jay, they have become living legends. I get choked up just writing this entry, because RUN-DMC meant a lot to me, and the murder of Jay was like hearing about the death of a good friend.
Notice that I didn't put many recent MCs on this short list. Not to deny the impact of rappers like Outkast, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Ghostface Killah, Eminem or 50 Cent, but to quote a decidedly non-hip-hop figure such as Morrissey*, "You just haven't earned it yet baby". Time will tell if someone like Nelly will be either a footnote in rap history or an important voice, but until then I have to focus on the heroes of my hip-hop youth.
Not to mention, I had to leave off a bunch of vets from this short list, such as Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes and Kool Keith. Otherwise, I'd be here all day, writing up a storm, and I have so many things I want to cover in the next few weeks. For you see, this is the topic I'm going to stick to until I get it all out of my system, and that will take a while.
My apologies to anyone who thinks rap music is stupid. I don't think it is, but to each his or her own.
TOMORROW: Playing bass in a live rap group back in 1994...
*=In my old blog archives, I once posted about how I thought Morrissey was the Britpop equivalent of a gangsta rapper, and I deconstructed The Smiths' "The Queen Is Dead" LP through a rap lens.
Rapping. Being an Emcee. Freestyling. Rockin' the mic.
There are plenty of reasons why I want to address this topic, chief among them my quest to turn my good friend Bro Man into a dope MC. Bro Man has a great voice, but is possibly the least rhythmic African-American I have ever encountered. He can't dance, doesn't sing very well, and can't rap to a beat to save his life. Of course, this doesn't make him any less black-- it just means that he comes off, in the eyes of The Other, as an "Oreo".
I've had plenty of fun at Bro Man's expense. A favorite joke of mine was that he wasn't even an Oreo-- "You're more like a Hydrox" I would say, and the fact that he didn't get mad and attempt to beat me down is a testament to both Bro Man's tolerant nature and the irreverent crux of our friendship.
You see, I'm not exactly the poster boy for La Raza either, seeing as I have a tenable grasp of espanol and sound more like the Valley kid that I am than some miltant Chicano. However, I've always identified with black culture, and so rapping and hip-hop music is as important to me as any of the art forms I indulge in regularly.
Oddly enough, I wrote my first rap in 4th Grade... as a homework assignment!
Mr. Watnik, our 4th grade teacher in the Magnet school I attended, was an unorthodox instructor, to say the least. I know I talked about him in the past, but those Archives are long gone. Here's a refresher.
He would play guitar for us on Fridays, handing out lyric sheets so that we could sing along with the hits; he read "The Tell-tale Heart" to us and at the climax of the story he tossed a cow heart into the middle of the room; he had us write parody songs a la "Weird" Al Yankovic; he taught us the "Flea Fly Flow" song and also informed us about "E-O-Eleven" and Warm Fuzzies/Cold Pricklies; he performed Steve Martin's brilliant Flea Circus bit for our amusement, and changed the way we thought of the phrase "I have an announcement to make"; and he invented games with names like "Dada" and told tall tales about finding his twin brother in New York-- he used a poster of Che Guevara to illustrate his point!
In addition, he devoted one semester to teaching us about the properties of propaganda, and another semester dissecting our judicial system... and we were in 4th fucking grade!!
Anyway, Mr. Watnik had us bone up on the U.S. Presidents. To do this, he defined "rap music" for us. Although I'd heard rap music before that time (circa 1984) I had never had anyone break it down to its essentials. Up until that time, I just assumed it was party music, the kind of stuff my older brother listened to, the kind of stuff that got played on the late great KDAY AM.
I think I was one of the few kids in that class who knew about rap music. Mr. Watnik wanted us to write rhyming verses about a U.S. President, and then come into class and recite the rhymes to an instrumental track. We picked names from a fishbowl, and I landed "Tricky" Dick Nixon!
So you see, I've been politically active since grade school...
Anyway, that was the first rhyme I ever wrote. I can brag about rapping since the 4th grade now, and often times I do throw that nugget into my battle rhymes.
Since I have excellent diction and no trace of an accent, people assume that I'm a square. That is my greatest asset when rhyming against foes or with casual friends. Little do they know that years of writing poems and rhymes has given me a vocabulary that can cover all the bases. And my love of all forms of rap music has given me enough ammo to dismiss wannabes and poseurs.
I love the shock that registers on the face of a clown who thinks I can't rhyme. I can't tell you how many ciphers I've been in, where someone thought I was reciting written raps that I had memorized. Of course, to dispel this notion, I would concoct a freestyle verse right there on the spot, and that would put pressure on even the tightest MC. I have lost my share of battles, but I always come away with a smile on my face, because everyone leaves the circle knowing that I can at least bust a decent flow, even if I'm not the best out there.
My hip-hop heroes, in no particular order:
RAKIM-- In my opinion, he is the greatest rapper of all time, but
that's the beauty of hip-hop-- there is no real answer to the question "Who's The Greatest?". Actually, let me take that back-- the only logical answer for any MC is "I Am The Greatest", which is why braggadoccio is a huge part of rapping, and which is why there is no one MC who captures all of hip-hop in one identity. However, if I had to pick one, Rakim would be the man. His voice, his style, his menacing prescence... all MCs after him followed his rough formula.
LL COOL J-- For a while, he was played out, and he hasn't had a decent flow on a track since "Mama Said Knock You Out" which wasn't all that to begin with. But those early albums are some of the wildest, most vicious streams of hip-hop jawing that were ever committed to wax. He calls himself The Greatest Of All Time, and because of his longevity-- and the fact that he has won every rap beef that has been brought to him, from Kool Moe Dee to Canibus --it's safe for him to say it.
KRS-ONE-- The Apostle Paul of Hip-Hop, KRS-ONE went from being a lowlife street urchin/tagger to an up-and-coming take-no-prisoners battle rapper to the philosopher/teacher/elder statesman that he is today. The senseless murder of his Boogie Down Productions partner DJ Scott La Rock sparked a fire under KRS' ass, one that hasn't died down at all. A maddening, walking contradiction at times, KRS-ONE never ceases to amaze me with his knowledge, wit, and pure microphone fury. Also, he has one of the best voices in rap music.
CHUCK D-- When I first heard Chuck D, he scared the shit out of me. Like KRS-ONE, he has a great voice, and his rhyming style is almost Cubist-- the lyrical Picasso. But it was the Red-Black-and-Green politics that caught everyone by surprise. Intelligent, powerful, with a voice that can make you want to burn down a liquor store, Chuck D has never sold out nor has he lessened his rage. And speaking of rage, Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against The Machine owes his whole rhyming identity to Mista Chuck.
MELLE MEL-- I had to take it back to the days of wayback for a bit, but ironically Melle Mel is the one ol' school rapper that most non-rap fans know-- he is the man who authored both "The Message" ("Don't push me'cause I'm close to the edge / I'm tryin' not to lose my head / a-huh-HUH-HUH-HUH!") and "White Lines", a surprise college-radio staple. Possessing a smooth-as-silk voice and a party-loving demeanor, he also was capable of capturing the urban struggle with such lines as "It's like a jungle sometimes / it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under."
SLICK RICK-- A.K.A. "The Ruler". A direct influence on Snoop Dee-Oh-Double-Gee, Slick Rick first caught my attention on a 12" single, "La-di-Da-di" b/w "The Show". Unfortunately, original versions of that classic single are hard to find-- because of legal entanglements, certain sections of the songs where Slick Rick sang lines from old pop tunes have been edited out for good on later pressings. But I still remember the magic of hearing "La-di-Da-di" for the first time, which was only a long, uninterrupted story-rap by Rick accompanied by the superb beat-boxing of Doug E. Fresh. One of the few MCs to make an English accent sound dope as opposed to fey.
ICE CUBE-- While all of my white friends in Junior High were digging on the suburban appeal of listening to Public Enemy, I was getting NWA tapes from the kids in my 'hood. NWA was scarier than Public Enemy or X-Clan, because it was real-- in fact, I think NWA, for all its fantasy violence and mayhem, was the beginning of the whole "keep it real" ethic in rap. You see, if you lived in a bad neighborhood, overrun by gangs and crack dealers, then NWA's "Fuck The Police" was the real rallying cry. Public Enemy had "Fight The Power", but to inner-city youth, the Power was the cops and anyone who was trying to kill you with a choke-hold. Ice Cube emerged from the group as the poet laureate of Los Angeles gang culture, and he hasn't made many missteps since then. One of the most gifted writers in rap, akin to pulp novelist Jim Thompson, he also has an unmatched talent for finding the most potent-yet-offensive way to convey a message in his songs.
THE BEASTIE BOYS-- Okay, before you ride me for being PC or wanting to be all-inclusive, keep a few things in mind. (1) The Beasties did more for rap than a lot of other groups-- they spread the message out past the New York boroughs and into everyone's homes. (2) They were able to say some crazy shit on record and get away with it, because they were goofy whiteboys-- listen to NWA's first album and count the number of Beastie Boys samples Dr. Dre used. (3) More than their mentors RUN-DMC, The Beasties made the rock-rap connection palatable. Ad Rock is still one of my all-time favorite MCs, because of his voice and the cleverness of his rhyming. And yes, I liked To The 5 Boroughs, no matter what anyone else thinks.
RUN-DMC-- If you can call The Beasties the Buddy Hollys of rap, then RUN-DMC were the Chuck Berrys. They wrote the book, tore it up, re-wrote it, and watched generation after generation flip the script up and down. They were the first rap group to look like they were from the streets-- no rhinestone-studded leather pants and fringes for these three Queens natives. They were the first rap group to have a full-length album. They were the first to go platinum. They were the first to rock arenas. They were the first to do almost everything that rappers today take for granted. And, with the recent loss of DJ Jam Master Jay, they have become living legends. I get choked up just writing this entry, because RUN-DMC meant a lot to me, and the murder of Jay was like hearing about the death of a good friend.
Notice that I didn't put many recent MCs on this short list. Not to deny the impact of rappers like Outkast, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Ghostface Killah, Eminem or 50 Cent, but to quote a decidedly non-hip-hop figure such as Morrissey*, "You just haven't earned it yet baby". Time will tell if someone like Nelly will be either a footnote in rap history or an important voice, but until then I have to focus on the heroes of my hip-hop youth.
Not to mention, I had to leave off a bunch of vets from this short list, such as Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes and Kool Keith. Otherwise, I'd be here all day, writing up a storm, and I have so many things I want to cover in the next few weeks. For you see, this is the topic I'm going to stick to until I get it all out of my system, and that will take a while.
My apologies to anyone who thinks rap music is stupid. I don't think it is, but to each his or her own.
TOMORROW: Playing bass in a live rap group back in 1994...
*=In my old blog archives, I once posted about how I thought Morrissey was the Britpop equivalent of a gangsta rapper, and I deconstructed The Smiths' "The Queen Is Dead" LP through a rap lens.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
NEVER EVER EVER CALL ME IN THE MORNING UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT ME TO CHEW YOUR FUCKING HEAD CLEAN OFF YOUR BODY
The following is an exchange between myself and a bill collecting agency that occurred at 8:15 am PST.
ME: Hullo?
GIRL: Hi, is this James-- Ledsman?
ME: Close...
GIRL: Hello, my name is Anne from P________ Financial, we're calling in regards to your account with us.
ME: Oh, yeah, right...
GIRL: Have we caught you at a bad time?
ME: Well, frankly, yes... you just woke me up.
GIRL: I apologize for that sir, but we've been trying to reach you for some time now.
ME: Yeah, I just switched from the night shift back to the day shift.
GIRL: I see... well, we were wondering if we can expect payment sometime soon, since you are overdue.
ME: Yeah. I'll pay it. First of the month, when I get paid.
GIRL: Well, there's a problem with that. You see, in order to keep your account from going into further collection efforts, we need to receive a minimum payment of $______ by next Tuesday. Would you like to send in your payment or handle it with a check by phone?
ME: You don't seem to understand... I have no money until my next pay date. I will gladly pay it all on the first of February, but unfortunately I have nothing to give as of now.
GIRL: Can you hold on for a second, Mr. Ledsman?
ME: It's not LEDSMAN!
(pause, as the operator puts me on hold for two minutes)
MAN: This is Bill, can I help you?
ME: (pause) Uhhh, I think you got it backwards, buddy. You guys called me.
MAN: Mr. Ledsman, is it?
ME: Sure, why not?
MAN: It shows here that you have been delinquent for over six months.
ME: Is that what it says?
MAN: You mean you don't know?
ME: Evidently not, and don't act like you knew it from memory either, because I know you got a computer screen right there in front of you...
MAN: Why haven't you paid us, sir?
ME: Because I have no money.
MAN: I'm asking you a question, sir.
ME: And I gave you an answer.
MAN: No, you didn't. That's not an answer.
ME: Funny, sounded like an answer to me.
MAN: I want to know why you haven't paid us.
ME: I just told you why, you--
MAN: And I'm telling you that's not an acceptable answer.
ME: Fine-- take 50 points off my final score then...
MAN: What?
ME: You mean to tell me that you are calling me this early in the morning so that you can find out the exact reason why I'm not paying you right now?
MAN: Allow me to finish. You're talking over me...
ME: And you're talking over me! And I keep telling you that you won't get anything from me until the end of the month, okay?
MAN: Look here, Mr. Ledsman. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this here--
ME: And you're doing a bad job of it...
MAN: You need to act responsibly. You need to acknowledge your debts. You don't get anything for free in this world.
ME: (laughing) Listen to yourself! Are you guys monitoring this for training and research purposes?
(long pause)
ME: 'Cause if you ARE, then I'm afraid you are NOT doing a good job. Listen to yourself. You're raising your voice, delivering veiled threats, trying to scold me like a two year-old...
(At this point MAN decides to keep talking straight through my tirade, sticking to the script and uttering all of the formalities that he has been trained to go through when closing a call)
MAN: We will be speaking to you soon, Mr. Ledsman.
(hangs up)
ME: Hello? Hello? Well I'll be... HE HUNG UP ON ME!
(hysterical laughter as I hang up my line)
THE MORAL OF THE STORY: Call me around noon, and you'll speak to the humblest person on the planet. Call me when I haven't had any food, drink, or weed, however, and you're asking for a torrent of abuse.
ME: Hullo?
GIRL: Hi, is this James-- Ledsman?
ME: Close...
GIRL: Hello, my name is Anne from P________ Financial, we're calling in regards to your account with us.
ME: Oh, yeah, right...
GIRL: Have we caught you at a bad time?
ME: Well, frankly, yes... you just woke me up.
GIRL: I apologize for that sir, but we've been trying to reach you for some time now.
ME: Yeah, I just switched from the night shift back to the day shift.
GIRL: I see... well, we were wondering if we can expect payment sometime soon, since you are overdue.
ME: Yeah. I'll pay it. First of the month, when I get paid.
GIRL: Well, there's a problem with that. You see, in order to keep your account from going into further collection efforts, we need to receive a minimum payment of $______ by next Tuesday. Would you like to send in your payment or handle it with a check by phone?
ME: You don't seem to understand... I have no money until my next pay date. I will gladly pay it all on the first of February, but unfortunately I have nothing to give as of now.
GIRL: Can you hold on for a second, Mr. Ledsman?
ME: It's not LEDSMAN!
(pause, as the operator puts me on hold for two minutes)
MAN: This is Bill, can I help you?
ME: (pause) Uhhh, I think you got it backwards, buddy. You guys called me.
MAN: Mr. Ledsman, is it?
ME: Sure, why not?
MAN: It shows here that you have been delinquent for over six months.
ME: Is that what it says?
MAN: You mean you don't know?
ME: Evidently not, and don't act like you knew it from memory either, because I know you got a computer screen right there in front of you...
MAN: Why haven't you paid us, sir?
ME: Because I have no money.
MAN: I'm asking you a question, sir.
ME: And I gave you an answer.
MAN: No, you didn't. That's not an answer.
ME: Funny, sounded like an answer to me.
MAN: I want to know why you haven't paid us.
ME: I just told you why, you--
MAN: And I'm telling you that's not an acceptable answer.
ME: Fine-- take 50 points off my final score then...
MAN: What?
ME: You mean to tell me that you are calling me this early in the morning so that you can find out the exact reason why I'm not paying you right now?
MAN: Allow me to finish. You're talking over me...
ME: And you're talking over me! And I keep telling you that you won't get anything from me until the end of the month, okay?
MAN: Look here, Mr. Ledsman. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this here--
ME: And you're doing a bad job of it...
MAN: You need to act responsibly. You need to acknowledge your debts. You don't get anything for free in this world.
ME: (laughing) Listen to yourself! Are you guys monitoring this for training and research purposes?
(long pause)
ME: 'Cause if you ARE, then I'm afraid you are NOT doing a good job. Listen to yourself. You're raising your voice, delivering veiled threats, trying to scold me like a two year-old...
(At this point MAN decides to keep talking straight through my tirade, sticking to the script and uttering all of the formalities that he has been trained to go through when closing a call)
MAN: We will be speaking to you soon, Mr. Ledsman.
(hangs up)
ME: Hello? Hello? Well I'll be... HE HUNG UP ON ME!
(hysterical laughter as I hang up my line)
THE MORAL OF THE STORY: Call me around noon, and you'll speak to the humblest person on the planet. Call me when I haven't had any food, drink, or weed, however, and you're asking for a torrent of abuse.
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