Tom Ray

image - CC-BY Some rights reserved by Harry Potts

I mean really. Think back on that song for those that know.

It goes along, catchy, poppy. Then it gets to the solo and for like 15 seconds the song is nonsense. And I’ve never heard anyone say they thought twice about it?

I’m gonna say what I think it is. Now keep in mind this is based on my own conspiracy theory derived from what I claim to remember from this period of time.

I recall that David Lee Roth hated how Eddie Van Halen was leaning in a synth heavy rock direction. I want to even say I remember hearing Roth said you’re the greatest guitar player in the world. No one wants to hear you play keyboard.

So based on what I think, when they recorded the song Eddie said: fine you want a guitar solo? I’ll give you a guitar solo!

Switched the time signature, picked up his guitar, banged on it for a few seconds and set it back down.

I mean seriously. listen to it. And we’ve just all accepted it because well, it was Eddie Van Halen.

That has always been my running theory.

Now if you look, here is what wikipedia says about it.

although the song does contain a guitar solo, which Eddie Van Halen claims is his favorite solo he never wrote. This refers to the fact that it was spliced together from multiple takes.

- Wikipedia

Multiple takes? Again, its like 15 seconds long. Compared to what I said it sounds even more passive aggressive.

— image by GregKolls CC-BY Some rights reserved

I’ve heard people say pot is a gateway drug. Musically for me, the band Bad Brains was the gateway group for me.

When I was growing up just getting into skateboarding and punk rock music. That weird time where it matters for some reason what you listen to. No longer could you just listen to things just because you liked them. You become aware they have to fit a criteria approved by groups you choose to hang out with.

In morning’s, friends older brother drove us to school. Always cluing us in by listening to what was the new punk album at the time.

And I remember the time he had just bought “I Against I”. I had heard Bad Brains before but this time was different.

It was many different things. It was punk but it wasn’t. It had soul. Ballads. Grit. Of course reggae.

And from the way my friends brother was tapping on the steering wheel it was OK that I liked this.

It made me aware just because you like punk you don’t have to only look in that section for music.

And when I first heard the drum beat for the track “Re-ignition”? Forget it. The way that HR, the singer just sang in soo many different and unique ways to express what he was feeling was so appealing to me. I didn’t even know what he was talking about half the time. But I could feel it.

Man that was a good day!

When I say they were a gateway, I mean a gateway that showed me not to be ashamed I liked other styles.

I grew up in a house of Leon Redbone, Jim Croce, Kiss, Michael Jackson, Tommy James and soundtracks for things like the Jungle Book and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, etc. Things like that. We just had random 45’s of all things.

HR had his own contemporary jazz band Human Rights. After hearing what he did with that I went back to listening to any random group I could find. I listened for music. Not type anymore.

###Re-Ignition by Bad Brains

I’m fascinated by deja vu. (see what I did there?)

It happens to me a lot. And while reading about it this afternoon there are of course many different theories as to why it happens.

One theory says it’s connected to epilepsy. But I don’t know anybody that’s said they’ve never experienced it in one way or another. So that can’t be right can it?

“The strongest pathological association of deja vu is with temporal lobe epilepsy. This correlation has led some researchers to speculate that the experience of deja vu is possibly a neurological anomaly related to improper electrical discharge in the brain.”

— Deja vu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think the concept of studying something that you can’t clearly show other people is amazing. You can only describe what it is like to you. You don’t REALLY know what it is until you’ve experienced it. Like explaining being in love.

When it happens to me I find myself just trying to figure out what it was that it reminds me of. Like seeing an actor in a movie that you recognize, but just can’t place.

And when you experience it, are you like me and think it’s some big premonition? Something on another level is trying to tell you something? Why is that? Why does it always have to mean something?

I think it’s just the spookiness of the “second site” that’s had. Tells you it must mean something. Why would such a unique experience be wasted on something that means nothing?

 CC-BY-SA Some rights reserved by bionicteaching

Watched the Netflix documentary of Nina Simone the other night. I love watching a good music doc.

In it she talks about learning and wanting to be the first African-American female classical pianist. Later in life, because of money she has to take job as a nightclub act.

Then she was discovered and continued to do music in this genre from there on. Always wishing that she could go back to the other dream.

As they played songs from this timeline in the story she even talked about how she grew to hate it.

If you listen to what she does it is like nothing at the time. What she knows to do and just the way she does things is so different from what someone else would have done with the songs. And it made me sad that she didn’t seem to get that.

When the time came of the civil rights movement she wrote a song called “Mississippi Goddam”. Leading up to this I thought I knew exactly what this song was going to sound like. I was wrong.

The song is fast. It is bouncy. And it is aggressive. I don’t think anyone could write the way they felt that she did here.

That’s why I say sometimes an artist can be too close to what they do to realize just what they bring to the craft. It just sounds like a song to them.

I think this is why musicians have such a hard time answering the question: What kind of music do you play?

Ask others. Have those that know you tell you what it sounds like and means to them.

One of the reasons I started the podcast I do, Music Manumit, is to learn more about creative commons music and meet other like minded people that do the same thing. And I have. I’ve meet so many that I don’t remember all of them off the top of my head. And that’s a problem.

Friday I talked with the new head of the site free music archive, Cheyenne Hohman, who is a great person and has done a lot for the site in the time that she’s been there. Though promotion, reaching out to people and reinvigorating the radio free culture podcast. Talking to her inspired me. Which is the whole point of doing interviews with people like her.

I’ve talked to the last 3 people in her position at the site over the years and not kept in touch. why? I didn’t even know until we scheduled the interview with Cheyenne that Andrea, the previous person had left.

I have connections with so many of these people that I need to get better at keeping in touch. Talking to them about like minded projects and collaborating with them. Bring them in on ideas i have, because they, as I mentioned, are doing what I am too– getting their stuff out there and wanting people to create from it & with it. We should all keep connected. Why wouldn’t we?

First try at doing this was a cover of a song my band Lorenzo’s Music made of the Biting Elbows song “Stampede”.

I had the singer Ilya Naishuller on the podcast before and I thought it would be a good start. After doing recording and live video of the song, I shared a link with him and he shared it to his people too. Being a creative commons song (cc-by-nc-sa) we were able to do this, no worries.

Even this little bit of our connection made it a very successful experiment. After that others that saw contacted me to use the song we did in their own way with their projects. Like we did.

I need to keep in touch more with people I meet or what’s the point of doing?