Playback is a Bitch

Last night in East Harlem a woman was sitting in her automated wheelchair, outside of a Duane Reade.  It was hard not to look-- she was beautiful-- ageless and drawn from illness.  She was breathing from a mouth device that looked at first glance like a sort of kazoo.  I hesitated, but had to ask... she motioned her head with difficulty, toward the door... so weak, thin as a young child, she could barely manage the armrest controls.  I held the door... it was an ordeal for her to just enter. She thanked me, barely speaking...  using the mouthpiece... absolutely no breath of self-pity or bitterness, she went forward... 

Me, the useless sympathy-soaked sponge of human compassion... Jesus, I asked, what sort of punishment is this for a human being-- what payback? As though there is any rationale for suffering-- for the homeless veterans, for the woman incinerated in a chocolate factory, for the souls crushed in last week's tornadoes, for my friend whose brain tumor has stripped her of her postural dignity, her grace. 

People used to console me when my sister repeatedly forged and narrated to our disadvantage... don't worry, she'll get her payback. But she doesn't.  Life doesn't work this way... childhood cancers, neuro-muscular diseases... they continue to ravage the good and the bad.  Beloved wives are hit by drunk drivers,  children fall from cliffs and brave men drown in cold seas.  

I find myself struggling often with the occupational annoyances of most career musicians-- tinnitus, compromised audio issues.  Few of us trust ourselves completely in the studio, mixing.  Many bravely step out on stage and turn their amplifiers up without consideration. It's not intentional, but there's a certain competitive performance headspace volume which comes with the territory, despite the advice of sound engineers.  

Last night I watched Woodstock: The Director's Cut... a longer version of the original which I had not seen for at least 40 years?  It's become sort of a cliché to my generation... a landmark, a cultural monument to a time that seems further and further away than ever.  I keep thinking the way I heard music back then was different from the way it sounds now.  I play vinyl records occasionally... my headphones only underscore the sense that my ears are not created equal.  Not that I would have done things differently...

Alvin Lee was incredible.  I forgot how great... having had the opportunity to travel with him in the early 80's... I could only remember how privileged I was to sit in his dressing room while he messed around on his red Gibson 335, casually churning out jaw-dropping ideas and phrases.  He was fairly quiet otherwise.  And Hendrix, of course-- that improvisational ending of Purple Haze as though he gave up on his band and just played.  You feel him move from 'stage-guitarist' into inspiration and truth.  

But the innocence-- the vibe, of course... and most of all-- the lack of branding... no corporate sponsorship or signage except messages on T-shirts and flags.  At the end of the film there's a reeling-off of musicians who have passed... and then of words-- things that have since lost their meaning-- integrity, compassion, kindness, etc... equality... 

I have friends that work at the recently fallen banks.  In the Woodstock days financial CEOs made a reasonable salary.  Greed was not the religion of corporate culture.  There was economic inequality but nothing like that of today.  There's a website that lists the payment received by each artist at the festival.  It's staggeringly modest. 

No performers at Woodstock had earpieces or pitch correction; some of the bands were awful.  Something musicians know-- the audience is often hearing something completely different.  Stage volume is deceptive.  If you played in dive bars, you never heard yourself sing. Someone had to play it back-- and it was rare that anyone recorded live performances.  It required equipment and planning, like these festivals.  Stephen Stills... in those days-- well, he was just so damn good, no matter what he became. 

The pandemic musical intermission encouraged me to rethink musical priorities.  Recently I rediscovered a singer I'd heard almost by accident in a Washington, D.C. club long ago-- Eva Cassidy.  Yes, she was doing covers, but her guitar playing was excellent, and her voice-- well, up there with anyone.  I was riveted.  It was reassuring to listen to her performance which was so fortunately captured with little fanfare and alteration by some angel in 1996.  It's humbling-- nearly perfect.  Eva passed away just months after the recording. Unfortunately, there's now a pop-up message on every YouTube video reminding the listener that a new album has been released adding strings and orchestration to these magical tracks.  Schmaltz it up, why don't you?  Okay... it's a real orchestra, but doubtful she would have approved; unfortunately, we can't speak for the dead.  Legacies and family members sell these people out.  The likes of me cannot save them.  Most often there is no Director's cut. 

I am a huge Clifford Brown fan.  He, too, died way too young; I have most all of his recorded material and among them my least favorite is the one with strings. I'm opinionated and stubborn, but why, I ask? And who will profit from this girl's brilliantly pristine performances now?  I don't know.  Current engineers can create nearly anything out of sound waves and a computer; they can even fool a dog or a whale. For the rest of us, playback, when we actually get to hear it, can be a bitch. 

March Sadness

I've binged on basketball this weekend to the point of exhaustion.  My alma mater has slipped into Cinderella-hood with an unexpected victory and I cried out and fist-pumped in front of the screen my son forced me to install way back when he was still competing.  It's fantastic, I must admit.  I am fully committed to the madness, the passion-- the heartbreaking disappointments and the wins-- deserved or not. And it's free.

It was March when I began this blog-- exactly sixteen years ago, with the faint hope that leaving a trail of written crumbs might entice someone to discover a persona I was not quite sure I was. At that moment my son's hoop dreams were real and like a full moon on his teenage horizon.  I was a NYC basketball mother-- no car, but I faithfully subway'ed it to every gym in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan-- to church basements and city parks-- for tournaments, games, competitions.  I yelled my head off and jumped around and embarrassed the hell out of him while he mostly ignored me or referred to me as his grandmother at Riverside Church. Uptown many of the parents were 15/16 years older than their kids... some still had hoop dreams of their own.  

These days he's more of a bettor and an analyst.  He's aged out of playing competitively and he's mature enough to realize his contribution is maybe managerial.  The business of sports has changed, too, since he was in high school.  The stakes are higher, the field is not quite so level. It's complicated, as they say.

March always had a sense of mystery for me-- our Mom read to us at night, and one of her favorites was Little Women.  It didn't occur to me that the March sisters simply had a common last name; it was more of a designation, like the March hare I knew well from repeated Alice in Wonderland narrations.  Beware the Ides of March, I recalled from some rhyme my Irish nanny recited.  We had the piano sheet music for The Funeral March of a Marionette which gave me creeps-- how can you know when a puppet is dead, I asked my sister many times?  

It seemed fitting that I was feeling under the weather this past week. Like a commemoration of the 2020 covid scourge which took my Alan but left me here forever changed.  It was exactly three years since that Ides of March when he'd had symptoms, and mine arrived on St. Patrick's day, like a virus snake.  

Tuesday is the randomly designated beginning of spring.  Today's chill reminded us not to take things for granted.  It occurred to me that my son's father was born in March-- maybe this very day.  Surely there was a time when I baked a cake and celebrated.  The first time I fell in love was March.  But I can't seem to draw it out of the funereal doldrums that ring from its very name.  There will always be an Alan-shaped hole, and terrible pandemic remembrances that sparked a chain of events I could not intercept.  

Like most of these posts, I begin with an idea and stray far enough that I cannot recall my original intent.  Basketball.  Madness.  It's a young sport.  The basket.  It's simple.  Last week in the cold rain there were boys playing in relative darkness on one of the uptown courts.  They were inspired by the tournament, maybe.  They were soaked and the wet ball on puddled pavement was hard to manage.  I stood in the streetlamp shadow and watched them like an old crow. The documentary Hoop Dreams was on some cable channel at 3 AM... I stayed awake until dawn watching.  It was depressing, yes... but also the time-- before cellphones, before the internet-- felt innocent and more real.  The uniforms were funny. The mothers-- the relentless routine of raising children-- the vicarious, deep disappointments... where are they now?

The banks are ailing, the world is in turmoil, but the games go on... Sport, before television, was the true narcotic entertainment of the people.  We go from season to season, from World Series to World Cup to Super Bowl to March Madness.  Admittedly I dread the coming of spring.  I dislike daylight savings time-- I hoard long dark mornings and early sunset... reading by candlelight and the pointy scent of winter starlight.  It occurred to me today, had I stayed in England, today would be Mother's Day.  For the Brits, it maybe sweetens a dark month.  

In the park this evening, a fat red robin stared me down.  He was bold and a little early, I thought.  His breast was the color of blood. If April is the cruelest month, I asked him silently, what can we name March?  If the year was a deck of cards, we'd surely be a black suit. Tonight I watched Gonzaga beat out a heroic TCU.  It was heartbreaking-- they played so hard, the underdogs.  We're all underdogs... there's a rare victory out there if we can find it... and there's tragedy; there's April, with its cruelty, and for another ten days, the richly unpredictable madness of March.