Tibetan Book of Balding

When you start to go bald, you face yourself squarely. You didn't cause it, you didn't earn it. It is not retribution or karma. It is simply destiny rising up in front of you. You can try to hide it with implants or fine woven rugs of hair, but you cannot escape it. It's like an early death. Except that it's only a loss of hair.

But it was, in my case, good practice in getting used to the concept of mortality. Baldness. Mortality. They both are final, non-judgmental, and jam-packed with unavoidable destiny. If you can learn to accept baldness and get on with your life, you can probably learn to accept death. It's coming; that's a no-brainer. Why worry about it? Hey, once you've gone through the grieving stages of losing your hair, you've got all the practice you need in dealing with the grim reaper. He carries a scythe, right? First he shorns you of your hair, later he comes back for the rest. Relax, already.

Reminds me of the guy who was afraid of relationships and commitment. Someone suggested he start with a pet. But even the idea of caring for a goldfish was more than he could take on. So he started with a houseplant. Got used to routine plant care, moved on to fish, than reptiles, then mammals, finally fellow humans. We should get used to mortality in baby steps, too. Include and accept all the little 'passings' that are constantly presented to us. Then when the 'big one' comes, you've got some skills to deal with it.

Of course, check in with me when my time comes. See if I'm so gosh darn sanguine about it.

(and even though 'shorn' is the past participle of 'shear', it just somehow sounded right in the sentence above. So sue me. You can't shear me, that's already taken care of.)

The thing about Singing Telegrams is...

Okay, so you've just graduated with a bachelors degree. You studied music theory and composition. You've somehow got to make some money. You've got to get a job.

You write music for (and direct music for) theatrical productions, but it's not enough money, and it's not steady work.

You dress up in your best clothes and go around trying to get a job as a waiter - no luck, but you do get hired for one lunchtime rush of dishwashing, at which you are horrible and which ruins your only good shoes.

You get a job as a sales clerk in a musty sheet music store, where all the music is stored behind the counter in dozens of file cabinets. Minimum wage, but at least it's a job in the music business.

You try your hand at teaching piano to kids. But you're just not the kind of guy who can get excited about "Hot Cross Buns", and you're not really the kind of guy who knows what to tell a kid who says "I hate practicing". Your instinct is to tell them to give it up if they don't like it. Heck, I did, and look where it got me...I ended up being a musician anyway.

Then you get your dream job. Singing Telegrams. Oh, it may sound hokey. It may BE hokey. But here's the thing about it...

Me and my brother, circa 1980

Every situation is brand new. All you've got is an address. You've got your bellboy outfit on, and you have to go find a particular person and sing them a witty song (memorized beforehand). You may be singing to a couple sitting at home watching TV. You may be singing at an office party where you've got to grab attention as if it were a bull. The recipient may be mortified - You've got to tone down the performance and work it to minimize their sense of embarrassment. The recipient may be thrilled - Give them the thrill of their life. The recipient may want to sing with you and take over your job - You've got to maintain control of the situation in the most friendly and funny way possible.

It was improv at its best. No, you're not making it all up, but you're paying attention to your own performance, you're paying attention to your audience, there is no fourth wall, the people you're singing to need to be reassured, your presence may embarrass them, but you have to take the sting out of it, and yet make it as funny and sweet as possible. I loved trying to take all that in and make the situation work.

And there was the down time between telegrams. Sometimes you'd drive 20 miles to deliver one, and then you've got another one in that neighborhood in 3 hours. You go to the local library, read some books. You go to the park, stretch out under a tree and write some music. The down time was a wonderful gift, too.

Nervous? Almost never. Singing to celebrities? No problem. Amazing to think that when I sang for Mrs. Walter Mondale (the Vice President's wife), I was not vetted, did not have to sign a loyalty oath, I just went to the restaurant and sang to her. Different times, eh? The one time I got nervous was when Jim Henson sent a telegram to Frank Oz on his wedding day. I was given an Ernie puppet, and was to sing a custom wedding song in the style of Ernie. I was out of my depth - I don't know puppets, and I'm not an instant mimic. I was nervous. I showed up at Frank's parents house somewhere in Oakland, and it was just Frank, his new wife, and 2 or 3 others. They looked at me like I was from another planet. I warbled the song, feeling foolish with the puppet on my hand. I was glad when that was over.

I got my biggest tip in the same neighborhood some time later, At a house where there was big party going on. The telegram was addressed to "Stoney Feeney". The sweet smell of pot was everywhere. I was offered tokes, but Bellboys don't do that kind of thing. I found Stoney sitting on a bench in the semi-darkness of the back yard. I sang my song, and held out the telegram for Stoney to take from the silver tray. He took the telegram and, reaching into a large brown grocery bag, put a heaping mound of vegetable matter on my silver tray. It was the biggest tip I ever got (in terms of dollar value), but it was rather awkward trying to get it home. I ended up putting it in my leather "mailbag", and later spent an hour trying to get all the seeds out of that thing.

The singing telegram gig only lasted 2 years at most. "Western Onion" (aka "National Onion") was bought up and mismanaged into insolvency. But really, the days of the singing telegram were numbered anyway. Pet Rocks, singing telegrams, dance crazes- they all have their time, and then fade away.

Wedding Lover goes for Gunnar Music

Take a tip from the pros - if you're planning a wedding, get the wedding music that hard-core wedding afficianados get - Music by Gunnar Madsen. From "News of the World":

Andrea Tsarbos makes wedding plans despite no groom in sight

London, Aug 4,2008 (ANI): She might be looking for a groom, but Andrea Tsarbos, from Britain has already planned her dream wedding to the last. Lack of a fiance hasn't stopped 23-year-old Andrea from planning every last detail of her wedding, including the lingerie she'll wear on her wedding night. “I know people think it's mad I've planned my wedding when I'm single, but I've not been able to help myself,” News of the World quoted her as saying.

“I'm passionate about weddings. I daydream about my own and it's developed into a full-blown plan. “Of course I need a groom before I get married, but I'll meet Mr Right one day. In the meantime, why not start preparing?”

She devotes much of her spare time on planning her wedding. “I think about it when I'm walking to and from work and when I'm at the gym. I talk about it with my future bridesmaids. If a magazine has covered a celebrity wedding, I'll make a beeline for it and pore over the photos.”

She has chosen a waltz by Gunnar Madsen for her first dance, but concedes she may let her groom select his music. “It would be lovely to have a special song I share with my husband-to-be,” she said. “I'm not a brilliant dancer so I would consider having lessons to make sure our first dance was perfect,” she added. She has also planned a lavish champagne cocktail reception. (ANI)

What is Jazz?

I was in the drugstore a few weeks ago, picking up a prescription. While I was waiting a young pharmacist, a guy in his early 20's, was telling a co-worker about Harvey Mason's drumming on the Herbie Hancock "Headhunters" album. I really enjoyed listening to his enthusiasm, it was a great way to spend my waiting time. It was also refreshing, uplifting even, to know that a classic old recording was alive and being appreciated in the now.

It was funny, too, cause just a couple days before, I'd heard a cut from that recording blasting from a car driving past. Not the typical sound one hears from car windows these days. And, hearing it coming from the car, I had been mildly electrified, feeling again the intense pleasure of the sound of that music.

So, this morning I put it on. I still have the LP I bought when it came out in '73. And yes, it IS still so good. Classic. And I don't use that word lightly. Classics are very few and far between in my book.

I stumbled upon another classic when I was a teenager babysitting at a house where the parents were very cool - hippies. (My parents were decidedly NOT hippies). After the kids were asleep, I scrounged through their record collection, and came upon an old record from the '50s - Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue". I put it on. It was old fashioned, but it was not corny, like Glenn Miller or Sinatra. It was cool. Jazz fusion was the jazz of the moment, what I'd been listening to. Here was something that was old but fresh. I played it over and over that night. I saved up and bought my own copy.

"Headhunters", too, has held up over time. It was surrounded by 'controversy' when it came out. I don't recall if it was with my saxophone teacher, or the guys I worked with at the record store, or my band mates in the "jazz" band at college, but I remember heated conversations about whether or not "Headhunters" was jazz, about how Herbie was wasting his talent doing this simplified funk music. It was hearing these discussions that made me go out and buy it. Wasting his talent? Not in my book. This record cooks.

Is it Jazz? Now that "jazz" is any music that doesn't have words to it ("The Quiet Storm" and al), it seems like a silly question. Is Kenny G jazz? That's definitely debatable. Is "Headhunters" jazz? I say yes, but, aw, heck, who cares? It's just plain good.

Back to School

School year started. Man, oh, man, I had no idea the world worked on some kind of schedule. Oh, sure, I was once a kid, I remember the long lazy days of summer, the "Back-to-school" ads on TV and in the paper, and the nearly violent yanking from summer days to regulated Fall school time. But that was a long time ago. Since then, I've been a musician, for gosh sakes. Calendars and seasons mean very little to a musician. Sure, you can book a gig for triple the normal asking fee on New Year's Eve, and you have to always remember never to book a gig on Super Bowl Sunday (which isn't a holiday that shows up on regular calendars but is the absolute worst day on which to be playing a concert). But "Back to School"? Sorry, it doesn't cause even the tiniest ripple in a musician's consciousness.

But now I have a son going to school. He needs jeans that can reach all the way to his shoes, he needs shoes that don't squeeze his growing feet, he needs school supplies, the teachers need to meet his parents, he needs to meet his teachers, there's a whole ton of stuff that needs to be thought of and organized. And, while I know it was hard for me as a kid to gear up for a new year of school with a new teacher and classmates and all, it also just kind of blindsided me back then. I wasn't self-aware enough to know my own fears, and I just kept rolling with summer until all of a sudden I was being packed off to school with my lunch in a pail.

Now, as a parent, I am acutely aware of what a big deal it is for my son. He was, like the little Me of decades ago, merely blindsided by actual first day of school. He was overwhelmed and yet rolled with it all. By now, after a week and a half of school, he's enjoying the new routine. Loving it, even. And he has no idea of the preparation that went into getting him to his first day of school :) Parenting is a hoot, and a kick, and a whole lot of niggling work that I just never expected. Once again, I've been blindsided!

Mongolian Camel Bell Ringtone

I was at home with Q last Sunday when the phone rang. It was M, our wife and mother and fun companion. She'd found these beautiful Mongolian Camel Bells and wanted to buy one for me. But there were so many to choose from, and I'm so particular about sound and music, that she wasn't sure which one to get. Cell Phone to the rescue! Granted, a cell phone is not hi-fidelity. Not even lo fidelity. It's pretty much sub-fidelity. Nonetheless, she rang each bell over the phone, and I narrowed it down to one that sounded, at least over microwaves, like a beautiful gong.

It came home, and it's lovely. A rich, deep tone, like a cowbell slowed down to half-speed. The clapper has a gorgeous tassle on it, and the leather band which it hangs from still smells very ripe and dusky/musky - I suppose it's the smell of camel. (Hey, I'm not from Mongolia already). Here it is outside the studio...

Graham Cracker Smacker

Here's how it all started. My son, Q, is fascinated by all things mechanical. He has a book in the ISpy series in which there's a picture of a convoluted balloon-popping contraption: It involves dominoes, rolling marbles, teeter-totters, pulleys and the like. He has spent many hours looking at that picture. So, one day, I decided to look up Rube Goldberg, the original inventor of such wacky contraptions. And it turned out that were a ton of super-cool videos of amazing contraptions on YouTube, from around the world. Well, Q spent many hours memorizing those contraptions. Then he announced he wanted to build his own. He's full of ideas, that boy. Me, I'm full of ideas, too, but usually they're ideas about music or stories. I'm not really much of a handyman. So we invited a handyman friend, David Jouris, over to help us build a contraption. The goal: Pour a glass of milk, and cause a graham cracker to split into pieces so you can dip it in the glass.

I'm telling you - it may seem short, it may seem simple, but it takes a lot of tinkering to get even THIS little contraption to work. We learned a lot about the concept of patience :)

 

Novelty? No thanks.

Novelty songs. I generally don't like them. Yet I do like humor in music. Obviously. (see "The Bobs" or my family music)

But just because I end up writing humorous songs sometimes, I don't really listen to humorous songs very much. I love music so much that, even if it's funny, it better have some serious musicality to it, or it'll make me mad. So usually I'm listening to more serious music (from Leonard Cohen to Bach to Rufus Wainwright to...).

I had a roommate my first year of college who loved Fats Waller. Fats is acclaimed as a great piano player and all, but I just couldn't get past the fact that he was yapping all over his songs, like he didn't know when to shut up. Somehow, he crossed the 'humor' line for me, obliterating whatever music was going on with his patter.

Spike Jones? Even as a kid, that kind of humor made me slightly queasy. On a par with Jerry Lewis or the Three Stooges, the "I'll do anything for attention" kind of humor that makes me run the other way.

Weird Al? Yeah, he rubs me the wrong way, too. Then again, every time I think of "Another One Rides the Bus", I smile inwardly. So there's some kind of magic going on. His work, being based on hugely successful melodies, has the advantage of having musical cajones at its core. And, as silly as his lyrics may be, I'd much rather be singing the lyrics to "Like a Surgeon" than the original vapid version.

The Coasters - There was real music there sometimes, some hummable tunes, but the humor wears thin for me. I give them 2 and a half stars.

Zappa - some sublime music, then mixed with such low attempts at humor. A bizarre mixture. Still, his music had integrity, and lifted him above being just a novelty act. And, his championing of 'art music' led me to composers such as Stravinsky, Varese and Stockhausen. I was listening to all kinds of contemporary music in high school, all because Frank said it was cool. I thank him muchly for that. And I find myself humming and singing "Peaches en Regalia" quite often, and it makes me smile. It has no words, it's not trying to be funny, but it's an odd bit of music that just makes me smile.

It's a funny thing, humor and music. I think that, for me, it comes down to music being an essentially emotional art form. Even when it's striving to be detached and un-emotional, the effect it has on me is still an emotional one. And there's a difference between a funny song/lyrics and funny music all by itself. When I think of attempts at making 'funny' instrumental music through the centuries, they all fail. Music can be witty, but not ha-ha funny. Lyrics can be ha-ha, but I can't think of music that achieves that all on its own.

What think you?

Strangers in the Night

Some songs just don't go away. Even when it seems like they should. Even when every fibre of my being screams that a song is no good, I am sometimes drawn, against my will, into an intimate humming relationship with a particular song.

It came to me again this morning, as I did the dishes. I sing it mockingly, as the lyrics are laughable and unworthy of serious consideration. I hate the song. And yet it has been lodged in my gray matter since 1966, and hardly a week goes by that I don't find it wafting through my semi-consciousness.

Oh, there are tons of other bad songs that are hummable and memorable and get stuck in my brain, but usually they have more sinew, more of a self-knowing sense of their own silliness: "The Addams Family", "Sugar Shack", "Yummy Yummy Yummy". Not so "Strangers in the Night." It masquerades as a classic. I hate it for that. And yet, my god, it is so HUMMABLE! I must admit that, somehow, it is a classic. I love the melody, even though it is so lamely predictable. Perhaps this afternoon I'll sit down at the piano and analyze it, try to determine where its magic lies...

But as of right now, this morning, at the kitchen sink, I just put aside the soapy dishes, took off my gloves, and went to the computer. I had to know more about this damnable cursed song. Wikipedia Ho! (as in Westward, Ho!)

Both my fascination with and my revulsion against the song seem vindicated. It was a number one song in 1966, and the title song from Sinatra's most commercially successful album. Apparently, I'm not alone in finding it hummable. According to Wikipedia,'Sinatra despised the song, and called it "a piece of s**t", and "the worst song I ever f***ing heard". Hmm, I'm with Sinatra there.

Who the heck wrote it? Well, Bert Kaempfert is credited with the music, but he probably did not write it. According to Wikipedia: The music was originally recorded by Ivo Robic´ for the music festival in Split, Croatia. Robic´ later sang the song in German ("Fremde in der Nacht", lyrics by Kurt Felitz) and in Croatian language ("Stranci u Noc´i", lyrics by Marija Renota.

Aha! So it's some Eastern European hybrid/approximation of American Popular music. That explains it! That's why it feels and is so 'four-square', lacking in the jazzier syncopations and surprising phrasings that an American composer would have naturally put in. And yet the composer hit it spot on, making the stolid repetition of phrases balance near-perfectly. So that, when I'm doing a mindless task, I don't sing "I Got Rhythm" or "Puttin' on the Ritz". Nope. When I go mindless, I go for the gold. "Strangers in the Night".

I Wish I Were a Troubadour

A couple years ago I was in New York and went to Little, Brown & Co. to meet, for the first time, my editor for the book of "Old Mr. Mackle Hackle". I came into her office and she said "Where's your guitar?" A bit surprised, I said that I don't always carry one with me. She said "When Dan Zanes comes in, he always brings an instrument, and gets the whole office singing songs." Wow, that is SO cool. I sure wish I could be like that.

But music for me is more private. I'm a bit shy. Oh, sure, put me on a stage and I lose all inhibitions. A stage is a place of ultimate freedom for me, where my shyness does not interfere. But without a stage I don't know what to do with myself.

Also, I don't remember songs very well, so when someone asks me to sing a song, I truly don't remember them, even the ones I wrote. I have to practice them to have them at hand.

At a concert I gave at the Cafe du Nord in San Francisco some years back, someone in the audience requested a song of mine. I replied that I didn't remember it. They said "But you wrote it!" I replied, "Yeah, well Steinbeck wrote Grapes of Wrath, but it's not like he could just recite it from memory."

The line got a laugh, but I don't think the person believed the truth of it, that I really don't remember songs I've written. Perhaps it's why I don't get tired of my own music! Really, I love so many of my songs, and maybe it's cause they're always a little new to me.

As for just getting up and singing at the drop of a hat, I need some encouragement to perform. Not a lot, but a little nudge from outside of myself. I heard Glen Hansard ,from the movie "Once", interviewed on the radio. He just picked up his guitar one day and started busking on the streets of Dublin. His faith in himself allowed him to just go for it. I've got a lot of faith in myself, and I'm grateful for every ounce of it, but I can't do what Glen did. I admire that. Perhaps I'll have that ability in my next life. If I come back as a snail, be on the lookout for a singing snail on a street corner near you.

 

Haruki Murakami

There's a novelist whose invention and soul and style I am so in love with: Haruki Murakami. His is the kind of writing that I'd like to think I would do if I were a novelist. I rarely fall head-over-heels in love with an artist's work. I SO love when it happens!

Sometimes my love of an artist's work includes awe, in that I can never imagine myself doing what that person is able to do: examples in that category include Ken Kesey, Aaron Copland, Tom Waits. Other times, it is more a feeling of a kindred spirit; that that person is doing exactly what I want to do, and I can even envision myself achieving the same kind of thing: examples include Thelonious Monk, Rufus Wainwright, Haruki Murakami. Not to sound big-headed, it's just that I understand their mode of creativity at a 'friendly' level. I feel comfortable in the presence of their work. And somehow, what they're doing feels like the same kind of thing I'm doing (or imagine myself doing).

So, it was fascinating to read Haruki's recent piece in the New Yorker, in which he spoke some about his life. ("The Running Novelist," The New Yorker, June 9, 2008, p. 72)

He writes of how the idea of becoming a writer came to him in a precise flash. He was at a baseball game, taking in the clouds, the game, just chilling and enjoying, when he suddenly knew that he was going to write. I get a chill from that, because it's a feeling that has happened to me so many times: There's a flash inside my brain, and suddenly I know the next thing I've GOT to do, and I know it deep in my belly. Most people never speak of this, so, uh, I keep it to myself. But Haruki knows the feeling. It's comforting to know there's someone else out there who gets these strange flashes. And it's so cool that it's someone whose work I feel such a deep connection to.

Want to read some Murakami? Start with "Kafka on the Shore". Bloody brilliant.

Top ZZzzs, Listen up!

Want a record that will put you to sleep, but never drive you crazy?

The absolute best lullaby music, chosen by our son Q himself, is "Wings of Slumber" by the Banana Slug String Band. It's been playing every night for over a year, sometimes more than once in a night, sometimes in the very same room I'm trying to sleep in. They have created a CD that has just the right blend of styles, melodies, off-center phrasing and gentle surprises that add up to the perfect nighttime experience. I'm REALLY hard to please, so, please, take this as the highest of high praise. This is the lullaby CD to get.

Small, eentsy caveat: There's a song somewhere in the middle with a vocal by Laurie Lewis, that when it comes on just seems louder than all the rest. It always jolts me a little. I re-recorded it at minus 6db so it fits in better. If you're putting it on an ipod or some such, you may want to simply drop it from the playlist. It's a nice song, but if sleep is your goal...you get my drift(log).

Evolution of a Musician Part 2

The Listening Years...

Up until February of 1964 (when I was 7), music just didn't really mean much to me. On that particular night, we were at my grandparents house in Los Gatos, California, and me and my sister and maybe some cousins were in front of the TV watching The Wonderful World of Walt Disney. I don't remember what was on that night, it must not have been that great, because when my teenage aunt came into the room and abruptly switched the channel, saying "the Beatles are on!", none of us complained much. Heck, sometimes what was on Ed Sullivan was more fun than what was on Disney...

Then the Beatles came on and I was electrified . I don't recall ever being so excited in my life. I'd had some fun times, some good toys, some fun experiences, but all of a sudden I had a purpose in life. This was something important, something I was meant see, meant to do, it was something powerful, a force.

Thereafter I dreaded my weekly crew cuts with my father. I wanted my own Beatle hair!. That wasn't about to happen (and wouldn't for another 7 years). I received 2 Beatles wigs as presents, and wore them with a mixture of pride and sheepishness (and itchiness) as I sang along with the records every day after school.

I remember my sister Lynn, older by three years, getting our first Beatles LP. "Introducing the Beatles" on VeeJay records. I remember the Beatles fan magazine she had. I remember buying my first Beatles LP, The Beatles Second Album". I earned $0.25 a week as an allowance, for mowing the lawns, washing the car, taking out the trash, and it took 12 weeks to save up to three dollars that an LP cost in those days. For the next few years, all my allowance went towards Beatles LPs.

In the summer of 1964, I was sent to visit with my great aunt and uncle on their cranberry farm in Oregon for two weeks. I got to drive a tractor, fish in the stream for trout with a spool of thread and a bent pin, and ride the zip line across their swimming hole and fall into it on my way across. There was only one other child around there my age, she lived down the road apiece. Her room was covered in Elvis posters. I remember some really heated discussions about who was better; the Beatles or Elvis. When I went into town with my aunt and uncle they asked if there was anything I wanted (perhaps to remember the trip by). A sampler of the famous local cheese? A toy fishing boat? No. I really really wanted "Meet the Beatles". They bought it for me. The stereo version! (Not that I had a use for stereo on our sleep teaching device...).

Around this time we got a piano in our house as a gift for my grandparents. My sister started lessons right away, and she was good. After about a year I took some lessons too. It didn't really excite me, because I didn't sound like the Beatles. I practiced, but listlessly. I performed in the talent show at school, a piece called the Happy Hop Toad. Snoresville, daddy-o. My piano teacher got some Beatles songs "Yesterday" and "Michelle", and simplified them for me, but still, it just wasn't rock 'n roll. Yes, it was the Beatles, but it wasn't rock. After about a year of lessons I quit.

Our neighborhood in Palo Alto butted up against the back of a huge luxury hotel called the Cabana. It was kind of a Caesar's Palace of its time with huge colored fountains in the front featuring armless statues of Greek or Roman origins. Very fancy, very impressive. That was where the Beatles were reported to stay when they came to play San Francisco. I remember spending long summer hours perched dashingly on my stingray style bicycle, hanging out with other Beatles fans at the big wooden gate at the end of that street, which looked onto the back parking lot of the hotel. We all speculated about how the Beatles might arrive. Long string of limousines? Hidden in a laundry van or milk truck? Maybe they'd arrive more royally in a helicopter. So, the sound of an approaching helicopter, the arrival of any delivery van or large car, would send us all to the fence peering over it hoping for a glimpse of our heroes. (Here's a blow-by-blow account of The Beatles' stay in my neighborhood. It turns out that they did indeed exit in a delivery truck, and they used the very exit that we all hung out at.)

For Christmas of '65 I got a transistor radio. Wow. All of a sudden I had access to all kinds of music. My favorite station was KYA, a top 40 station out of San Francisco. I went to sleep with this transistor radio every night. There were the dippy songs that were catchy but that I didn't like that much ("Judy in Disguise", "Yummy Yummy Yummy", the soupy songs by The Delphonics ). And then there were the Great Songs. "Dock of the Bay", "Heard it Through the Grapevine", "White Rabbit", "Light My Fire". While the Beatles were number one with me, there was so much more music out there and I was on fire with it all!

Playing The Happy Hop Toad in the talent show was an experience I never wanted to repeat. The next year I had a whole different idea of what I wanted to do for the talent show. I wanted to do a Beatles song. I knew a guy that had paper drum set. I had my two Beatles wigs. And I knew another guy who had whose mother had an actual electric guitar. I had a toy acoustic guitar. None of us knew how to play any of the instruments, but that didn't matter. I knew the words to the song "Help" backwards and forwards and I taught the guys all the words. And we wore the guitars and the wigs while one guy sat at the drums and we just yelled the words to the song. We practiced a lot, I really pushed them hard, and we took it to the talent show.

All the other "rock 'n roll" acts in the Talent Show were lip-synching to records. I was somehow weirdly proud of the fact that we were actually "singing" it live. And, oddly enough, the crowd went wild. A bunch of older kids ( fifth and sixth graders) came up afterwards and said it was really funny. One of the few times in my elementary school years when I was considered cool (if only for an afternoon).

As my tastes in music expanded, I sometimes found myself a little frightened by what I heard. My teenage aunt gave me "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison", and while I absorbed it, I found the cheering of the prison crowd at the words "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" really chilling (still do). The Doors records she leant me were rather spooky. And even the Beatles were getting dark and strange ("There's people standing 'round, who'll screw you in the ground, they'll fill you in with all the sins you've seen.") That was a heavy lyric for a boy growing up in a strict born-again household (more about that subject some other time).

In seventh grade (first-year of junior high school), we were required to do half a year of choir followed by half a year of band. I didn't care for choir. I found it dippy. When it came time for band, however, I really really wanted to play the drums. There were about 10 other boys, all much cooler than me, who also wanted to try out for the drums. I knew I didn't stand a chance against them, so I set my sights on the trumpet instead. And I really kind of liked playing it. But after a few months the teacher told me that my lips were shaped wrong for trumpet playing, and that I should give it up. Discouraged, I gave up playing music again.

Oh, but I still listened and dreamed. Apart from rock music, my aunt gave me the soundtrack to "2001:A Space Odyssey". I saw the movie on my birthday 3 years running (it ran for over 2 years at the Cinerama theatre in San Jose). There is some really wild contemporary art music by Ligeti and others on it that intrigued me. I went to sleep to it every night for a few months.

Then, I went to my first rock concert on May 19, 1968. The Northern California Folk-Rock Festival (lineup was The Doors, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Grateful Dead, The Animals, The Youngbloods, Electric Flag, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, and Taj Mahal). It was scary (I was only 11, and there were lots of drugs, including bad acid being passed around). It was also a dream come true (just look at that lineup!). It was a marvelous, sunny Woodstock-like experience (before Woodstock, even). But then the headliners, The Doors, began setting up. Dark clouds covered the sky, and by the time Jim Morrison took the stage, the sky was brooding, and the crowd's mood changed. Someone threw a full can of beer over our heads. It hit a guy on a blanket 10 feet in front of us, and his head was bleeding from a nasty cut. Someone threw a cherry bomb that exploded a short ways away. Jim Morrison was spitting on the audience. It was huge, awesome, thrilling, terrifying, and it was exactly where I wanted to be.

As I entered my teenage years, I found more fantastic new music by Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Tim Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Donovan. I spent after-school hours at Pacific Stereo, drooling over component stereo systems. I worked extra jobs and saved, and when I was 13, my older sister and I went in together on a $300 system. (I still have, and use, the amplifier from it)

But I only listened. Playing music seemed impossible. I didn't know how one could become a rock musician, that path was invisible to me. I didn't know that there might be guitar teachers or drum teachers. What I listened to was everything to me, but nothing that I could ever do myself...

Gunnar Music on YouTube

A recent search on Youtube unearthed some interesting uses for my music. None of them with my blessing, so don't think I had anything to do with them. It's a hoot to see where my music ends up.

Ants in my Pants - Some cool and interesting images and juxtapositions going on here:

Here, "Anna" is used to score a montage from the TV series Heroes:

Anna is used for a slide show of stills from the 1964 movie "Angélique, marquise des anges". I don't know the film, don't know exactly what this is about...

And then, you can even put your makeup on to my music:

It's a big, wide world out there, eh?

My Solution to Global Warming

"It's also a great Axe grinder!"

Here's my idea. Some kind of huge pedal-powered flywheel. I mean huge. 6 feet in diameter, one foot in width, made of stone or metal. I'm not a physicist, so I don't know if this is the most efficient way to translate pedal power into electricity, but I think we need to be able to SEE what our work is doing, or we'll get discouraged and give up.

If one were to pedal to charge up a set of batteries, you wouldn't get visceral feedback about what your work is getting you. If you hook up your pedal generator to a TV so that the TV works only while you're pedaling, you can see what it takes to power a TV, but...so much for being a couch potato.

And usually people want to exercise for half an hour in the morning and then get on with their day. If by pedaling you set this giant flywheel in motion you GET it, in a wonderful big way. The flywheel's energy can then be stored in a battery. For use throughout the day or night. There would be gears just like on a bicycle so that when you first start pedaling the gear ratio gets the flywheel going without too much struggle, and as you get faster and faster you can change gears and really get that flywheel moving.

I got this idea while biking around town. When I bicycle up the hill, I'm very aware of how much energy it takes to get my body and the weight of the bicycle up the hill. It's a lot a work. All these cars fly by me, most with just one person at the wheel and no passengers, and our cars are so powerful that the driver really has no sense of how much energy is being expended to lift all that steel and plastic up the hill. As such, my invention is not just about creating or harnessing the energy from an exercise regimen and turn it into electricity, but also about helping people to realize how much energy it takes to run a light bulb or a washing machine or a television set.

While walking the other day, I passed a woman who was blowing leaves with an electric blower. Now, leaf blowers are pretty ridiculous any way you look at. Are they really that much easier to use than a rake? The simplest way of reducing the energy used by leaf blowers is just to stop using them. But this woman's house had a huge solar array on the roof. So, ostensibly, she was just harnessing the power of the sun to blow her leaves around. Much better than using a gas powered leaf blower or electricity from a coal-fired power plant. Still, harnessing the sun's energy is not without its costs (the manufacture of all those silicon solar panels, the chemicals involved, et cetera). I believe that she, and all of us, need to understand how much energy it takes to blow those leaves around. If someone had to pedal a generator like mad so that she could blow leaves around the yard, we'd be back to using rakes in no time.

So I look around my house and I think about the things that I really depend on, or like to use, and the things that are not so important. I really love using the computer, I love having a music studio (which is mostly run by electricity), and it's great to have lights in the evening and the early morning. Whoa yeah, and the dishwasher and the clothes washer - those are really handy. I would love having a huge flywheel that I could spend 30 minutes on each morning and know that it would power my computer for four for five hours. I'd get exercise and I'd feel really good about the energy I was using. I'm pretty sure that even if each member of my family was peddling for two hours a day, we probably still wouldn't make enough energy to totally supply our daily household energy usage. But it would make a dent. And it would show us how precious the energy that we do have really is.