The Tuning Slide: 3.2- Music and Freedom

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

From folk songs to patriotic anthems, jazz to rock and roll, popular music has long expressed what it means to be American. … As a product of various traditions, talents, and techniques coming together in harmonious but also contentious ways, popular music is truly the soundtrack of the American experience.
-National Museum of American History (Smithsonian)

Music is rebellious. It is the expression of people’s greatest desires.

It can also be overbearing and reactionary; enslaving and a weapon.

Music has power. Great power. To play music is to participate in that power.

Music can be freedom.

Freedom:
1. The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
2. The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.
synonyms: liberty, liberation, release, deliverance,

Music lifted religious movements through chants, hymns, or Bach chorales. It gave slaves a moment of their own after relentless hours in the fields. Music has been the sound of revolt as portrayed in the musical, Les Miserables. It carries the voice of generations seeing injustice and speaking out through people like Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Tupac, or Eminem.

Freedom is not something to take for granted as we so often do. It is too easily revoked, sometimes for seemingly good reasons. When that does happen, music has been and will be there to stand against such reversals of freedom.

I reflect on this every year as we celebrate the Fourth of July. So for today’s Tuning Slide on the day after Independence Day, just some thoughts to reflect on- music and freedom.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors
the ethos of the best parts of society.
-Paul Kreibich

[First, from the website, Jazz in America an outline in a lesson plan for teaching about Jazz.}

Jazz is really the best music to represent America because:

a. It is partly planned and partly spontaneous; that is, as the musicians perform a pre-determined tune, they have the opportunity to create their own interpretations within that tune in response to the other musicians' performances and whatever else may occur "in the moment" -- this is called improvisation and is the defining element of jazz.

b. In everything from regular conversation, to basketball, to everyday life, Americans are constantly improvising.

c. Improvisation is the key element of jazz.

There is no better example of democracy than a jazz ensemble: individual freedom but with responsibility to the group. In other words, individual musicians have the freedom to express themselves on their instrument as long as they maintain their responsibility to the other musicians by adhering to the overall framework and structure of the tune.
Jazz in America (http://www.jazzinamerica.org/LessonPlan/5/1/242)

The genius of our country is improvisation; Jazz reflects that.
It's our great contribution to the arts.
-Ken Burns

[More thoughts from another lesson on the Jazz in America website.]

Each player has the freedom to play whatever he/she wants. But, at the same time, each player wants to play something that will not only please himself/herself, but make the whole group sound better as well, enhancing the overall sound. Musicians work together on this, supporting each other while not compromising their own artistic individuality.

Jazz musicians realize that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Each individual part is enhanced by the group, i.e., each individual player gets better and comes up with more musical ideas because of the others in the group. They need each other to accomplish their individual and collective goals. The music is better because each player is different; it brings something new to the music.
Jazz In America (http://www.jazzinamerica.org/LessonPlan/5/1/248)

Music is freedom and being free is the closest I've ever felt to being spiritual.
- Ben Harper

Having grown up in the 50s and 60s, music’s revolutionary potential was part of my own personal soundtrack. From the folk protest songs to rock anthems, Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” to Punk Rock’s anti-establishment cries, music’s power to inspire and motivate has been seen as part of these moves toward freedom. In Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or Communist China, Western music, protest music, songs of freedom were often banned setting up even more of an interest in them. Nothing like telling a group or a whole country they can’t listen to something. It only enhances its power.

So whether it is listening or playing or improvising, let’s keep music alive- and revolutionary.

The Soundtrack of Half a Century

We often speak of the popular music of given eras as providing soundtracks for different generations. Each of us has that particular set of songs or musical artists who define the music of our adolescence. Sitting in Target Center in Minneapolis on May 4 I realized that, even for my cohort, the oldest group of Baby Boomers, that line is too limiting for Paul McCartney and the Beatles. They have provided, together and separately, a soundtrack for at least half a century.

Over the years a number of friends and acquaintances have been to McCartney concerts and reported that it was one of the most amazing concert experiences of their lives. When tickets for the Target Center concert popped up on my Facebook feed the last week of April, I jumped at them. The dream of my lifetime was to see the Beatles in concert. They stopped touring as the Beatles 50 years ago this summer. But here was Sir Paul. Why not?

Personally I was a little worried before the concert started. As the 8:00 starting time approached there were still about 20% of the seats empty. Has Paul lost his following? Are people leaving the Beatles behind. By the time the concert began, though, almost every seat was filled.My guess is that the security lines were too long.

In any case we waited. It was 45 minutes more of what I can only call the worst music experience in a live music setting.

No it wasn't an opening group. It was a techno-beat soundtrack mix of Beatles/McCartney music. It was too loud and far too techno. For a total of over 75 minutes I felt I was being pounded into submission by a relentless beat. (I have never taken the drug Ecstasy, but I think I understand why clubbers do.) I was actually worried that by the time McCartney took the stage I would be so beaten down that I wouldn't enjoy the show.

Yeah, right.

Not a chance.

Here are ten of my pictures from the concert along with some more thoughts. A link to my complete album on Flickr is at the bottom along with a link to the setlist online.

The first seven songs of the set:

A Hard Day's Night
Save Us
Can't Buy Me Love
Letting Go
Temporary Secretary (A real dud in my book. The only one.)
(A Foxy Lady snippet)
I've Got a Feeling
My Valentine (for his current wife, Nancy)

From City Pages review:

If death hung heavy in the air — and constant reminders of John Lennon, George Harrison, Linda McCartney, producer George Martin, and Prince made sure that it did — the mood was still celebratory. We're witnessing pages of rock history come to life, after all, and the knighted, mythic creature performing the songs still seems to believe in their power. The packed crowd of around 19,000 did, too.

Paul mentioned the late great Jimi Hendrix after the Foxy Lady riff and then said he was dedicating the concert to our own late, great Prince. He told of seeing Prince perform at a small cafe this past New Year's Eve. "We saw the new year in together and that was beautiful — God bless you Prince!"

Prince. Minneapolis.
Minneapolis. Prince.
It goes together.

Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
Here, There and Everywhere
Maybe I'm Amazed (for his late wife, Linda.)
We Can Work It Out

In Spite of All the Danger (The Quarrymen song)
You Won't See Me
Love Me Do (Dedicated to George Martin who died in March)
And I Love Her
Blackbird

The Quarrymen song went back to 1959 when it was Paul, John, and George and "two other guys" that he told us we wouldn't know. He said their nicknames, and everyone laughed. We didn't know them. It was a country-style, skiffle/rock-a-billy song. He even tried to wiggle and jiggle like Elvis. Applause and laughter!

He told a story of George Martin, the Beatles' superlative producer asking Paul to do the singing on "Love Me Do" so John could play the harmonica. Without George Martin, he said, there wouldn't have been the Beatles.

Then there was "Blackbird." He mentioned that they wrote it in solidarity with the people in Little Rock, Arkansas, who were standing up for civil rights. It was a beautiful rendition with appropriate video accompanying him.While singing he was lifted on a hydraulic stage section. A little over done.

Here Today
Queenie Eye
New Song
The Fool on the Hill
Lady Madonna
FourFiveSeconds
   (Rihanna and Kanye West and Paul McCartney cover)
Eleanor Rigby
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
Something

 He started "Here Today" by saying it was written to John Lennon. Sadly, he said, it was "a conversation we never had." He urged the audience to say what they needed to say to the people they cared about while they had the chance.

He started "Something," a George Harrison song, by playing it on the ukulele which he said was how George first played it for him. It continued into a guitar slashing of highest quality!

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Band on the Run
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Let It Be
Live and Let Die

To quote the City Pages reviewer:

Paul performing "Let It Be" at the piano is all any music fan could really ask for.

With "U.S.S.R." he told an anecdote about being in Russia and having Russian officials tell him about listening to the Beatles' music. It was one of a number of times that Paul truly made it a personal evening, befitting the tour's title, One on One

"Live and Let Die," the heavy-duty title rocker from the James Bond film, gave us all a start when the pyrotechnics started. Sure, it was over-the-top, but it fit!

Hey Jude

Even as a sing-along, this one still moves across the ages. Take a sad song, and make it better.

Encores:
Yesterday

In many ways the most moving moment of the show for this old Beatles' fan was the opening encore number- Paul's acoustic rendition of "Yesterday." It kept its power with the strings being added through the miracle of electronic keyboard. As Wikipedia reminds us, "Yesterday":

remains popular today with more than 2,200 cover versions and is one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music. "Yesterday" was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners and was also voted the No. 1 pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine the following year.

The song was released as my senior year in high school began in September 1965. Hearing Paul sing it in May 2016 was nothing short of a spiritual connection across this half-century. The lighting, as I looked at it, started at that small moment in time, the spot on the stage, in 1965 and spread out into today. I know the lights were pointing down, but the meaning of the lights seemed to me a metaphor for the song itself, rising from that spot into its place in popular music history.

Hi, Hi, Hi
Let's Go Crazy (Prince cover)

He followed that short cover with a statement in honor of Prince.

He's your guy.

Birthday
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight

The End

And in the end, the love you take

is equal to the love you make.

Okay- I was prepared to be disappointed. The techno-crap before the concert did not do justice to the evening. I tried to keep my expectations as low as possible even though in my mind I kept saying, "I'm going to see one of the Beatles. My God, really! The Beatles!" I never expected to see any of them in live concert. After seeing my personal idol Herb Alpert last fall I knew that the older group of my generation's music can still do their thing. Alpert was 80 at the time. McCartney turns 74 next month. John and George are gone. But a 73-year old McCartney? Does he still have it?

Well, expectations are meant to be lived up to more often than they are broken. The initial reality of seeing Paul there, in person, playing those songs gave way to the joy and celebration of these past 50 years of his music- my music- our music. He looked older and had a sense of maintaining his energy while letting it out as appropriate for what he does today. He sounded like he had a cold and had some difficulty making the full range of the older vocals. But, as the accomplished performer he is, he made that part of the awe of the show.

He can still do it. He can still make these songs real and alive. There were, at times, even signs of the old Beatles' smart-alack attitude as he yelled back and forth with fans in the audience or gave the audience that old, much younger, Paul McCartney grin. I am grateful, by the way, for the large projection screens that allowed everyone to see and react to him, in person, almost one on one. The Beatles started the use of patterns and psychedelic images in some of their videos, so that felt like a good way to add to the overall ambience of the show.

The show itself was about two hours and forty-five minutes- with no breaks! He started and never stopped. He played three dozen songs. Acoustic. Classic Rock. Beatles songs. The audience was with him from the word "Go!" While tending to be a lot of Boomers, the crowd covered at least three generations. Sir Paul himself predates the Boomers who are starting to turn 70 years old this year.

Seventy!

And right there, on the stage was one of our icons. It didn't make me feel younger- or older, actually. It was more of a celebration of our 50+ years together with the music. It reminded us of the innocence of our youth and young adulthood. It reminded us of the ups and downs of life with loss and death always hanging around. Yet in the end the loss and death do not win.

The music does.

And we are better for it.

Thanks, Paul. It was a joy being with you. One on one, with 19,000 of your closest friends.

Click below for complete album of my pictures.

Paul McCartney Pictures Album

May 4, 2016

Target Center

Setlist

Tuning Slide: Meditating on Musicians and Music

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Without heroes, we're all plain people 

and don't know how far we can go.

-Bernard Malamud

I am going to take a side journey away from the trumpet alone on the Tuning Slide this week. A number of times over these weeks I have talked about who we listen to and who we surround ourselves with as important parts of our lives as musicians. As a result we often develop strong emotional connections with famous musicians we have never met.

I have spent a great deal of time in the past two weeks reflecting on the role of music and top musicians in my world. It was kicked off by the sudden death of the pop superstar, Prince. But it is something that has been raised countless times over the years whenever one of our great musicians dies. We have had our share already this year of the loss of these greats, Prince being the latest and, sadly, not the last.

We often call these people like Prince "icons." A definition of icon can be:

A person or thing regarded as a representative symbol of something

or

Someone who is venerated or idolized.

For better or worse, many of these musicians we uphold as heroes and icons are people we "idolize." Many of the "greats" do also inspire us and can lead us to greater things. As musicians we have the heroes of our own instruments that we love to emulate. I still get joy as I continue to work on Al Hirt's "Java" or play Herb Alpert's "Spanish Flea" in the big band. These spur me to play my best along with transcribing or just plain listening to some of the great solos of trumpet history.

Another piece of the musicians we hold as "icons" can be our part in the greater culture around us. These are the musicians who were the soundtrack for our lives at particular times and places. The most deeply ingrained are those whose music connects with strong and emotional memories. We "grew up" to that music. It is "our music." No one can ever take that away- it is imprinted in our memory. The way memory works, it is also directly linked to people, places, feelings. The opening vamp on the Four Tops "Reach Out I'll Be There" instantly transports me back to the radio station my freshman year at college. I can see it, smell it, react to is as if I were sitting there.

Which is why the death of a Prince, Merle Haggard, or David Bowie hits so close to home. The many ways people remember Prince are as much about ourselves as they are about Prince's musicianship, though naturally he wouldn't have had the cultural impact if he wasn't so talented.

This struck me when I stopped by Paisley Park in Chanhassen last week. One of the items left as a memorial was a baseball hat from an Iraq War veteran. Perhaps Prince's music carried him through his time in Iraq. Maybe it was the only way he remained connected with home and hope at difficult times. I don't know, but just seeing it there was a powerful spiritual moment, connecting this time and place with others. I was humbled by that.

Which brings me around to you and me- musicians ourselves. Someone reading this may one day be of the stature of an important musician impacting the greater culture. Most of us will not. We will play our music to keep our lives connected to this force we call music. It will be how we maintain our balance and discover new ways to express ourselves.

But- and this is important- we may never be "icons" but we will continue to have an impact on those for whom we play. Music, overall, is a spiritual language that connects us to our audiences. It is a conduit for getting in touch with something far greater than ourselves that is at the heart of human experience. No, I don't believe I am overstating this. We have all had it happen to us when listening to music- and when playing or performing music.

One of the big bands I play with regularly plays at senior living facilities in the area. The joy on people's faces is priceless. Seeing a person who barely moves, tap a foot ever so subtly to the beat is why it is important. Our band, at that moment, is as important to that person's life as Prince was to many other lives.

That is why we do what we do as musicians. We are, in countless and unknown ways, opening the window for the possibility of the spiritual entering our presence.

When speaking of religious icons a definition I remember from a TV series many years ago was

something or someone that opens a vision of God or the spiritual.

We can be that icon for others through our music. Music, of course, is not the only way this happens, but it is one of the ways we as musicians can participate in the expansion of the spiritual in the world. It is at that point that we move beyond ourselves into the flowing of that which is greater than us and sharing it around us.

I am honored and humbled to be able to do that.

Who Would Have Believed It?

As I mentioned in May's first of the month video post yesterday, I will be "celebrating" or perhaps remembering my high school graduation later this month. It has been 50 years. Half a century!

Where has the time gone?

More to the point, for this post anyway, is the way things are happening today that we would have never thought possible in 1966. There are the obvious things.. the incredibly powerful computer I call my iPhone that I don't have to remember Fortran to get to work. The many technological advancements that have impacted our lives. There is no Soviet Union anymore. We have had our first African-American president and may have our first woman president.

But what is striking me most today is that on Wednesday of this week I am going to a concert up in the Twin Cities. My first concert was 50 years ago this summer. In these intervening years I have been to almost 100 other professional concerts of many different performers from Herb Alpert to Rosanne Cash; the Tremeloes (who?) and Lionel Hampton to Janis Joplin and Old Crow Medicine Show.

Just going to the concert is not the BIG thought about Wednesday. It is that the concert is Sir Paul McCartney.

Yes, him. The former Beatle. This summer will be 50 years (notice all the synchronicity!) since the last paid Beatles concert in San Francisco. (They did that rooftop thing in 1969, but that doesn't count.)

So, if you had told me, that dorky, high school senior in 1966 that 50 years later he would be going to a concert in Minneapolis with Paul McCartney, I wouldn't have believed you. I would have laughed and done some quick arithmetic  and said, that such an event in 2016 would be as likely as say the top acts of 1916 - Enrico Caruso or Al Jolson - being a headline concert in 1966. Go ahead. Laugh with that teenage me. Even Sinatra would have been seen as old- and he was more contemporary in 1966 than early McCartney is today!

But the music world has changed in these 50 years. Old people like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards; Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney are still out on the road drawing crowds of all ages.

"Rock music" is no longer just for kids. It has become a staple of American (and world) popular music. Music has also splintered into many types and styles, some of which some of us just don't get. But then we aren't supposed to get it anymore than we our parents "got" the Beatles and Stones.

It is a music world that would have seemed insane. No adult would ever like the Beatles. (Like "silly wabbit- Trix are for kids! Remember that?) How could adults "dig" the Stones?

Until we became adults and took the Beatles and Stones along with us. Not just on the Boomer-oriented classic rock stations but into the mainstream and in school classes. My daughter did a history project on the music of the Beatles, one of her favorite groups. This music is more than just another bit of nostalgia, although admittedly there is some of that. But McCartney is still making music. He is still one of the great talents of the music world- or any genre.

Crazy? Yep, it would have seemed that way in May 1966.

I'm glad it isn't so crazy in 2016.

P.S. I just went to a web site that posts set lists for McCartney's concerts, as well as videos of the performances. Now I am really psyched! More to come later this week.

We've Been Here Before, Haven't We?

October 21, 2015

We were here nearly 30 years ago riding hover boards, cheering the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series, making video phone calls, holographic movies.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

Yes, I am kind of jumping on the cultural bandwagon of Back to the Future Part II. Today is the day Marty McFly and the crazy doctor landed in the future. I could get all philosophical and say that it is now no longer back to the future, but back to what used to be the future. Kind of like after 1984, 1984 isn't futuristic any more.

Like I used to try to confuse my daughter saying, "You know we aren't there, yet, because we can never get there. Once we are there, it's no longer there, but here."

(She didn't care for it that much, either.)

In any case, here we are and people are going crazy about what they got right and what they got wrong. We are searching for how the future of today is so different from the future of yesterday.

Let's just stop. It was a movie, people. It wasn't supposed to be future-telling. It was imagination. It was fun. Let's not take it too seriously. Let's just enjoy it.

So if you see Marty McFly today, ignore him. He's not there. Neither is that DeLorean dropping out of nowhere. It's all in your head. It's not happening.

But watch out for the Cubs. I hope THEY are real. (But it will now take a miracle.)