Positive Remastered — Finally!

After nine years? The first record from JCHMusic will finally be available as a professionally remastered version.

As long-term listeners know, in late 2007 I embarked on a plan to re-master the first four records prior to the release of Home. For some reason, I released them in reverse order, starting with Balance — then Compartments and Superpower. Then all heck started to break loose in my life and I had to leave off.

Until now, this has always been a great personal sadness for me. After more than twenty years playing other people’s stuff, Positive was a chance to finally get the music out there that I wanted to do. So, like many artists’ first records, it contains some of my best stuff (in fact, the sophomore jinx so many artists encounter is often simply the result of one simple fact: they’ve usually had umpteen years to develop ten great songs for their initial offering but then only twelve months to do the second. Do the math.)

The really annoying thing is that, although Positive benefited greatly from the ‘first release effect’ as far as song quality, it also suffered in equal amount from another common characteristic of first records: namely crappy recording quality. And the complexity of reasons that led to thiss can all be summed up in one sentence: On the job training. I was teaching myself the wonders of digital recording as I went and made all the usual mistakes that newbies make.

In my defense, I have to say that I never intended to release Positive to the general public. As I’ve commented on ad nauseum, I was still in the ‘traditional marketing mode.’ My goal was simply to get something out to ‘the industry’, get a record deal of some kind and then record the ‘real’ debut album. With someone else’s money. Putting it on a web site was a complete afterthought and came about only because I was writing shopping cart software at my ‘day job.’ Making it available for sale was more of an exercise in learning e-commerce than in cutting edge music promotion. But for whatever reason, people bought it; I started touring to support it and the rest is recent history.

Now here we are. Positive has several songs that I still think are among my best efforts and I feel strongly that they deserve to be heard the way I meant for them to sound. At my live shows, “Why Don’t You Come In?” and “You Are Loved” always were among the best received pieces.

So while everyone is waiting for me to get on with something truly ‘new’, I’m offering the next best thing in the meantime—completely new mixes of the original twelve songs that I think you’ll find are as striking as seeing the Sistine Chapel before and after the cleaning. OK, maybe not quite that striking.

As we get closer to release date, we’ll be posting some ‘before and after’ clips to give you some idea of the differences. At the risk of sounding immodest, I think you’ll be impressed at the difference that nine years and a couple of Grammy® Award-winning engineers can make.

Some Details

• Positive Re-Mastered is scheduled to ship August 1, 2010. As you’ve overwhelmingly demanded, it will be packaged in the traditional jewel-box and include not only the original art, but additional production notes.
• If you pre-order (we’ll start taking orders July 1) you will receive an autographed copy and a personal note.
• For current owners, as before, there will be a trade-up offery. You will be able to get the new release for a measly $5.00. If you ship back your current version, we’ll even pick up the return shipping.

Commitment: Coda

As picayune as my ‘career’ has been by ‘American Idol’ standards, the truth is, that I have been totally blessed with a core following that most artists would kill to have. You who have been so devoted through all my ups and downs deserve the best quality recordings I can muster. It’s not only my pleasure and honour to finally offer Positive Re-mastered, but frankly? It’s the least I can do for everyone who has supported my work. Of course, I hope that this release finds new listeners—better mixes have definitely brought new people into the fold with each re-mastered album, but that’s not the main point. I want everyone to know that I’m back and just as energized about what I do as I was ten years ago. Positive Re-mastered is just the first fruit of that effort for 2010. As I sang almost a decade ago now into the first decent microphone I ever owned:

I am committed.

The Importance Of Being Earnest

…with apologies to Oscar Wilde (not the most serious guy in the world, but what-ehveeeer.)

In my last death-defying rant I talked about the terrifying trend towards twee.

This time I’m giving you the flip side–the road less travelled. Or at least, the one that I have decided upon after some reflection and pain and suffering.

I’ve taken a lot of criticism from you dears fans (we few, we happy few, we band of broth… OK, enough with the high-school Shakespeare already.)

As I was ranting, my ‘base’ has been on me for the past several years about my downward spiral towards ‘pop’. Not that I ever reached the levels of Pomplamoose (that would be far too perky for such a curmudgeon as I.) Still there has been a definite shift towards less complex music and simpler, more immediately recognizable themes.

When I force myself to listen to older records (as I have to now in order to post music to all these frickin’ ‘music sharing sites’) I realise that the most successful stuff I’ve done was the stuff that was the least obviously ‘commercial’. And by ‘successful’ I mean the work that I still find ‘OK’. (As an aside, I used to gauge my work in the following way: every once in a while, I’d be listening to Internet radio whilst doing something else and being very preoccupied. I’d pop out of my concentration for a minute and think to myself, ‘I really like that song that’s playing. I wonder who that guy is?’ And then of course, realise it was just li’l ol’ me. And that would mean it was a truly good song. But before you accuse me of narcissism unbound, recognise that the same thing probably has happened to you or another artist who’s work you enjoy. It happens to lots of very normal people. Really. It’s not just me. Seriously.)

So I’m here today to make my contrition. And as we Catholics know, there are the four faces of contrition: admission (of fault), submission (offering to make amends), commitment (here’s how I intend to do better), and finally the actual asking of pardon.) Since implicit in a true contrition is a plan for the future, consider this post something like a manifesto which I can sum up in one sentence. I promise to be even more fuckin’ serious than I already am.

I confess to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned.

For a while, I have drunk the indie kool-aid that constantly tells one to ‘lighten up’; that people have no need of musicians who are pretentious and take themselves to seriously. (Why. So. Serious? as The Joker would say.) More and more I bought into it and became more and more self-deprecating about what I do and what it takes to do what I do. And then I realised something: professionals don’t that. Doctors don’t do that. Lawyers don’t do that. Very few physicists do that. Seventh degree black belts in karate definitely don’t do that. In short, the most respected people in society take what they do very seriously and they wouldn’t dream of adopting an ‘aw shucks’ persona because ya know something it tarnishes the brand.

When Miles Davis got on stage in the early ’50′s and turned his back on the audience as he played it was the culmination of decades of struggle for respect by jazz musicians who previously had to mug and grin in order to get gigs. He had reached a point where he didn’t have to do that and part of his over the top arrogant schtick was to tell other musicians to respect themselves. It wasn’t enough anymore to have that internal belief. Rather, it was important to tell the world that jazz was a deep art form that demanded respect from the audience. Miles was educating the world to take artists seriously. Just like how barbers in the 15th century started demanding to be called ‘physicians’ and ‘surgeons’. Over the course of several centuries they built a brand identity of awe and respect for what they do that, as much as their education and skill, gives them the authority and the earning power they have.

I realise now that one reason I dug the music that formed me (the progressive rock and fusion musics of the ’70′s) is that these guys were serious. They played great and they wanted people to stop and listen because damn it, what they were doing was just as worthy of that rapt attention as any guy listening to a classical concert. Were they entertainers? Of course! Zawinul admitted over and over that he was consciously trying to make danceable music with Weather Report. Keith Emerson stabbing his Hammond organ with knives was total theatre. But that was like Dogberry in Much Ado and Osric in Hamlet; a bit of comic relief to balance out the load.

Pop Will Eat Itself

I travel in the pop and rock worlds. If you’re say Bela Fleck or Leo Kottke, you avoid the ‘respect’ and ‘seriousness’ issues by virtue of the fact that you’re doing a very elevated form of ‘folk music’. You can be as ‘serious’ as you like with a banjo in your hands. It has a built-in pretentious limiter.

But if you write and sing songs that are done with the requisite Fender bass and Gibson guitar and Ludwig drums and Hammond organ, the current climate frowns upon anything that even smells of pretention. As I’ve written ‘pretentious’ is the one word everyone who hated ‘prog’ spits out to show their contempt.

In short, I’ve realised that if I project that ‘aw shucks’ persona then I’m in trouble. Because I’m trying to get people to take what I do seriously in a climate that doesn’t necessarily wanna do that. Like Miles, we gotta fight for our right to… er… well not ‘party’ but have people pay attention. We gotta build a brand. We gotta get back something we had back in Miles’ day and through the seventies but which is now lost. We have to state clearly this simple idea:

Don’t Try This At Home

It is a good thing to make intelligent and complex vocal popular music that demands your attention. And like Miles did, we will insist that we who make such music are professionals.

You may have a guitar and GarageBand, but you cannot do what we do. Just like you may have a computer, but you aren’t a scientist. And you may have a Subzero freezer, but you’re no Julia Child. And I’m gonna try to convince you that, despite everything the culture tells you (Pomplamoose) music delivered by someone like me who knows what they’re doing really is superior to that made on a laptop in a dorm room.

This worship of the primitive, which has so taken over music seems to have largely bypassed the visual media. I mean, it is still quite possible to be a serious visual and dance artist. I think this is simply because there is a culture that has nurtured that brand because it never had the commercial success of music (until recently no painter could expect royalties anything like what a musician could make from one successful album.) Now that music royalties have languished so dreadfully, most musicians are pretty much in the same boat as painters; but without that infrastructure of museums, grants and patrons that allows one to do serious work and be taken seriously.

I’m Coming

…So to speak. My final word on this (for today) is that I realise how the culture has taken it’s toll on my work. What I do hasn’t been as technically challenging as it might have been in the past few years. I’ve substituted other qualities that I think matter (more mature lyrical themes, one hopes) but the fact that I substituted means to me that I have, to some degree, lost my way.

Over the past couple of years, it’s fair to say I’ve had my share of bad breaks (no pun intended), which I won’t go into here. But it’s given me a real chance to think about why I’ve carried on even though it has at times been physically, personally and financially just excruciating. There has to be a reason I put up with that in order to keep doing what I do. So if it’s gonna be hard, then darn it, I gotta make sure I do the most intense, concentrated and action-packed version of whatever I do. No ‘substitutions’. Rather, it should be more like stuffing an overnight bag with a Steinway D. I gotta cram as much technique and craft and energy into every piece until the disc just can’t take it any more! More is more!

You fans keep asking when I’m gonna be back; if not touring, at least with new material. And the short answer is. Soon. I don’t know all the details yet, but I do know that I have never felt so enthusiastic to get back to work as I do now. And I can tell you that I have never felt more like ‘shredding’ than I do now. My ‘less is more’ period is officially over.

And again, I don’t know exactly what the product is going to look like yet. I’m working on it. But I can tell you that I am going to jam something into yer face by the end of the year. And when I do? I promise you one thing right now as God is my witness.

It’s gonna be intense.

The Importance Of Not Being Twee

Submitted for your approval. I give you Pomplamoose; apparently the hottest indie band in America right now, due to their hugely viral videos.

Do Americans know the term twee? Well, ya oughta. It’s a word that perfectly describes what is to me a really disturbing trend in pop music (and art in general); specifically it’s dumbing down. Or rather, it’s what I like to call the glorification of not growing up.

Now it’s not so much the ‘dumbing down’ of music that’s got me in my current lather. I’ve had most of my life to get used to that form of sadness. No,  it’s simply that current flavour is so insidious that makes it so troubling.

See in days of yore, you’d have a group like The Beach Boys or later on Abba who did simplistic, tuneful, carefree songs featuring fresh-faced kids. This was marketing gold. I call it  Audio-Wonderbread: Everybody likes it even though it provides all the nutrition for the spirit as the alleged baked good does for the body. But see the thing is, there’s no irony for these groups. They are honest crap. Everyone knows Wonderbread is bad for you, just like everyone knows “Surfer Girl” is fluff. But who cares? They both taste good! In other words, these are true guilty pleasures. And every once in a while? Guilty pleasures a very good thing.

What bothers me about Pomplamoose is that they aren’t representing themselves as guilty pleasures or artifice at all. Quite the contrary, the whole point I think is the ‘genuineness’ of what they are doing. It’s child-like simplicity. It’s honesty and wholesomeness. But not too wholesome, of course. And that’s the problem.

I see how positively everyone reacts to their stuff and I realise how far we’ve fallen. It’s not just that they’re taking a one chord song and redoing it in a totally caucasian way (below is a similar example of a why white people should be required to obtain a licence to do black music.)

Play That Funky Music White Boy

Is anyone old enough to remember Pat Boone murdering Little Richard? That’s what this is. When Pat murdered Tutti Frutti, he wasn’t winking at the camera. He thought he was doing something cool. But Pomplamoose is a bit different. They also believe in what they’re doing, but in a different way as I’ll explain below. But back in Pat’s time? Everyone who actually was cool were laughing at Pat. Nobody’s laughing at Pomplamoose. They’re singing along.

There was a time when it was good to be good. There was a time when it was cool to be an adult. Twee Culture rejects both premises. Twee culture celebrates a Rousseau kind of ‘naturalism’. It values ‘sincerity’ to the point that ‘craft’ and ‘complexity’ are suspect. (Kind of like the old Southern stereotype who’s lowest form of insult is ‘college boy’. And Twee Culture rejects maturity. Children are happy and care-free. Adults? Well, they’re kinda like Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins and need to go fly a kite (or in more modern terms, smoke a blunt perhaps?)

The final twist on Twee Culture is that sense of deep irony that is it’s primum movens. See Twee doesn’t work without an underlying ‘worldliness’. Otherwise? It’s just adults behaving like kids. Or adults appreciating adults producing stuff that seems like it was made by kids. Whatever.

Unlike Pat Boone, when the girl in Pomplamoose sings the above song she is winking at the camera. She’s rendering this angry song of African-American schadenfreude like a nervous twelve year old girl at a spelling bee. And she knows it. She knows it’s cute and it’s attractive. I’m not saying it’s not ‘genuine’ because I don’t think her self-consciousness is an act. But I’m also quite sure that she ain’t taking any lessons in stage presence. She’s working it because it sells.

What bugs me is not Pomplamoose. What bugs me is that almost everyone I show this video to thinks they’re great and don’t see at all the comparison with Pat Boone. They see the video (and the band as a whole) as very clever in that they juxtapose the ‘fresh-faced kid’ look and the simple tunefulness with gritty lyrics and more adult themes. They buy the irony as being extremely creative. But when I first saw it I immediately flashed on that show ‘Saved By The Bell’ or ‘The Brady Bunch’ where you had thirty year olds playing the parts of high school students.

I wanna know when we’re going to get back to at least some appreciation of music groups that can actually play; who aren’t trying to affect a light-weight persona. In other words? Along with the non-stop party of Blackeyed Peas, Lady Gaga and Pomplamoose, is there no room for a Steely Dan or Stevie Wonder?

As I said at the beginning, every once in a while, Wonderbread is a joy and a pleasure. But when the culture can no longer distinguish white from whole wheat? That’s not good.

JCHMusic Now On TheSixtyOne

Add thesixtyone.com to the never-ending list of places you can check out JCHMusic. This site is a great place to see really new bands, with a heavy emphasis on ‘indie’, but every once in a while there are some out of the mainstream acts (such as moi.)

Thesixtyone has all the usual ‘social networking’ bells and whistles. You can ‘like’ and ‘share’ and create ‘playlists’ but it’s real strength is in exposing you to new, quality artists that you might not otherwise encounter (the true beauty of a good radio station is the encounter with the unexpected, n’est pas?)

OK, forget all that searching for truth jazz. Here’s the direct link to JCHMusic on thesixtyone. If you care, start there. Then you can move onto all that other stuff.