Magnetic Fields and Laura Barrett Live - Town Hall, NYC March 10, 2010

To elaborate on my post on Brooklyn Vegan (where you can find a nice rundown of the setlist and some really nice concert photos), which I felt compelled to write in defense of Stephin Meritt and Co's honour..... Seeing the Magnetic Fields live, finally, was a treat.

Having been a fan of 69 Love Songs and everything after, I was pretty excited to see them live, but really didn't know what to expect. My guess was that the show would be a demonstration of the contrast between the somewhat out of character wall-of-fuzz-and-haze sound of their last album, Distortion, and their new acoustically oriented release Realism, which are clearly companions.



Brother and sister, if you will. But, alas, no. To my surprise, there were no amps or electric instruments to be found on the stage, so clearly Distortion was off the agenda (too bad, because there are some amazing gem-in-the-rough songs there). The instrumentation that night was limited to viola, acoustic guitar, Stephin's little acoustic (bigger than a ukelele, what do you call it?), a lap steel guitar (maybe) and a little keyboard, but all just barely amplified: so there we were in Town Hall actually hearing human beings singing and playing their instruments. Imagine that in 2010: WHO ELSE DOES THAT!??! Outside of classical, jazz, folk, etc. anyway. I mean, you could hear the pick on the strings, the vibration of the body of the viola, and the timbre of Stephin's one-of-a-kind voice. The set jumped around the MF catalogue, with plenty of gems from 69 Love Songs, and a nice sampling of the new album. You can check out a personal highlight of the evening HERE on YouTube, "I Don't Want To Get Over You", from 69. Its a song that out-Morrisseys Morrissey (my first usage, and hopefully last, of Morrissey's name as a verb). Dark, depressing, obsessive, self-loathing, yet witty = classic MF.

I'm currently reading another of those business books, Blue Ocean Strategies, by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Basically, its about companies who succeed by making the competition irrelevant: they ignore the "bloody red ocean" of the battle of competition and instead find clear open water, "Blue Oceans", where they find new markets, products, services, etc. for which there is not yet any competition. This often involves redefining the market or the product itself. Magnetic Fields have been in their own kind of Blue Ocean I think for quite awhile now, just kind of existing in their own sphere, doing their own unique thing, and probably not caring a damn what anyone thinks of all of it (or what I might be writing in this blog for that matter). For sure, Stephin and Co. have their influences but they're really in a little category of their own. And for a few hours at Town Hall, none of the other music in the world mattered, at all:

One comment on the aforementioned Brooklyn Vegan post complained about the obnoxious hushed silence at the show. I experienced it differently: the human, intimate performance full of personality, beauty, humor, wit and only slight amplification, commanded the complete attention of the audience who were for the most part as mesmerized as I was at what was going on up on that stage. From the lightest plink and pluck of the instruments to the unrehearsed informal and vague stage banter: we were all taking in a special moment that demanded complete focus: I didn't want to miss any of it. It really wasn't the kind of show where you would want to be chatting with your buddy about whatever as you're swigging your 6th beer (not that there's anything wrong with that, but just not at this show).

One of my personal favorite moments: after having engaged in the technique twice to bring a song to a slowly quietly faded out conclusion, Claudia referred to the band as the master of the "Live Fade", something nobody else does.

At most live shows, the 'real fans' will prove their devotion by singing along even the most obscure lyrics to every song. At this show, there was very little singing along, lest anyone would drown out the band. Instead, everyone would laugh out loud whenever one of the songs got to one of those witty parts. A good example: the reference during Acoustic Guitar, one of several MF love songs to an inanimate object, the guitar:

"Acoustic guitar, if you think I play hard, well you could have belonged to Steve Earle, or Charo or GWAR..."

You kind of have to hear the melody to get the humor...

All in all, I think it's amazing that Magnetic Fields keep doing what they do best and haven't bowed to the pressure of being more "commercial "that must have inevitably followed their success with 69 Love Songs. If they had, they'd probably be gone by now. Lucky for us, Stephin and Co. haven't abandoned their unique vision of good music.

Now, on to the opening act.....

I unfortunately arrived late to catch the last few songs of Laura Barrett's opening set. She's in a little Blue Ocean of her own, though it is probably quite near the Magnetic Fields' ocean. So there she was, up on the stage with just a little string accompanyment, sitting in a chair, in a flowing blue-green dress. She had a little box in her hand, a kalimba. I think she's probably the closest thing to the Eddie Van Halen of kalimba that you'll ever see. I think it's fair to say that she probably has the advantage in the kalimba-music market... but her music does go beyond that. She has a beautiful, round, rich voice for such a wee little thing, and she sings songs that sound kind of vaguely influenced by jazz, folk and other stuff, but sound like the kind of things that come straight out of someone's brain: unadulterated, unfiltered, uncensored words and melodies that go all over the place in a wonderful way. Highly reccommended. Oh yea, and she was nice enough to sneak up behind me at the merch table and thank me for buying her CDs, which she gladly autographed with a nice little message and good penmanship. Her best comment of the night: referring to her kalimba playing as a "real METALFEST" happening up on the stage. I think she's going to go places: Laura Barrett is the real thing, too.

Farewell (old) drum head my friend: imPerfect Sound Forever

I have lost my snare drum sound, probably forever. Oddly enough, this all started about a year ago when I went to one of those week-long management development courses designed to improve my “leadership” skills. I highly recommend it. It had very little to do with the daily stuff of management (how to hire good workers, how to prepare a budget, how to speak in front of a large group, etc. etc.) but rather was a week of self-reflection. One of the last things we focused on was the famous “work-life balance”, but in a very personal way. This wasn’t a discussion on telecommuting or how if you work too many hours a day or week you won’t be a truly happy person (well, it was a little about that), but rather the focus was on the quality and nature of what you do outside of work. More importantly we all had to come up with a plan (like a mini-business plan) for stuff we were actually going to do to demonstrate a change in different aspects of our personal life to make it closer to what we want it to be, and yes, to balance it out better with all that time we actually spend thinking about and doing “work work.” It’s a very good approach to both work and the rest of life. Having a good attitude or a new attitude or a better mindset or whatever you want to call it isn’t enough: it’s about what you actually do to demonstrate who you are that really counts. So….we’re getting closer to the drum sound issue here…. My personal plan coming out of the development course included a concrete action item called something like: “spend more time working on writing and recording music”. Sounds simple enough…

One of the bullet-pointed tasks to implement that goal has been to improve my recorded drum sound: I haven’t been happy with it for a while now. So I messed around with mic placements, soundboard settings, software settings, etc. and finally my recording buddy got me this amazing little book, aptly titled Recording and Mixing Drums. Who knew there would actually be a book on this mysterious subject. It’s a short little book, actually, a fast 79 pages in very large type with illustrations. The basic points in the book have probably changed the way I’ll play and sound, forever, somewhat unintentionally. I ran home to implement about a dozen of the fast fixes in the book, mostly about “x-y” mic placement, and a whole bunch of other stuff that was all new to me, but easy to do. Emboldened by the instantly improved results on a test drum track recording, I then took the next concrete step (remember, it’s all about doing real stuff, not just attitude) and followed the advice of Chapter 1 of the book. Basically it says (my paraphrase): “Your drums will sound crappy on a recording if you don’t tune them, you idiot!” And fundamental to tuning, you need good fresh heads (and this is a direct quote): “If the drum heads are dented and stretched out, cancel the rest of your appointments for the day.”
Drum tuning is a very touchy subject for us drummers. Every drummer has their own ‘philosophy’ on this and the most stubborn viewpoints are probably held by the self-taught variety such as myself: in summary, “Naahhh, I don’t worry about tuning. I’m not gonna spend time getting a drum head to sound like some kind of piano note or get the head on perfectly straight. That’s bull. My drums sound great just the way they are, see…” at which point you thwack away as usual. So, I took a pretty big leap personally, I thought to myself, by actually listening to the book’s suggestions on tuning, since I never really had ever tuned my drums properly all these years. This was a great moment of listening, self learning and self progression, a step into a discomfort zone: all that great stuff I’m supposed to be doing in both my personal and work life according to my leadership development class.

Did I really need to change the heads, “they’re still pretty new”, I thought to myself. OK, hold on a second: as I looked at my “new” drum kit it dawned on me that it wasn’t so “new” anymore. I knew that my “old” drum kit was from my teenage years (1979 or so), but my “new” drum kit was….hmm….”new”, isn’t it? Actually, it was a gift from my wife on my 30th birthday, which was 13 years ago, and add to that the fact that my main snare drum predates that kit by 5 years or so, and it was bought off the floor at Sam Ash so it was probably there for about a year = I’m playing on about a 20 year old drum head?!?! This required changing, literally, and quick:

So I took the next concrete step and actually ordered new heads (nice Remo pinstripes) and as soon as they arrived, started to work right on the snare, the most important basis for the kit’s sound. I quickly removed the head, put on the nice crisp, clean, snappy new one and started tuning it up with my new drum tuner gadget thingy to get that evenly mounted effect and perfect balance between top/bottom head tension. I finally gave it a good thwack to see where I was in the tuning, and then it hit me: my snare drum was never, I mean NEVER, going to sound the same again. There was no point in trying to tune the new head to sound like the old one: first of all, it had never been tuned “right” and looking at the old head I could see that the combination of age, dents, stretching, and grime must have given the drum head and therefore my whole snare drum sound a particular character that couldn’t be reproduced.

Drummers know that when you play someone else’s drums, you play them differently: the drum placement and drum sound affect how you attack the whole situation. You adjust your technique, your sticking, and everything else. This can actually be fun and exciting – you find yourself playing things that you know you’d never be playing on that old familiar kit of yours, which is kind of like a well-worn pair of shoes, or a baseball glove that’s broken in. So here I am, feeling both terrified and excited at the same time that I’ve ripped the heart out of my old friend the drum kit and she’ll never sound the same again, which means that I will never sound the same again. It’s like not being able to go back home again. Where to go? What to do? Well, I moved forward and changed all the other heads too. With each change came the pain of losing that old familiar sound and the joy of hearing them do something new and different. A whole new world of possibilities is opening up here. It’s kind of daunting.

So my good friend and recording buddy who got me the little book that started the whole thing here called me up a few days ago to report that the hard drive on his multitrack recorder was officially “Dead”. He hadn’t backed it up in a few years, which means he has lost whole bunches of finished and unfinished recordings, including things I’ve worked on but never heard the work-in-progress. He was surprisingly not completely distraught. I mean, this is beyond the little change in a snare drum sound that I’ve been whining about here: this is real mixed, mastered, finished product, gone forever! He wasn’t happy about it, mind you, but he suggested we embrace the situation: a new beginning, isn’t it? Now we can leave all that stuff behind and just do some new things – what do we want to start working on? And so begins the next chapter, musically anyway. It’s kind of exhilarating.

Words of wisdom from the last sentence of my little drum book (another direct quote): “Have fun developing your drum sound.” I’m sure the author didn’t overthink the point the way I’ve been doing here, but I’m taking that bit of advice to heart. This has to be fun - there’s no turning back now anyway, so here we go! Farewell old (drum) head. And more.