When you are a newly christened punk and a beginner bass player, you are immediately drawn to Matt Freeman from Rancid. His playing is given a primacy in the band that's super uncommon in most cases. Bass, being a rhythmic instrument, is generally relegated to the background in most bands, playing the difficult role of being integral to songs and provide a base (lol) for others to build upon, but having to do so subtly and from the back of the stage. You go about learning your introductory songs, realize that pretty much every punk songs' bass parts are a simple mimicking of the rhythm guitar part and curse yourself for having committed to such a boring existence.
Then you hear how loud and extra the bassline of "Maxwell Murder" is and a new world of fast chromatic runs and bass solos is opened up to you. The paradigm is shifted.
The thing about the bass solo in "Maxwell Murder" though, if I may put on my bass elitist hat for a moment, is that it sucks. It's real showy, which is the purpose, but it's more or less atonal. Once you learn the parts that make it up, you realize that it's really just "Show-offy lick A into show-offy lick B" and so forth. The song would actually be better, and the bassline would be cooler if the solo was removed entirely. There's plenty of cool riffs in there already!
This is the unfortunate truth about Matt Freeman. In principle, he is someone for bass players to dream on: He has a distinctive sound and style which drives the band, that is at once percussive and often a key melodic element. But he is more guilty of anyone of the dreaded term overplaying. He adds too many parts to most songs and things that don't contribute anything meaningful to the song as a whole.
However, there is a smaller niche within Rancid's songbook in which Freeman is absolutely perfect and does all of his best work. That is the parts he writes for their ska and reggae songs.
In properly played ska and reggae, there is no room for over playing. The genre's rhythms live on restraint and subtlety and you need to be at your best as a bassist or the song falls apart at the seams. Freeman, who is a first ballot ska hall of Famer due to his time in Operation Ivy, knows this and I've noticed that his playing on Rancid's ska songs, of which there are many, is pulled back and not as in your face.
These are masterfully written parts and, in my opinion, his best stuff. Writing something as free-flowing and melodic as "Time Bomb" is infinitely harder than something as fast and crazy as "Axiom".
But if he's capable of this level of playing, then why doesn't he do it all the time. It's a common paradox in music: You are capable of perfection, but only when you're not trying. Harnessing that problem in order to create good art is so hard and everyone who creates things struggles with it. In this way, Freeman and his wild, all over the fretboard playing is part of a greater narrative in music about the struggle to create things that are good and worthy. For this reason, Freeman's bass playing, from the simpler parts that appeal to me to the loud and stupid parts that appeal to me in 8th trade, is perfect.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Poking Fun at the Coffee Stains on Your Tie-Dye Shirt
It's easy for me to forget that good things are achieved through being honest and revealing yourself. Sometimes I get so caught up in trying to come up with huge new ideas to work on that I don't even realize how far out of my wheelhouse I am. I can be so quick to dismiss all the things I've written in the past, writing them off as subpar, diary-adjacent ramblings that aren't as worthy of praise as other types of writing. I think it's important for me to stop and recognize that me writing rambling posts on here that are one step removed from stream of consciousness is a valuable way to access the part of my brain where good ideas happen.
Over the last year and a bit, I've been trying really hard to branch out into more "respectable" types of writing like fiction and short stories. It's been a difficult hill to climb and I've found that I've been pretty unhappy with most things I've finished. I'm typically hard on myself in making anything, so I guess it makes sense that this is how I feel, but I also can't shake the feeling that all the stuff I've done doesn't have the voice that I want it to.
There's a certain tone that I'm able to access in my best IMU posts and in an ideal world I would be able to take that tone and lay it on top of a story, so that the result is something that is distinctly written by me, rather than me trying someone else's style on. I don't think I've been able to do that yet.
I was listening to Pete Holmes' podcast You Made It Weird today where him and his guest Ryan Holiday talked about the importance of telling a story that only you can tell as path to good art. I'm not sure if I agree 100%, but I do like the idea of applying that logic to whatever you are doing, whether it be writing, music, food, photography, or whatever else.
To return to how I started, I think that voice comes from being vulnerable and being real while you're saying something. Don't put something into a story if you don't feel it. Don't hack away on an idea because you've convinced yourself that it needs to be done this way. It's not working. Just be honest and say what you can.
There you go folks. A classic "life in general".
Over the last year and a bit, I've been trying really hard to branch out into more "respectable" types of writing like fiction and short stories. It's been a difficult hill to climb and I've found that I've been pretty unhappy with most things I've finished. I'm typically hard on myself in making anything, so I guess it makes sense that this is how I feel, but I also can't shake the feeling that all the stuff I've done doesn't have the voice that I want it to.
There's a certain tone that I'm able to access in my best IMU posts and in an ideal world I would be able to take that tone and lay it on top of a story, so that the result is something that is distinctly written by me, rather than me trying someone else's style on. I don't think I've been able to do that yet.
I was listening to Pete Holmes' podcast You Made It Weird today where him and his guest Ryan Holiday talked about the importance of telling a story that only you can tell as path to good art. I'm not sure if I agree 100%, but I do like the idea of applying that logic to whatever you are doing, whether it be writing, music, food, photography, or whatever else.
To return to how I started, I think that voice comes from being vulnerable and being real while you're saying something. Don't put something into a story if you don't feel it. Don't hack away on an idea because you've convinced yourself that it needs to be done this way. It's not working. Just be honest and say what you can.
There you go folks. A classic "life in general".
The Dying Art and, Like, Probably Totally Huge Importance of Being Earnest
While I was hanging out with my brother last week, we had a conversation in which we both expressed our dismay at the death of earnest in contemporary culture. I feel like the rise in popularity of the internet has contributed significantly. Exposure to constant streams of content has overwhelmed seemingly everyone and their go-to response is to fall back on irony, because then no one can make you feel insecure about not being familiar with trends that seem to develop, change, and become passé at lightspeed. If you don't care about anything, no one can drag you online for anything.
It sucks and I feel like authenticity is non-existent. It's hard for art to survive in these circumstances. I don't think that good art can be made without coming from a place of genuine enthusiasm. If you aren't putting real creative energy into something, it will show in the final product and turn out shitty. But these days it feels like everyone has to care deeply about something, throw themselves into making it, and then act like none of that matters when it comes time to talk about it. It ludicrous.
If you talk about something you like, people expect you to do it with an air of detachment. Why would you want somebody to not be attached to what they like? It's insane.
My main problem with all of this is that earnesty is slowly being turned into a weakness, and that's dangerous territory. I would argue that young men turning to right-wing nihilism is a result of them being afraid of how being earnest will be interpreted. They're ironically detached from the world to such an extent that lash out just to hurt people. If you make being vulnerable a weakness, then the person will stop caring about anything that happens and stop feeling compassion.
If someone is acting earnest, don't see them as corny. See them as true. People liking things is good and your interests are part of what makes you distinct.
The other side of that coin is to be earnest yourself. Don't make being ironic and irreverent your only qualifiers for liking them. These are things are as valid as anything else, but they're not everything and they're a little played out.
Somebody trying to take you down because something you earnestly like is "corny" is almost definitely doing it because they're scared to own the things they like.
Just be earnest and be real.
Know thyself.
It sucks and I feel like authenticity is non-existent. It's hard for art to survive in these circumstances. I don't think that good art can be made without coming from a place of genuine enthusiasm. If you aren't putting real creative energy into something, it will show in the final product and turn out shitty. But these days it feels like everyone has to care deeply about something, throw themselves into making it, and then act like none of that matters when it comes time to talk about it. It ludicrous.
If you talk about something you like, people expect you to do it with an air of detachment. Why would you want somebody to not be attached to what they like? It's insane.
My main problem with all of this is that earnesty is slowly being turned into a weakness, and that's dangerous territory. I would argue that young men turning to right-wing nihilism is a result of them being afraid of how being earnest will be interpreted. They're ironically detached from the world to such an extent that lash out just to hurt people. If you make being vulnerable a weakness, then the person will stop caring about anything that happens and stop feeling compassion.
If someone is acting earnest, don't see them as corny. See them as true. People liking things is good and your interests are part of what makes you distinct.
The other side of that coin is to be earnest yourself. Don't make being ironic and irreverent your only qualifiers for liking them. These are things are as valid as anything else, but they're not everything and they're a little played out.
Somebody trying to take you down because something you earnestly like is "corny" is almost definitely doing it because they're scared to own the things they like.
Just be earnest and be real.
Know thyself.
Monday, February 18, 2019
"The Mets' "Go!" shouters enjoyed their finest hour on Friday night, after the Giants had hit four homers and moved inexorably to a seventh-inning lead of 9-1. At this point, when most sensible baseball fans would be edging toward the exits, a man sitting in Section 14, behind first base, produced a long, battered fog horn and blew mournful, encouraging blasts into the hot night air. Within minutes, the Mets fans were shouting in counterpoint--Tooot! "Go!" Tooot! "Go!" Toooooot! "GO!"--and the team, defeated and relaxed, came up with five hits and five runs that sent Billy Pierce to the showers. It was too late again, even though in the ninth the Mets put two base-runners on and had the tying run at the plate. During this exercise in foolishness, I scrutinized the screamers around me and tried to puzzle out the cause of their unique affliction. It seemed statistically unlikely that there could be, even in New York, a forty- or fifty-thousand man audience mad up exclusively of born losers--leftover Landon voters, collectors of mongrel puppies, owners of stock in played out gold mines--who had been waiting years for a suitably hopeless case. Nor was it conceivable that they were all ex-Dodgers or ex-Giant rooters who had been embittered by the callous snatching away of their old teams; no one can stay that bitter for five years. And they were not all home-town sentimentalists, for this is a city known for its cool and successful teams.
The answer, or part of the answer, came to me in the lull during the eighth inning, while the Giants were bringing in a relief pitcher. Two men just to my right were talking about the Mets.
"I tell you, there isn't one of 'em--not one--that could make the Yankee club," one of them said. "I never saw such a collection of dogs."
"Well, what about Frank Thomas?" said the other. "What about him? What's he batting now? .315? .320? He's got thirteen homers, don't he?"
"Yeah, and who's he going to push out of the Yankee outfield? Mantle? Maris? Blanchard? You can't call these characters ballplayers. They all belong back in the minors--the low minors."
I recognized the tone. It was the knowing, cold, full of the contempt that the calculator feels for those who don't play the odds. It was the voice of the Yankee fan. The Yankees have won the American League pennant twenty times in the past thirty years; they have been the World's Champions sixteen times in that period. Over the years, many of their followers have come to watch them with solidity, the smugness, and the arrogance of holders of large blocks of blue-chip stocks. These fans expect no less than perfection. They coolly accept the late-inning rally, the winning homer, as only their due. They are apt to take defeat with ill grace, and they treat their stars as though they were executives hired to protect their interests. During a slump or a losing streak, these capitalists are quick and shrill with their complaints: "They ought to damn well do better than this, considering what they're being paid!"
Suddenly the Mets fans made sense to me. What we were witnessing was precisely the opposite of the kind of rooting that goes on across the river. This was the losing cheer, the gallant yell for a good try--antimatter to the sounds of Yankee Stadium. This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me."
The answer, or part of the answer, came to me in the lull during the eighth inning, while the Giants were bringing in a relief pitcher. Two men just to my right were talking about the Mets.
"I tell you, there isn't one of 'em--not one--that could make the Yankee club," one of them said. "I never saw such a collection of dogs."
"Well, what about Frank Thomas?" said the other. "What about him? What's he batting now? .315? .320? He's got thirteen homers, don't he?"
"Yeah, and who's he going to push out of the Yankee outfield? Mantle? Maris? Blanchard? You can't call these characters ballplayers. They all belong back in the minors--the low minors."
I recognized the tone. It was the knowing, cold, full of the contempt that the calculator feels for those who don't play the odds. It was the voice of the Yankee fan. The Yankees have won the American League pennant twenty times in the past thirty years; they have been the World's Champions sixteen times in that period. Over the years, many of their followers have come to watch them with solidity, the smugness, and the arrogance of holders of large blocks of blue-chip stocks. These fans expect no less than perfection. They coolly accept the late-inning rally, the winning homer, as only their due. They are apt to take defeat with ill grace, and they treat their stars as though they were executives hired to protect their interests. During a slump or a losing streak, these capitalists are quick and shrill with their complaints: "They ought to damn well do better than this, considering what they're being paid!"
Suddenly the Mets fans made sense to me. What we were witnessing was precisely the opposite of the kind of rooting that goes on across the river. This was the losing cheer, the gallant yell for a good try--antimatter to the sounds of Yankee Stadium. This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me."
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Rustle of Spring
Something about the coming season of Major League Baseball feels different, but I've found it hard to articulate why. Pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training is normally a time of joyous optismism in which I am so happy to see baseball being played by professionals that the actual quality of the game and the fact that Opening Day is still six weeks away eludes me, but this year I'm having trouble finding that state of mind.
It could be that the league's labour issues, with owners doing everything short of openly stating that they are colluding against players, is weighing on my mind more than in years past. The free agent class of 2019 was supposed to be the biggest ever, but instead it's the worst. It's no fair and it makes upset at the sport.
It could be that the Jays are in the middle of labour issues as well and purposefully manipulating Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s service time instead trying to make the team better. It bothers me, but I also accepted that it would happen long ago.
It could be that the team will be very bad this year and more or less writing off the next 2-3 seasons, but I've been through that before and it doesn't scare me.
Something feels different though, for sure. There's a persistent reminder in my stomach that something is off and not the same, but I can't figure out what it is for the life of me.
To try and fix this feeling, I decided that I would re-visit what I think is my favourite book ever, Roger Angell's The Summer Game, during Spring Training. Already, in the book's first section which happens to cover Spring Training, I find myself being pulled back into baseball's romantic gravitational pull. I then realized that a huge part of the back also covers Angell falling in love with the all-time worst 1962 New York Mets and that it will also serve as a valuable companion during a terrible baseball year.
Maybe that's it. Everything I love about the sport is still here, I just need to hurry up and wait.
It could be that the league's labour issues, with owners doing everything short of openly stating that they are colluding against players, is weighing on my mind more than in years past. The free agent class of 2019 was supposed to be the biggest ever, but instead it's the worst. It's no fair and it makes upset at the sport.
It could be that the Jays are in the middle of labour issues as well and purposefully manipulating Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s service time instead trying to make the team better. It bothers me, but I also accepted that it would happen long ago.
It could be that the team will be very bad this year and more or less writing off the next 2-3 seasons, but I've been through that before and it doesn't scare me.
Something feels different though, for sure. There's a persistent reminder in my stomach that something is off and not the same, but I can't figure out what it is for the life of me.
To try and fix this feeling, I decided that I would re-visit what I think is my favourite book ever, Roger Angell's The Summer Game, during Spring Training. Already, in the book's first section which happens to cover Spring Training, I find myself being pulled back into baseball's romantic gravitational pull. I then realized that a huge part of the back also covers Angell falling in love with the all-time worst 1962 New York Mets and that it will also serve as a valuable companion during a terrible baseball year.
Maybe that's it. Everything I love about the sport is still here, I just need to hurry up and wait.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Bagpipe Lane
New Year’s came while it was cold this year. There had been warm ones in the past. This year it was freezing.
Two days later I walked back from a diner. It was 10 below zero. In a month, I would be used to this and wouldn’t notice, but now it chilled me to my core. My shoulders were tense. There wasn’t any snow. Everything was grey. There was only a couple of people outside walking along Bloor. Everyone looked at the ground and you couldn’t see their faces.
It’s weird that the year ends and begins in the dead of winter in the middle of the night. The beginning and ending are the same, like a snake eating its tail. Funny how everything looks so ugly, covered in salt and early darkness. Maybe everyone makes New Year’s resolutions because everything around them looks like shit. Why make a resolution when everything around you is dead?
Two days later I walked back from a diner. It was 10 below zero. In a month, I would be used to this and wouldn’t notice, but now it chilled me to my core. My shoulders were tense. There wasn’t any snow. Everything was grey. There was only a couple of people outside walking along Bloor. Everyone looked at the ground and you couldn’t see their faces.
It’s weird that the year ends and begins in the dead of winter in the middle of the night. The beginning and ending are the same, like a snake eating its tail. Funny how everything looks so ugly, covered in salt and early darkness. Maybe everyone makes New Year’s resolutions because everything around them looks like shit. Why make a resolution when everything around you is dead?
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