Weather Report

[John Watt]

Weather Report: live, Buffalo 75-77?

Weather Report! Thoughts of Weather Report profile like thoughts of weather reports and newspapers, always constant variables in our lives. Wayne Shorter, known through Miles Davis since the sixties, Beautiful! Composing with Joseph Zawinul on keys to start Weather Report created attention grabbing and aggressive top of the pop chart hits, instrumental "jazz-fusion".
Needing to hire another bassist, they found Jaco Pastorius, touring "Birdland".

My Press Pass from The Welland Evening Tribune usually worked. The only newspaper a in city of over 50,000. Closer to Niagara Falls than Buffalo. The crowd of people or my friends wanting to pay to get in really helped me and my date. I've been to Kleinmann's Music Hall a few times, and I hope I spelled his name properly. This time to see Weather Report. No press was being allowed backstage, there was no press area, bar or buffet. This turned out to be a good thing, as we went back with our friends and actually watched the whole show.

Surprise after surprise! Not saying a word, Joe and Wayne would appear top stage left with the keys, play the opening and walk off. They returned to play the ending. All night. Every song. No solos. Not one. But that was alright. Two drummers were spread out on a descending two steps stage, with Jaco Pastorius down a wall on the main floor stage with his amp in the middle. Why am I thinking Alex Acuna and Chester Thompson? There would be a long bass and double drums jam, a long bass solo, another bass and drums jam and the ending. Every song, all night. No deviation. But that was alright all night, watching long Jaco Pastorius bass solos.

He was tall and skinny, had scruffy torn jeans, a pale green Florida palm shirt and past the shoulders hair with sneakers. He used a Fender Jazz Bass with a 25 foot cord through an Acoustic amp about 4 1/2' feet tall, with maybe an eighteen and four tens or twelves. Sometimes he'd stop and talk about what he was playing. He'd be walking around his amp, go up to the back wall and face up to one of the drummers, or both, or stand across the front, leaning down forward, swooping around with his bass, and standing and leaning backwards like some slow motion Cirque de Soleil acrobat. He toned down for a bass and cello approach to four strings, sounding like a chamber quartet. He would turn the effects and volume drive up and walk around, holding the bass up flat manipulating the volume and tones, looking down the strings at you while getting a spacey feedback semi-Hendrix solo happening, echoing off the whole room. Sometimes it came down to just Jaco by himself, meditatively, both drummers towelling off. He towelled off frequently. You felt like towelling too in a facility having air conditioning problems.

Jaco's sonic volume, his agitating and insistent pulling and snapping of the strings, chiming harmonics out at you, letting them long echo with French horn and double bass voices, mike stand sliding clusters of passing trombone textures, hair-lashed noise and curly-cord whipped contraphasals, tired you out too. You knew you had just heard a great concert, and a great bass lesson. It might seem too glib now, but Jaco Pastorius lived a contrapuntal life. He sold a lot of fretless basses. Even I did a job filing one down. Some of my favorite musicians being from Buffalo, I wonder what Pat Methany, Lyle Mayes and Jaco Pastorius would have done.

Having heard Hendrix and owning a Strat and Marshall with effects back then, I know what Jimi and Jaco could sound like. They would be floating along, "Moon, Turn the Tides away, gently... gently..." now orchestrated with a Jaco bass heavy atmosphere while Jimi creates passing clusters of underwater phenomena, singing about "mermen and aquatic women" and "jellyfish"... hearing the surf again and the reintroduction of muted single notes without deep echo surfaces your consciousness. The quiet washes of what I think are Stevie Winwood out-takes from "Voodoo Chile" swell and ebb, adding a receding surf action. Jaco would still be there with some soft horn or cello octave finger tapping, phasing and flanging, and when the sound of a band going up the beach takes you ashore (like Miles Davis's stereo use of passing simutaneous riff clusters on Bitches Brew) they would click together, hitting a rhythm down low, grooving the song and... as only they could go... Jimi and Jaco...

 

[sunwaiter]

and what about Jimi and Miles?

they both shared an absolute taste for experiment through sonic possibilities, power, different uses instruments, real fusion.

it has been said that Miles and Jimi met at a party where the jazz veteran suggested to the machine gun engineer that they should play together. or is it the contrary? maybe they did not even drink together, maybe they never really crossed paths. but some said that tapes from the eventual collaboration were hidden in some obscure drawers, like any object of fantasy, never to be found out.

when i listen to Buddy Miles' "nichols canyon funk", i wonder how funky Jimi could have been, cause he represented many styles of "black" music, even when worshipped by lots of "white" rockers or hippies. he delt with the blues, he played incredibly loud with incredible distortion effects and all sorts of other devices that you know very well, John Watt, before black sabbath and co, he liked to jam because most of the time (at least on the audio and video traces we've got today) themes were really a pretext to improvise.

the last new year's eve Jimi spent on earth was funky, and he was so thin, his wrists seemed too fragile to hold and play the guitar.

for those who like to believe such thing: maybe jaco and jimi and miles, and ray and james and barry and chet and bonzo and.. etc... are playing together, making a HELL of a noise in HEAVEN.

 

[John Watt]

Sunwaiter vs. Sonwaiter.

Sunwaiter, you presuppose those "who like to believe such things". I can only surmise that like every true believer, you believe your own truth, cloaked by your own judgement and learning. I hope you take Sundays off. That's entry level.

If I was part of being outside, one with the public forums and amphitheatre, everything entertaining known and rehearsed inside me, I'd lament enclosure. I wasn't an opera producer feeling sad, watching people sit quietly to hear symphonies. I wasn't a classical composer, watching small jazz orchestras with audiences for dances. I wasn't a local player, watching the Hollywood elite use electronic products to dominate everyone else. I wasn't in a Big Band when those electronics enabled one guitarist with an amplifier, filling the hall solo with louder sound. I was there to hear the first musician using ambient feedback to create part of his beautiful sound, a floating symphony he could waft with the neck of his guitar.

When I consider what it takes to present a symphonic work, the writing and reading, musicians and instruments, the hall, the seats, I equate it with standing onstage in the axis of a Hendrix style setup, immediately louder, phasing and flanging various levels of tone and string presence. I could gently strum a simple Em and just listen, wait for it to build, drone with effects on certain strings, react to touching of different guitar parts, partially pitch bent and chorussed for passing elements when standing on a cord generates it's own signal. Not a mighty woodwind ensemble, but a hurricane itself. Once that swirled is there, it's so relaxing it's crazy. You in the eye, the axis, seeing out through your sound with the semi-conscious concentration of playing and watching and having to listen, as your fingers are often irrelevant to what you hear, and your instrument can lead you. I always say I can only play as good as I sound.

But that lead guitar era has passed. It's too bad Jimi didn't have digital. It's easy to replicate now what took pure volume before, and use manufactured stereo and synthesized effects. Jimi may have worked mechanically to simulate the radar and sonar signatures he learned in the air force. But now we have effects devices named phase shifter and flanger or chorus control. The real dimensions of our lives still exist out there, measurable and playable. You are more than welcome to visit and try such a set-up yourself. It's a big responsibility, bylaws and all that, but if you catch a sound, phased with the atmosphere, a sound of our earth, you'll feel it. I feel it so much I can look around and say that when years from now, when everything is digital, Leo Fender and his individual two-way adjustable bridges was the start of scientific tuning and our modern era of music. I wonder what a non-tempered symphony, wired and effected and conducted cleanly, could do.

As Jimi said, don't look for your own reflection in someone else's window. You have to smash that room full of mirrors, for the whole world to be there for you to see. And then you'll be watching for your love to be.

 

[sunwaiter]

hi! how's it going today?

i didn't get what you said about sundays off.

but yeah, it is true, everyone's got a different approach to what is real or not, to what happened or not. speculation is a activity.

do you prefer jimi's studio music or his live performance (i guess you can answer in a very sharp way since you witnessed some of his concerts)?

 

[John Watt]

Sunwaiter: third stone from the sun.

Sunwaiter! Speculation, you are so right. You know it when it busts, and you know when it comes through. I bought my first Hendrix album on speculation. In grade ten English, our teacher would give us an extra mark if you recited or performed your required memory work. I was standing near her desk and saw "Are You Experienced" with those garish printer's ink colours and fish-eye lens photography, of a band outside in a park. I read the liner notes and bought it later that week, wanting to buy "In A Silent Way" and seeing the album art and grabbing "Bitches Brew" as a new release. The best album shopping I ever did. One half of Bitches Brew was listenable only once, or twice, and there were a few tunes I played again, but I traded it. In a Silent Way stayed with me for a long time. I like how Miles lets you get into the sound, before he gets busy. Totally different from his bebop albums. Herbie Hancock said Miles asked him to play an electric piano that was there, his first, and that's what stuck to me about that record. That and the incredible hits each other player, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, etc, made later on.

And Sunwaiter, I appreciate your Hendrix live/studio query. I spent most of my headphone time with Jimi. Except for the albums used to demonstrate stereo home entertainment centers, with cinematic sounds, only Jimi was creating a dimensional soundscape. That must have been nice, not having time for crosswords or building a lefty guitar, just playing with tapes, like music processing. And that's all that was, plastic and cellulose. Live, Jimi really played guitar. They say he never played the same thing twice, and he was on all the time. Watching him, he impressed you because he was having such a good time up there. What he was doing was so musically environmental and immediate, he seemed to be trying to play more than fingering the fingerboard. If I thought buying the same guitar and amp would make me sound like that, he made it look too easy.

But let me perhaps delve into a jazz thing, for you. In the early 70's, some friends and I went to see Herbie Mann at The Colonial, where we saw George Benson, a medium sized and formal nightclub on the main street of Toronto. He was very melodic and energetic, with a far better band, probably New York session pros. I got talking to a band member because he was waiting until the washroom was empty of whites before he went in. I said this was Canada, and waited behind him. When Herbie started the second set he took off his shirt, topless from the waist up. We couldn't reconcile that. He picked up his alto flute for the first time, a beautiful sound, my friend got one right away, and played "Never Can Say Goodbye" by The Jackson Five. A lot of bands picked up that tune, and I played a disco version eight years later. But this topless thing, what's with that?

 

[sunwaiter]

Herbie played "never can say goodbye" on the album "push-push". There is aretha franklin's "spirit in the dark" and "chain of fools" too. he can be seen topless on the cover. It looks like he liked exposins his hairy chest. some kind of hippie thing, according to my vision of that period.

"jazz" artists seemed to get acquainted with lots of possibilities at that time, and the two Herbies were among the more courageaous ones. The flutist worshiped aretha franklin, whom this album is dedicated to if i remember well. He ended up in disco criticizable but also danceable music.

Herbie the keyboardist did the same but got even beyond, as you know, with his electronic adventures of the eighties. then he calmed down and went back to something he really mastered . age of reason, some say. "Headhunters" is one of the first "jazz" albums i ever bought and i still listen to it regularly today. the climax of funkiness is on "Sly" (refering to Sly Stone of course), at about minute ten.

i like the concept of funkiness. the 1969-1974 era is, to me, and in terms of records i know, the ultimate funk era. i even call 1974 the year of the snare drum, because people weren't afraid anymore to hear it sounding loud and heavy, thanks partly to James Brown's earlier productions.

i think i could do unconfessable things to be there and see and hear live performances Jimi, James, Ozzy, Herbie and even Michael and his brothers, because they did played funky music.

 

[John Watt]

cold morning in the drums

Sunwaiter! Your Herbie Mann comments are right on. If you say hairy chest on that album cover he must have shaved the rest of his body. It was what, early 70's, when I saw him and haven't heard much since. But you saying he played "Chain of Fools" is worth a listen. That's a great song. Hearing "chain, chain, chain... chain, chain, chain... chain of fools" makes me feel like I'm getting dragged along myself. I would think sax right away, but I think the flute could sound more vulnerable. Who knows what Herbie Hancock would do with some hum in a tube synth around his neck.

It's interesting that you talk about a snare drum era, citing James Brown, the most sampled band around. I'm being more late 70's, but musicians around here still talk about big Ludwig marching snares. And some girls still remember that Phil Collin's drum break.

That all sounds poignant, until I remember that Russian troupe of entertainers. I was asked to join an Elvis act who was showcasing at a large theatre in Niagara Falls, where The Elvis Presley Museum was, during an Elvis anniversary. A group of fourteen Russian entertainers who had been stiffed by their manager in Toronto, big news, had been relocated to Niagara Falls, working out of this theatre. I was pumped, thinking about my new stereo Marshall system. Elvis Little was pumped, lots of new sequins. But then I went backstage. The Russians, men and women, were warming up. They looked like ballet dancers, until it got more physical. When it seemed everyone was taking a turn on the piano and violin, I asked and was told someone with an injury would do the easy work onstage. The costumes, music, singing, dancing, fighting, juggling, all exhilerating, every night.

Seeing how hard they worked to be successful, I felt embarrassed and lazy onstage, tied to my amp. I felt bad going over big time as a one nighter rock'n'roll clone act, when these artists were being taken for granted. They were closed down a few days later. Our theatre show attracted an early dinner crowd. Sitting around afterwards with the Russians, I said any one of them put our show to shame, and I would talk to the owner and put my pay on the table, like them, and treat for our supper. I couldn't talk Russian, and except for a few pokes and smiles, no-one talked English to me. But sitting with those men and women was a symphonic and olympic experience. I'll never know a society that requires such intense and varied talents, just to get by.

Unconfessable things? I have to have my share too. I'm still thinking about it.

 

[sunwaiter]

John Watt,

i mentioned the jacksons. this family is, as was james brown, a true example of HARD WORK. everybody knows their story.the very heavy hand of the father, the prison-like career, the sad children playing joyous funk.

yesterday i saw something that i can qualify as weird on youtube. a little chinese girl, maybe three or four years old, showing how supple she was, spinning on her jaw with the help of some metallic device, somewhere on a city street. nothing sadder to see this mini-circus officer, executing incredible and not risk-free things, just to get some thing to eat.

the comparison is a little clumsy but i couln't prevent myself from doing it.

here in paris, lots of people play all kinds of music ( that we can sort as the Duke did ), for the same purpose. some other people don't play music. some should not try anymore to play music, because it's their everyday unchanging performance that busts my b---s and kills the few humanity left in me, when i get back home after a day of "work". sometimes you give em your dime just to make them stop massacring elvis, piaf or bach.

but afterwards i think: djeez, this must be very tough. and i also realize that the biggest talent is to stay alive. music may be my passion, it's jut a hobby. michael and the roms in the subway do it for a living.

 

[John Watt]

Ah, Sunwaiter! I touched the quick reply and can still see your message while I type. That's really nice. You are right about Chinese, say Asian, acrobats. You are saying the same things my parents said watching them on Ed Sullivan back then. I'm catching some emotional resonance from you, so I'll take a chance and answer your question about my reference to taking Sundays off, calling it entry level. Believe me, trust me, know me, I'll never start Bible-beating. There is this real spiritual history. And if you think of the ten commandments, you will see taking Sunday off is ahead of not murdering or being an adulterer. It's a simple truth, but it's the simple truths that expand to format your life eternally.

Here in Toronto, where there are a lot of conservatories, you can find beautiful musicians out in public with their open case on the ground. The professional street musicians have to audition to get one of the city approved locations. And then there are the lost souls holding an instrument. All those lost souls, the ill and homeless, is one good reason I moved out of Toronto. Being a rock musician, playing in clubs, meant a lot of girls coming on to me, thinking I had something back in my room, or would party with them so they could stay. I gave away money for a lot of cab or bus rides home, and was a soft touch on the street. It's hard to walk out into the night, pumped up with your performance, only to be confronted with that.

It makes me sad to see you say it kills the humanity left in you. Don't feel that way. And it's not tough. It's just what they are doing. If music is your passion, it's not a hobby. It's a passion. Don't let anything interfere with that. Don't think you're too old, too fat, have a cheap instrument, none of that. If Jubal, named in The Bible as the first musician God gave talent to help us, walked the earth today, he would wonder what we are doing listening to pieces of plastic, almost everywhere we go, with not much human music. Think of your passion as righteous, and music a weapon of love. If you can act on that once in a while, even once as you grow older, it will make it all worthwhile. The atmosphere of music will open up for you, blessing you. Sure, you will become more disenchanted with all the flash and trash. I know someone who can't watch T.V. any more. When I say Sundays off is entry level, I mean this. Honouring your creator, respecting your spiritual intermediary, is taking Sundays off. With this attitude, watch what happens to your Sunday and what you can do or what it brings to you. I can see you sitting outside with your instrument, maybe waiting for someone to ask for a tune, or just serenading the birds. I can see you inviting a seemingly destitute musician back to your place for a meal, and getting into some good tunes. You might be surprised and add some humanity, make another friend, for your life.

I have to disagree with "the biggest talent is to stay alive". If you mean staying alive in a spiritual sense, you are right. That's why we have to go through this life, trying to uplift ourselves if not maintaining. As God says, he wouldn't make us born if he would not provide for us, and we should not have a care for tomorrow. You can walk away from it all naked, but you wouldn't die. And you might find life carrying you, a life that doesn't die.

You caught me in a thoughtful, but tired mood. I hope my outreach isn't offensive, et, je ne sais pas tout les mots, mais mon ami, nous sont joyeux.
as always, John Watt.

 

[sunwaiter]

John Watt.

I am happy to see that some people still take some time to answer, whatever the reality rate of time is. you took some to write a proper answer and i'm not only grateful, but honored.

now let's forget the polite formulas. i did meant staying alive. wether it means, physically alive or spiritually alive, it looks quite the same to me, often. i like to think "brain dead, body dead". i have a virtually bottomless well of love or maybe naiveness, and in both cases it leads me to be disappointed or angry more than i wish it would but i always remember that i have been provided with the essence of life. i often tell it to friends: i have been kinda lucky until now, in terms of pain. didn't have to deal with too much of it, so i'm glad; and i'm really enjoying my trip.

when i mentioned the humanity being killed in the subway, it was just a somewhat clumsy image to describe my unability to bear what we call here la routine. but be sure i've always respected those who play an instrument (not that they deserve more respect than any other earthling but i feel some parentship-i don't know if laws alow me to use this word).

i meant that the world as it is, or more exactly the society we created, in all its various forms, doesn't really like music or accept it as an absolutely vital activity. it may have been some time ago in forgotten cultures, but you know what i mean. now the bottom line: i think life is precious, but that it also can be seen as a hobby, in the sense that we are not important. importance is an illusion, and everybody knows it, but we always fake ignorance by agitating ourselves like ants, observed by gods who are too tall. i really enjoy life, because of this incredible luck, being here.

i don't believe in samsara, and i hold on to my life, because i really feel that i'm alive. if i were into sophisms, i would say that the greatest talent is to maintain what i call luck. i know it's a little blurry but i truly felt like saying it to try to explain my view.

i have always played as an amateur on guitar, bass, drums, kitchen utensils, toothbrush et al, since my twenties i have listened to lots of music and i have acquired a sure information, if there has to be one at least and at last: music is really my passion. so will tell millions or more people. even if playing music has to be hitting my throat with my index, trying to reproduce the theme from "macgyver" to make a baby laugh, i do believe that i'll always have music.

for the first time in my "professional" life, this year i discovered what a "week-end" was, yo know, sundays off. it's not that i was chinese before, but, i didn't work in steady places. now i really lke sundays because each one of them is mine. until the next rythmic pattern my existence wants me to follow.

 

[sunwaiter]

oh i made a mistake: my personnal highest peak of funkiness can be heard t

 

[sunwaiter]

at minute ten of "chameleon".

 

[John Watt]

these strong dualities.

Sunwaiter! Once again, your last message created a strong duality in me. So much of what you said is mutual. And there are voids. When I first wrote back tonight, losing three times before losing online to a modem plug, I began by quoting one of your paragraphs and scrolling up to co-ordinate my responses with yours. I'd be happy trying to recreate myself, but I can't do that here. Before, I was under your lengthy posting of the previous page, which I recommend reading, and could copy you. Maybe posting under a previous message would pop up at the end. Maybe replying at the end of the thread would bring me good luck.
I'll jus'wing it.

La routine. or is it le routine? Cette, ou les personnes qui as un mot pour le sensationne a manger fruites alive. Another duality but left undeveloped here.

Your writing is strong and urgent. Beyond half-way through, I could almost see a man's arm held up front outside, not a fist, but flexing the fingers to see how they feel. And yet your literary reference is unknown to me. This is an example of what I meant of you creating strong dualities. What seemed the main thrust for me, over half way through, feeling the arm, began with you saying "I don't believe in samsara" and carried past to where you were wondering why you said that "blurry" good luck trying to explain yourself. But the more I saw samsara, the more I was overcome by memories of a very idyllic time of my life. Samsara...

My high school bassist friend who invited me to go see Jimi Hendrix in Toronto asked me if I'd spend a week with his family at a cottage up north. My Mom thought I should pack like a Boy Scout. I was a Cub Scout too. That meant having a new book for a rainy tent day, a paperback. I saw one that reminded me of Jimi's "Axis: Bold as Love", using The Indian Pantheon of The Gods for graphics. "I am Sam, that's short for Samanathra" was a science fiction based on The Indian Pantheon of The Gods and Samsara. At the end of one chapter, Sam and his divine friend are taking refuge at a monestary. They are being followed and know the monks will be questioned later. Sam decides to cover their tracks by holding an audience and talking. He explains about his being there, and their being there, and his not being there, and his being there not being their being there, until I was into anything from India. I even visited my grandmother to ask her to show me her Hindu Kush spoons. I have a sitar imitation on guitar. Deva Dip Carlos Santana. I read the Baghavadgita, the world's oldest book, read much more, and the art came alive, leading me to Egypt.

So Sunwaiter, you can see what a little samsara did for me. But my theme is this duality, furthered here. You talked about the theme of "MacGyver" (your spelling) as part of playing with a child. For about a year when I visited my parents, half the time MacGyver was on. This reminds me of the only really strong regret I feel about Canadian cinematic production. I really liked the movie Stargate. But getting MacGyver to star in the T.V. series, after finding a Daniel Jackson clone? Losing the sand and sun and going under a mountain? Not exploiting Samantha's cleavage? That's not Samsara, and I'm not Jack fishing in a pond with no fish.

Part of what you wrote made me think my enthusiasm for music makes being a non-musician sound wrong. Please, don't disparage your musical status. It's more the media and technology glamorizing others more than you do yourself that's doing that. I would only encourage you. When I was 25 to 27 years old, I only played guitar once in a while, filling in as emergencies, one lasting six weeks in a row, not playing outside the peninsula, living for a girlfriend. I spent almost a year driving around in a mint '62 Jaguar XKE converted Dtype racer. I'm lucky I'm alive.

How can you not believe in Samsara? These whirling subuniverses of gravitational energy are coalescing to magnetize and materialize as these words for you. There is no mastery of typistry occurring here, no fields of font, all just default of he who formatted. And what attention should you impart to these words, when a whim of choice over submit or delete decides their existence, not yours. Your actions will be decided by you when your attention is no longer here, but on the next circumstance of your own life's path. This writing is even no longer an extension of a message from me, but your own words even you don't have to publish to be read and for you to reread or to be thought of any more as being said here as you hear them from your attractional existence, and looking away, turning your attention from or turning off the screen, will be just a little less light in a more consuming sensory environment, unless you decide to lay back and groove in Electric Ladyland with the headphones on.

I better be careful. I don't want my new titles to be "Precedent, text limit".
Sunwaiter! Vous a faites les mots beaux. as always, John Watt.

 

[sunwaiter]

John Watt=

I like the concept of creating dualities, but not ambiguity. i hope i don't give such an impression. as far as my under-employed brain can remember, i've always wanted to know clearly which side i was, what i disliked if i didn't know what i liked, to make my points well set and clear; i 'v always wanted to understand things. not talking about meaning of life, ok? simply facts of life, its mechanisms, its yings and yangs, what is black, what is white. well, now i have understood that there's a lot of grey. the world is more a black and white movie, its movement making the two tones melt together, creating an infinity of nuances. it's more like this than like a color snapshot.

but i'm still a child and i still want to understand many things. my brother hates it, he hates the "why", the "why" children pronounce maybe at an average rate of 100 times per day. i don't use the W word as often as when i was five, but i still need it. i don't have any grief against my brother, after all, he's the only one i've got. but sometimes i pity him a little, because he sounds so tired. but i know we're quite alike and he enjoys life, wether he takes chill pills or not.

once more you / i - we can reconfigure and reconsiderate the samsara thing; when some concept seems too deep and complex in its possible readings, i always say that we can redefine it. maybe i'm too lazy.

i'm going to have my meal now. it's 13:00.

carlos and alice have been sampled by the cinematic orchestra and it's not a bad thing - is that an expression of samsara?

 

[John Watt]

Sunwaiter! redefining... the story of my life. Letting events redefine my trajectory, letting people redefine my desires, letting nature redetermine my range, letting redefined love show the way. possible readings of deep and complex concepts... the unseen as debatable... the unknown as considered... what is redefined here is our self estimate as we travel past new thoughts...

What I had to do before I could return to professional music was finally be myself. Be as left-handed as I am. Mere design and expense. Having an acoustically responsive instrument work through an amplifier meant redefining the electric guitar. Too late to redefine myself for a return to violin, trumpet or piano, teen years. I didn't have to invent something and look for applications, I have a need. The grey areas of my life, the vague events of being present, not involved, waiting for my moment, became brightly illuminated, provincially publicized, highlighted by criminal responses and celebrated by those who only wished. Walking on the shoulders of churchmen and women, cossetted by authorities, visible beyond colour, known beyond flesh, sought out to be loved.

and what stirring of these elements can redefine a heart and mind, confident and strident as acute adherence clears away doubt, NOT je ne sais quoi.

In 1980 Toronto, I was asked to run through a set with a showband one afternoon. I was 29, they were early twenties and surprised I sounded like I knew the songs. That's a recipe for musical trouble for me, band members upset I'm getting strong reactions and interest for my playing, when I don't know the songs. But I was asked to sign a contract for eight weeks and fly east to play military bases, leaving that night, Europe following. The core group, chick singer, bass and drums were partying together hard core with pro sports and media divas. Sexuality and tastes were sampled and lurid. Clothes weren't needed. Too bad my stage show is so open for translation. The keyboardist that was there bunkered down himself, turning out to be a university graduate arranger and trumpeter, and a non-smoker non-drinker, although not a vegetarian like me. Too late to be friends, he just wanted to survive the eight weeks. Flights out east, playing in Newfoundland, one performance, three night stay. I shot my friendly mouth off at a radio station, pumping up my original guitar, earning the enmity of others for now we had a special appearance to visit a remote community for cultural exchange, playing with an auditorium setup of a popular local band. Twillingate, mentioned in many a song. "I's the buy that catches the fish and brings them home for Liza" being one. It seems you have to go through Twillingate for many reasons. Three of the best looking girls there wanted to pack and leave with me that night and live with me in Toronto. I managed to get out soon enough to see the ocean.

The next stop was Goose Bay Labrador. Over six feet of snow. Just a military base with one off-base lodge for travelling personnel, where we stayed. The second day I was getting restless. I got special permission to go outside. I got more special permission to walk to the gate house. All I heard was, you get caught after the sun goes down, you die. Finally, I earned special permission, rising above being a rock guitarist, to leave the base. I walked down the one-lane road, walls of snow on either side. I reached the lodge, and was standing there when I saw chrome shining, and a '57 DeSoto pulled up and stopped. A very wizened Inuit, very short, came over and asked me what I was doing. He thought my life was in jeopardy. We talked, and he invited me to come along. He said he was a tribal elder and worked for the government, managing a remote provincial hunting lodge and going to visit migrating tribes for a census. This cream and metallic brown DeSoto looked too good, so I hopped in.

We got to the end of the road, amongst the leftovers of the American World War military base. He said these Inuit shelter along the walls. There must have been about 150 people, no-one taller than 5'5", all in furs. My friend was popular. Everyone wanted to grab his arms, hug him, asking him to try their food. Whatever he said melted the hearts in their eyes, because I was looked at, touched curiously, held, and shared some love. This evolved into Inuit games, men wanting to run ten mile snowshoe challenges, mushing sled races, fishing hole contests, firing up huge snowmobiles for races to an island and back, all judged by the elder. I was in another world with different people.

There was serious discussion. They kept looking over at me. I was taken over where the dogs were, and told about their breeding, one-third wolf. The elder said if the dogs didn't like me, we could go. My hair was standing on end, never before was I looked through my eyes by blue-eyed animals like that. They settled down around me, and I could walk away. The elder said he borrowed a snowmobile and wanted to take me for a ride to show me something. This was still all too much for me, but I never once worried about my life being in his hands. And everyone was so nice, the elder passing on his treats to me, I had to accept. He said he would set me up on a trailer they would put old oil drums on for haulage, so I wouldn't freeze. So there I was, sitting on a box all covered in robes, some given by pretty twinkling eyes. By the time we rounded the bay, we were doing over 80 mph.

The elder could talk and his words carried past me. He talked about life before the white man. The real life, when The Great Spirit was heard throughout the land. There was no land in sight. It was all totally flat ice with patches of dry snow cover that blew up around us. I could look around and couldn't tell where the sky stopped and the ice began. I could hear this sound, he asked, I said yes, thinking wind friction. He stopped and shut off the motor. I could have been afraid, used to sno-beaters, but the sound was still there. He said I could hear The Great Spirit. It was completely calm. There was nothing to hear, but I could hear it. He started up again and kept going, the enchantment growing.

Somewhere, miles and miles out on the ocean, just ice, smooth, featureless and unending everywhere you looked, he stopped again. There beside us was a hole, kind of frozen over. He got out and said it was his turn to keep it open, and this is where they would fish for ocean smelt, filling barrels to dump on the ground as fertilizer for the spring. He chopped at this ten or twelve inch round hole until the ice started shushing up and down, and he cleared it out with his hand. He said I should watch the waves, the water going down four feet and rising back. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a long twine with a thin hook bigger than my curled finger. I said if you caught a fish with that it couldn't come up through the hole, and started talking about Lake Erie fishing. He said be careful, the blowing whale gets the harpoon.

He lowered the hook down with the water, and pulled it up with the water and kept going, a long fish on the hook that fell off on the ice beside him. He pulled a few more out, kicked the fish back in, and said that's what fishing used to be like all over before the white man, asking if I would try. I got two or three a few times, him kicking them back in, and then I got twelve in a row. I said that was too many to let go, I wanted to eat them. He laughed saying they were ocean smelt, holding one up and explaining it to me. All the same, about fourteen inches long with two darker brown stripes along the sides. Very passive fish, according to him, wanting to be caught. He said he knew the Inuit girls working in the lodge kitchen, and he'd get them to do them up with bear fat and bacon, traditional.

I couldn't guess where land was, but I got back before dark, having to be questioned by the base commander. Once he heard about my elder friend, he let me go. The party was raging. I had to skinny-dip in the pool with everyone else. I had to have a least two shots to be screeched in. An instructor left his wife to travel with the chick singer, who didn't go to meet him at the train station in Toronto. Fliers talked about a British pilot who downed over forty shots being screeched in, and falling down dead. The next few gigs were mainland, parties easy to avoid, and I walked away from the contract after the eight weeks, deciding to forget Europe. It's hard to be excited about a band that didn't rehearse. The bassist and drummer wanted to see me off, and the chick singer ran out onto the sidewalk, having a half-naked screaming I love this forum-fit because I wasn't going to say goodbye to her.

All this is certainly a duality in me, the straight and narrow certainly. Being excited about flying, stewardesses would ask pilots and I was allowed to sit between them, looking ahead, seeing the sun rise above the clouds, and set, watching the city lights along The Saint Lawrence River. In today's uh, political climate, that wouldn't happen now. What's a band if the performance landscape is hazardous to your health? I want to redefine rock. I want the wondrous sound effects, the electrical energies, the environmental response, the stages, but I want acclaim for musicianship, a studied and intent audience, where rock was heading before the sex and drugs took over. Comedy was the next rock. Wrestling was the next rock. Now all of entertainment rocks. Even Corno Dolce thinks about rock. But who is taking the now global sound and creating a band with social relevance as performance.

I want to redefine rock. No-one knows I will be, the next Nicolo Paginini.
Audacity? Bravura? or too many notes, and not enough time?
I'm creating a wide, newly invented path for any others,
all wrapped up building my own musical mystery.
as always, John Watt.

Samsara? Years later, hiking alone along the river at the bottom of the Niagara Gorge at Queenston, I came upon a settlement of Inuit travellers fishing at the bottom of a hydro generator, small silver fish forming the wave from the outlet. It got quiet. Women held their children close, shushing them. Men stopped and looked. I smiled, shook my head sideways, and started clucking as I heard so far away. The tension melted, hands were offered, and I was asked to look and see who had the most in their buckets, and I spent another afternoon, a sunny summer day, getting into it with Inuit.
What voices and songs there are to be heard.

 

[sunwaiter]

John Watt[

i got more than high only once. you mentioned the great spirit you could hear there in the white land. i think i was able to hear it also that time.

i didn't have a job, and i was looking for one, not in a very active way, because i was drifting along. it was a calm period of my life, when i could enjoy sopme void. no girlfriend, no lots of friends, hardly some musical practice. i listened a lot of music, my walkman always plugged in my ears. that day i had an appointment in some college with a man whose work was to help other people finding a job. it was the first time i got on this particular bus, in some parisian suburb i forgot the name. the trip was quite long, maybe hal an hour to get there and another to get back to my starting point.the sky was the clearest i had ever seen. it was cold. few people were in the bus, because it was mid-morning. the music i was listening to was a mix i'd done, using klaus schulze, tangerine dream, and some other groups of the same kind. it was a real TRIP, as no other in my life, wether in a plane, on a bike, or the back seat of my crazy uncle's car, at 215 kilometers per hour on a highway near the sea. nothing could be compared with these moments on the bus.

 

[John Watt]

Sunwaiter! I'm troubled for you. You are twisting this duality into my heart. I feel what you are saying and find inspiration with your words. You obviously have a very expansive and meaningful experience with music. But you are pin-pointing the actual time of a moment of Herbie Hancock's Headhunter's as your ultimate moment of funk. Didn't he record that solo? I only remember him and props as the video. Sure, if anyone could synthesize funk as a musical mischief, he could. But these are arrangements and studio tracks layered with synth sounds. If I could be typing here with each hand on a different keyboard with two screens, each hand playing and saying along the same things, maybe I could digress or accent on one hand and reading both at the same time you could experience literary funk. But that's not possible.

What disappoints me in myself is not having a referral for you. I can't say go here go there see this band, come visit hear us jam. I can't provide funk or turn you funky here. If you're not using it as a musical influence, you have to be dancing along to feel it. If nothing else, funk is a duality of rhythm, a harmony of rhythmic flow. Just like saying it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing, funk is a required feature of our musical landscape. I can see the travel factor of being on a bus, the passing landscapes and flashing poles, excluded by headphones with Tangerine Dream, providing a sensory funk, your brain acclimatizing itself with totally disparate inputs. This gives me an idea.

There's no sound card in this computer. It's nasty of me, posting here without hearing, and my one computer store customer is disappointed I haven't brought this unit in for a free upgrade. I've got three different speaker systems here, but I'm thinking of getting headphones for the computer to be quiet for others. I've never had a Walkman or portable headphones. It's hard to get into such tiny tech and sound. But what you've said moves me, and your headphone experience is intriguing. Et mon ami, tu sait, sur la route les femmes, le feu, is easy to forget la musique.
I'm now a Headphonehunter. Merci!

 

[John Watt]

Trying to show a Weather Report photo

 

[sunwaiter]

John Watt/

don't be troubled, please! everything's fine, as long as i can have access to music. any form. everybody has more or less understood that diversity is the key to breaking the daily routine. i'm not talking about love because i believe in my traditionnal not-hippie-at-all one and only relationship, i'm talking about what you can really use your senses for, and now you know i particularly get high on music. the trip on the bus got me high on music and sunshine, not to quote lionel and his commodores.

what is moving me in "chameleon", in the middle section, is the organicquality harvey mason, oaul jackson and bill summers give to the jam. herbie could have added a hundred of synth tracks (i've never been the biggest synth fan), this tune would have stayed that funky. because of the rythm section, because of the era, because of what was ont heir minds when they played this music.

lately i didn't practice much my instruments. i have a time and mind consuming relationship, yes, you are right to make this remark, women have this power. Mais elle sait que je n'oublierai jamais la musique, sauf peut-être quand mon cerveau s'éteindra.

if you still haven't visited, please feel free to do it anytime:

www.myspace.comolivortex.

i regularly replace some tune by another one.

 

[sunwaiter]

oops.

www.myspace.com/olivortex