Acid for the Children

### Отрывок про то, как он нашел себя

When I started playing with Anthym, we would jam free all the time. Just improvising with no plan, collectively making up music as we went. That’s how I learned how to play the bass. I used the few scales and little bit of music theory I knew from the trumpet and the horn experience gave me a different kind of approach. I thought of bass lines like horn parts. We went at this modal improvisation for hours on end. It was all feeling; I was just searching for rhythms, looking for those transcendent bursts that made us all fly. Our jamming was mostly self-indulgent bullshit, but in the rare moments of beauty, I discovered a new part of myself, a depth that could not be denied, a sound that could not be fucked with because it came from a sacred place within. It was unique to us because it wasn’t calculated. Blisters, blood, and then with pride, calluses.

I took great comfort in that sacred place, a space of searching and satisfaction, a space that would always be home. Once I found this way to access it, I knew it would be there forever. My life had meaning. Nothing special about me, we’ve all got our own sacred place, but to access it, your mission must be pure and your aim true. Just a little thought of trying to use it for a power tool, a career move, and the process becomes corrupted. You gotta go for the joy, the pain, the adventure, the search, the journey to love. I learned that from Kurt Vonnegut. You have to be willing to dedicate your life to that journey, not as a means to an end, but just as an opportunity to trip the fuck out. Ya gotta suspend all self-judgment, and embrace all. The reward is the journey itself.

And that’s how I became the bass player I’m still trying to be. Just exploring for a sense of purpose. Sometimes fun, sometimes bland or even grueling, but always pure. Sure I had some weird rock star fantasy, but I didn’t even know what that meant. My reference point for a music career was being with Walter in his Volkswagen Bug, his upright bass crammed inside with the neck sticking out the window, me squished in the backseat, him going to play some cheesy gig for a few bucks while I would have a Shirley Temple then fall asleep in a red vinyl booth in the corner. I didn’t consider commercial success because I didn’t know what it was. The jamming was all I cared about. I just wanted to get good.

Loved getting lost in the rhythm, but did not spend time learning other people’s music. This helped me define my own aesthetic, but slowed my development as a songwriter, as I didn’t study the craft. I just loved feeling the metal strings under my fingers, the deep thunk as I struck them and invented my finger dances. That wood, the long piece of it, smooth and rounded on the backside so my left palm could slide up and down it like when sliding down the banister and whooping it up in an old house with a big staircase. Those left hand fingers gripping around the other hard flat side of the wood, strips of metal crisscrossing it one way and the long metal strings floating magically above it on the other. Each of my fingertips with its own little brain excitingly plotting their moves atop the strings, all of my heart and body vibrating with the VOOM POP BOOM RAOOM BOP yeah feel that other hand the fingers running and walking up and down the four string steps right hand left hand……right brain left brain…Jackie to my left, Kustom tuck-and-roll amp to my right.……be the kick drum let it hum then came time for the thumb

Отрывок про ритм

Transformation always comes when you least expect it. It happened on a

night Freddie and I were in his tricked-out room playing records on his fancy

stereo. The lights were out and we were blasting the Ohio Players at mega

funk volume. We started playing air drums and guitar. I was on drums. I

became utterly transfixed and transported. I WAS Diamond on the drums,

hitting every note, feeling it, driving the rhythm. Gone, in a complete sweat,

an ecstatic trance, imagination and the music had completely overtaken me. I

felt complete. Never before had I felt this way playing music, it didn’t matter

that I was miming. Beating the air wildly in the dark, the combination of

over-the-top physicality and heartfelt groove, both those parts of me satiated

in unity, brain and body. Incredible fantasy, time travel, and shape-shifting, I

coulda gone all night long. But the song ended and the lights came on.

And………

_Thus my lifelong meditation on the concept of groove, what it is to make

deep rhythm. This becomes a huge part of my life, as a musician of course,

but also the question of how it relates to all of existence. When I’m rocking a

groove, there is only nature working, ain’t no one gonna rock it harder than

me. Free from all prison of my mind’s construct, I am a fucking mama grizzly

bear protecting her cubs, and I don’t care if I die. I trust my animal instinct

completely. I let go of every thought, let go of all the world, and KILL the

groove. The hurt and pain in my heart is my ticket to fly, I surrender all

earthly desires in the moment, when it’s time to rock and tap the source. I

gotta be the groove and nothing else, fuck the world so I can uplift the world.

To all you kids out there hurting like I hurt, I’m gonna be with you there in

the magic place.»