Life-Changing Music

Looking at the ticket prices for the upcoming James Taylor/Bonnie Raitt concert in St. Paul made me re-evaluate my own concert experiences over the years. At $350-600/per-ticket, I would expect a life-changing experience out of a concert: at least on the level of a week-long vacation trip costing about the same money for two people. Travel has always been life-changing for me; at least 90% of the time in a positive way. Even business travel has been far better than 50% positive, even if the business part sucked (which it often did). So, I started thinking about the life-changing concerts I’ve seen in my 50+ years of music experiences. No, all music performances don't have to be life-changing, but when they cost as much as a month's rent they damn well better be.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of many of my own performances that I’d consider to be positive life-experiences. One of my last gigs, before I quit calling myself a “musician” and quit bands for the rest of my life in 1982 was so disheartening it was another 30 years before I considered playing music even for friends. I’ll have to tell that story another time.

The first concert that I’d call life-changing was in the early 1960’s when I conned my want into being a stage hand for the original Ventures. I learned a lot from working and seeing that show, including the fact that it’s possible to make a living in music while possessing a wide variety of talent levels: from the simple pop capabilities the Ventures demonstrated to the incomprehensible talents of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In my first major act show, I also learned that a lousy sound guy could sabotage a good bit of a show just by being lazy and tone deaf.

My next life-changing concert experience came after several years of Midwestern band touring and a few dozen big name concerts when I lucked into an Stax/Atlantic showcase in Dallas, Texas. The headline act was Sam and Dave, and the intro acts were Otis Redding and Wilson Picket. The PA system was a pair of Shure Vocal Master tower speakers and, probably, a 50 watt 4-channel Vocal Master powered mixer. I’d been in white-boy R&B bands for years before seeing these masters at work. Not only was this performance eye-opening for me because their showmanship and talent was octaves above anything I’d seen to that moment in my life. The sound quality was amazing, with only the vocals going through the “sound system” and the rest of the band balancing their output to stay under the vocals. My wife’s life was changed by experiencing an all-ages audience (close to all black) that was totally into the music, dancing their hearts out, and cooler than any group of people we’d ever experienced before or since.

Hundreds of shows in my groups and dozens of major name band concerts later, we saw the Allman Brothers (post-Dwayne and Berry Oakley, with members of Sea Level, a fusion band filling out the band) in a large venue. The intro band, Grinderswitch, was nothing short of awful and brought out the faux-cowboy assholiness of their audience to the point of scariness. When the opening notes of “High Falls” began, the IQ of the audience jumped a solid 50 points. This was the first time I’d heard a large scale sound system that sounded musical; and there haven’t been many such experiences since. I was just beginning to morph from music equipment repair guy to audio equipment engineer and my eyes were opened in multiple directions: mix fidelity and quality, speaker system directionality, musicianship, ensemble performance, showmanship, and song selection and audience mood control. The whole evening was hair-raisingly exciting and I can still hear some of that performance in my head 40 years later.

Another 5 years of music performances passed before the next life-altering concert experience: the original Pat Metheny Group in a disco-being-turned-into-an-Urban-Cowboy club in Omaha, Nebraska. The club held about 100 people, most of whom were sitting on the floor and my business partner and I and a couple of friends were right in front of the stage, close enough that we thought Dan Gottlieb’s drums were going to slide off of the stage into our laps. Pat came on stage, plugged in, said “We’ve never been here before, so we have a lot of catching up to do.” The band played practically everything from three PMG albums and several of Pat’s songs from albums before PMG: three solid, non-stop hours of amazing music. Pat is the only major performer I’ve seen more than twice and a half-dozen times isn’t even close to enough.

Two decades later, I took my wife, daughter, and future son-in-law to see Steely Dan at Fiddler’s Green in Denver. This was their first tour since they quit the road and got rid of “the band” back in the early 70’s. Roger Nichols was manning FOH and the sound and performance was what I expected; near perfect. It’s hard to call seeing a band I’d loved for most of my life “life changing,” but in some ways it oddly was. First, my daughter and boyfriend didn’t get any of it and left early (bailing out on the most expensive concert tickets I’ve ever bought). That was a wake-up call. Second, I found myself falling in love with those songs almost as if I’d never heard many of them before. Third, I really appreciated my wife’s effort to appreciate music that was not in her ballpark and that she could have been just as easily bored by. We saw SD again, at the Minnesota State Fair a few years ago. It was the same amazing experience, sans Roger Nichols.

Otherwise, it’s obvious from 50+ years of concert going that from here out, when the ticket prices are in the extravagantly idiotic territory I’m going to use the money for travel.

Flashing Backwards

While doing some cabinet making in the shop, I listened to Chicago’s self-produced “documentary” (or promotional video, depending on your perspective) “Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago.” For me, the movie could have stopped about 1/3 way through, when the story got to Terry Kath’s suicide/accidental death/whatever it was. Kath died in 1978 from a self-inflicted “accidental gunshot wound to the head.” Do what you want with that, but I have a hard time imagining accidentally shooting yourself in the head. 

Kath played and sang on Chicago albums from CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) to Chicago VI. Most of the ballsy Chicago vocals were Terry’s, from “I’m A Man” to “Make Me Smile” to “Color My World” to “Now That You’ve Gone.” The other male vocals were Peter Lamm. After Chicago VI, the band went for whiny tenor almost-male vocals and I mostly forgot about them from 1974 on. It’s possible that Chicago did something I liked post-Kath, but I can’t think of what it would be.

In 1970, I was a married trade school dropout with a first kid on the way. I was offered a job in Hereford, Texas with an agricultural equipment company. When my wife and I drove to Texas for my interview, we passed through Amarillo at the moment a local AM radio station decided to play The James Gang’s “Funk 49.” That song allowed us to fool ourselves into imagining that Amarillo and west Texas were at least as hip as western Kansas. It wasn’t. West Texas was and is as backwards as Alabama; and that might be insulting Alabama. I’ve written about my R&R screw-up in “The Last Wagon Wheel Gig.” I haven’t written about what drove me to trying out country music during that miserable period of my history. This is that story.

After we settled into our new home and I got moderately comfortable in my new job, I started looking for a band to join. From the local music store, I quickly learned that there were only three options for a pop musician in Hereford, Texas: C&W, high school kid rock banks, and two horn bands mostly populated by college players from West Texas A&M in nearby Canyon. The kid rock bands didn’t play for money and the horn bands pretty much only worked the college circuit from Amarillo to Canyon to Lubbock and back. The good news was that the horn bands made some money, intermittently. Not much, though, since the cash was shared equally among seven to nine players and a management company out of Oklahoma City.

My last rock band was a fairly successful power trio in the Cream/ Led Zeppelin vein. To be honest, I thought I was a pretty hot guitar player. I could reasonably accurately reproduce Clapton, Page, and everyone British except for a few Jeff Beck solos, I’d been picked (by local musicians) for local All Star bands (on bass) for several years running. Before that, I’d played in a couple of bands that were considered R&B bands, doing Motown and Muscle Shoals hits without a horn section. I played bass with those groups, too. With a recommendation from the music store guy, I got a tryout with both of the horn bands as a guitar player. They both already had excellent bass players.

To make a short story honestly short, I got my ass handed to me during both tryouts. Songs like The Ides of March’s “Vehicle” were right up my alley, but both of those groups were keyed in on Chicago before I knew much about the band. “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is” got a little radio play, but not enough for me to recognize how great a song it was. The first audition started off with the band leader putting the Chicago Transit Authority record’s charts in front of me. With about a minute to study it, he counted off the tempo and away they went with the intention of doing the whole record straight through. By the time they got to “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” (the 2nd cut on the record), it was obvious I was out of my league. I thanked them for their time and slithered away with my tail between my legs. The 2nd band tryout didn’t get past introductions when they realized I didn’t read music and would need to hear the songs they wanted to play, practice them until I mastered the changes and solo, and come back a few weeks later ready to audition. Again, slithering away.

Several years later, when I was working with the Sum Fun Band in California, I learned that horn players often have an unfair advantage: they are committed musicians rather than guitar hero wannabes. They have been playing their instrument, often, for most of their lives; practically all the way through K-12, college, and adulthood. They read, they know theory and composition, and have been playing in a variety of performance settings from jazz clubs to college marching bands at the Rose Bowl. Using the horn player musicianship standard, most guitarists are as close to being a musician as donkeys are to being unicorns. It’s freakin’ scary how many hours a horn player has practiced by age 20.

Some time passed and Chicago came to Amarillo. I got tickets, partially because the James Gang was the headline band (or the opener, I don’t remember which). My wife was either pregnant or tending to our first daughter, but she was definitely not interested in either band. Probably, especially Chicago because, to this day, she isn’t a fan of horns or B3 organs. So, I was there on my own, which meant I found a spot near the stage where I could closely watch Kath with Chicago and Walsh with James Gang.

All I remember about Joe Walsh was that he was incredibly drunk and had roadies pretty much propping him up against amps or stage gear. His guitar playing was nothing interesting.

Terry Kath, however, ruined my day by demonstrating how much better he was than guitar playing I’d seen to that moment and any chance I ever had of getting into his league. There were guitarists of practically all sorts and Terry Kath was so far into extreme territory that he seemed like he was floating by himself. I couldn’t guess where he was going anytime during Chicago’s performance. I can count on the fingers of my hands how many times a guitar player has left me so damaged, confused, and demoralized.

Somewhere between the Wagon Wheel Gig and seeing Chicago and Terry Kath, I decided I wasn’t going to put much hope into my music career and I began to concentrate on my electronics career. I started a music equipment repair business and sold my electric guitar and amp. At the time, I thought I was through with bands and music. That sabbatical lasted two years, when I changed employers and we moved to central Nebraska. In Nebraska, I hired a kid who turned out to be a drummer. He introduced me to what he was listening to in 1974 and we started a band together. And so it goes. A few years later, I was in eastern Nebraska, met another kid, started another band, canned the band and started a sound company and recording studio. The kid tired of music and we closed the sound company and recording studio. I moved to Omaha where I started another studio with another kid and we wrote and played jingles and made some money. He moved to Washington and I moved to California. And so my quitting and returning to music looped a few more times until I ended up retiring in 2013.

Though it all, that evening watching Terry Kath play has stuck with me for almost 50 years. When I watched the Chicago documentary, it brought back some of the feeling of heartbreak and disappointment I felt in 1978 when I heard Terry Kath had died. Chicago was something amazing with him and something ordinary without. I can still imagine myself competent enough to play with a horn band, I just don’t have the energy or time to get there from here.