Diatribe Of The Day: Bonnaroo Is Only One Week Away!

We make a big deal about Bonnaroo here at Ohmpark. For me personally, it is the highlight of my year, the thing I look forward to constantly, my Christmas. It’s more than just a festival that puts together amazing line-ups every year. It is one of the most important and influential institutions of music this decade. Every year it means something different and serves as a barometer for where music is going in times that are very different than the rest of rock/pop music’s history and fairly mysterious as to where things are going to go next.

Luckily for me, I’ve been able to attend every year of Bonnaroo so far, and I thought I might tell some tales from those 5 years here as I get hyped up for next week. When I first came to college I hung out with a lot of hippies and got turned on to jambands fairly early. It was just pure chance that I ended up going to the first one, because it was advertised almost entirely by word of mouth. Phish had been blowing up and that scene was at a watermark so high that they could literally get 70,000 (give or take) people in a field to party through nothing but email. It’s kind of cliche’ to say how the first one was so much different than the rest, but it’s the truth. There were literally tables set up in the campgrounds with huge bags of weed and scales sitting right out with a crowd of customers hovering around to buy it up. Laws ceased to exist almost entirely for 4 days in Tennessee. The festival was the pinnacle of the post-Grateful Dead jamband scene (with the exception of maybe Phish at Big Cypress) and was a once in a lifetime sort of event. I don’t know if you could compare it to Woodstock because the cultural significance of that single festival was so broadly spanning into pop culture, but there is something almost more special about that first year of the ‘roo because it occurred in such obscurity; The greatest party of the millennium happened and no one would really even know about it until years later, except for those of us who went.

The second year was when Bonnaroo upped the ante and went from being the greatest jamband fest to becoming America’s greatest festival period. They expanded the genre limitations of the first year and paved the way for a world where the multitude of styles could unite under one flag, just straight up great music, anyway you like it. The very last time I tripped in my life, happened to be the very first time I saw one of my now favourite bands, Sonic Youth. That experience will be in mind until I die as one of the best I’ve ever had. Mushrooms and Sonic Youth are just an unbeatable combination. The afternoon was so spectacular that I decided to never take psychedelics again because nothing could ever top that.

Year three exposed me to amazing artists such as Yo La Tengo, Primus, Wilco, Grandaddy, Praxis, and Danger Mouse live for the first time. The best show of this Bonnaroo for me would be Material. At one point in the set, Buckethead would build up an amazing solo, and right as it exploded, lightning struck, thunder shook the ground, and rain clouds opened up to a pour. It was one of the most surreal concert experiences of my life.

The fourth year (2005) was probably my favourite overall. It started bad as the front gate security took away much of my beer, we got parked in a very far away spot, and the smallest group I had ever taken included someone really lame who wanted to just complain constantly. But it turned around fast. The Thursday night I went to watch my favourite basketball team, the San Antonio Spurs, play the Detroit Pistons in Game 1 of the NBA finals. Of the 500 or so people in the cinema tent watching the game, there were only four of us Spurs fans. The entire game was a Pistons blowout with everyone in the tent going crazy…until the fourth quarter. The Spurs eventually would win the game and was the turning point for the entire weekend. The next day before watching the unbelievably amazing late-night The Mars Volta show, Me, Sleo, and Biggie C were able to “mysteriously acquire” all-access passes to the fest. We spent the rest of the weekend backstage drinking free alcohol and stalking our favourite artists. That weekend was one of the best in my life.

Last year we volunteered to work at the ‘roo. We got to start camping on Tuesday on our way back from Coparusa so it was interesting to be hanging out at the fest with only the other employees. I waited 6 hours or so in one spot to watch the epic Radiohead show, but it was a small price to pay. I think last year the most interesting thing for me was to be able to watch how the fest is run behind the scenes. Bonnaroo 2006 concluded with me getting to shake Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth‘s hand as we both waited to get on stage for the Phil Lesh and Friends show.

I could literally go on for hours and hours about my experiences at this fest. I’ll spare you for now, but I urge you to get tickets now if you don’t have them. If you can’t make it, we’ll be covering the fest around the clock both here and at Camura.

Diatribe Of The Day: What Is A Musician?

The night after St. Patrick’s Day a couple weeks ago, Me, Ichuda, and some other friends spent the night getting drunk in a dive bar on the beach at Tybee Island. We ended up getting in like a 5 hour discussion and argument about Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I’m not going to rehash this tired debate here, but I am going to address a single element of the argument that has come out in previous music debates. There are certain phrases that people use when trying to make a point about particular music that always bother me. A simple example of this is: “Every *Insert artist or genre here* song sounds the same”. When I hear someone make an argument like this, It translates into my head as “I don’t know what I’m talking about”. The phrase that came up in this argument that I’ve heard in similar arguments with many different people was “*Insert band or artist here* are/is a great songwriter(s), but not (a) good musician(s).”

I hate when someone says something like this. It really infuriates me because there are a lot of layers to this sort of thinking that I disagree with. First, somehow the word “musician” has come to mean something different to people than its actual definiton. Certain people in this mind frame think that there is a black and white dichotomy between being a song-writer and being a musician. Either you are songwriter, a musician, or both. Not only is this oversimplification lack an understanding of the evolution of music, but it totally redefines the word “musician” to only account for those who can play an instrument technically proficient according to conventional norms determined by some popular thought based in tradition. It basically boils down to, the faster you can play a scale, the better a musician you are.

Now, I do not disagree that in assessing how good a musician someone is, its fair to take into account how technically proficient that person is. But that is only a part of the greater picture. These classical-rock fundamentalists rob the word of every other meaning and dimension it possesses. Here’s some definitions of the word ‘musician’ that i can find on the web:

Answers.com:

One who composes, conducts, or performs music, especially instrumental music.

Websters-online-dictionary.org:

1. Someone who plays a musical instrument (as a profession).

2. Artist who composes or conducts music as a profession.

But I think I like Wikipedia’s best:

A musician is a person who plays or composes music Musicians can be classified by their role in creating or performing music:

Musicians may also dance or produce choreography. The concept of the musician and the status of the musician in society varies from culture to culture.

You will notice that by definition, song-writing is musicianship. The song-writer is not a separate sphere outside of the musician, but one flavor of musician. You’ll also notice that “conducting” is included in all three definitions. A conductor doesn’t even actually make any music or sounds, but it still considered a musician. The conductor manipulates the music using the musicians as his instrument. Music is making art with sound. You have to think on that raw, fundamental level to really understand what a musician is. To better illuminate my perspective on these two types of musicians and their importance I think in terms of comic books, The song-writer is the penciller and the technically proficient are the inker. The song-writer creates art and the technically proficient perfect it but there’s lots of different dimensions, and variations, and combinations. So arguing about who is a better musician between some who is purely a song-writer and someone who is purely a master of their instrument is impossible on a certain level. That’s not to say that value judgements don’t exist. The musician who can combine both as well as each of those clearly is a better musician.

Another problem with this argument is the limited conception of what passes for being a master of an instrument. There are classical musicians who believe that jazz and blues and rock ‘n’ roll aren’t “real music” and that musicians in those genres are not as good as classical musicians because they don’t do specifically what they are used to. Assuming that particular styles are objectively better than others is something that i will never agree with. As music evolves, styles evolve and just because a particular guitarist hasn’t been practicing a particular old style of music over and over again does not necessarily mean they are any less proficient at their instrument. They may be inventing a new style of playing the guitar that the rock dinosaur guitarists could never do. Also, as technology is moving more and more rapidly, what constitutes an “instrument” is changing and a particular musician doesn’t have to even touch classical instrumentation. Mastering making music from a computer is just as important as mastering music on a drum set.

The best way i can illustrate how i conceive what makes a great musician is to give an example. I consider Jim O’Rourke one of the greatest musicians of all time because he can play any instrument as good as the best and each with a distinct sound unmatchable, he can write brilliant songs, some of the best lyrics I’ve ever heard, he has a good and distinct voice, he can improvise at high levels, he has created some of the best pop songs and some of the most challenging and innovative experimental music I have ever heard, he has produced some of the best albums of the last decade, he mixes, he collaborates constantly with great musicians, and he is insanely prolific. The truly great musician to me is the one than can master as many different dimensions of music as possible.

So, I’m taking “musician” back. The next time someone is going on and on about some dude who can shred on a guitar in his sleep but couldn’t write a good song, tell your friend “yeah, he’s really good at his instrument, but he’s not a good musician.” and wait for that reaction.

Your reward for reading all of that garbage is a few Jim O’Rourke tracks:

Jim O’Rourke : Insignificance : Memory Lame

Sonic Youth : Murray Street : Rain On Tin

Loose Fur : Loose Fur : Carnival Knowledge

Jim O’Rourke : Terminal Pharmacy : Terminal Pharmacy

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