Interlude No 2

Music

December 25, 2016

Music was always my constant companion. When I was a kid, I had a record player and a few hand-selected records handed down to me by my parents, ex-hippies who had found Jesus. When the Lord entered their hearts, he asked that they segregate their record collection into what was allowable within their newfound innocence, and what music spoke of the devil or sex, and therefore must be purged. But I suppose my parents hadn’t consumed all of the CoolAid because, while they had segregated their records they hadn’t burned the bad ones at the stake. I had uncovered the treasure and would lay in the basement many nights listening to Steppenwolf, Grateful Dead, Bob Marley, and others that would draw me into their world and away from my own. 

The greatest of those was Bruce Springsteen. My grandmother once snuck me a VHS tape that had on it a music video for every song on Born in the USA. After some time, my mother decided Bruce was okay, and so the video tape played on repeat until it wore down and it gave back only fuzzy, multicolored stripes. I would take my shirt off, strip down to my jeans and bare feet, and pretend I was Bruce, The Boss, bringing the world to its knees with my guitar and my voice - with beautiful women joining me on stage to dance the night away. Courtney Cox, career launched, you’re welcome. I knew when I was five years old that I was going to be that. Not just a rock star. That was only ancillary. I was going to write music that brought people to a different place. Music that took people where Bruce took me: to a place where I was more than what I was - a shitty little kid  from a shitty little family living on a shitty little dead end street across from a dirt field on Long Island.

First, I played the drums. Then, for a brief period, the piano and, simultaneously, the guitar. I gave up piano after much complaining to my mother, who had paid my music teacher to give me lessons around age six or seven. (To this day I wish I had kept that up.) By my early teen years I was a fantastic drummer - an instrument which takes no formal training to master, only hours of practice. I was equally proficient on guitar, although I had no clue as to its concepts. Even today, I really don’t know the “names” of any chords, how to play a D versus a B, or anything else for that matter. All I knew was how to play. I played by ear and could learn songs by listening not just the melody, but to each individual note I could hear within each chord struck. Honestly, I would look at tab books and my version typically sounded more accurate, because it was based on sound, not on music theory. Let’s face it, sometimes the Beatles may have just placed their fingers in a combination that sounded good to their ears, but wasn’t exactly a B Minor. Play the B Minor and you were close, but not what Lennon’s fingers played.

I digress from the point. Music was everything to me. Well, music and sex. The two do seem to go hand in hand (what musician doesn’t have a lot of sex? The answer you ask? Me throughout all my musician years. More on that later.) Music took me to another world. A world where I could be someone else, somewhere else. It gave me a language I could speak - often in riddles and rhymes and mystery, but just as often, it is riddles and rhymes and mystery that best describe life. Music gave me an outlet for my pain, a non-prescription based solution for my constant depression, and a foundation on which to dream of a future where I wrote my own story. I knew, at a very young age, that music would be it for me. I had what it took: I was good at it, was a great songwriter, relatively good looking, and - most importantly and all too often missing from creative types, I was organized and willing to work hard for it. 

Then, all of a sudden, I had my chance. Around age 17 I met PJ, a relatively soft spoken and intelligent kid, a few years younger than me. A year or so later we started fooling around writing music, and it was pretty good. We started playing some shows, as an acoustic duo, mostly playing in between Long Island Hardcore bands, as the emo-pop-duo of the scene. Soon after, we added a drummer, bassist and eventually, a pianist. A few years later we signed with a label and recorded a record which holds up to this day. The songs are catchy and relevant, even 11 years later. 

After signing, we began to tour. Mostly, at that time, touring was a way to get good. We played 5-6 shows a week, driving all over the country, with little money. Some shows were great (most often that meant an American Legion Hall with 70 kids showing up), some were horrible (playing in front of nobody in a shitty bar). It weighed on me. I missed Emily. Missed her in a way that made me feel like this life was too heavy to hold. But when we played, I lost myself. And when the shows were good: when we opened for a great band in front of a huge crowd, or a smaller intimate show where we connected with the crowd and made them feel like they were part of something great, the feeling was like the greatest drug the universe could inject into my veins. 

We blew people away. Our set was specifically designed to smash the mind of someone who hadn’t heard us. More than seven songs were rarely played: the point was to get up there, catch people’s attention and suck them into our world, then have it end before they wanted it to. “Grab our album at the mercy booth - Dan is a nice guy, he’ll kiss you and give you a T-shirt too.” If we played in front of 30 new people, we sold 35 albums. We ran out of march as quickly as we could replace it. We talked about recording a winter EP the year after the album was released, to peak more interest and speed the love on a Christmas song we had written that would have made Frank Loesser feel like maybe it wasn’t so cold outside after all.

But it was stressful. I was 23, newly married and deeply in love. Our drummer was 19. Our lead singer turned 21in the middle of nowhere while we were on a tour. We loaded and unloaded our trailer in the rain, blistering heat, and snow. We changed multiple flat tires in the middle of desert highways. We slept on floors, in our van, in the trailer. We argued about how to run this little business based on a pipe dream that was looking like it was headed for reality. My wife coming around was awkward in that there was only room for one love: music or her. The guys didn’t like when she came around because I got distracted. The music all of a sudden didn’t matter to me when she showed up. 

Still, I wasn’t giving up on it. It was all I had ever wanted: to wake up every day knowing that the only thing I HAD to do was write and play music. I could always deal with that, I knew. Any other occupation was highly questionable. Then, one night in Chicago, after playing in front of nobody at a dive bar, our lead singer came up to me while I was drinking a Miller High Life and eating chicken wings at the bar. He just said, “hey, I think we should take a break.” I still have no clue what prompted it. I went out to the parking lot. They were all standing in a semi-circle, and I walked up, standing in the open end of a horse shoe, and said, “so, you want to give up?” “Yeah, we just think some time off would be good.” My reply was, “what the fuck are you guys going to do if you don’t play music? I know what I’m going to do. I have other prospects. You guys have nothing. You can’t just give up when things get hard. That’s life.” They disagreed, so I threw my beer bottle into the air and watched it smash in the parking lot. I went to the back of the van and cried, called our former manager, Alex, who they had decided to fire a few months earlier. Then I called Emily. She got me a plane ticket home. I couldn’t stand being in the van with those guys as we drove home from giving up on everything we worked for, as if it was no big deal. I roamed around Chicago O’Hare night waiting for my early morning flight, went home, and didn’t see any of them for probably two years. Ironically, my forecast was true: a decade later, none of them are doing anything. They’re fucking around, playing a little music here and there. One of them is in a serious band, and tours all over the world, but an instrumental band that makes no money. He comes home, lives with his parents, and bartends to make ends meet.

Eleven years later, we were asked to play a reunion show, opening for a local hardcore band that had signed to Victory records around the time we broke up (ironically, I recently found a Newsday article my grandmother had saved: Lux Courages breaks up, and The Sleeping signs to Victory records”). The show was scheduled to happen at a pretty big, new, beautiful theatre in Huntington, The Paramount. At first, I said no. Nobody understood why, but here is the best explanation I can give you: when someone you love dearly dies, it’s horrible. But over time the pain fades until it’s only a slight pinging in your chest, then all but fades entirely. It wouldn’t be at all healthy to dig the up and look at their corpse, eleven years later. But after a while, after convincing by Emily and feeling guilty that I was ruining it for everyone, I agreed. 

The night was great. We blew through a similar seven song set that could bring any unfamiliar crowd to their knees. We were rough, dropping some of the more intricate harmonies and melodies that made us memorable because we, mainly I, just couldn’t do it anymore. And for me, it was digging up the corpse. I’m still feeling overwhelmed with emotion. I miss it. It pains me to remember those times. Being backstage at a great venue, hanging out with friends, meeting new people, being on stage and making eye contact with someone who we were clearly touching emotionally. It felt great. Better than great. It felt like home. 

And then I had go back to work. To the job I took because I thought making $60,000 a year was a lot of money. When you’re making close to nothing, I suppose it is. I make double that now, but it still doesn’t seem worth the degradation of my soul that it has caused. On Christmas Eve one of my aunts commented, “what happened to the happy, light hearted Adam I used to know?” I said I was just tired. And I am. I’m exhausted. But mostly, I’m just not enjoying anything right now. I miss playing music. I’ll die missing it. And I’ll never do it again.

On the other hand, I know that if I had kept going with music, I probably would’t still have Emily in my life. Thinking about the possibility of that makes me fall apart inside. What a position to be in to have two loves who cannot live together, and have to give one up for the other. I suppose one could say that I’m lucky .

After a decade of winging it and listening the the advice of others above my own inner voice, I have strong, sound advice. People say, “do what you love and they money will follow.” It’s good advice, but for very few people. The reason is that 99% of the population doesn’t actually love doing anything, or the thing they love will lead them to homelessness if pursued full time (these days, most people love to watch Netflix, eat pizza, and drink - that doesn’t contain the makings of anything at all). My advice is this: IF you love something, do it; the rest doesn’t matter. If you don’t love something, do what will make you as much money as possible. Anything in between is stupid.