John Hendow

The Preons will be playing Monday 7/16 at the Rendezvous in Seattle. We’ve been invited to join a multi-band bill with five bands performing(!) , so this should make for an interesting logistical evening. Brad wisely negotiated our position as the first band on the bill, so our downbeat is no later than 9:30 PM. Forty minutes of Preons, then we’ll vacate the stage to make room for band #2. My guess is that the evening will be considered a well-attended event, as the Rendezvous is a small bar. It’ll seem packed with just the band members present…

I sometimes lament the sorry state of rock. It seems to me that I grew up surrounded by great rock from bands like KISS, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, The Scorpions, Mötley Crüe, Rush, and so on. What I love about rock is the energy and the role of thunderous guitar and aggressive bass. At some point in the 1990s I realized rock had largely vanished from the landscape. What was left were bands where the guitar was a visual prop dragged around by a fashionably aloof lead singer. Nobody was rocking out! At that point I had been playing professionally for over a decade, and actively (and loudly) wondered what the heck was going on with rock. Dang. I had already become one of those fist-waving curmudgeons who scolded disaffected teens because back in MY DAY we had REAL rock and we were THANKFUL.

Bands like Tool and A Perfect Circle give me some hope that rock is not quite dead. Last week I picked up a copy of Tool’s new CD 10,000 Days. This month’s Bass Player magazine has a great interview with bassist Justin Chancellor, and it reminded me of how much I’ve enjoyed their earlier releases. For one thing, this CD easily has the coolest packaging of any musical product I own. It’s very inventive. And the music is everything rock should be… dark, complex, driving, and delivered just seriously enough that you can believe the people behind it are having fun. The band is well worth seeing live if the opportunity should present itself. Dig the crazy time signatures, admire the machine-gun kick drum, behold the majestic grind of a Mesa / Boogie Triple Rectifier. Tool delivers an industrial rock crossover with freshness and vitality.

It gives me hope that we’ll be able to reverse the trend toward global musical lukewarming, so our childrens’ children will still be able to enjoy a good moshpit.

Thus spake the great (and oft-eloquent) brethren of KISS:

I know life sometimes can get tough! and I know life sometimes can be a drag!
But people, we have been given a gift, we have been given a road
And that road’s name is… rock and roll!
God gave rock and roll to you, gave rock and roll to you
Gave rock and roll to everyone
God gave rock and roll to you, gave rock and roll to you
Put it in the soul…

Last week during a team lunch expedition I lobbied my co-workers to make a quick side trip to a CD store in West Seattle. They were kind enough to agree, and I picked up two discs that I had been wanting. One was the latest Tool release (review forthcoming), and the other was a double CD titled The Essential Jaco Pastorius. As a student of the instrument, I’m interested in analyzing Jaco’s approach to bass, and obviously his contribution to – and influence on – modern fretless bass cannot be overlooked. Most musicians hold him in reverence as the Jimi Hendrix of fretless bass.

I was aware of Jaco in the 1980s because my jazz musician buddies were always talking about him. My perception of his work was that he was brilliantly inventive, technically virtuosic, and determined to be up front in the band. Having the benefit of a few decades since those first listenings, my assessment of his playing is still very much the same. I think he was very interesting and complete as a stylist. But I’m not a fan of the music he played. The tracks with Weather Report seem a bit cheesy, both in the 80s new-wave-jazz-rock instrument tones, and in the actual compositions themselves. I enjoy his playing with Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny and of course with Herbie Hancock. There is a strong sense of drive in his playing that adds a new dimension to the music around it. He definitely has a strong lead melodic sense, which was (and still is) a departure from the traditional role of the bassist.

Studying Jaco is good for my musical education, and for my increasing understanding of the modern bass repertoire. However, the net effect is that I have an even greater appreciation for Mick Karn. Jaco is technically a much more adept and well-known bassist, but Mick’s playing resonates with me in a much deeper way.

Last night I had my first official bass lesson. It took some research and calling around to find a teacher, but I am quite satisfied with my first lesson, and this seems like it will be a good fit for my needs. We spent an hour playing through some material and talking about my objectives. My teacher was well prepared and had put together some material for me to work on, including scale / arpeggio exercises and an accompaniment CD to practice against.

In terms of mechanical diagnostics, I was pleasantly surprised that my right and left hand techniques were deemed pretty decent. Thus far I have been using the same basic right hand techniques that I learned while studying classical guitar; in terms of finger style, this is the “rest stroke” and the “free stroke”. For thumb techniques I use a fairly standard approach that I derived from observation of Victor Wooten, Les Claypool, Larry Graham, and Booty Collins. I had more confidence in my left hand, since my guitar technique is more directly transferable to bass. One of my challenges on fretless will be to develop accurate muscle memory for finger position.

The real challenge in working on bass is determining the direction I’d like to go. Without a doubt, I’m interested in studying the styles of Tony Levin, Mick Karn, Bill Laswell and Bootsy Collins. These are the players who are most directly responsible for my interest in playing bass. In the process of analyzing these greats, I’ll probably explore some related artists. Beyond that, I am interested in developing sufficient chops that I could confidently sit in on jazz gigs. Good heavens… I’m thinking I want to be a jazz bassist… it’s just a matter of time before I get a beret and start smoking a pipe.

Last night we had a fairly productive band practice, even though one of our members is currently in Uganda (!). Three of us worked through our current set of live material, focusing on timing and a few tricky rhythmic passages, then we had a go at some new stuff as well. I continue to be impressed with Brad’s musicianship. He always has good musical ideas and plays them beautifully.

We’ll continue to practice without Josh for another few weeks, which will give us more opportunities to work on new ideas. Hopefully we’ll have some pleaseant surprises for him when he returns.

The search for an instrument teacher can be time-consuming. I suppose if I was a beginning student it would be a lot easier. As a reasonably experienced guitarist who is learning to play bass, the challenge is finding a teacher who (1) doesn’t regard this as a strange move and (2) can deliver some guidance in the right direction.

Today I contacted a local teacher to set up an initial meeting. This is the third bass instructor to be “interviewed”. To speed things up I’ve declared my bass influences; one of the absolute requirements for any instructor is that he has to appreciate Tony Levin and Mick Karn. This is what I mean by “in the right direction”… I want a teacher who is willing to help me analyze and internalize the individual style of the musicians that I like.

Most fretless players / teachers get all hung up on Jaco Pastorius, and they assume that anyone with a fretless bass should swim those jazzy seas. I do recognize that he was a brilliant player, but honestly I’ve never heard anything by him that really moved me. Maybe it’s my world-music leanings. At any rate, I’m cautiously optimistic that I will begin lessons next week, and that is exciting.

Well, today I received the first issue of my new Bass Player magazine subscription. After years of subscribing to Guitar Player, I didn’t renew, instead opting for the low-note sibling magazing. As quipped by a good friend of mine (in a decent Darth Vader impression) “Your journey to the Dark Side is now complete…”.

I still don’t consider myself to be nearly as proficient on the instrument as I am on guitar. For one thing, I tend to think and play like a guitarist, so my bass playing isn’t quite as idiomatic as I’d like it to be. But I do feel that I’m making strides on the instrument and look forward to digging in to some lessons with a local teacher.

So for the moment I’ve stashed my guitar Jedi robe in the hall closet. Even if the Dark Side isn’t more powerful, at least the bad guys tend to wear much cooler black outfits.

The Police arrived at a perfect time in my musical education. I was interested in punk, new wave, and reggae. Somehow they gracefully balanced these musical styles and found commercial success in the process. Unquestionably, the band did groundbreaking work in the late 70s and early 80s with their defining albums “Outlandos D’Amour” (1978),  “Regatta De Blanc” (1979), “Zenyatta Mondatta” (1980), “Ghost In The Machine” (1981), and “Synchronicity” (1983). I saw them in concert twice during that period and was impressed with their performances.

During the last 25 years, the band has basically been inert. The three members have pursued their own paths and explored new artistic forms. I once attended a symposium on “Scoring for Film”, at which a panel of composers spoke about the challenges and rewards of writing music for movies. Stuart Copeland was one of the panelists, and while I enjoyed his comments, it was much more entertaining to speak with him afterwards about the experience of playing live music.

When The Police decided to reunite for a tour I was skeptical but optimistic. Tickets for the Seattle shows sold out very quickly and scalping immediately ensued. I didn’t manage to get tickets until the day before the second show, and that was only through very good fortune and the kindness of a wonderful friend. Our seats were great and the show was a lot of fun.

Read the rest of this post for my review…

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During my junior year of high school (1980), I heard the Dead Kennedys debut album “Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables” at a rocking party. I had heard other punk bands and was a fan of Black Flag, the Clash, the Misfits, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, but something about the DKs particularly resonated with me. The music was energetic and full of attitude, with a helping of snarling satire courtesy of Jello Biafra’s lyrics. It was the first point in my young adult life that I recognized the editorial voice present in rebellious music, which led me to explore some of the historical politically-charged recordings of Woody Guthrie. At the time in my life when I was on the cusp of adulthood, the status quo seemed boring and artificial. The DKs deftly skewered America’s middle class conservatism, and smarmy lyrics aside, it acted as a great soundtrack for my final summer as a high school student.

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Last night’s Preons show at The High Dive went fairly well. Originally there were going to be three bands on the bill:

• Monostereo
• Mercurius
• The Preons

At about 8:00 we were informed “Monostereo” had dropped off the bill, so we adjusted the set times a bit. Ultimately this meant pushing back our start time by 30 minutes. The guys in “Mercurius” were cool and fun to chat with. I always enjoy meeting musicians who play for all the right reasons. These guys had taken the ferry from Bremerton on a Wednesday night, just to play in Seattle. That is a refreshingly unjaded attitude.

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