"There are two kinds of music: good music, and the other kind. I play the good kind."
~Duke Ellington
I used to worry that I didn't have an identity. I was playing guitar in a rock band, playing bass in a blues band, writing as half of a folk duo, and then going home and churning out strange little string quartets and orchestral pieces on the computer. I was flitting about from style to style and sound to sound like a slightly detuned hummingbird. I was never sure who I was going to be when I picked up a guitar. And it worried me.
Because, you see, I could listen to any cut from any one of my guitar heroes and hear their personality shine through like a beacon. I could spot Bill Frisell a mile away. Jimmy Page is always and forever Jimmy Page. Frank Zappa?--no matter how far out weird he got, there was always that thread of continuity, what Zappa himself called the Project/Object, running through his music like an overloaded hydro wire that somehow connected Igor Stravinsky, doo-wop, funk, and the glory hole of your local truck stop bathroom stall in a way that sounded unmistakably Frank.
And then there was me, soaking up and imitating styles like an echolalic sponge, and never even having the good grace or self-discipline to get my imitations right. I was, I down-heartedly concluded, a duffer and a dabbler, a poseur and a fake. Not shredder enough to be a shredder, not bluesy enough t be a blues player; I was half-assed in every possible direction at once.
I tried to find a direction. Really, I did. I told myself I would only write pop songs. I told myself I was part of a piano-guitar-voice trio, until death do us part. I told myself I was working on an album of solo acoustic fingerstyle stuff that fans of Bruce Cockburn might like if they were willing to ignore the fact that Bruce was already so much better at that than I would ever be. But I couldn't stick with any of them.
And then I realized that all this compartmentalization was just me cutting off my nose without even the satisfaction of spiting my face. I wasn't trying to make a shitload of money. I didn't need a marketable image. And if I looked back at the heroes I referenced--Zappa, Frisell, Page, and Cockburn, not to mention Brian May, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Ani DiFranco, Vernon Reid and Pete Townsend, among many others--none of them were compartmentalized, either. If you listen to their widely varied output, they don't seem to have a marketing strategy other than "do whatever the hell you like, as long as you do it well."
Neil Young was once sued by his OWN RECORD LABEL for making an album that didn't sound like Neil Young. Ween has basically been an entirely different band every time they've made a record, but they consistently crack me up and fill me with joy. Listen to Adrian Belew play for the Talking Heads, then listen to his solo albums and quick-cut to his hilarious Bob Dylan impersonation on Zappa's wonderful "Flakes"--the guy's all over the map, and I adore him for it.
And bands that find their sound, find their formula and grind out album after album of the same shit, year after year? Well, when something dies it soon enough begins to stink.
We all know AC/DC hasn't done anything worth listening to since Who Made Who, or maybe earlier. Bon Jovi, bless his slick black corporate soul, has made the same bloody album every year since Slippery When Wet, but people are so dumb or so stuck in their ways or so die-hard committed to their love of mediocrity that they continue to buy it. Fifty million Bon Jovi fans, I humbly suggest, can most certainly be wrong. Or at least be wasting their time.
Gradually it dawned on me that my only job as an artist was to sound like me. But still the doubts persisted: what does "me" sound like? Do I sound enough like me? What if "me" changes from day to day--is that bad? Weak? Demonstrative of a lack of conviction?
Basically, I was a neurotic twit. But I got better.
Projects came; projects fell away. Collaborators brought out different facets of my musical personality, helped me understand truths or partial truths about myself. I stopped trying to impress other people. And then, one magic day, I stopped trying to impress myself, too.
Now I just listen to the noises in my head, and try to duplicate them in the world. And if that means a slow Dixieland blues today and a jangly pop confection laced with jazzy #11 chords tomorrow, well, that's just fine. It's all me. Even if I'm trying to imitate Bruce Cockburn. Because, you see, here's the secret:
I never perfected that Bruce Cockburn imitation.
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