The meaning of live (not a typo)

Setting the groove…

Sep 09, 2023

I have been a drummer from my early teens to about the age of Jesus' retirement. So this is the late seventies till just before the turn of the century. Ancient history.

The hair was still on the top of my head in them days…

After several flirtations with local music makers I was invited to play in a more professional band that started out with their own material. We played on average two times a week and toured the country in a van brim-filled with five guys, flight-cases and cigarette smoke.

At some point we got a record deal. The day after I got married we entered the studio. Having ten days to do ten songs was a submarine mission. Nothing else mattered. I believe I never even called my girl1. Horrible me.

Music was my first love.

We got a bit more fame and moved into the festival scene, getting invited by radio and tv. I was just over twenty, by far the youngest of the band when we started playing the bigger venues (like a ten year difference to the next oldest geezer, and a non-smoker in so far possible). Not with our own songs though. We were hired as session musicians for - slightly more famous - artists from abroad. It meant more money and better gigs. It also meant a lot more songs and reading from sheet music (wasn’t too great at that, I pretended and played from memory). Performing like that, with camera crews, tight soundcheck schedules, short rehearsal times, is a high pressure environment. Intense, crazy and formative. It was very artificial, even back then. Confusing. I learned a lot, had some insanely good times on the road and experienced close up how the world of entertainment functions. And I was a first hand witness to how rapidly, moving from the eighties to the nineties, things got hollowed out by the money business. And even in ‘live’ music, machinery took the lead. Backing tracks became the standard. Playing along with a click makes it possible to sound all the more impressive. It leaves nothing to chance. It also is indistinguishable from cheating.

Moving the earth

Still our music was real. It was just us showing up. I set the tempo. We decided the length of the guitar-solo with a glance. Enough? Yes, please not another round! And one night at a three day festival, Saturday, main stage mid evening, I had my moment. Everything was right that gig. The day leading up to it, the weather, rehearsals, the songs. From the moment I lowered my but onto the stool and counted off the first song, every single thing seemed to work together for this one purpose. All fell in place. Joy.

I can’t remember which song it was, halfway through the setlist, but it started with drums only. Loud heavy rock. And as a drummer in those times you had sidefills as monitors. Your own personal speaker-stack. Left and right. The size of American fridges. That feels really powerful. If you hit the floor tom you can literally feel the earth move. And the crowd out there feels that too. The full connection was made. I was moving ten thousand people with my body. I entered the rhythm and became one with my instrument, with the song, my fellow musicians, with the whole bloody universe. The crowd lifted me. Elevation.

Something happened last century

It is often seen as primitive when people align like that. And it certainly is wild, physical, raw in some sense. But what stood out for me, and that makes it a life defining experience, is that it was pure communication. It was the most intense conversation I’d ever had, and still nothing comes even close. No amount of talk can do that. Nothing is more embodied, and earthy and at the same time made of pure light. This is what we seek. Communion. Rejoining. Celebrating our being here. Making love. It’s utterly erotic and sacred at the same time.

Since, I have learned it does not have to be big and all pumped up. Music was my first love but it wasn’t my only. The same treats are present in many walks. Unaware often. Unnoticed. Trying to figure out why we are not conscious of how this really works, has been a long journey.

We have almost lost it at this point in time. We know, and still seem unable to find our way back. Something happened last century. Not just peak-oil. Or the moment where tech and tools no longer serve but take over the lead. Something deeper has struggled to stay alive in jazz, in rock-’n-roll, in culture. On and off stage in art, in community. It still does. More than ever it withers.

We can’t do without. I do not accept a world that has lost soul. That no longer knows the way, the truth and the life. At some level almost everyone feels we are saying goodbye to how it was. Whatever you call it.

The key to move through this transition lies in this deeper communication. It's not the talk that gets us there. Not the tech, not the science, not the weapons, It is celebrating. Detaching from the machine, from the hard work and attaching back to life: the actual renewable energy source. Still abundantly available in your neighborhood. A live concert is what we need. What a weird thing to state. The musical version yes of course, lovely, but it is is also a symbol, a metaphor of enormous proportions. But who will still show up for the real thing?

What didn’t happen is me chasing that moment of union. Life led me down another path. After a good while I started recognising what helped to get closer, and what took me away. What I struggle with is sharing this. It seems to be utterly indescribable. It defies head on definitions. The available words are worn out. Tired.

A conductor of a big orchestra may seem like a dictator demanding full obedience. But the musicians are not slaves at all. The amount of pushback a symphonic orchestra is capable of, can only function in concert with someone of large capacity, with a very wide embrace. The depth of service needed to wield the baton is incredible. As is the amount of presence each instrument brings in.

Story

Writing is my attempt at pulling this into the light. Wide and slow. You could call it symphonic writing. My way to breathe life into a dying tradition. It still is not too late to revive the skill. Because this is a technique. Very different from mechanical or digital. This is communal tech without the need for fossil fuels, this is the primal source of energy we seek. It is the pulse that drives us, the beat that moves us. So, I do use words but not to explain. I conjure. I call forth. Create. In concert.

Wording this longs for listeners, readers. An audience that is not passive but responds to the groove, that carries the performance to a level unseen. You are invited to be on the same page. I can promise you I will play, find the groove that pulls you in. Give heart and soul to the gathering forming in real time that has no other purpose than being present with what is.

In concert. That’s the meaning of live.