Five Before Chaos

Ah yes, the mighty trombone. Jenni’s uncle gave her an old one that must have belonged to her cousin or something. It needed a mouthpiece, so I picked one up and decided to give it a go. Having a lot of fun with it, more on that later. But it gives me an opening to talk about music. I was reluctant to go there… in the late night depths as I read the random blogs, I realize how in 99% of the cases, I really don’t like reading about peoples’ personal stuff. There’s the usual “I went shopping with Mary at the mall today” crap, the “boo hoo I’m lonely” stuff, and there’s still all those teenaged girls from Singapore with their food diaries. Like I said in the beginning… why the hell should you care what I think? So I’m gonna try to make this as entertaining as possible.

I started playing guitar in 4th grade. Never got too far with it, but I could play “Yellow Submarine” and “House of the Rising Sun”. Dabbled on and off with it for a few more years, mostly blues and surf music. Then, in 1984, I remember watching that video by the Thompson Twins, for a song called “Hold Me Now”. You probably remember it, typical 1980’s pop post-new wave crap. But I finally noticed that the bass only had 4 strings, not 6 like my guitar. Must be easier, I figured(wrong). A few months later, my parents bought me an entry-level Peavey “Patriot” bass. Started figuring out more blues, classic rock, etc. I don’t think I was all that good.
Fast forward a few years…. no longer living in Putnam Lake, NY, living in Bonita Springs, FL, pure hell. But I started playing with people, and enjoyed it a lot. Enjoyed the attention from the females, too. Must pursue this further.

FFWD some more, living in CT. Was still going back and forth between guitar and bass. At this point I was starting to listen to jazz and fusion and stuff, as well as expanding my consciousness with an array of new-to-me chemicals. Put together a band called…Five Before Chaos. It was kind of like punk jazz. Our hearts were in the right place but our chops and writing skill weren’t. It was a great period of musical growth for me because I started to really realize the creative possibilities of the instrument. I just needed to get the skills to tap into those possibilities.

1996… Living in VT. Got a lot of real-world bar-band experience with a blues band(F.B.C. didn’t really gig much, and when we did, there was a lot of audience head-scratching going in). Played in biker clubs, roadhouses, ski resorts, even a prison. To be a bassist and play the blues, ya really gotta love it, because it’s more or less variations on the same thing over and over. And over.I was bored shitless, even though the money was good (one does not truly know tedium until having played the bass on ZZ Top’s ‘LaGrange’ for 20 minutes straight). Stopped doing that, got involved in a pop/funk/worldbeat band. We did pretty good, some of the musicians were fantastic, and things really started to click for me as to what great bass playing entailed. As usual, got burnt on it after a couple of years, as did others. End of that(for me at least).

Playing in a band, with all the rewards and bullshit, can be funny. You get tired of it, you take your break. You get tired of driving home dark, dirt roads at 3 AM, smelling like an ashtray and having a headache ‘cuz the guitarist wouldn’t turn down. And then after a few months you start to miss it. Just like Michael Corleone in Godfather , Pt. 3 - everytime you try to get out, you get pulled back in. Wash, rinse, repeat. I was getting more and more into jazz and old school funk, and put together an all instrumental band called Leon Tubbs. This is the one I’m really proud of. It was a hybrid of jazz, funk and worldbeat, and it didn’t suck. Great, original writing and playing (if you’re curious, lemme know and I’ll see about putting some up here). One of the high points was opening up for jazz guitar legend John Scofield at the 2002 Discover Jazz Fest in Burlington. Now that was a pants-pooper. It’s one thing to play to a bar full of people gettin’ down, but to hear 2000+ people applause afterwards was quite the rush. We went on for another year or two, went into the studio to start an album, but a lack of personal creativity, coupled with mounting problems in my personal life kinda just made it hard to continue. So I moved on.

Without getting sappy or cocky, I wanna say music is a very important part of my life, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I put endless evenings and weekends into it. Sometimes the reward was great, sometimes it made me want to commit multiple murders. But I also love to be in the woods. And go for rides with Jenni. And chop wood. And finish college. And write minimalist ambient stuff and music for films that don’t exist yet. And have a mortgage. So I’m kinda semi-retired. It took a long time to come to terms with it that I wasn’t gonna be out on the road with some band, because that was my focus and goal for almost a third of my life. I still gig occasionally, and I know I could gig a lot if I wanted to. But then I wouldn’t have time to sit around and make obnoxious musical farting noises on the trombone, would I?

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