The Gig at Scott's Valley
Friday was one of those weird nights where the movie
Spinal Tap meets reality. The gig, a benefit for a local dance troupe, was held at the Scott’s Valley Bible Study Center, located in a shopping mall in the Santa Cruz Mountain town of Scott’s Valley. Mike Schermer, the young blues guitarist who hired me, wanted to get there early, so I drove down from the Bay Area in the afternoon, picked him up in Santa Cruz and drove to the gig, arriving about 6:45. The plan was to have dinner, then play from 8-10pm, a short and early night. Arriving simultaneously with the caterer, we were among the first ones there.
The venue itself was a claustrophobic, low-ceilinged meeting room in a suburban strip mall. Lit by fluorescent ceiling lights and sound proof, I noticed the smell of cooking, or maybe frying, in the air. The stage, occupying a far corner of the room, was triangular in shape. Flanking the stage, a home stereo played softly providing musical accompaniment for the show to come. Nobody seemed to know what was going on.
We brought our equipment in and set it in a back alcove near the men’s -and only-restroom. Mike recognized the caterer, an old friend from Santa Cruz, said
hi, then, dodging the children in pajama-like costumes tied at the waist, talked to the young woman who booked the gig and hired the band. She said to Mike, we would “play after the ceremony and presentation was finished and after dinner.” Drawing closer to him, she also said, “There is going to be a party afterward at my house” and would he like to come? He said, “Sure, but I’ll have to go home and change cars since I got a ride.” By this time the other band members arrived and found parking in the narrow strip’s lot.
Andy Santana, the harmonica player and singer, came first with the p.a. for the band, followed by Robin Roth, the drummer, and her friend Mary. We stored the equipment in a rear alcove. Andy talked to the caterer, a friend of his, then gave me a 6-pointed star shaped badge with the words “licensed junk collector," for, after all, to him, I was “the law.” I hope he’s referring to my playing. Mike, who is Jewish, told me to be careful where I wear the star because it was the “Hebrew star.” We sat down at one of the folding tables near the rear of the room and ate some of the Hershey’s kisses that were used as table decoration. We’re getting hungry, where’s the food?
The dancing had now started. The home stereo came to life playing some middle eastern music while the troupe of mostly middle aged female belly dancers entered the room, filing on the stage, carrying long knives and chanting “la-la-la-la-la” very fast. I thought, “Where’s Xena?” Upon closer inspection, the belly-dancing troupe contained the entire range of ages, from children to one senior citizen. The dancing went on for a while, and then a separate “chorus line” of children emerged from the rear alcove lead by one of the adult dancers. Dressed in a noisy costume complete with a brass serving plate on her head filled with grapes and carrying a folded tortilla on the end of a sword, the noisy dancer and chorus line snaked around the room announcing “Dinner was ready.” When she came to our table, she asked, “Would you like some grapes? Or a tortilla? “ “No thanks,” we said, but the tortilla was removed from the sword and placed on the table anyway.
Dinner finally began, and the children were the servers. Dinner included Mexican-styled shish kebob with hot green sauce, salad, beans and bread, but no rice. The belly dancing continued. Each dancer had a solo. Mike turned to me and said, “If the old lady takes her clothes off, I’m out of here.” She didn’t but did a solo anyway. The rapid “la-la-la-la-la” continued. Maybe I don’t get this, is this supposed to be good dancing? It seems more like summer camp theatre.
The next act was a chorus line featuring a Marlene Dietrich look a like doing karaoke. “Cabaret” was coming over the home stereo and the Dietrich character lip-sang and lip-talked to the recording. This was so ridiculous I could hardly contain my laughter. The performance continued with an awards ceremony, celebrating the dancers and their accomplishments. “Mike, “I said, “You really know how to pick the gigs.” We started laughing and asking where Xena was. The dancing continued. I thought, “Is there no end?”
At 9pm, with dinner and the dancing ceremonies over, we started to set up on the triangular stage. We played for and hour and five minutes, doing songs that Andy and Mike wrote for their band The Soul Drivers plus some other blues numbers. Most of the audience remained, but some left and the woman who booked the gig paid us at 10pm. On the way out I had some warmed over coffee with -- unknown to me, since I had my reading glasses off-- mocha-mint creamer. Horrible! I left, with Mike, about 10:30, $100 richer, knowing that I wouldn’t be going to the after party. I dropped Mike off in Santa Cruz and then went home.
Just to keep the record straight, Mike related to me later that he didn’t go to the after party either. The woman who invited him called around midnight wondering if he “got lost?” “No,” he answered, “I fell asleep.” Then he told me he woke up at dawn to go surfing.
Authenticity
First, this quest for "authenticity" leads nowhere. The word, "authentic," means "real" but it has been abused by advertising to confuse the consumer and has lost its meaning. Is Coke the "real thing?" Are Levi jeans "authentic jeans?" Are their competitors not real, or "authentic?" Music, like other arts, is sold as a commodity, that is, it fulfills a need and can be traded, but it requires an audience to complete the experience. Are these experiences not real? I say, they are real, and the only reason the question of "authenticity" is asked is because advertising has made us question the reality of our experiences. It's like the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland; we know there is a "real" Matterhorn somewhere else, but to authenticate the Matterhorn experience we would have to go there and ride the roller coaster down that other mountain, which is, of course, impossible, since that coaster doesn't exist.
Second, tourists are the engine for the entertainment business nearly everywhere. The Saloon and Lou's Pier 47
http://www.sfblues.net are both San Francisco tourist joints; in fact, aren't we all tourists? How many of us walk to the gig in the neighborhood? My guess is almost no one. In the US, think of Branson, or Las Vegas--without tourism, both places would die.
(San Francisco's The Saloon is pictured on the left.)
The question of being "authentic" is a global one. Globalization through the internet is removing barriers to communication. There are rock and hip-hop bands on every continent, for example. Don't Japanese rock and roll bands play real rock and roll, or further, how about European blues bands? Or how about American symphony orchestras playing, say, a Beethoven symphony?
Last, "the set list from hell" is a symptom of people's wants and desires. A similar set list also exists in all music, all styles. People like what they know and know what they like, so I find that you gotta stick the familiar in with the new or you lose the audience. Yeah, I'm sick of Mustang Sally too, but I put my heart into it when I play it. I try to give them an "authentic" experience.
OK
OK. Now that I am back from vacation, a tough journey through Italy and Sicily looking for ghosts, for glimpses of my wife's past relations, for indecipherable clues; birth certificates in Italian, headstones, gravesites, abandoned residences, buried cemeteries, conversations with the past in foreign languages with people who knew someone who knew someone else of the same name back in the day, broken French as my common language of choice as Lynn attempts broken Italian, I can now report on some of the music I encountered there. Music is like life: It describes the human condition, makes a statement, tells a story, and lifts the veil on the past, if only temporarily.
I'm not talking about Blues, that most American of musics, but I am talking about the music I encountered in Italy, both live and on the radio. First, the live music, so let's start with the ancient music of the zampogna, the bagpipe made in the town of Lynn's grandfather, Scapoli, Molise, a medieval mountain town high in the Apennines, a music whose ultimate roots may be unknown. The zampogna, a reed instrument like an oboe, but with holes like a flute and a sheep's bladder to hold the air,(
http://www.comunescapoli.is.it , for the museum; the following for a musical sample
http://web.tiscali.it/zampogneinsardegna/img/Audioz+L.wma), was an instrument played for centuries by sheep herders and vagabonds, but is now the focus of a yearly festival in the mountain town, and a museum is there to preserve the music and its instruments. It is lonely, haunting music, music with almost no chord changes or discernable rhythm parts, but with a drone and a melody, usually a simple melody with a singing, vocal style. These melodies carry the spirit of the past, and according to a local I talked to, a man who spoke both English and Italian, the instrument was sometimes played by beggars for spare change. Italians who emigrated abandoned the zambogna when they came to America, ashamed, maybe, of the poverty associated with the music. Now, there is a yearly festival, and zampogna players can be found all over the world. We visited the museum, Lynn having corresponded with its director but were late for the festival by a couple of months.
Next, the most amazing encounter happened in Sorrento. Looking for dinner before 8pm when most locals eat their evening meal, we decided to try L'Osteria del Buonconvento, a place where live
Canzone Napoletan musicians/singers work during the evening hours. While we were eating there, the song, Con te partiro, (The Time to Say Goodbye) came on the music system. Lynn started to cry, that song was played at her mother's funeral; how would I know since I was in surgery that day? The song is a long goodbye, a slow celebration of love and final parting. I found out who sang it: The singer was Pietro Rainone, a musician approaching middle age who lives near Naples. The following night, we came back to the restaurant but were told the restaurant was full. Lynn said she wanted to buy a CD from Pietro, who was playing live that night. Pietro turned around and looked at us, finished the song he was doing, and signed a CD for us during a break. Lynn explained her search for her past. Then, the owner announced to us that, in fact, they were
not full, and he then arraigned for us to sit with one of his regular customers, Peppe Gioia and his wife, as guests. This was amazing to me; we were treated like family; later that night Pietro played Con te partiro knowing about the funeral while facing Lynn, who burst into tears, Peppe then wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. Pietro, who speaks a little English, told me that he has played all types of music, but is now doing what he loves best, the music of his home town, Naples, music that fills his heart, music that is old, with influences from the Arabs and Moors, as well as the harmonies of the west. He is a fine singer, and fine guitarist who plays a Spanish guitar with a single cutaway; he even did Gershwin's "Summertime" for me in his own style, and in his best English; he also told me he played all the instruments on his CD. His orange wristband said it all; it means, according to him, "Live with passion." Fabulous.
Next, in Trapani, Sicily during the America's Cup trials, and in dedication to them, the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, based in Palermo, played a free concert at the Chiesa dei Gesuiti (The Church of the Jesuit's). I love free classical concerts, and this one was a stunner. But instead of playing national Sicilian music, the orchestra played Greig's Piano Concerto in A minor with Enrica Ciccarelli on piano, followed by Berlioz's
Symphony Fantastique; both 19th century pieces from Norway and France, respectively. The conductor, Jacek Kaspszyk, lead a fiercely passionate performance of both works; the audience was noisy, talking, inappropriately applauding after every movement, as babies cried, doors opened and closed, and one lady pushed others aside in the pew in front of us creating room for herself so she could sit down. In my opinion, acoustically, the old places are still the best. I could hear everything, and at triple
forte, the orchestra was too loud for conversation, overwhelming everything but thought. The orchestra even performed an encore to the shouts of
Bravi from the audience! Sicily wants to be more than an Italian province and it shows in its music.
Finally, what's up with Italian radio and TV? Is this where American performers go to die? On a TV show I watched in a hotel room one night, I saw KC and the Sunshine band do "Shake Your Booty," live. Why? I heard Neil Young twice, once in a bookstore in Palermo doing his classic "Helpless, Helpless, Helpless" and another time, while driving, doing something off his new album, something I didn't recognize as even being by him. I know he has had some tough health problems of late, but is this like the French and their love of Jerry Lewis? One radio station was called the "Juke Box" and its call letters were its phone number. That interested me, but is the voting for real, or is it like MTV's All Request Live, a suspected pay to play venue for the new and naïve? The radio music is pretty much all vocals, a mix of Italian (I guess its Italian) and old American classics from the 70's. I didn't hear any blues or jazz even when I set the car radio on "scan," just this endless, weird mix of stuff, old and new. I can say I honestly just don't get it.
Well, that's the current installment. We were robbed on the highway at a toll booth at the start of our car journey, but that is a story for another day.
