Germany wrap-up

That’s it for Germany, I’m home, and in a state of pure jet lag.

How am I doing? I’m reminded of this passage from the Vietnam war book Dispatches, by Michael Herr:

Entire divisions would function in a bad dream state, acting out a weird set of moves without any connection to their source. Once I talked for maybe five minutes with a sergeant who had just brought his squad in from a long patrol before I realized that the dopey-dummy film over his eyes and the fly abstraction of his words were coming from deep sleep. He was standing there at the bar of the NCO club with his eyes open and a beer in his hand, responding to some dream conversation far inside his head. It really gave me the creeps — this was the second day of the Tet Offensive, our installation was more or less surrounded, the only secure road out of there was littered with dead Vietnamese, information was scarce and I was pretty touchy and tired myself — and for a second I imagined that I was talking to a dead man.

I can say now I know exactly what this is like: I’ve flown on KLM.

Actually the airline was lovely, just, despite having easy 12+ and 14+ hour itineraries, I ended up being awake for about 30 hours straight going both directions on this trip, and by the time I arrived in Portland, I was in a strange hallucinatory fusion reality where being awake and REM sleep begin interweaving disturbingly. At one point yesterday I was telling my wife about “wiener dinner”— fabricated in my mind as a real, and painfully obvious German food thing that neverless defied my attempts to explain it to her verbally.

Some highlights:

JazzAhead
A jazz industry convention, it involved three days of hanging around the USA booth, with no great goal except to yak with whoever presented themselves. I did get to show some cymbals, and give away some books, and tell a little bit of what I do.

Along with my brother, John Bishop, and Evan Woodle, of Origin Records, we spent most of our time hanging out with Jen and Mike West from Downbeat Magazine, Brian from soulandjazz.com and his wife and sons— all hilarious— and jazz radio programmer Brad Stone, and Lydia Liebman, a booking agent— daughter of saxophonist Dave— and her husband, drummer Willy Rodriguez, and pianist Milan Verbist, son of Antwerp bassist Piet Verbist, and Origin recording artist in his own right. Also around was Jens Tytgat of Inside Jazz, a Belgian booking agency— he forced me to drink some Belgian beer at one point (“well, you start with one then”). They’re all very entertaining people, and we had quite the little pirate ship going, some very lively dinners.

Our friend in Berlin Michael Griener was there representing Deutsche Jazzunion— we got to hang out more than usual, which was great. I also got to meet Adam Osmianski, another drumming blogger, who I’ve interacted with online for about ten years. He writes That Drum Blog, is originally from Pittsburgh, and now lives in London. He thought there might be some in the Cymbal & Gong cymbals in London, so we’ll see if we can make a meet happen there in the next year or so. Also met vibraphonist Wolfgang Lackerschmid of Augsburg, who did a record with Chet Baker, and worked with a lot of great people, and also another drummer, Devin Gray, now in Berlin.

The theme and lesson of the event was, for me:

Don’t sound anybody for a gig; just be on the scene.

A man I like to call Thelonious Monk said that. The point of the thing was really just to be around, and give people a chance to like you. Even if you were there to hustle, the object is to give people your name, what you do, and a reason to be interested in you, and that’s it. Not everybody will give you an opening to accomplish those things. It doesn’t matter, you can’t be results oriented, if somebody’s thinking this one outing is their “shot” to make things happen… no. I think success is coming away from the event with a few people liking you and remembering you.

Clearly everyone there is in the same boat as you, me, all of us: they’re not that comfortable “networking”, and they think everyone else is doing more than them, and they’re nervous about meeting people— like every person there who isn’t a pure staffer (or a serial killer) feels that way.

Here’s a tip, too: the people I mentioned above get approached a lot, and what bothers them is hard sell, someone being demanding— the Hollywood type approach of that’s how much I believe in my music, I’m willing to force it on you, just makes them want to have nothing to do with you. Go easy, be around long term, be likable.

Postscript: To my brother, the one great crime is to not hang. The last night, after three days of nothing but hanging, with considerable alcohol being consumed at dinner, which itself went much later than expected, and with everyone scheduled to leave Bremen early the following day, he, Evan, and I had to decline to attend the late party at The Maritime, which was sure to last until 3 am at least, with much more alcohol consumed, and no reasonable exit— like, if we had gone, we would have been there until 3— as we walk away he’s muttering no-hanging mother___ers.

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Bremen
I had not been to Bremen before, and it’s a lovely medium-small city, I think the most charming German city I’ve visited. Most of them were heavily bombed in the war, with varying levels of care put into their reconstruction. In Bremen it was done elegantly, and new and old mix very well together. I don’t necessarily get the impression there’s a ton of music happening there, though. Michael mentioned “it would be a good place to retire.”

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Berlin
My stay was very brief, one and a half days, and I mostly just wandered. On the 27th, my birthday, I hit the streets early and basically walked the whole day, with really no goal at all— first to the center of old West Berlin, around the zoo, then to Kreuzberg, then, randomly, to Pankow, then Humboldthain Park, with its flak tower.

Musically, I was able to catch Michael’s group Elasmodine at Kühlspot Social Club, in a pre-war light industrial complex in the wilds of the Weißensee neighborhood. The group was fantastic, playing entirely free groove music, in a somewhat similar orientation to Marc Ribot’s Ceramic dog. Right up my alley, everything I ever wanted to do in music.

I also made it to a jam session at Cafe Engels, in Neukölln, which is where all the artists are moving to, as they get priced out of Kreuzberg. There I met one of my students, Brad, who happened to be in Berlin at the moment, and Knut Hagedorn, a good drummer from Berlin who has been following the site.

The session had a full house, all people in their 20s, and the band were all in their 20s, led by saxophonist Charlotte Joerges. The hosting musicians were very good; I didn’t get to speak to the drummer, but he had a set of very nice K. Zildjians. I was a little surprised at the tunes they chose to play, which were mostly things we beat to death years ago on this site’s titular gig: Days Of Wine And Roses, Don’t Get Around Much Any More, and I think a couple of even more severe chestnuts my mind refuses to remember. When I was playing we did Blues For Alice, In A Sentimental Mood, and Besame Mucho.

I had a strange interaction with the bass player, that’s worth talking about. He was also sitting in, and on the first tune it was passed to me to solo, which I did, and then attempted to pass it to the bass, but the band came in and finished the tune. Afterwards I told him I tried to set him up for a solo, and he said “maybe it’s too loud”, which to me translates as you are too loud. As if I wasn’t playing correct dynamics, which I was, and would just mindlessly drown him out, which I would not. After that I let him play his solos unaccompanied. Which he was not able to do, and maintain the form, and the time. A lesson for him.

I also had to kick him around a little bit on the ballad. Ballads, on a jazz gig, and especially on a jazz jam session, develop in a particular way, over the course of the head, and the solos— from slow 2, to slow 4, to suggesting double time, to double time 2, to double time 4. Roughly. It’s supposed to go someplace. This bass player wanted to keep it in the slow 2 the whole time. Music is cooperative, but you can’t have the most conservative— because inexperienced— player dictating the performance.

Really, players like that are not cut out for this music. You cannot be that big a candy ass. Especially as a student (or recent student), especially with clearly more experienced players. You play when you’re on the spot to play, and you make yourself heard. If something about the situation is not to your liking, you deal with it and play. Dealing with it is the one thing you have to do, it’s the whole thing.

And the situation should have been to his liking; I was serving everyone well, including him, and the audience, and myself, and he should have been overjoyed to play with me. He should have been able to recognize that he should have been overjoyed. That’s not ego, that’s just factual.

So that guy irked me a little bit. Don’t be like that. I also noticed this trip that when listening to somebody else play— Michael, and even the drummer at the session, who was just some young guy— I don’t know if I can play. I’m always a little uneasy because I wouldn’t do what they do, and I don’t know what I would do instead. Of course then you sit down to play, everything’s right there— oh, I’m actually skilled. But I don’t know what I’m really going to do apart from doing it. I’ve got my own things I play that somebody else would not play— none of which is even the most important thing about what we played in the first place. We’re worrying about who has the fanciest lace curtains when the important thing is that there’s a house there that’s not going to collapse under a stiff breeze.

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All in all, a very succesful trip in people terms, which is really the point of it all. Seeds of possibly returning to Germany in the fall, with cymbals, and to London. I certainly plan on attending next year’s JazzAhead, and planning for that will help me focus my activities this year, to present myself as some form of coherent entity.

Back to work, work, work.

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