Clay Anderson Johnson

What is the worst quality of any artist? By this I mean related to the art itself not interpersonal relationships or bad habits. It is not lack of intelligence, artists do not need to be intellectuals. It’s not even being bad. People who are bad usually know it and try to compensate in other ways. The worst problem is mediocrity, the gray area between good and bad. This usually shows first as a lack of taste and discrimination. The dictionary definition of taste in art is “the sense of what is fitting, harmonious, or beautiful; the perception and enjoyment of what constitutes excellence in the fine arts, literature, fashion”. People who have no taste do not know what good is, they only know what excites them. People who have taste sense what is good. This is a perceptual sensation more than it is knowledge. Having taste is the ability to have an emotional response to art to distinguish between good and bad as well as the gradations between the two. This is being able to innately discern degrees and nuance. This is largely inherited through cultural conditioning although often wealthy and well educated people still have horrible taste. Mediocrity can also stem from not wanting to learn and to not be able to accept criticism. This generally comes from the belief they know everything already resulting in: Not realizing that in music a poem is not the same as a lyric and when set to music it is not a song, although it can become performance art by adding a visual presentation in a video. Overplaying being confused with skillfulness or dexterity. Being overtly artsy and pretentious in word choice being perceived as equaling culture and refinement. Imitation being substituted for creation. Lack of direction appearing as being artistically adventurous. Often the former problems arise from being completely self taught, these are not qualities learned in a school. Not that being self taught is in itself bad, but I have met more than one self styled musician who has never bothered to learn the basic principles of music. For the most part they were guitarists. Simple basic principles which are never learned can have catastrophic impacts. I knew a guitarist who could not advance because he had never learned to count time, the beats in a measure, although he could play a very simple, basic rhythm pattern. This meant he could not stop playing and count the beats in a rest before he resumed playing. There are probably many more who struggle with this same, very elementary, problem. These are guitar beaters not guitarists. Many may have never played a song which was not in 4/4 time so that is all they can do because that is all they know. They may not know what a time signature is or what it means. This is self limitation which comes from not caring enough about what they are attempting to do to learn the basics. Usually they believe they already know everything just from beating on a guitar which they learned from copying an actual musician on a recording or a watching a video. They simply copied something rather than learning why it worked and then wandered off alone into their own version of what music is. One of the most fascinating things I have found about people who cannot accept criticism is it most often comes from a feeling of inferiority not one of superiority. They have a subconscious need to defend themselves in whatever they do because of their own perception of themselves as being weak not strong as they would have you believe. They project their own failures, faults, and weaknesses onto others. You see this all the time in politics and politicians. You may see it when someone posts for Critique. You try to be helpful but then are met with argumentation and hostility about how theirs was the obvious correct choice. They have a deep seated need to prove themselves. They project their own shortcomings onto someone else who is only attempting to help them in order to strengthen their own work. Mediocrity originates from someone who either cannot tell or cannot accept the fact that what they are doing is less than good from another person’s perspective. This is why it is worse than being bad. These are people who are gray in ability who actually believe they are gleaming white. People who are bad work to become better. People who are mediocre believe they are beautiful already. People who are really good fret about whether something is good enough and want friends to tell them if something is wrong. Some of the most skilled people here post on New Music Friday in order to hear if something is not working or can be improved. This is one of the great paradoxes of life. People who can play but have no talent often believe they are artistically great. The people who are really good always question themselves. The really talented people always look for ways to become better. Carol Kaye, who is now 87, is often listed as the most recorded musician of all time. She played bass guitar with the musicians known as The Wrecking Crew of the Los Angeles studios heyday. There is a documentary where she talks about the first time they heard The Beat Goes On. They thought, “Jesus, what a piece of garbage. We will have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to make this work.” (Actual quote from Carol Kaye) Her bass line with one accented note brought that song to life. Sonny & Cher were smart enough and humble enough to let them add to a song which in turn made their careers. Better musicians took a song that they thought was horrible and by everyone working together produced one of the sixties’s biggest hits. Listen to a version of the original recording then listen to a performance of it from The Sonny & Cher Show. The original is great, the TV show version is only mediocre. This is because the TV show bassist does not add the bump in the bass line. One accented note in the bass line makes the difference. Carol Kaye has discriminating taste.

I like to combine the Primitive and the Primal with the Classic and the Modern to show all of human history is but a brief snapshot in the life of the universe, a split second in relative time. The arc of all human civilizations in total are but a brief moment in time and space which through our limited faculties of perception appear to be far more than they are. Two mathematicians at Stanford University have put forth a mathematical proof of the Kahn-Kalai conjecture. This is a validation of random structure theory the implications of which might be that our most advanced astrophysicists could be totally off base about the way the universe has and is developing.

Savagery! Feeling the throbbing Bass and pounding Drums.

The same thing happened with Rock with all the hair bands playing corporate music power pop ballads posing as bad boys who were "Rockers". I was on a panel at the Billboard magazine annual convention* in LA years ago when they played a Bon Jovi video of them riding motorcycles like they were a biker gang. After it I said it was cotton candy pretentiousness. My remark did not go over well with the crowd as they were expecting to hear how cool it was. * I was selected at random from the UCLA Music Business and Creative Arts program.

Do you know the difference between an outlaw and a criminal? Most people think they are synonymous and interchangeable but they are often different concepts. Criminals are outlaws in a legal sense but outlaws are not always criminals. Outlaw is often a cultural or artistic construct more than a legal one. Criminals break the law, outlaws are outside it. The word outlaw originated from the term outcast. This is someone who does not conform to the community and are cast out meaning that laws protecting them no longer apply. Bob Dylan was an outlaw because he was a folk musician who picked up an electric guitar, hired a drummer, then went to the Newport Folk Festival. The crowd was outraged and threw a temper tantrum. Dylan had made a giant leap forward artistically but his audience of that time hated it. This put him outside their community. Willie Nelson is the father of a movement which is called Outlaw Country. They were not criminals. They were people the Nashville establishment had little use for so they then started their own little thing, a musical Cosa Nostra. They were outside of the established Country music order. The Rastas who started performing Reggae were outlaws outside of the White establishment of Jamaica. They truly had a unique lifestyle outside of the broader community of British influence. They had the audacity to drop the slicked down hair and suits of most Black acts of the time. The first photos of Bob Marley show him dressed that way. Keith Richards remembers him like that the first time they met. Today’s Rap or Hip Hop artists are made up of people who style themselves as gangstas. Often they are criminals of a very petty variety who package themselves as outlaws which they are not in the artistic and cultural use of the term. The reality is that they are a conformist’s conformist conforming to all the rules of their community. They are simply poseurs, posturing as something they are not. In other words they are often criminals who may be sentenced for petty crimes and sometimes violent. In the worlds of Art and Culture however they draw as close inside the lines as possible in order to remain a part of their community. In that sense are not outlaws. They are the established order not outside it. Their culture is money and success with all the trappings of it. This is being oriented exactly the same as the broader establishment community.

The Easter holiday gave me more time than I had previously thought and my OCD kicked in.

One of the complexities of life is people are similar but different. Everyone lives at the same time both in the world they perceive and the larger world referred to as reality or a commonly accepted form of what really exists. Even that is not the final reality. This is why there is both Religion and Science. Each claim to be the final arbitrator but it is physically impossible for the finite to conceive the infinite. Back to the original subject… My neighbors and I live in different worlds which overlap. This is not to say one is better than the other, only different people with different concerns. We all live in the same place but place value on different things for a variety of individual reasons. Still people are more alike than different. Many people can be similar to one another without being the same person. Many artists and bands are very similar but at the same time very different on many different levels. I have an excellent illustration of this. I took Carlos Santana’s online course The Art and Soul of Music. I discovered we are more similar than what I had previously thought although I had been his longtime admirer going back to his first album. This is not to imply I believe I have the talent and ability of Carlos Santana as that would be not only vain but ignorant. He is major league, I played in a sandbox. However we have similar backgrounds starting out and conceive of many things in the same way. Some are because of music, some are because of growing up impoverished, or some because of another reason. We both have heavy Latin influence in our music. He was genetically and culturally in a Latino environment, my relatives were largely in Texas and Florida when there is a lot of Latin music. So percussion is a big deal for both of us. Because we grew up with no financial advantages, we both are deeply empathetic and go out of our way to help other people. He can do big things, I can do little things. We both married women in a different area of the same field. He married Cindy Blackwell his drummer. I have told my own story many times before. We both are deeply spiritual people who are not dogmatic or follow an organized religion. We both believe in something bigger than the god of any human religion. We perceive their gods as merely symbolic, or something beyond that religion’s authority. We both have a little training in formal music which we applied in a popular music environment. We both play guitar in a much more melodic fashion than most Rock guitarists. We generally don’t play riffs or heavy chord progressions, we play melodies. Neither of us wander but are very concise. We both have identical ideas about how to run a band. This is because he could verbalize what I had thought for years but could not put into words. When I say “Bands which are democracies generally fail” this is a direct quote from Carlos Santana.

I view life as a combination of luck and education combined with opportunity . I will give you a classic example of good luck. I was born into a rural backwater and married a woman who grew up in Beverly Hills whom I met at an online dating site. High odds, not a good match at first sight. My original college education was Theater not Music. Her entire family is composed of artists, writers, and producers. Check the Box √ She has a Gay brother, which is a deal breaker with many men, didn’t bother me - Theater education. Check the Box √ We both have advanced educations. She has a Masters in Political Science. After undergraduate UT Austin I have the Music and Creative Industries program UCLA and Web Development certification Cal State Northridge. Check the Box √ She was living in a classic 1920s apartment in a high rent district just off Santa Monica Blvd. I lived in a house in Bel Air. Check the Box √ Now the biggie… We both had experience in a different area of the same business. I knew how to produce Music Events. She was a Political Event Producer. Ring the Bell! This was sheer Luck. The universe, the stars, God, or whatever you happen to believe in smiled on both of us. This was Kismet. We celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary this month. We both have never been happier. I produced songs because I took courses in it at UCLA. This was Education. Having the brass to convince people to let me do it was because of the overwhelming confidence level which stemmed from that education. It was not talent or being a good musician. It was being an educated person who obviously knew what he was talking about who shoved his foot through the door. I created my own Opportunity.

This is an illustration of Good and Bad people with two different stories. One involves me, the other involves my wife, Adrienne. The stories are based upon actual situations. These are what in literature are referred to as morality stories and are set in a background centered around music. The first story is mine. I once played in a band which included two brothers, one played rhythm guitar, the other drums. The elder was the guitarist. The guitarist was OK, basically good enough to do the job but not talented. Like most people of that level he believed he was much better than he actually was. He would never listen to anyone, he always knew everything he did was the right way to do it. Same old song… The drummer was the best I have ever known. He could bury any other drummer I have ever played with. He had talent in capital letters and like most people with actual ability was fairly modest. He was the main reason I stayed. He was more than good musically. The drummer also had a serious problem. He was bipolar which is a physical mental condition, a mental problem caused by a physical imbalance. This meant in addition to all the recreational drugs and alcohol he was on psychiatric medication. The guitarist never gave the drummer his due. He always treated him as his inferior. Not only was the guitarist a mediocre musician, he was a Bad person. Eventually he became so insufferable that his brother and myself both stopped playing with him and everyone went their separate ways. The second story involves my wife, Adrienne. As you probably know we had a live events company, Spellbound Creative Concepts, working together for fifteen years. Usually we worked together although sometimes there were scheduling conflicts and we were in different places such as in this story. One of the worst experiences of her life was meeting and working with Elton John. She says he was an absolute nightmare. It was for a charity, Aids Project Los Angeles, APLA. She says he was bitchy, entitled, and cost the charity more in expenses than he brought in. APLA wanted him badly. They wanted him so badly they did things she advised them not to do. Adrienne had been in The Business since the 1970s. She was sitting in the bar at The Rainbow on Sunset with Led Zeppelin and their manager Peter Grant while I was still in college. Elton John demanded a choice of two suites at two different 5 star hotels to choose from upon his arrival. This meant the charity lost the deposit on one of the suites since it was not a 24 hour ahead cancellation. These are $3,000 or higher nightly accommodations. He got first class airfare from London to LA and back on a very exclusive flight which was approximately $10,000 each way. He got a limo everywhere he went whether it was show related or not. The Rolling Stones do not ask for this type of transportation. He demanded a special type of cheese which was not available locally and someone had to drive south almost to Orange County to get it. Then he did not eat it. He got a fully stocked bar including expensive wines with a full buffet in his suite for every meal and several other perks. What the charity got turned out to be a 30 minute show and an enormous bill for his expenses. He soaked a charity and gave them almost nothing in return except for the use of his name. This is an example of a very Bad person.

I had two Colonels in my parents generation, one Army and one Air Force, and my mother's family was deeply religious. Their expectations of me were to be either a military officer or an evangelist. I rebelled in an unusual manner by going into Fine Arts in Theater. I had dual BFA programs one in Playwriting, the other in Stagecraft, a combination of Sound, Lighting, and Set Design. I started playing Music because I did it for fun in college bands and other people thought I was good at it. I switched directions after college uponI realizing Theater was even a smaller career opportunity than Music. However it came useful later as I was trained in theatrical production for doing live events. So I basically got "schooled" again by playing with professional people rather than attempting to start a band with amateurs like I had in college and fumbling around. Most people don't realize that training, in its many different forms, is a shortcut. You then can leapfrog over problems others struggle with for years. What professional musicians taught me was not complexity and virtuosity but the power of simplicity. Keep things simple but powerful to hit an audience on an emotional level. Emotion is the name of the game.

Everyone usually knows their strengths, but how many recognize their limitations? How many people go anywhere without helping someone else other than themselves? I know my limitations because I have a lot of them. I am not so much a creative person as I am a good problem solver. This is because I was trained to solve problems in one way or another. Usually this was either formal university training or being mentored by a professional who knew what they were doing. I generally write in the first person about myself and my experiences because it is an easy way to explain things in an easy understandable manner. This is not complicated academic theory. Everything, every thing, I have ever had success with involved helping someone else to achieve what they wanted. This is very simple but very important. I was trained to be a lead guitarist by older musicians because I knew a little bit about it whereas they knew a lot. I deliberately looked for a working band upon leaving college. I never wanted to form another act like The Beatles. This is because I had a realistic goal. It was not becoming rich and famous but to travel, to have an adventure, and not work a day job. Music was ONE of the ways I achieved my goal. Being a backup player for someone else helped them and gave me a job at the same time. You probably have noticed the word “Adventure” occurs quite often in my writing. This is because all I ever wanted was to have a different lifestyle and I did achieve what I set out to do. I retired 5 years ago at 65 comfortably, not wealthy, but secure. I was happy doing what I did. I play guitar, keyboards, bass, and added drums only last year after taking Sheila E’s online course. I have known many technically better guitarists and can only barely play piano at a professional level. I sing only well enough to do one or two songs to give the lead vocalist a break during a show. However I can do one thing extremely well. I can pick up a Les Paul, then lay down a very simple, but powerful, lead guitar line revolving around the melody of a song which elicits a good response from an audience. This is what I was trained to do by older more experienced musicians. I can support a vocalist with concise playing, step forward to lay down a strong, simple, solo then step back again to support the vocalist. That’s it. I know my place. I achieved my goal by supporting someone else. I am not a good songwriter, that was never my goal. However I know how to make someone else’s song work really well. This is not because I am brilliantly creative but it is a skill I learned playing live with better musicians and being university trained in Record Production at UCLA. I know how to make an average song sound good and a good song sound great. I did not invent the wheel, this was something I was taught how to do. My primary skill in a studio is TALKING. That is correct, not playing but talking about what to do with the song. I have worked on many more studio songs than I have ever actually played on myself. This is because I was taught in the traditional manner of production recording at a university in 1992. What many people do now is different than the traditional method. The METHOD I was TAUGHT is acting as a cog in a wheel. This means listening to a song, then acting as an intermediary between the artist, the band, and the engineer. Sometimes the artist and the band were the same but usually not. My skill is to act as an arranger and musical director who knows how to tell an engineer what to do. I have never worked with a name act or someone with a big budget. I never cared. I was happy to let someone else have the glory. I just wanted to work and go home knowing I did a good job for what I was paid. There is a whole lot less pressure to produce some unknown’s debut than to having whomever the employer is expecting to have a hit record. I also hope my dedication to doing a good job helped at least one of these artists. Knowing your limitations works in your favor. Having a small success is better than having no success at all. Few people become music stars, but many people make money with music. Music was only one of the avenues I used to reach my goal although they all were in sync with my original goal as part of a system. Everything I have ever done is because I was trained to do it by someone else, learned from them, and then did it. This is a very simple concept. I added power to my package by being eager to help other people to succeed. I know my limitations and built upon my real strength. That strength is not Music. It is I am an eager learner and can see the bigger picture. Trying to achieve anything on your own, concentrating only on what you already know, being focused only on yourself, people usually go nowhere. Learning, then doing, then cooperating with others to achieve THEIR goal works really well.

Like Greg B, my home studio is in what was formerly a bedroom and though not sound insulated noise has never been a problem unless my or my neighbors lawn maintenance people showed up. Most, though not all, real studios I have been in had a separate engineers booth not one big room. From your description it sounds like you have only one room. Is it possible to move at least some of the heat producing equipment just outside the room? Both Boston's first album and Led Zeppelin III were recorded in a home with the equipment outside in a van.

You said this is unfinished. Is the last section intended to become the Chorus? I would make sense based upon the title. Also what type of accompaniment do you envision? From the cadence and flow this seems like more of a piano than a guitar song.

I put up today's Blog post Branding.