4:26 p.m. - 2007-02-10
Why with all the pipe?
The reason I bought a pipe cutter and amassed a quantity of pipe a few weeks ago was so that I could make a tuned percussion instrument out of, you guessed it: pipes. It was a challenging and arduous process. I don't know how to use very many tools and I don't tend to plan ahead. I just dig in, scraping, cutting, grinding, bending, and hope for the best. Also, making a tuned (equal tempered with a keyboard layout, in this case) instrument presents all sorts of mechanical and design problems on top of the tuning itself. Questions arise, such as: What will constitute the frame? How will you keep the bars from flying off when they're struck? How will you align the beams of the frame? How will the beams be held aloft so you don't have to play kneeling on the ground? Will there be resonators, or a very basic single resonator, or no resonators at all? At no point in the process did I consider these questions in advance. I was entirely in the moment.
Ultimately, it turned out okay. The tuning was close enough that each note fit with all the others in context, and the frame, constructed from discarded steel shelving and step-ladders, was just stable enough that it didn't rattle or collapse. The resonator was constructed from three pieces of sheet metal, and probably helped fill out the sound a little. I built my two octave pipe-aphone for an event at the children's museum last Friday organized by Kia. The event was the opening of a new exhibit that teaches all about environmentally sound construction and urban planning. I played a couple of sets with Michael, Sean Michael, and Lisa, who played her saw. It was a pretty fun time. Afterward, Kia said she was happy with how it had gone, and I hadn't shamed her. In my book, that spells a successful evening.
BUT WAIT! The evening wasn't over yet. After we got out of the museum, at around eight-thirty, we drove to Milwaukee to join the other members of the Theramones for our first appearance in over a year. This made for a long day for Kia and I, since we had gotten up at around six in the morning to make an early morning promotional appearance on drive-time radio. We had both gotten late morning naps, but it was still a very long day. Driving out of town for this late rock show made us feel very hard core.
So anyway, so our Theramones show was at a place in Milwaukee called the Cactus Club. Neither of us had ever been there before and we got lost along the way because all the freeways in Milwaukee are torn up because Milwaukee is a depressing hellhole. But eventually we found the venue, which is nestled in a quiet residential area. It wasn't a very big rock club, but it contained the smoke from countless billions of cigarets. The air was oppressive, especially to our dainty Madison lungs, undesensitized to smoke-filled rooms since the smoking ban was enacted a year and a half ago. Also, it was crowded and it was too cold to go outside. We met up with the others and awaited our spot on the four-band bill. We were third. And very hard core. Kia drank a Pabst while we waited. She said it seemed like the thing to do. We were in Milwaukee, plus Pabst is what all the punk-rockers are drinking these days.
In spite of the smoke and the fact that we would be reeking of it for days, the Cactus seemed like an okay place, sort of dank and unprepossessing, with a younger crowd of Milwaukee scenesters. Most of them seemed like nice, everyday people out for a good time, a few of them seemed like dicks, like in any scene. Since I've never been a punk-rocker, I'm not totally sure about the rules, but I think one of their guiding principles is that each piece of punk regalia you don, every mohawk and filthy leather jacket and gigantic boot you wear, gives you a certain licence; in other words, the more you look like a caricature of a punk-rocker from a quarter century ago, the more you're entitled to be a loud stupid inconsiderate jackass. I could be wrong. This is based on my limited experience with the punk-rockers.
Eventually we got up on stage for our set. The sound man set up microphones and we set up our instruments and checked everything to make sure it was working. Ultimately, everything was working, so we tore into our set. After the first couple of songs, it bacame apparent that the audience reaction was mixed. Some of them seemed like they were into it. Others, not so much. It didn't really matter to us, as long as they didn't rush the stage and beat us with mic stands or something. We were playing to play, for the most part. Plus, being heckled is kind of a gas if you're not used to it. At least when someone yells "That sucked!" you know they weren't ignoring you. Plus, during the course of our set I had the satisfaction of having my punk-rocker hypothesis (see above) confirmed. To wit: there were five or six young scenesters who spent most of the set right up in front of the stage. These were the kids who were most openly mocking us, and they were also the ones who most looked exactly like the hard core kids from when I was in high school. I was in high school MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AGO. In that time, the hard core kids haven't come up with ONE FUCKING NEW THING. They still wear the ugly boots, they're still loud and stupid, and they'll probably all go to law school, just like their upper-middle-class parents want.
Eventually our set ended and we drove home, acrid smoke clinging to our hair, clothes and skin. It was late and we were very tired. As usual, I left Milwaukee with no desire to come back. We reviewed our Cactus Club experience. We agreed that rock and roll is kind of dumb, but then so are a lot of things. If you avoid all the dumb things too strenuously, you risk missing out on many varieties of experience. As with most things, balance seems to be the key, balancing the dumb with the not dumb. For instance, when we were at the children's museum earlier, promoting learning and fun and faith in the minds and dreams of children, that fell on the not dumb side of the ledger. Kia and I struck that balance, and THAT's what makes us so much more truly hard core than those ostentatiously booted Cactus Club kids.
