Starting this past October, we were invited to join Mastodon on their US tour. If my memory serves me correctly, somewhere around Sauget, IL they started adding "The Creature Lives" to their sets, and asked that everyone on tour come up on stage and sing the "Oooooh Ooooh Ooooh Oooohs" with them. That first night, I was double-crossed by my regiment, and ended up on stage with Brent and his mic by myself…metaphysically naked and alone…but by the end of tour, in Atlanta, it had transcended its humble beginnings with hundreds of green balloons dropping in front of a cadre of cloaked druids, chanting along in epic unison. During the last few days of that tour, we were trying to work out if and how we could rejoin Mastodon, and Red Fang, for the European leg of their upcoming tours together. Lo and behold, we were again honored to be able to share the stage with them for their last 6 shows in the UK, which ended last Saturday in London.
The day we were all traveling home, Whitney was dead, and Mastodon were headed to the Grammy's because their song "Curl Of The Burl" had been nominated in the Best Hard Rock category. They lost, but I'm truly proud of their nomination (their second) and what it means to Brann, Brent, Troy and Bill…and the attention it brings to them and the rest of the bands huddling under our genre's umbrella.
So, I'm home again now, but only for a brief stop before turning around and heading in the opposite direction towards Australia, and Soundwave Festival, where we'll get to hang out with the Mighty Mastodudes once again. The last time we were invited to Soundwave, we were humbled by the invitation to join Nine Inch Nails on stage to perform their song "Wish" with them. I don't remember noticing Rob Sheridan on stage at the time, but when we got home, NIN posted that amazing video on their site, immortalizing that experience. I was immediately taken back by how much energy was transmitted through that video because of the point of view he shot it in - on stage, moving with us. It had a sense of something greater that the countless videos on YouTube of so many other bands shot from the crowd never achieve. When I see videos of us shot by fans, I'm reduced to the objective role of critic or voyeur, but when I watch Rob's video, I'm transported back on stage - my adrenaline spikes, my palms start to sweat…
A few times on this past UK run, I decided to take some candid shots from stage, and post them to my Instagram (liam_wilson). Most of what I got was blurry crap so I didn't post much, but there's a few choice cuts on there that showcased some of the magic and excitement we were feeling up there, and backstage leading up to it. On the last night at Brixton Academy - a stage that has a special place in my heart, primarily because of how many times my teenage self watched Faith No More's "You Fat Bastards" VHS tape of their performance there - I made the whimsical decision to instead capture a moving snapshot during those last moments of the set - and ultimately our tours. What I wanted was a recording for my own personal memory bank, but what I got was something bigger that I feel like is as much mine as it is everyone's who was there - on stage or in the crowd - and worth sharing with anyone interested in witnessing it (..."generations to come!"). It's a choir of pitch-perfect (err) 'Creatures' gagging on a bitches brew of 666 blood red balloons, a bouquet of beard hairs, a toenail from Brent's broken foot and the rotten cast it was steeping in for a month of sweaty lime lit nights.
Apologies for the "Cloverfield"-esque quality of the video, and for the times when I wasn't really focusing on anything in particular - which I blame on being blindsided by limbs thrown around my shoulders in an Ekhardt Tolle-inspired assault on my "drive to archive" the moment, in lieu of living in it.
My stepmom handmade me this one-of-a-kind quilt from old DEP shirt designs a few years ago, and I finally found the wall space to display it in my man-den! Figured I'd share it with y'all (again). Enjoy.
This performance is simply incredible, technical prowess aside...
Inspired by a plant he grew in his 10-foot square backyard in the Leeds (UK) inner city, he writes "I put the seeds in a tiny tub, but it grew like a Roald Dahl story until it took over the whole backyard, then one day the sun shone extra hard and 100 flowers went "POP!". It was amazing, so I wrote a song for it."
...and I think I speak for the masses by saying, "Thank You".
I'm a bit late to the game on this one...but I did finally catch this last week:
The simple fact that the idea of 'Channeling' came up in this at all had me hooked. I can't say I have even 1/100th the creative output this kid has, but I can empathize with his lack of responsibility, control or attachment to what comes out of him. I know I've worked for and with the gifts I feel I have, but ultimately, I think all the work is basically rooted in becoming better at accepting, conducting and redirecting the musical energy flowing through that unified field of sound that surrounds us. I feel like all the practice, rehearsals, lessons, concerts and anything else I've participated in that's influenced my playing has simply been in a greater collective effort to widen and simultaneously remove any obstructions from this artery of sonic bliss. I'm trying to broadcast my cosmic frequency further and wider by raising my vibratory levels. When I'm in the zone and feeling that creative force I'm practically incubating in an energy cocoon, being steeped in some sort of musical radiation.
In a similar vein of thinking, I started considering all the musician jokes and stories I've heard over the years, and all the musicians I know and love and who in most cases truly represent every musician stereotype there is. I'm considered laid-back by most, just kinda walking through life's changes, one eigth-note at a time. I can take myself away from my bass, but I can't take the bass out of me. I feel like all the drummers I know are so obviously drummers; singers are usually just like the rest of the singers I know...guitarists too. We're all trapped in this cacophanous feedback loop of astrologic proportions. Always moving, always becoming. Rising and setting signs - how we see and hear ourselves vs. what others see and hear. Traveling within destiny to be what we were born to be, yet still developing with every new relative experience as if our skins were dipped in some sort of sound-sensitive emulsion.
What I'm getting at here is that I've always wanted to be, or knew I was a musician, before I even started playing 20 years ago, and as far as I'm concerned I've just been slowly growing into my bass player-ness ever since. Its as if all this time spent making sounds with my instruments - all those wild and free-radical frequencies I've been producing have been travelling right through me, subltly shaking my organs and training my whole being on an atomic level to vibrate in longer, slower, more far-reaching and patient wavelengths. Bouncing off and passing through every celestial body in its path, on an unstoppable mission to the edges of spacetime. Its almost undeniable that this fact of physics would have some significant effect on my whole self, on my personality, on the planets that govern my fate - and not only where I fit on stage with other musicians, but where I fit into nature, and society as a whole. I think of the waveforms drummers are making - quick attacks with quick decay, and I understand that there's simply no way that doesn't have some effect on their often nervous 'tempo-tantrum'-esque disposition.
In reverse, I feel like all my efforts to groove on my instrument have as much to do with how "groovy" I am without it. My approach to life is as if its one big improvisation, every decision I make is a phrase over whatever chord chart the REAL book of life has me playing through each day...sometimes repeatedly, until I lock into a line that works.
...Not to mention all the medicinal qualities of collaborative efforts, or how all the shows I've played are an exercise in sync'ing up with everyone else's accumulative good vibrations, both onstage and in the crowd - and how that makes every night unique.
You can draw your own further conclusions, I just figured I'd put all that out there as food for thought and discussion.
I can't help but finish this rant by suggesting that at least some of these thoughts may have been stirred up by a lot of the musician-y books I've read over the years. I most recently finished 'The Music Lesson' by Victor Wooten, and I can't tell you all how impressed I was by the breadth and focus of Vic's message. Other self-declared essential reads in this arena include: Joachim-Ernst Berendt's 'Nada Brama: The World Is Sound', Philip Tosio Sudo's 'Zen Guitar', Daniel J. Levitin's 'This Is Your Brain On Music' and Barry Green's 'Inner Game Of Music'.
All this "Anonymous" hacker stuff really caught my attention...If you're reading this, you should take heed too! I'm not even sure if sharing links like this will be illegal if Sopa/Pipa pass! This shit is truly outrageous...write, call - shit, TWEET @your state representative! Seriously! Don't leave it to the search engines to police what's legal and illegal...
Since I'm probably not famous enough to make it up on http://moustair.com/ I figure I'll post this myself. Thanks to my low-end brother Dan Gillies (currently holding it down for the Meatmen) for this psychedelic gem...per our discussions, he figured we should go that extra mile and two-up the competition.
The Heidelberg Project was started in 1986 by Army veteran and neighborhood native Tyree Guyton (and his "Grandpa Sam") after the area began to deteriorate after the 1967 riots. This small street has become an ever-evolving, salvage-centric political protest in Detroit's east side with the main goal of developing the cities first indoor/outdoor museum, constructed in large part with the help of the neighborhoods children. Despite two separate occassions where a complete demolition of the grounds was ordered by the city's former mayors Coleman and Archer, the project remains more or less in tact, sans a few of the houses. I finally got to see this folk-y, outsider art site this afternoon after years of curiosity, concluding that the whole endeavor is a beacon of light at the end of a long tunnel of urban sprawl and decay. Another Atlas Obscura recommendation off my bucket list of places to bear witness to in my extensive travels.
Living in a city (Philadelphia) where its easy to see how much things are hurting spiritually, socially and economically, and simultaneously how easy it is to make lemonade out of life's lemons in these kinds of places if you've got the motivation, I found this 'Detroit Lives' documentary to be really fascinating, inspiring and surprisingly easy to relate to:
"It is a curious and a distressing fact, particularly in our civilization that we are apt to propound very high ideals and to issue deep moral injunctions without ever offering the means to implement the ideals or obey the injunctions. We have been saying 'Know Thyself' for an enormously long time." Aldous Huxley
