Column: Gordon Raphael #26 - Nov 2006
By: Gordon Raphael
There are a lot of questions I have been asking since I started really applying myself to the world of music, and rock and roll, and playing gigs, and doing original music. As an artist - 'how's it going for you?' which definitely and intentionally brings up 2 questions:
1) How is your own creative process feeling to you when you listen to your own stuff? Are you satisfied, happy excited, turned on, inspired, proud, or insecure, finding disappointing areas, a bit bored, wanting more, let down?
2) How is your artistic life treating you in terms of getting love, acceptance, reactions, income, offers of collaboration with other people (musicians, managers, gig bookers, fans, friends, etc)?
For me, it took a long time to finally start recording and writing and even playing songs that I could listen back to and think..."wow, that sounds cool - I cant believe I came up with that and man, I cant wait to play this for my friends...I think I'm really gonna be something special in the world of music! And after that phase, I wrote tons of songs and played them to people all over the place with mixed reactions - some liked it a lot; some thought it was self indulgent crap and others thought it was immature song writing with bad rhythm and un-interesting harmonic movement!
Then years passed and I started amassing thousands of songs. I never got a song of mine released - not even yet! I had bands and played shows, got some fans, had a lot of fun, played with tons of musicians - many really awesome ones, too. There has been a lot of joy and almost orgasmic excitement with playing music and making songs, but as yet I am unreleased and known primarily to myself.
On the other hand, I listen back to tons of my songs and think... this shit is so cool and I sing and play and write so well, in my own style - so I still want to try and play live, and release my songs. I have been in the band (after I had my NYC experience with Debe and you...) Sky Cries Mary in Seattle that got signed and toured and made albums and I got income from that, and tons of fun. I also somehow got to stumble onto being a producer of other people's music since year 2000, when after 24 years of recording my own freaky-shit, some others wanted to have a bit of weirdness and attitude in their songs too. This little transition turned into a pretty cool and very rewarding career when after The Strokes demo got popular, I started getting smiles and requests to party and work in many places- mostly NYC, London and Berlin. Now I am truly fighting (with myself...!) to get back to strumming one of my 22 guitars or playing even one note on one of my 22 keyboards. I'm more prone to working, drinking cofee or shopping, or moving house these days! Music seems like a distant dream, but I still feel the urge deep within.
The only real feedback I can give you that you may find valuable is this: In life it seems to me that when one is truly on fire and inspired to do something, it has a lot of resonance and power. Even if you make bird noises, and do a funny dance, - just because it aint in a genre, and not already in the shops - if you do it with utmost conviction, then people will gawk at it and you'll get on TV, and do shows in clubs and make little weird films, and make a soundtrack for some experimental film, and watch your idea spread. Maybe even get some money from it. At least you will get smiles and conversation and meet interesting people with an open creative attitude to life.
If there are doubts swirling round, and feelings of "not good enough" (which I just went to a treatment centre in Kentucky last year to deal with Co-dependency for - cuz that shit is a symptom of childhood mis-programming and definitely leads people like me and many other musicians to drugs and what have you!)- well then that feeling goes into the sounds and music and makes people psychically pick up on and they then have the same feeling about the music even though they don't often know why! That's my observation, as spacey and intangible as it sounds!
Q: "What to you is the difference between a good voice and a 'real' singer? Take for example your Strokes; he has a wonderful sounding voice. Is that because he is actually a gifted singer or does he just have a rockstar quality that is just as rare?
Excellent question. To me, any song with a voice on it - the voice instantly becomes the single most important element of the song PERIOD. Unless the voice is only a harmony or backup to the instrumental, and even then it's pretty hard to ignore, and is still important. What is a good voice? Well to me the voice has 2 primary functions.
1) To tell the story. Why is the song written in the first place? That's the story.
2) To make you feel something that the singer is really feeling. Now that means that as a listener you have to be interested in that particular story to begin with, it has to (again) resonate with your experience and ideas and history. Also, you have to want to share those feelings the singer is expressing or it don't mean shit!
I think I am only attracted to singers with amazing gifted voices. That means I feel so mush when I hear them and it makes me crazy to listen to them. Millions of people have technically trained and super-high-quality voices, and they just bore me to death and I feel a blank in their art form. Millions of people have average voices and they know it, and they project that average-ness and it also bores me to tears! Some people realize that every human has a distinct and built in voice that only THEY have, and have a story to tell that only THEY can. When those factors line up, its pretty f**kin' cool and for me, ultimately inspiring and jawdropping.
Julian Casablancas from the Strokes has a one in a trillion voice. Its epic, dripping with the realization that he is the only one exactly like himself in the world, and that can be lonely, happy powerful frustrating and awesome. He can also hit freaky notes that one wouldn't think of putting next to the last one, a lust for out of the way melodies, harmonies and orchestration, and the fucker can roar louder than a lion. To me he had (when I worked with him on the first 2 albums) the same lovable quality of tone as Frank Sinatra - in the sense that millions of humans could relate to and love those particular tones and words. A singer for the people. And yes, that guy struggled many times since I've known him wondering if his tone, melody, song writing, performance etc, was really cool, or not! Imagine that!?
Singers I tend to want to record make me practically wet with what they can get their voice to do, that mine doesn't do. Certain screaming things, certain out of control things that just sound so cool to me. I almost don't care about 100 percent note accuracy if the feeling comes across powerfully anyway. Not that I favour out of tune singing mind you-but in tune or auto tuned singing with no balls, pussy or feeling attached is nothing to me.
Singers who've messed up my mind: John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Jeff Buckley, Girl from Portishead, PJ Harvey, Kate Bush, Julian from Strokes, Jordi from Satellies (a band I record), Kill Kenada (another of mine) Regina Spektor (the album Soviet Kitsch that I recorded), Anna Mercedes, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Sly Stone, Jon
Anderson from YES (old albums), Roy Harper (Flashes from the Archives of Oblivion), Robert Plant, Perry Farrell, Axl Rose, Sarah Maguire, Lemmy from Motorhead, Cream, Old Supremes, Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) Billy Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald. OK?