San Diego/House Concerts

“San Diego,” from Building St. Petersburg (1999).

“San Diego,” from 1998-1999 (2005).

“San Diego,” from Live at Keith Danner’s House (2005).

A part of me has thought I’d post about tunes that are less what I’d think of as Bill classics–such as they are–than stuff I’ve done that show up rarely if ever in a live set and which never account for any of my iTunes sales–such as they are.  This, for no reason other than to vary the music I myself think about.  The classic Bill tunes–such as they are–get enough attention and end up in live sets, which is probably enough.

That said, in the many months since I’ve written posted anything at all here, I’ve played more gigs than I have in years, all in living rooms.  The short of it is that I’ve really been pleased to play house concerts for friends and acquaintances, much happier than I’ve been gigging out so to speak in cafes.  At most of these house concerts I’ve played, either by request or my own volition, “San Diego,” which is definitely not the best tune I’ve ever written but which is one of the most classically-formed and easiest to play well live.  Play well, meaning not simply in a technical sense, but emotionally.  It’s an easy song to invest with real emotion.

The video above, as the opening image notes, was shot in Pasadena a few weeks ago.  I went down to the CCSS conference to participate in a workshop and I arranged to play a house concert at the amazing Brian Forden’s pad.  I slept on Max Gerber’s couch.  Max shot video at the house concert itself which turned out nicely and which I’ll use for more videos as well in the future.  Max, whose photography is becoming fairly well known, shot this video in his living room the morning after the house concert and I felt I played the tune fairly well, particularly for never having cut a video of any sort before.  For those of you who have never seen me, I look more-or-less like I do in the video, except in color.

I’ve gotten a lot, as I noted above, playing these house concerts over the past six months or so.  We–my wife and I–have been fortunate enough to have been participating in a Marx reading group with some really heavy hitters from News and Letters, and we are now, having started with On the Jewish Question, are reading the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.  A few passages are apropos.  From the “Human Requirements and Division of Labor Under the Rule of Private Property“:

…no eunuch flatters his despot more basely or uses more despicable means to stimulate his dulled capacity for pleasure in order to sneak a favour for himself than does the industrial eunuch – the producer – in order to sneak for himself a few pieces of silver, in order to charm the golden birds, out of the pockets of his dearly beloved neighbours in Christ. He puts himself at the service of the other’s most depraved fancies, plays the pimp between him and his need, excites in him morbid appetites, lies in wait for each of his weaknesses – all so that he can then demand the cash for this service of love. (Every product is a bait with which to seduce away the other’s very being, his money; every real and possible need is a weakness which will lead the fly to the glue-pot. General exploitation of communal human nature, just as every imperfection in man, is a bond with heaven – an avenue giving the priest access to his heart; every need is an opportunity to approach one’s neighbour under the guise of the utmost amiability and to say to him: Dear friend, I give you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non; you know the ink in which you have to sign yourself over to me; in providing for your pleasure, I fleece you.)

And conversely, from “The Power of Money“:

Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return – that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent – a misfortune.

As an aside, I want to repeat to everyone that that last is Karl Marx writing.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that he was anything other than as deeply a humane human as we as a species have produced.  For me, personally, the two combined crystallized feelings I’ve had about music over the last years.  For much of my adult life, certainly since I got my first good review in 1995 or so when I sent out the House Carpenters’ record to a few places, and then especially when I got some shockingly good reviews in lo-fi/DIY ‘zines and websites, with The Bathroom Mirror, etc., I’ve chased sales as a measure of my worth, musically.  Chased sales, however, poorly, with intermittent effort at best, and a chronic hesitance to press for a sale.  I am a commercial failure, without question, and for years this wounded me at some level, despite having done everything in my power to not sell records.

At all of the house concerts I’ve played, I’ve had people I know over.  At Brian’s, I was surrounded by very old friends, mostly from Pitzer, people I’ve known upwards of 20 years now, as Brian arrived in 1989 if memory serves.  I’ve played all the concerts for free, and while I’ve made CDs available on a sliding scale–they do carry a cost–I’ve approached them as social, rather than commercial occasions.  It’s a beautiful thing, really, and I feel like I’m actually coming to a point as a person where I am accepting that in fact this is the more natural form of music: that of a social affair between people who care for each other.  I have imagined Mississippi John Hurt a lot, before these house concerts, not for his “rediscovery” but imagining what it was like for him before that.  Tom Hoskins, who tracked him down in Avalon, Mississippi, asked people in town if they’d heard of Mississippi John Hurt, and if memory serves the reply that they certainly knew a John Hurt who played at social occasions locally.  Imagining him in those situations really has been good for me.  I have to think that those were beautiful events.

In any event, whether my imagination has simply run wild or not, I have been enjoying the specificity of playing for people I know, and for playing to play rather than for any other reason.  It is very difficult in this monetized society to dissociate notions of value from money.  I feel pretty certain I’m getting closer to it.

The song is one of my most often requested, and one of which I’m most proud.  As I noted above, I don’t think it’s my best tune, but it’s certainly one of my most easy to play.  The idea is pretty simple, and I came by it honestly and truly authentically.  When I was in high school, growing up 40 minute max from the border, people I knew would go down to Tijuana and take advantage of the city: buy alcohol, act foolish, and do whatever else they didn’t brag about when they came back.  They only ever bragged about getting drunk.  It struck me then as horribly screwed up, even if I didn’t have the language to articulate it particularly well.  The tune was based on that memory.

A last point: the guitar is worth mentioning.  I bought it in 2004, a Galloup Solstice. I’d had beers with someone who had recently retired and purchased for himself a truly fine piano.  He told me that I really needed to have a great instrument, that having a merely good one was not enough.  I went to Westwood Music, tried out a number of guitars, and picked this one.  I’ve never looked back.

San Francisco, CA – 01/16/10

San Francisco, CA – 10/10/09

Who	Bill Foreman house concert
When	Saturday, October 10, 2009 8:00pm - RSVP--so attendees maximum. - All Ages
Where	Bill's Living Room (map) San Francisco, CA, USA 94112 Email billforemanmusic@gmail.com for event information and directions.
Other Info	At the very least, it will be me, Bill, my guitar and lyric book, and hopefully on a few tunes some other players as well, depending on who can make it to the performance. Should be fun, and good. No amplification, either--just real music. RSVP required, as space is limited: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=132392972961&ref=nf

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