I’ve always been the sort of person who gets inspired by an experience or a live happening. Which is why I walk around with a small notebook most of the time. If something strikes me, I want to be able write it down. This way when I get home I can write, play, record a track, whatever I need to do, and not lose track of my ideas or inspiration. Sometimes it’s a good book, (often it’s) something that someone says, a great painting, something I see, or more often than not… great live music.
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My notebook. |
Generally live music is the thing that inspires me the most, as both a performer and producer of music. Hearing an album on a record is one experience, but hearing/seeing songs unfold live is an incredibly different experience. Music is always given more life when it’s performed live. The artist knows they only have one shot at a great track, so they give it a lot more energy. They feed off the energy of the crowd.
The concert that made me decide that I HAD to be in the music industry in some form or other was an Incubus concert circa 2004:
I have the most vivid memory of going with my sister to see Incubus on their Crow Left Of The Murder tour, at the Tower City Amphitheater. I’ve never wanted to go home and write new music more than I did at that moment. I had been drumming for a few years at that point and I remembered coming home, going to sleep, waking up the next morning, downloading ALL of their albums and learning everything I could on my drum set. Then later, trying to re-record covers of their music on my computer and figure all of the technical stuff out. Just for practice.
I’ve always enjoyed how much contrast and affinity they’ve managed to have from record to record. They have enough contrast to make each record interesting & different, but enough affinity to allow the listener to instantly recognize that all too incredible, ‘Incubus-sound’. Not to mention, they’ve really mastered the art of tension and release in their music. Great examples of this in there music can be found throughout their musical cannon. But, two favorites are Warning from their 2001 record Morning View and Pantomime, a live b-side track.
Warning, an apocalyptic song that tells the story of a girl who wakes up in a cold sweat, absolutely panicked. She’s realized that she’s wasted her life doing what society dictated she needed to do to be happy, instead of doing what she needed to do to be truly happy. So, naturally, she wants to warn everyone else not to make the same mistake she’s made. The song starts off slow and dreamy as the character in the song wakes up; from here, the lyrics in the first verse heed the audience to do whatever it takes for them to live a wonderful and fulfilling life. (Even if what makes you happy isn’t what popular culture would dictate as being acceptable.) The music in the track follows the lyrics perfectly throughout the piece, building tension through the verse and igniting into the energy packed, panicked, warning of a chorus. The music in this track represents the narrative (text/subtext) of the song perfectly.
As for Pantomime, it’s kind of the same idea. Except the song was originally released with their Alive At Red Rocks DVD in 2004. This track is one of the most incredible songs I’ve ever heard; both lyrically and musically. The live representation of it is even more spectacular and full of life than the studio recording. It has a completely different feel and is a great example of how much energy is pumped into a live song.
It starts off simple, with some ambient sound to create a spacey aural space, and some simple back-and-forth styled power chords.
The song’s narrative is about a frustrated man who can’t seem to string his words together in a manner that would effectively convey his emotions or ideas without the risk being completely misunderstood by the receptor. So, he dreams about transporting himself to a simpler space in time that would allow for him to speak through his actions alone.
In my fantasy, I’m a pantomime.
I’ll just move my hands and everyone sees what I mean.
Words are too messy
and it’s way past time
to hand in my mouth
paint my face white and try to
reinvent the sea,
one wave at a time.
Speak without my voice and see the world by candlelight.
The song starts off as a few simple elements, but then, big-bang style, explodes into a million intricate pieces after the second chorus. The character sheds his fear of being misunderstood and making mistakes, embracing the fact that sometimes instead of trying to say anything at all, it’s better to just be quiet and let silence speak for you. Which acts as a crazy juxtaposition (contrast) to the amount of aural space being created in this musically explosive portion of the song, but there is affinity to the earlier portion of the song that is much simpler musically and heavy lyrically. (It flip-flops.)
It isn’t until the instrumentals explode three quarters of the way into the piece, that the vocals simplify and the music multiplies, leaving the audience with their jaws down and their minds-blown. The last quarter of the song thus acts as his conclusion, demonstrating that sometimes it’s more effective to let the sound (or lack thereof, in the character’s case) do the talking.
So in summation, Incubus has been one of the most creatively inspiring things in my life, since I’ve gotten into music. They’re constantly pushing me to be better at producing and writing for myself and others.
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