Hammering away

The feeling was disbelief.

I spent my life around drums; my brother I'd consider a virtuoso, exposing me to an alternative path, a way out and forward. Rock and grunge was the tip of the iceberg that I descended down. I didn't have many older role models, my parents were disconnected from the music I liked and the youthful emotions carrying me away.

My role models were Gen X musicians who paved their own way. They filled the requirement my dad thrust on us to "be self-reliant"; they were untouchably successful in their careers (as seen on MTV in the late 80s and early 90s), but they centered their lives around art and craft. They weren't office drones spilling coffee on themselves while rushing to work. They had handlers, fame, fans, and made great music and videos that I watched every day.

The recordings of my childhood (cassettes first, then CDs) offered a vision, a teaser; but the live show offered a lifestyle. When the magic of the sound becomes a real human being. Naked on stage except the performance.

Naked on stage except for the performance.

Music is immediate. A lifetime of taste, technique, and collaboration all surface in a million exploding instances on the stage. A form of tattoo (like the Stones said) engages the brain and body. An impression is left that can't be undone.

How can a single night change the course of a life?

Thousands of nights we experience in our lives; but rock has the promise of bringing you to base, to the beginning and end, together and alone, to think and to feel.

Why care about the history of rock? Of underground or psychedelic rock? Because of the immense psychological promise. The setting of an immersive rock band can inspire therapeutic, philosophic, artistic, compassionate, spiritual, and egoless experiences. To facilitate that setting for those conditions to arise is a risk; for one thing, it's rebellious. To call that power into your own hands (i.e., Iggy Pop's Raw Power) supposes you, the nobody engaging with the music, is actually somebody, and you might have some raw power in yourself to offer the world.

So that gets couched in art. The mind manifesting through a medium. Rock is electrified and communal.

What is 'krautrock' but a bunch of young post-war kids grappling with hope and existence while the world seems unable to learn from the horrors of war?

Art can radicalize. It can radicalize toward love. It is a creative force, born from love - love of craft, of people, of feeling, of self. Of living a better life. Of deepening the mystery.

All this came to the surface at the Caledonia Lounge in Athens, GA in 2006. Jumping around in the front of the room, a foot away from Jerry's translucent blue drum kit. 13-minute songs of metronomic fury. Sustained energy equals ecstacy.

I didn't know what a 13-minute motorik beat could do before then. Or why one would want to play a solid beat for 13 minutes. I'd never gone to a dance club beyond getting drunk in a very undergraduate college kid way. I didn't understand then what "dance yrself clean" could mean. I was a rock kid, and dance was too electronic, too programmed. My game was sticks on drums.

So Jerry looked like a rock drummer, but played like a dancehall soundsystem. 2 seconds of playing on the kit and the audience is silent, mesmerized. I looked around and thought "I want to do that! How do I do that?!"

I heard Jerry's favorite drummer is Jaki from Can, a krautrock band from the early 70s. I listened to Can. What roads led to this? How can I make it my own? When someone shows you a wholly new way of approaching your instrument, you want to know about the artist, not just the art. I'm not interested in art, I'm interested in artists, like Duchamp said.

I looked at Jerry and wondered. I know the path of a starving bohemian artist, but I didn't know how to live at night on the road, travelling the world, recording, keeping your physical health up, paying rent, showing up for your family, and keeping your sanity. That seems like a different order.

He seemed to do it! Not just a middle path, but his path.

That show was 20 years ago. He died 17 years ago. I'm still grappling with the loss, as are many other fans.

I have a gut feeling that all roads lead to Jerry Fuchs. This is the tip of a huge iceberg and my exploration is just getting started.