Rock Soup

For the past few days I've tried to somehow write what it feels like when a band is really hitting on all cylinders - I mean playing TOGETHER, locked-in and deeper in the pocket than a piece of lint. It's four different guys starting with nothing (silence) and then creating one, singular thing.

I wanted to write about it but didn't want to get mired in melodrama or hyperbole - I'm trying to keep these blogs as lean and mean as I can - so I deleted the last two blogs I wrote.

Here's what I came up with, and - although it is a metaphor - it's a good description of when a band really gets locked into a tight musical groove. I'm sure we've all heard a variation of the rock/stone soup fable. The basic elements of the story are the same, but the end varies greatly depending on the protagonist (a starving soldier=idealism=good feeling, or a manipulative hobo=deciept=bad feeling). For the sake of a good vibe, we'll go with the soldier.

A starving soldier wanders into a village in the dead of winter. He goes door-to-door begging for food, but alas, the villagers are also poor and close to starving as well - it's been their worst winter in memory.

Discouraged but inspired, the soldier runs around town collecting scraps and pieces of trees and wood. Using his last match he starts a huge fire, and drags an enormous black iron pot he'd seen resting against the wall of a blacksmith's shop on top of the fire. He fills the pot with snow which melts and starts to boil.

Meanwhile, the villagers have collected around him and the pot of now-boiling water. Most think the poor soldier's lost his mind. It's then the soldier pulls a smooth stone from his pocket. He polishes the rock with snow, then drops it into the boiling pot of water.

At this point he pulls a long wooden spoon from his knapsack and begins stirring the water. The villagers, meanwhile, think he's absolutely crazy, but he continues stirring the boiling water. He then takes a taste of the water and says "This is the best rock soup I've ever had, but it needs something else...maybe a carrot and an onion..."

One of the villagers approaches the soldier, draws a deep breath of the soup's aroma and says "I have a carrot and an onion." A few minutes later he returns and adds the carrot and onion to the rock soup. After a few minutes of stirring, the soldier and the villager take a deep breath and the solder says "this smells wonderful - but some potatoes would really bring out the flavor." A few of the villagers reply they have potatoes at home, and soon they return with enough potatoes to fill the pot.

As the soup simmers other villagers add other vegetables, spices and soup bones to the mix. Finally, the soldier tastes the soup and said "Perfect!" Starting with the children, everyone has a bowl of this soup and all are warmed and filled by it.

Maybe playing music in a band begins with a rock. The rock, in a cover band's case, can be ego, personality conflicts, business concerns, audience apathy or scorn - but the band members, working together by adding something vital to the mix, make the rock irrelevant by unselfishly giving something of themselves to the whole. Four guys with four different flavors, tastes, spices and colors, adding to something larger than the individual. It's at that point a band transcends the ideal and - for a few wonderful moments - achieves the real.

That, my friends, is what it's like when my band REALLY nails it.