In music, I think ability is an overrated virtue. It has been my experience over the years that the more people tell me how talented a group or a musician is, the less likely I am to be enamored with the final results. Case in point: When people have found out that I play the bass, they always think I should hear or think I am a fan of Jacko Pastorius. They always look perplexed when I tell them I hate his music. Sure, the guy was a once-in-a-generation type of player that revolutionized what was possible on the electric bass, but his recordings with Weather Report and his solo releases have always bored me shitless. It’s like listening to someone tell you over and over again how great they are. Would I like to have even a fraction of the dead man’s ability? Of course I would, but that’s not the point. As much as I am impressed with his technical prowess on his instrument, no amount of flashy solos, compositional complexities or intricate melodic passages moves me like a song.
 
And writing a goose bump-inducing song is the hardest trick of them all.
 
Songs come in all shapes and sizes and it is not essential for the people who write them to be consummate players. In fact, some of the songs that move me the most were written by people who could barely play their instruments. I’ll never forget how invigorating it was to hear the Ramones as a kid. They were the whole reason I wanted to play music. My first guitar teacher—a man who used to extol the virtues of Al Demiola, Jeff Beck and Pat Methony as the only worthy heroes for any budding 6-string player to emulate—used to openly mock me when I said I would rather be Johnny Ramone. He would sit there in disgust as I made him teach me tunes from “Rocket to Russia” saying that any idiot could play this shit. It used to drive him crazy. While I understand that a man who spent his life honing his craft would find the rudimentary chord structures of the Ramones maddening, to this day I would rather listen to the Ramones than anything by his preferred guitar heroes.
 
My favorite musician of all time is Nina Simone. She was the musician that made me want to become a better player. Simone could play with the best of them, but never did she merely showboat, though she easily could of. She used that impressive ability of hers to do what was best for the song or composition and not the player. Too many musicians never learn this trick. Playing music becomes about appeasing the ego or a platform for showcasing one’s ability on their instrument instead of a collective pursuit to touch the face of god. Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Ray Barretto, Cannonball Adderley and Max Roach are just some of the players that proved (to me at least) that a team first mentality in music supersedes any individual glory.
 
In my stereo right now is “Simponi Kebising Babi Neraka” by the Indonesian metal band, Down for Life. Like a lot of metal bands these days, their tunes are absurdly orchestrated, played at inhuman speeds, and, in order to hear them in the proper context, the CD demands to be heard at maximum volume. It is a masturbatory exercise much in the same way as Pastorius in the sense that it is predicated on showcasing technical ability, but their self-indulgence is visceral instead of intellectual. I can only listen to it for a finite amount of time, but I’ll take music that hits me in the gut rather than in the head every single time.

exactly…

Hear you on Simone… and somewhat, if so absolutely on Jaco. He was an ultimately self-destructive ego monster, but some of his work (for example on Joni Mitchell’s “Hejira”) was restrained and lyrical.

Technique in music is like vocabulary in writing, an advantage only if something interesting is being communicated, and then only to those who understand the words.

A joke is only funny if you speak the language. Of course that doesn’t mean the barbarians lack of sense of humor.