Play To the Devil or Death

Somebody finds something that gives their life value and they exchange their life for it. Guitar players like Pete Townsend and Malmstem play until their fingers bleed. Sax players like Charlie Parker or Dexter Gordon play until blood comes gushing from their mouths. Stories of the performer dieing on stage, his heart bursting from the effort, the devil arriving and collecting on his deal, pulling the blues man down to hell at the peak of his performance. The piano player having a nervous breakdown and passing out in the middle of playing The Rach. Beautiful, but mostly it never happened. Life ain’t so exciting, and having your lips ripped apart by a reed isn’t fun, but anything that makes a good story…

I frequently think about death these days. It has to do with being closer to the end  than I am to the beginning. In high school I had a friend who said, “If I had to give up either sex or music I wouldn’t know what to do.” And he couldn’t even play. He just liked to listen. But then again,I couldn’t play then, and I suppose I can barely play now.

But the point is this: I’m always trying to put value on things, put some meaning into my life, some value into a life, which, like everybody else’s, may be meaningless in this Cosmic Joke called existence. If I were to die on stage giving my all in some sort of knockout performance would that give my life meaning? I find the story of the musician who died playing, or was driven insane playing, very romantic. I find the idea of pouring your entire soul into a single moment, to burn with the fires, and then suddenly burn out, very cool. But, in fact, that would be pretty meaningless to me. What would be meaningful is if I could hang around afterwards and have people tell me how much they liked my performance.

People usually choke on a chicken bone, or something so very unromantic anyway. Thank God I don’t have to make such a choice between life and music. Now that I can play a little bit I don’t need to. It’s all life. There’s a mundaneness to dragging yourself downstairs to your weekly practice session. Gather your notes, haul your equipment, haul your ass.  There’s something very ordinary about it. It’s like a job. Not to diminish the magic. The magic is there.   But it’s like being married, eh. The magic ain’t there every day dancing in front of your face like a silly clown. Sometimes the magic’s just resting quietly, lounging behind the tiredness of your eyes.

Just haul your ass and finish that next set.

Er… but on the subject of the devil collecting your soul here are two versions of Charlie Daniel’s “The Devil Went Down To Georgia":

This second with John Popper doing on harmonica… well… it leaves me speechless… You shouldn’t be able to do that on harmonica.  Maybe he did… well… no…