The Machine’s Pump Volume 24 – #11 – November 2021

It’s happened! I can’t remember “normal.” I know we used to travel around all over the place and would stop at buildings and carry stuff inside and make loud sounds while people looked at us. I can see us driving into the darkness and sleeping in unfamiliar rooms inside big buildings, full of the same. I can still sense how all of that feels. If live music had continued to be the powerhouse, go-to distraction from life, which everyone enjoyed for decades, before Covid arrived, I think I could see a clearer distinction between then and now. But even when Covid becomes just a yearly nuisance, live music has a lot of figuring out to do. The scene has been losing steam for a long time. Once faithful followers are turning into tribes of hermits, not turning to music for escape. You know that’s true. And it’s hard to bend the bow away from human nature. But humans also like puzzles and are actually pretty good at making adjustments and creating new realities which work. With this in mind, all musicians have to face the truth about CDs. They’re done. For Brave Combo, we still encourage people to buy them from us at shows as souvenirs, because they are cool little packages of information and sound. Unfortunately, accessible CD players are disappearing from everyone’s day-to-day activities and easy reach. This is because nothing beats streaming for convenience and variety. It’s here. Ain’t going away. It’s only gonna get easier for the listener to pick and choose at will. And, as we all know, this represents a dramatic income loss to most musicians, at all levels. So, there’s a triple whammy: A general decline in interest in live music, Covid-19 making it impossible for crowds to gather comfortably, and the end of income from CD sales. What’s a band to do? Think and think harder. Not just accept, but embrace the challenge. There are so many ways to create and to get one’s creation out there. And if it’s interesting and done well, someone will notice. And if it blows someone away, it will probably blow away several people. How’s that for a pep talk? Now get out there and do something different!

Speaking of nothing, I found a totally flat fork in a parking lot the other day. It’s been intentionally flattened. It’s mine now. I’m keeping it, unless someone wants to offer me a lot of money for it. Check it out. I parked the car, got out and there it was. You know, where you would normally find a penny, heads up. Why would someone flatten a fork on purpose?

BIG NEWS! The 2021 Holiday Season has arrived! This means Brave Combo will be missing some of its favorite gigs of the year for the second year in a row. We are not doing our annual Midwest run, culminating at Fitzgerald’s in Chicago. We are not playing any indoor venues anywhere right now. The few shows we are playing will be outside. And that brings me to this very important announcement. We are live-streaming our first holiday show of the year on Thursday, December 2, at 7:00 pm CST. We will be broadcasting from one of our favorite Denton live music clubs, Rubber Gloves. And you can attend the show in-person if you live nearby. But you must sign up and reserve tickets on-line. You gotta be used to stuff like this now, right? Of course, you are. So, tune in and see how we look! Ticket Info: https://linktr.ee/bravecombo

Speaking of the holidays, Brave Combo can’t escape the power of the song, “Must Be Santa.” Literally, everybody loves it. We certainly had no idea what we getting in for when we recorded it, originally for a record company in Japan, not necessarily planning to release it anywhere else. They had it a year before Rounder released it in the United States. That part of the story is bizarre enough and I’m not even going to go into it. Whatever, now, in 2021, our version, our arrangement, of the song appears to be one of the most popular, if not most popular, worldwide, based on YouTube numbers. The arrangement is everywhere. Dance troops use it. All kinds of bands play it. There are casual family get-togethers combos. Outside, sound-synced home light shows use it like crazy. And, after Bob Dylan covered us a few years ago, he added millions of views and more and more musical outfits learned and performed our version. This cracks me up, but also makes me want to keep imagining crazy shit. When I was growing up, Mitch Miller’s version was one of my very favorite Christmas songs. The words were okay and the guys sang it well-enough, but I really loved the music, itself; the melody and harmonic structure. It spoke to me. And, no surprise, when Brave Combo had an opportunity to make a holiday album, it was at the top of my list. So, we turned it into a straight-up polka, composed a brand new intro and outro and a bunch of stuff in the middle, added strange little musical references, including an Okinawan line, changed reindeers’ names to Presidents’ names, modulated a bunch and threw in a ton of unique touches. When you watch a video of some group of people from somewhere in the world performing the song and it has all that stuff going on, it’s Brave Combo’s version. I’m not bragging, and it honestly makes me cringe sometimes to drop the names of truly famous people, but facts are facts. And this is just one of myriad unbelievable events we’ve had in this ridiculous band. Since it’s the season to be seasonal, did you know Brave Combo was invited to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade once? Do you know how it happened? Well, we were going to be in NYC anyway when the parade was happening, so I wondered what it would take to march in the parade, cause we can be portable. So I thought I would start by calling the main Macy’s in the city. When the receptionist answered I asked her if she knew who handled booking the entertainment. And she said “Ralph.” I asked her where Ralph was and she said, “on the eighth floor.” So, I asked her if she could connect me with Ralph. And she did. We were right behind Woody Woodpecker and right in front of Dionne Warwick. I often tell young bands this story when they ask how to “make it.”

You know about us playing the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon, right?

Okay, I gotta stop. I have more to do than just write about how clever we are. Thanks for reading. Sleep well.