7. "Change Your Life"

Change your life

Kneel down

Cast your strife

Don't drown

Black Nail (late ‘16)

I begin composing electronic music, still at this point using GarageBand, and still sans keyboard. "Black Nail" is my first experiment singing free-form over a beat-heavy electronic backing track I had laid down in GarageBand, using LOGIC-controlled programmed auto beats and then turning one of the beat-lines into a bass line by switching the effector from "drums" to "synth bass." The following year (2017) I decide to buy my first MIDI keyboard, a KORG nanoKEY2, in order to do further compositional work and programming, but before doing so I also download LOGIC PRO X to my Mac computer and start learning its rudiments. My first experiment with the synth/keys in LOGIC is a song I call "Poppies for Sally." I was literally shocked that I could jump right in and start composing with the keyboard without any lessons or theory or chord charts…

The keyboard/MIDI controller really changes everything for me. 

Now, I no longer need a band. I truly feel that I no longer need one... 

And, I literally don’t anymore.

Relief.

Very quickly I am moving into new and exciting terrain: electronica, industrial, beat-heavy stuff with heavy synth-bass lines... It is so much easier to create melody lines and backing tracks with the MIDI Korg than I had expected, and a further bonus is that now there are no so-called “experts” around to tell me "that chord isn't a chord," or “you should hold the pick like ‘this,’ you are doing it wrong,” etc. The guitar in fact now takes a back seat for a time, as I focus more on using the MIDI keyboard via LOGIC PRO X to create many new songs, many new sounds as I experiment with different “electronic” styles. 

Around this period I also start going into the studio together casually with a blues guitarist I meet at a livehouse jam session where we had one night together performed my original bluesy song "Lonely” and had hit it off. (As a small aside, I had once tried performing “Lonely” live together with my band, but it hadn’t sounded right at all -- even one of our “guests,” an audience member/friend of one of the band members, had criticized us pretty strongly, suggesting we practice it more before playing it live again -- so I was very pleased to now have the chance to do this song with someone who had a much deeper understanding of and a genuine love for the blues and improvisation.) When the two of us are in the studio, I simply do what I was already doing during my solo shows at the time -- I play the Telecaster and sing atop my programmed electronic backing tracks -- with him improvising tastefully in his own style beside me and… 

You know what? 

It works out just fine, with no stress or rules or pressure or anything at all. (Surprise! Can collaborating with someone -- a guitarist, no less -- really be this easy?!). We eventually decide to add a third member into the mix as an experiment (though I know too-well by now what can happen when adding a third or please god no! fourth member into a more manageable two-person collaboration), a jazz-style bassist I had met at a friend's nomikai (飲み会) -- lit. "drinking party/gathering," a common practice in Japan, especially pre-Covid times (it’s coming back now, slowly) used to maintain ties with friends and/or co-workers, as well as a way to make new friends/connections -- and, after a few sessions in the studio, we had the opportunity to perform in front of a live audience together as "The Reptile's Skull.” The name was actually originally to have been "The Reptile's Revenge," but I quickly rethought it to avoid trouble with people now in my ex-bandmates' camp, as it is a very small community and I know that the word will soon spread around like poison oak. In any case, and quite unfortunately, a sense of deja vu soon arrives when the bassist tells me in private one day that he cannot work with the guitarist anymore for certain reasons he explains (he confides them to me directly, rather than making a fuss about it in the studio, so there is never any confrontation between him and the guitar player at all; in other words, he handles it like an adult) and then he quietly disappears. This time, fortunately, the trio had been quite peacefully and effortlessly dissolved, with no gossip mill to follow and no hard feelings between any of the three members. Further, the guitarist and I decide to simply continue going into the studio together, just as before the short-lived three-man project had started, just as if nothing had ever happened, and that is it.

Phew. Close call.

It is now the summer of 2017. The guitarist and I are performing together as Another Room, a side-project name I decide on for us, to help distinguish between the shows we will do together as a duo and my solo performances under my own name. As we have lost our bassist, I begin programming synth bass lines into the backing tracks we are using on stage to give us some “bottom end.” I also, at this time, begin asking around in the music community whether there is anyone who might be willing to teach me, at a reasonable cost, how to master my own recordings, as I am now becoming aware that the sound levels on my recordings are too low, and that they are not as dynamic as they could be. One day, I am introduced by a friend to a local producer who runs his own indies label, a guy who does commercial photography and video work for clients professionally, while performing in his musical unit, a duo (him on guitar/vocals, the other member a drummer) utilizing heavy electric guitar with effectors, live drumming, and programmed synths/electronic sounds, something much more akin to what I myself had always wanted to do, rather than the standard “four-piece rock band" with guitar/bass/drums-only...

We meet after he has listened to some of the recent "electronic" recordings/demos I send him, including various mixes of the then still-recent “Black Nail,” and he says that he will do the mastering "gratis" if I will agree to join his label, no strings attached, as he likes my music and wants to produce me. There is no contract, no dotted line to sign, he is rather kind to me (at first, anyway...), etc., and so, naively thinking that this is the "(little) big break" I'd been waiting for, I agree. Thus begins the drama.

In the three weeks we work together on making my music sound better (and he makes it a point to call it a “working relationship” rather than a “collaboration” or a “LOGIC demonstration” or whatever), he both masters and remixes, in his own style of electronica, four of my original songs. 

They were/are: 

Firstly, “Black Nail,” which I will rearrange and then rerecord in LOGIC for this purpose, as he tells me that he can't do anything with the original GarageBand file I have sent him (for some unexplained reason, though I am glad to take on the challenge and do a new version). I am, after all, very pleased with his mix, which also sees him playing electric guitar and piano -- not to mention that I, too, now had also recorded a superior version of my own via LOGIC, with the addition of some Mike Garson-like improvised “chaotic” piano breaks, and a new, dark synth bass line -- and I tell him so. This is going to be great, I am thinking, feeling positive about this new “label” situation overall. While it’s true that he can be a bit temperamental at times, it’ll all work out, I tell myself; everything is going to work out just fine…

The second song he agrees to do is “Chaos,” which turns out to be a completely different story. (Let me just interject here that I had not expected him to remix any of these songs in the first place, since I had only asked him for help with the mastering of the tracks, the dynamics and sound quality, not the arrangements.) His version is almost House-style techno, and I am not very fond of it (not at all, to be honest), but he insists that his style of mixing/rearranging the track will "sell,” whereas my non-boomchickboomchick style version -- which was essentially, at the time, presented as a dark electronica arrangement, with a few odd-time beats thrown in, but definitely not particularly dance-able -- would not. 

He will also eventually remix two other songs, "Burning Fire" and "This New Day," albeit not so radically as with “Chaos,” and the four tracks will end up going onto my debut EP for his label. Additionally, we will do an outdoor photo shoot to create the EP’s jacket, and he will also create a logo for “Marc Lowe, the Artist,” essentially turning me into a brand, as well as designing what might be called professional-quality, full-color flyers for the one and only show we will end up doing at the end of those tumultuous three weeks together, my “debut live show” for and with him and his label, which itself is essentially a one-man show: him.

Apart from the fact that he has remixed/rearranged all of my music completely from the beginning, without my asking him to, and in his own style, bringing back recent memories of what had happened with my ex-band’s guitarist’s arrangements (which, ironically, I had at the time euphemistically and bitterly referred to as “remixes,” as I mentioned in an aside earlier in this essay)… And apart from the fact he has also insisted that I must always use his mixes and arrangements as backing for my live performances… And apart from the fact that he has insisted, too, that I buy a certain type of synth and dress a certain way on stage (this part reminding me of what had happened in HOM, where the bassist had tried to take control of the band’s image from day number one), etc. etc. etc…. Really, the biggest issue for me is, essentially, that he loses his temper quite a lot, bosses me around as if I were his doormat, and he shouts at me, too… I feel like I am on tenterhooks all of the time, much as the drummer for HOM must have felt, and it is difficult for me to tell him directly that I am not completely on board with the sound of a mix or with having to do this or that a certain way as directed when, instead, I would much rather do it differently, i.e. in my own style. After all, what is the point of being an independent solo artist if I have to answer to someone at every step of the way, just as I had when I had been in a band? 

Indeed, every time I voice my opinion or protest something I simply am unable to honestly agree to, I get a lecture, or he tells me to just shut up and to watch and/or listen to him. Essentially, I am never to question his wisdom and experience, as he simply has so much more of it than I do, so my input is quite unnecessary, invalid, even. Further, and this is rather important in Japanese culture, he is, purely in terms of age, my senpai. (Sound familiar?) The age difference means nothing to me at all, both because I am not Japanese and because in fact I have a strong aversion to this anachronistic way of thinking and to power dynamics, or jo-ge (上下), literally “above-below.”*

* To say a bit more about this... The backwards system this culturally-engrained way of thinking has bred continues to provide a societally-sanctioned excuse to exhibit what has come to be referred to in recent years in Japan as powa-hara (パワーハラ) -- an abbreviation of the English “power harassment.” The opposite of the term senpai, by the bye, is kohai (後輩), or literally “one who comes after” (whereas the Chinese characters for senpai mean “one who comes before”), and the kohai is generally expected to kowtow to his or her senpai. All-too-often, and quite unfortunately (sometimes tragically, as with those who commit suicide after months or even years of abuse), this system can end quite badly for the kohai, who may find himself or herself in a position of psychological, possibly in some rarer, but not so uncommon either, cases, physical, abuse -- it's a bit like in America where college freshman who join fraternities or sororities are forced to do stupid things by the older members in order to be accepted into the group, except it is much more pervasive in Japanese society. The general way of thinking about senpai/kohai rules seems too often to be that this dynamic is simply “the way things are,” and so people who experience this sort of abuse are often not shown any sort of sympathy or understanding either. There is another way to shrug this off in Japanese: you just say "shikata ga nai," 仕方がない, or "It can't be helped," and no one will push the issue any further, however terrible any situation may become.

It is also, I think, important for the reader to understand that, in Japan, one’s elders were traditionally to be respected, if not wholly revered. This comes from the Confucian ideals imported from China before China's younger cousin in East Asia (Japan) was itself old enough to develop its own systems of philosophy and/or religion, outside of the animistic traditions we now think collectively of as "Shinto." However, to be a bit objective about this "system" of senpai/kohai relations that still exists in Japan, let us consider the difference between the original Confucian ideal of “respecting one’s elders” -- where "elders" generally meant “elderly members of the community,” or, in more modern terms, “senior citizens” -- and “being subservient to someone who is a few years older than you” or, to put it rather more bluntly, just letting your 'senpai' totally walk all over you merely because he/she/they is/are a few years older and may (or, depending, may not) have a bit more life experience than you do at present. These are, both objectively and practically, two completely different things!

The gap in our ages was rather insignificant, in any case, only a matter of a few years, though I was in my 40s and he in his 50s at the time, which may have made him feel, even more than had we both been in our 50s, respectively, at the time, that he both deserved and indeed had the right to demand my unwavering respect, extending all the way to “complete, unquestioning obeisance.” At times we would get into shouting matches, as a simple comment or suggestion I proffered could soon devolve into a heated argument. I also got the “just because you are an American doesn’t mean that I think of you as anything special!” comment a lot, which seemed to betray some sort of complex he may have harbored that had absolutely nothing to do with my attitude whatsoever, and it left a bitter taste in my mouth every time he said it to me, often out of nowhere. In any case, apparently I wasn’t supposed to express any of my opinions or ideas in the first place to him. I mean, hey, I had asked for his help and had also agreed to let him “produce me” (in other words, I had said "OK" to his offer of joining his label "without any strings attached" and sans contract) after all, hadn’t I? 

Well…needless to say, I soon begin to feel very stressed out all of the time around him (we are meeting daily at his place/studio for long hours, where he works on the mixes of my four songs, whilst I am supposed to just sit there quietly and watch him at work; once or twice when I start to doze off, as we have spent some rather late nights together and I get sleepy in the heat of his room, with the windows open but no A/C, he suddenly blurts out, “What, is this boring you? You have something better to do, eh?”). I also start increasingly to feel that he is becoming more and more controlling, wielding his power over me as my producer and manager, hence, also my boss. This was definitely not what I had bargained for; I had originally gone to him simply to get some advice about mastering my tracks, and now…it had become a really sticky and stressful situation for me. 

How have I ended up here in the first place? I find myself asking myself, daily...

I officially announced my resignation from his label two days after our big "Marc Lowe Artist Debut" show, with me the opening act at my own event (which, as I will explain below, I essentially ended up paying for out of my own pocket in the end as well) and his electro-rock duo closing out the night as the main act/headliner. I will come back to the resignation part in a moment.

The show is held at one of the larger livehouses in town, a venue at which I would never otherwise have had a chance to perform, since neither I nor either of my prior bands could ever have pulled in enough guests to justify such an extravagant booking (nor to pay the fee -- called noruma -- for the guests we could not pull in). A couple of days after our show for his label, and having already been thinking about quitting from long before the date of the show itself had arrived -- I had, essentially, been counting the days, a bit like a prisoner waiting for his reprieve -- I phone him to first thank him for everything, and then I state my intention (now that the event has finished, I say...) of “distancing myself” from the label a bit in order to work more on improving my technique of self-producing my own songs, which had in fact been my initial goal (surely, he recalled?) when I’d come to him for help with mastering my songs in LOGIC in the first place. All of this is totally true, of course. Note that I did not say that I am “quitting the label,” but I tell him that I would like to have a bit more freedom to arrange and perform things in my own style and at my own pace. “I hope you will understand,” I add, waiting tensely for his response…

In response he tells me, in no uncertain -- in fact, in frighteningly certain -- terms, that there will ("obviously…") be a "penalty fee" for leaving his label despite our (verbal-only, no-strings-attached...right?) "agreement." I am of course now thinking something along the lines of: You mean, you want me to pay XXXXXX (it was a rather sizable "penalty fee") despite the fact that I never signed anything, and that you told me everything would be gratis, no fees involved, and as a trial-run? When I protest the amount of the fee, however, and tell him that this really isn't right, that he'd said there would be no charge for his services, also quickly adding that, of course, I would be more than willing to pay him something to compensate him for his time and efforts (more than willing, I was!!), some reasonable fee for his help, but that this was just much too expensive for me to consider now, after-the-fact, and without having had any forewarning and so no expectation of having to make any payment... Well, without interrupting me, he immediately threatens to raise the fee even further, and then to continue raising it each and every time I complain about it or try to avoid paying what I “owe” him for his time, his mixes, the flyers and the CDs and on and on...

And so, after things had seemingly begun to start going so smoothly for me post-band drama/trauma at the end of the previous year, now there was, once again, more trouble in paradise.

Repetition, or, rather, another turn of the screw?

I was very good at screwing myself at that time in my life.

"Turn, and turn again..."

Although I did not pay him for many months after this, the issue of owing him his "penalty fee" (which he never officially billed me for; everything was still 100% verbal between us) continued for over a year, with him phoning me and sending me text messages about it over and over. I discuss the issue with various people, even visit a lawyer's office (they say that, if brought to court, it will cost me more than the amount itself he wants to charge me, and that, if I happen to lose the case, it will cost me even more, so I should consider the consequences of not paying him first very carefully!). And so one day, after months of constant “reminder” text messages and phone calls, I gather the courage to phone him up and tell him that, OK, I agree to pay, thank you for all you did for me, though I also request an official bill, something on paper, to keep for legal purposes after I have done the deposit into his account, and also to ensure that the transaction is, at least, "legitimate" in the eyes of the law, or at least to this extent. 

As it was true that I had learned how to better use LOGIC from observing him -- to mix and to master, as well as to arrange, to move parts around, layer them and so on -- I eventually decide to spin the situation in a positive direction, at least in my own mind. I come to think of his "penalty fee" as my "learning fee," what would be termed benkyo-dai (勉強代), or something like a “study fee,” in Japanese. I essentially paid -- albeit a fairly extravagant, I had thought, fee -- for his services, for what might be considered a (rather untraditionally-structured, albeit!) course on using LOGIC. The important thing to remember, I told myself, was that included in this fee was something that money often cannot buy, something essential for everyone's process of learning and evolving: 

Life experience.

Indeed, this experience had bought me yet another “life lesson,” one I would never forget. 

That was for sure.

And so, from this point on in my life, I take a vow (to myself) not only to never, ever again form or join another band, nor to ever let anyone else do my mixing or arranging or jacket art or anything, basically, unless it is mutually beneficial, done as part of a true collaboration, for instance, and also truly and definitely that there will indeed be "no strings attached" (as with the music videos I've done in collaboration with friends, and of course without any money ever exchanging hands in either/any direction, nor any fights or power plays), and especially never to allow anyone to try and control my creative process or PR or any of these things in any form whatsoever. 

From now on, I determine, I will not only be in control of everything I make and do myself, but I will also be and remain confident in my abilities, and that I will also always go with my gut feelings, rather than asking too much of others or thinking too highly of others' opinions (advice is one thing, but an opinion is just an opinion, after all…), nor will I give up my autonomy in any way to anyone due to self-doubt or a lack of confidence in my own (rather ample, in fact) abilities/capabilities, not even, or, rather, especially not, to people who call themselves "pros" and/or so-called "old-timers in the music/entertainment business," and/or those who make it sound like they know better what my music and art needs than I myself do. 

No.

I am starting to realize... I am growing up just a bit now... 

I was 44 years old at the time. 2017 turned out to be another major year of transition and transformation, not the first and definitely not to be the last, either, but a very important year for me indeed. I am coming of age, just a little bit. But it won't be for several more years until I finally reach “full adulthood,” so to speak, at the age of 49, post-Covid, living alone in a tiny apartment room in Tokyo, the same room where I am right now writing and revising this very text...