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July 17-23, 2008
buzz@boulderweekly.com
Technique and technology
Ottmar Liebert discusses the effects of the digital age on musicians and fans
by Dave Kirby
Universal soldier
Veterans returning home from war have a long road ahead of them
by Dylan Otto Krider
Technique and technology
Ottmar Liebert discusses the effects of the digital age on musicians and fans
by Dave Kirby
Apart from being a unique, fluent and respected practitioner of nylon string guitar, Ottmar Liebert is something of a tinkerer and technophile. Maybe it’s a little counter-intuitive for a guy whose warm and melodic nylon string guitar — evocative of flamenco and bossa nova traditions — is typically poised with organic spontaneity, but Liebert is intensely fascinated by recording and listening technology, and a keen observer of how the evolution of technology resonates in the business of creativity.
Some of this is reflected in the divergent character of his two new releases, The Scent of Light and Up Close, both out late this spring on his own Spiral Subwave label. Scent is a full-blown studio recording with Liebert’s band, Luna Negra, brimming with energetic and breezy acoustic guitar instrumentals (including the 11-minute meditation/fantasia “Silence”), typically pristine, expertly performed and beautifully rendered.
The other release, Up Close, features Liebert and band in binaural, the recently revived recording technique designed to mimic the real-life listening experience of a human set of ears surrounded by musicians in an enclosed space, without the gloss and polish of a heavily produced and edited studio CD. Binaural works most effectively with headphones, rendering an uncanny sense of musician and instrument placement, as well as intensely precise sound reproduction — you can hear the movement of feet on the floor, the sound of hands sliding over instruments.
Musicians talk a lot about recording “live” in the studio, but binaural is the real thing.
“I first stumbled on the technique back in the ’70s,” says Liebert. “It’s been around for a long time. They used to do radio plays in binaural, because it simulates space so well, but it was last year when I thought I really wanted to try to record a CD in the format. My manager and I found a guy with a dummy head mic who’d rent it to us for a week, so we just went in and did it. It was a great experience. Sort of the original surround sound, or as close as you can actually get to it.
Liebert is eager to avail himself of state of the art technology to use in recording his music, but takes a somewhat dimmer view of how technology is changing the way people listen to and consume music. Devices, formats, file-sharing lawsuits — for Liebert, most of this could have all been avoided.
“You now, when digital technology was just starting to take over, if the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) had stepped up and established its own gold standard for music formats, I don’t think we would have seen all these competing and incompatible formats out there. It just makes it harder for the consumer, and for the artist, as well. And the RIAA would have been as positive force, instead of just suing people over file sharing.”
We asked about his views on file sharing, and Liebert drew a sigh.
“I got an e-mail recently from a 22-year-old guy in Romania. He said he had recently discovered our music and was a big fan of ours. But he conceded that he discovered our music through file sharing, and he said he was really sorry that he hadn’t actually purchased any of the music… but that when the next CD was available there in Romania, he promised he’d go right out and buy it, because he thought he owed me that.
“I mean, I think that says something about the technology, but also your fans and the people who care about the art.”
But as for the iTunes-ization of the music business, the rapid obsolescence of the album-as-artform, Leibert counts himself a skeptic.
“I think in the years to come, we’ll really come to regret what we’ve done to the business of making music. Now, having said that… well, I don’t know about iPod sales, because the record just came out, but I know on our website, where we’ve been selling both records for a little while, not a single customer has just purchased a single song. Almost everyone buys the entire album. I’d like to think that has to do with our fans.”
As for his current fortunes, Liebert was on tour in California when we caught up with him last week. California has always been a good market for him and his band, even before his breakout success with Nouveau Flamenco in 1990.
“The tour’s going well. The band is improving all the time, and we’re getting a good response.
“I think the key [to our longevity] has been having new people coming into the group over the years, as well as keeping a fresh eye on the music, always reconsidering it and taking a new perspective.”
And doing what you want, not what an industry guys tells you.
“That’s right. I remember talking to a guy on Higher Octave years ago, when I was on that label. He said, ‘Our research says that you really need to have a violin player and some oil can drums.’”
Gypsy calypso?
Liebert laughed.
“Yeah, something like that.”
On the Bill
Ottmar Liebert and Luna Negra will perform at 8 p.m. on Sunday, July 20, at Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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Universal soldier
Veterans returning home from war have a long road ahead of them
by Dylan Otto Krider
W hen Ray Meyers returned from Vietnam, he spent the next several decades boozing, doing drugs and raising hell. “I was in jail here in 1985,” says Meyers. “And I was in trouble in ’91 and ’96, and I’m probably missing one or two in there.”
Then during a final jail stint in 2001, he heard something that turned his life around. “One of my fellow inmates called me ‘pops,’” Meyers says. “I didn’t think he was talking to me.”
As it turns out, the comment made him aware of his own mortality in a way that went beyond your typical midlife crisis. Like a lot of vets, he’d been mentally stuck in the most dramatic period of his life. For many soldiers, the horrors and excitement they experience as impressionable young men in combat can stick with them for a lifetime. “You can be 80 years old and locked into this idea of being a young person,” Meyers says. “And you have this feeling of invincibility.”
Then when you re-enter the humdrum of daily life back in the States, you’re flat. The only way to feel normal is to create your own trauma, either chemically or through self-inflicted chaos. So Meyers got help. But it still took him a year to admit that the problem was Vietnam.
After spending some time dealing with his addictions and post-war trauma, there came another seminal moment. A friend who had witnessed his transformation asked him to speak to his grandson, an Iraq War vet who was in jail for a DUI.
When Meyers tried to get in, he discovered the guy’s visiting hours were slim to none. However, unwilling to give up, Meyers decided to weasel his way in by forming a nonprofit organization.
“I never really anticipated there would be this kind of need from the general public. I anticipated going into the jail.” By the time he finished maneuvering all the red tape, Meyers found himself running a full-blown charity called Veterans Helping Veterans Now.
In essence, it is exactly what the name implies, a place where vets can get assistance from other vets with drug and alcohol addiction, employment or counseling. This week the group is putting on Veterans Rock!, a free concert to let people know they’re out there. (At least one of the six bands playing, Martian Acres, has a veteran in its ranks).
Meyers hopes his story will teach others a bit about dealing with traumatic experiences. You can never tell what will set some people off. There have been cases of soldiers who developed symptoms simply from seeing the body bags as they got off the plane in Kuwait, while others go through the worst shit imaginable, and seem to handle it just fine.
However, Meyers is skeptical of vets who claim the experience didn’t affect them. “I thought it had no effect on me. I’d lived my whole life that way, and I lived through Vietnam and thought I could handle anything,” he says.
As one might expect, the Iraq War is creating a new generation of vets in need of services, but surprisingly, places like VHVnow are also seeing an uptick in veterans of other conflicts as the images on TV bring back their own experiences.
“I do know a guy who did fine until 1995, then saw a traffic accident and started experiencing flashbacks,” Meyers says. Once you start looking, you’ll find similar cases everywhere. One Vietnam Vet by the name of Chuck Keller has been collecting similar stories and writing them down after he sought help two years ago.
“In the mind of every victim of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is the thought that he or she is somehow alone in the world. Nobody ‘understands,’” Keller wrote in one online diary. “In a way that’s valid because each case is unique. But I have found that there are common threads, and those can be the ‘twigs’ to which the falling victim clings to avoid plunging into the precipice.”
This is why Meyers says the important first step is finding others who can relate to what you’ve experienced. “The common ground — and you can take this from the Greek Wars through the Middle Ages through the wars in Europe — the experience of being in war is the same for the soldier.”
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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