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A page at www.patricepike.com tells the story. Pike was forming a new, not-yet-named band with guitarist and long-time musical partner Wayne Sutton as the end of the line was approaching for Sister 7, their band for the last ten years. Pike had been reading Ken Wilber's book A Brief History of Everything and was struck by his characterization of the black box as a way for science to deal with what couldn't be explained. While songwriting and creating music might at times have a mechanical, paint-by-the numbers aspect, for a song to reach even the minimal quality standard something else has to happen. Songwriters commonly describe the writing process as something outside themselves, the meaning of lyrics often not even registering until they're complete. Pike saw parallels between making music and the mysterious processes that science can't explain. Then she glanced around the stage and saw black speakers, black amplifiers, everywhere she looked were wires running from black box to black box. With a potential name that could work for both the mystical or the most literal minded, it was no problem convincing Sutton and drummer Michael Hale and the Black Box Rebellion was born. The origin of the name Black Box Rebellion could be summarized by three consecutive words from my dictionary that are also an apt description of the music on Fencing With Fire; literal, literary, and literate. I'm often accused (usually with good cause) of being too literal. One definition, "conforming to the simplest, nonfigurative, most obvious meaning," applies to the speaker and amplifier definition of Black Box. When Pike sings "St. Ann doesn't go to church anymore, she is working / Giving free needles to medicate this" during "The Honey Tree Lie," the words are about a real person in the South Bronx that communicate a worthwhile message using the most literal of interpretations. This makes for easily accessible songs you'll be quick to enjoy. But, like the multiple layers of definition for Black Box, you'll discover deeper meaning as you uncover less literal interpretations, which are ultimately what give the songs their staying power. Literate is defined as "well written." A simple word with a simple meaning that says a lot. When used to describe a songwriter it seems to usually be a country or folk singer-songwriter, someone performing in a style that emphasizes lyrical over musical content. But the subtle shadings implied by literate also apply to the rock of Patrice Pike and the Black Box Rebellion. Songs with a message. Lyrics that convey volumes of meaning in few words. In "Ms Ramona," Pike describes a ride on an elevator with an older woman who lives a different lifestyle. These few lyrics say a lot about Ramona's reaction to Pike's tattoos and Pike's feelings about their respective choices.
Pike describes all her songs as "short fiction stories," which might be enough to justify the literary label. But her reading also provides inspiration for songs (not just band names). Pike was still reading Ayn Rand's Fountainhead when inspired to write "Dominique" about one of the book's characters.
The BBR will rock you with their character study of the "Jackknife Girl." You'll enjoy the jazzy torch-song "All the Pieces" that might remind you of Norah Jones (who, like Pike, is an alumnus of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts in Dallas). But the tune with the greatest impact for me was "The Honey Tree Lie" because it illustrates the power of music beyond mere entertainment. Hundreds of years ago, before television, radio, and widespread newspaper distribution, folk music was one way that word spread about people and events happening in other parts of the world. As modern methods of news distribution have taken over, music has become a way to spread news and alternative viewpoints that are largely ignored by the mainstream press. In 1915, union organizer Joel Haggland (aka Joseph Hillstrom) was put to death by a Utah firing squad. Those who felt he'd been framed by the mining company owners told their side of the story in "Joe Hill." When Neil Young sang "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming / we're finally on our own / this summer I hear the drumming / four dead in Ohio," he was not just spreading the word, but calling for action. Like these examples, music can inform and at times act as a catalyst for change by prompting further investigation and involvement. Pike's "The Honey Tree Lie" is subtitled "for the children in the South Bronx & Johnathan Kozol." My initial reaction was, "who's Johnathan Kozol and why the children of the South Bronx." And thus began the chain of events that, at the least, has modified my thinking about how far away the U.S. remains from achieving the ideal of "all men are created equal." With minimal investigation I discovered that Pike was referring to the book Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation in which Kozol had written about his experiences in the South Bronx. The more than 400,000 who live in the Washington Heights and Harlem areas of Manhattan just across the Hudson river and the 600,000 residents of the South Bronx contains the largest racially segregated concentration of poor people in the country. In this song Pike compares the story of the tree with honey enough for everyone from A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh to the reality of the South Bronx. Kozol's tales of overcrowded schools with classes held in stairwells, waits of four days for a hospital bed, and a supermarket closing permanently because it was continually overrun with rats expose the lie of the honey tree. After discovering Kozol's story, life events continue to remind me. A conversation with a sixtyish gentleman while waiting for takeout barbeque (yes, you can get good barbeque in the Upper Midwest) started about music when he asked about my Rockzillaworld sweatshirt. How we got from music to his army experiences, I'm still not sure. He related the story of guarding the building where Martin Luther King was waiting before leading the march from Selma to Montgomery, ending with the comment that where race relations are concerned, the country seems to be moving backwards. Then while reading Robert Gordon's excellent musical history It Came from Memphis, I was struck by how integral the melding of musical forms with both African and Anglo roots were in creating the great music we associate with that area. Without the cultural cross-pollination that happened on the Memphis music scene, best illustrated by the integration of the house band at Stax Records, Booker T and the MGs, this music never would have been created. New York is a long way from the suburbs of Minneapolis, but the issues Kozol raises have implications, both large and small, to us all. Your answer to the questions raised by Kozol's book may be different than mine. But without music I (and possibly you) wouldn't be pondering the question. *Purchase your own copy of Fencing With Fire at www.patricepike.com
Excerpts from Amazing Grace can be found at www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/AmazingGrace_Kozol.html
and if you're visiting Minneapolis combine great barbeque
with live blues by visiting Famous Dave's location in the Uptown
Area. Go to www.famousdaves.com/lisclub.cfm
for the current schedule. |
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