Notes On Nothingness:
A Journal of Zero Consciousness

Kind of odd to be recording thoughts and impressions of the Zero scene. It feels a little illegitimate; as if it is somehow not what's appropriate for Zero consciousness, that Zen-like concept of effortless trance meditation, anchored in the immediate, floating and drifting with the musicians who are spinning their spells on stage in front of you. I used to take notes on most of my concert experiences, mostly for fun, sometimes for a writer's exercise - a focused journal entry - and occasionally for absent friends who wanted to know ... but that was always difficult for Zero. They were tough. After a particularly sublime moment, at a Maritime Hall show this past spring, all I could write was "nothing will be mine, here ... nothing, as in Zero." Not a scene to be recorded, only felt; experienced. It reminds me of a line from one of Ken Kesey's journals: "Only nothing is instantaneous./ Everything else takes time." Amen, Ken. This will take some time. Let me tell you about this band ... because the feeling they project now is that this part of their history won't last much longer; and like all histories, it carries the promise that the record of a time will mean more than just itself.

That was the show that I 'got it' - had my first Zero epiphany. And even then, I was still thinking of them as temperamental - though consummate - musicians. From the outset, a characteristic of Zero was that it had the rep as a musicians' band: they had the imprimatur of Marin County's finest for years before their audience surged following the post-Dead phenomenon of Deadheads pouring their efforts into surrogates. But Zero also inherited the anti-celebrity attitude of many musicians' bands: no star trips, something that saxophonist Martín Fierro had reputedly brushed up against when he was involved with the Dead for a few projects, including horn arrangements for an album as well as playing with Jerry Garcia in a couple of his side-bands. It left a mark on Zero that can still be seen in the resolute and natural way that they move through their audiences, who respectfully give them room, occasionally approach and are invariably dealt with politely; and why the band makes it a point to bring their infant children to shows. All part of the 'Zero Family' ethos that they successfully project.

Martín exemplifies that, to some extent: the guy who refuses to take himself too seriously, yet when he plays, it's nothing but serious ... but what a goof, off the sax.

Even Steve can show some of that self-deprecating humor, musically. This spring I saw him with his own band, Steve Kimock and Friends, and he took a stunning solo with the guitar held up behind his neck, Hendrix-style - great spectacle to have with your musical vitamins. And the solo was first-rate, too; at first, I thought everybody was just cheering for the licks I was hearing, as I swayed with my eyes closed.

Martín was the reason I first went to see Zero, though. I had first encountered him on the Dead's studio masterpiece, Wake of the Flood, yet another of the many introductions they provided to so many other musics and musicians. It made me interested in hearing my first Zero gig, in the spring of 1988 at a San Francisco club. Even then, I thought they picked up on much of the feeling I had come to expect from the Dead - though Zero was very much its own beast. They laid claim to that elusive common territory that improvisation of all stripes seems to aim for at its heart, some sort of ur-communication - communion really - that describes a continuum encompassing performer and audience, from intention to composition to anticipation to reaction, that is seamless and whole and transcendent; and that is where Zero shines.

So why write it now? Because they have this new album out ... and it's very, very good ... and it feels strange, as if this might be a scene, an artistic community that is about to break open, reach a whole new level of exposure and popularity and fame, and lose some of itself in the process, almost a flashback to the sense of dread I had when I listened to the Dead's In the Dark, and thought that the secret was finally out. Old Deadheads called the new converts In-the-Darkheads, and the scene never really got its feet back underneath itself after that;

there just wasn't enough time and oldtimers to teach the new seekers how to behave, how to fit in, how to learn and grow and make their own contribution to the scene. Ironically, in that sense Deadheadom was sunk by the same ethos that sunk the Haight, which Garcia talked about in his long Rolling Stone interview with Greening of America author Charles Reich: "For any scene to work, along with that freedom there's implicit responsibility - you have to be doing something somewhere along the line - there is no free ride. And you have to know where you're going. It's helpful to have a scene that will indulge you long enough to let you find out." Too many people and it simply sinks.

Which may be part of why the Zero scene doesn't have that same level of absolute openness that the Dead scene did. There is an initiation. As you walk in, the first sense you get before a Zero concert is more like the feel of a jazz club, with bright musically literate patrons who reflect the passion and competitiveness of the musicians in front of them. And if you listen well, respectfully, attentively, and make the right noises, and get it - without giving a goddamn for anything else around you - then you pass, and next time you'll get a nod. Zero's fans are a bit more ebullient and effusive than that, but they're every bit as reflective and literate. And enough of them were Deadheads to know that they don't want their scene to outgrow itself, and get diluted into that old traditional audience-performer dichotomy epitomized by a pool of drunk faces yelling at a stage of besieged musicians to play their radio hits.

The scene opens up when you show your interest; when you dance to the music, and not to show off or cruise for romance, though that can happen when you don't make it a goal. It seems like shows have more and more dancing over the last couple of years, though whenever I crossed the bridge into Marin, it was always wall-to-wall movement, swaying and grooving. It takes a little longer for San Franciscans, I guess; or maybe the City is where they are picking up their new, younger fans, most of whom have never been trained to listen and dance and forget and flow. Zero is teaching them. They are nothing if not great mentors. Demanding teachers, too. The funniest moment my fifteen years of concerts came at a Steve Kimock and Friends show, long past midnight, at a tiny bar in San Rafael, bandstand so low a beer glass on the floor stuck up an inch or so above, and a devotee was getting tired, no longer able to do much more than twitch, and as Steve is taking another solo, subtle and eloquent, the fan yawns, right in front of Martín, only a couple of feet away, holding his horn, attentively waiting for his friend to finish playing, catches sight of this stifled power yawn - and just thwacks the fan, as if to say "hey, wake up! pay attention!" and I just collapsed with laughter. The performer-audience barrier according to Martín.

Over the years that I was seeing other bands, I kept checking in with Zero. I still didn't fully 'get it' - there were always those around me who clearly were getting more of what was going on than me. But there was always enough to draw me back. After this many years of seeing bands for whom the live performance was the principle means of artistic expression, I knew it might take a few times. At first, I found their rhythm too clinical, their sound too bright and thin; now I wonder whether I simply was clueless, or if their sound reinforcement has improved, or if I have simply learned and grown. When I heard their new album, I thought back to that impression because Judge's vocals seemed too bright, as if the bass had been lopped off; there may be some truth to that - in concert, I think his baritone has much greater depth than on the disc. But speakers wash everything together, and maybe they mixed for that. It's still a good sounding CD. It should win a great many converts, if it gets decent distribution and any kind of airplay at all.

That first gig made me feel that they had absorbed much of the Dead's feel for improvising, since their jams definitely captured the ethos that the Dead did, but I didn't know at the time to what extent that terrain had been explored by so many others, including several other Haight-Ashbury bands in the Sixties, including one that featured a guitarist who would go on to play with Zero, John Cipollina, whose work with Quicksilver Messenger Service in the Sixties was a major contribution to rock guitar's electric vocabulary. The more I learned, the more I realized that Zero was drawing from the same well of predominantly American musical forms that the Dead and Quicksilver and Janis's first band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Airplane and Country Joe and the Fish and several others all explored, each emphasizing certain currents over others, mixing them all together and exploring collectively, elevating the jam into the grand artistic grail for the evening.

Most of those bands said then - and some of their surviving members continue to say today - admiring things about the others; they all seem to feel that on a given night, one of their peers was the best band performing at the time. Zero falls so squarely in that long, loose lineage, heirs to the same rich and diverse set of traditions, all the way down to their generosity in crediting those early San Francisco rock giants. In their new album, they thank Jerry Garcia in the credits, and despite their large spiritedness, I wonder if there was a pause over that one; the critically mindless dismissive comparisons to the Dead must rankle a bit by now.

In a recent America On-Line interview, one fan wrote to ask if it was true that Steve had studied with Garcia, prompting the response: "NO, I NEVER STUDIED WITH ANYBODY." A nice use of caps to show his pique; and for those who have listened to both guitarists, while it is clear they both admire certain qualities in playing and perhaps even draw on a similar pool of influences, it's also clear that they approach their craft from somewhat different trajectories. And for Steve, who has so many different tones and sounds and styles to choose for whatever mimesis he's after, it has to be irritating to have people only discuss one of your many influences.

That said, it also has to be noted that he is the only guitarist who can actually pay homage to Garcia without sounding like a rip-off, or a second-rate apprentice. Of course, he can also do that with Hendrix, Clapton, Gilmore, Les Paul, and a few others, but the Garcia acknowledgement is consummate; something I found out at a Missing Man Formation show at the Fillmore.

Steve is not an imitator; nor has Zero ever been a cover band, which is why the halls they play don't become crucibles, melt-point tests for audience and band, seeing how close they can come to the real thing. Zero spaces are more like alembics, the medieval reaction vessels used by alchemists to try to make lead into gold - and moreover, to add mass in the process, pulling matter from thin air; something from nothing, appropriate for a band called Zero.

With the new album, fears of Missing Man scooping Zero's innards out seems banished. And the audience feels like it's gelling, though it doesn't have quite the feel of being firmly fixed yet. I've been to most of the Zero and Zero-family-related shows in the last three years, and the crowd is solidifying, but still growing and fluctuating, it feels. One hallmark of that is the degree to which it feels like a captive audience - fans - versus scenesters, people on the venue's guest list, the merely curious, or the random. Last year at a Fillmore show I wrote "Not exactly the feel of a Dead scene gathering. But a pleasant atmosphere, and we talk among our neighbors a little; not too much. The sense of shared community seems notably absent - much more a sense of, 'well, I was this kind of Deadhead, not like you.' The classic American suspicion of others, and assumption of difference until proved otherwise. So different from the feel of the Dead scene, especially before In the Dark - that wonderful sense of family and familiarity, of openness and caring." But Zero shows are getting that way, more and more, as committed fans come to achieve a few hours of Zero consciousness, and the scenesters get slowly absorbed, or displaced.