Tuesday, March 28, 2017
time flies
wow howabout music at 52?....i still have the same dreams of being a great musician like i did when i was twenty five......but it must be over now....you'd think but i dont understand how society thinks about things.....I often find myself disagreeing with the consensus about something....everybody must vote nay on occaision....right?...or maybe not....certainly I seek to minimize embarrassments.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Music at 46
I was putting new strings on my acoustic guitar a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't get the thing to stay in tune..........then I took a closer look at my guitar and realized that the neck was separating from the body of the guitar. Evidently, my years of neglect had finally succeeded in causing my 1000$ guitar to fall apart.
340$ later it is back and glued together and holding a tune. Ahh but what to play?, and why? I plunk out a few old covers......guided by voices, neutral milk hotel, leadbelly, eric's trip........nobody that most people would ever have heard of. My finger tips have no callouses and my thumb hurts from pressing it awkwardly against the neck of the guitar. Maybe I should got to a few open mic's and play a few of the old fav's and see if people laugh.......probably they'll just ignore me and keep talking to their friends like I'm not even there...........two of my old drummers have been calling, asking to jam the old tunes............who knows?, maybe get a whole set together and play a gig! I get sick to my stomach thinking about it but I can't stop thinking about it. I fear I will pull out my old les paul jr. and try and tune it up. Worse, I may even plug it in to my amp and see if any sound comes out. I think the amplifier is broken but cannot be sure. God help me if it decides to function.
Friday, January 11, 2008
fly me to the tune
I was playing "Fly me to the Moon" on guitar today. I am not a Sinatra fan but his version of "Fly me to the Moon" with the Count Basie Orchestra is a timeless masterpiece of art. I play a version that is not technically difficult to pull off but still captures all the jazzy sophistication of the song with it's mix of Major 7th and Dominant 7th chords.
The music of my formative years was country, rock and pop music. Sinatra and big band jazz had never been things that I was able to appreciate; Opera is still a problem for me in the same sort of way. However, circumstance caused me to listen to this particular version of "Fly me to the Moon" dozens of times until it had possessed my unconsciousness and I began to love the song.
For three months in the mid' '90's I worked the night shift in a commercial radio station whose main demographic was the retiree set and thus focused on the moldy oldies. One of the tracks in heavy rotation on this AM frequency fossil was "Fly me to the Moon". I was eventually fired for screwing up a syndicated religious program aired on Sunday mornings but not before I had started to listen to that song with an open ear/mind and begin to appreciate it's beauty and succinct perfection. (I would note that the same thing happened to me with Herb Alpert's Orchestral version of "This Guy in Love" but that's another blog.)
A year or so later I began my career as a wedding DJ and guess what song the oldies loved to slow dance to......you guessed it, "Fly me to the Moon". So for a two years, until I grew tired of bride's and their mothers and their special fucking day, I played that song several times each weekend as part of my oldies slow set before the traditional garter toss and the real drunkeness took over the reception hall. I still remember, third song on side two of cassette number 134.
Herein we have artistic perfection that will age like tree sap into amber for all time. In under three minutes Sinatra, Basie and company and Quincy Jones created an understated piece big band vocal beauty. I realize now how good Sinatra could be; how he wore the melody like a glove and never strayed or added notes. The modern R&B style of vocalism is the horrible antithesis to the archaic Sinatra style of shout.
Basie's band is like a tight rope for Frank to walk, the brass jumping out to punctuate and push the man along.
You can feel Sinatra's joie de vivre as he dances among the stars. When I play and sing the song I can feel his spirit in me and feel the human tragedy of our aging and passing. Why can't we sing for ever more? Why cannot we see what spring is like on other worlds? Sometimes I think Christianity's obsession with life after death is silly and childish but when I play "Fly me to the Moon", I begin to understand and I hope Sinatra is up there somewhere dancing and singing among the stars.
The music of my formative years was country, rock and pop music. Sinatra and big band jazz had never been things that I was able to appreciate; Opera is still a problem for me in the same sort of way. However, circumstance caused me to listen to this particular version of "Fly me to the Moon" dozens of times until it had possessed my unconsciousness and I began to love the song.
For three months in the mid' '90's I worked the night shift in a commercial radio station whose main demographic was the retiree set and thus focused on the moldy oldies. One of the tracks in heavy rotation on this AM frequency fossil was "Fly me to the Moon". I was eventually fired for screwing up a syndicated religious program aired on Sunday mornings but not before I had started to listen to that song with an open ear/mind and begin to appreciate it's beauty and succinct perfection. (I would note that the same thing happened to me with Herb Alpert's Orchestral version of "This Guy in Love" but that's another blog.)
A year or so later I began my career as a wedding DJ and guess what song the oldies loved to slow dance to......you guessed it, "Fly me to the Moon". So for a two years, until I grew tired of bride's and their mothers and their special fucking day, I played that song several times each weekend as part of my oldies slow set before the traditional garter toss and the real drunkeness took over the reception hall. I still remember, third song on side two of cassette number 134.
Herein we have artistic perfection that will age like tree sap into amber for all time. In under three minutes Sinatra, Basie and company and Quincy Jones created an understated piece big band vocal beauty. I realize now how good Sinatra could be; how he wore the melody like a glove and never strayed or added notes. The modern R&B style of vocalism is the horrible antithesis to the archaic Sinatra style of shout.
Basie's band is like a tight rope for Frank to walk, the brass jumping out to punctuate and push the man along.
You can feel Sinatra's joie de vivre as he dances among the stars. When I play and sing the song I can feel his spirit in me and feel the human tragedy of our aging and passing. Why can't we sing for ever more? Why cannot we see what spring is like on other worlds? Sometimes I think Christianity's obsession with life after death is silly and childish but when I play "Fly me to the Moon", I begin to understand and I hope Sinatra is up there somewhere dancing and singing among the stars.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
music appreciation note #1
I find it fascinating how a work of art can grow in significance over time in the court of critical and public opinion. While sipping puh erh and eating chinese barbeque I pontificated on this matter to a friend. My example was the '80's remake of "Scarface". This was a film that most critiques panned when first released. They made fun of Pacino's accent, skewered Oliver Stone's script (a relative unknown at the time), and debated if De Palma had become a hack.
Now, here we are twenty some years later and Rotten Tomato calculates an 89% positive rating for the DVD re-release. Tony's cliches and "fuck you"s have become signposts and even bigger cliches. Posters of a swarthy Pacino are more popular than ever and the video game just came out. "Scarface" is now considered a certified classic like Miami Vice and crack cocaine. But back in the '80's these things were NOT cool. What happened? Jung's collective unconscious seems to have decided that "Scarface" is important and will continue grow in relevance as the 21st century progresses.
The first musical example of this process of growing cultural relevance I can think of is Black Sabbath. The critics hated them. The hippies ignored them. Until the 80's, radio would not play them. They were the biggest underground band of the '70s, too popular to be called a cult band yet to weird to be part of the mainstream. Then you started to hear "War Pigs" and "Iron Man" on the classic rock stations. There was nothing like getting wasted in a car at 3am with Iommi's guitar moaning metallic angst..............
By the early '90's Sabbath were becoming cool. People started to realize that here was a band that had spawned multiple genres: death metal, grunge, prog metal, metal metal........Sabbath was the most to blame for all these bastard musical children. I remember hearing Soundgarden for the first time, tracks from "Badmotorfinger", and I heard all that was great in those early Sabbath tracks.
Sabbath (note you don't even have to use the "Black" anymore for people to know what you're talking about), are now a part of the mass consciousness, part of the fabric of modern culture.
Working class losers are now artistic shamen who transformed rock 'n roll into a modern benediction to technology and primeval darkness.
How long before the moody instrumental pieces like "Planet Caravan" enter into heavy rotation and are re-appreciated as influential works of genius as well? Anything is possible in the time machine of critical and public opinion.
Now, here we are twenty some years later and Rotten Tomato calculates an 89% positive rating for the DVD re-release. Tony's cliches and "fuck you"s have become signposts and even bigger cliches. Posters of a swarthy Pacino are more popular than ever and the video game just came out. "Scarface" is now considered a certified classic like Miami Vice and crack cocaine. But back in the '80's these things were NOT cool. What happened? Jung's collective unconscious seems to have decided that "Scarface" is important and will continue grow in relevance as the 21st century progresses.
The first musical example of this process of growing cultural relevance I can think of is Black Sabbath. The critics hated them. The hippies ignored them. Until the 80's, radio would not play them. They were the biggest underground band of the '70s, too popular to be called a cult band yet to weird to be part of the mainstream. Then you started to hear "War Pigs" and "Iron Man" on the classic rock stations. There was nothing like getting wasted in a car at 3am with Iommi's guitar moaning metallic angst..............
By the early '90's Sabbath were becoming cool. People started to realize that here was a band that had spawned multiple genres: death metal, grunge, prog metal, metal metal........Sabbath was the most to blame for all these bastard musical children. I remember hearing Soundgarden for the first time, tracks from "Badmotorfinger", and I heard all that was great in those early Sabbath tracks.
Sabbath (note you don't even have to use the "Black" anymore for people to know what you're talking about), are now a part of the mass consciousness, part of the fabric of modern culture.
Working class losers are now artistic shamen who transformed rock 'n roll into a modern benediction to technology and primeval darkness.
How long before the moody instrumental pieces like "Planet Caravan" enter into heavy rotation and are re-appreciated as influential works of genius as well? Anything is possible in the time machine of critical and public opinion.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)