Copyright Information for Google - Will Vinson Cover

Hey Guys I'm using an old blog as a spot to post this to link to.

Here are the screenshots of Will Vinson's written permission to cover Dear Old Stockholm Syndrome. I recommend if the licensing company needs further proof, they speak to their own artist. I'll refrain from commenting about the inanity when an artist I know personally gives me permission to use his tune, then a separate entity tries to sanction me without even speaking to the artist.

My Self-Made Career - So Far

Ten plus years into my "music career", and with growing frustration about my day job, I picked up Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.

Wait - let's back up.

It's actually been a slow progression to this point.

In 2008, recently back from Taiwan, and deciding to invest myself in politics after a seven-year slumber, I started blogging in earnest.

In September of 2008 I learned I had narrowly missed acceptance to Stern School of Business. The next week, Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Feeling I'd been given a "sign", I decided to spend the next three years seeing how music would work out. The answer was bifurcated - it's worked out well from the standpoint of my ability and my fulfillment. It hasn't worked out great - yet - from the standpoint of "acceptance" or commercial success.

During the intervening several years, I grew increasingly dissatisfied with my job at a university, and what direction my career might take. I started listening to podcasts. First Adam Carrolla. Then Joe Rogan, which eventually led me to London Real. I was listening to London Real's episodes on ayahuasca the night Hurricane Sandy hit New York.

Sandy shattered the last of my illusions about my day job, but something had happened. In my efforts to find another job, I happened across a position description that required video lesson experience.

Why don't I simply make that experience on my own, I wondered.

Over the next three months I taught myself videography. First with the iPhone, then with a growing array of toys. What I wanted to do hit me one day when I watching the Vice channel on youtube. I'd been blogging about the state of jazz. I'd been playing sessions and gigs. I'd been conducting interviews for the blog, and I'd been making short videos of myself playing. Why not combine the three into a Vice-style jazz documentary show.

This still didn't solve the issue of how to make money, however.

It just so happened that London Real featured a guest named Tim Ferriss on one of its podcasts. The next week I picked up Mr. Ferriss' book Four Hour Work Week, and became convinced that his ethos was the way forward. With echoes of Seneca and Steven Pressfield, Ferriss recommends readers decide what's truly important to them, and use efficiency tricks to decople their income stream from their dreams. Sure it was complicated, but here was a way to live as Steven Pressfield would recommend (with maximal emphasis on my "calling"), without starving.

The journey deeper into the rabbit hole of Ferrisian lifestyle led to two discoveries -

First, I could indeed "unplug" myself from many inefficient systems at work, allowing greater flexibility to do what I wanted, and second, perhaps I could incorporate my other major passion, travel, into the schema.

As such, my blog dedicated to escaping New York, be it for overseas jaunts or weekend getaways, was born, partly as a way to play Tony Bourdain on the internet and call it a job, partly as a (maybe) truly viable way to make money.

It's going to take more, though. I need to become an expert at a small sector of e-commerce, then, as much as possible, outsource it.

Still, I'm not doing so badly for four months' progress. My dreams, to travel the world and write about it, and to make music and share it, seem within reach finally.

I hope the next time I publish here it's with further happy news, whatever form that may take.

Generations in Jazz Part One - Mike Boone

Last week I wrote about the generation gap in jazz and alluded to the conversation that started me thinking about it, a message board discussion that had started with the question, "why don't African American fans turn out to commercial jazz clubs in very large numbers?" That initial question provoked a side discussion of great interest to me: why is there so much misunderstanding between generations of jazz musicians?

If you've been on Facebook, Twitter, or any jazz discussion group lately, you've likely seen comments from "established" musicians about the younger generation, and many aren't very complimentary. But my brief encounter on the discussion board made me feel a lot of the animosity is based on misunderstanding. That's why I set out to find musicians of different generations willing to speak to me, and engage them about the past and future of the music.

The first who graciously agreed to speak with me is bassist Mike Boone. Boone is well known as one of the busiest bassists on the Philadelphia scene. Right out of college Boone played with Broadway star Ben Vereen and drummer/bandleader Buddy Rich. More recently, he's played with John Swana, Bootsy Barnes, Sid Simmons, Orrin Evans, Sean Jones, vocalist Evelyn Simms, drummers Bobby Durham, Billy James, pianists Sam Dockery, Uri Caine, John DiMartino, saxmen Larry McKenna, Pete Chavez, Rudy Jones, and trumpeter Johnny Coles. Boone can be seen regularly in Philly, at Ortlieb’s Jam Sessions on Tuesday and Sunday nights.

Mike's musical experience spans more than three decades and encompasses a range of styles unusual by today's standards. As such Mike was the perfect person to begin my discussions about the last three generations in jazz and the future of the music.

Nate Smith:
Mike Boone thanks so much for joining me.

Let me start with something provocative...Do you see a big difference between the skills, experiences, and tools you had when you graduated from Eastman School of Music and those of today's jazz school grads?

Mike Boone:

To answer your question, the musicians back in the day where more versatile. They didn't have "walls" separating different music genres. [When I graduated from college] you played everything, and tried to play it well.

NS:

Can you talk a little about your early education in music? What first inspired you to first pick up the bass? Who were your first teachers?

MB:

I was originally a pianist. When I got to the High School of Music and Art in New York City, if you played piano or sang, the school required that you take up a secondary instrument. When I got to sign-up class, I saw that all the girls had picked the cello, and all the boys had picked the bass. I think it was peer pressure (on my part) that made me choose the bass. I was only playing "classical" music: my goal was to be the first Black bassist in the N.Y. Philharmonic, thus being a "credit to my race".

I listened to a little jazz while in high school. My upbringing was Seventh-Day Adventist. At that time, we weren't allowed to listen to ANY secular music; only church hymns. Classical music was okay to listen to: my step-father had an extensive collection of albums, and sheet music. He was trying to teach himself to play the piano. I didn't start playing jazz, or anything else [beside classical music] until I got to Eastman.

NS:
So you listened to a little jazz in high school. When you were at Eastman, was it your own desire to pick up jazz, or did someone encourage you?

MB:
Both, I guess. A pianist named Greg Turner had a lot of records; we would listen all night to different things. I should add that, at the same time, I was hanging around some of the "bad boys" at Eastman. ha ha. These guys would smoke pot, and listen to heavy metal music. Even though they were classical players, or so I thought.

Kent Jordan, a flutist from New Orleans, came to school during my junior year. He would practice all the time. He would also go around telling everyone that 1) jazz was black music, 2) New Orleans was going to take over jazz in the coming years (this was 1976), 3) there was family of musicians, including a tennage trumpet player who could play classical and jazz music. We thought he was crazy, but as it turned out, he was right!

NS:
So Kent Jordan prophesied the coming of the Marsalis brothers? Wow.

I want to come back to something I'm likely going to revisit again and again (cause that's why I'm doing this)-you said musicians back in the day were more versatile, and hinted that people were thrown into situations where they had to learn a lot of different stuff on the fly. What were some of those early experiences that helped you grow?

MB:
Actually, I left school after my junior year to go on the road with Ben [Vereen], then came back to Eastman to finish up my studies. I have a Bachelor's degree in Applied Music from Eastman, although I couldn't tell you where that degree is today hahaha...

I picked up an electric bass for the first time my freshman year. I literally had to place the bass on the bed and try to figure out the fingerboard. It took a couple of months for me to get the hang of it. I started playing in a top 40 band in my junior year. We played straight- ahead and commercial jazz, R&B, funk, quasi-Latin stuff, as well as some of the vocal hits that were out. We worked on average 4 to 6 nights a week. I learned a lot on that gig, and gained an appreciation for all kinds of music.

When I went out with Ben, we played with orchestras, and pit bands. My second gig with Ben was with the Boston Pops, under the direction of the great Arthur Fiedler. I also did some session work in Los Angeles on some TV specials with Ben.

NS:
How long after hitting with Ben did you play with Buddy Rich?
What did that experience teach you?

MB:
Ben actually fired me in 1981, I believe. We were trying to get a raise. We got it, and then he fired us two weeks later! ha ha.

I got called to join Buddy's band in March of 1982. At my "audition", on a gig Buddy had in New Haven, CT, I literally read sight-read the second set. I learned a lot about playing time from Buddy, and at any volume. With intensity.

NS:
And this was on electric, right?

MB:
Yeah, with Ben, and Buddy, it was on electric bass. I was getting good at playing traditional Jazz on electric bass. I could actually SWING on that instrument.

NS:
So you get on the audition with Buddy, and as you say, sight-read the second set. Did your classical training come into play? There's no pressure like orchestra playing...

MB:
When I was at Eastman, I was in several ensembles, as well as one of the 4 big bands we had. So, I had some experience with reading charts.I used to memorize the classical stuff, anyway. That way, I figured, I could pay more attention to the conductor.

NS:
You mentioned dreaming in high school of joining the New York Phil. By the time you were touring with Buddy it seems like that interest had waned. What happened to change your mind?

MB:
I soon realized that in all this other music I was playing, there was more freedom. Sure, I was holding down the bottom, but I had way more options. And, with playing the electric, as well as acoustic, the possibilities seemed endless.

NS:
So right out of college you're playing electric with Buddy Rich. Fast forward to '92, and you're doing primarily gigs on upright. (I've heard you say you were "coerced" into buying your first upright.) What changed to cause you to adopt the upright after so many years on electric?

MB:
Well, let's rewind back to the 1980s. With the coming of the "Wynton" regime, the electric bass was outlawed from jazz, and the acoustic bass was unplugged. After my second stint with Buddy, in 1985, I settled in Philly, and started working some. However, the primo gigs in town went to the upright players. After 3 or 4 guys made the conversion, I took the plunge. Bought a plywood bass, struggled through the first five months just to get the strength to get through a set, and then an entire gig.

NS:
Okay - good opportunity to inject some politics: I remember [from an earlier, off-the-record discussion] you saying the "classicalization" of jazz began before Wynton. Do you think a backlash against electric music was just in the air in the '80s? Were the audiences just waiting for someone to come around and take it back to the old days?

MB:
First of all, this is just MY opinion. And, maybe, it was those around Wynton that influenced his views and rhetoric. Yes, someone didn't like the direction jazz was going. Personally, I think some top brass had a beef with Miles - after all, Miles left acoustic jazz music in favor on a more inclusive kind of music. I also think Miles was slowly but surely getting back to his blues roots; that's why he needed the guitars.

Also, at that time, jazz really wasn't thought to be on the same level as "classical" music. Classical was commonly referred to as "legit" music. So, the implication that Jazz was not. I guess calling Jazz "America's classical music" "legitimized" the art form. (Funny, we already had African-American "classical" composers like William Grant Still, Coleridge Taylor, James Reese Europe, and others.)

Wynton's "in" was that he could play European classical music. In fact, he had already, as a teenager, practically mastered that idiom. I don't, however, think he was the best jazz trumpeter at the time, but it didn't matter. Eventually, he did grow into the jazz player he is today, but back then, I don't know.

NS:
I see. And the end result was your need to play upright to continue to get gigs. You practiced madly to transition to upright, bought a plywood bass and "took the plunge." What was your first major gig on upright?

MB:
Darryl Hall, who at the time, was a fine electric player made the switch. Then Lee Smith and Steve Beskrone started playing upright. I knew it was just a matter of time. It seemed that Arthur Harper didn't want me to sit in. It took about a year before he let me on the bandstand with my electric. When I was done, he whispered, "Good, now do it on acoustic".

I should also add that early on I played a lot with the great Trudy Pitts. We did this gig in Wilmington with singer- guitarist Judith Kay. I didn't drive at the time, so she would pick me up. I learned so much from her: in the car, on the bandstand, at her house, etc. Her husband, the notorious Mr. "C", played drums with Trudy. He would tease me, and Lee about playing what he called a"f-----t" bass. I guess we both got tired of hearing that!

NS:
Small world. I was actually in grad school with Darryl Hall - he was sort of the "star" of the class, or one of them. A lot of people were going back to get their degrees - I guess so they could make more money teaching. I remember Darryl being of the "generous" guys in the class too. Darryl, Steve Kirby and John Benitez were like mentors to the younger guys in the class - always generous, always encouraging.

MB:
Well, Darryl, like so many of us in Philly, had a slew of mentors who always encouraged us. The Jazz community was equally involved in the nurturing that took place. At this juncture, I should mention people like saxophonists [Anthony H.] "Tony" Williams and Bootsie Barnes. Those guys mentored so, so many of us, and they still do.

This was in the Mt. Airy section of Philly. We had just moved into that neighborhood. There were two clubs within walking distance of my house. Slim Cooper's Lounge on Stenton Ave, and Carter's on the corner of Stenton and Washington Lane. Tony played at Slim's. Tony's group and fans later moved over to L G's Blue Note, just a half mile up the road on Washington Lane. Carter's is where I first heard Joey DeFrancseco, Bootsie Barnes, and Jeff Lee Johnson playing bass. (He's primarily a guitarist.) I remember one night where Bootsie lectured his band for the entire break for messing up a tune.

Tony Williams' band was he first group I heard after moving into town. (This was after my second stint with Buddy, which ended March of 1986.) He had Eddie Green on piano, Tyrone Brown on bass, and Al Jackson on drums. I had heard of Eddie and Tyrone from recordings with Pat Martino: I was aware of the group they were in called Catalyst, which also had Odean Pope on sax, and the late Sherman Ferguson on drums.

Also, as long as we're talking about mentors, I have to mention pianists Gerald Price, Eddie Green, Don Wilson, Jimmy Gaskins, bassists Tyrone Brown, Bob Blackwell, Benny Nelson, Stan Wilson, Don's brother on tenor sax.

NS:
Most recently, you've been featured in the documentary Philly Jazz. You're on the board of directors for a foundation called Jazz Bridge, that discreetly helps jazz musicians through tough times. You've been playing regularly with Byron Landham, John Swanna, Sid Simmons, Orrin Evans - I heard you on Sean Jones' excellent CD Kaleisodcope along with drummer Obed Calvaire. What haven't you been doing in the last ten years?

MB:
What have I been doing the last 10 years? Trying to stay out of trouble haha. I've also been teaching at Temple University for the last 5 years. I really enjoy it. And, basically freelancing in the area, doing various jam sessions and original music gigs. I work with Marlon Simon's Latin jazz group on occasion. I'm on his latest record, along with Boris Koslov.



NS:
That brings up an interesting point - in our prior discussion you had mentioned seeing the local Philly scene decline beginning as early as '79, but from what you say (and what I know about the cats you still play with) it sounds like at least a part of that scene is still going strong. How does today's scene compare to when you first moved there in '82?

MB:
I mean, there are fewer places to play, but that's everywhere, I'd imagine. I feel the level of musicianship has gone up, due to the Jazz programs at Temple and the U of the Arts. Combining that with the few clubs that offer music, I am seeing a new generation of players.

NS:
That seems to contrast with the opinions of some other musicians who think there's less talent nowadays...

MB:
The downside to that is there aren't as many seasoned players and fans as there seemed to be back in the day. Many of those folks have passed on. Those who are still around are trying to pass on what we've learned. (And we are still learning.)

NS:
I can see what you're saying about the change in "scenery". Sometimes I feel like there are more dedicated musicians than ever, but it's as if somebody has drained all the money out of the system - lots of gigs but many fewer paying gigs. Does that ring true to you?

MB:
Yeah, and the club owners know this, and use it to get more music, while paying less, or NO bread. WE musicians have to get creative. We also need to collaborate with each other and other like-minded folks. (We do something like that on Sunday evening in the Germantown section of Philly, and a jam session down in Old City Philly...on Wednesday nights, featuring Byron Landham on drums.)

NS:
(I've heard Byron. He's a bad dude.) I agree completely with what you said about needing to consolidate our resources within the scene, and that's one reason I'm trying to "push back" against what I see as some of the misunderstandings between young players and the previous generation.

MB:
It seems to me that some of the younger players don't feel the need to reach back. It's almost as if think what they've learned in school is the end-all. And, maybe, some of the older players need to engage the younger players as well. Find out about harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic devices, and incorporate them into what you already know. Also, this is the computer generation. (I am just now dealing with the computer.) Today's musicians are "cyber-ready", if you will. We who aren't computer savvy can learn form the younger guys, and girls.

NS:
More and more, it seems like some parts of the jazz scene can exist wholly apart from the tradition. Part of that "computer generation" is that people can create their own CDs, their own fan base, so they don't rely on record labels or word-of-mouth so much to get a reputation. This is especially true in New York. It can have great results sometimes - allowing really great musicians to get out there without having to go through a label. For better and worse it also allows more and more different kinds of music united under the label "jazz" - no gatekeepers to "police" the genre. (No jazz "cops".)

Some older musicians I've talked to have postulated that the audience members who grew up with the traditional idiom are turned off by what they see as declining standards of "swing" in some of the popular "jazz" today's young musicians are playing. (I would submit that a great deal of the new music is fantastic and the artists genuinely humble and creative, but that some of it has been easy to caricature.) Some of the younger artists - like Orrin Evans - who are plugged into the tradition, are really expensive to see if they're playing at the Vanguard or the Jazz Standard.

MB:
I like your "cop' comment. Orrin and Rodney Green used to accuse me of "policing" the beat whenever we played together; ask him about that haha.

All the academia has pushed the traditional audience out the door. As far as people doing their own CDs, I've always felt that a CD was basically a business card. A means to an end. Of course, it's your music, your passion, and u may have put a lot of time, effort, and MONEY into it. But, it's merely a documentation of where u were at that time. Hopefully, we grow and evolve, and we don't keep putting out the same stuff.

NS:
Hahaha CDs were a point of contention in a piece I wrote about Branford Marsalis. Some people were saying "don't put out a CD until you can play." I think that rubs youngsters the wrong way because we see CDs as just what you said: a business card. There's this catch 22 where we can't go on the Jazz Messengers to learn to play, so we have to create our own performances and we can't do that without a CD. At the same time you do have to be humble and learn the music - if you haven't done your homework your CD isn't going to sell anyway...

MB:
I'd like to ask Branford if he thought he mastered jazz before he put out his first CD.

It is a catch 22. But you have to seek out those older people, to get what was given them by their predesessors. That is the only way, in my opinion, that these younger guys wil gain a real sense of authenticity in the feeling of their playing. A feeling that rings true to those who really know this music.

NS:
There's a real precarious balance - clearly there's some music being made today that's just BS - most of it not by jazz musicians. But some people aren't interested in learning the tradition - they're only interested in playing "guitar hero". But there's a distinction between that and people who are really interested in learning but still have to amass knowledge and experience. I guess I worry the whole generation is being painted as lazy and self-aggrandizing.

MB:
It's really your own personal odyssey. My philosophy is this: let me reach back, as far as I can, to those who are still here, while embracing those who are just starting out, and be aware of what is currently happening in music. I should mention Orrin Evans's time at the Blue Moon club that flourished during the mid 1990s. A lot of younger guys worked their stuff out there. I was probably the oldest regular there, 'cause I wanted to be on top of this newer approach from the young cats. I guess I was a stabilizing factor, as well, so they let me hang. It was a good time for the music.

NS:
Mike Boone, it's been a pleasure speaking with you and hearing your thoughts. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

MB:
You are going to be old one day, lord willing. So, it is important to have the right info so you can pass it on. That's the oral, or aural aspect of this music that needs to survive.

Moral Hazard and the Public Option

Today Glenn Greenwald pans progressives for "falling in line" with Rahm Emanuel on a Health Care bill without a public option.

Emanuel's assumption [was] that there was absolutely no reason to accommodate
progressive objections to the health care bill because progressives (despite
their threats) would automatically fall into line and support whatever the White
House wanted, even if their demands were ignored. Is there really any doubt that
Emanuel was right about this point?

Dennis Kucinich, who yesterday came out publicly in support of the Senate bill - a striking reversal from his long-held pledge to oppose any bill without a robust public option- was the probably the proverbial "last straw". If Kucinich, one of the most outspoken Liberals (and, in my opinion one of the few ideologically consistent members) in congress, is falling into line, opposition from the Left is essentially dead. Sure enough, poll numbers of Liberals in support of the bill have ticked up.

The idea behind Moral Hazard is that as soon as people learn there’s no negative consequence for a behavior they’ll do it like it’s going out of style. Great recent example: the financial crisis.
Before we beat up on Dennis too much, let's remember why we had Liberal opposition in the first place. It's something I feel like I deal with everyday at my office: a little thing called Moral Hazzard. The idea behind Moral Hazard is that as soon as people learn there's no negative consequence for a behavior they'll do it like it's going out of style. Great recent example: the financial crisis. Banks take dangerous risks, they lose money, the government bails them out. Result: ding ding the risk taking continues unabated, even increases!

What does moral hazard have to do with Liberal opposition to a weak health care bill? Plenty, if people are thinking strategically. Liberals threaten to oppose the bill if it doesn't include a public option or medicare buy-in. Rahm Emanuel assumes they're bluffing, that they'll just fall in line and deep throat whatever he feeds them. Now that just such a bill is set to pass, Liberals must oppose it! (Or so the thinking goes.) Otherwise Emanuel and triangulating administration strategists will get the idea that Liberal threats aren't worth a damn. And hence you've created a Moral Hazard, incentivizing the continued bitch-slapping of Liberals.

There's just one thing we should remember - these strategies are a means to an end: that end being passing strong health care reform and strengthening the progressive agenda long-term. With respect to the bill itself, we've probably gotten as good a bill as we're going to get. Any positive results Liberal pressure was going to produce with the present bill, it's already produced. Opposing the bill from the Left now might make sense if, as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi suggests, everyone will pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and promptly start again - with the lessons from this defeat in mind - to make a stronger bill. But what is the likelihood of things going down that way? Not high, if you're a student of history. Nope - if this bill doesn't pass it will be years before Democrats will have the moxie to try again, and it might well be even worse.

It's this bill or no bill.

As to the other part of the argument - that "centrists" will have greater incentive to ignore Liberals' demands in the future if this bill passes - that may be true, but remember the second goal is strengthening the progressive agenda. Does anyone really thing the progressive agenda will be strengthened in any meaningful way if health reform fails?
Hate to say it but this is the end game. Build on the passage of the bill, make it stronger, implement its major reforms sooner. Then elect some people with actual balls in the next primaries. But for now, this is what we're stuck with.

What if Health Care Reform were really Socialist? - how great would THAT be

So Health Care has passed.

And Liberals are getting ready to eat it for the next nine months. To put yourself in our particular frame of mind, imagine you're in a castle (c'mon indulge me). You look outside and you've got William Wallace' screaming hordes of angry Scots amassing outside the gates. Now imagine your own soldiers are over 65, incontinent, and don't particularly give a @#$%.

Finally, imagine you're just house-sitting the castle for your evil uncle who never really did @#$& for you anyway.

We know the bill sucks (though it's "still a vast improvement over the status quo" - quotes aren't because I don't believe it but because it's now kneejerk, drummed into me over months and months).

• State Exchanges!!?! No. State exchanges with opt out. (It's truly perverse, because Republicans argued for competition across state lines, but made it impossible to include in the bill.)
• Obviously, no public option, no medicare expansion. (While it's true the PO wasn't the "be all and end all" of the bill, it was a powerfully symbollic to Liberals, as one of the few elements not written by and for the corporations.)

The whole thing's a Rube Goldberg contraption, assembled at the behest of the lobbies to avoid offending anyone. (Just watch the comically well-meaning reporters at PBS try to sus it out.) And this is what we're being asked to defend. And this is what's being decried as tyranny, Frank Luntz-ified into a "government takeover."

Imagine, just for a moment, what we could have done with an actual government takeover.

Medicare for all? I'm picturing a parallel universe where Liberals didn't run from the Luntz phrase "government takeover" but embraced it, using the phrase as often as possible to talk about about all the benefits of simplicity, cost savings, portability allowing more dynamism in the economy, the moral imperitives and all the rest. What if politicians (beside Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich and Anthony Weiner) would stand up and invert Reagan's mantra: "government doesn't have to be the problem - it can be the solution." God what if we had actual socialists counterbalancing the far right?

What could possibly go wrong?

Would people be oiling up their guns? Would people be throwing bricks through windows? Would Sarah Palin be using none-too-subtle allusions to gun violence in her tweets?

The same mixture of sensible philosophic objectors, militia members, rank-and-file neocons and cynical media stars would be lined up saying exactly the same things (because what else could they say?), and the average people like you and me could pick a position in the true center, deciding which forms of government involvement we wanted (health care) and which we didn't (warrantless surveilance, costly overseas occupations of countries not posing an immediate threat, "too big to fail" corporate welfare).

What's stopping Democrats from adopting such a "radical" stance? Obviously not the polls-

• The public option has consistently polled above 50 percent, whereas the Senate Bill polls at something like 35 percent.
• According to a recent CBS News poll 54% of respondents believe the Senate Bill will not effectively cover Americans, and pluralities believe it will not effectively control costs or regulate the insurance industry. If, however, you add up the respondents feeling the bill is adequate and those feeling it doesn't go far enough, the equation changes: 54 - 39 covering Americans, 45 - 39 for controlling costs. Across the board, only minorities believe the bill goes too far.

As a Democrat, would you not want a majority on your side? Why would you decide to pass an unpopular bill that could easily be made extremely popular and then run on that in 2010? Do you have any idea how many Liberals would mobilize to reelect to you if you showed even the most cursory interest in pleasing anyone beside Signa?

As a bookend, I received another email from Organizing for America this morning - a champagne-lubricated victory party for New York area supporters. It was the first thing in the morning, and I strained to see the text through blurry eyes.

This Thursday, March 25th, OFA supporters will be gathering in Manhattan to celebrate the historic passage of health care reform -- and our role in making it happen. We'll get together with OFA staff and volunteers to talk about how far we've come and what we've accomplished together.

No offense guys but I think I'll sit this one out.

I've been privy to a couple of fantastic "controversies" in the last several months - both sparked by an established player "dishing" about up-and-comers.

Here is the first - it's a couple of years old, and has "made the rounds" already:

For those not able to view this (such as people reading this at work or on mobile devices), this is former Young Lion (and now Middle Aged Lion?) Branford Marsalis talking about his students. I've transcribed it (abridged) below-

"What I've learned from my students is that students today are completely full of shit. The only thing they're really interested in is you telling them how right they are and how good they are. The idea of what you are is more important than you actually being that. All they want to hear is how good they are and how talented they are and...most of them aren't really willing to work to the degree to live up to that."

Branford has already taken his fair share of flack for this statement so I won't belabor it.

A well established drummer who has played with Joshua Redman for the last two decades (as well as Joe Lovano, Dianne Reaves and a who's who of major-label jazz stars) posted a similar, though more focussed message the other day. I'll paraphrase:

"Let's bring the music back where it belongs. If you can't play don't put out a record. It's that simple...When Betty Carter, Ray Brown and Art Blakey were here we had a higher standard [but now some people don't] take pride in their music."

As I've commented earlier there is a certain spirit in which both comments ring true. (Though Branford's is a little harder to defend because he strays into paranoia - you'll see if you watch the clip.) Even twenty years ago there were "gatekeepers." Branford himself came up through Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and the other commenter through both Betty Carter's and Ray Brown's bands. Until about 2001 there was a "market" - albeit a limited one - for graduates of these leaders' bands, and with Carter, Blakey or Brown on the resume you could be assured the artists had a pedigree, and had been "vetted."

Now, for better or worse, those "kingmakers" are gone. The "jazz" rosters of the major labels have dwindled to a handful of aging stars (who - don't get me wrong - are still innovating and killing it, but the labels are slow to add "new" artists). Many of the current generation's most talented - wait I don't like that word - accomplished artists have realized that if the labels aren't promoting new artists they can get a better deal by releasing things on their own labels. And the proliferation of small recording studios and online sales potential of iTunes and CD Baby have made it possible for anyone with the budget to put out a record.

SO - no more gatekeepers.

At a certain level it must get annoying if you're Branford, or my unnamed "colleague" (a term that overstates my importance in the relationship by orders of magnitude) - you have people approaching you all the time for lessons and you're bound to notice something's changed. Everybody has a CD now, and a website, and a press kit, and a mailing list, and a "fan" site. And everyone's using business language - "networking", "contacts". So you've got a crop of little self-starting entrepreneurs running around releasing records and there's just one problem - a great many can't play. Somebody's got a record and a website and gigs, and he pulls his horn out, and he can't play a blues.

That's gotta get you thinking some dark thoughts. The temptation to "vent" must have been overwhelming, and who could resist using a platform of influence to inveigh against what you see as the "dumbing down" of the music? Surely the jazz world is in need of some arbiter of artistic validity, some influential figure who will say, "the buck stops here." There's just one problem - "artistic validity" may be harder to pin down than we think.

In the real world of jazz/music/art education teachers often have to make judgment calls about their students' potential very early in those students' development. (And while when I used to teach I dealt primarily with people who never intended to make a career out of music, influential figures teach students who - by and large - do.) Is there a risk that by setting the bar "too high", (or defining competence too narrowly) people with the potential to become great artists are getting "turned off" before they can develop?

I'll come back to that - first let me talk a bit about my own experience in the education system. The first day of Jazz History in grad school, a well known historian was adminstering a placement test, and called on a volunteer, asking him, "how many Louis Armstrong records do you own?" The poor soul, who had doubtless listened to a great deal of Satchmo's near ubiquitous music but never spent money to acquire any records, sat mute while the professor proceeded to lambaste him - and by extension all of us - for not knowing our fundamentals. By contrast in undergrad I took Jazz History from an equally distinguished teacher - a well known composer and close associate with Gunther Schuller and classmate/bandmate of John Medeski. He took a far less confrontational approach to the subject, approaching Duke Ellington as if no one had heard of him, treating every detail of his biography as revelatory.

Similarly I've had drum teachers who told me not to talk to them about polyrhythms until I had "mastered" Jo Jones and Warren Dodds (as if such a thing were possible, or even desirable), and those who approached them - and Roy Haynes, Jack Dejohnette and Tony Williams - with youthful enthusiasm (assuming, correctly, that the greats didn't need anyone else to "sell" them). The latter bunch were no less reverent of the early greats - they just felt it wasn't THEIR role to insist that I master them FIRST, to the exclusion of all else. The ironic thing is all these guys absolutely liked the same music, played similarly - indeed many played TOGETHER - and ultimately held the same goal as teachers: to help their students achieve the highest level of artistry possible.

In teaching you're always trying to balance encouragement with challenge - to give the student enough encouragement so he/she doesn't give up, all the while offering enough stinging reality to motivate him/her to keep climbing. Jazz offers a unique challenge, as a highly technical improvisational music - its practitioners, by definition, must have BOTH confidence and humility in spades. It's been my experience, however, that most teachers are either confidence builders or gatekeepers, and rarely both.

Which brings us back to the central question: is there a role for "gatekeeping" as we teach jazz? The goal - that an influential teacher can take a meandering, slightly lazy student and "forge" him/her into a competent artist - is a laudable one, and anecdotes of such transformations abound. Just pick up a copy of Arthur Taylor's fantastic piece of jazz stenography, "Notes and Tones", to see what I mean - artists from Philly Joe to Abbey Lincoln to Miles all talk about finding that one great teacher who kicked their ass and whooped them into shape. We have ample testimonial from successful artists who developed and thrived under the watchful guidance of a "no bullshit" teacher who emphasized sequential learning.

But what if sequential learning doesn't work equally well for everyone? Developmental psychologists have long agreed that learning styles are highly varied and highly individual. By forcing everyone to follow a linear path of development (first master this, then this, don't try playing those Dolphy licks until you can play like Lester Young) do we ignore someone with the potential for great talent who might develop in a more associative way - indeed in the way many of us discover and gain aptitude for things we're not being "graded on", like wine? (Example of this would be, you like Mark Turner [sax player in this clip and composer of the tune]? Cool, transcribe him, but check out these Warne Marsh records [that's Warne on the tenor sax - the larger of the two horns]. You like Brecker? Cool, but he got that lick from Trane - check out this record...) Are there not artists just as talented who learned less formally?

(No less relevant is this question: do Philly Joe, Miles, Abby, Tony Williams, and the subjects of Art Taylor's interviews REALLY have only their TEACHERS to thank? Were these not people of both exceptional intrinsic motivation - who would have succeeded in gleaning the knowledge necessary to ply their craft from any source available, whether or not that source was a taskmaster - and unusual opportunities (the time and place they came up, the existence of "the street", the musical families many were born into with the notable exceptions of Coltrane and Miles)? Finally, how can we be sure they're telling the truth? Miles, Coltrane, and Bird may have had great teachers at points in their lives, but they also succeeded because of their ability to IGNORE people telling them they were "doing it wrong" and to strike fearlessly out on their own in pursuit of the "next step.")

More broadly, what if someone will NEVER master Bird, but will nonetheless become a powerful and convincing player of the alto saxophone? Everyone agrees in hindsight on the genius of Ornette Coleman but many were FAR from convinced in the early '60s. What if some teacher had so discouraged Ornette that he hung up the horn for good. Similarly, what if Ringo Starr had taken a lesson with Jim Chapin and been so discouraged he gave up the drums? Everyone now agrees Ringo exerted tremendous influence on drumming and on music, but his potential to do that was probably not evident to everyone who met him in 1950.

It is this danger that should give us the greatest pause - for while teachers have tremendous power to motivate, inspire and encourage, they also have more power than they realize to DIScourage, to turn off, to dishearten.

Is the potential benefit to the music from "gatekeeping" great enough to justify "turning off" at a time when jazz so desperately needs NEW voices and FRESH perspectives? If even one more late-bloomer makes his/her way through music or art school and proceeds to make creative, refreshing, deep art, is it not worth the thousands upon thousands of lackluster records (which probably won't sell very well anyway) made by artists who will never understand the degree of hard work necessary to achieve greatness?

This question I'll leave to the reader.

Walking With Giants - demystifying a Kendrick Scott solo

So I've issued this little challenge to myself. Explain a piece of modern jazz drumming in a historical context to a non-musician without illiciting yawns.
You see, my piece last week mishmashing jazz, teaching music, and "kids these days" into one mess of an article, got me thinking. I'll write more on teaching and "kids these days" soon, but at present I'm thinking about music and influences. In college I saw a brilliant lecture about one of Mozart's piano pieces - with the assistance of a "live" pianist onstage - broken down for the "lay" listener, and it dawned on me how much understanding art can heighten appreciation.


So here goes-

Check this out:



That's Kendrick Scott, playing a drum solo with Terence Blanchard's band on pianist Aaron Parks' tune Harvesting Dance.

It's hard for me to picture exactly what a non-musician would be thinking about this, but if you were witnessing it live, the spectacle and intensitiy would probably overcome everything else and you would be moved to applaud, as this audience did. (Hah-another "blog to come" on making esoteric music universally palatable;) On this video, however, it's a little harder to follow. The ensemble is obviously playing something around him, and he's "freaking out" on the drums in acrobatic but esoteric ways. But without the feeling of "being there" or a basic understanding of what's going on, the watcher's attention may wander.

But I contend anyone can get closer to understanding what's going on in Kendrick's solo by appreciating a couple of simple elements and their lineage. To start with, what's going on musically, in the context of the composition and the band? It's probably hard to tell in the Kendrick clip, but I'd wager it's easier in this:




Many of us know Dave Brubeck's famous tune Take Five from radio, movie soundtracks and jazz compilations, even if we never bought a Brubeck record. (Fewer know that Joe Morello, the drummer pictured here, was an icon and pioneer who taught a generation of students.) Because the tune is familiar and catchy, I'll wager the solo held your attention for longer. But musically, what's going on in the Brubeck clip is exactly the same thing as what's going on in the Kendrick clip. It's the middle of the song, and the band is playing a repeating figure while the drummer improvises. The drummer finishes the solo, and the band plays the melody again.

Our familiarity with Take Five helps us put the drum solo in context. Let's take two minutes and get more familiar with Aaron Parks' fantastic tune, Harvesting Dance.



If you've made it to the two minute mark you've heard the whole melody.

Now skip to six minutes. You hear the last half of that same melody, then the drum solo begins. This is the part of the tune the Kendrick clip depicts. (I should add that Eric Harland is the drummer on this recording.)(If you like the tune, pick up a copy of Aaron's new CD, Invisible Cinema.)

Putting Kendrick Scott's drum solo in the context of the song and the band gets us halfway, but what's going on behind the drums? To understand that we have to address, briefly, three elements: "drumistic" idioms ("rudiments", in the vernacular), theme and variation, and building intensity within a long solo.

To start with, rudiments. A very brief history: drum vocabulary originated in part from the military, where drums provided a beat to march to.



New Orleans musicians in the early part of the century combined this traditional drum style with spiritual-derived blues tunes for their "second line" funerary marches (still popular today), like this one:




The tune and the vibe are very different from the fife and drum band, but the snare drummers aren't playing all that differently - they've just added "swing" to their traditional military idioms. But the drums are a little hard to hear in the above video. Below, drummer Herlin Riley gives a good demonstration of this historic style:





But how do you get to Kendrick Scott from New Orleans? Actually it's not a far leap at all. Some of the vocabulary Kendrick plays comes directly from the New Orleans idiom. In the first minute of the solo Kendrick is playing "buzz rolls" (pressing the sticks into the drum to create a sustained, "buzz" sound) exactly the way Herlin Riley does in the video above. But there's nearly a century worth of vocabulary to tap into, and we'll look right now at some of that.

Below is Gene Krupa, who I wager most readers have heard on Benny Goodman's recordings if they haven't heard of him by name. He was definitely not the first drummer to take "solos" - Warren Dodds, Sid Catlett, and many before Mr. Krupa were arguably more virtuostic. (Mr. Krupa, like Mr. Goodman, coopted an African American idiom and translated it to a white audience - which is not to impugn Krupa's or Benny Goodman's musicality or their genius one bit, but simply to state the verifyable fact that their race played a role in their record sales and "mainstream" acceptance.) But Gene Krupa captured the spotlight like no drummer before, with his solos.



The quality is bad, but I chose this clip for its similarity to the Herlin Riley New Orleans drumming. Sure, Krupa plays fast and loud, and "shows off", but listen to how he starts. The "swing" beat comes right out of the New Orleans "rudimental" drumming - he's just adding more notes and more variation.

Eventually, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Pappa Jo Jones and others added some sophistication to the idiom (taking it one step away from popular music in the process, but that's another blog;). Perhaps the best example of the "be bop" drum style comes from "Philly" Joe Jones (no relation to Pappa).



By now, you can probably trace the resemblance to the New Orleans drumming, and maybe even to the military fife and drum band. Drummers could spend days telling you the various ways that Jones and his peers innovated, but suffice it to say they took an older style and added textural variety by incorporating more different drum sounds.

This gets us a long way to understanding what Kendrick is doing. When you see the "flurries of activity" and things like changing the sounds by striking one stick against the other, it's all out of this tradition. But Kendrick's solo differs from Philly Joe's, Gene Krupa's and Joe Morello's in two important ways. The first is theme and variation: while the other drummers pictured so far begin a solo and throw thoughts at you more-or-less "stream of consciousness", like you might speak to someone on the phone, Kendrick is organizing his ideas a different way, a way tipified by Max Roach:



Max was a contemporary of Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gilespie and others in the Bebop movement that begain in the 1940s in the US. He beat Philly Joe Jones to the New York scene by a few years.

Max is using "theme and variation" to organize his thoughts, and it's one of the reasons he was able to do "drum only" concerts like this one in his later years. Instead of playing esoteric, drumistic things, he plays "melodies" and phrases that sound like a blues song on the radio, then repeats himself. (The "tune" is Big Sid, Max's homage to precursor Sid Catlett.) The simplicity of Max's playing (in this example at least) makes it easy to follow, and the "fun" is in listening to the variations he throws in - "where will he go next?"

Kendrick employs the same strategy, albeit more subtlely.

Finally, Kendrick doesn't simply hit you gangbusters from the first bar, but takes fully three minutes to "build" his solo. This way of playing was for years more practical on live performances than recordings (because of the time limitations of the early records). One of the greatest at "building" a solo was Count Basie drummer Sonny Payne:



This is Old Man River, played ludicrously fast. (If you're familiar with the tune, you may be able to hear bits of in Sonny's solo - he's definitely "quoting" from the melody.) Sonny doesn't "start slow" the way Kendrick does, but at about 1:40 he drops the volume to an almost inaudible level and proceeds to build to a satisfying climax.

Let's look at Kendrick's solo again:



My guess is you'll hear a lot of those other drummers' vocabulary and approach. At the beginning, the buzz rolls from Herlin Riley and Sonny Payne. At about 0:35, some playful theme and variation like Max Roach. At 0:56, some great rudimental vocabulary straight out of Philly Joe (with some extensions you might expect from 45 years of drum evolution since then). At 1:45, the intensity builds, just like the end of Sonny Payne's solo. (Aaron Parks, the pianist/composer, is giving a "helping hand" by adding more notes to his truly sinister voicings.) Finally, at 2:42, the band comes back for the final melody just as in Joe Morello's Take Five solo.

To hear the complete studio recording of Harvesting Dance check out Terence Blanchard's 2005 record, Flow. (Harvesting Dance is the last track.)