Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

• New to Me: Geri Allen, Hancock/Shorter, Nonequal Bach

  Date: 2012.01.24 | Category: Thoughts | Response: 0

  Last year I inaugurated a feature where I talk about music which, while not necessarily hot off the presses, is still New to Me–since it’s been a while since the last installment, here are a few albums which have recently been turning my crank:

  Geri Allen — The Nurturer (1990) & Maroons (1992): I once got to go hear Geri Allen at the Village Vanguard after a friend who worked at an artist’s credit union discovered money for her which she’d forgotten about, and going to her show seemed like the best way to get in touch. She was off my radar for a while before a friend loaned me an album last year, which led to me digging up more. These two are  both fine early 90s efforts, with really interesting tunes and her own deeply personal blowing–and of special interest to trumpeters, great contributions from sidefolks like Wallace Roney and underappreciated legend Marcus Belgrave. (“Number Four,” an Allen/Belgrave duet on Maroons, is worth the price of admission itself.)

  Derek Adlam — Masterpieces for Clavichord by Bach (2005); Christophe Rousset — Bach: Italian Concerto; Partita in B minor etc. (1992): Since stumbling on to Johnny Reinhard’s “Microtonal Bach” show during WKCR’s annual Bach Festival while I was in college, I’ve been hooked on recordings of my favorite composer made on instruments in historical, non-equal-tempered tunings–even though I love Bach on piano, once you’ve heard how colorful and interesting baroque modulations can be in nonequal tuning, hearing the same pieces on an equal-tempered instrument can be like going from technicolor to black & white. Rousset’s rousing album features a strident harpsichord in the Werckmeister III tuning, and outstanding versions of several Bach staples, including one of my all-time favorites, the Chromatic Fantasia & Fugue in D minor (check it out here). Adlam’s disc features the much more subtle clavichord (made for quiet performances in small rooms) in a tuning called “Young 2,” and a program of lesser-known (to me) pieces. (Couldn’t find a video but here’s Adlam playing some William Byrd in nonequal tuning.) If you want to get a great intro to historical tuning and the kind of color effects I’m talking about, check out this page featuring the same baroque piece played in Meantone, Werckmeister and equal (modern) tunings.

  Herbie Hancock/Wayne Shorter — 1+1 (1997): It’s embarrassing, but I never got around to checking out this album until recently, when a friend put on the sublime “Meridianne/A Wood Sylph” at a listening party. (We had a great time imagining the Verve execs’ reaction in the studio–”Uh, are you sure you guys don’t feel like throwing in a version of ‘All Blues’ or something?”) With these giants, you know it would’ve been incredible even if they’d phoned it in, which they unquestionably did not. An outstanding reminder of the towering peaks still remaining to be ascended in this music. On the off chance that I’m not the last person in the world to recommend this record, I strongly suggest you pick it up.

• How Not to Become a Bitter White Jazz Musician

  Date: 2011.12.02 | Category: Thoughts | Response: 55

  By now you’re aware that there was another jazz blogo-Twitter-Facebook-sphere conflagration this week (they seem to crop up every few months or so like drug-resistant bacteria)–this one in response to a post by accomplished trumpeter and opinionator Nicholas Payton (who is always a good read, whether you agree with him or not). The post that set it off, “Why Jazz Isn’t Cool Anymore,” is a collection of thoughts covering Payton’s problems with “jazz” as a word and marketing concept and its place in the history of racism in the music, plus a varety of other stuff including silence and whether it’s romantic to be poor (his take: no). It’s all interesting and debatable, but that’s not what prompted me to write today–my problem is the kinds of reactions these sorts of discussions tend to bring up from some white musicians and fans. (There’s that voice in my head telling me to close the laptop and walk away. No? Shit, here we go.)

  On the list of topics most white jazz musicians would rather not be talking about, I think issues of race in jazz fall right behind their parents’ sex lives or when the biopsy results are due back. It’s uncomfortable for all sorts of reasons, which is why most of us choose to avoid getting into it if at all possible. It tends to explode the happy illusion that the jazz scene is a harmonious colorblind family where musical achievement is the only metric that matters. If it is discussed, it’s usually among friends in a non-public setting where good faith can be assumed and people can accept some basic facts as givens:

  • that jazz is a music that came out of the African-American community and is a deep part of that culture’s historical identity;
  • that great respect is due to the Black masters who shaped it;
  • that those masters were on the receiving end of vicious racial animosity for much of the music’s history;
  • that white musicians unfairly profited from discrimination against black musicians by audiences and the music industry;* but
  • that white musicians also played a role in the development of the music; and
  • that America isn’t yet over these wounds, and people, especially musicians, ignore this to their own detriment.

  But on the internet, in public, things are very different. Anybody with a Twitter or Facebook account can instantly jump into the fray with thoughts ranging from well-thought-out arguments to idiotic name-calling–so after a brief honeymoon (ten minutes? 15?) of respectful disagreement with Payton, sure enough, out of the woodwork came (mostly white) people calling him a racist, accusing him of calling them thieves, etc. This is par for the course in American discourse (see here) but disappointing, since I like to think jazz musicians are a little more attuned to how loaded these issues can be.

  But as I said in one Facebook thread which I couldn’t stop myself from getting sucked into (after it followed the standard devolution from reasoned debate to incoherent jazz Fight Club), it’s unfortunately easy for white jazz players to fall into the trap of walking around in a haze of proactive defensiveness, ready to drop Bill Evans on anyone who brings up racism in the music’s past or present.

  But to those white players who feel themselves veering toward that defensiveness, I would say the following:

  • The fact is, you are occasionally going to run into people who think you probably shouldn’t be playing this music, or think white people are generally bad for jazz. Some of them may be your friends. Some of them may be your heroes. Some of them may be German tourists who think jazz can only be played in sunglasses. Some of them may know much less about the music than you do. This is just a fact of life and a natural result of the history covered above.
  • This is indeed a drag. Trust me, I get it. It’s a drag to spend your life learning to play a music, only to know there are people who think you’ll never be authentic because of who your parents are. But:
  • Compared to what the Black architects of this music went through over the first century of its existence, this is a pretty minor price to pay. No one is throwing you in jail. No one is making you walk in the back door or use a separate water fountain. There is no vast population of white jazz musicians being deprived of work by inferior Black jazz musicians. Being called a thief is a hell of a lot nicer than some of the names I’m sure those pioneers heard on a regular basis.
  • In case you’ve forgotten, being white is an advantage in just about every other area of your life, short of the cost of sunscreen. (In case you need a refresher: see here.)
  • This doesn’t mean you should never respond to a dumb argument or defend yourself, just try to have some perspective and be grateful that you live in a relatively peaceful country and can study music and (God forbid) occasionally get paid to play it.
  • But if it still bothers you and you really want to change peoples’ minds, take a cue from that Bill Evans guy you’re always mentioning and win them over by being a nice and respectful person and playing your ass off.

  —

  *To be clear, this usually wasn’t the musician’s fault! By all accounts Paul Whiteman was actually a pretty decent guy who cared about his musicians, and Chet Baker openly acknowledged that winning a trumpet poll while Clifford Brown was still alive was ridiculous (and I love Chet, but c’mon). But the fact that nobody calls Paul Whiteman the King of Jazz anymore, or thinks the ODJB was acutally “original” is a good sign that history is a better judge than short-term marketing hype.

  —

  … WHILE YOU’RE HERE, some other posts to check out:

  • Jazz Philanthropy & The Gig: A Thought Experiment
  • New York: Jazz Mecca, Economic Hell, Talent Sap?
  • Technique in Jazz: One Guy’s Take
  • Jazz According to G
  • Or you can check out my latest album here.

• Pop-pocalypse Now?

  Date: 2011.07.18 | Category: Thoughts | Response: 3

  The always-interesting Ronan Guilfoye has a great anti-pop music screed up today over at his site, Mostly Music. The gist:

  This music… this sticky treacly manufactured international pop goo, whose sticky effusions have polluted the entire planet, springs from no culture other than money. It represents only the international corporate business behemoth that has taken the name ‘music’ into its title, despite having no interest in the concept of what music really is. It is unprecedented in human musical history – a music without any culture. A music without any message. And ultimately a music without any true humanity.

  Tell us what you really think, Ronan!

  Seriously, though–although I have a great fondness for this kind of crotchetiness, and I don’t like most of the music he’s talking about either, I have three objections to this critique:

  • This stuff is immensely popular and important to millions of (mostly) young people and serves as the anthems of their generation the same way that the popular music of your generation or mine did for us. YES, it’s shoved down their throats by multimedia conglomerates, but the fact is that people have access to a whole world of music, and a great plurality if not majority of them are choosing to listen to this, because it resonates with them. To deny the music’s humanity is to deny theirs, I think. And I would say there are millions of fully human, vibrant, intelligent young people in the world who nonetheless have crappy taste in music. (If you disagree, read this guy’s blog for a while. He writes incredibly intelligently about what does not, to my untrained ears, seem to be especially intelligent music. But that makes me think twice about writing it off!)
  • I’m pretty sure the major purveyors of music, art, and literature throughout history have pretty much never cared about quality as much as they have about capital (at least since the end of the patronage system). Singling out today’s pablum for special condemnation smacks of end-times-ism.
  • In spite of the incredibly annoying production values of most of today’s top 40, there are still plenty of catchy tunes out there being written by actual human beings. It makes me angry sometimes, since they’re so annoying, but I defy you to not get something like this stuck in your head. (And it even has a repeating modulation! Suck it, Jerome Kern!)

  All that said, I really do think Auto-tune is going to ruin peoples’ ears for real singing, and I do think the globalization of pop is going to continue to weaken a lot of regional music (as globalization has in every other aspect of culture, as inexorable as that is).

  Thinking about all this did make me think of my dad, however, who likes to respond to any overheard pop, hiphop, etc. by saying, “they’ve finally come up with music for people who don’t like music.” This from a guy who listens to Schoenberg!

• Jazz According to G

  Date: 2011.06.09 | Category: Thoughts | Response: 1

  Ted Panken (who I used to listen to on WKCR all the time) has a great new blog, which has already featured some gems–among them, this classic interview with Kenny G, in which Mr. G advances the curious claim that Charlie Parker was nicknamed “Bird” because his reed squeaked. The jazz Twitterverse jumped on this with a vengeance, and has since been abuzz with hundreds of other surprising #kennygjazzfacts. Arcane jazz-nerdery meets humorous lists? I’m there!

  My contributions (so far) to the fact-fiesta:

  • They called Louis Armstrong “Pops” because he founded the Boston Pops, and ate Corn Pops, and had so many children.
  • They called the album “Kind of Blue” because Miles was suffering from hypothermia.
  • “Birdland” was actually named after the movie “The Birds” and Harold Land.
  • They call it the saxophone because the first one was actually made out of a phone.
  • “Take The A Train” was supposed to be either “Take The Train” or “Take A Train,” not both!
  • Few people know that “Songbird” was actually a reharmonization of “Ascension.”
  • Who knew that jazz would grow from its beginnings in David Lee Roth’s “Just a Gigolo” to become a worldwide phenomenon?
  • No family has done more for jazz than the Jones brothers–Elvin, Thad, Hank, Tom, James Earl, and Barnaby.
  • Coltrane called his tune “Giant Steps” in honor of Wilt Chamberlain’s feet.
  • Chick Webb was an inspiration to every chick with with webbed feet who dreamed of playing jazz.
  • Few people know that Herbie Hancock got his nickname because he Goes Bananas.
  • Jazz evolved in the late 1800s when rustic field hollers began to incorporate synth bass, DX-7s, and QuadraVerb.
  • WC Handy was such a big sports fan that he named his most famous composition after his favorite hockey team.
  • The word “jazz” was a common American slang term meaning “as exciting as basketball in Utah.
  • I used to think Charlie Parker was great, until I found out he was just reading all those solos out of the Omnibook.
  • Jelly Roll Morton changed his name because “Croissant Morton” sounded too fancy.
  • Coltrane took such long solos because he had lockjaw, which is how he got the nickname Eddie “Lockjaw” Coltrane.
  • King Oliver’s nickname came from his favorite movie, “Oliver!”
  • Joe Henderson wrote “Inner Urge” after waiting in an especially long line for the mens’ room.
  • Everyone knows Kenny G invented jazz, but few remember Wynton Marsalis invented classical music.

  More of my questionable attempts at internet humor can be found here.

  UPDATE: Some of my favorites from other folks:

  • Is that the “Jazz Masters Cemetery” up ahead? Good–pull-over. I gotta pee. (@AtmosTrio)
  • Tina Brooks is a huge influence on me, both as a saxophone player and as someone who constantly gets mistaken for a woman. (@keithflentge)
  • Trumpeter Booker Little was not only a librarian but a dwarf as well. His real name remains a mystery. (@peterhum)

  And I’m grateful to WBGO for giving a shout out to this list! (I’d be even more grateful if they’d give my CD a spin.)*

  *No really, why have I had more luck getting attention on the web by being funny than by playing jazz? Is the universe trying to tell me something?

• New to Me: Ambrose Akinmusire, Clare Fischer, Avishai Cohen

  Date: 2011.05.16 | Category: Thoughts | Response: 1

  Last winter, in lieu of a “Best of” year-end list, I wrote a “New to Me” Top 10–the idea being that these days we’re all introduced to music through a wide variety of sources including radio, blogs, YouTube, live shows, word of mouth, dudes shouting on street corners, etc., and albums which jump up on my radar these days are less likely to be “new releases” as such. “New to Me” means exactly that–an album may have been around for years or decades, but I’m sharing it because it’s new to me. I also promised to make this a regular series, which I’ve been less than diligent about. Until now!

  Here are a few artists and albums which have lately been getting a lot of play around my house, car, ears, subconscious. (Two of them are even literally new!)

  Ambrose Akinmusire – “When the Heart Emerges Glistening” (2011), “Prelude (to Cora)” (2008): Ambrose grew up around here and has been known to frequent the same jam sessions I go to when he’s in town, so it’s just bad luck I haven’t heard him live yet–but his recent media firestorm is well-deserved. I’d been looking forward to checking out “When the Heart” since his Blue Note deal was announced, and was even more interested after reading some interviews. A few things he said actually blew my mind a little–for example: “I can sound like the most articulate trumpet player… But at the other side, I want to be able to sound like a beginning trumpet player. I want to be able to sound like I can’t play. I’m thinking of that spectrum.” For a jazz musician, this is kind of a shocking statement–it shouldn’t be, since that whole unpolished, raw quality has been part of the music since its earliest days–but I think players devote so much (necessary) time and energy to becoming masters of technique (playing the “right notes,” having a clean sound and execution, etc.) that they don’t often give themselves permission to be messy and raw (and play some clams if necessary). I recently wrote that I really enjoyed David Smith’s playing due to the unapologetic “trumpety-ness” of it, and Ambrose really takes this ball and runs with it. Obviously he’s not the first player to combine that fondness for the messier side of the horn with solid chops (I think Dizzy, Don Cherry, Lester Bowie, Dave Douglas, and early Wynton are probably all in his artistic genealogy somewhere–he might like my hero Shake Keane too), but the adventurous unpredictability of his ideas is what really makes it stand out for me. I really enjoyed “Heart,” which is pretty evenly happening (although the production sometimes gets a little weird, like when overenthusiastic use of panning gives the impression Ambrose is flying around the studio on a wire)–so I also checked out “Cora,” which I think I might like even better, since it comes across as having even less studio-polish (despite a fair amount of synths) and the fearless blowing comes to the fore.

  Clare Fischer – “First Time Out” (1962), “Surging Ahead” (1963): Fischer first cropped up on my radar in college, when my arranging teacher Mike Mossman touted his big band charts. But I never really checked out his piano playing until recently, when I found a $5 LP of “First Time Out” after doing a gig at Bird & Beckett’s and was inspired to dig deeper. So I managed to track down a used copy of “Mosaic Select: The Pacific Jazz Trios,” which includes the complete tracks from “First Time,” “Surging,” and some unreleased odds and ends from Fischer’s early 60s trio featuring the young Gary Peacock, plus other great material from West Coast pianists Russ Freeman, Richard Twardzick, and Jimmy Rowles. Fischer comes across on these albums as a really interesting improviser, tons of chops (his octave lines alone should win over the bopheads), melodicism, with an arranger’s ear for harmony and plenty of daring. Highlights include “Free Too Long,” a brisk free-blowing tune (over steady time) which is an interesting comparison to Peacock’s (slightly) later work with Paul Bley, or Keith Jarrett’s early trio albums; a burning version of “Lennie’s Pennies” (Fischer was obviously working his way through Tristano’s language and finds interesting, personal things to extrapolate from it); plus straightahead smokers like “Without a Song” and intricate originals like “Strayhorn,” heard below:

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• New York: Jazz Mecca, Economic Hell, Talent Sap?

  Date: 2011.01.20 | Category: Thoughts | Response: 1

  Over at Mostly Music, bassist Ronan Guilfoyle has some really insightful thoughts about the joys and challenges of the New York jazz scene, its impact on players there, and the repercussions on the US jazz scene as a whole of having such an overwhelming percentage of the country’s best musicians in one place. Since I agree with pretty much all of it, I’m going to just present a big excerpt:

  On the one hand there’s an extraordinary concentration of great musicians in a very small area, making for a hothouse creative atmosphere and an abundance of players on every instrument who play on a very high level… On the minus side it has to be said there are just far too many musicians in New York for it to make any sense on an economic level. … The abundance and availability of musicians and the lack of places to play drives the price musicians can charge for NY gigs down to below subsistence levels. … A lot of the New York musicians I know work in (often menial) day jobs that have nothing to do with music, and the reality for them is that they’re not going to get out of that situation anytime soon.

  Been there, done that. It’s the biggest reason I left after 8 years–it was painful to be surrounded by so much creativity and yet be so burnt out by a demoralizing but necessary day job that I had very little time or energy left for the music. But that’s not the only problem:

  As a jazz scene New York reminds me of one of those huge edge of town malls that arrives in an area and sucks all the economic life out of the high streets of any town within 50 miles of it. Nearly the entire US scene is based there, and this ‘gotta go to New York’ mentality means that it’s almost impossible for a regional scene to hold on to its good players. They in turn all arrive in New York where they have to scuffle and jostle for financial crumbs. … Let’s imagine that say 30 players of every instrument were to leave NY tomorrow and go back to their home cities and expend their energy there and develop their own scenes there, how much healthier would both those regional scenes be and how much better economically would the New York scene be for giving the musicians there a little more economic room to breathe?

  I think this does happen to an extent–here in the Bay Area, for example, there are players coming and going from New York all the time, largely for the reasons he mentions above: going there to learn and test their mettle, coming back to have more time for music and feel like a human being again. But as much as I like it here, and know there are great players, how are we supposed to keep good musicians in town when all the clubs are closed and DJs have most of the gigs? Jam sessions are fun (here, I mean–New York, not so much) but they don’t pay, not even for the house band.

  I also think he has a point about a higher level of musicians creating a better scene–I firmly believe that having bad jazz played in public is bad for jazz (since any given performance a passerby witnesses is likely to be his only exposure to jazz that year, and if it’s bad, that person will be lost as a potential fan). Of course, you have to play bad jazz before you can play good jazz, and I wouldn’t suggest developing players not be out there working through their shit–just that if there isn’t plenty of good stuff to show people the music’s potential (because most of the best players have already left for NYC, for example), then locals won’t be inclined to go to jazz shows and the scene will wither.

  Anyway, lots of food for thought. Anyone agree/disagree? Ideas to rectify this other than (as Guilfoyle jokes) “forced repatriation”?

• New Years’ Update: Year-End Lists, So Long Coda

  Date: 2011.01.12 | Category: Press, Thoughts, Updates | Response: 1

  Hi folks, I’ve been MIA lately but it seemed like a good time to catch you up on music-related news–good, bad, and who knows.

  First the bad–you’ll notice the Quintet’s show scheduled for mid-January has been canceled, due to the unfortunate fact of the venue, Coda, following too many clubs to mention into nonexistence. This hits me, and the scene in general, particularly hard, as Coda was the perfect venue for jazz and related musics–the place looked great, treated the musicians well, paid decently, and took an interest in promotion, so of course it couldn’t last in the Bay Area. I was asked recently in an interview to name my favorite venue, and I said, “I used to like Pearl’s, until it closed. Then I liked Octavia Lounge, and it closed. And Anna’s Jazz Island, closed. My favorite venue is any venue that’s open.” So we can tack another on to that sad list.  (Note the title of the Times article: “Death of Jazz Club Underscores a Changing Scene”–I wish that this represented changing. Seems like the same old same old to me.) Oh well–the hunt for places to play continues.

  On a more positive note, my album Contextualizin’ has been featured on several “Best of 2010″ lists recently–the first from The Jazz Page (“Another solid band out of the Chicago area”–close enough, maybe this’ll get us a gig there?–”Ian and the Quintet have a nice sound that can appeal to music lovers across the jazz spectrum and beyond”), and the second from Arnaldo DeSouteiro’s Jazz Station (I also made the trumpet and flugelhorn lists, with some very heavy company, and Adam Shulman was recognized in the electric piano category). Both give me the warm fuzzies, especially since the record was released so early in the year and has been off the jazz blogosphere’s radar for a while. (This would be a good time to put in a word of thanks to Terri Hinte, whose tireless work getting the CD to the right ears has been a huge part of its success.)

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• The “New to Me” Top 10 for 2010

  Date: 2010.12.01 | Category: Press, Thoughts | Response: 8

  It’s that time of year when people start cranking out Top 10 lists like fruitcake, so I thought I’d toss my cake in the ring and do one myself.

  But since I usually come across new albums via used record stores and word of mouth, I decided my list would be not necessarily the best albums which came out in ‘10, but the best albums that showed up on my radar for the first time this year (hence “New to Me”). Some of them are actually new! (But most aren’t.) Hopefully some of them will be new to you, too.

  So now, in no particular order, here are ten albums which made my year:

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• On the Jazz Curmudgeon

  Date: 2010.08.30 | Category: Thoughts | Response: 1

  I’ve seen a few examples on the jazzerwebs lately of that well-known species of jazz fan who, while passionate about his own particular area of interest (say, Lithuanian swing revivalists of mid-1936 to late spring of ‘52, or Archie Shepp’s bossa nova period), is nevertheless vehemently dismissive of anything falling outside that area. (For prime specimens, see A Blog Supreme and this video by Tyshawn Sorey.)

  My initial response to the first guy pretty much sums up my thoughts about this phenomenon: “There are as many restrictive definitions of jazz as there are curmudgeonly jazz fans (seems like their numbers are growing–or is it that the number of non-curmudgeonly fans is shrinking)? These types of arguments can go on infinitely–[Esperanza] Spalding is a hell of a lot more straightahead than Chris Botti, for example, but he gets referred to as a jazz artist all the time. You can argue over where to draw the line until the cows come home (and the audience leaves), but don’t expect it to accomplish anything for the music.”

  As I think about it more, though, I think the reason these voices ring so loudly (especially to musicians) is that the audience for jazz is already so small that to be attacked from inside what one would presume to be one’s own camp makes it more unpleasant–and often using the same critiques (no melody, too intellectual, whatever) that someone ignorant of all jazz would use. (With friends like these…)

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• The Jazz Bucket List (via Twitter)

  Date: 2010.07.20 | Category: Thoughts | Response: 5

  Lee Mergner of the happily resuscitated JazzTimes recently published (and A Blog Supreme mentioned) a list of “jazz-related things to do before you die (or Keith Jarrett kills you)”–an unfair jab, really, as it’s been years since Keith has murdered anyone, unless you count the fatwa he ordered after Umbria.

  Anyway, the list had a few I’ve done:

  • “visit the Village Vanguard and soak up the history” (I think that was history I found on my shoes);
  • “walk on hallowed ground at Congo Square in New Orleans” (actually it was more like stumbling–3 hurricanes will do that to you);
  • “memorize at least one solo from a famous jazz record and hum it for someone who might actually recognize it” (welcome to my college social life); and
  • “Buy the CD of a local jazz musician playing a gig where no one pays attention to the music, ever” (That was me. I bought 1000 of them. Most are still in my garage).

  Following JT’s lead, I came up with a few more musician-centric suggestions of my own:

  • Make a waiter call his boss at 1am to get the band paid
  • Be told by a relative he only likes “real jazz, like Al Hirt and Kenny G”
  • Take out thousands of dollars in loans to prepare for a career which pays tips and sometimes beer
  • Listen to Trane’s first recording and feel ecstatic joy at how crappy he sounds
  • Get a request for “Summertime,” within 5 minutes of finishing playing “Summertime”
  • Consider renaming your band “[Your Name]’s [Exotic-sounding word]” to get more gigs
  • Consider hiring a DJ, tubist, theremin player, hog-caller, and bearded lady to appeal to the indie crowd
  • Get shredded at a jam session by some kid from Lithuania who looks 14 years old
  • Get asked by a club to play something “jazzier”
  • Get into a physical fight about straight-8ths odd-meter jazz
  • Practice Bird tunes in all 12 keys on a NYC rooftop, get yelled at by neighbors
  • Quit music in heat of passion and then come crawling back
  • Buy 20 copies of my CD and use them as coasters, doorstops, cat toys, or pizza cutters

  There were also a few good suggestions from Twitter’s peanut gallery, including the notorious Jazzfamoose (“Realize that Del’s Frozen Lemonade is so much better than who’s on the mainstage at the Newport Jazz Festival,” “Get berated by Lorraine Gordon at the Vanguard” (done that!), “Have your CD get reviewed by @natechinen & still sell less than 500 copies in 2010″), and improviz (“Contact Mingus by Ouija board”–I wouldn’t recommend that, I think he can still punch you from beyond the grave). Got your own? Throw ‘em in the comments.