Smart guy

If you haven't seen it already, Seth Godin's quick summary of the state of the music business circa 2008 is chock-full of all kinds of analytical exactitude. In a way that few such summaries are.

Some samples:

The music business had a spectacular run alongside the baby boomers. Starting with the Beatles and Dylan, they just kept minting money. The co-incidence of expanding purchasing power of teens along with the birth of rock, the invention of the transistor and changing social mores meant a long, long growth curve.

As a result, the music business built huge systems. They created top-heavy organizations, dedicated superstores, a loss-leader touring industry, extraordinarily high profit margins, MTV and more. It was a well-greased system, but the key question: why did it deserve to last forever?

Why indeed? It's funny the way things can seem inevitable after they've been around for a mere fifty years or so.

On the other hand, it's important to remember that the above-inferred decline (and the generally gloomy media prognostications) do not necessarily signal the crash of the CD market as a whole. A few weeks back I was actually wondering -- again -- do I really need to release the next IJG album as a CD? Why not, from this point onward, just create a spiffy website "frame" (i.e., an online equivalent of liner notes, artwork, etc.) in which to "house" each new "album" (i.e., collection of downloadable audio files)?

And then I was reminded: yes, the major CD releases are tanking more and more every year, but indies seem to be doing better than ever -- as in, indie CD sales are up by 35%. (Of course, this suggests a whole other can of worms: potential disagreements over what exactly the definition of "indie" is.)

Copy protection in a digital age is a pipe dream

If the product you make becomes digital, expect that the product you make will be copied.

[...]

Most items of value derive that value from scarcity. Digital changes that, and you can derive value from ubiquity now.

The solution isn’t to somehow try to become obscure, to get your song off the (digital) radio. The solution is to change your business.

You used to sell plastic and vinyl. Now, you can sell interactivity and souvenirs.

It's not that music itself is less valuable. It's just that the ways people are connecting with it are... potentially different. Again, it's easy to forget that the carefully catalogued CD collection is a very historically (and culturally) limited phenomenon -- one that owes a great deal to, say, nineteenth/twentieth century practices of book collecting (hello, Walter Benjamin!). It is not at all the default position via which to experience music (though, alas, until recently it has happened to be my favorite).

Perhaps this moment is about the gradual de-commodification of music itself, and the simultaneous commodification (or ramping up of same) of the activities that surround music. And if the commodification of music is what led to nonsense like this, then perhaps undoing those commercial entanglements would be a good thing -- you know, for art's sake.

But perhaps I'm being too naive and optimistic (I've certainly been guilty of that before). Perhaps the commodification of music is somehow vital to our perception of it as "art"? (Or is that just a historical coincidence? Or an inherent western weakness?)

Interactivity can’t be copied

Music is social. Music is current and everchanging. And most of all, music requires musicians. The winners in the music business of tomorrow are individuals and organizations that create communities, connect people, spread ideas and act as the hub of the wheel... indispensable and well-compensated.

How does one create a community around the idea of jazz? Let alone "new" or "avant" or "wacky" forms of jazz?

It should be the easiest thing in the world. These art-forms are generally improvisatory, which means (to me, anyway) that they are not just opportunities to showcase the mad extemporaneous skills of specific performers, in a top-down way (see Kris Tiner's heartbreaking account of this idea taken way too far), but that they are customized; i.e., responsive to the specifics of a particular environment or audience. In a very real sense, the audience and the space participate in the creation of the music itself.

To the discriminating ear, performances always vary, regardless of the genre. But with jazz -- yes, even big band jazz -- one of the charms is that the performance (and to some extent the "content" of that performance) is going to be really different from night to night. What could be more interactive than that?

Many musicians have understood that all they need to make a (very good) living is to have 10,000 fans. 10,000 people who look forward to the next record, who are willing to trek out to the next concert. Add 7 fans a day and you’re done in 5 years. Set for life. A life making music for your fans, not finding fans for your music.

The opportunity of digital distribution is this:

When you can distribute something digitally, for free, it will spread (if it’s good). If it spreads, you can use it as a vehicle to allow people to come back to you and register, to sign up, to give you permission to interact and to keep them in the loop.

Again, selling the experience, not the product.

And 10,000 fans? Holy shit, that actually seems do-able. Who needs a gold record?

How we roll in Jersey

Rory Briston: Man in Trouble. The Breakup



This video has absolutely nothing to do with the IJG or me. I'm good buddies with the clown is all.

Quotable quotes from an ex-cop

For reasons I don't fully remember, I recently stumbled upon this (see also below, assuming the embedding works).

(And speaking of stumbling upon, how cool is stumbleupon?)

Anyway, the subject matter here is interesting enough (though I've never seen the film under discussion), but partly I'm just curious to try out the Internet Archive's video posting interface, which I have never used.



And the promised quotes (yes, I watched the whole damned thing):

We did indulge in occasional gratuitous emotional violence, mostly out of boredom.

Film composing is not art, it's craft. [...] Playing in a rock band, that's art. [...] It's your own collaborative artistic vision. So you're an artist. But when I'm scoring a film, there's only one artist, and that's the director.

(Interesting. At the risk of wandering too far from the point here, I feel compelled to cut in briefly and say that "craft" is always what I thought the Police were about. I don't mean that as a critique, necessarily -- I know they had great songs, that they were great musicians, and so on. I was never a huge fan, but I was an appreciative observer of Police-mania, which hit as I was entering high school. But despite my respect for them, the group always reminded me of the real policemen I have known -- more upstanding than artsy.)

[Advice for an aspiring musician:] Get on the mic... cuz the drummer works for the singer. Even when the drummer is the singer.

The Sex Pistols invented this cool thing called punk. And we stole it.

In our day we'd go from radio station to radio station, city to city, and we would meet the local guys, we'd shmooze them, we'd press records into their hands -- and other things -- you know, just a little payola, and you could do it. [...] Breaking in [today], I don't know how you do it anymore.

Q: "You mentioned that you were the can of beans. So why the gym shorts, tee-shirt?"

A: "The short shorts [...] That's what everybody wore back then [...] If I wore those publicly today I'd make some new friends.

Rock and roll is basically the mating dance of the human being. [...] It's human plumage. The purpose of music is to... it's a sex dance. The way we display our wares. Did you ever notice how when music plays people start to shake their hips? They thrust their pudenda at each other? In a way that would be otherwise socially unacceptable? It's all about sex.

Numbers game, game primaries

If you are as trepidatious (whoops, is that a word?) as I am about the (oh-no-not-again!) return of American I-dull tonight, consider the following possible statistics:

If 4% of the US population is tone deaf, and if the US population is somewhere around 300 million, and if the viewership of the show is around 30 million (these are all guesstimates based on cursory google searches), then it's possible that nearly half of those who enjoy the show are tone deaf.

Yes? I'm just saying it's possible, is all. (Math was never my forte, so I'm winging it here.)

Recent news about tone deafness.

* * * * *

Recent webological coincidence (hmm, I think not):



(Thanks to transterrestrial for the screenshot.)

The "establishment media" (which I'm defining here as any powerful, moneyed opinion-makers) is really bobbling things with this election (surprise!), and that ad (which has inundated Yahoo! (at least) over the last week) is a great example. As I've inferred, Clinton is not my first choice for prez, but this ad campaign has been pretty unfair, and one has to be suspicious of the motivations behind it.

Is it illegal to post this?

RIP Dan Morris

For some time before I snapped up an (unwitting) Mr. Schnelle as our "official drummer" -- and let's face it, the honor has been all mine -- we had something of a "drummer problem," in that we couldn't get any of our tubs-men to actually stay in the band. From 2000 to 2005 we went through, by my count, six "main" drummers, and maybe a few more who subbed with us from time to time. That's changing drummers more than once a year -- no way to build a solid rhythm section, especially when you're dealing with complex, written, original music. It was maddening.

Not that it was anybody's fault. Sometimes economic reality intervenes. Sometimes schedules just don't mesh. And sometimes, even in the case of players who can handle all of the aesthetic / economic / logistical challenges you want to throw at them, the chemistry of a given lineup might be slightly askew. (As a bandleader, sometimes you've just got to suck it up and recognize that the greatest musician in the world might not be the best fit for your project, if he or she isn't "vibing" with everyone else.)

Still, I like to think that I have learned something important from everyone who has played in this group, no matter how briefly. And I know that's the case with Dan Morris, who took a turn in the IJG drum chair for maybe four or five months in 2003. Dan and I lost touch shortly after his tenure as our drummer -- until recently, when he came back to my attention in the worst possible way. There are so many dimensions to this tragedy, but the one I keep coming back to is the untimeliness of it all -- at 37, he was, simply and horribly, way too young.

Dan's good friend Alex Shapiro has a moving tribute (as well as some context) here (thanks to KT for the link).

* * * * *

I met Dan at a James Carney trio concert (at the aforementioned club Rocco) sometime in 2002 (Dan Lutz was on bass, I believe). For me, it was a moment of great growth -- the IJG (such as it was) was fully into its septet phase, and was in the process of becoming a distinct presence on the LA "avant jazz" scene (such as it was). I was at the Carney concert both to hear the trio live for the first time (I had been a fan of their recorded work for a while) and to check out the club, which I had never been to. It was a mellow evening, audience-wise, and at the break Carney and Morris both came over to my table and we had a long chat about music and LA. They confessed their admiration for our City of Angles album (which had just come out), and we talked about that for a little while. I was a little naive, and a little overwhelmed, frankly -- as an interloper on the scene, I couldn't believe I was getting totally unsolicited and genuine respect from the very guys I was trying to show unsolicited and genuine respect for. It was a nice connection.

I noted right away that Dan had a big, fun, outgoing manner; as a result, the conversation seemed to fly right by. At the end of the night, I filed that interaction somewhere in the back of my mind -- with a note that said "If you ever need a drummer, be sure to give this guy a call."

* * * * *



Dan was on board for our very first San Francisco performance (which, coincidentally, took place on the day after the Iraq war started, and was thus a fairly emotional event for me -- I can still vividly remember the street protests that almost prevented me from actually making it to the venue). If you squint, you can see him in the above pic, between Garrett Smith (bone) and Cory Wright (soprano).

But Dan's first performance with us was a Rocco show (by this time the club had moved into the theater next to the performance space depicted in the "AMC" video), on February 22, 2003. It was only our second performance as a nonet; in addition to Dan and myself, the personnel was Aaron Kohen (bass), Cory Wright (tenor), Beth Schenck (soprano), Evan Francis (alto), Kris Tiner (trumpet), Justin Ray (trumpet), and Garrett Smith (bone). Dan helped us debut a number of tunes which would eventually be released on The Star Chamber.

To my ear, he lent a unique beefiness to the overall sound of the group. Check out his take on the opening section of this (shitty live recording of) "Anger Management Classes" (I know I've been going on about this one lately -- sorry):



Whatever my insecurities about this tune, I have long drooled at the prospect of doing an orchestra + drumkit arrangement of it -- and what Dan plays here pretty much nails what I would be looking for from a drummer in that scenario: a driving beat punctuated by "sporadic raining hellfire" fills. Or something like that.

Although he was comfortable slopping around in the bog of progginess exemplified by "AMC," I personally think that where Dan really shone was in the freer, more improvisatory stuff. In this excerpt from a performance of "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboy-Presidents" (recorded at the same Rocco show), notice how he expertly displaces the big "drum downbeat" that you so desperately want to hear at the end of the first four-note horn sequence (to put it another way: there's a roll that begins at around :21 and feels like it could end in a crash at :26, but hangs on for another two seconds). That, plus the sudden shifts in feel/texture that follow, give this section an apposite frenetic tone (which ended up evolving in a different direction by the time we got around to recording the tune "for real"):



Of course, Dan could lay down a plain old comical backbeat groove (the sort of thing that we would start doing more of in 2004, after he left the group). This is from a later section of the same recording of "Mamas":



And so on.

* * * * *

I certainly don't want to suggest that Dan's participation in the IJG was the high point of his career, however much I personally appreciated it. To really hear him at his best, I recommend checking out any of the recordings he made with James Carney. There are three of them, and they are all stellar -- here's a sample from one of my very favorite of Jim's tunes (that's Peter Epstein on soprano -- good golly!). There is also the work he did with Alex Shapiro, which I am less familiar with, but which sounds great to me in the excerpt that can be found at her own post. And yes, there's more stuff listed at this bio.

The bigger issue, however, is that whatever recorded legacy he left behind, Dan was a significant force on the LA new music scene in the early years of this century -- and perhaps in ways that are frustratingly harder to measure than through the evidence of a simple discography. He was one of those dedicated, unsung people who was always out hearing music as well as making it. He was curious, he was an advocate, and he helped to keep the scene alive. He was there in a way that mattered -- a quintessential soldier in one of the best "good fights" a person could embrace: the fight for culture.

For that, and for everything else, this ex-Angeleno would humbly and solemnly like to say: thank you, Dan. You will be greatly missed.

Speaking of politics...

I got what America needs right here.

I know that's the title of the piece, but seriously -- how cool would it be if we actually lived in a country where presidential candidates could publicly speak like this?

Primary coronaries (but not, thankfully, coronations)

I haven't posted anything about politics in a long time. But boy oh boy have I ever been following the "big race." You might even call me a junkie at this point.

Junkies don't always make the best writers. So I'll take the easy way out by pointing you to this post, in which the political blogger Publius comes pretty close to describing my own take on the events of the last week. Some salient excerpts:

Coming of political age in the Gingrich/late Clinton era, I’ve never really been inspired by any politician. It’s been a mix of outrage and ironic detachment from ’94 on. So you should forgive Ezra – and our generation more generally – if we use some flowing rhetoric from time to time. It’s a newfangled thing for us – and we’re not that good at it. It’s like getting drunk for the first time. You may utter some stupid stuff, but it’s still fun, so you don’t really care.

When the primary fumes pass, we’ll all come around to Clinton, especially compared to the GOP monstrosities. But with Clinton, my perception is that none of this inspired future is possible. Hers will be a competent, moderate, K Street-friendly administration. But I want more – and I think the nation could get more.

[...]

The problem is that the specific types of policy disagreements I have with Clinton are ones that generate strong emotions. Thus, it’s easy to mistake emotional-yet-ultimately-policy-based critiques with unfair sexism (though I’m not denying that sexism plays a role for many opponents). Here then is a brief rundown of those policy disagreements.

First, and most fundamentally, I think her actions on the national security front disqualify her. The Dems should not reward radio silence on Iraq, torture, etc. during the years it mattered with a presidential nomination. Period. It doesn’t make her a monster, or even a bad person. But it should at least mean you don’t get to be president. If you make an insincere political gamble, you have to pay that bill if you lose. Kerry paid it, and Edwards did too.

Second, and relatedly, I have fears about her national security judgment going forward. Specifically, I fear that she’s so afraid of looking liberal that she either won’t attempt bold change (e.g., Cuba, Israel/Palestine), or will be bullied into doing something foolish (Iran). Her past positions are strong evidence of what she’ll do in the future – see, e.g., Kyl-Lieberman – and it’s not good.

Third, on domestic policy, I think she’s got all the right stuff – she’s brilliant and has great policy proposals. But the fear is that those proposals will just collect dust in the White House policy shop. I’ve seen nothing since 1994 that indicates the slightest willingness to take political risk for something she believes in. She’s too cautious and scared (just like Kerry). Turning back to Obama briefly, I’m more convinced that he’ll at least try to aim high. I also believe that an Obama victory would create more favorable underlying social and political conditions for real progressive change.

Yes. Let me add (to expand on Publius's "underlying social and political conditions" point) that a vote for Obama, by legitimizing political idealism and imagination again, would at least start to pave the way for a world in which someone like Dennis Kucinich -- who in my view has a much saner, more humane, and more progressive platform than any of 'em -- could actually have a viable candidacy. (Assuming there was no horrible mis-step to inspire a conservative backlash, of course.)

There's also this interesting bit in the comments, from Adam:

I still think Obama can pull it out -- and man am I hoping he will -- but then I remembered that my nightmare scenario was Hillary coasting to the nomination and then getting annihilated in the general election, a la Kerry. [...] But right now that worries me less than it did just two weeks ago. Kerry's problem -- and Clinton's too, up 'til this point -- was not engaging, not being human, working off polls, etc. Gore made the same mistake. Clinton finally, blessedly, got something of a clue, and that shifts the whole dynamic of the race. This is about the Presidency, after all. Clinton a month ago didn't stand a chance in the general; Clinton in the last week could actually win the Presidency. In retrospect, I feel like her unfavorables might have been less about Hillary-hate than revulsion at the robotic brand of politics that's typified so many ridiculous Democratic losses.

Again, yes.

More fun with the PDX Craig's List

Hilarious:

I have been hailed as the greatest guitar player in the world. I'd like to hook up with 16 other guitarists to make a 17 piece guitar band called "Guitar-o-rama". I have looked the name up and it is not taken. I feel like the type of music played is inconsequential as 17 guitarists playing at once will splatter everyone's brains onto the venue's floors. I've already got 3 coffee shops pretty much locked into doing a gig. Obviously you see where I'm going with this.

Please respond to this with a cover letter, references and resume to be considered.

Thank you and have a wonderful day.

I actually like the concept here (though of course it's already been done, in one way or another).

And then there's this:

Musicians are assholes

Ya you heard me right!!!! . My girl left me for a dam drummer today, and he is ugly. she met him at a bar that he played at last night . he is just going to use her like you all do and then dump her with a STD. I have a real job , a nice car and I am romantic, and a very nice guy with a real job So I just want you all to know that I am going to spread the word about you Musicians. SO take your drum sticks and guitar picks and put them in your ASS

Location: HELL

[Sic.]

Thanks, fellas, for making the gig-searching process that much more enjoyable.

The departed

It's not complete by any means (are they ever?), but Locust Street has posted a list of a few of 2007's notable departures -- with accompanying music clips (if you've never heard that Kenton version of "Everything Happens To Me" (a Bob Graettinger arrangement) do yourself a favor and check it out now).

There is never enough time to blog about everything you want to blog about -- but I sure would have appreciated a few extra hours this year to write up a post on Lee Hazlewood. Ah, well.

Naked baby photos, no. 1

In the spirit o' year-end house-cleaning (and stock-taking), I offer up this "early" IJG video (made 5 years ago), which I just rediscovered in my vaults. Obviously, we were a kinder, gentler band back then -- those of you expecting the full-on sartorial buffoonery, circus skronk, or sprawling instrumental configuration of our more recent efforts will probably be disappointed. On the other hand, the production values on this thing (courtesy my good friends / long-time-supporters-of-the-group Matt Smith and Sarah Shute (and their friend Charlie Heath)) are much higher than anything I've been able to produce on my own. (Smith/Shute/Heath also edited/directed the final piece, though I have excerpted/pared it a bit here.)



The performance is decent -- especially given the fact that it took place on a Saturday morning (for reasons I don't fully remember). For those of you interested in the history of the early twenty-first century avant jazz scene in LA, the setting is Rocco in LA, which at the time was probably the most interesting venue for new music in the city (proprietor Rocco Somazzi has since had to pick up and move his presenting aspirations to other venues -- nowadays he mainly books at Cafe Metropol).

The tune is the aforementioned "Anger Management Classes," and the audio is a second or third live take in front of a casual audience of maybe ten people (we didn't have any time to mix or edit the recording, so the performance is pretty raw). The band: Evan Francis (alto), Cory Wright (soprano), Kris Tiner (trumpet), Garrett Smith (bone), Drew Hemwall (drums), Aaron Kohen (bass), yours truly (piano). Audio recorded by Michael Kramer.

Quite a serious buncha fellas, eh?

Downtime

As a rule I'm not too good at the whole "time off" thing. But I have forced myself (this holiday go-round) to step away from my usual routines (including blogging) for a few days.

I must admit it feels nice, actually getting to, say, read a book or watch a movie again.

I plan to hold on to this little hiatus until the new year. But don't get me wrong -- that doesn't mean I'm not also simultaneously scheming and pondering how the hell we are going to top some of the adventures we had in 2007 (by the way, the fact that I consider 2007 a high point in the life of the IJG is probably pathetic, given that the year's activities didn't bring me anything that even remotely resembled what you might call "material profit"). I'm still working on the problem of festivals and tours and such, but I had to dial it down a little, even if just for a few days (or until the guilt of "inactivity" kicks in).

Anyway, for what it's worth, Christmas week was sure exciting. We had a few "firsts." Thandie's first trip to the Emergency Room -- in an ambulance, no less (she's fine now, though it turned out she had pneumonia). Our first Portland snow (on Christmas day, in fact). And my first Christmas card from the kid. (Evidence below. Though there was a little coaching on the spelling of some of the words, this is entirely in her own hand, and the word "Thandie" was spelled without any assistance whatsoever. May I remind you that she is 3 years old?)



Alright, enough palaver. More news soon.

Happy whatever.

And I thought "avant garde party music" was a niche

Here's a guy who's really taking it to the next level.

Actually, just because we all know how temporal a Craig's List ad can be, let me quote the thing verbatim:

Tuba player looking to join NUBA all-nude tuba band

Very large, hirsuite [sic] male looking to join all-nude tuba band. I've played tuba for 10 years, and I've played in the nude before, so this is a logical progression.

Heavens to Murgatroyd!

Popping the balloon

Better than the original, methinks.



And this one is better than that (the horn transcription of the famous Jimmy Page solo is particularly priceless, as is the "Teddy Bear Picnic" quote at the end).



Don't get me wrong. I dig Led Zeppelin a lot. (As did most white boys growing up in suburban NJ in the 80s.)

Two of my favorite (probably unintentional) holiday children's film double-entendres

Are you ready?

1. The Year Without a Santa Claus

The scene: Jingle and Jangle (two of Santa's elves) and Vixen (you know, the reindeer) have traveled to "South-town" (which, if really in the South, is strangely devoid of any black people). They are stopped by a police officer.

OFFICER: I pulled you over for riding a -- riding a -- what's that thing?

JINGLE: This is Vixen.

OFFICER: Riding a Vixen the wrong way down a one-way street.

Hilarity ensues, and etc.



2. Rudolph's Shiny New Year

The scene: Rudolph and his friends have finally rescued Happy, the baby New Year, from the clutches of the evil Eon. But they need to get Happy back to Father Time before the bell that signifies midnight stops ringing.

RUDOLPH: There must be some way to get back to Father Time's
castle before the twelfth bong.

This one turns into a bit of a running gag for the last part of the film. For instance, when Rudolph & Co. finally do make it to the castle (courtesy of Santa Claus), Father Time informs us that they did so "without a bong to spare."

And so say we all. (Well, except for me I guess.)

Don't bother me, I'm surfing

Just found this (while looking for something else, of course).

I think my favorite of these questions is this one: "How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the Internet?"

(There are lots of adjectives I would use to describe the Internet, but "soothing" is not one of them.)

And what about the poor schmucks (like me) who work in areas in which (nowadays, at least) "success" seems somewhat dependent on being online much of the time? Are we addicted?

Three days

WEDNESDAY

Daphne was in Omaha this morning. She was actually thinking about doing some Christmas shopping before getting on the plane. Thankfully she decided against it.

Is this the new norm, then? Every few months someone new takes a turn at the whole rampage thing?


THURSDAY

Took Daphne and Thandie to hear Nancy King and Glen Moore this evening (so no, we're not only about exposing the kid to the old European music). Even with all the distractions (people milling about in the lobby, people coming and going, people conversing -- none of which was as offensive as I'm making it sound -- this is Portland, after all) there was something undeniably bright and fantastic about the performance.



My friend Tim DuRoche explained to me that King actually started out as a drummer, and you could certainly hear it in her sure-footed time (no mean feat when your only accompaniment is a bass-man). But there was other stuff to love too. Lots and lots of it.


FRIDAY

Beautiful things started happening at 9 PM.

Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Killer Shrews, and The Green Slime.

Back to back. Uncut. Commercial-free.

Totally unexpected.

Turner Classic Movies, how I adore you.

As Daphne said when I rolled out of bed on Saturday morning: "No wonder you're so tired!"

My favorite is the yellow pepper trumpet near the end

Hopefully this won't inspire someone to start a meat orchestra in response.

Wait, it's already been done?!

(Sorry, I'm running on fumes at the moment.)

The Ballbreaker

Sorry, I find this rather hilarious (both the initial argument and the response to it). I know it's not supposed to be. But I'm a degenerate.

Anyway, I thought I was going to have enough Tchaikovsky to make me sick yesterday when I took Thandie to see Portland's own CBA do their version of the Nutcracker (giving Mommy a much-needed afternoon off). If I had been there by myself, that surely would have been the case (though at least this wasn't the Nutcracker on Ice). I still think the show is too long by about twenty minutes (okay, we get it: every freaking toy and piece of candy has got to have its dance!). And yes it was possessed of some of the typical problems of the classical rep.

But there was something about being there with a three-year-old who has never been to a full-on theatrical production before, and who has been growing more and more interested in music and dance (especially over the last year) that made the experience -- forgive the maudlin here -- pretty goddamned touching. (Especially after we spent the morning listening (and dancing!) to fresh-out-of-the-oven near-final mixes from her Dad's group's forthcoming CD (more about that soon). Said CD will be kind of different from Tchaikovsky, you might say.) Several times I caught myself watching her fascination with the thing, and for a moment, I had such a rush of hope and happiness that I almost couldn't stand it. Or something like that.

The production prided itself on using all pre-professional dancers (apparently most academy-based productions will bring in a ringer or two when it's time to put on show like this). That was sort of endearing (at least half of the cast was made up of children not much older than Thandie). What wasn't so endearing was the use of canned music -- a money-saving choice, no doubt. I for one would have preferred (if no big band were available) to have had accompaniment by a wind quintet, say, instead of being occasionally able to hear shuffling ballet slippers over the sound of the recorded orchestra.

But I guess that wouldn't be "classical" enough.

Oh, well. 'Tis the season, mofos!

Breaking the musician's code

How I wish I had time time to write up a decent post on this, which came to my attention via an e-missive sent out by Rob Scheps, who participates in the band in question ("Jazzcode").

Given that participation (Scheps was kind enough to sit in with the IJG last March, but on the whole he has a habit of playing in much more, uh, high class and high profile situations), I know that the level of musicianship on display in this group is most assuredly of an extremely high order.

But as to drummer Carl Stormer's broader project, which distills jazz aesthetics and philosophy (as if such a thing exists in a single "code") into a powerpoint presentation that can be used to teach corporate teams (or armies) to be more productive? Normally I'm the biggest fan of incongruity, but this seems kind of like, well, you know, an insult.

It reminds me a bit of that old Virginia Slims ad (see above) and its double-edged slogan ("You've come a long way, baby"). Translation: "We've finally gotten around to letting you be an equal part of our society... but just so you can buy and consume our cancerous products, bee-yotches!" Sure, it's technically an advancement -- but at the same time somehow it misses the point.

Many times I have absent-mindedly mused that if only more people understood the thought processes behind jazz, or what it means to improvise (you know, so you don't have to stick to your plan after it becomes apparent that your plan is really fucking stupid), then the world would surely become a better place. (This is in fact one of the justifications (excuses?) that crops up every time I doubt the "deeper purpose" of my own commitment to music.)

But to reach the broader culture on these terms? In a suit? Neatly groomed? At a corporate retreat? No thanks.

Of course, any jazz musician who is able to get the music in front of an audience that would not otherwise be inclined to check it out is okay by me. Though I do wonder what percentage of the seminar participants go on to become "jazz fans" (versus the percentage that go on to become more productive workers).

A code is not an incantation. And I suspect that what's missing here (in the presentation, not the music) is the spirit, or magic, of the subject. And if not an outright revolutionary or rebellious or comic mood (you know where my allegiances lie, right?), then at least a willingness to offer a counterpoint to the status quo.

Instead, this (again, the presentation, not the music) seems to be a logical extension of the GQ-ification of jazz that made it into all the magazines in the 80s. Or jazz as Tony Robbins might imagine it.

(Ah, what the fuck do I know? You gotta make your money where you can in this business. But damn if it isn't the principle of the thing, always the principle of the thing that I get hung up on...)

New acronyms

Proposed, this 25th day of November, in the year of our bored, two thousand and seven:

GOYFAK: "Get off your fat ass, kid." Inspired by this. (Thanks to my dear wife for the link.) I know, I know, there is pedaling involved, but come on!

GOYFAM: "Get off your fat ass, musician." Inspired by this and this. (It's an idea that would certainly solve some of the logistical problems of running a big band... but would the performance be any good?)

IRTFMIIMEALS: "I'd read the fucking manual if it made even a little sense." Inspired by this. (Thanks, Ann Bartow.) I could just as easily have cited any manual that comes with an IKEA product.

Mario Music

My lovely wife just sent me this, which she discovered while surfing YouTube with our daughter this morning:



I blogged about XOC's (i.e., Jason Cox's) take on the Mario Bros. music a while back. Just re-visited his site, and there's a lot of new stuff to explore. Can't wait to listen to some of it over pumpkin pie tomorrow...

Water Music

A yoga instructor once told me I had a "beautiful spirit." But I ain't got nothin' on this guy.

Dinah via Daniel

Speaking of City of Angles, I just discovered this video by IJG alum (and Royal Crown Revue drummer) Daniel Glass, who was our regular drummer back in 2001-2, and who recorded that album with us:



There are many things that this fellow can do well (check out his website for some of them). There are also many ways to swing. But it's not often that you come across someone under 60 who has absorbed the old-school pre-war jazz drumming styles to this extent.

In my opinion, anyway.

I kinda hope Glass starts blogging one of these days -- he's sort of a walking encyclopedia of twentieth-century western drumming.

Hat trick

For some reason utterly beyond my comprehension, last week an IJG tune was once again used as bumper music on NPR's Talk of the Nation. By my count, that's the third time this has happened.

All of the tunes used in this way (Nov 7's "Anger Management Classes," and previously "Mwahaha" and "Void When Detached") originally appeared on our second album, City of Angles, released by Innova in 2002.

Wait, was it really 2002? Yeah, I guess it was. To me the album feels older than that, because (in my opinion, anyway) the vibe of the group has changed a great deal in the years since it was made. Some of the basic elements of our "mature sound" (if indeed that's where we're at now) were in place, but on the whole, I think Angles wears its influences a bit too shamelessly.

"Anger" is a perfect example of that, as a matter of fact -- to my ears the "9/8 within 9/4" vibe of the opening groove comes across as more-than-a-little-reminiscent of the "7/8 within 7/4" of Zappa's "Pound for a Brown." That was totally unintentional, I assure you -- but given where my head was at at the time, it's not surprising to me now that Angles is full of these little, uh, "raw" homages.



Once upon a time, "Anger" was also (I now recall) the "big closer" in our live show (a position that it seemed to occupy pretty effectively). But somehow that live excitement didn't translate to the recording studio; I have always felt that the album version was kind of pale in comparison. (As I continue to work on the new record I'm getting a better sense of just how cool a good live recording can be; like Carla Bley, I'm thinking that might be the way to go from now on.)

Anyway, you can still get City of Angles here. Um... I probably haven't done too good a job of selling it just now, but it's a pretty good album, I guess.

* * * * *

I think I need one more Zappa reference for this week's blogging. So here it is:

Neophyte blogger Maria (of Maria's Music) recently posted a critique of the Howard Stern show. The subject was an episode in which Stern (et al) ridiculed the music of some non-mainstream group called called Zs. Apparently Stern receives music for airplay all the time, and the marketing genius behind Zs (that seems to be how they refer to themselves, though the pun hidden in "the Zs" (i.e., "disease") makes the addition of the article very tempting) realized that there was potential for some exposure. (Wish I had thought of that scheme.)

Despite my east coast origins, I've never been a Stern fan -- not because I've ever been offended by anything he has said (perish the thought!) but because most of the time I just don't think he's funny. (I do share his interest in all things prurient, philosophically if not specifically (there's no accounting for taste, ya know) -- but on the whole his act has never appealed to me.)

Anyway, during the first segment Maria links to, after listening to a bit of a Zs tune called "Woodworking" (a quirky, fun, abstract sort of piece without an easily-discernible pulse) one of Stern's on-air entourage (not sure who, since I don't really follow the show) chimes in with the following sage observation:

"That's like shitty Frank Zappa. Zappa would do that like in the middle of songs but he'd do it for like thirty seconds and then get back to music."

Translation: "I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about." Here's why:



I could of course have cited hundreds of other Zappa tunes that tread in (and indeed helped to establish) the same aesthetic terrain as Zs' "Woodworking." Whole Zappa albums even. Most of which are longer than 30 seconds.

In fact, Zappa's appearance on the Steve Allen show, circa 1962, playing the bicycle [I'd've inserted the YouTube clip here if they hadn't deleted it... probably at the estate's request, sadly] seems to presage this Zs moment on Stern. Those who haven't seen the Zappa/Allen clip should know that, like Stern, Allen had a habit of ridiculing artists he didn't understand:



None of this is surprising, I suppose. Re-listening to the Stern clips, I actually found myself laughing from time to time at the depths of the ignorance (Zappa would have called it "dumb all over" (and a little ugly on the side)). But it's funny in a way that should be of concern to anyone who gives a shit about music. For me the question is: are we talking here about ignorance in terms of a lack of specialized knowledge? (That would be frustrating but sort of understandable.) Or is it more of a personality trait / social phenomenon -- a kind of "willful philistinism"?

In other words, is this a problem of the pleasures of the music existing somewhere beyond the "lay ear's" ability to hear them? Does one need to be "in on" the methodology or the theoretical underpinnings in order to appreciate a Zs piece, or a Zappa piece, or a Cage piece, or an Ornette Coleman piece, or anything non-mainstream?

I just don't think so. To my ear, the pleasures of this large category of music ("non-mainstream" is an over-generalization, to be sure) seem, notwithstanding variances in personal taste, to be as plain as day. And I don't think I've come to that conclusion because I have a music degree -- because I don't. When I first got into so-called "avant-garde music," or "jazz," or anything beyond whatever was playing on Top Forty radio, all those years ago, it was because of a sound -- or, to cite Zappa yet again, a certain configuration of "wiggling air molecules." It was only after first liking it that I decided to seek out a better understanding of how it was made. But that knowledge, which came later, was not and is not essential to my enjoyment.

* * * * *

Addendum:

Here is a bit of a transcription of Zappa's appearance on the Stern show, circa 1987 (the year I graduated high school, coincidentally). It's kind of ironic (in light of the above), and funny (in light of Zappa's apparent boredom with the interview). The maestro handles Stern's provincial buffoonery with a measured cool:

STERN: Was [Zappa's son Ahmet] named after [Ahmet Ertegun]?

ZAPPA: Yeah.

STERN: Are you serious?

ZAPPA: Yeah.

QUIVERS: Where else do you get a name like that?

ZAPPA: (laughs) It's a Turkish name.

STERN: Yeah? Well um... I never liked the Turks quite frankly.

ZAPPA: Yeah? Well that's the way it goes.

STERN: The hell with them. I mean, they never did anything for this country did they?

ZAPPA: I don't know, I'll look into it.

Large Hiney Vehicle

The latest IJG video is now up:



This is the third pre-release video from our upcoming album. The (Bimhuis) audio is a rough mix (and includes a little audio "tag" not on the album version), and the video is a rough assemblage of clips from the Netherlands, Ohio, and Bakersfield (all recorded in 07). All footage was shot by either myself or Matt Lichtenwalner -- except for the animation, which was taken from a traffic safety film now in the public domain.

As was the case with our earlier videos, my attempts to sync up the performance video and the music (or even to match players with their respective solos) were hopelessly confounded by a comparative dearth of source material. So at some point I gave up trying and decided to just enjoy the resulting discrepancies. But for the record: the bone solo near the end is Wolter Wierbos, and the tenor solo right after that is Katharina Thomsen. (My apologies to them.) Oh yeah, and the spoken word tag is by Mike Richardson, with yours truly on piano.

Maybe someday I'll have the resources to do somethin ' a little more sophistimacated (like a full-on concert film... drool...).

In the meantime, I must leave you with this warning: this video is not safe for work. Unless your work is fucking cool.

Rule Lithuania

Came across this article while researching the Vilnius Jazz Festival.

Some of the good bits:

Never mind free and fair elections, independent judiciaries or respect for ethnic minorities, a country can only really be declared democratic if its leaders are big enough to allow the erection of a monument to the late, lamented Frank Zappa.

Teachers at the [Vilnius Art] academy, however, were less keen on the idea, fearing that a memorial to a man still revered for his anti-establishment songs could corrupt the innocent minds of their students.

Zappa himself would no doubt have enjoyed the irony of the [monument dedication] ceremony, which included a stirring performance by the city’s military band, a firework display, and plenty of toasts to 70-year-old local sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas, a man who was previously better known for his depictions of the likes of Lenin and other communist heroes.

Bitchen!

Album update no. 45,362

(Photo by Ting06.)

As you may have surmised by now, the new IJG recording will not "drop" this year. (Boy, do I hate that phraseology, by the way.) This despite my best efforts. Of course, release delays are typical for even a major label effort -- but when your project is indie, snags in the production process may be that much more acute, cuz chances are you're doing almost everything yourself.

Ah well. In our case the issue is twofold. First, "final mixdown" continues to be pushed back because of scheduling conflicts (leaving me more time to tweak and fiddle -- which is fine, but only to a point). And second, as I have gotten deeper into the mixes (thanks to the more or less permanent temptations presented by my paltry excuse for a basement studio), I have revised the, uh, "conceptual core" of the project.

You may recall that I had been referring to this thing as "The Art of the Mix Tape." No more. I did not jettison the title because I no longer like it (who knows, it may still come in handy someday) but because it doesn't really fit the essentially live album that is emerging. The new working title is LEEF (a misappropriation of a Dutch word), for reasons that I'll explain if I actually get to use it (it turns out the Bimhuis folks may want to have some say in what we call the album -- more on that if necessary).

Wait, did I say "several versions"? Yeah, I guess I did. Since I managed to cut the middle man out of the preliminary mixing process, and I don't have to pay someone an hourly fee to "fiddle and tweak," I have the luxury of experimenting with different conglomerations of the material to see what works best. As a result, I still haven't decided if I want this to be a long-ish album (like, over 60 minutes), or a more concise one. And I still haven't decided which tunes to use exactly. And I still haven't decide how live I want it to be. Originally I was planning on using about half of the Bimhuis show, and filling out the rest with studio tracks and "non-live" experiments, plus one or two other segments recorded live elsewhere. But it seems like more bits from Amsterdam keep sneaking in every week. (It's amazing how a decent mix can reveal some magic in performances that I thought were hopelessly flawed.) There are so many possibilities; maybe I'll just have to release 'em all somehow.

Maybe I'm staying so noncommital so late in the process because flexibility seems to be the name of the game these days. I feel the same about the format wars: I'm pretty open to everybody's arguments, and so I'm drawn to releasing a download version of the record for the kids and the iPodders (and a FLAC version for the really hip folks), a CD for the mainstreamers, an LP for the audiophiles, a "director's cut version," some web-only extras, maybe a deluxe DVD-CD pairing that includes higher-quality versions of some of the video currently on YouTube, and so on. Sure, part of me wants to go "exclusively electronic" with the release (bypassing the expensive replication process), but I don't think we're really in a position to do that yet. After all, we're not a huge band, and we need all the audiences we can get. So for now, I think I'm just going to avoid assuming that there will be one definitive version of the record (though I'm sure I'll have my own favorite).

What else? Despite the delays, I'm really excited about this monstrosity. It will be our first release to feature a singer -- and probably the first "official" CD I will ever have made with Ms. Knapp -- Gruel doesn't really count because it was truly DIY, and distributed via CD-R, for crissakes. (I have been making music with this chick for more than 20 years, so it seems crazy that it took so long for us to actually release something spiffy, eh?) This will also be our first recording to feature the IJG pseudo-big-band lineup (15 people), our typical configuration for the last two years.

Oh yeah, and it will also be our first release to hypothetically require a “parental advisory” label for strong language -- assuming I actually cared about such things.

Which I don't. Though I suppose I should elaborate for anyone who hasn't seen our current show. The linguistic offensiveness I'm alluding to has to do with the eminently guttural glory of the word “fuck,” which we employ 1. lyrically, 2. in one of our titles, and 3. in some of the spoken-word segues that will probably fill out the record. None of this will be particularly surprising to those of you who read this blog regularly (lord knows I don’t shy away from obscene language), or, for that matter, for anyone who has even the slightest connection to a culture of musicians. (Certain obscenities are simply part of the day-to-day language of most folks who move in these circles.)

Why the naughty bits, you ask? I guess the word "fuck" reminds me that one of the things that drew me to making music in the first place was the thought of participating in some kind of constructive rebellion. You know, expressing dissatisfaction with a status quo, and trying to point toward something better. (Yeah, music used to have that kind of effect on people. It's easy to forget that when Ornette Coleman first hit the scene, his music alone could provoke fisticuffs.)

Anyway, maybe I'm wrong, but in our jaded culture, the word "fuck" still seems to carry that kind of transgressive (but also funny, and potentially joyful and celebratory) power -- at least, I assume, for most of the audiences that listen to jazz here in the States (e.g., it's hard to imagine someone getting away with deliberately uttering it onstage at Lincoln Center). And that sort of complex transgression is part of what I'm after in my music too.

Why, the word "fuck" is almost as offensive as Janet Jackson's tit -- and much more aesthetically pleasing.

* * * * *

Oh yeah, and here's a picture of a "monster pile" that Thandie drew before breakfast this morning. Happy belated Halloween to all.

Support the arts, damnit

A better composer / bandleader / blogger than I needs your assistance with an excellent adventure.

To hell with conventional wisdom

Cuz what initially seems counterintuitive can often be right.

Take this for example.

An excerpt of the excerpt: "Our review of existing econometric studies suggests that P2P file-sharing tends to decrease music purchasing. However, we find the opposite, namely that P2P filesharing tends to increase rather than decrease music purchasing."

My experience exactly.

Excuses, not results

By the way, I must apologize for being so willy-nilly with the labels on this here blog. Sometimes I use 'em, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I make up new ones where old ones would clearly suffice.

I wish I could say all this was because the writing found here is "beyond category" (to borrow a phrase from Duke Ellington). The sad truth is that I'm just unorganized.

Worthless factoid

Last night I learned that I am one-eighth French.

The straight poop on the latest in morning beverages

I love coffee. But I'm not sure I love it this much.

Where, I wonder, does the inspiration come from? What's the thought process?

"Sure, the coffee I'm drinking right now tastes pretty good. But I bet coffee made from that would be absolutely divine!"

Well, excuuuuuuse me!

Discovered this in my ongoing attempt to improve the band's global stature in 08. I'll mask the source, though I can tell you it's a booking agency:

Unsolicited Submissions Policy

[Company X] has a policy that neither it nor any of its agents or other employees shall accept or consider any unsolicited material, ideas or suggestions of any nature whatsoever ("Unsolicited Materials"). Accordingly, you may not use this website or information obtained there from to submit Unsolicited Materials to [Company X] via any means (including, without limitation, via mail, fax or e-mail). Should you nevertheless contravene this express prohibition by sending Unsolicited Materials to [Company X], please be advised that the Unsolicited Materials will not be considered by anyone at [Company X], and if possible they will be returned to you with no copies kept. Unsolicited Materials will not be forwarded to or discussed with any third parties.

And then you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Or maybe they're just covering their own asses. But why? From the legal tone of the paragraph, it almost sounds like they could be sued for not accepting someone's application. But that would be ridiculous, no?

More likely they're just overwhelmed, as are most booking agencies these days. Understandable enough -- but in that case won't a simple "Sorry, but we can't accept unsolicited materials" suffice?

What a business.

Anyway, "regular blogging" (whatever that is) will resume "soon" (whatever that is).

If This Ain't Love

Well, hello there!

Bet you thought I skipped the country, huh?

Actually, I've just been holed up in my basement, madly mixing the new IJG album. More news on that front soon, but in the meantime here's something else:



Beautiful, eh?

Actually, before I go any further, I gotta revise a statement I made in a recent post -- Hounds of Love is just about as good as The Kick Inside.

But now back to the issue at hand: wow, there have been a lot of "neo-soul-divas" coming down the pike over the last few years. Let's see: you've got yer Lauryn Hill, yer Erykah Badu, yer Alicia Keys, yer India.Arie, yer Corrine Bailey Rae, and now, yer Amy Winehouse. That's just off the top of my head.

I think this is great -- much of this music is superior to the stuff that really sells (of the ones I listed, Alicia Keys is the only one who leaves me completely bored -- and she's probably the richest of the bunch). But every time one of these artists breaks, there is a lot of talk about how she is bringing back some long-lost quality of vintage soul / r&b music (or whatever you want to call it). And every time these claims are made, my ears perk up, because, as you know, I, uh, kinda like that old music a lot (especially of the Stax and Muscle Shoals variety).

The above Nicole Willis, who is being similarly marketed, is, as far as I can tell, the first to really live up to the hype. There is something about Willis and her (Finnish!) band (the Soul Investigators) that demonstrates a deep understanding of that music too, right down to the recording techniques. (Mic distortion?! On a commercial record?! That's brave.) The Nina Simone / Irma Thomas / Marvin Gaye vibe certainly doesn't hurt, either.

It's not astonishing music -- it's weirdly familiar, actually -- but it works.

Here's the album in question.

So bad it's good, part one

You may have missed the Ig Noble awards last week. I missed it too of course, but that didn't stop me from thinking fondly of this wacky event, with which I feel a great deal of simpatico. Check it out: "The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." One might even say this is what I'm after in music.

This year's ceremony is over, but the site is well worth poking around. Did you know, for example, that you could cure hiccups with a digital rectal massage? (Thank you, Francis M. Fesmire, Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven, for hipping us to this remedy.)

The ceremony is sponsored by the good folks at Improbable Research, who also bring you The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS), a club "for scientists who have, or believe they have, luxuriant flowing hair." Queen's Brian May, who is also an astronomer, is a member. (I couldn't make this up.)



Oh, and Jill, you might be interested in this: "Every year, the ceremony has a new theme. (The theme pertains to some of the goings-on at the ceremony, though not necessarily to any of the year's prize-winning achievements). This year's theme: CHICKEN."

What a business

Well, this truly hits the spot on a rainy night in Portland (while I print out press kits, fer crissakes).

For my money, Kate Bush was never better than on her first album. And when you mediate a great tune like "Them Heavy People" (no, it's not actually called "Rolling the Ball") by giving it to some Japanese singers, while having Kate herself do a few uber-cheesy dance moves (but not singing -- huh?), you've hit upon something delightfully wacky.

For shame

The RIAA wins its first case.

I wish these fuckers would concentrate on making some music that was actually worth $222,000. Wired has the list from the above suit:

Guns N Roses "Welcome to the Jungle," "November Rain"
Vanessa Williams "Save the Best for Last"
Janet Jackson "Let's Wait Awhile"
Gloria Estefan "Here We Are," "Coming Out of the Heart," "Rhythm is Gonna Get You"
Goo Goo Dolls "Iris"
Journey "Faithfully," "Don't Stop Believing"
Sara McLachlan "Possession," "Building a Mystery"
Aerosmith "Cryin'"
Linkin Park "One Step Closer
Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar on Me"
Reba McEntire "One Honest Heart"
Bryan Adams "Somebody"
No Doubt "Bathwater," "Hella Good," "Different People"
Sheryl Crow "Run Baby Run"
Richard Marx "Now and Forever"
Destiny's Child "Bills, Bills, Bills"
Green Day "Basket Case"

I might give you a buck for the lot.

Actually, no: I'll pay someone to take it all out of circulation. (Except maybe for "Don't Stop Believing," which has camp value for me).

P2Pnet has some perspective. (Check it out: "the judge in the case ruled that jurors may find copyright infringement liability against somebody solely for sharing files on the internet. The RIAA did not have to prove that others downloaded the files." Just ridiculous.)

What's in a name, really?

So I've plunged headlong into "booking madness mode," querying probably (by now) hundreds of music festivals around the world in the hopes that at least a few of 'em will be willing to take a chance on our "Monsters of Industrial Jazz Road Show" in the summer of 08.

There are two festivals that I hope we get into just for the names alone:

The Hell Music Festival, in (where else?) Hell, Norway. (Come on. How cool would it be to see a piccolo-trumpet-playing-dreadlocked-skull-guy on stage at this one? (Yes, that's the opening line of my pitch.))



The Oliver Cromwell Jazz Festival, in the UK. (Betcha didn't know that this regicidal dictator was a jazz fan.)

The best logo award (so far) probably goes to the Brussels Jazz Marathon. Their "running trumpet guy" (kids, don't try that at home) can be seen in the backdrop of this shot (and also in the bottom left-hand corner):



Anyway, keep your fingers crossed. Please.

* * * * *

[UPDATE: I would love for us to be represented by the A.S.S. Agency almost as much as I would love for us to appear at the Hell Music Festival.]

Notes on / in Ohio

Jardin means "garden," right? So what's with all the bricks?

Now for some random observations on what I can only assume will be the last IJG tour for 07:

Cincinnati (27 September, Jardin)

* I have already indicated that our Midpoint show redeemed (for me, anyway) what would otherwise have been a pretty so-so tour. This was not so much because of the size of the audience (which, to the best of my knowledge, wasn't much more than 40 people -- cozy enough inside our tent, but not exactly a huge crowd). No, what turned things around was the quality of the response. Like the best audiences we've had all year, the Cincinnati folks seemed to instantly understand our schtick. Consequently they did not hold back at all: dancing, lighters, whooping / hollering, and various other forms of audience participation were all to be found in great abundance. For the record: we never got this sort of response in 2006 (or before), and for the life of me I have no idea why.

* I was quite internally-agitated until shortly before our show. There had been many premonitions of doom throughout the day (in fact, I might as well admit that this tour occasioned what I suspect may have been my very first panic attack -- oh joy). Not the least of these was the rumor (uncovered by Jill and Matt) that Jardin's neighbors had previously voiced (and had been able to enforce) concerns about "excessive noise after 11 PM." What time were we supposed to go on? 11:15 PM! Beautiful. (As it turned out we didn't run into any problems.)

* Aside: the festival infrastructure was very professional, though my understanding is that things were run almost entirely by volunteers. Kudos to you, good people of Cincinnati.

* Our writeup in Cincinnati's City Paper: "Naturally, it's neither exactly Industrial nor Jazz, but IJG does take the instrumental and compositional chops (and horns galore) from the latter. And if you take into account that the origins of Industrial music can be traced to Dadaism, noise art and a reaction to 'agricultural' music, well, suddenly it all makes sense. Dig It: Throbbing Gristle meets 'Yakety Sax' at an art opening." (I like this, but what exactly is "agricultural music"?)

* As alluded to in the TWSIS piece, Cincy was the guinea pig for our first experiment with "guerilla marketing" (a tactic we alternately referred to as "jazz terrorism" (Rosenboom) and "jazz streaking" (Pratt)). To wit: a few of the horn players (Rosenboom, Templeton, Rodriguez, and perhaps Francis?) piled into one of our minivans a half hour before our show and played a spontaneous open-door concert, while Ms. Knapp eased the vehicle down one of the festival's main drags, and Mr. Lichtenwalner waved a sign announcing who we were. At the time I had no idea whether this (admittedly obnoxious) strategy would work. Now I can say: it worked. (Note to self: more jazz streaking.) Anyway, here, for the curious, is some footage of the second pass:



* Because of the two days of pent-up anxiety that came with worrying about how things were going to go in Ohio generally, I ended up letting off a lot of steam during the performance at Jardin. I mean a lot of steam. It was a physical experience as much as an emotional or intellectual one -- a little bit like laying into a punching bag for 45 minutes straight.

* Speaking of: I realized after this show that if I could somehow manage to tour the group more regularly, I would probably be in the best shape of my life. It seems like every time I get to the end of a set, I have more or less sweated through whatever clothes I happen to be wearing (what with the jumping and the running and the hopping and such). It's a workout, and, you know, much more fun than getting on a treadmill.

* Various kinds of spontaneous band choreography emerged with this show -- something I consider an extremely high compliment from the musicians. Although I have fantasized about carefully working this sort of thing out ahead of time, usually we barely have time to even practice the actual music. Once in a while I will write in specific gestures as part of an individual chart, but nothing too elaborate. With these shows, however, the band more or less danced as an organism -- not in the sense of everybody always moving as one, but a commitment to (and lack of embarrassment about) the idea that music and body movement simply go together. My favorite moments in this regard were the "visual reverb" (the term is Josh Rutner's) that many of the horn players did behind the bone solo in "Fuck the Muck" (see the clip below), and, in the same tune, a rather over-the-top arm-linked-swaying that accompanied the hymn section at the end.



Columbus (26 September, Rumba Cafe)

* I don't mean to knock Columbus. There are certainly good people and good musicians fighting the good fight there, just as there are in most other places in the world. And I personally thought Honk Wail & Moan (the other big band on the bill) turned in an admirable set. They certainly had a decent turnout (including one couple -- okay, one rather energetic chick and her seemingly along-for-the-ride boyfriend -- who danced their way through about a third of the HWM show). Basically, everyone involved in helping me set up this gig really went out of their way to make us feel at home. So gracias all around.

* Still, it was probably inevitable that things were going to be a little stressful in Columbus. The IJG west coasters were seriously sleep-deprived (we had all taken red-eyes); the group had gotten precious little time to rehearse anything, old or new; we ended up going on pretty damned late (if James Hirschfeld hadn't had some friends in that part of Ohio (almost by accident), we might not have had much of an audience at all); and we were adjusting to the somewhat depressing vibe of the city (which suffers from an "insular urban blight" kind of situation).

* I have already mentioned the emergence of our "Skeletor" character, played (and, honestly, created) by Dan Rosenboom. Talk about channeling one's inner 12-year-old! It's probably safe to assume that most of us in the band have gone through a metal phase at one time or another -- so even though the music we are currently playing is pretty unlike metal in just about every respect, there is something inherently right about having a dreadlocked skull-mask guy along to help play it:



* Let me backtrack. For some time now I have been trying to feature the piccolo trumpet skills of Mr. Rosenboom in a more than peripheral way. With the new stuff, I think I finally managed to come up with a few apposite vehicles for that purpose. The catch was that I asked Rosenboom to create an "evil cowboy" character to go along with one of those tunes ("Boozey McBombalot" -- with a title like that, you can perhaps guess who the "evil cowboy" is supposed to be). This he did with a gusto, and an artistry, that was downright thrilling. (In case I'm not being clear enough: Rosenboom actually played the piccolo trumpet while wearing the skull mask.)

* Apropos of nothing: I'm trying to get to the point, compositionally, where I can reliably make a listener laugh with a single well-placed note.

* Speaking of laughter, here's a 2 AM "golden moment of goofery" at a gas station in Columbus, courtesy of Evan Francis:



* * * * *

So there you go. It's been a really exciting and fun year for the band. Thanks again to everyone involved, especially the musicians. We'll see what we can pull out of the hat for '08. Until then, it's back to the new record for me...