we liked your earlier films when you were funny
In one of the term’s last classes, a student who usually didn’t play, came with a guitar and sung a song about someone falsely accused of a crime. Someone asked […]
future course
trying to dream up how a music business course will proceed next year. i’d like to take a song and put the class to work reaching out to music directors […]
random amazing things i learned this week
Yul Brynner in drag picking up Roman Polanski in The Magic Christian John Lennon singing background vocals on David Bowie’s Fame The F blues scale easily works over Ab major […]
unstoppingly
There is a territory I’ve been to but can’t just get there effortlessly. A space where one plays something they never played before which feels very stimulating, astonishing even. Like […]
the diminshed opinion
The 6th diminished scale continues to baffle me. I keep trying but I’m yet to walk away feeling like I got close. Barry Harris and all his fans, who are […]
renegades
There is a book I keep coming across during my Xmas shopping often front racked, very beautiful black and white cover of Bruce Springsteen and Barak Obama. It’s titled Renegades. […]
then and later
There were two brothers I knew when they were little kids. They looked up to me. I was a counsellor at a summer camp and they were among my campers. […]
we travel the starship from planet to planet
In the 70s, a teenager named Al, who had had enjoyable acid experiences with blotter and microdot, obtained window pane for the first time and took it while attending a […]
iggy pop
There is no more enjoyable a moment, from a film trailer on music, than when Iggy Pop shares a two second explanation after first hearing the famous song by Link […]
of course they did
There is something other worldly about both Bud Powell and Errol Garner and the fact that they never look at their fucking fingers while playing virtuosically. It’s proof there is […]