Category: Music

Absurdity

Coming Up On…

Every writing project comes to a point when it crowds everything else into smaller and smaller spaces, mainly of time.  Right now I’m 3/4 of the way through what I’m currently working on. As a result, my reading has slowed to a crawl (I’ve been taking far too long to get through an ARC that is really good—review to come) and I’m barely keeping up with everything else.

Donna has spent the weekend in Iowa with her sister, leaving me to wallow in potential bachelor disorder.  But I’ve managed to keep the place not only clean, but straightened out a few things.  I could never get used to her being absent, but occasionally I get more done when I’m alone.

However, the last couple of months have been taken up with another project that’s been demanding as much if not more time than the novel and has me a bit on edge.  I’ve been practicing piano daily in preparation for an actual gig.

World Book Night is coming up.  On April 22, the night before the official event, Left bank Books is doing an event for it—Speakeasy —at the Mad Art Gallery in Soulard.  Come by, it’ll be fun, and…well, I’ll be playing piano, along with two other excellent musicians.  (Not that I’m an excellent musician, but…)

This was the brilliant (read: insane) idea of Jarek Steele, co-owner of Left Bank Books (and my boss…one of them…), who casually suggested that it would be cool to have a jazz combo at an event called Speakeasy and, for reasons which now escape me, I said “Yeah, that would be.  Maybe I…?”  “Well, of course,” says he, “that’s what I had in mind.  Would you?”

So I’ve been diligent at the keyboard, honing some skills that have been largely left unhoned for too many years.  Much to my surprise, the rehearsals are going okay, and, well…it will be interesting.

But my daily schedule has been torn between the demands of a novel that is swiftly heading for conclusion and needs (demands, pleads, screams for) my attention and the little guilt-gnome in the back of my skull telling me to stop fiddling with that and practice!

Leaves little time for much of anything else.  Like reading.

After the 22nd, and my day of recovery, I’ll get back to, well, Other Things.

On the other hand, who knows?  This might go so well that we three who will be doing this could decide to continue it…

Sigh.  Doubtful, but never say never, right?  So it is with some reservation that I suggest if any of you are in the area and in the least interested, check out the event.  You will want to come out in support of World Book Night anyway, which is a certifiably cool thing to do.  It will be fun.  See you then?

culture

Banks Passing

One of the founding members of a band I have loved and followed since I first heard them over 44 years ago has died.

Peters Banks  was the original guitarist for Yes.  As noted in the obituary, he recorded the first two albums with them before being asked to leave, to be replaced by Steve Howe.

The video below is from 2007 and shows a performance by Banks of a piece from his first solo album, Two Sides of Peter Banks, which was released in 1973.

I have written elsewhere about the peculiarity of certain musicians within certain milieu.  Banks, outside of Yes, was a first-rate player.  He did not shine so much with Yes, but a large part of that is probably because Anderson and Squire were going in one direction and Banks had other ideas in mind.

In the last few years I’ve found and purchased three other Banks recordings.  All instrumental, very layered works, part jazz, part rock, part Something Else, I’ve listened and admired the distinctiveness of his sound.  He did other bans after leaving Yes (Flash, Empire) and a lot of session work.  I’ve always been impressed by the list of players on that first solo album, though.  He had Phil Collins (Genesis), Jan Akkerman (Focus, Brainbox), John Wetton (King Crimson, UK, and later Asia) Steve Hackett (Genesis) and others, all first-rank players, all fitting together seamlessly in a wonderfully eclectic musical experience that showcased a wide range of influence and style and ambition.

Here’s a rare video from a Yes session with Banks on guitar:

Time catches us all eventually.  It’s good some things are not forgotten soon.

Farewell, Pete.

 

 

blog

Favorite (To Me) Posts of the Year

I’ve never done this before, assuming a certain shelf life to what I write here, but maybe I’ll start.  Now, this is completely self-indulgent, so you are warned.  Here are my personal favorites of the Distal Muses for 2012:

2012

The Last One

Narratives And The American Landscape

Music On A Saturday Night

Le Guin Again

Honor and Duty

Petty Stuff, Harlan Ellison, and Therbligs

The Golden (Silver?) Good Ol’ Days

Reflections On The 4th of July: A Personal Statement

Jon Lord, Deep Purple, Legacies

Gravity

Longer Tomorrows

Rights

Meanwhile

Post Thanks

 

I’ll leave December alone.  The last one is, I think, appropriate to end the overview.

I have selected almost no political posts—most all of them were topical, concerned with what was happening at that moment—and the few of a political nature included are far more general, more philosophical.

We had many deaths in 2012.  Here is a good list of the musicians we lost.  Here is a list of the “notable” deaths of writers.  I quibble and chafe at the label “notable” because there are so many whom the L.A. Times would never notice who mean so much to so many.  As well as Ray Bradbury, K. D. Wentworth passed away, a friend and writer, a wonderful person who left too soon.  Certainly more people will know who Ray was.

We should remember in order to go forward on solid ground.  Take what was good and make it better.  Learn from the bad so as not to make the same mistakes.  But never give up.

Have a safe, happy new year.

blog

2012

I was never so glad to see an election done than this past one.  The only comparable year in my experience was 1968 and I can’t honestly say that comparison is viscerally valid, as I was 13 most of that year, 14 right before the election, and most of the issues washed over me leaving me unfazed.  But ’68 was the year of Nixon and Humphrey and George Wallace, Vietnam, the Counter Culture and the Anti-War Movement, and a resurgent Republican Party in opposition to LBJ’s Great Society.  I sensed the acrimony, the bitterness, the ugliness, but most of it made no real sense.  Looking back, I can see that it was very much a revolutionary year and now I can make at least an intellectual comparison.  2012, politically, was a war.

I just finished reading Gore Vidal’s Lincoln, part of his epic series Narratives of Empire.  Lincoln chronicles, novelistically, the Civil War from the viewpoint of Washington and inside the Lincoln White House.  I have read enough period history to recognize the essential accuracy of Vidal’s setting and the nature of the events.  It was tonic for me since it is a full court display of a truly ugly period of political history.  We have encased Lincoln in the amber of the past and rendered him “safe” for our nostalgic alchemy, but it is always instructive to learn about what really went on.  For sheer vileness, one would be hard pressed to find another period in our history to top it.  All the thoughtless charges this past year that Obama was destroying the country, that his re-election would signal the end of liberty, the gutter-level spite in even the most passing of commentary—especially by those in the upper levels of our political institutions—are rendered commonplace by gaining even a smidgen of knowledge of earlier times.  Lincoln, who is now regarded as one of if not the best president we ever had, was at the time regarded even by his supporters as a first-class mediocrity, called “the original gorilla” by subordinates and a Press that was never, seemingly, satisfied with his performance.  His own cabinet was comprised of men who, each of them, thought they could do a better job.  Whereas Obama is only feared as someone who would take away liberty, Lincoln did (the suspension of Habeus Corpus chief among his actions) and yet, here we are, 150 years later, having a hard time wrapping our collective heads around the utter humanness of his presidency.

Still, we didn’t live through the Civil War, we lived through 2012, and personal experience matters differently.

My reasons for not voting for Romney I made plain.  What I found so disconcerting this past year is how little reason impacted those who were bent on ousting Obama.  Once I left the realm of contentless rhetoric and starting talking policy, eyes glazed over, mouths became slack, the body language of my conversents acquired the fight-or-flight posture of someone beginning to perceive a physical threat.  I can only conclude from my small and thoroughly unscientific sampling that most of the people I knew who intended to vote for Romney cared not at all about such things.  Policy made no difference other than as a prop to a personal disdain for Obama.  Without doubt, I’ve lost acquaintances over this.

Worse, the response to losing has been one of the most bizarre congeries of absurdities in recent memory.  The complete denial of reality startled me.  It has been an antic, carnival year in politics.

Interrupted for me personally by my first encounter with mortality, namely an attack of appendicitis that laid me up for nearly two months.  The first week of August I developed a “fluttering” in my belly that resembled stomach flu, but wouldn’t settle out.  By the time I got to the emergency room, it was a full blown agonizing Thing.  My appendix had perforated and I was in Barnes Hospital for a bit over a day.  A few weeks later, I was back in because, one, the wound had become infected, and, two, I had developed an abscess.  Two months after the initial event, I was pronounced healed.  Two months of soup and sleep and reading books and contemplating vulnerability.

For whatever reason, I do not consciously consider myself the object of much affection, so it always surprises me (pleasantly) when people display it toward me.  (I don’t really understand this in myself, since I am in many ways a rather self-centered person, but this never seems to extend to expectations that anyone else pay attention to me…desires, certainly, but not expectation…)  The degree of sympathy and well-wishing that came during my convalescence both humbled and delighted.  Thank you, my friends.

As I said, this did afford me an opportunity to read and I plowed through several books I might otherwise not have managed.

I began a new job this year, at Left Bank Books.  Back in 2011 I started doing work for them of an unusual sort—what we call downtown outreach.  Left Bank is our oldest independent bookstore (1969) and four years ago opened a second location in downtown St. Louis, which proceeded to be ignored.  Well, it takes a while for a new business (or a new location) to acquire recognition, but in this economy they couldn’t really afford to wait.  So we tried something and I started going around to the businesses downtown to introduce them to the fact that they now have a full-service bookstore right there.  Many folks knew about Left Bank Books, but only remembered the Central West End location.  Naturally, they were thrilled to learn there was one within walking distance.

I sort of doubt I had much to do with their increased sales this past year, but it didn’t hurt.  After a few months of my meeting with office managers, building managers, hotel concierges, and the like, sales took a turn for the better.

As of October, I started training as a bookseller.  I’m still doing some of the outreach, but now I have some steady hours (much needed!) and the bonus is I’m getting to know a bunch of very smart, very passionate, very cool people.

Donna also got a new job.  In a weird way.

At the end of 2011, she was dismissed from USSEC, the Job From Hell.  The less said of that the better.  The money, as they say, was great, but everything else sucked.  Frankly, that job was killing her (and not doing me much good either).  Entirely due to office politics, which she hates, she was set up to take a fall and fired.

Cause for Great Celebration and Gleefulness!

We’ve been becoming reacquainted this past year.  Except that the search for a new job turned out to be far more labor intensive than either of us anticipated.

However, she went back to doing what she loves to do—temping.  Of course, the problems with temping are simple: not enough pay and no benefits.  But she likes doing it!

Solution came in the form of an actual job offer from a temp agency to be a regular staff employee.  She works directly for the agency, takes what assignments they are now dedicated to getting her, and best of all she has benefits.  This is in most aspects a dream job for her.

We’re planning an actual vacation.  First one in several years.  (Long weekends aren’t actual vacations, we’ve learned this the hard way.)  But the best part is, she’s happy.

On the writing front, things are…much the same as they have been.  I finished the second volume of my alternate history trilogy (officially the Oxun Trilogy, consisting of Orleans, Oculus (now done), and Orient (forthcoming) and my agent loved it.  I have some revisions to make on it, but nothing major.

And we’re waiting.  I’ve decided to go ahead an write Orient this coming year anyway, just to have it finished.

I have placed a short story collection with a small local press.  Official announcement yet to come.

And I’m trying to write short fiction again.

My photography is continuing to improve (digitally) and I’ve taken my first steps into RAW.  Musically, well, I was playing fairly well until August…

The components of my youth are changing, passing away, metamorphosing.  Too many deaths of heroes, too many changes in landscape, too much maudlin reminiscence.  I won’t detail such things here.  Go back over my posts these last dozen months and you will see what I have mourned and remembered.

All in all, 2012 was a net improvement over the last few years in several ways, though I admit I have to think about it to see most of them.  The bout of appendicitis has been a bit of a wake-up call, with solemn contemplations of time left and mortality and reassessment.  I had blithely been living as though I had plenty of time left to do Everything I Want To Do, but even before August I was admitting that this wasn’t true.  August underlined it and put an exclamation point on it.

We do not make Resolutions normally.  I long ago knew that such things were little better than To Do lists that often get overwritten and superseded by circumstance.  But this time…

2013 will be different.  I don’t know how yet, but.

So be safe, be warm, love each other.  See you all on the flipside.

Art

I Love Jazz

We had a treat recently and I wanted to share a bit of it.

I like jazz.

No, that’s not accurate.  I love jazz.  So imagine my delight to be asked to work an event at our local jazz spot, Jazz At The Bistro, selling copies of John Pizzarelli’s new memoir, World On A String, for Left Bank Books, during his quartet’s Saturday night performance.

There is something about live jazz that just goes right into me.  A good group of masterful musicians, having a conversation on stage, it’s just magic.  Pizzarelli is one of the best guitarists in the business and frankly, I didn’t fully appreciate just how good he is till this event.

You can play a game listening to a musician of picking out influences.  Who is it this player derived inspiration from?  I heard Les Paul, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Larry Coryell, half a dozen others, but a truly good musician takes all those and makes something new out of them, something all his or her own, and Pizzarelli is at that level.  It was an amazing show.

So I thought I’d share a bit with the video below.  Oh, and please follow the links above and buy the book and his albums.

 

 

John, by the way, is the son of legendary guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, who seems to have been around forever and been on damn near everything.

Art

Jon Lord, Deep Purple, Legacies

I said I’d do a longer piece on Jon Lord, so.

In the aftermath of his death, I bought a couple of old Deep Purple cds I never had. By old I mean from the Sixties. The Book of Taliesyn, Shades of Deep Purple, Deep Purple. These three albums, the band’s first, were recorded with what is known as the Mark I line-up, which did not include Ian Gillan, who became the most recognizable voice of the band in the Seventies, during their most successful period.

What is fascinating now, in retrospect, is just how much a shift they made after they fired Rod Evans (vocals) and Nick Simper (bass).* The original Deep Purple was very much headed in the direction of what we now call Prog Rock. Not just in the wild sound effects they employed, but in the really intricate song-writing. The whole aesthetic approach of this early manifestation of the band embraced the novelty and innovation that defined bands like The Nice, Jefferson Airplane, Yes, and early Genesis. The break when they reorganized around Ian Gillan’s greater range and angrier delivery and Roger Glover’s far more fluid and, yes, heavier bass work is striking, not only for the differences manifest between songs like The Shield or Hush and the next-period thunder of Speed King, Hard Lovin’ Man, or Fireball, but also because of the album that came between the last Mark I Purple and In Rock—namely, Concerto for Group and Orchestra.

This album goes directly to what I consider the most significant aspect of Deep Purple, namely the incredible musicianship of Jon Lord. This is a Lord composition and it is a mature, fully-realized bit of what we call Classical Music (given that we tend these days to lump all the various schools of such music into that one bin—Baroque, Rococco, Classical, Romantic, NeoClassical, etc) that also incorporated rock motifs, elevating what at the time was still, despite the work being done by many gifted writers and performers to raise its stature, regarded as “kid’s music” or, more generally, “pop” or, less kindly, trash. Going back to the the first three Purple albums, you can hear the forerunners here and there throughout in the experimental elements and classically-tinged keyboard work of Mr. Lord. It is historically an astonishing piece of work, rendered even more so by the fact that after that, the new line-up of Deep Purple dove head-first in the hardest of hard rock, the music pitched at a roar and scream.

And yet, here and there throughout the next four albums—In Rock, Fireball, Machine Head, Who Do We Think We Are?—we hear that same sensibility flavoring the stew. Lord’s solos, while full-blown blues-idiom statements, would shift into energetic renderings of Bach, Vivaldi, Rachmaninoff, inserting passages of refined musicianship that fit in with, augmented, and yet stood apart from the thunder and shouts around them.

As good a set of musicians as Deep Purple comprised, it was the sensibilities of Jon Lord, I think, that made them stand out.

(I have to admit here that I never really loved Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar work. It’s fine for what it is and I’ve changed my mind about his actual abilities, especially after listening to the Taliesyn album. He could keep up with Lord, truly. I just didn’t care for his approach. But it was another distinctive voice within the Purple mix. I confess that both Tommy Bolin and present-day Steve Morse play more to my liking (especially Morse, whose work with the Dixie Dregs and later with Kansas established him as one of the best in the business), but there is also no arguing that Blackmore’s style is almost instantly recognizable. But I listened more in spite of him than because of him.)

Deep Purple became a bit of a cliche by the end of the Seventies. Smoke On The Water was so overplayed as to become its own parody. But despite periods of never listening to them, I always return, drawn to the power, yes, but always to those keyboard runs and the above-average musicality, which I identify with Lord’s continual influence.

What brought me finally to the realization that this was one of the finest composers on the planet was the series of albums he did all of his more or less straight classical compositions, starting with The Gemini Suite, which in many ways was a second try at the Concerto. The format is the same (modeled on, I believe, Bartok’s Concerto For Orchestra) but the music is all new. Lord did a number of these and after his retirement from Deep Purple in 2001 or so he devoted all his time to composition and recording his symphonic music. In albums such as Boom of the Tingling Strings, Durham Concerto and others, he has left us a set of musical experiences quite apart from the driving rock he also did with great ability and obvious passion. (He said of his later works that he composed music, not labels.)

Jon Lord was only 71 when he passed away, from complications of pancreatic cancer. His voice still speaks and I would urge everyone with any serious interest in music to go find his later recordings and be amazed.

As much as I love his classical works, though, I think this is how I will always remember him.

___________________________________________________________________

* Rod Evans, in these early recordings, displayed a common approach among a certain kind of rock’n’roll vocalist that was a sort of homage to Elvis. His exaggerated stylings can come across almost laughable in certain instances, but he was a credible singer within a certain range. He later became a founding member of Captain Beyond in league with a couple of Iron Butterfly alumni where his vocals leveled out and he displayed his qualities to much better and more honest effect. With the collapse of that band, Evans soon retired from music.

Nick Simper fared less well, though he worked more steadily, in and out of a variety of bands that never quite “made it.” The longest run after Deep Purple was a band called Fandango. Simper still gigs, though.

culture

who did we think we were?

Jon Lord died yesterday.  He was 71.

Don’t know who Jon Lord was?  Pity.  But, then, you probably do, even if the name doesn’t evoke anything.

Jon Lord was the keyboardist for Deep Purple, the hard rock band that made music history in the early 1970s for their loudness, their energy, and their instrumental dexterity, especially Jon Lord’s who regularly threw in passages from Bach or Beethoven or Scarlatti in the middle of heavy, driving blues-based rock tunes.

Then there were the songs themselves—Hush, Wring That Neck, Kentucky Woman, Child In Time, Highway Star, Space Truckin’, My Woman From Tokyo…and of course Smoke On TheWater.

But then! Oh, surprise surprise, the man had musical chops that far exceeded what anyone might expect from a rocker.  Concerto For Group and Orchestra was a full-blown orchestral suite with the London Philharmonic and Deep Purple.  Later there was the Gemini Suite which was a similar idea.  Other blends of rock instrumental and orchestral composition followed until, late in his career, Lord retired from the band to do nothing but compose and the results were amazing pieces of late Romantic symphonic work of deep complexity, exuberant melody, and a lush tonal palette.  He was a composer’s composer.

I will do a longer appreciation of him later.  For now, this is a place marker to note that this was one of the artists who set my aesthetic goals in music, someone I “wanted to be like when I grew up”—at least musically.  He was an amazing talent.  He left behind an incredible body of work.  Go acquaint yourselves.

Art

More Music

I wish I had recordings.  Sometimes, these monthly jam sessions just turn out sweet.

I don’t have much to say about this past Saturday night’s coffeehouse other than everyone had a good time and we had some surprising performances.  So rather than try to recapture the musicality, I offer a few images.

Bob is a multitalented player, whose skill I envy.  A pleasant surprise was his daughter, Diane, showing up, who turned out (not very surprisingly) to be musically adept as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The guy on the right is one of my oldest friends, Tom.  Back in The Day we had aspirations to be rock stars.  For my money, I got something better—a lifelong friend.

 

 

I “premiered” a piece I’d written a long time ago for a friend and colleague, Allen Steele.  He wrote a delightful story called Blues For A Red Planet and I couldn’t resist doing something musical with it.  Aside from a quote from Holst, there’s not a lot Martian in it, and I’ve never played it publicly before because it requires a decent drummer—which I finally got with Bob, providing the appropriate thunder.

 

Ended the evening with an unexpected bongo number with our two drummers.  Reminded me of some of the percussion moments from Santana concerts.

Art

Embassytown Aurality

I don’t post music videos normally, but I thought this was exceptional. It’s music based on China Mieville’s truly excellent novel, Embassytown, which I urge everyone to get, read, immerse yourselves in. This novel goes on my list of “novels to be used to teach science fiction” along with a handful of others. Enjoy.

Art

Music On A Saturday Night

Storms apparently kept a lot of people away. A shame.  The monthly gathering at the New Covenant Methodist Church on Bellerive happened anyway, a St. Patrick’s Day session complete with a pot of corned beef, and the limited audience enjoyed an evening of good music delivered by people who were having an enormous amount of fun.

More fun than I’m used to having inside a church.

I’ve been attending these now for almost five years.  Maybe longer, someone would have to check.  When I began, these open mic sessions offered nearly 80% karaoke, of variable quality.  Rich and Annette (Annette more forcefully—though Annette’s “forceful” comes across with the glee of a 12-year-old wanting to share a puppy) had been on me to come play.  I didn’t play at first.  When I did…

Let me explain something about my music.  Way back in the distant past, in a galaxy far, far away, I had aspirations to be a rock star.  Never happened, and in hindsight it never was going to happen.  As hard as I worked for those years, I really didn’t have the full range of dedication it would have taken.  I wanted to get up on stage (or better yet in a studio) and rock out, mainly on my music, music I wrote.

And it frankly wasn’t very good.  Like my fiction, it required time to ferment, to acquire some growth, some maturity, some…worth.  And playing other peoples’ music was just a stop along the way.

So I quit.  Didn’t touch a keyboard for, oh, almost 15 years.  I bought a guitar, learned enough to play along at parties, and then started writing a few songs (not very good ones) and Donna bought me a better guitar, and so it went, and there were even a few gigs, but…

After Clarion (1988) I came home, started writing stories that actually sold, and about a year later we found a piano that I thought would be perfect.  A Yamaha Clavinova.  It has a lot of bells-n-whistles, but mainly it has the touch of a real piano and two piano samples that are superb.  So, we bought it and I started noodling again.

Fifteen years is a long time to not play an instrument, and I had forgotten nearly everything.  But I didn’t buy it to restart a career that was never going to happen, I bought to for stress release.  (And in that cause, this machine has taken a beating.  I still have it, it still functions well, and I assure you I have pounded on it.  I’ve had it repaired once in 23 years.  That’s pretty reliable.)  So while I occasionally pull out some sheet music and painfully struggle through material I once knew by heart, for the most part I just jam.

I’ve developed a free-form style built around a handful of basic motifs that can be mixed and matched into a variety of presentations that allow me to fly.  Just the sheer joy of playing is what I want and I don’t care about the tune.  What I play sounds like something, has a familiarity to certain things, and people listen and apparently enjoy it while thinking  “I just can’t quite place that…”  It’s pyrotechnic, utterly improvised, and I do it because it makes me feel good.

Well…when I started playing at this little coffeehouse, it apparently made others feel good, too.

Gradually, the musicians have taken over from the karaoke.  There are now some fine players doing their bits.  There’s a floutist of considerable talent, two drummers (one of whom is phenomenal), a couple of good guitarists, plenty of singers (not me) and occasionally a violinist, a conga player, and once we had a first-rate saxophonist, and a trumpet player.

Then there’s me.

Charitably, I think I just shock people.  They don’t know what to make of me, but either they’re too polite or too stunned to not like it.

Occasionally, I even play well.

Last night we hit some grooves.  Some?  All night the playing was excellent, by everyone.

I brought a composed piece.  I wrote it down because the changes and the overall direction was more complex, more disciplined than what I normally do.  I arrived early with the intent of (hopefully) working it out with a couple of the others and at least including drums and maybe a guitar solo.  We ended up rehearsing—

Monkees.

Yes, well—don’t scoff, I liked the Monkees, and I was saddened by Davy Jones’ passing.  For the ending sing-along, we did five Monkee’s tunes.

Rehearsing those took all the time we had, so I didn’t get to work on mine with anyone.  I mentioned it to Bob, the drummer.  I asked him to sit in on the free-form I intended to do in the second half, just a basic 4/4 rock beat over which I could waffle.

When I began playing my prepared piece, all of sudden I had a rhythm section.  Bob and the conga player, Robert, just joined in, laid down a solid beat, and to my deep pleasure I didn’t stumble, and it was…

It was like flying.

A word about Bob.  He’s a musician’s musician.  Keyboard, guitar, vocals, and drums, he plays it all, and he plays it with a natural grace I envy.  But as a drummer he is surpassing good.  He found my groove, figured out how to nail it, and played as if we’d rehearsed it a dozen times.  I felt my face stretching into a grin halfway through.

I haven’t had quite that much fun playing in a long time.  Last year we did something fairly complex with a spoken-word piece I wrote (which is posted on this blog, the Jazz posts) that came together surprisingly well.  But I expected that, we had rehearsed.  This time it was spontaneous and it just rocked!  They made me sound pretty good, I think.

The rest of the evening was as good or better, and the Monkees’ jam was just fine, even if Rich’s voice was a touch raw and he couldn’t quite make those Davy Jones high notes.

And a lot of people missed it.

We didn’t.

I am so glad to have music in my life and so fortunate to know first-rate players.  Thank you all.