It’s been a frustrating couple of weeks, but this does make the day cheerier: I just firmed up plans to road trip to Nashville on April 27 (less than two weeks from now!) to meet up with some friends (Geof Morris, Mike Terry among others) and see Andy Osenga play a show with full band at 12th and Porter.
Yeah, who care if it’s a 10-hour drive each way. I can’t wait.
[Oh, and also: I completely have the best wife in the world. Thanks, Becky, for being supportive of this.]
Normally when we think about musicians and “their music”, we think about the music that they write, perform, and record. But author Ben Ratliff (jazz critic for the New York Times) decided to ask a different question. What do these musicians listen to and find influential? What are they thinking and hearing as they listen to the music? So Ratliff met with a dozen or so noted jazz musicians, asked them what tracks they’d like to listen to, and then relates to us the experience and conversations of listening to the music with the musicians. The result is The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music. It turns out to be fascinating stuff.
Though I am a musician and fancy myself a fan (though not a hardcore aficionado) of jazz, it quickly became clear to me that the plane these guys think on is just incredibly high. It is fascinating in its own way, though, listening to serious jazz players talk about how they think about jazz. My favorite part of the book, though, was the reference list at the back, where Ratliff lists each recording that he listened to with each of the musicians. It has been a great input for my personal playlist… so much to explore.
If you’re a musician, like jazz, or just want to explore the minds of some great musicians, I’d recommend picking up The Jazz Ear. It’s a short read, but quite worth it.
[You can buy The Jazz Ear from Amazon.com.]
OK, I know I’ve been tagged on this one multiple times. Let’s see.
What does your music library say about you?
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1. Put Your iTunes/MP3 on Shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write down the name of the song no matter how silly it sounds!
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.
5. Tag at least 10 friends
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[Note: I reserve the right to skip classical music, christmas music, and sermons.]
What do your friends think of you?
“Oh No” – Hem [hehehehe]
If someone says, “Is this okay?” You say?
“Dream Awake” – The Frames
How would you describe yourself?
“Beautiful Sorta” – Ryan Adams & the Cardinals [I swear I'm not gaming the system.]
What do you like in a guy/girl?
“Give Me Some Room” – Michael O’Brien [meh]
How do you feel today?
“Scared” – Waterdeep [HA!]
What is your life’s purpose?
“Cheers Darlin’” – Damien Rice
What is your motto?
“Things Have Changed” – Bob Dylan [niiiiiice.]
What do you think about very often?
“Happy” – The Frames
What do you think of your best friend?
“Real Good Thing” – Newsboys [Again, I swear I'm not gaming the system. AWESOME.]
What do you think of the person you like?
“Night Must End” – Sleeping at Last
What is your life story?
“Yawny at the Apocalypse” – Andrew Bird [ROFL]
What do you want to be when you grow up?
“Valerie” – The Zutons [????]
What do you think of when you see the person you like/love?
“The Grace of God” – PFR [Aw yeah.]
What will you dance to at your wedding?
“Once” – Harry Connick, Jr. [Good song.]
What will they play at your funeral?
“Your Own Private Love” – Harry Connick, Jr.
What is your hobby/interest?
“I’ve Just Seen A Face” – The Beatles
What is your biggest fear?
“Always Returning” – Brian Eno
What is your biggest secret?
“Light In Your Eyes” – Sheryl Crow [or maybe people finding out I have Sheryl Crow in my music library]
What do you think of your friends?
“Mothers of the Disappeared” – U2 [um, OK?]
What will you post this as?
“I Still Miss Someone” – covered by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash
Songwriting, you ask? Yeah, if you missed it, I was invited to attend the Iowa Songwriter’s Guild meeting last month and they planted the bug again. So I’ve been keeping the songwriting idea in mind, looking for and writing down ideas, phrases, and so on. I have at least one idea that I really like as a concept; now I have to find a way to put actual words to it.
As a worship leader and accompanist for many years, one of my greatest gifts has been that I have an immense capacity for remembering music and lyrics and then playing them back. I could sit down with nothing more than a list of song titles and play and sing you songs for hours and hours. That skill, though, seems to become a curse when it comes to songwriting. Because I have trained my brain for so many years to remember and replay other people’s melodies and lyrics, now when I try to create my own phrase, I write down two words and it makes some other song lyric pop into my head. Play a couple of chords and it pops a song into my head. And once it’s in my head, it’s hard to banish.
I’m going to keep at it, though, and hope to attend January’s Guild meeting with at least something to show for my efforts. I may not ever turn out a great song, but it’s at least worth the effort to try.
I’ll work through that title backwards. How do you know when you have some musical kinship with someone else? How about when they pull out that obscure song that they really like and want you to hear… and it’s a song you’ve been playing on repeat on your iPod for weeks?
That very thing happened last night at Nick and Allie’s house. After the Iowa Songwriter’s Guild house show I hung out for a while to hear some of Allie’s new hymntunes and to generally talk music with Nick, and he pulled out The Khrusty Brothers’ Sympathy for Jesus. What a great song. That provoked a discussion on Don Chaffer and Waterdeep, and ended up with Nick lending me all of his Waterdeep CDs so I can take a listen. So far, so good.
Earlier in the evening Nick & Allie hosted the Iowa Songwriters’ Guild monthly meeting, which this month was a special house show. Each of the writers played a couple of songs, and I quite enjoyed hearing folks share their talent. I was motivated to try to dust off my long-neglected songwriting chops; what remains to be seen is if that motivation will last long enough to actually write anything. Nick did send a book on songwriting home with me, though, so I’ll have to take a look at it. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
When Andy Osenga’s The Morning came out two and a half years ago (to much fanfare on this blog) I would not have predicted that New Beginning would become the signature track off the record. Early In The Morning would’ve been my bet, with then either House of Mirrors or Marilyn next on my list.
Thirty months later, though, New Beginning has become the most durable track, evidenced by, if nothing else, the fact that Andy is performing it almost every night this year on the Behold the Lamb Christmas tour.
The bridge of the song still gets me every time:
I can feel a prayer rising
And I don’t even know the words
Still the groaning is the postage
And it will not be returned
Though we’re living in this rubble
Of our reckless plans and games
We are reaching for the promise
That we will not stay the same…
Thanks, Andy, for a great song.
Tomorrow morning I will get in the car and, rather than heading to work, I will embark on one of my signature crazy-man concert road trips. Previous editions of the road trips have taken me to Chicago and Nashville… this time I’m heading west, to Omaha. The goal this time: the kickoff concert of the 2008 Behold the Lamb of God Christmas tour, featuring Andrew Peterson and friends.
My current plans are to leave Cedar Rapids first thing in the morning, meet Curt McLey for lunch in Elkhorn (suburban Omaha) around 11:30, and then head over to the church where the concert will take place. It will be good to catch up a bit with the gang of musicians who make up this tour – Andy Osenga, Andy Gullahorn, Jill Phillips, Ben Shive… talented songwriters and musicians, all… and when you put them all on the same stage… amazing things happen. The concert is at 7 pm and then it’s just 4 short hours on I-80 back home. Good times.
If you haven’t heard Behold the Lamb before, you should go buy yourself a copy from the Rabbit Room store. Best Christmas album I own, hands down. I’ll be bleary-eyed and saddle sore come Wednesday morning, but it will definitely have been worth it. Hopefully I’ll have some good pictures to post when I get back. Only 18 more hours to wait…
Discovered this one last night: when I tapped the Genius icon to create a Genius playlist out of the currently-playing song, the playlist it created began with a different version of that song. It was repeatable, happened twice.
In detail: I was playing “All the Way Home (live)” from Andrew Peterson’s Appendix M record. I hit the Genius button to create a playlist, and it generated one quite neatly. Unfortunately, rather than starting the playlist with “All the Way Home (live)” from Appendix M, it started the playlist with “All the Way Home” from AP’s Carried Along.
Don’t know quite what’s going on here, but something ain’t quite right with the Genius.
During an online conversation with Lydia this morning I was chiding for her unfamiliarity with Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Three Little Maids from School Are We”. Just to get everyone on the same page, here it is:
But then I got to thinking about my familiarity with Gilbert & Sullivan, which leads me to an embarrassing admission: most of my familiarity with the music of Gilbert & Sullivan comes from two sources: the movie Chariots of Fire, and the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons.
In Chariots of Fire, as I recall, one of the main characters is interested in an actress who is playing one of the three little maids in The Mikado. There’s also a scene when the olympic team is traveling on the ship and they’re singing Gilbert & Sullivan songs around the piano. (The scene always sticks in my mind because the audio is just off – the piano chord sounds a split-second before the actor’s hand hits the keys.)
In The Simpsons, the villain Sideshow Bob tracks down the Simpson family (who were living on a houseboat in a witness relocation program), ties up the parents, and is just about to kill Bart. Bart stalls Sideshow Bob by challenging him to sing the entire score of The Pirates of Penzance H.M.S. Pinafore (thanks for the correction, Jamie!). Bob can’t resist the challenge and so sings and sings and sings while the boat floats down the river, into town, and to the authorities.
I really should take some time to become more familiar with these guys.
[Edit: I found a good version of the Simpsons' scene.]
I switched over from my usual podcasts and indie rock this morning to give some iPod love to a genre I’ve ignored far too much as of late: classical piano. To be more specific: Bach and Chopin. What a fantastic way to start the morning.
Now, I’ve spent innumerable hours over the past 20+ years with my backside on a piano bench and my fingers hacking away at some composer or another. And ever since I was a kid, let’s face it, I did a lot of hacking. Sure, I had assigned pieces that I was supposed to practice every day. But more often than not what I’d do is just play through those pieces once or twice, then put them down and move on to something far too hard for me, say, a Rachmaninoff piano concerto or a Chopin Ballade or something by Debussy. The weeks when I actually did practice my lesson, my teacher was always blown away by my progress. I wonder at times how well I would’ve progressed if I’d practice like he expected.
When you have small children, though, the amount of time available for you to practice the piano goes down quite a bit. First, they take up your time directly. Second, they go to sleep early and playing the piano would wake them up. So I haven’t done a lot of practicing in the past few years. Occasionally I’d pull out a book and hack through a little bit of Rachmaninoff, but that has been about it. If I get a chance to sit down at a piano somewhere else, I usually just improvise for a while, though it has been frightening just how much I remember of Beethoven Sonatas and Bach Fugues that I learned back in high school.
The other night I sat down at the piano after dinner and actually practiced a new piece. Rachmaninoff’s Polichinelle Op. 3 No. 4, if you really care. (You can hear Rachmaninoff himself perform it on YouTube.) It’s difficult enough that I can’t just sight read through it at full speed, but not so difficult that I get disheartened trying to practice. I am hoping that I can actually put a little time into it, commit it to memory, and eventually have something new to play on occasion, rather than just murdering a section from Chopin’s Ballade #1 like I usually do.
How I do love my piano music.
