avast! ye evildoers ~ ~ pclef.net

HAPPY FRIDAY

For what are stars but asterisks. To point a human life?
-Emily Dickinson

The Fly
by William Blake

Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

...

AMPED

...guitar...

...bass...

it's been a fun week since the memorial day break. on monday I headed out to my old stomping grounds in brooklyn to investigate a used amplifier I'd seen listed on craigslist. it turns out that the seller was none other than ben street, bassist for kurt rosenwinkel, ben monder, and other local jazz cats on the rise. therefore the amp for sale was a bass amp. but since it was touted as sounding good on guitar, I gave it a shot. it did indeed sound really good. and the price was fair, so I paid the man and went home. when I got home I realized something I hadn't noticed--the amp is fan-cooled. no big deal on a performance stage, but less than ideal for recording. since I was repurposing it for guitar, I still need the amp for recording--electric guitar requires amplification. obviously to record an acoustic bass you'd just mic the bass itself--acoustically. so this is truly a performing amp, as it was originally intended for the upright. hmmm...but I still love the way the thing sounds, and I'll say this--it is loud as hell. this amp could keep up with a marshall stack or any of the louder rock drummers I've ever worked with. 120W in a 30lb package. it does sound great with guitar, but in a duo setting (my usual these days) vs an upright bass in a quiet room, I can only run it at 1-2 on the volume knob. so yesterday I noticed another used henriksen model--the guitar combo--for sale down south. again, good price, good condition. so, promising myself that I'd sell the bass amp, I got in touch and bought the guitar amp. there's nothing left in my checking acct, but I've got two rather nice amplifiers now, either in the house, or on their way. I'm quite excited about the smaller guitar amp. for one thing, I'm no longer as interested in maintaining multiple tube amplifiers. it's expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating. I'll keep my smaller one, but I'm selling my old boogie combo to a friend and will keep it to three main amps--my dr. z for the louder rock stuff, one for acoustic (AER alpha) and this henriksen for the jazz stuff. the jury is still out on whether I'll keep the fender cyber-deluxe digital amp. it's a nice little swiss army knife that is handy merely because it is so versatile. but all in all, the simplification process, and the shrinking down process (out with the 4x12! in with the 1x10!), not to mention the bartering and dealing process, have begun in earnest...

one reason why posts to this bloggy space have been so infrequent lately is due to a lot of time spent playing. I started jazz guitar lessons about a month ago, and the progress made has been a great motivator to keep at it. ergo less time for elucidating inner thoughts on the blog-o-blab-slab...goal is to feel proficient, able, ready, swinging, fluid, capable in the jazz idiom, ready-to-gig, by summer's end. and to that end, I'm hoping that this will be the last time I have to hover obsessively over my gear for a while.

...

THIS.IS.NOT.FUCKING.OK.

it would seem that an army, lacking a clearly-defined enemy, will find one to fight regardless, even if it's just random civilians.

...

BE THREE

saddened today to learn of the passing of Jimmy McGriff, one of the great masters of the Hammond B-3...I love that sound, straight outta Philly--Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff, Dr. Lonnie Smith, all peers and contemporaries of McGriff, who made some great records and led some great bands.

the music will never die...

...

A MEMORIAL

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of shells dropping softly behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jilt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
-Wilfred Owen

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.
-Thomas Paine

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
-- William Butler Yeats, remarks on the adoption of the Irish Constitution of 1937

The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors.... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!
--Frederick Douglass

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"
--Quentin Crisp

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”
--Epicurus

....................................................................................

Like many Americans, I spent this past weekend standing over a hot grill, playing with my kids, hanging out with my wife and my friends, playing music, and carrying on...but I'm also cognizant of the reason we have this holiday--to commemorate our war dead, whose sacrifice is the foundation of this country and way of life that we all so readily enjoy. and no, I didn't go to the local parade, or listen to any VFW guys giving speeches. I was relaxing. So today's post is my way of paying tribute to all those who have fallen in the fight for our freedom. My thesis: all wars are religious wars. We're in a religious war right now. And our leader is a professed religious man who has a horse in the race for theological dominance--a race which will never be resolved. it never gets resolved because neither side is right--mohammed and jesus and allah and moses have one crucial thing in common, aside from their roots in persia and palestine--all are myths. yet deaths in their name persist to this day. I'd like to remove god from the equation altogether. then there won't be any more of these wars, and we can re-name this particular holiday "barbecue day," or "sitting on your ass day" or anything but what it is--a day to commemorate the fact that mankind, in his ignorance, kills off his own species because he is afraid of the dark.

...

CHRONIC TONES

obviously, the answer to the question "all I want for xmas is..." just got answered...

...

DOLPHY

...eric dolphy, super genius...

busy week. no time to post anything lately but we do need to move on...

1. Eric Dolphy: discuss.

2. If you don't know, find out.

3. Repeat.

...

KEVIN JAMES IS AN IDIOT

...I mean c'mon the yellow tie should have been the tip-off...

game set match to tweety....just priceless...

...

THE HILLARY HOW-TO

...seriously, she's got her down cold...

seems perfect: comic relief for the hump day...and let's face it--it's this sort of theatrical schtick that voters from west virginia ohio and pennsylvania fell for...no wonder they're unemployed overweight uneducated and broke...

...the GOP's greatest hits, to the silken strains of the Platters...

...

SONIC LIFE

All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! ~Thomas Carlyle

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. ~Leopold Stokowski

Without music life would be a mistake. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead. ~Benjamin Disraeli

Musical compositions, it should be remembered, do not inhabit certain countries, certain museums, like paintings and statues. The Mozart Quintet is not shut up in Salzburg: I have it in my pocket. ~Henri Rabaud

If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. ~Sydney Smith

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. ~Henry David Thoreau

I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet

My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require. ~Edward Elgar

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. ~Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence. ~Robert Fripp

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. ~Charlie Parker

You are the music while the music lasts. ~T.S. Eliot

...

THE GOAL

"..Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument. This is a comprehensive technique...a feeling for the instrument that will allow you to transfer any emotional utterance into it. What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, Forget that. I’m just going to be expressive..." Bill Evans

.........................................................................................................

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are
feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in
such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out
of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
-M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author (1936-2005)

...

LINGUISTICS

this exercise was suggested to me the other day and to me, it feels rather natural and synonymous within the context:

every time you hear someone call Obama "elitist" substitute the word "uppity" ...

a practical equivalent, wouldn't you say?

also, in the category of every-time-you-masturbate-god-kills-a-kitten:

fun fact: every time a beer is purchased in america, cindy mccain gets a dollar.

shalom!

...

UNPLUGGED

The louder he talks of honour, the faster we count our spoons. -Ralph Waldo
Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

I just realized that it's been nearly a week since my last post in blogworld...and a depressing bush one at that...I apologize for leaving the idiot king in the top spot for so long...

been busy. above tune (though not above arrangement) has been one of my areas of focus, along with c mixolydian in all positions, a few dom7 arpeggios, including a very cool one that throws in the 9, some sightreading, working with the metronome to accentuate and feel the swing beats of 2 and 4, chord scales in three ranges (top 4, middle 4, bottom 4), and I've been transcribing some voice leading music to tablature.

and that's just what I've been doing prior to 6am.

I've shifted to a 9pm bedtime. I just faced facts: I hate TV. hate. it. so when it comes on in the evening, instead of becoming annoyed by its invasion of my home, I simply retreat to bed, get a good night's sleep and wake around 5am to get down to the studio for a cup of coffee and an hour of practice. I wish I'd started this years ago. the grinding tortoise-like pace of 60 minutes each day is now catching up with the intermittent rabbit sprinting of my previous method, and I'm starting to see that once this process is firmly set in motion, that the material is far from impossible--that it is within the grasp of anyone who wants to put in the work. it's also a lot of fun, inasmuch as the learning becomes slightly addictive, and it's also a really nice way to start the day. I'm beginning to suspect that by doing this when I'm just coming out of my subconscious dream state, that I have my best chance of getting the material into my non-judgmental brain processes as possible.

learning curves don't stop there--at work I'm transitioning into the digital world, which means a whole battery of online research surveys and data mining software. the bar has been raised. my hope is to have it fairly well mastered in a few months. meanwhile, I have to get my clients smart targeted research results...and I'm starting to see how very lacking the research is, in terms of integrity, accountability, verification and application. it's going to be an interesting summer...

so when people talk about only using 10% of their brains, I'd like to think that I'm at least in the 15% range...for the time being...of course, once the jazz harmony work is learned and internalized, one gets to use 100% of one's subsconscious, and allow the present conscientious mind to take a break and wander off...

like a great man once said....if you ain't playin' you're payin'.....

...

FIVE YEARS

...May 1, 2003, Bush declares "major combat operations in Iraq have ended"...

Can there be any doubt, at this point in time, with the record of the past eight years, with 9/11 on Bush's watch, with the loss of a major American city and nothing done about it, with the abandonment of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, with a policy of torture evidenced by Abu Graib and the Yoo memos, that we truly lack any effective or competent leadership whatsoever in Washington?

...