I went to Ben Folds’s Myspace page and heard some pretty awful songs that were supposed to be on the new record. I later found out that he recorded nine joke versions of songs to leak on the internet intentionally.

“Hiroshima” apparently isn’t a joke song though, and I am still crossing my fingers that the album won’t be disappointing. Ben Folds hasn’t let me down before. I don’t know why I’m so skeptical now. The clips on the Rolling Stone article give a decent idea of how the record is. It seems pretty produced/electronic, so far. I guess we’ll just see.

I heard this band a few weeks ago on 89.3 The Current in Minnesota, and just picked up their self titled album, Fleet Foxes. This was the song I heard. The album is fantastic and the freshest thing I’ve heard since I can remember.

“White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes.

Brian Stark, Sean P Jones and I went to see Steely Dan at the Nokia Theater last night. The experience was excellent. There was an opening set of jazz tunes by some of Steely Dan sidemen, with the addition of (as Philly pointed out) organist Sam Yahel, who didn’t play with Steely Dan. I’m just assuming that he’s along for the tour as the opening act in most cities.

Steely Dan played for about two hours. A lot of the songs were noticably slower than their originally recorded tempos. On some tunes, like “Pretzel Logic,” the effect was awesome, just increasing the greasy goodness of the minor bluesy feel. On other tunes, such as “Aja,” the reduced tempo seemed to make the song a bit sluggish. A few of the tunes were played in lower-than-original keys, but with aging rock stars, this is pretty commonplace.

Musical standouts were trombonist Jim Pugh, saxophonist Walt Weiskopf, drummer Keith Carlock and especially guitarist Jon Herington, who managed to be elegant and precise without losing energy or my interest. I recall Jim Pugh, who visited UNT last fall for the inaugural performance of the UNT U-Tubes Jazz Trombone Ensemble. Their first publicly played piece was my original composition, “Blue Lobster.”

Donald Fagen was sort of a white Ray Charles type character and was very lively throughout the performance. Walter Becker sang on “Gaucho,” and also had a humorous monoglogue during the breakdown section of “Hey Nineteen.”

The tickets cost $55 each, but including driving, parking, and semi-ridiculous Ticketmaster fees, the real cost of the concert was about $80. I still think it was worth it, and may even consider paying as much to see them again, should the opportunity arise.

Earlier I wrote about Brad, my trumpet teacher from high school. I met with him this past week again. The next morning, I met for breakfast with Phil Holm.

Phil was my concert and jazz band director from 7th grade to 9th grade. He also helped out with certain aspects of my high school band experience as well. When I was in 5th grade, all the students took a day trip to Valley View Middle school, where all the band instruments were out there to try. I couldn’t make a sound on any reed instruments. It might have had something to do with a yet-to-be-corrected overbite. Phil was at the brass station, and told me that he played trumpet and that I should think about it as well.

From that point on, Phil was always a source of encouragement. He was very passionate about music and education. He introduced me to the music of Frank Zappa. I think at one point, he found a big band arrangement of “Chunga’s Revenge” and had us try it out. That was a long time ago, but I’m sure the results were nothing less than catastrophic.

Phil has been a member of the Casablanca Orchestra for many years. They played George W. Bush’s 2004 inaugural ball. Regardless of one’s politics, that’s a pretty cool and high profile gig.

I try to meet with Phil a few times a year, just to catch up and see how he’s doing. He doesn’t teach band anymore, and has had success as a realtor, which is good because he has 4 kids to eventually put through college.

Phil and Brad are the two main reasons I decided to pursue a career in music in the first place. Talking with both of them usually reengergizes me into feeling excited about music and my future.

Roommate Betsy told me that I may have some more gigs at Hector’s starting next week. I’ve yet to get confirmation on this, but it looks promising.

I’m in Minnesota for a short while, then it’s back to Texas in order to gear up for fall auditions and the school year. Also, I anticipate to be recording some original pop/rock tunes when I get home.

I am the biggest Ben Folds fan I know. He has an album coming out at the end of September. The first song that I’ve heard off of it is called “Hiroshima.” I can see the catchiness, I can see the hook, but the song just seems boring to me, like I wouldn’t care to listen to it more than a few times.  Maybe I’ll change my mind about that, maybe not. I can see myself being disappointed if the whole album sounds like this one song. My experience with Ben Folds is to immediately love almost everything he does. I guess we’ll just see.

So after my previous post, I used UNT’s Naxos streaming music hookup to listen to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. I enjoyed it. Maybe what I’ll try to do is listen to one new piece of classical music a week. That seems very doable.

So, I ran across this site, kickassclassical.com. It’s a listing of the most recognizable pieces of “classical” music in pop culture and where you probably heard them. The fact that they’re so recognizable doesn’t diminish their awesomeness. Looking through this page makes me want to be more well versed in classical music (and not just the well known stuff on this page). Like, could I sing you a line of a Beethoven string quartet? At this point, my answer is no, which is terrible. I haven’t been feeling particularly inspired to write lately, and it wouldn’t hurt to get some new (old) sounds in my ears.

P.S. Monsterpiece theater

I forgot to mention in my previous post about “Rock With You” that the vocals are done by my roommate, Melissa McMillan. She is one of the lead vocalists in Groove Academy, the cover band I play in. She expressed sadness to me that she wasn’t included earlier. Sorry Melissa!

Last Thursday, I subbed for my roommate Betsy playing solo piano at Hector’s on Henderson, a fancy restaurant in Dallas. She usually plays and sings, but I just played piano. I did a mix of standards and well known pop tunes. I got a few requests for Elton John and Billy Joel, which is fine, because I knew both the tunes (”Tiny Dancer” and “New York State of Mind.”)

This coming year, I’m going to try to focus in on practicing for these kinds of gigs, as they are pretty good. Solo piano offers you a lot of freedom to do what you want. It’s a little lonely playing without other folks, but the independence allows me to take such gigs on short notice, without having to organize a group of people. Also, it’s easier to get weekday gigs on solo piano rather than a larger group.

I played most of the gig from memory, only needing a list of tunes and their keys. I read some of the standards out of the real book. Ideally, I’d like to be able to do a whole show with just a list, and possibly add singing to it. That will take some work, but will probably be worth it. I don’t know where I’m going to move to once I graduate, but I want to be able to hit the ground running and go out and hustle some gigs, both on trumpet and piano.