I’m trying to get back into the blog thing. Years ago, I used to keep a pretty ridiculous blog at this web address. That was 2003-2005 (about). I think I can be more articulate and focused now than I was back then.
The Internet exploded yesterday after the news of Michael Jackson’s death broke. Darcy James Argue wrote about how stunning Michael Jackson’s talent and work ethic were, even from a young age. At work today, The first thing I did was put on The Essential Michael Jackson. “Got To Be There,” the title track from his album of the same name came on. The studio track is impressive, but I found this earlier today on YouTube. Listen at 0:53.
Incredible.
In 1972, MJ was 13 and already years into his career as a professional musician. I believe when I was 13, I had just made the decision that wearing sweatpants to school everyday was not going to happen anymore. Whatever. I had my accomplishments and he had his.
Because of the sheer volume of pop music produced, statistically there are going to be a lot of good songs heard. Michael Jackson wasn’t great because he had a hit or two. He was great because he made great songs consistently for DECADES. Songs that I (and pretty much everyone else) can listen to over and over again. This is because his songs are valuable.
Especially with the addition of Quincy Jones to his musical world, Michael Jackson’s songs are astonishing. Sean “Philly” Jones and I had a pet project last summer of trying to recreate “Rock With You.” It took a really long time and by then end of summer we had a lot of stuff going on. Initially, Philly had laid down the drums (a direct transcription I believe) to a click track. I a placeholder bassline which Scott Mulvahill eventually replaced. Kelyn Crapp laid down guitars and Melissa McMillan did vocals. We then added the little details (horns, strings, synths) piece by piece. The summer ended before we completely realized this project, but it was an eye opening experience. There is SO MUCH going on in the original track, yet it sounds so well blended.
Here’s what we came up with. It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to it.
My personal experience in listening to jazz has been particularly scatterbrained. I owned very few actual jazz albums before going to college. It sort of makes me wonder how I decided to major in something I knew so little about in comparison with my peers.
Once I got to UNT, I was suddenly surrounded with people who had been listening to this music all their lives, with influences and suggestions from well-listened teachers. There were kids my age who had truly intricate knowledge of many important jazz albums. A lot of the most famous players in jazz were little more than names to me. Some particularly poor scores on Jay Saunders’s Intro to Jazz Records tests made it abundantly clear that I needed to do a HELL OF A LOT MORE LISTENING to jazz if I really wanted to understand and play it well. Since then, my knowledge and understanding has grown a lot, but still, as I said earlier, scatterbrained. In the same way that a puzzle is not completed from the top left to the bottom right, the gaps in my knowledge get filled in a seeminly random fashion. I’ve written about this before.
Today, Ethan Iverson, the pianist for The Bad Plus dropped a motherlode of blog posts on various topics in jazz. My understanding of these topics ranges from paltry to moderate. It’s obvious from his writing that the dude has listened to more than a few metric assloads of jazz in his time. I’ve given a couple of these articles a skimming and will continue to dive into them and listen to the albums and players he’s referenced. I’ll do this especially in the Marsalis/Young Lions-centered pieces. I probably have fewer jazz records from the 1980s than any other decade.
Iverson is only 11 years older than me, but he has been in New York for about 15 years, which means he’s experienced a lot of the major changes in the scene firsthand. To me and people my age, it’s all history. It’s very distant. If I want to know about Wynton Marsalis’s influence in New York, I have to read or hear about it. I didn’t live it. It’s the same thing with when even relatively newer groups/artists like the Bad Plus, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Joshua Redman. By the time I was aware of these people, they had already made their splashes and had grown from their initial albums.
This sort of sounds like complaining, I guess, but I’m OK with my situation. I’ll bet a lot of people my age have a similar experience. I’ll continue filling in gaps, however haphazardly. The way I write and play music is constantly being influenced by things I hear from all different periods. Quincy Jones’s old Basie charts show me things I want to learn and incorporate as much as Maria Schneider’s, Darcy James Argue’s and VOID’s (Tom O’Halloran and Troy Roberts).
I’m planning on seeing Iverson wih the rest of the Bad Plus at the Dakota around Christmas time. They always have a run of shows there this time of year. I went last year and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I’ll also be able to catch Happy Apple during my time back home. It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen them. They have seemed to always have a show the weekend before I get back to Minnesota for a break from school.
I sure have lots of thoughts in my head.