who dat? contest.

(yo stee. i know
who dat?)



last game:

microsoft billionaire/trailblazer owner paul allen.


first correct answer:

cgroppe


left column hear canadians call mac & cheese "kraft dinner". why canadians so weird, pretty ladies?

all music entry


THIS IS THE MISSING ENTRY FROM FRIDAY. IT WAS WRITTEN ON FRIDAY, THUS, "YESTERDAY" IS THURSDAY. I TRUST YOU CAN MAKE THE MENTAL LEAP...

So I didn't write yesterday, mostly because I was too excited/nervous about something... there was a secret Weezer show in Silverlake last night. I was tripping because I was stuck at work and I knew rabid Weezer fans would be waiting outside all day and I wasn't going to be able to get there until 6pm. Weezer haven't put out an album in 4 years and haven't really played live in nearly that long - so naturally the excitement in the fan base was high. And while they were listed as "Goat Punishment" in the paper and everywhere else, they had for some reason changed it to "Weezer" the day before, so many people who weren't in the loop, knew, and were coming. Yeah, sucks.

I only went with two friends/weezer fans because we were nervous about our chances of getting in and didn't want to inflict an evening of waiting in line for no reason on anyone else.

We got there at 6 and were behind about 150 people, some of whom looked like they'd been there literally all day. But things looked good and we got coffee and LA Weekly's and went through the classified laughing at the personals. We got a few beers and drank them and smoked too much and got antsy. I actually really enjoyed sitting there. There was a feeling of camaraderie I've mentioned being absent in LA, and it was also just nice to be outside. I'm always fucking inside. At work. In my car. In my apartment. I miss outdoors. I grew up outdoors... well, not literally. I mean, we had a house.

Anyway, at about 9:15 the line started moving. Then it stopped. Half hour later a bouncer came by and pointed to a dude about 50 people up from us, and told us and the 500 people behind us, "Everyone from here on, I can guarantee you are not going to get in. We're nearly sold-out already." We were devastated. Devastated. But we stayed. He could've been wrong. He could've been lying, trying to weed out the easily discouraged. About 20 minutes later, people started trickling in, and we were 30 people from the door. A cop came by and told us a guy 10 ahead of us was going to be the last person. But we stayed. And we got in. In fact, about 40 people after us got in. And the place was barely half full - I think Silverlake has very strict Fire Marshal laws or some shit. Anyway, you do not know how happy we were. Seriously. You don't know. No, shut up, you don't. Look, I'm telling you. Dammit.

There was a smoking lounge within this small venue (holds about 230 total, which isn't a lot) that was just like a small separate bar, so we found bar stools and drank and chatted for 2 hours while the opening bands did their whatever thing. Weezer was supposed to go on at 11:45 so at 11:15 we got 22oz. beers and went down to the floor. We ended up about 8 deep from the stage (like 20 feet), with a perfectly clear view. The stage is high, which I very much appreciated. I'm tall as hell, but I still HATE when they build low stages, especially if the ceiling is high enough to accommodate a higher one - it drives me nuts.

The roadies got huge cheers as they tested out the equipment. We chatted with people around us and I think I was looking down or something, when the audience started cheering. It was them. Weezer. Rock!

There was no banter (throughout the entire show) - they were just there to play (they're doing a Japan tour soon, and some dates on the Warped Tour). They launched right into My Name Is Jonas, and the crowd flipped - including me. I realize I sound like a fawning schoolgirl, but I kind of was that night. The whole crowd sang along with every note, and danced and gave the "W" sign. The bands sounded very very tight. Excellent. They played for about 60 minutes, all of which I was just smiling like an idiot, dripping with sweat and singing. Off the top of my head, they played about 4 new songs, plus El Scorcho, Buddy Holly, Surf Wax USA, Undone - the Sweater song, Say It Ain't So, In the Garage, No One Else, Tired of Sex, Why Bother, and maybe a couple others I'm forgetting.

It was short but sweet. Very. An 11 on my 1 to 10 scale of expectations for the show.

I called a friend who lives out of town during, and held my cell phone up during In the Garage. It was 2am but she didn't care. I wouldn't have either.

Elsewhere...

...my friend Shan and I have been doing this for about 10 years - trying to come up with funny and/or disgusting band names. And last night waiting in line, we had ample time. Here is a small sampling of what we came up with.

Naive Campbell
The Facials
The Little Furmaid
Sleeping Doodie
It Rubs The Lotion On Its Skin
The Queefs
Jennifer Love Spewitt
Plumber's Crack
Time of Death
Tards on Parade
Doodie and the Beast
Depends
Chinrest
Choad Rules
Put The Lotion In The Basket
T'aint
Where The Gay Takes You
Massive Head Wound
Internal Bleeding
Brain Atrophy
Whiskey Dick
Koncentration Kamp
Auschbitch
The Other Tard
Glengarry Glen Close
Lionel Ritchie's Afro
Dead Begley, Jr.
Camel Toe
SuperFudgePacker
James and the Giant Reach-A-Round
Bi-Curious George
Are You About A Size 14?
It Has Wings
Carpet Muncher
May Complicate Pregnancy

...and the one of which I am most proud (for a house music type band):
Sudden Infant Dance Syndrome.

If you steal any of these names for your band, you have to pay us each twenty bucks. (Except for S.I.D.S. That's worth at least fifty each.) Thanks.

Finally...

...OK, so this is very very long but very very funny. (Since I got it via email, it could be fake, but I somehow doubt it - it's a bizarre hoax if it is indeed fake.) It is the undeniably talented jazz guitarist Pat Metheny addressing the question of Kenny G. I don't love Pat Metheny's music that much, but if he indeed wrote this, I just might have to bust out his records again...

Question:
Pat, could you tell us your opinion about Kenny G - it appears you were quoted as being less than enthusiastic about him and his music. I would say that most of the serious music listeners in the world would not find your opinion surprising or unlikely - but you were vocal about it for the first time. You are generally supportive of other musicians it seems.

Pat's Answer:
kenny g is not a musician i really had much of an opinion about at all until recently. there was not much about the way he played that interested me one way or the other either live or on records. i first heard him a number of years ago playing as a sideman with jeff lorber when they opened a concert for my band. my impression was that he was someone who had spent a fair amount of time listening to the more pop oriented sax players of that time, like grover washington or david sanborn, but was not really an advanced player, even in that style. he had major rhythmic problems and his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to pentatonic based and blues-lick derived patterns, and he basically exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a professional soloist in an ensemble - lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual music. but he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs - never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at the keys moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again) . the other main thing i noticed was that he also, as he does to this day, play horribly out of tune - consistently sharp.

of course, i am aware of what he has played since, the success it has had, and the controversy that has surrounded him among musicians and serious listeners. this controversy seems to be largely fueled by the fact that he sells an enormous amount of records while not being anywhere near a really great player in relation to the standards that have been set on his instrument over the past sixty or seventy years.

and honestly, there is no small amount of envy involved from musicians who see one of their fellow players doing so well financially, especially when so many of them who are far superior as improvisors and musicians in general have trouble just making a living. there must be hundreds, if not thousands of sax players around the world who are simply better improvising musicians than kenny g on his chosen instruments. it would really surprise me if even he disagreed with that statement.

having said that, it has gotten me to thinking lately why so many jazz musicians (myself included, given the right "bait" of a question, as i will explain later) and audiences have gone so far as to say that what he is playing is not even jazz at all.

stepping back for a minute, if we examine the way he plays, especially if one can remove the actual improvising from the often mundane background environment that it is delivered in, we see that his saxophone style is in fact clearly in the tradition of the kind of playing that most reasonably objective listeners WOULD normally quantify as being jazz. it's just that as jazz or even as music in a general sense, with these standards in mind, it is simply not up to the level of playing that we historically associate with professional improvising musicians. so, lately i have been advocating that we go ahead and just include it under the word jazz - since pretty much of the rest of the world OUTSIDE of the jazz community does anyway - and let the chips fall where they may.

and after all, why he should be judged by any other standard, why he should be exempt from that that all other serious musicians on his instrument are judged by if they attempt to use their abilities in an improvisational context playing with a rhythm section as he does? he SHOULD be compared to john coltrane or wayne shorter, for instance, on his abilities (or lack thereof) to play the soprano saxophone and his success (or lack thereof) at finding a way to deploy that instrument in an ensemble in order to accurately gauge his abilities and put them in the context of his instrument's legacy and potential.

as a composer of even eighth note based music, he SHOULD be compared to herbie hancock, horace silver or even grover washington. suffice it to say, on all above counts, at this point in his development, he wouldn't fare well.

but, like i said at the top, this relatively benign view was all "until recently".

not long ago, kenny g put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old louis armstrong record, the track "what a wonderful world". with this single move, kenny g became one of the few people on earth i can say that i really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music.

this type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers - was weird when natalie cole did it with her dad on "unforgettable" a few years ago, but it was her dad. when tony bennett did it with billie holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. when larry coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a wes montgomery track, i lost a lot of the respect that i ever had for him - and i have to seriously question the fact that i did have respect for someone who could turn out to have have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes.

but when kenny g decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that i would not have imagined possible. he, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that louis armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. by disrespecting louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, kenny g has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. we ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril.

his callous disregard for the larger issues of what this crass gesture implies is exacerbated by the fact that the only reason he possibly have for doing something this inherently wrong (on both human and musical terms) was for the record sales and the money it would bring.

since that record came out - in protest, as insigificant as it may be, i encourage everyone to boycott kenny g recordings, concerts and anything he is associated with. if asked about kenny g, i will diss him and his music with the same passion that is in evidence in this little essay.

normally, i feel that musicians all have a hard enough time, regardless of their level, just trying to play good and donpit really benefit from public criticism, particularly from their fellow players. but, this is different.

there ARE some things that are sacred - and amongst any musician that has ever attempted to address jazz at even the most basic of levels, louis armstrong and his music is hallowed ground. to ignore this trespass is to agree that NOTHING any musician has attempted to do with their life in music has any intrinsic value - and i refuse to do that. (i am also amazed that there HASN'T already been an outcry against this among music critics - where ARE they on this?????!?!?!?!- , magazines, etc.). everything i said here is exactly the same as what i would say to gorelick if i ever saw him in person. and if i ever DO see him anywhere, at any function - he WILL get a piece of my mind and (maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.)

NOTE: this post is partially in response to the comments that people have made regarding a short video interview excerpt with me that was posted on the internet taken from a tv show for young people (kind of like MTV) in poland where i was asked to address 8 to 11 year old kids on terms that they could understand about jazz.

while enthusiastically describing the virtues of this great area of music, i was encouraging the kids to find and listen to some of the greats in the music and not to get confused by the sometimes overwhelming volume of music that falls under the jazz umbrella. i went on to say that i think that for instance, "kenny g plays the dumbest music on the planet" - something that all 8 to 11 year kids on the planet already intrinsically know, as anyone who has ever spent any time around kids that age could confirm - so it gave us some common ground for the rest of the discussion. (ADDENDUM: the only thing wrong with the statement that i made was that i did not include the rest of the known universe.)

the fact that this clip was released so far out of the context that it was delivered in is a drag, but it is now done. (it's unauthorized release out of context like that is symptomatic of the new electronically interconnected culture that we now live in - where pretty much anything anyone anywhere has ever said or done has the potential to become common public property at any time.) i was surprised by the polish people putting this clip up so far away from the use that it was intended -really just for the attention - with no explanation of the show it was made for - they (the polish people in general) used to be so hip and would have been unlikely candidates to do something like that before, but i guess everything is changing there like it is everywhere else.

the only other thing that surprised me in the aftermath of the release of this little interview is that ANYONE would be even a little bit surprised that i would say such a thing, given the reality of mr. g's music. this makes me want to go practice about 10 times harder, because that suggests to me that i am not getting my own musical message across clearly enough - which to me, in every single way and intention is diametrically opposed to what Kenny G seems to be after.


The Larry King Happy Song Corner

 
 
Larry is listening to Paula Cole, crying.
 
 
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