Very occasional quote of the day: epic

From Hal Galper on Facebook:

“I’d heard a recording of an interview with Coleman Hawkins that stuck in my brain. He said you had to go to the city twice. The first time to learn the city,  the subways, where the jam sessions were and meet the doorman at every jazz club in town. You can then evaluate your playing relative to the scene, figure out what you had to get together and go home to prepare yourself for your next and hopefully permanent visit. It took me three times 

Boston at the time had two top level jazz clubs. George Wien’s Storyville was across the street from The Stable. The NYC bands came to town I'd interrogate them to find out what it was like to go to the city. Everybody had a different story. That's when I realized what happens to you in New York City only happens to you!

I was failing miserably in high school except for Shop as they called it. Grasping at straws, my parents got the idea to send me to a technical prep school my sophomore year in Boston’s Copley Square, coincidentally just across the street from The Stable, Boston’s local jazz club. I had my lunch breaks there, eventually taking a couple of bongo lessons from the club’s janitor just do do something jazzy. I’d bail on the classes spending the rest of day hanging around the club catching the sounds of Serge Chaloff rehearsing from my perch at the top of the ramp that led down to the basement venue. That was where and when I first met and took my first ever jazz piano lesson with Ray Santisi. He hand-wrote out a lead sheet with the melody to Moonlight In Vermont with some simple, nice sounding changes telling me to come back when I’d learned it. I didn’t tell him I couldn’t read. My 2nd lesson, Ray asked me to play the tune. I sat frozen staring at the lead sheet. He opined “forget it kid, you’ll never play.” I remember hearing the receding Doppler Effect of his shoes as he walked up the ramp and out of the club.                                                                                                      

Back in Salem again I came home, unkempt but unbowed. But It was too late, I’d caught the bug. Didn’t know if I could play. How could I? I knew nothing. I spent my senior year of high school cutting classes, jamming with my first trio in the back room of the school’s music director, Mr. Devoe. My bass player was Mary Burke from Tennessee and local drummer, John Pramis. Mr. Devoe, he got me. With an unending supply of pre-signed absentee approval slips in hand I jammed my way through my senior year ostensibly working on “the senior revue.,” which was actually true. Having the courage of my ignorance I played my first trio concert at the Review. Two originals. The first was in the key of C, the only key I knew a little bit about at the time, following with another in C minor, which I knew even knew less about. I knew nothing about form or structure. Considering the absolute silence that ensued, it was at best a head-scratching performance. 

You want this record.

I was facing a bleak and uncertain future until I learned Massachusetts had a State program offering financial support to disadvantaged students for tuition to go to college. I had lost my left eye in a childhood accident and qualified for full tuition at any institution of higher learning of my choosing. Really? Looking forward the end of the semester I expected to be called down to the Dean’s office because my attendance record was so bad.  He said, “Mr. Galper, if you do’t start doing any better you won’t  graduate.” Prepared, I gave him a mental F—K you, asserting I didn’t didn’t need no stinkin’ graduation because I was going to be a jazz musician. I left triumphant. My path was clear and didn’t attend my graduation.

A year later I was studying with Ray again at Berklee College Of Music. He’d play the piano while I sat  beside him, watching his small hands skitter over the keys in awe. If you were quick enough to stop him and ask, he'd show you what he played. I hadn’t become much of a better musician since our abortive encounter at The Stable and didn't learn a thing that semester. However, I studied with him again a year later and redeemed myself. I was much faster and copped royally!

Ray had been playing 6 nights a week at The Stable forever when he handed his seat over to me! I mean, who does that? I was playing seven nights a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays with Herb’s big band, the weekends in a Varty Haroutunian’s quintet with Herb Pomeroy and Monday nights with Sam’s quartet or Gene Distatio’s Quintet. One night he came into the club, pulled me aside to remind me of our first two lessons. I had completely forgotten the incident. He told me he’d learned an important lesson as a teacher. “Never second guess a student, they can surprise you.” Considering the context, his gesture was incredibly sweet and generous. He didn’t have to tell me that and he did so without ego. A lesson in humility learned and never forgotten.

“Never second guess a student, they can surprise you.”

Following 3 years of intense study with the great Madame Chaloff I was overly protective of my new chops. Alan Dawson was the drummer with Herb’s big band. A great drummer and a prince of a man but he was a lick-stepper, following my lines too close, duplicating the rhythms I was playing. I Hate That! Duplication is death to the music. Playing what you play isn’t dialog. All that tells me is you can hear. Don’t play my ideas, play your own ideas! Can’t have a conversation if the other person says the same thing back to you. I’d have to breakup my phrasing to get away from him. Not bad training in itself but I was staring to lose my hard won chops. The crazy part of me got out of the box and I lost my cool. Like an idiot I pressed Herb with an ultimatum, it’s either me or Alan. No one else in town could play the band’s drum charts and they had Ray Santisi. I was promptly fired having unknowingly broken protocol, instantly becoming persona non grata in Boston. Lesson learned. I have since never given an ultimatum to anyone. In any case, no matter what, it’s inevitable you’ll eventually bypass the musicians you came up with. You’ll know when it’s time to leave town when they make you leave. You’re a reminder they didn’t stick to the true path. So I left, giving what few gigs I had to Mike Nock, split with my first wife to Berlin to Paris to test the waters. I was back in Boston a few months later  month without a wife, broke with a brick of hash strapped to my chest, the proceeds of which kept me alive for six months. I figured, gee, I guess it’s time for me to go to The City. Duh! 

Stuffed my life into an old blue Navy B4 ever-expanding suitcase and took a bus out of town. Was told to get off at the Port Authority unawares there were two Port Authority bus stations. I got off at 178th St at 2 am with nineteen cents in my pocket, dragging my B4 down a deserted Broadway to West 75th St where I had a couple of friends I’d met the previous summer who’d let me sleep on their floor until I got my shit together. Tried to bum a penny to get 20 cents for the subway but everyone I asked gave me a weird look. Had I known more about NYC culture I would have asked for a dollar. As I walked downtown B4 in hand I kept thinking “welcome to New York Hal, welcome to New York.”  

Looking back, I'm more than ever convinced most of the important decisions in our lives are made below the level of consciousness, something I expect to expound upon in the future.”

Best books: The Drummer's/Musician's Lifeline

Looking at two little books co-authored by Peter Erskine and Dave Black— The Drummer's Lifeline, and The Musician's Lifeline, subtitled, respectively, as Quick Fixes, Hacks, And Tips Of The Trade, and Advice For All Musicians, Student to Professional.

The Musician's Lifeline is the larger and more broadly focused of the two, and is more interesting to me. It's packed with advice from a whole lot of famous players, relating to every aspect of doing music as a job, career, and art form, largely in one-liner format. It's a little values sketch of a particular community* of musicians— many top jazz and studio professionals, performers, educators, and the tier under them— what they think about, how they generally look at things. It will be most valuable to jazz studies majors— this is the field your education is for.    

* - And it's my same community, though in terms of career accomplishment I'm in the category scrappers below the least-biggest person here. Everyone in the book is doing big gigs, or more likely is the big gig. But I know a few of these people, been in workshops with many of them in school, and/or there's one degree of separation with many more of them, via my peers. 

The Drummer's Lifeline is shorter, with a lot of duplicate materials, but with more that is narrowly of interest to drummers, mostly from Erskine and Black. The unique materials are largely minutia, mostly related to gear— I don't sense a larger philosophical center to it as with the other book. 

Much of what the books cover will be familiar to professionals, and to many serious students. There are some choice bits that were new to me. And it's good to have obvious things restated and reinforced. There's a lot that will be good for people to hear early in their playing life, before they learn it the hard way. 

On the other hand, we live in a neurotic age. If you're prone to general anxiety over ever doing anything wrong... or prone to focusing on minutia at the expense of actually playing your instrument... or to preparation neurosis, where you're permanently in a state of feeling a need to do more to be ready to play with people... maybe you don't need more voices in your head issuing dire instructions. Musician's Lifeline in particular gets a little overbearing just from the sheer volume of wonderful advice.  

At least the sources are unimpeachable— these are not just a bunch of chattering youtubers. You can readily dismiss any contrary advice you've been worrying about. And there is some helpful advice dismissing some areas of worry— like where Erskine realistically assesses the variety and difficulty of most of the reading he has had to do in his career (that is, basically never any Zappa level stuff).

They're worthwhile, and you should be buying books. Get them from Steve Weiss Music: 

The Drummer's Lifeline by Peter Erskine & Dave Black - Alfred - 191 pages
The Musician's Lifeline by Peter Erskine & Dave Black -  Alfred - 126 pages

Bruce Gilden, a street photographer

A few videos of Bruce Gilden, a New York photographer. He's known as a street photographer, and a rather invasive one. He gets right up in people's faces and photographs them with a flash. It seems like a sketchy way of working, but he's a member of Magnum, and is Guggenheim fellow, and is respected as a very serious, top level photographer.

This video is from Vice magazine's site, so it's intended to be “edgy”:

This gives a good idea of the level of scrutiny you have to apply to any visual work— and the level of responsibility. These are street photos taken in uncontrolled situations, but he holds the photographers accountable for everything in the frame. I also like his comment about strength in numbers— repetition shows commitment to fully exploring a concept. 

In this video you can see how he works— it's pretty obnoxious, but at least there's no ambiguity. There are ethical issues when photographing people who did not volunteer to model for you, to illustrate whatever statement you want to make about humanity, and Gilden claims to have “no ethics.” But clearly that's not the case as you hear him speak and watch how he talks to people. There are certainly plenty of photographers who actually have no ethics and no empathy for their subjects, for whom this aggressive attitude will backfire. 

Here he gives a little more defense of his way of working, contrasted with a common mentality in this kind of photography that is just about sneaking around and stealing from people.

Here's a sit down interview by another photographer. Interesting that he studied acting with Bill Hickey, with whom my wife also studied. By now you notice that he has a little schtick with how he speaks about himself and his work.

The most important part of this for me is near the end, after 19:30, where they mention younger photographers in it to find fame as gallery photographers: “We're lifers; we do it because we have to do it.”

Bears

Not quite the sense of menace I was
hoping for, but that'll have to do...

One of the effects of this new Internet wonderland of information is that now everyone feels they are in competition with everyone else, everywhere in the world. It's as if every famous drummer who has ever lived, and an endless parade of seeming child prodigies, are now poking their fat noses into your studio and saying “Yeah, but can you do this? Or this? How are you going to make it if you can't do this? Or this? All of us are doing this— why aren't you doing it? What about this?”

The reality is, it's just you, the gigs available to you, and the other people already playing those gigs.

There's an old, dumb-ass, redneck joke about two men in the wilderness, who encounter a bear. One of them begins preparing to do some running— in the usual inane telling he puts on running shoes. Whatever. The other says “Bill, are you crazy? You can't outrun that bear!” To which the first guy replies, “That's OK, I only have to outrun you.”

Haw haw, that guy's going to get mauled by a bear! It's easy to mock the savagery of these frontier people, but now imagine the bear is Vinnie Colaiuta... no, imagine the bear is the abstract concept of career opportunity... no, imagine the bear is a call for a gig. The non-running redneck is “eaten” by the call for the job— he gets the gig in other words— while the other, who has been wasting his time learning to sprint (which, it turns out, is not a primary wilderness survival skill) ends up alone, naked and afraid...

That's not it, either.

It's more as if every bear/drummer in the world has been air-dropped into your back yard, and whatever you thought was your life/career has been instantly transformed into a frantic, futile, and very short, scramble for your life, before being engulfed and ripped quite literally limb from limb. But what they didn't tell you is that the bears are all holograms piped in from zoos around the world, and none of them can actually hurt you.

Grasping that, you go about your business building a shelter, finding a water source, and gathering pine nuts, and are able to survive quite comfortably. Our character with the running shoes thinks this is the way the world actually is, and now puts on a bear costume in hopes of blending in and moving up the bear hierarchy; but since the bears aren't real, and himself having no actual survival skills relevant to his true environment, he soon starves to death.

...

Yeah. This bear thing was just supposed to be the preface to something else, but it kind of got away from me. We'll delve into this subject with a little more discipline soon...

...or, to just fail.

I would add:

- Think of your work as being in competition with that of all artists, everywhere, at all levels of the business, past and present.

- Imagine that your every creative move and decision is being judged by people better than you.

- Be dominated by your weaknesses. Be oblivious to your strengths.

h/t to Ed Domer and Universal Audio

Making any money in jazz

Dollar bill.

This is something I wrote last week, but decided against posting, as it can be kind of a downer. I have actually officially banned from my presence discussion of how much being a jazz musician sucks financially. But now it's being thrust upon me- sort of- by this post at Jon Crowley's blog; here a young elite is not pleased with his career prospects as a jazz musician, and has put together a petition to remedy matters:

I am a saxophonist living in New York City. I have lived here for the past ten years, attended and graduated from some of the best music schools in the world. I have toured and played with many of my jazz heroes including Dafnis Prieto, Jean-Michel Pilc, Chris Potter and Richard Bona, and have been a working musician on the scene. I now find myself looking at a broken, antiquated system—a system that no longer serves us and is no longer self-sustaining. The jazz system sends young hopefuls through music schools, charges them upwards of $150,000 and then spits them out into a world where it is almost impossible to obtain the most basic sustenance. We're not talking about low-level products; these are amazing and virtuosic musicians who are struggling for work. How did jazz arrive at this current state? 

He goes on for a good while outlining the state of things, ending with the questionable solution of starting a new "genre", which he wants to be called Stretch. The idea seems to be that giving the music a new name will force society to create an entirely new apparatus for its distribution and performance, which will be better for the musicians formerly known as jazz musicians. I think he could've just as well named it Mr. McFooty's Neo-Olde Tyme Hijinks for the all the likelihood of anyone anywhere ever adopting his genre name, but he does an OK, New York-centric job of outlining some of the systemic problems with the jazz end of the music business. If you choose, you can sign his petition at the mymomthinksimgreat.com.

More after the break:

Kenny Washington overheard

Or the cyber-equivalent. Mark Feldman at the Bang! the drum school blog features a Facebook post by jazz drummer and scholar Kenny Washington, in response to a question about how to take one's drumming "to the next level." Here's a portion of it, but go read it in its entirety:

[...] For me, I never thought about next levels and all the superficial shit. I thought about the next gig. Your hands and overall technique are very important. I say this all the time. [...] I’m up every morning at the crack of dawn practicing trying to play better. What helped me coming up was practicing out of Charlie Wilcoxon’s “Modern Rudimental Swing Solos”. Practice these etudes slowly bar by bar and take them apart. This will help your control, brushes and help you to get a better sound on the instrument.

Listening to records is very, very important. I checked out tons of music. Too many records to mention. I listened to just about every drummer you can think of. At one time or another, I tried to play like all of them. I learned what made them all tick. All of them have something to offer you musically. If you do that, you’ll eventually get your own sound and start to formulate your own ideas from what you’ve heard. Don’t just listen to the drummers, but listen to how they accompany the other musicians. It’s what I call “musical action and reaction.” Learn the melodies and solos of other instrumentalists as well. This will teach you about musical form which in turn will help you to play musical drum solos. All of these things helped my approach to the drums.

[...] Playing with local musicians that have more experience than you is also very important. Ask for comments from these musicians. It might not be what you want to hear, but listen and give thought to what they’ve said. When you’ve really put the time in, then try to sit in with the more established musicians. It’s like applying for an office job. First impressions are everything. If the boss is not impressed, you won’t get the job. It’s the same thing with music. If the boss likes your playing, you’ll get hired. If he doesn’t, you won’t get the gig. If you come back months later even if you’re playing much better, he probably won’t be interested. He remembers you from the first time. Take your time and put the work into the instrument. If you do that, you’ll reap the benefits and eventually your phone will start to ring. Speaking of which, it’s time for me to go and practice. 

Dispatches

Not that easy a life.

Here's a note I received from a British drummer currently working on a ship in the Mediterranean:

"I’m presently doing a stint as a cruise drummer in the Med and stumbled across your page.  I’m 8 weeks in and the life is interesting!!!  Parties, people, places and lots of performances.  I’m playing in one of the lounge bands doing 3-4 45’s a night.  7 nights a week.  Haha I’m sure you can appreciate that my body seems to be taking a bit of a pounding.  I was just wondering if the creeping sense of lethargy is normal!?

 I’m feeling pretty bushed most of the time,  I’ve not got cramping issues but I’m certainly noticing that the later sets and the louder sets outside on the pool deck are getting harder.

 If you’ve got any advice – or can think of any pad routines to help me keep a lighter dynamic I’d be really grateful.

 Keep up the great work on the blog, you’re keeping me sane!

 Kind Regards from another drummer in the high seas

 - Edgar in Livorno"

What you need is a month in the Mediterranean. It's hard to think of recommendations that don't involve me flying to Rome, taking a week or ten days- two weeks max- to get "acclimated", renting an Audi and driving to Livorno- via Orvieto, Firenze, side trip to Siena so I don't wear myself out driving- and relieving you for a month or so, but let me see what I can do.

First, you  may want to read my cruise ship drummer survival and playing quieter posts, if you haven't already.

Joey Baron master class, part 1 : Paying Your Rent Is High Art

This is part one of a transcript of a master class Joey Baron gave at the New School in 1994. I originally found this in '98 on the rec.music.bluenote news group, and was just able to dig it up again. I've edited it substantially for clarity- the original transcript is by a student who left in all the 'likes' and 'I means', and fragmented sentences. It's long, and editing it is a giant pain, so here is part one:

MUSIC SCHOOL VS. MUSIC WORLD:
It's difficult. Most of my experience is like out in the field... maybe i should give you a little bit of background. I'm 38 years old. I've been playing since i was 9 and travelling, starting on weekends when I was a kid travelling since i was about 10 and a half. So my expertise is kind of like out there in the field, so any questions you have about that kind of stuff- I'll do my best to answer and... to answer your point: it is really hard, to get out of school and out of the academic world. It's a whole other thing, surviving, and paying your rent... if your can pay your rent, that's being a success, forget about Downbeat awards and all that stuff, paying your rent, that's like high art.

It's difficult and everybody has their own way of making things work. I have some really good friends who came into music through a different angle than i did. Most of my experience has been as a player, doing apprenticeships, and as sideman with a lot of different kinds of musicians. I have friends like John Zorn, who's mainly a composer- that's his main thing he's been doing since he was a child. And he had his own way of making music and he just stuck to that and in terms of surviving, he did day jobs, worked at record stores, he helped assist people in the theater, you know, and he kept his overhead low. He didn't live in a big fancy place or anything like that. A lot of people do that, other people do a lot of commercial work, they end up doing club dates or if they're lucky enough to do recording work or jingles. It's as many different people as there are that's as many different stories as there are, as to how people pull it together.

March 1985 Modern Drummer interview: John von Ohlen

Interview with big band drummer John von Ohlen from Modern Drummer, March, 1985, by Scott K. Fish, with the many good parts pulled out here, by me. Von Ohlen toured with with the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton bands before retiring from the road to live in Cincinnati, where he formed the Blue Wisp big band. I forgot how much this influenced me- I must've reread this a dozen times during the long bus rides on drum corps tour when it was originally published. I was never much of a big band player, but Greg Hall did have us playing Blue Wisp's Love For Sale arrangement at South Eugene High School that year.

Interview excerpts are after the break: