A Dearth of Heroics

Reasons.  They wanted liner notes and liner notes they shall have (though more than they bargained for at that).  About the music, there’s not much to say.  Say what?  Some heads won’t get it.  And hell if I care.  If it’s about anything, it’s about going places — and even that meek attempt at an explanation is cryptic.

 

I think too much and it’s not worth my time.  But that’s a fix I’ll never kick.  My folks are just proud I haven’t cursed yet.  

 

Music is a simultaneously soothing and agitational artform and these cats can play.  Straight ahead, funky or hip-hop… phantom distinctions here… with Mo’Ming it’s about doing what they do.  

 

And these tunes are barely a taste.  Chosen mostly because they were easy to record or sickeningly catchy (…I wonder if they’ll actually print that…).  But moms always say put your best foot forward.

 

And break it off in someone’s ass.

 

(Sorry Mom.)

 

Apologizing for execution, not intent.

 

So be moved.  Be moved to dance, be moved to jump — to shout, to laugh, and cry.  We dedicate this to influences and role models.  The music isn’t abstract, but it is real.  I just hope some heads do get it.

 

Call us funk, call us jazz, call us hip-hop — Whatever tickles.  It’s a love thing, you know.  They wanted liner notes, and liner notes they got.

 

They can find their own reasons.

 

– akie bermiss 2/21/03  12:45am

this morning i was asked for psychological advice.  me.  how absolutely absurd.  asked if i knew the difference between a good person and a bad person.  asked if being “judgmental” made a person bad.  (simultaneously i was being dreamed about in a scenario that painted me very much as a bad person.)

i like that word, thought.  judgmental (this is how its spelled?)  Judge and Mental.  together.  i mean, its a bit misleading.  as if to say there is away NOT to be Judge-Mental.  like one can observe something, think on it, and not produce some sort of idea or personal consensus on the matter.  if there ARE non-Judge-Mental people out there — don’t bring them here!  there’s nothing i like less than someone who is cool with everything.  any and every experience is worthy of being mentally catalogue inasmuch as it contributes to one’s overall sense of the so-called “right and wrong.”  or, perhaps: good and evil.

let’s back track, shall we?

there was a time in my life when i’d polarized things so severely that i thought there truly was an objective righteous and evil.  no in between.  and that one had to choose with whom to throw one’s lot in.  as if all existence where a game of dodgeball.  where everyone lines up.  and captains from opposing sides stand-up and choose teams.

then i loosened up.  thinking perhaps there were no captains.  that one had the opportunity to choose for oneself whether to be happy or sad.  good or bad.  for the right or for the wrong.

but then also, it occured to me, what if everyone is choosing. then they can also choose to think of you as being on whatever side they decide.  people meet people and decide: i like this person.  and they go off with them and they are friends (to put the matter very simply).  or they meet someone and they decide: this person is wack.  no good.  no love for this person.  they are not of my people.  and so lines are drawn.  good and bad and right and wrong and evil.  and its quite difficult to say which is which.  that is — am i a good person?  or am i a bad person?  one asks oneself.    you may say, “well i certainly think i’m a good person.  i got to sleep every night.  i work and get tired.  i care about the people i care about.”
and that may be enough for you.

but what about your enemies?  are decidedly bad JUST because you see yourself as being good?  i wonder, wonder, wonder and wonder.  all the time over this issue.  how do we evaluate the goodness in ourselves?  (given a shared moral sensibility… of course.  which is a whole ‘nother bag of fruit.)  are we marked by our good deeds?  or by how well-loved we are?  how many love and trust us?  by the things we HAVEN’T done?  drugs, alcohol, sex?  types of drugs, types of alcohol, types of sex?!  did we intervene when we thought something wrong?  or stand back and mind ourselves?  should we enforce our sense of right on others?  are we willing to have theirs enforced on us?

lets not even talk about blame.

shall i endeavor to please everyone?  whether they endeavor to please me back or not?  if being right limits the power i have to DO right?  what then?  be right?  do right?  shouldn’t they be the same thing.  is can one BE bad with out DOING bad?
and yet… it just doesn’t seem to work out like that.

***

so here i sit.  condemned.  some how.  some way.  for somethings.  and yet — in some sense: innocent.  meaning to cause no harm.  but naturally well-suited to do so.  am i bad then?  that my innate recklessness and awkwardnesses make me unsafe for delicate things?  shall i martyr my self unto myself?

and say, reasonably, you are a bad man.  you cause harm.  people have been hurt by you.

perhaps.

***

but, suddenly, i am fed up of such things.  meaning no harm, i am causing no harm.  i am indicted of being.  reminds me of how i’d upset my father on sundays.  driving back from church.  he thought i was too angry.  too loveless.  threatened my being of such a bad disposition with send me to a psychologist.  ha.  a psychologist.

it is foolish to ask me for psychological advice.  i am — CLEARLY — confused.

[are you bored yet?]

some time has passed.  since the last substantial post i have gone from reeling drunkenly down the corridors of financial destitution to once again breathing that breath which betrays measured relaxation.  from pouring my eyes over scientific/fantastical madness to a dry, derisive history of one of this nation’s greatest presidents (not Lincoln. FDR — who was, i think, my mother’s favorite).  from quiet aquiesence to silent indecision.  all these changes, i think, for the better.  or at least for the forwardness of being.

i choose this evening because i find myself in Princeton, NJ.  in a hotel.  and, yes, you guessed it dear reader, at a desk.  nights like these try the mind.  i should sleep.  but couldn’t i just write all night.  i remember, in high school (its been a reminiscent last few entries, i apologize and acknowledge it) , when it would be cold, and dark, and snowy.  and i would wait til around midnight to see if they were going to preeemptively shut down school for the next day.  and when they did… i would spend all night writing at my poor imac.  nights like these are like nights like that.  i could say more, but there is, i believe, an order to things.  and a gradual growing nature of things.  and right now, i’m only writing to say:

oh see?

how wonderful it is.

being here.

insomnia: no real improvement.  yet, i’ve somewhat come to terms with the beast.  i don’t lay awake of nights now.  instead i pursue the better angels of my craft.  devoting the night to stride-piano.  turns out my left hand is not AS BAD as i’d thought it was.  its still NO GOOD.  but, at least, i think if i make stride a priority in 2009, i may get somewhere.

but my last post reminds me, somewhat unsubtlely, of some other high school revelry.  shapel and myself and the voyage didactic.

if the pseudo-religious order we created in sixth grade is something of mason-group/secret-society or some such, then i am likely to be giving something which could be called our secrets.  its something of a give-away to even mention that we had secrets.  or secret things.  a secret sign, a secret inscription, secret handshake, maybe?  certainly secret rituals and observances.  we began in sixth grade praising out demi-deity, BOB, and formulating a philosphical regime around it.  (truth be told: much of what i do today is still informed from the groundbreaking shit we came up with when we were thirteen and fourteen) .  somewhere along the way our foursome became a kind of stranded pair of twosomes.  Andrew entered a program and left for private school in the 7th grade.  Anwar did it in the 8th grade.  by ninth grade, it was just me and shapel and the great dark sea of public school.

its not that the teachers are bad in public school, or even that the adminstrators are bad (a thing harder for me to admit knowing so much of the politics as i do… having listen to my mother speak on it saturday and sunday mornings for a decade of my being astute enough to understand).  moreso, it is a question of the philosophy of education. i’m shamed to say that Brooklyn Public Schools are truly impressive as regards their ability to NOT prepare their students for the world.  i think of all the things that i  did learn in school.  and that was in the Eagle Program and the C.I.G program and at Brooklyn Technical High School and still: when i got to College i felt like i had an extraordinary amount of catching up to do.  i had wonderful, fantastic, intelligent teachers (for the most part) and they taught me as much as they could in 40 minute incremements once a day, five days out of seven.  but there is so much more i could have done.

sadly, i find my self now a full-fledged adult.  25 years old.  working in the real world.  and still when i launch into some new project my first step is always to do extensive background research in to things, i think, i should already know.  not minutae or esoterica, but hardcore, straight-up knowledge.

i mean i read the Odyssey in High School, but not the Iliad.  we study ancient rome and greece… as an antiquity section for the the regents. probably taking up about three measly weeks of time. i didn’t know about pericles, or thucydides, sparta, and the hot-gates, isocrates, socrates, plato, et al.  ancient africa: was there even a section on that?  i don’t recall any questions about africa on the regents.  i learned math — but until i got to trig and calculus and physics… i didn’t know what the use of it was beyond addition and subtraction.  i read shakespeare and learned what Iambic Pentameter was… but not really.  i didn’t learn about other meters.  i was forced, for 9 years, to take French as a language (not to worry: none of it stuck) and then offered french or spanish as a language in high school  french or spanish.  not even latin… the pater familial language.  arabic? hebrew?  swahili?  sanskrit?  german? (english is a germanic language… i can’t help but think if i’d learned german, perhaps i’d have found Rilke earlier.  oh how much fuller i’d have been.)  lets not even talk about the arts.  i had the rare pleasure of being part of an insurgency at Brooklyn Tech.  despite us all having to choose technical majors a hardy minority of us decided to add-on a de facto (so there’s a little latin, in him — and all the ladies say…) performing arts minor.  a mixture of drama club, SING, the spring musical, DiBo’s Chamber Chorus training, and the various bands and orchestras.  the school, i think, didn’t official seem to think that spending the equivalent of two or three periods a day doing music and drama meant much of anything in the overall scheme of things (too often we fought for the right to perform, to miss a class and take the NYSMA test or spend two days at BAM working with the Royal Shakespeare Co. on our abridged version of Taming of the Shrew).

ah well, i complain.

and i can go back further, you know.  even though i was in the eagle program from Kindgarten through fifth grade, they had me in the lesser of the reading groups until the middle of second grade.  this seems funny to me since i have been an avid read SINCE i could read.  and i honestly don’t even know when that was?  i couldn’t learned to read before i six, i think i remember learning letter in my first grade class… maybe it was cursive? but in second grade we were reading in class and out AND my mother’d starting leaving young adult biographies on my desk at home.  [note about me: if i get started in a series, i generally cannot rest until i have exhausted the series.  due to this peculiar condition i manage to read the complete: Beverly Cleary books, Pee Wee Scouts (even after they really were engaging books), BabySitters Club (yeah.  i admit it.  and what?), those biographies (they were like: American Heroes or something), all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Anne of Avonlea books, and its likely there are more...  you can imagine what your boy did on weekend, dear reader?  alone.  in his room.  with his books. and his glasses.]

anways, i was in the slow group.  i know it was the slow group for three reasons.  the first is, they would do a reading test at the beginning of the year (i bet they though i’d forgotten this shit) where you came up to the teacher’s desk.  read aloud for a bit and then went back to your seat.  and then, though they tried to make it seem arbitrary, they gave us reading books and accompanying workbooks.  the books were the same brand, same covers, same everything — except colour.  i think the “smart” kids got purple and the “less-smart” kids got orange or something.  i remember knowing there was this divide, but not sure if or what i should do about it.  i wonder, now, if my parents had to come in and talk with my teachers.  it would be unironic that the teacher to put my in the “smart” group was my only black teacher until… from kindergarten to… dare i say?… high school? (ah! the subtle racism of: a lack of role models.)

that just an interesting anecdote.  but more?

(i’m writing this in rondo form… so i’ll just palindrome it on out now…)

***

one day, in 4th grade, a woman came and pulled me and couple of other students out of class.  she took us down into a room on the first floor or basement (i forget, but remember it as being a descent for some reason).  and there, with about five or six kids, she had us write poetry for an hour or so, instead of doing whatever it was out class was doing.  this was the closest i came to that feeling or experience of being in one of those prep-school movies, where just three or four students engage a professor who challenges them to be scholars.  every couple of weeks… or maybe every week (i was 11 afterall… how was i to measure time.  it was just school and not school, in those days.) she would bring us down stairs and have us write and talk to use about our poems.  i remember only a few of the poems vaguely.  one had to be about an animal (i did the Blue Whale, if i’m not mistaken) and one about a color (green was mine: “…it’s not easy being green / when there’s nothing to do / its not easy being green / …when you’re always blue.”).  that was fun for a while.  in fifth grade it was abandoned, as far as i know.  it was the end of poetry.  and i had JUST started to like it.

i really do wonder if my parents came in for a conference and my teachers told them i was a dull boy.  and that i might not last long in eagle.  that i was in the lesser of the two reading groups.  and so forth.  i was unengaged in such politics.  knowing my mother, she would not have told me they thought so low of me anyways.  i just know from later experiences that, perhaps, she had had to go to bat for me because my intelligence may not have been: apparent. (get it?!  ha.)

***

all this is to say, shapel and i made a pact to question everything (in keeping with the general oeuvre of B.O.B.) and to look outside of the curriculum for knowledge.  to be skeptical of any superlative or generalized statement.  and to work out anything that was told to us to be true for ourselves before believing it.

it was by this route — by being academically combative with the institution of education — that we were able to more round-out our learning.  still i am envious of my friends who were taught such things.  who had the opportunity to learn a little latin, or linguistics, thoeretical physics, philosophy, culture, government (i took Honor Gov’t for a term in high school… turns out it had very little to do with reading and discussing the Constitution or Declaration of Independance or laws or supreme court decisions… and much more to do with memorizing the names and locations of states and their capitals… got an 80-tops, if i got anything, and the teacher thought me an underacheiver)… we managed to cobble together some Plato, Baldwin, Einstein, Aristotle, Malcolm X, Ralph Ellison, and W. E. B DeBoise (among others) to create a rugged, revolutionary frankestein monster of a dogma… and run around on that for about four years.

why is it the greater part of our learning had to take place outside of school?  the result was mixed.  Shapel just cut class for a straight year and half/two years and read on the train and in McDonalds.  i cut gym and lunch… pretended to be sick or unprepared and read and wrote instead.  got up early for school and sat around reading before class, debating with shapel over Minute Maid juice in my kitchen until eight or nine o’clock at night.  a general distrust of authority and a mean rebelliousness where purported “intelligence” is concerned. i paraphrase T.S. Eliot… quoted to me by Prof. William Mullen of Bard College: What wisdom have we lost in knowledge?  What knowledge have we lost in information?

—-

so — to wrap it up.  i guess i’m teaching myself poetry again.  can’t afford to have someone teach me write. not now, anyway.  its always nice to learn about craft.  humbling, too, that there 15 year-olds who have mastered what i am still have trouble to be pronouncing.  sometimes, its a long, miserable voyage on choppy seas to get from the question to the better question.

two full months later: i’m still here.

today, i turned my suitcase rhodes keyboard into a very awkward black desk.  i like desks.  let it be known.  few things give my soul a sense of greater satisfaction that sitting a well-made, open, sprawling desk.  its my favorite spot in any hotel room.  i got to it first.  some people like the beds.  or the bathrooms (in a really nice hotel this can be pretty ridiculous).  others check-in and go straight to the pool and/or fitness room.  others still find happiness in a t.v.  not I, good sirs and lady-sirs.   i go first, and promptly, to the desk.  wipe away the advertisments or television channel guides.  and i set down my books, my papers, and my computer.  i immediately scout for the complimentary pens.  these usually suck.  but occasionally you’ll get a good one — even in a not-so-shishi place (Country Inn and Suites… i’m talking about you.  good work on the stationary and pens.)  i like to have something to write.  so its fortunate that i am often in the enviable position of needing to write something.  i’m normally in a hotel or motel for musical purposes.  meaning: charts, lyrics, setlists… i like to write them out.  less efficien? yes.  more fun? absolutely!

as a senior in college i rented a personal carrel (i thought they were spelled carrol, for quite some time) before classes even began.  and even though i had to do most of my work in front of the piano… any time i could work with just pen, paper, and reference materials: i was up in the remotest section of the Bard Library (periodicals, my friends) listening often to Paul Hindemith or Sonny Rollins… and writing.

so how, you ask, could i have gone so long with out one?  in deed!  well its all about quality.  i don’t like rinky-dinky desks.  if that’s all that available.  i think i’d just rather not have one.  i’ll use a cleared-away table as a desk for a while.  that can be nice.  but i really like desks.  the three or four stints i’ve had in regular office jobs i have always been delighted to have my own desk.  a well-stocked desk is a bonus.  rubber bands, paper clips, pencils, reams of printer paper, an assortment of pens and pencils, bookends (very fancy!), maybe a complimentary coffee mug.

oh i do so love a good desk.  and i have alot of trouble writing with out a spacious desk which to sit at.   (ya like that?!)  2008 is drawing (however slowly) inexorably to a close.  and i want to hit ’09 running.  this year started out ALL fucked up.  and there was just not way to get it right.  it was like you’ve started a race, but missed the gunshot and tripped and there was mud in your lane.  there’s no starting over.  so you just have to run this race out.  on the other hand, i am still quite trepidatious.  all my masterful plans of late ’07 came crashing down unexpectedly.  i hope for better fortunes this winter/christmas/newyears.

it begins, simply, with a nice desk where my computer can sit while i use it.  or while i listen to podcasts or watch MSNBC and write correspondences with my siblings or jonathan ronsani. where i can pick about 10 – 15 books to be at the ready for whatever should come to pass (inevitably, i pick some grouping that does not betray my more casual more, more genre-loyal reading).  I like a good bit of nonficition.  but only the kind i expect to read again or to read bits of again.  this includes bios, histories, and music law consultations.  if there is to be fiction, it will most like be the next few books i am meaning to read.  so that i know, when i finish whatever i am currently on, i can grab the next quickly.  also, a few articles, plays, and books of poetry (currently Milton and Rilke are holding it down).  and my piece de resistance?  no long my La Roche Oepdipus trilogy, my Forsyth Orchestration book, or the article Emma gave me: “The Problem With White Hipness: Race, Gender, and Cultural Conceptions in Jazz Historical Discourse.”  though these have all been past title holders.

it is now, my brandspankin’ new The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.    yes… i like shakespeares.  i gets down on it.  if you think i don’t read Shakespeare aloud to Biggie… then you had the great fortune of not living near me during the winters of 2004 (when Bill gave me the BBC King Lear with Gielgud) and 2005 (when i discovered Throne of Blood, Ran, Pacino’s Merchant of Venice within a few weeks of each other).

back then: i really knew how to make a racket.

***

its morning.  and i’ve gotten up.  made the coffee.  turned on the news.  and, of course.  right away: dolly jumps into my bed and steals into my residual warmth.  oh what dames these cats be!

From blogstuffs

an interesting night for the world.  to think i’d started a post some months back… explaining why we were doomed.  my mood, if only for the evening, is a little brighter.

and with music present.  i find myself incapable of entertaining thoughts of sleep.  i write… as i sometimes do… through the night. strange how a single song can take so very long to come into sonic fruition.  and then… once there… with all the colors available to you… you must make a coherent smattering.  is it artistry, in the end, or — actually — madness?

i’ve left my futon in couch mode.  so that i sleep lightly (poorly) and return promptly to my work.

[what can i say, darling?  sleep is the greatest of all bores. ]

it is a strange (perhaps: wondrous) sensation… to go mining back into your professional history and find your same murmuring self… murmuring more prematurely.  its… really…curious.

well all that is to say, the era of my life when i was the lead singer, keyboardist for thefoundation was probably on of the most formative periods of my life.  i lean heavily on the various and sundry concepts concieved lived there to keep me going with inspiration gets lean.  its crucial to note that when i came to college i had so little piano under my belt i could do little other than play the strange, syncopated fragments that i’d been able to create through trial and error.  a few lessons here and there… i think may’ve learned the minuet that everyone has to learn… (you know the one… trust me… you know it… ) and written few semi-trite songs.  notated painstakinly in my almost figured-bass notation language.  but not quite.

in the winter of 2002, i was led to the august auspices (and awful office) of Mr. John Esposito (who teaching in a mud-mired trailer just down the hill from the main music building.   he laughed aloud when i asked him if i should practice for like an hour a day or something.  “more like six hours a day” he said.  ha.

well, somewhere in there we incorporated my piano into the then burgeoning sound of MotherMing… mostly as a compositional device.  very occasionally (sp?) as an intergral musical element.  i spent the first year or so of the MotherMing years as the consumate front man.  in my signature (read: only?) basketball (read: shaq) jersey and zipper pants.  jumping up and down, screaming, urging the crowd on.  basically ignoring the fact that i couldn’t really: play.

(don’t get me wrong.  those were heady frackin’ times.  evidenced here, by my man Sam Mende-Wong at our final blowout concert/party.  in Bard’s famed Old[e] Gym[e])

later on, i wrote a few more keyboard songs.  tunes its likely you’ve never heard (the original City Is, I’ve Had Enough, Ab joint I… some others i’ll likely never remember that weren’t up to snuff.)  and it sort of became customary for me to do some gigs, some gigs up and about.  as i became SLIGHTLY more confident about playing keys, i was more and more excited about smaller venues where sitting would not be looked at askance (actually, i’ve always prefered smaller venues.  even when standing.  in the later days when i would begin to feel less and less excited about my rapping — it would only take the close, sweaty press of a packed house party writhing in the darkness to inspire what we used to refer to as the thirdset or the hiphopset… wherein kyle and elijah would jam out, hoffa would make turn is saxophone into some sort of strange acoustic synthesizer… and i would rattle off hundreds of bars of finished and unfinished rhymes.  and we’d all end up hoarse.)

by the end of sophmore year… things were beginning to crack a bit.  we played a good bit in NYC that summer.  and i managed to buy a stage rhodes keyboard.  which i left on the livingroom table in our apartment in the west village.  and played… all night, basically.

junior year, i hunkered down.  and did little else than practice and attend music classes.  seriously.  from about 9am to 9pm everyday (with my homeboy Johnny Ronsani.)  and by late november it became clear that the band was evolving.  with myself, hoffa, and elijah (and actually Kyle too, though he was a compsci major) in John’s jazz rep classes and playing together about 12 hours a week… it was getting the point where the old ideal could no longer.

so motherming broke up (the same day i had extensive dental surgery… it was great!)

…and thus the foundation came into being.

***

that is when i finally began my “music journal.”  or memoirs.  or something.  there is so much in here, its hard to remember the young man writing such things.  but i think its illuminating for those who would know thefoundation.  where the started… where they went… how they burned out.

forgive the sad… silly… youthful tone of this tome.  i was young.  infact, i wrote the brief preface in the days of MotherMing when we were recording that album.

***

along with the excerpts from that journal.  i am hoping to put up a number of thefoundation artifacts.  the first is the post-whitespace foundations.  of the “OR DIE tour” era.  perhaps i should first be clear.  there are, to my thinking, about six Foundations eras in the 2 and half years we played as a quartet.  the first was the pre-formative (December ’03 – February ’04); second, the formative (March – July ’04… the chowhound/jargonkiss era); then theFoundation era (Late Summer ’04 – May ’05… we record the Whitespace album); The Lean Times (Summer ’05 – December ’06); post-whitespace/Chris Patton/thefundamental mixtape era (January ’06 – May ’06?); finally, The-Long-And-Beautiful-Break-Up (c. June ’06 – August 8, 2006)

that is definitely too much information!  and yet my carefully, maintained… horrifically written… timeline enhancing notes, journals, and keepsakes make the clear distinctions.  i think it is completely obvious that i am a bit a maniac when it comes to histories.  (is this blog not evidence enough).  anyways.

the stuff i love most is in the extremes.  while there is GREAT stuff from the nearly Year-long period at the middle.  we worked alot.  played up and down the east coast.  concieved of alot of material.  had some of the best parties at 32 Broadway in Tivoli (complete with the totally inebriated band taking the stage and playing raucous thirdsets… sometimes with the aid of the now extinct B.P.M.)… and even in the Lean Times… when the band threatened to break up during that long slow fall after graduation.

the most exciting stuff comes, for me, when we were still trying to figure out what to play.  and how to play it.  how to exit from the pure funk/jamband zone and become something still more potent.  to incorporate the advance techniques of Esposito’s jazz rep classes… and the finally sure hand of the… ahem… keyboard player… the lessons learned from Meshell Ndgeocello’s Spirit Music Jamia… the lates sixties Miles Davis groups (who were rocking my world)… the muscular verbosity of Kurt Elling and the amazing awesomeness of Laurence Hobgood’s compositional craft… the free musicality of what Johnny was turning me on to (Charles Gayle, Mark Dresser…)… and then our own: thing.

it was at first — pretty awkward.  but eventually, the bits that didn’t really work… got left behind.  and we came to a confident new sound in White Space.  a sound i love.

but it took the crucible of hunger and lonliness to bring us out of the Lean Times in to the magic of the “Or Die” tour.  new happenings.  the music seemed to open up before us… like a flower.  no, really.  like a flower.  and out came many floating secret pollens.  and and what we could grasp.  we grasped and threw in.

… giving us… those last few glorious concerts and shows.  much of it undocumented.  but the beauty remains.  and what there is.  i share now.  from my heart.  to your ears.

it was: good. very very good. insofar as working weekends go… it was pretty much tops. everyone knows that… no matter how good the gigs are… a weekend with multiple musical outtings can be pretty exhausting. hauling your gear first… to the car, then to the gig, unloading, playing, then reloading… then driving home (probably at like 1 in the morning) only to get up the next day… probably didn’t sleep right, right? probably went to be around 430. should have just stayed up til the 530-6a sweet spot and then slept till 11 or so. but no… down at 4…. maybe 5. up at eight. first things first… coffee. emails… (especially if, like me, you have yet reasoned out how to save up and make an excuse to buy an iphone just so you can check your emails ANYWHERE!) then… you got that second gig later, so you better go over the music (unless its like a jazz hit or something and you can just show up and play some standards.) do that. try to find everything you’ll need. then a little time with the sweetheart. sometimes difficult to remember where you are if your seeing notes or lyrics or fretting over a 13 bar verse section into a sudden tumbao. but with enough coffee, one can be in two places at once and mostly stave off anxiety for later… for later. maybe a shower? eh. maybe not. then into the car, to face city traffic… perhaps half of Flatbush is closed down. and you’re trying to hit three succinct spots in Brooklyn… all on opposite sides of the Park. better light a cigar for that. make it one place. make to the next. haul the gear back out. maybe up four flights? to a roof. (if you’re doing this with your new keyboard… the heavy metal and wood one… well be prepared to be sore on Monday) set up, perhaps. well maybe just block out positions then have a beer and some food. then cigar number 2? then set-up. well, then it might rain. you might try to rush the small stuff in and cover the big stuff. wait it out for a couple of minutes. then come back. check the clouds and re-engage. at this point you’ll likely have to deal with a slightly wily (perhaps very uncomfortable) landlord who is worried about cats being on the roof AND partying. so then there’ll be restrictions. and reasons to change the blocking. then maybe, reconsider. reblock. and then maybe one more time. then play. stop. drink, chat. play again… contemplate cigar number three. but then decide not to be totally decadent. play again. stop? well…. another tune… and then a finale… and then: stop. rap with the band. shake the hands. cards, numbers, promises. and then hit the gear again. call the sweetheart? say goodnight or try for a quick midnight rendez-vous (make sure you spell the french right and get the tense right [rhymes!]– cause she may be reading…)? ah… go for it. so pack up like a madman. and try to get the keyboard down alone. it goes in first. always. then back up for the rest of the stuff. the sundry accoutrements: keyboard stand, mic stand, music stand (and people ask me why i’m alway standing), amp, and bookbag (with the as yet unsmoked third cigar… let’s just say its a… what?… CAO Gold, maybe?) get that down. in the car. and drive back PAST the park. the downstairs is locked. so not sweetness at midnight. but a forlorn call, while you gun it back up to home. buy some crap food. park… about .333 miles from house. gather the bookbag (with all the music, clothes, and toiletries from this weekend), the box of cigars UPS delivered on friday that you just brought on the road with you, and — oh yeah! — the food. cover the keys with… blanket, sheet, winter jacket, some detritus from the floor (anything to make it not look like a keyboard… but like a crappy ford car with nothing of worth in it). come home. eat. tabulate. disrobe. and sleep.

yes, it can be pretty exhausting. that’s for damned sure. but… what if the gig on saturday night was at a great little bistro in Upstate, NY. tucked up in the ____(?)____ Mountains. and the band is a couple of cats you’ve played with before and are glad to see. well, even without a bass player and having to be creative with the two-hands (and the dwarfy.. late-to-the-instrument technique) but that all in all it sounds good. and even at times (dare i say: most of the time?) it sounded really good. well you’ll be pretty damned happy. and you’ll all be saying, “damn. we should play more often. we’d be killing this shit!” so that even the late drive back to brooklyn (a good 2.4 hours) is not so bad. (there IS a cigar involved, of course).

bedtime is cool. you’re ready to stay up til the come-up (sunshine, that is). but sleep ain’t halfbad. and its twice as nice with non-feline company. then, an early wake up could mean that you have to go it alone for a few hours. still feeling pretty good from the gig. you float over to the local cafe and get some frackin-serious Brooklyn coffee. drink. type. drink. type. then hang.

the second gig is private rooftop affair. not bread-a-la-bread, but its in Brooklyn. so bread is secondary to the pleasure of: Brooklyn Rooftop House Party for a Friend. and the view will kick your ass for days and weeks (even yours truly… afraid of heights over six feet and heights under… that part of the atmosphere where you start falling up. the music, is beautiful. a combination of cuban, soul, and the fire of many minds fusing. a particular sound: drums, el. bass, keys, congas, djembe, cello, and trumpet. many things are possible. one finds oneself singing. and then singing unencumbered. and the stark emergency exity lights, and the height, and the industrial/urban soul of the roof seems to take over. wind, and moon, and night press in. and, yes, the ancestors come down to this place. and dance. spirits. spirits. won’t you come on in the room?!

ah. when you finally get to sleep sunday night (its actually 605am Monday morning… just in case, he says.) you wake up just before noon. its monday. and, it seems like, a whole different America has come. and gone. he says.

find the cats. find the couch. and take it: slow.

—-

tomorrow night, i’m playing an Obama benefit in New York. at the Beechman Theatre up on W. 42nd St and 9th Avenue. Underneath the West Bank Cafe (think of Yishay’s photographs for some reason). and though its only for about 30-35 minutes, i’m pretty excited. got a couple of, as yet, unperformed arrangment of Stevie and Donny… that’ve been bouncing around the apartment (and my head) for sometime.

information?

http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4gjvw

and now: some colorful lights and meaningful sounds to lull me to sleep.

it would have been, on monday, my mother’s 58th birthday.  how much time does one spend to reflect on this now.  precisely six months since her (very) untimely death.  is it enough to observe the day?  mightn’t i have gone to the cemetery?  or to church?  or stayed in.  i carried on today like it were any other day since January 14th.   work, play, work, play… smoke… play… smoke.

now — at bed time.  i wonder if i should have made a greater event of it.  but yet, it is only the first missed birthday. and, perhaps, it comes too soon on the heels of the passing to really provide any distance for reflection (one needs distance in order to reflect… or, at least, to observe what is reflected).

i suppose the greatest complication is: disbelief.  its still hard to believe.  and so, tonight, i go to bed.  with the usual heavy heart.  and the usual confusedire.  and the usual resigned perserverence.

what good is it to fight these things off just now?  let the summer stew me here.  i will trudge onward to autumn.  and, in winter, face that darker darkest heart of suffering.  and: there, perhaps, make my stand.  for now i go, begrudingly, easy.

i slide.

HELLO friends!

it has been quite the couple of weeks since our last rejoinder here. so much has happened. the second Burundanga show (now with Sita!) — making it two for two. more music is up on the site (myspace.com/burundangamusic) from that show. my younger sister graduated from Dartmouth College making it 4 for 4 for the bermisses and college. an essentially unprecendented percentage. and finally, the purchase of a long-awaited new keyboard. ever since about early fall 2004 (when my old Korg kicked the bucket after i flipped my car on the NY Thruway at 2 o’clock in the morning after the whitespace recording session AND all the older cats were making fun of me for trying to gig out with my rhodes) i’ve been using the first edition of the Casio Privia keyboards. lightweight (extremely light-weight), weighted keys, on-board speakers, and usuable (if not fantastic) acoustic and electric piano sounds. for a while that worked. i spent most of ’04 – ’05 using the Privia as my practice keyboard in my apartment. and i gigged with theFoundation on the rhodes exclusively. good thing to since the Privia was not really made for gigging. it was great for at-home use though. i remember writing “tuesday night lights” on it. in something like October of 2005, when i was just… ridiculously broke… mostly jobless… after John had put me in as the accompanist for the Bard Jazz Singers Workshop and i was getting a little bread… Bugalu called me to play the gig at the Black Swan in Tivoli. it took me a while to figure out how to connect my keyboard to an amp (it had 1/8″ inch outs… most instrument cables are quarter inches… i had to find a suitable adapter. it was a frackin’ nightmare). well after a couple of gigs there, i learned how to make the Privia sound, at least, acceptable coming through an amp. and have used it since on jazz gigs, blues gigs, weddings, and all that.

but in the winter of 2006 i saw the new keyboard player for the Eric Person band play a tiny red keyboard that, when he was finished with the gig, he put in a little red bag and put on his back. that was the first night i heard the Clavia Nord keyboard. in hindsight, i think he must’ve been using an electro, cause it was super-tiny. 66 keys. but the sounds this thing could make… i mean: wtf?! (to borrow from the hipsters). and this was in a jazz setting. anyway, i was jealous, but knew my place. and, at the time, had no idea what keyboard he’d been playing. just been amazed. a year later, i catch Aaron Steele’s Group A at a little dive in alphabet city, and his keyboardist is using the same little piano. richly, sexually red and a beauty in sound. some of the sounds were obviously home-made. mmm… it was good stuff. Aaron put me on the Nord Electro. and when it came time to buy (its been time for years): i looked to Nord. the stage pianos seemed the thing. not so light as the electros… but great power in processing… and weighted keys (which is a creature comfort of mine).

anyway… all this is pretty boring, i guess. the point is. i bought the 88 Nord Stage model yesterday. bit a hope and a prayer. but its about time i had a real keyboard. i love pianos… but i don’t get to play them often. and i certainly can’t drag my sustain-pedal-less rhodes out to every gig. so the Nord. mm-mm! i got it home yesterday afternoon… and basically haven’t stopped playing it. sent my eldest brother a happy birthday recording. and, in the heat of the excitement, started recording all sorts of things. things for the Mimetiks. things just for me. things for no one at all.

anyway… there’s this whole story i could tell you about Bach and the Well-Tempered Clavier…. but i won’t bore you further. instead… how about a reflection of my ecstaticness with this new instrument. the singing of songs, i wouldn’t dare have sung on the Privia… and only quietly sing in my room on the rhodes. please enjoy. there are more to come…

—

prettygirl (nordstuff)

akie