Selected Pieces

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This blog is kind of a workshop for me, words scattered around like sawdust on the floor, pieces everywhere, some finished, some in progress, some going absolutely nowhere. A lot are ideas I might expand on later, or might trash. Who knows. Sorry about the mess.

What I’ve done, though, is take a lot of finished product, stuff I think is actually pretty good, polished ‘em up all shiny and proofed and put them together in the Selected Pieces category. If I were you that’s where I’d head and not bother with the rest. The stuff there should give you an idea of what I’m about. If not, there’s a bloated autobiography page.

However, if you’re looking for jazz stuff only–I was the jazz guy at the LA Weekly for years–try here. For music that ain’t jazz try here.  For vestiges of my ancient punk rock life try here.  There’s a collection of liner notes here. Confessions of a hipster’s life here. A non-hipster’s life here. Me trying to be funny here. And trying to seem serious here. There’s a few other categories in the drop down menu. Don Heckman has posted a bunch of my stuff on his International Review of Music here, including the fairly notorious diatribe Don dubbed “Keeping It Real”, parts 1 and 2  And a few others have popped up on the LA Beat site here, one piece of which I didn’t even know was public..  It wasn’t supposed to be..

You can follow my new postings on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. Feel free to email me at brickjazz@yahoo.com.

Immanuel Kant

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A chick one time bragged to me that her boyfriend, a philosophy major, was so smart that he found the Critique of Pure Reason really funny. She said they spent a whole weekend screwing and reading Kant aloud, laughing. That was probably the stupidest I’ve ever felt in my entire life.

Medical marijuana initiatives

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So when I got to the polling station here in L.A. yesterday to vote on the three marijuana initiatives I was so stoned I couldn’t remember which one I was supposed to vote for and which two against. All those long words, man, and that crazy legal lingo. I just stared at them for a long time. Like a real long time. I heard someone cough and turned round and there was like a line of people staring at me, wondering why I was taking so long. I kinda freaked out and just voted all three yes. Righteous. Voting for weed three times. Jah Rastafari. But as I left the booth every one was looking at me. I gave the ballot to the dude who gave me a flag sticker which I accidentally stuck on upside down. Detov I. Everyone was still looking at me weird. Well, not everyone, but the dude with the flag stickers, and the old ladies, the guys in line, and the pretty chick with the big, the one who told me I signed on the wrong line. They were all looking at me. They could all tell I voted yes for all three weed initiatives. Which ones were cops? Which ones were narcs? Which ones were gonna tell my prospective employers? I started shaking and asked for my ballot back. I wanted to change my vote to no on all three. The guy said I couldn’t. I got upset and said why not? It’s too late, he said. I started freaking out. You mean they know I voted for all three pot initiatives? Now everybody in the place were all looking at me, everyone, even the incredibly old people who could barely do anything. I couldn’t believe I said that out loud. I might as well have screamed look at me, I am so high!!!! And I was. I mean righteously high. Totally Bob Marley. Insane in the membrane. I split so fast, nearly ran out of there, cut across the lawn and walked home. Thank god I had a bowl full on me. I ducked behind a tree and fired up a good one, keeping an eye out for cops and old people. I exhaled slowly. It felt good. I waited till it grew dark and walked the several blocks back to my pad. Walking felt good. Felt natural. I felt one with the birds singing and the stars blinking and the car alarms. Jah Rastafari. Too bad I’d driven to the polling station.

It was a lot easier when pot was illegal.

Why I always vote for the liberal white guys

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I suppose it’d be tacky to point out that here in Los Angeles a white guy beat a woman for mayor yesterday, and that here in Silver Lake a white guy beat a person of color for the city council seat.  This is a good thing, though. We’ve already had a black mayor and a mexican mayor so a woman mayor would just be too much too soon. And this district has already had its share of non-liberal white guys, with the two women, one a lesbian even, and an Asian. No point in giving the office to another one. We really do need to have more liberal white guys in office. Being a liberal white guy myself, I feel far more comfortable with other liberal white guys in positions of power, at least in my neighborhood. We’re smart, and we’re hip, and we have excellent taste in music, wine and film. Most foodies are liberal white guys, you notice? Liberal white guys know what’s good for this city. Liberal white guys know what’s good for Silver Lake. Liberal white guys are even job creators. We hire maids, we hire gardeners, we even hire dog walkers. And almost all of them are women and people of color. Sometimes you see them at the  bus stop at the end of the day, heading east.

Before Silverlake* became overwhelmingly white and liberal, like I said, we had a person of color and two women for city council. And one of those women was a lesbian. Nothing scares a liberal white male like a lesbian. Believe you me. But that was a long time ago. We had union people around here then too.They owned homes, their children even went to Ivanhoe, if you can believe that.  But don’t get started on all those union people. Sheesh. The nerve of those guys…..

Which is why I am happy that Whole Foods is coming in. That’ll show ‘em.

Yeah, yeah, I know, this time it was different. You already explained that to me. Even women and people of color explained it to me. It’s not about opportunity for women and people of color. It’s about opportunity for women and people of color unless they happen to be running against liberal white guys. A liberal white guy trumps everyone. Now when’s that Whole Foods open?

 

*damn, there’s that old Latino spelling again.

 

 

 

Ray Manzarek

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I was never much of a Doors fan, though suddenly I think they are the greatest thing ever. Funny how that works. Just trying to get into the Jimbo spirit here. Stark and dark and evil, Ray dropping Trane–McCoy Tyner really–into the Top 40. Lighting fires. Ray was hip. Jazz hip. Jazz was dark. Jazz was beat. Jim was beat. Words breaking on through to the other side, full of madness and patricide and Oedipus. Ray laying down jazz licks hidden inside that rock’n'roll. There was nothing pretty about any of this. Nothing soft. The music grooved as bad things happened. Life was hard and weird and sympathy wasn’t part of their vibe. Let’s get real here. You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.

Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo and Karl

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A bunch of us were trying to watch Duck Soup last night as a guy provided unsolicited Marxist subtextual analysis. It was quite illuminating. For example, I had never realized that Edgar Kennedy, selling his  lemonade, represented Capital while Harpo, the peanut vendor (or El Manicero, badly whistled), was Labor. Their struggle was represented brilliantly by the metaphor of the burning straw hat and even more so by Edgar Kennedy pushing over the peanut vendor’s cart and then Harpo dancing in his lemonade. It’s so obvious, he said, which made me feel so clueless as I’d always thought it was just really funny.. The mirror scene was also a metaphor of class struggle. And the whole motorcycle and sidecar thing. I bet you never knew this. The primary theme of the film, however, was how Big Capital and the duped American working class embraced isolationism instead of entering WW2. When Groucho tricked Ambassador Trentino into calling him an upstart and  declaring war he was trying to tell the American public that it was time to confront their anti-Semitism and enter the struggle against Hitler. All this was particularly prescient in that WW2 was not happening at the time, nor, indeed, was Hitler even in power when the original Broad\way show was written. This was pointed out and while the narrator agreed that such was the case, it only proved his point.

It all got a little over my head during the Freedonia’s Going To War song and dance bit. Apparently when the Marx Brothers lapse into the minstrel show routine what they are really saying is that not only is America unwilling to overcome its own anti-Semitism and enter the struggle in Europe but it refuses to liberate the people within its own borders. There was more to it but I think that was the gist of it. And you thought it was just tacky.

I wish I could repeat the entire lecture but I wasn’t taking notes. This is just a tiny fraction of what was explained to us, and we didn’t even get to the final war scenes,  because someone turned the television off.

Still, even the most astute deconstructionist has to admit that some of Duck Soup is just funny.. Groucho is writing a note with a big quill pen. Harpo sneaks up behind him with a big pair of shears and snips off the quill. We all laugh. Classic early twentieth century American absurdism our critic declares, and laughs alone. 

College can be a terrible thing.

Brian Eno

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Not sure why but the only Brian Eno thing I’ve ever owned is that old compilation record No New York. Still got it, too, all old and battered and vinyl. He was the producer and didn’t play anything on it, but he made Mars sound like the weirdest band in the world. And listening to it now, they still do.

I bring this up only because I’ve seen about three hundred posts today wishing him a happy birthday. Apparently Brian Eno makes people feel all warm and fuzzy inside and they just have to wish him a happy birthday. When “Baby’s On Fire” was on regular rotation on KNAC way back when–it was a hit on that station at least–the last thing that I thought of was wishing him a happy birthday. I just thought wow, weird, and jacked up the volume. But my friends have gotten so soft and squeezable in their dotage. All sweet memories and gabba gabba hey. But I love them anyway. And I like Brian Eno. I just don’t understand the Facebook thing where everyone wishes people they don’t actually know a Happy Birthday. It seems weird to me, but they’re all terribly sincere about it. Happy Birthday famous person! they say. And all their Facebook friends chime in. Happy Birthday! Ten years ago this would seem really weird. Now it’s obligatory. I never wish people I don’t know a Happy Birthday. It’s silly and meaningless and, well, weird. Odd at least. Though if I ever met Brian Eno I’d probably wish him a happy birthday. Especially if it wasn’t anywhere near his birthday. 

Sigh…..I’m sorry an essay entitled Brian Eno isn’t really about Brian Eno. I mean I like Brian Eno. But I get caught up in tangents, like riptides they yank a narrative right out of my hands and sweep it along who knows where. No free will at all. Just the free flowing rush of random connections and puns that appear out of nothing at all. Writing as Brownian motion. Sometimes I think the only time I speak is in incomprehensible proverbs  But any idiot would know that.

Oh yeah, here’s Mars doing “Puerto Rican Ghost” off of No New York. Brian Eno produced. You probably won’t like it. You probably really really won’t like it, even. There’s only two kinds of music, Duke Ellington said. I’m not sure where this fits in. I know it can clear a room, except for a few weirdos. My kind of people, those weirdos.

And here’s “Tunnel”,  also from No New York. I think this used to be my favorite cut on the record back in the day. Who knows how many people I tormented with it at maximum volume. I recall playing it one Halloween and some tiny trick or treaters wouldn’t come to the door. I turned it off. Three and a half decades later it’s still a crazily imaginative piece of music (or “music”), the aural sensation of a hurtling subway is pretty incredible. That had to be Brian Eno creating that sound, knowing what buttons to press and levers to push to get that feel, like George Martin assembling “Tomorrow Never Knows” or Teo Macero editing Bitches Brew from an unholy mess of jam sessions. Back in the late ’70′s and even into the ’80′s “Tunnel” sounded stunningly alien, even scary, but I guess all the crazed electro creations of the past couple decades have sunk in and now this thoroughly analog thing sounds a little more conventional. A little more. As it spins it forms itself into a groove in my head. I can imagine people dancing to it. Weird people, yeah, but weird people dancing. Which is the title of an essay if I ever heard one. Not this one, though, but one full of weird people dancing. What a sight they make.

Accidental Death and Dismemberment

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Just looking at the dismemberment breakdown in my Accidental Death and Dismemberment policy. It’s not the kind of thing I read everyday, but still, it’s kind of entertaining in a grisly way. Losing an arm, say, or a leg is good money. Losing both is better money. Even better if the arm and leg are on different sides of the body. I remember reading in a book about the Civil War that  General John Bell Hood lost an arm on one side, a leg on the other. They had to strap him to his horse. That always seemed kind of pathetic for a big, tough Texan like John Bell Hood. I also read somewhere that he died after the war in one of those yellow fever epidemics New Orleans was notorious for. That would have been worth less money, dying from yellow fever, than losing that arm and that leg. But of course he lost that arm and that leg in a battle, well, two battles. Hood always liked to be in the thick of things. But his Accidental Death and Dismemberment policy would not have covered either amputation. Gotta read the fine print…no wars.* He should have thought about that before galloping like a fool headlong into the fray. He had to rely on veterans benefits, if they had those back then. Well they did, or would have, except he was on the losing side. No veterans benefits for them.They lost their country, their peculiar institution, and their veterans benefits. All they had left was Dixie, and you can whistle that till the cows come home and you ain’t gonna get a penny. Look before you leap, I say.

Those Accidental Death and Dismember plans–AD&D in the trade–really get into the details. You make a few bucks losing a finger or two. A thumb is a bit better, being all opposable and everything, and losing a hand better still. Same goes for toes and a foot. But those are still chicken feed compared to having the whole arm or leg lopped off. Losing both really does cost the insurance company an arm and a leg. They must hate that. The rep would be in the operating room, if he could, trying to sew the things back on. OK, maybe not. But it’s a considerable pay out nonetheless.

The policy gets a little weird above the neck. Loss of speech, hearing, vision and maybe even smell (I don’t have the policy in front of me) are covered. You lose just one eye or one ear you earn some pocket change. If you lose one ear and one eye–one of those how the hell did I do that things–you get a better deal. They list all these in the policy, and all the other body parts, with the pay out for each. They run down the page in declining value. Dying is winning the Super Lotto, of course, the big wazoo of AD&D. That first D is what you aim for if considering your prospects in an accident from a strictly financial point of view. The arm/leg thing comes next, then an arm or a leg all the way down to a measly finger. You look at your finger and realize how little it’s worth. It wiggles back, showing you what it can do.

OK, this essay is getting under my skin. And that skin isn’t worth anything, insurance wise. So I’ll stop right here and leave you, dear reader, free to go watch Dexter. Personally I can’t watch Dexter. I find it disturbing and disgusting and wonder what is wrong with all you people. Then again, Dexter the serial killer is giving his victims the big wazoo, insurance wise. I doubt they’d appreciate that, however. Besides, they’re all bad guys and bad guys never have life insurance, so never mind.

 

* Actually John Bell Hood would have known all this too well, since he was the president of a life insurance company after the war. Imagine that. The company was ruined by the yellow fever epidemic that killed him. Killed him, his wife, a kid or two, and left a mess of orphans. Ironic now, tragic then.