Saturday, September 6, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Create an Email List with Google Docs
**Update 10/9/08** Google has updated their software to make this process easier. I updated this guide and eliminated several steps no longer needed.
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Google Docs has a great function that can help you build an email list. I found out about this when Lauren Zettler asked if I could help her create something like this (and she sent me a link to another example... in other words, this isn't my idea, I'm just trying to spread the good word). Lauren recorded a gig we played at the Hotel Cafe in LA and wanted to offer it as a free download. When you have something like this to give away, it's a great opportunity to build your email list. Click on the cover image for her free download, and you can see how this works from the end users' perspective.
Log in to Google Docs (you'll need a Google password, which will be the same as a Gmail or YouTube login) and select New > Form in the upper left corner.
Start adding your questions to your form. Play around for a bit so you can figure out how your different options will look. It's easy to edit by redoing the last few steps.
Once you're done, save the link at the bottom of the window. Use this to direct people to your form.
Before you close that window, choose More actions > edit confirmation. Make this say whatever you'd like, but it should ideally be an instructions for the next step, such as a link to your free download.
Good luck!
Reading Music for Guitar
Despite the fact everyone and their dad plays one, the guitar is not an easy instrument. Thanks to the Guitar Hero video game, there was a brief boom in the guitar lesson market. Yet once all those people realized steel strings hurt your fingers more than plastic buttons, and hitting the correct string or two is a lot harder than flicking a light switch, those of us that try to maintain a few students had to go back to drinking PBR instead of those delicious microbrews.
One of the biggest challenges for most guitarists is reading music. Many great guitarists don't read music. They just don't have to. Either they have great ears or play in the type of bands where it's not needed. There are also many that do read music, and exploit that skill to get a lot of work.
Learning to read music seems like a chore. There is tons of great music that can be played without reading a single note, and thanks to more intuitive notation methods like guitar tab, it can even appear cumbersome.
Even if you can read notes on a treble clef, you can play the same note on several strings. This gets confusing, especially if you're trying to articulate a passage properly. When a guitarist comes across an E in the top space on the staff, they can play the open top string or, working the way down the lower strings, get the same pitch on the 5th, 9th, 14th, and 19th frets. Each has a different sound and can influence your next move. It's confusing and causes a lot of guitarists to freeze up or get delayed when sight reading music.
My own excuse for being a poor sight reader is that I rarely see properly notated guitar music any more. Most people don't know how to write for guitar. The other night I played a gig where I had a few guitar charts, most with the notes written in the wrong octave (note to arrangers: the guitar sounds an octave lower than written, so if you want to hear middle C, write the C in the staff), and with a lot of cluster chords without a chord symbol notated above. Most of the time I was reading over the piano player's shoulder, looking at a bass line and then a few bars later back to my music stand trying to double the lead trumpet part. The next day I'll be working with somebody using a capo, and while they're telling me it's a C chord, in my head I'm transposing up a minor third to Eb to compensate for that capo on the third fret. When somebody finally puts actual guitar music in front of me I never know what I'm going to play.
However, I strongly encourage guitarists to learn to read. Being able to read and notate music properly is the best way to communicate with great musicians. There are more gigs for guitarists that can read. Even if you don't gig, there is a wealth of music to learn that been arranged and notated for guitar. Combined with a great ear, you'll find yourself not only being a better guitarist, but a much better musician.
One of the biggest challenges for most guitarists is reading music. Many great guitarists don't read music. They just don't have to. Either they have great ears or play in the type of bands where it's not needed. There are also many that do read music, and exploit that skill to get a lot of work.
Learning to read music seems like a chore. There is tons of great music that can be played without reading a single note, and thanks to more intuitive notation methods like guitar tab, it can even appear cumbersome.
Even if you can read notes on a treble clef, you can play the same note on several strings. This gets confusing, especially if you're trying to articulate a passage properly. When a guitarist comes across an E in the top space on the staff, they can play the open top string or, working the way down the lower strings, get the same pitch on the 5th, 9th, 14th, and 19th frets. Each has a different sound and can influence your next move. It's confusing and causes a lot of guitarists to freeze up or get delayed when sight reading music.
My own excuse for being a poor sight reader is that I rarely see properly notated guitar music any more. Most people don't know how to write for guitar. The other night I played a gig where I had a few guitar charts, most with the notes written in the wrong octave (note to arrangers: the guitar sounds an octave lower than written, so if you want to hear middle C, write the C in the staff), and with a lot of cluster chords without a chord symbol notated above. Most of the time I was reading over the piano player's shoulder, looking at a bass line and then a few bars later back to my music stand trying to double the lead trumpet part. The next day I'll be working with somebody using a capo, and while they're telling me it's a C chord, in my head I'm transposing up a minor third to Eb to compensate for that capo on the third fret. When somebody finally puts actual guitar music in front of me I never know what I'm going to play.
However, I strongly encourage guitarists to learn to read. Being able to read and notate music properly is the best way to communicate with great musicians. There are more gigs for guitarists that can read. Even if you don't gig, there is a wealth of music to learn that been arranged and notated for guitar. Combined with a great ear, you'll find yourself not only being a better guitarist, but a much better musician.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Thoughts on Leaky Music
There's been a lot of talk lately about unfinished music leaking across the internet, and I think the conversation started up again after some of the Guns 'N' Roses tracks from Chinese Democracy (their new album) got loose. At first I thought, "Who cares?" But after seeing some reaction, I began to think about it more, and from the artists perspective as well as the fans.
Let's start from the fans' perspective. If you really love a band, chances are you want to know what goes into making their music. Where do they get those ideas? What would it be like to hang out with them? What are they like in the studio? Hearing unfinished music gives you a piece of that. It's like the bonus features on a DVD that have outtakes or commentary. You get to humanize the artist. It's pretty cool, right?
From an artist's perspective, I would love to share the process with you, but within context of my vision. You have to understand that making music is HARD. When I practice, I'm either messing up a lot going really, really slow 99% of the time before I get things right. I also write or play a lot of bad ideas to get them out of my head before I get to the good ideas. I don't want you to hear this stuff, at least not without my consent. So let me show you that I can get it right and then I'll reveal the painful part. Then I know you understand the context, and no matter who hears me messing up, I know they have probably heard me getting it right. This is why outtakes are shown at the end of movies. They're funny because you know the actors eventually said their lines correctly.
Technology plays a big part of this discussion. Advances in recording techniques can fix about anything. Because of this, the quality of talent has dropped. Clearly, if an artist can't really sing or play like the finished product, I would expect them to freak out if the public hears it. On the other hand, it is pretty amazing to hear an unfinished vocal track of somebody that can actually sing. I heard an unedited David Lee Roth track, vocal only with a little bleed from the headphones, and I had new respect for the man. Even more so, listen to someone like Etta James. You think they had to auto-tune her vocals?
In general, recording is a lot less romantic today than it used to be. Music used to get picked up by a microphone and hit the tape pretty close to how it would sound on the record. But today stuff gets recorded very, very raw. Where studios used to use the acoustics of a room to capture natural reverb, today it is a lot easier to record very dry and add reverb later, by running the track through analog or digital processors. Almost every instrument can sound awful in a rough mix. It's very easy for people to perceive ugly sound for lack of talent. Even the best A&R guys can have trouble hearing talent through a poor mix.
Ultimately, this should be an artistic decision. The public does not have a right to hear whatever they want. Many fans believe they have this right because of the transparency of the internet. People, including many artists, share a lot of themselves on blogs, social network sites, YouTube, and personal websites. In fact, doing just that is a GREAT way for artists to reach more fans. I know several people who do this successfully. But at the end of the day, they have artistic control over what is released because they know context is key.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
File Under Jazz
Years ago I was asked to write an article explaining jazz to the novice listener. Below is the result, formerly posted on an e-zine, then on my website before I decided to scrap that section. Enjoy, and please add your thoughts and perspectives as comments:
WHAT IS JAZZ?
The largest hurdle for this discussion is to define jazz. To classify any genre of music, certain common qualities must be present. What qualities do we find in jazz? Improvisation and syncopated rhythm seem like obvious answers. Some definitions characterize jazz as having polyphonic ensembles (several instruments playing in harmony) and “deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre” (Merriam-Webster). But the umbrella of jazz now covers many different kinds of music with virtually nothing in common except the jazz section of a record store. Listen to any Glen Miller greatest hits album followed by Miles Davis’ On the Corner. Miller, a popular big band leader in the 1930s and 1940s, wrote some of the most memorable big band charts from the Swing Era, including “In the Mood.” On the other hand, Miles Davis, known as one of the most influential and experimental musicians of the 20th Century, recorded On the Corner in 1972 when his musical influences included Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, and James Brown. These two albums, if not for the two artists themselves, differ in a myriad of ways but are still filed under jazz. There is an explanation for this, both in the way the music is played and its history.
WHAT IS JAZZ?The largest hurdle for this discussion is to define jazz. To classify any genre of music, certain common qualities must be present. What qualities do we find in jazz? Improvisation and syncopated rhythm seem like obvious answers. Some definitions characterize jazz as having polyphonic ensembles (several instruments playing in harmony) and “deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre” (Merriam-Webster). But the umbrella of jazz now covers many different kinds of music with virtually nothing in common except the jazz section of a record store. Listen to any Glen Miller greatest hits album followed by Miles Davis’ On the Corner. Miller, a popular big band leader in the 1930s and 1940s, wrote some of the most memorable big band charts from the Swing Era, including “In the Mood.” On the other hand, Miles Davis, known as one of the most influential and experimental musicians of the 20th Century, recorded On the Corner in 1972 when his musical influences included Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, and James Brown. These two albums, if not for the two artists themselves, differ in a myriad of ways but are still filed under jazz. There is an explanation for this, both in the way the music is played and its history.
A PROCESS NOT A STYLE
Pianist Bill Evans said it best when he described jazz as no longer being a style but a process. In other words, it is a way to play and treat existing music. For example, Cole Porter wrote many great American songs in the 1920s and 1930s such as Night and Day, What is this Thing Called Love, and All of You. These were popular songs of the day, many from Broadway musicals. In the 1940s and 1950s, jazz musicians began playing the tunes in jam sessions, using only the chorus and repeating them over and over again taking turns improvising the melody. (Today, these tunes are part of the standard jazz repertoire.) This process has been part of black music ever since slaves were brought to America, when spirituals were sung in plantation fields. The words might have been taken from the Bible, but the way they were sung came from the African traditions of call and response, vocal style, tone quality, and pitch flexibility. As blacks moved north and into urban areas, they kept these aesthetics and applied them to other types of music. In rural areas black musicians had little access to instruments, but in the cities they could play pianos, saxophones, trumpets, and other white or European instruments and played those using rhythms and tonal qualities from African music. For instance, boogie woogie was a blues based piano style popular from roughly 1920 through 1945. Jazz historian LeRoi Jones wrote about the piano in Blues People as “one of the last instruments to be mastered by Negro performers” and boogie woogie “succeeded in creating a piano music that was within the emotional tradition of Negro Music” (90). And unlike European classical traditions, this music making process has no formal rules. The only rule is to make music that gets your foot tapping, makes you cry, or evoke some kind of emotional response from the audience. This is the essence of jazz, and as far as the listener is concerned, the only quality that matters.
HISTORY OF A PROCESS
If jazz is more easily explained as a process to make music as opposed to a defined style of music, then we have to understand how the process differed through history. Then we can justify the Glen Miller and Miles Davis albums being filed under the same category.
Early jazz, prior to 1928, was a spin off of the New Orleans style brass bands, now known as Dixieland. These bands played tunes from ragtime, the blues, military and religious music, and the popular tunes of the day. In the 1920s trumpeter Louis Armstrong emerged as the first great soloist and entertainer in jazz. He was the first to play with a modern swing feel.
During the Swing Era (1935-1945) big band jazz and popular music were one and the same. From big bands, smaller groups formed consisting of one or two horn players and a rhythm section (piano, bass, and drums). With a smaller band more emphasis was put on the soloist and musicians could improvise longer. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s small group began playing bebop in the 1940s and removed jazz from the mainstream. Bebop musicians considered their music to be art, not entertainment. The music was still based on popular tunes, but the melodies were rewritten and played at faster tempos.
The 1950s saw the beginning of cool jazz, modal jazz and hard-bop. One style of jazz did not stop when a newer one began, they all existed together. The 1960s saw free jazz, post bop, latin jazz and the bossa nova craze, plus the beginnings of jazz-rock fusion that persisted through the 1970s. Also during this time, contemporary or smooth jazz gained popularity, mixing easy listening and R&B with jazz improvisation. Many artists played many different styles as they developed. Miles Davis, for example, began playing at a young age in big bands around St. Louis, then played bebop with Charlie Parker in New York, created the cool school, pioneered modal jazz, led some of the greatest post bop groups, recorded the first major fusion album (Bitches Brew in 1969), and played pop jazz in the 1980s. His last album, released after his death in 1991, was a collaboration with rapper Easy Mo Dee. In many ways, Miles Davis’ career outlines the history and process of jazz from the 40s to the 90s.
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
Jazz intimidates a lot of people because it appears so complex. Yet it is not an exclusive club reserved for intellectuals and beatniks. Jazz is a language, an unspoken line of communication between the musicians and the audience. It is an active process that requires the listener’s participation. If you avoid listening to jazz because you think it is all the same, I beg you to reconsider. There are many styles of music called jazz, and there is at least one everybody likes. Once you stop trying to define it and really listen, you will realize that nothing I have written in this essay is required to enjoy jazz; the music will speak for itself.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The New Singles World
We're not talking about the dating scene.
One of the major reasons Napster and subsequent file sharing services became so popular is that they allowed people to cherry pick hit singles. If you think about it, that is probably the root of file sharing. Give me just what I want and not the other baggage (now this is starting to sound like dating). Up to roughly 1999, you had to buy an $18 CD to get the one song you really wanted. So file sharing was never solely about getting that song for free, it was just about not spending all of your beer money to get that one song. If it had been easier to buy that song for $.99, or even half that, I bet a substantial amount of tracks would have been sold. It would still be eclipsed by the free downloads on P2P's, but a lot of people will pay a little for some convenience. I'm one of those people. Enter iTunes.
iTunes is a huge force in music retail. I believe it makes up about 30% of total US music revenues, and according to at least one source, is the top music retailer in the US. One reason is the deep catalog and long tail economics of selling less of more. From personal experience, I can report over 80% of my revenue from music sales is from iTunes, with the rest being physical albums and all the other digital service providers.
Ok, I've said nothing new so far, so let me get to my point.
There are still holdouts at iTunes, perhaps the most notable being The Beatles. Here's a Wall Street Journal article that does a decent job discussing "why" bands do this. In short, these artists want to stick to selling their music in the album format and avoid letting people choose one or two tracks. Even so, their music is easily found across torrent and P2P services for free.
Holding out seems like a noble thing to do and all, but come on guys, you're missing the point. For starters, your real fans are still going to buy the whole album. While your tracks will still be traded freely on the internet, you might pick up a few sales from people willing to pay for the convenience of iTunes.
More importantly, there's the artistic debate. The artist wants you to buy the whole album and listen to it start to finish, in order. Well, here's where it gets tricky. I see albums in three categories.
First, there will always be pop acts that play the singles game, and those singles usually get released on an album with eight or nine "filler" tracks. Filler, in this case, means phoned in pieces of crap that should be an embarrassment to all those involved. These are usually the kinds of acts major labels got in the habit of using to support themselves. Once there was an option to avoid the filler, the focus was shifted back to the single. Only today you can exploit it with with mobile products, videos, etc.
At the other end of the spectrum there's the concept album. The first band that comes to mind is Pink Floyd. Sure, they had some great songs, but in the context of the whole album, holy shit, it was a whole new experience. Why would you want to miss out on it? Fact is, most people don't. Go look at The Wall on iTunes. It's $24.99. Originally released as a double LP, it's now just 26 tracks (you can tell it's on two CDs because it's numbered 1-13 twice). A bunch of the tracks are under two minutes, and there are maybe just two or three songs people would actually listen to outside of the whole album. Yet the "filler" tracks here are functional pieces to a larger concept, and to get the whole picture you gotta buy the whole thing. If you look at that graph in the WSJ article, you'll see that people are buying as many Pink Floyd albums as they are digital tracks.
Finally, somewhere between the pop acts and the concept albums are simply great albums. The Beatles would be a great example here. So many of their albums are loaded with songs you want, you just buy the whole thing. One of my favorite albums by an independent musician is The Hill by Mike Stocksdale (you can get it for free on his site but I STRONGLY encourage you to go buy it and support this guy). Mike just wrote a bunch of great, tasty songs. A few of these could be singles, but quite frankly, you're missing out if you don't get the whole thing and listen start to finish.
The bottom line is either your album is either good start to finish or it's not. Not selling your tracks as singles makes no sense to me. Your fans are allowed an opinion, and in today's climate they expect to be able to buy a track or two first before deciding your new masterpiece is worth their time and attention to listen start to finish. Look, I understand that many tracks are Album Only on a variety of services based on length (see any jazz album), licensing (see any soundtrack), and occasionally publishing (which makes little sense to me), but those are not artistic decisions. If you think your album so great that it MUST be listened to start to finish, which ought to be the way we all make albums anyhow, then throw it out there and let the fans figure it out. Everybody wins.
One of the major reasons Napster and subsequent file sharing services became so popular is that they allowed people to cherry pick hit singles. If you think about it, that is probably the root of file sharing. Give me just what I want and not the other baggage (now this is starting to sound like dating). Up to roughly 1999, you had to buy an $18 CD to get the one song you really wanted. So file sharing was never solely about getting that song for free, it was just about not spending all of your beer money to get that one song. If it had been easier to buy that song for $.99, or even half that, I bet a substantial amount of tracks would have been sold. It would still be eclipsed by the free downloads on P2P's, but a lot of people will pay a little for some convenience. I'm one of those people. Enter iTunes.
iTunes is a huge force in music retail. I believe it makes up about 30% of total US music revenues, and according to at least one source, is the top music retailer in the US. One reason is the deep catalog and long tail economics of selling less of more. From personal experience, I can report over 80% of my revenue from music sales is from iTunes, with the rest being physical albums and all the other digital service providers.
Ok, I've said nothing new so far, so let me get to my point.
There are still holdouts at iTunes, perhaps the most notable being The Beatles. Here's a Wall Street Journal article that does a decent job discussing "why" bands do this. In short, these artists want to stick to selling their music in the album format and avoid letting people choose one or two tracks. Even so, their music is easily found across torrent and P2P services for free.
Holding out seems like a noble thing to do and all, but come on guys, you're missing the point. For starters, your real fans are still going to buy the whole album. While your tracks will still be traded freely on the internet, you might pick up a few sales from people willing to pay for the convenience of iTunes.
More importantly, there's the artistic debate. The artist wants you to buy the whole album and listen to it start to finish, in order. Well, here's where it gets tricky. I see albums in three categories.
First, there will always be pop acts that play the singles game, and those singles usually get released on an album with eight or nine "filler" tracks. Filler, in this case, means phoned in pieces of crap that should be an embarrassment to all those involved. These are usually the kinds of acts major labels got in the habit of using to support themselves. Once there was an option to avoid the filler, the focus was shifted back to the single. Only today you can exploit it with with mobile products, videos, etc.
At the other end of the spectrum there's the concept album. The first band that comes to mind is Pink Floyd. Sure, they had some great songs, but in the context of the whole album, holy shit, it was a whole new experience. Why would you want to miss out on it? Fact is, most people don't. Go look at The Wall on iTunes. It's $24.99. Originally released as a double LP, it's now just 26 tracks (you can tell it's on two CDs because it's numbered 1-13 twice). A bunch of the tracks are under two minutes, and there are maybe just two or three songs people would actually listen to outside of the whole album. Yet the "filler" tracks here are functional pieces to a larger concept, and to get the whole picture you gotta buy the whole thing. If you look at that graph in the WSJ article, you'll see that people are buying as many Pink Floyd albums as they are digital tracks.
Finally, somewhere between the pop acts and the concept albums are simply great albums. The Beatles would be a great example here. So many of their albums are loaded with songs you want, you just buy the whole thing. One of my favorite albums by an independent musician is The Hill by Mike Stocksdale (you can get it for free on his site but I STRONGLY encourage you to go buy it and support this guy). Mike just wrote a bunch of great, tasty songs. A few of these could be singles, but quite frankly, you're missing out if you don't get the whole thing and listen start to finish.
The bottom line is either your album is either good start to finish or it's not. Not selling your tracks as singles makes no sense to me. Your fans are allowed an opinion, and in today's climate they expect to be able to buy a track or two first before deciding your new masterpiece is worth their time and attention to listen start to finish. Look, I understand that many tracks are Album Only on a variety of services based on length (see any jazz album), licensing (see any soundtrack), and occasionally publishing (which makes little sense to me), but those are not artistic decisions. If you think your album so great that it MUST be listened to start to finish, which ought to be the way we all make albums anyhow, then throw it out there and let the fans figure it out. Everybody wins.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Craziest gig, ever.
Summer of 2002. The last summer I spent in my parents house in St. Louis. I was working as a waiter and trying to find gigs wherever possible. With the amount of running around I was doing, I figured a cell phone would help people reach me for gigs, and within 24 hours of activating my first cell phone, while shooting pool and drinking beer at a friend's house, I got the call.
Me: Hello?
Unidentified Voice (w/ heavy Italian accent): You play guitar?
Me: Uh, yeah?
UV: You know some jazz chords?
Me: Yeah?
UV: You gotta suit?
Me: Yeah, who is this?
UV: How long will it take you to get to the Hill? You gotta car?
The Hill is the Italian neighborhood in St. Louis. Sort of like Little Italy in New York, but less touristy and in my opinion, a lot more authentic, so probably more like Arthur Ave. in the Bronx.
Me: Maybe an hour and a half. Wait, who is this?
UV: It's [not named to protect myself], I'm a jazz singer that sounds like Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Dean... you know, I'm a jazz singer. Meet me at [unnamed restaurant] in an hour. I need a guitar player. I've got all the music.
And so I asked a couple more questions to make sure I'd get paid, got something that resembled directions, and went home to get my suit. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
While sitting in traffic headed downtown, he called back to tell me that he and the sax player were running late (Ok, now I know there's a sax player), and he needs me to cover for them until they get there. In 2002 I could play about three competent chord melody solos on guitar. At least, there were three I felt comfortable performing. So I crossed my fingers that they weren't running that late.
When I got to the restaurant, a rough looking man in a suit named Guy showed me where to set up. "Where's [the singer]?" he asked. "Oh, he'll be here soon. Traffic. I'm going to play some solo guitar in the meantime." Gulp.
Nearly an hour later, they showed up. It was just the two of them. That meant I was the entire rhythm section, and would be playing plenty of chord soloing whenever the saxophonist laid out. After setting up the small P.A., a binder of music was thrown in front of me. Opening it up, I didn't recognize a single song. These weren't jazz standards, these were Italian songs. Half of them were written for mandolin! I was a goner.
The scariest moment in my life happened a few tunes later, when he called Mi Amore. Finally, something I sort of knew! Before I had a chance to look it over, he was counting off the tune. And by counting off, I mean he was doing some weird foot stomping, fist swinging motion while singing what I imagine was some sort of trombone part from the arrangment stuck in his head, "Bah, Bah-Dah, BOP!" As soon as I started playing my best boom-chick-chick waltz pattern, he got right in my face and while playing air mandolin, starting singing some high notes, wanting me to play that, doing some tremelo picking, at the same time. I don't remember the next couple minutes, but things seemed to settle in place. But then it all fell apart. The key changed or something, but not in my music. Wait, where's the final barline? Where's the rest of this lyric? I'm missing a page!
And that's how I fucked up Mi Amore in front of an all Italian audience in the most Italian neighborhood in St. Louis. I was pretty sure my car was going to blow up when I turned it on.
Yet ironically, Guy and everyone else loved my solo playing at the beginning that they forgave me, and just teased me about it afterwards. Plus, once we did get to the jazz standards, I more than made up for it. Literally, I played like my life was on the line. After the gig, which went until the last customer left a little after midnight, the chef made an amazing pasta dish for the three of us. The owner broke out a few bottles of vino and we kicked back, smoked cigars, had some lemon dolce, and shot the shit until about 4 am. My car started without incident and I felt successful.
Me: Hello?
Unidentified Voice (w/ heavy Italian accent): You play guitar?
Me: Uh, yeah?
UV: You know some jazz chords?
Me: Yeah?
UV: You gotta suit?
Me: Yeah, who is this?
UV: How long will it take you to get to the Hill? You gotta car?
The Hill is the Italian neighborhood in St. Louis. Sort of like Little Italy in New York, but less touristy and in my opinion, a lot more authentic, so probably more like Arthur Ave. in the Bronx.
Me: Maybe an hour and a half. Wait, who is this?
UV: It's [not named to protect myself], I'm a jazz singer that sounds like Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Dean... you know, I'm a jazz singer. Meet me at [unnamed restaurant] in an hour. I need a guitar player. I've got all the music.
And so I asked a couple more questions to make sure I'd get paid, got something that resembled directions, and went home to get my suit. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
While sitting in traffic headed downtown, he called back to tell me that he and the sax player were running late (Ok, now I know there's a sax player), and he needs me to cover for them until they get there. In 2002 I could play about three competent chord melody solos on guitar. At least, there were three I felt comfortable performing. So I crossed my fingers that they weren't running that late.
When I got to the restaurant, a rough looking man in a suit named Guy showed me where to set up. "Where's [the singer]?" he asked. "Oh, he'll be here soon. Traffic. I'm going to play some solo guitar in the meantime." Gulp.
Nearly an hour later, they showed up. It was just the two of them. That meant I was the entire rhythm section, and would be playing plenty of chord soloing whenever the saxophonist laid out. After setting up the small P.A., a binder of music was thrown in front of me. Opening it up, I didn't recognize a single song. These weren't jazz standards, these were Italian songs. Half of them were written for mandolin! I was a goner.
The scariest moment in my life happened a few tunes later, when he called Mi Amore. Finally, something I sort of knew! Before I had a chance to look it over, he was counting off the tune. And by counting off, I mean he was doing some weird foot stomping, fist swinging motion while singing what I imagine was some sort of trombone part from the arrangment stuck in his head, "Bah, Bah-Dah, BOP!" As soon as I started playing my best boom-chick-chick waltz pattern, he got right in my face and while playing air mandolin, starting singing some high notes, wanting me to play that, doing some tremelo picking, at the same time. I don't remember the next couple minutes, but things seemed to settle in place. But then it all fell apart. The key changed or something, but not in my music. Wait, where's the final barline? Where's the rest of this lyric? I'm missing a page!
And that's how I fucked up Mi Amore in front of an all Italian audience in the most Italian neighborhood in St. Louis. I was pretty sure my car was going to blow up when I turned it on.
Yet ironically, Guy and everyone else loved my solo playing at the beginning that they forgave me, and just teased me about it afterwards. Plus, once we did get to the jazz standards, I more than made up for it. Literally, I played like my life was on the line. After the gig, which went until the last customer left a little after midnight, the chef made an amazing pasta dish for the three of us. The owner broke out a few bottles of vino and we kicked back, smoked cigars, had some lemon dolce, and shot the shit until about 4 am. My car started without incident and I felt successful.
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