05.24.06
Posted in Culture, Uncategorized at 11:11 pm by Administrator
Not sure how much blogging I’ll get done for the next week. The Lovely and Talented Mrs. Q and I are going to Ft. Collins, Colorado to Grandson No. 2’s high-school graduation. Ft. Collins is a great restaurant town. I’ll probably blow my recent good nutritional behavior to smithereens. Also a good jazz town, interestingly. It’s not because of the university. Colorado State is more of a place for quantitative types – engineers and such. But I always hear some good blowin’.
In fact, I have an old high-school buddy who works for Hewlitt-Packard out there and he’s a keyboardist. On one previous visit, he found us an open-stage jam. That would be cool.
I hope we go to the hot sulphur baths, too. There are a few resorts up in the Rockies that specialize in that.
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Posted in Jazz Guitar at 11:05 pm by Administrator
I just played a private-function gig with violinist Carolyn Dutton, whose main project is the Hot Club of Naptown. Man, she’s so lyrical and swinging. We didn’t even rehearse. We hadn’t played together since last October. We didn’t even use charts most of the time. Did a smattering of stuff, from “Ain’t Misbehavin’” To “‘Round Midnight” to “Cherokee.”
It’s a duo format that would be ideal for a wedding reception or corporate function. If you live/work in our area (central Indiana) and are in a position to line up music for such an occasion, keep us in mind.
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Posted in My Other Thrill-Packed Site, National Security at 1:45 am by Administrator
Foggy Bottom shows some spine as Amnesty international shows its colors. A.I. is one of those organizations that proves John O’Sullivan’s axiom that groups that don’t start out explicitly right-of-center wind up drifting to the left of center.
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05.23.06
Posted in Jazz Guitar at 4:34 pm by Administrator
I just came upon a great new resource, Guitar Player TV. Several “channels” within this “network.” Several each dedicated to rock and blues. There’s even one called “McGuinn’s Den,” on which the legendary folk-rock pioneer demonstrates technique and regales the viewer with some history about various folk tunes that go back to Elizabethan England and such. Of course, I’m getting a lot out of the lessons on the jazz channel. They’re presented by Mimi Fox.
The whole network is hosted by Larry Carlton. It’s a great place to hang.
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Posted in Culture at 4:07 pm by Administrator
One of my guitar students is a twelve-year-old guy who I think is mainly coming to me because his mom wants to see him focus on something and get some direction going. He’s a good kid, smart, capable of making rather witty remarks, animated to the point of sometimes being theatrical. He is the product of an affair his mom had; he doesn’t know his dad.
My students have always ranged widely in age and level of seriousness, but I mainly get young guys who want to learn either modern-day rock schlock like Green Day or heavy “classic rock” (God, I hate that term) licks and effects-pedal tricks. Such is the case with the youth in question. I always insist on starting lessons with scales, arpeggios, and some timefeel exercises, but because such students’ moms cut me checks that pay bills, I indulge them in their lowest-common-denominator inclinations for the last fifteen minutes or so.
Last week, this young charge wanted to learn a song called “Stacy’s Mom” by some band called Fountains of Wayne. I’d heard it before, at the gym where I work out. (Gyms routinely play awful music, something I may ponder in a future post.) Not only is it stupid from a musical standpoint – vanilla diatonic stuff – but the lyrics portray an adolescent male who sometimes goes home from school with a gal his age because he has the hots for her mother. Stuff about the mom coming out to the pool with just a towel on and such.
Now, I realize you’re not going to be able to shelter a 12-year-old very much in today’s society. It’s probably not been possible for a while, in fact. When I was twelve circa 1968, I was deep into Michael Bloomfield, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Cream, and Traffic. Here’s a difference, though: rock groups of that day based their musical thrusts on a sense of heritage, and it was through those acts that I was led to Muddy Waters and eventually Miles Davis. You ain’t gonna be led to anything worth giving the time of day to if you preoccupy yourself with Fountains of Wayne.
Anyway, I thought the age of twelve was just a bit early for getting into tee-hee male-fantasy-about-friend’s-moms-type stuff, especially when presented so mindlessly and artlessly. Worldviews are molded at such crucial junctures. It took me years to see that the rock icons of my adolescence weren’t such great role models beyond the musical realm.
I didn’t say anything, though. I just showed him the chord changes and the strumming pattern and tried to get him to identify the key the song was in, and identify the I, the IV, the V and the relative minor. I’m not sure how well I succeeded at that modest objective.
It’s in such moments that we either make little retreats in the culture war or we have the courage to advance the cause of dignity, nobility and refinement. I’m afraid I chose retreat in this instance. I guess my excuse is that I didn’t want a hassle with his mom. If I’m going to be honest with myself, though, it’s probably closer to being a case of not turning the student himself off with what he might see as ponderous moralizing. As I say, I pay a significant number of my bills by maintaining a roster of guitar students.
That’s my confession for today. May my creator look mercifully on what I did with my free will.
Oh, one more thing: I later looked up this Fountains of Wayne outfit. They met in college back in 86, so they’re pushing 40 now. Aren’t they a little old for the tee-hee boys-sure-are-horndogs bit?
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05.21.06
Posted in Real American Music, Uncategorized at 11:22 pm by Administrator
Book Worm Room is sponsoring a carnival of converts. So far all I’ve done is post a comment, in which I tell my personal tale of coming to my senses, under the post about the event, which you can read here, but you can fully participate with a submission form at the same link if you’d like to link your own account of ideological epiphany from your own blog. It’s for those who moved from left to right, either over time or in a road-to-Damascus moment. My story begins in 1986 . . .
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Posted in National Security at 5:26 pm by Administrator
Read this and then this and then ask yourself why we’re still talking about light-water reactors and security guarantees.
It’s the same thing that’s going on in this situation, and the two main parties hosing things up are the same in each case. That would be Russia and China.
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Posted in Culture at 1:36 pm by Administrator
Man, I wish I’d had my head screwed on this straight when I was in college. This guy’s a senior at Oregon State (in microbiology, of all things), but he’s wise beyond his years. In this column for Townhall.com, he traces with exquisite examples the sliipery slope from general moral relativity through multiculturalism to hatred for America. Click now, absorb and ponder. (Administrator’s note: the direct link to the article doesn’t seem to be working, and I’ve checked the URL three times to make sure I typed it right. You’ll go to Townhall. Click on “Columns” on the left side and go down to “Multiculturalism With Entertainment Options” by Nathanael Blake. Sorry. Worth it, though.)
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05.20.06
Posted in Culture at 9:35 pm by Administrator
After weeks of leaving e-mails, phone messages and messages with his favorite bartenders, I was finally able to get a few minutes in real time to do that long-awaited interview with Barney Quick. Bent Notes is probably the first venue in which he has revealed certain surprising facts and offered the following insights.
Bent Notes: I’m trying to get a handle on your worldview. You obviously love jazz and blues, art galleries, and cooking and dining out – stuff that would point one way, if we were to make certain demographic generalizations. But then there’s this – well, certain tone that permeates your observations on matters of economics, world affairs, and the overarching cultural questions. Are you a -
Barney Quick: Ah, ah, ah! If your think you’re going to out me here, know that far slicker interrogators have thought they had me cornered, only to find I’d slipped past them more fluidly than the champions in a Naked Mazola Twister tournament.
BN: But how do all the parts of your professional and philosophical lives fit together?
BQ: Well, let’s start with the music. It’s generally assumed that even musicians with exacting standards and serious practice regimens are “imaginative” in some kind of way that precludes sound thinking about the basics of the human condition. People – both the musicians I’m talking about as well as the general public – think that a rock dude or a bluegrass guy or even a jazz cat or some chamber-recital type is going to look at the Inescapable Subjects and say, “The workings of the free market? The lessons history has to teach us about human nature and specific gender traits? Yuk!”
BN: But it’s true that, from the statements of most musicians who make statements about such things, we see a pattern of being for certain things and against others. You seem to look at those thing, um, differently.
BQ: Ah, but I see my postion as being supremely consistent. You want to know why I’m into jazz, The Great American Songbook, blues, 40s and 50s developments like jump blues, doo-wop and honky tonk, 60s developments like soul and the rock of that era? All those musical forms hinge upon a sense of standards, a respect for heritage, and an honest humanity that really expresses something. I listen to “Potato Head Blues” by Louis Armstrong, or “Take the A Train” by Duke Ellington” or “Hey Good Lookin,” by Hank Williams or “Turn On Your Lovelight” by Bobby Bland, and I’m proud to be an American, damnit!
BN: But a lot of the people involved in making that music were either dissolute and not much given to thinking about America and Western civilization, or, in some cases, dead-set against the foundational principles of the West and actively working to counter them.
BQ: Ah, but in both cases – the just-plain-loaded and the anti-establishment types – they lived and did their work in a time when they recognized a sufficient body of shared values in our society to get dressed up and conduct themselves with dignity onstage or in the studio or in their business meetings.
One time when I was teaching rock history at Indiana University, I asked the class to compare the respective ways in which Billie Holiday, in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, had dealt with the public’s awareness of her junk habit, and 90s grunge-rockers like Alice In Chains and Nirvana had dealt with it. Billie would show up for the gig in her evening gown, with her signature gardenia in her hair, and sing these great standards from the American Songbook in a voice full of nuance and recognizable human emotion. Sixty years later, the grungers would put their full desperation on display, making it a big part of the content of their work, and look the part – tatoos, stringy hair, glazed-over eyes.
I asked for ideas on why this might be the case, and one gal had a pretty good answer. She said, “We live in a more therapy-oriented society now, in which people are encouraged to be out-front about the issues in our lives.”
This says a lot about what’s been happening over the years. We now want to be oh-so-authentic that we wind up actually cheapening the things we feel by putting them on the same level with pragmatic conversation. It erodes the whole notion of dignity.
BN: Oh, wow. Look at the time. I have to meet deadline. Can we do another installment of this some time?
BQ: Sure, man.
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05.19.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:34 am by Administrator
I wasn’t aware the Senate was going to delve into the language angle of the current immigration debate, but maybe it’s the way to put the basic principles involved back into sharp relief. With Harry Reid trotting out the inflammatory rhetoric, it looks like we may be moving toward some clarity.
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05.18.06
Posted in Culture at 1:48 am by Administrator
I just saw a TV commercial for a new KFC product called a Mashed Potato Bowl. The concept is to plop a blob of mashed potatoes into a bowl and then layer on all the things one would find in a grandma-style Sunday dinner: fried chicken, corn, and gravy. Then – get this – they sprinkle shredded cheese over all the proceedings.
Picture if you will the various demographic types to which this will appeal: the testosterone-pumped adolescent male with the backwards ball cap, the loud music and the hot car, the harried single mom, often upset about a recent encounter with an abusive boyfriend, a gaggle of rug rats in tow, paying for a sack of this gruel with government assistance, the penny-conscious young sales rep who hopes to soon eat something with a little more flair and nutrition.
This is the mishmash our entire culture has become. It started at the high end, with “fusion food” and came on down to McDonald’s “Asian salad.”
You know where all this is going, don’t you? How long is it before those science-fiction-novel depictions of little nutrition pills that take care of us all day so we can go on our automaton ways become our real sustenance?
Please refer to my Republic column on what capitalism can do and what it can’t. I have it posted on my writing clips page over at Barney Quick.net. The free market by itself can’t elevate us beyond God-forsaken mashed potato bowls.
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05.17.06
Posted in Politics at 2:28 pm by Administrator
Rep. Mike Pence’s (R – IN) remarks at a blogger’s meeting yesterday provide more substantiation for the argument that not everyone in Washington holds his finger to the wind. This guy has solid policy proposals based on deeply held principles and he doesn’t care who thinks they’re not politically feasible.
Back when he was still in Indianapolis running a statewide think tank, he got me a job interview at a small publishing house that reprints classic works on human liberty. I was one of the two finalists for the gig, but it went to someone with more of an academic background. I also went to his victory party after his first election to the House back in 2000. He represented my district then. Alas, the lines have been redrawn since then.
He’s as square as they come in his personal life, but maybe we could use a little more of that in Washington. Besides, I would imagine that’s a point of pride for him.
One thing’s for sure – he’s not gonna listen to any Dick Morris.
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Posted in Blogroll, Music at 12:38 pm by Administrator
I was at the home of a friend who is a very accomplished jazz singer, with some great CDs and performing credentials to her name. She put a stack of copies of her new CD on the table and told those of us gathered there that this was her new musical focus. It’s meditation music – bells and bowls and chants. She’s gearing it toward holistic well-being retreats and such. It’s well-done and effective, as I would expect from her. But it was her statement that “I’m tired of trying to scrounge up enough decent-paying jazz gigs to make it worth my while” that kind of jarred me. Once again I was faced with the question: To what extent can a musician in modern America make jazz a viable income stream?
There was a time, during the swing era, when jazz was America’s dance music. After World War II, the beboppers took it in a progressive direction, while the jump-blues cats pointed the way toward rock & roll. But even so, Brubeck, Miles and Chet Baker could amass big fan bases in the 50s, and in the 70s, fusion was all the rage with the college crowd. Those groups played the same big arenas as the heavy-metal and funk acts.
But where are we now? I know I’m glad I’m a writer as well as a jazz musician, and that I also can play blues. And teach. But jazz isn’t dwindling as a viable art form. Is it?
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05.16.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:23 am by Administrator
Well, okay. His five points were, in order:
- secure borders
- temporary worker program
- employer accountability
- opposition to amnesty
- honoring the tradition of the melting pot
I might have put them in some other order and emphasized some things a great deal more, which would have meant mentioning other things merely in passing, which would have been fine by me, but it was okay. It paves the way for Congress to pass good legislation if it has the will to do so.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:34 pm by Administrator
I’m watching Fox in the living room, CNN in the bedroom, taking in the perspectives of a lot of pundits and analysts. This is an interesting issue from the standpoint that it sets up several camps within both the left and the right.
I cast my lot with the seal-the-border-and-then-look-at-how-to-deal-with-the-illegal-aliens-already-here camp. Talk mostly about fences and guards tonight, W. Don’t get specific about any kind of “guest worker” program. That comes a ways down the road, after we’re sure some Mustafa posing as a Pedro doesn’t come across and hook up with the others in his cell and put the finishing touches on The Big Ugly.
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05.14.06
Posted in National Security at 9:56 pm by Administrator
No one doubted the solidarity between Venezuela’s Chavez and the current Iranian regime, but here’s some big-time confirmation.
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Posted in Culture at 3:02 pm by Administrator
Tech Central Station has a great interview with George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen on the relative roles of the private and public sectors in the viability of the arts in America. He brings in the historical perspective, as well as some intriguing “what-if” scenarios. It’s a keen mind that can embrace both nuance and principle.
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05.13.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:27 pm by Administrator
If you want some substantiation for your arguments about either the monumentally bad idea the Canadian health care system is, or why May 1 was chosen for the Day Without Immigrants rallies, go to On The Fence Films and watch Dead Meat and El Uno De Mayo, respectively.
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05.11.06
Posted in Culture at 9:38 pm by Administrator
I have not yet read Manliness by Harvey Mansfield, but this review makes me want to. This whole subject was the topic of my April 8 column in the (Columbus, IN) Republic (not available on their website; I may post it on the writing page of my other site.) In that piece, I spoke of the concept of the gentleman, and his quiet stewardship over his sheer brute power, how a true gentleman is indeed a bit in awe of it. Wrote it before I knew about Professor Mansfield’s book.
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