"Sweet" Sue Terry: BLOG

Some of the best music I've ever heard has been in the subway. Even though great art deserves a frame, there's something to be said for a glimmer of beauty in the midst of the underground squalor known as the MTA.

Years ago there was a black guy who played--I kid you not--washtub bass. He swung like mad, and sang Moon River in 4.

I remember a piano player with an electric keyboard. This guy was phenomenal, a unique voice. He didn't play in clubs, he only played in the subway.

A steel pan player whose instrument was so finely tuned that I forgot my distaste for steel pan. He played original arrangements of Classical music, pop tunes and Jazz. He played arrangements of symphonic pieces.

Just the other day I heard a Russian accordion player who blew me away.

At Judy Palma's birthday dinner on Wednesday, Chris Karlic was telling us that the violin virtuoso Joshua Bell played in the D.C. Metro for 45 minutes, and almost everybody just walked right by.

Here's a link to the article in the Washington Post, and video of the performance. If you're interested in the postmodern interpretation of the public reaction (or lack thereof) to Bell's performance, then you should read the whole article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

On Bell's website, http://www.joshuabell.com/, it says that writer Gene Weingarten was just awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Post article.

Now that the little buds are out, so are the little bugs.

John Vett sends a communique regarding small insect repellent: put some Listerine in a spray bottle & spray yourself.

Tried it. IT WORKS! It's gnat season and the 'squitos can't be far behind.

Caveat: Do not use the "flavored" Listerine--it's sticky. Use regular and you're good to go.

Ya heard it here, folks.

Here's the first paragraph of Progressive Insurance's Spring newsletter:

On Apr 11, 2008, at 12:22 PM, Progressive wrote:

"A Summer Road Trip on One Gallon of Gas?

Yes, it's possible...with the 100 MPG car!

Progressive is the sponsor of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE, which will award $10 million in prize money to the teams who produces a production-ready, super-fuel-efficient vehicles."

My reply to them:

"I think we have a problem with subject-verb agreement. Please review your first paragraph.

If your propaganda has basic grammatical mistakes like this, indicating it has not been proofread, then how can I trust the other departments?"

On Friday I went to buy a new set of bedsheets. I came home with a 300-thread-count set featuring a pretty, faded-burgundy flower print on a cream background. And because mama didn't raise no fool, I did NOT pay retail.

You can do the same if you jog down to 86th Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where the Century 21 department store presides over two city blocks. Allow three hours to find a parking spot.

It occurred to me today to analyze the print pattern on the sheets. Even though it is busy, it's a restful pattern on the eyes, and this is not just because of the mellow colors.

If the pattern were polka dots, say, it would drive me crazy--all the dots being the same size.

But the print has three different flower groupings; let's call them A, B, C.

The pattern only makes sense if you look at the flow of it in one direction--then you can see a linear pattern of A, B, C that is either vertical or horizontal depending on whether you're looking at a sheet or a pillowcase.

It's kind of like the vertical lines of code in The Matrix computer screen.

The adjacent pattern line is placed so that A is aligned between B and C of the line next to it, and so on.

So the pattern simulates randomness (like snowflakes, raindrops, clouds, etc.) while closer inspection, Dr. Watson, reveals its underlying pattern.

My "eureka" moment so excited me that I rushed to phone up the head of the Nobel committee. But he must have died, because he's not returning my calls.

In a true "graphic design imitates life" moment, I rejected the matching quilt cover and purchased a staid brown with subtle squares. Too much chaos--no matter the underlying pattern--can't be a good thing.

Did you know that many of the New York Jazz clubs lack decent dressing rooms for their artists?
("NO! I hear you gasp).

It's true.

The venerable Village Vanguard, for instance, has no dressing room. The artists hang out in an old kitchen, seated on folding chairs (if you can find one) surrounded by decrepit stoves, sinks and countertops. I suppose it qualifies as a sort of "green room", although it is not private. Pretty much anyone can walk in there.

Sweet Rhythm has no room for the artists at all. Zilch, not even a kitchen. And unless you're a Yoga teacher, heaven help you if you've got to change in that bathroom. Better you should sprint across the street to the Mexican place. If it's not raining.

The dressing room at Dizzy's Club is the size of a walk-in closet. But at least there is comfortable seating and a bathroom.

The Minton's green room is an office. A very small office, with a whole lot of stuff in there. Be sure to hermetically seal your belongings before using it.

Birdland is okay if you don't have to go from one end of the dressing room to the other-- to the bathroom, for instance. The room is shaped like a hallway, so if other band members are in there, traversing it is like navigating aisles in a movie theater. But a movie theater aisle is easier because you don't have to leap over horn cases.

The Blue Note has real dressing rooms that are small, but private and clean. They don't double as storage rooms. There is one for the bandleader, and another for the band. And at those prices, I would expect no less.

These are just a few clubs that come to mind.

(Is the Complaint Dept. open yet? I've been on 'hold' such a long time)PLEASE SUMMARIZE YOUR COMPLAINT IN 60 WORDS OR LESS

Not having a dressing room/green room is a drag because:

1. Must change and put on makeup in public bathroom (so much for that 'artist mystique' you were trying to cultivate. . . now EVERYONE knows you use Mabelline Instant Age Rewind)

2. No place to sit down and look over music or warm up (hey, you knew about this gig 2 weeks ago!)

3. No place to be away from the public to chill out between sets (are you some kind of prima donna, or what)

4. Where are you supposed to count the money and pay the musicians after the job (just go in the bathroom to count the money, drug dealers don't seem to have a problem with that so why should you)

THANK YOU, YOUR COMPLAINT WILL BE PROCESSED IN FOUR TO EIGHT WEEKS.

I like interacting with my fans and friends who come to the show, but I need a clean and quiet place to go for all of the above. I put out lots of energy when I play, and I can do a better job when I don't have to spend more energy talking to people between sets. This is very draining. I prefer to save my energy for performing, and chat with folks AFTER the gig.

Let's not forget that most of these clubs would have zero customers if not for the artists performing there. Few seem to realize this, least of whom the artists themselves.

Now that I think about it, if all clubs provided clean, private dressing rooms for their artists, the artists might start to think more of themselves, and get all uppity, and demand more money!

Oh. . . I get it now.

I read that one of the original Mad Magazine writers, now in his eighties, is still writing for the magazine!

I don't believe he is the author of one of my favorites from days of yore, however. "Rewriting Your Way To A Ph.D" is a true classic.

Use your View menu or your keyboard to enlarge the print, and have a few laughs:

http://www.collectmad.com/madcoversite/mad158_phd.html

"Sign" of the times:

THE UNITED STATES IS CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS. WE WILL REOPEN IN NOVEMBER UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.

The pundits are now admitting we're in a recession. Another "sky is blue" story, eh?

So I do a school presentation last week on the upper west side, heretofore assumed to be one of the "better" neighborhoods. The brightest kid in the class was a girl about 9, who said her dad plays the saxophone. We said, who's your dad? Turns out we know him.

Meanwhile, Andy and Sheila (both of them sax players) moved to Vienna two years ago with teaching positions. They have a great apartment and full health coverage. THEIR daughter--same age as Dave's--is fluently bilingual if not trilingual by now, while Dave's kid is surrounded by numbskulls in what passes for public school education in this country.

No wonder musicians are flocking to those doctoral programs like there's no tomorrow. . .

there's no tomorrow. . .

there's no tomorrow. . .

I've always said that playing music is an ideal way to get the left and right hemispheres of the brain to function together. When you read music you're calling on a lot of left brain function--recognition of the music symbols and what to do in response to them; and when you improvise you're into that right brain big time. That would account for why it's hard to talk after a long emotional solo.

Playing the tune and then speaking to the audience between tunes takes a particular ability to glide back and forth, hemispherically speaking. It ain't easy.

Apropos of brain hemispheres, Mike Pekor just sent me a link to an utterly fascinating talk that is free to watch; you can even download it to iTunes if you wish. It is truly remarkable and I think readers of this blog will especially appreciate it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

The whole thing with Spitzer is really a drag for everybody.

He said in his press announcement that it was a "private matter." Sorry. If he had a lady on the side who wasn't a prostitute, then it could be a private matter. But when you were a two term Attorney General and now you're the Governor, not to mention the fact that you ran on an Ethics platform and prostitution is illegal, then it is not a private matter.

I don't know why these politicians don't read books like The Art of War and the I Ching and The Book of Five Rings. If they did, they would know what to do and what not to do.

Seems to me, if I were Attorney General and I was wacking a whole bunch of corrupt politicos and making a whole lot of enemies in the process, that I would watch my back until I retired from office. When your star shines too brightly, a takedown is always looming. For a smart guy, he acted awful dumb.

Last night about fifty people gathered at a Manhattan loft to celebrate the life and music of saxophonist/flutist/composer Thomas Chapin, who died at 41 of leukemia. He would have been 51 yesterday.

It was a great honor to play at this event, organized by Tom's widow Terri Castillo-Chapin and hosted by Pamela Kraft.

To be on the same program with great musicians like violinist Mark Feldman, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, multi-reedman Ned Rothenberg, bassoonist Michael Rabinowitz, tenorman Josh Harris, and young altoist Brett Ryan was a treat. Also performing was Thomas' niece Sonia Caltvedt who flew in from San Francisco and played two flute pieces, including a Chapin original.

There were speakers and poets, lots of friends and great food. It was the kind of night that happens every night, somewhere, in this city that never sleeps, but gathers its human fold under wings where the muses visit regularly.

It was the kind of night that you remember twenty or fifty years later, after you've watched the world bend in a fun house mirror, and the kids are all grown up.

It was the kind of night where you were glad you were paying attention to the kind of night it was, so that you could still remember it twenty or fifty years later and smile.

Now here's a site I guarantee you would not have found on your own!

NYSSMA (a NY State music education organization) recognizes student achievement every year with various awards. Go to this page, scroll all the way down to the bottom under "Related Links" and you can hear some mp3 files of compositions by students ranging from 12 to 18 years old. I think you will be impressed--I was.

http://www.nyssma.org/committees.cfm?subpage=112

In the bottom of my Qi Note Records messenger bag, which accompanies me on all flights and various other missions, I found a piece of paper on which I had written the following:

A prophet is never welcomed.

The only thing that can travel at the speed of light is a massless particle.

photon, graviton, gluon (strong force particle)

If the massless particles leave the emptiness of a vacuum and begin to interact with matter, even they can't travel at the speed of light anymore.
***********************
Below this I had the address of a promoter in Florida who, I understand, is no longer promoting. Which proves my theory that if you wait long enough, you don't have to do most of the things you think you have to do, like contact promoters.

As for those other snippets of wisdom, though I wish I could take credit for them, I suspect they were copied from somewhere. The appalling lack of footnotes, to which I am ordinarily attentive, will surely haunt me as I say to someone "A prophet is never welcomed" and they say "That's MY line!"

While en route from one room to another, my attention was captured for a few minutes by a PBS program about how humans learn.

The researchers showed some chimps a box on which they manipulated a few simple moving parts, after which a piece of candy would fall out of a slot.

They gave the box to the chimps, who copied what the researchers did, thus retrieving the candy.

The kids did the same thing in a separate experiment.

Then the researchers showed the chimps the same thing on a see-through box, where you could tell that the manipulations were unnecessary--you could just take the piece of candy out of the slot from the jump.

So the chimps cut right to the chase and did that.

But the kids went through the same process of manipulating the moving parts before extracting the candy!

The researchers were trying to prove that humans learn best by interacting with other humans and copying what they do.

In my own research, I have obtained the same results, however I interpret them differently: I say the experiment proves that humans will do the same stupid things over and over, just because they saw some other humans do it.

In the interest of science, I hereby donate these findings without expectation (but not without hope) of remuneration, to my scientific colleagues who would like to make use of them in their own research.

I had been trying for a couple of years to make movies on a PC. Nothing elaborate--just some stuff to put up on YouTube, some demo DVDs, etc. But I just couldn't find the right combination of software/hardware, so it never happened.

Now I have a Mac and I was making movies in like two minutes.

I told Saul I was making movies and he asked me what platform I was using and I was embarrassed to say iMovie. He said I should be using Final Cut but the thing is, it needs to be easy and fast or it ain't gonna happen.

Even with iMovie it took me all day to make my first installment of my lesson series today. But now that I know my way around the program, future ones should be less time consuming.

Anyway, they are going to be free lessons on YouTube. I'll start posting them when I have 5 or 6 done. Will keep you posted!

Also working on an art film! That's gonna take a while. For that I probably should use Final Cut, but I think I'm going to see how far I can get with the limited palette that iMovie offers.

As Fellini said, it's essential for a creative artist to have limitations--they lend structure to what would otherwise be unbridled chaos. Or maybe he said, bring on the unbridled chaos!

Whatever.

Check out this video of Clara Rockmore doing one of her signature pieces. If I'm not mistaken, the theremin is the only musical instrument that is played without actually touching it.

Of course, what made her great was her musicianship & feeling. I had heard recordings of her but never realized there was video out there. On a whim I typed her name into YouTube's search window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSzTPGlNa5U

I once saw a documentary about Professor Theremin, the inventor of the instrument. His bizarre life included an episode of being kidnapped by the KGB to invent some sort of secret weapon for them. Does anyone know the name of this film?

And I must not forget to add that when I was a kid, a theremin player came to my school and demonstrated the instrument during assembly. When a volunteer was asked for, I raised my hand, and was chosen to come up to the stage and try to play it! As I recall, it was like trying to take a frisky St. Bernard puppy for a walk, without a leash.

This is the ten year anniversary of Tom's death, and there are several events going on to remember him and his music.

The event I am scheduled for is a more personal remembrance concert with very limited seating, but you can go if you reserve early. It's at the Kraft Loft on Sunday, Mar. 9. Details are on my calendar on the home page. I understand violinist Mark Feldman will also be performing that day--he is one of my favorite musicians so I'm happy about that.

But last night I was called in at the last minute to sub the lead alto chair with the Thomas Chapin Orchestra, mainly comprised of former members of the Walter Thompson Big Band of the 80's and 90's.

I don't know why I never got involved in that scene when it was happening, because this Soundpainting thing is right up my alley! Using hand gestures, Walter directs the musicians and the music is created spontaneously. He even got the audience involved. It's pretty wild. You never know what's going to happen.

We interspersed that with Paul Jeffrey conducting his arrangement's of Tom's music. Since most of the band members were my old friends (Frank London, Steven Bernstein, Steve Swell, Ron Horton, Curtis Fowlkes, Michael Blake, Pablo Aslan, etc.) who happen to have become the premier improvisers in New York, but who, like me, came from a traditional music background, the music was performed to a T both during the improvised and the reading sections.

They are doing it again on Friday at the Bowery Poetry Club, you should go see it if you can. I am not doing this gig, but I'll be playing on Mar. 9 at the loft.

Walter said there's Soundpainting videos up on YouTube, so I'll be checking those out for sure!

Last week I ended up subbing for this gospel extravaganza out in Long Island. It was all music by Victor Simonson, with a choir, orchestra & large rhythm section (many keyboards, full array of percussion, etc.) It was a really fun gig, especially since some buds of mine were on it, like Keith Loftis.

Keith gave me a CD of some stuff he's working on. I was listening to it again last night, and I have to say it is very dynamic music. I really look forward to hearing the final product.

I became his fan when I heard him at a Roy Hargrove Big Band concert at the Jazz Gallery a couple of years ago. Then we ended up doing some rehearsals together, so I got to play with him.

What else is going on? Well, we had a giant blow-out free improv fest at the Deer Head (don't know what the owners thought about it, but the audience loved it!) It was the Blue.Seum Project (me and Tim) with special guests Bill Goodwin, Wayne Smith and Derwyn Holder. I was just reviewing the video. Some really good stuff--especially since I have 2 more audio sources to sync into it--a board mix and an Edirol mp3 recording made from the stage.

I'm just learning how to make movies, but I have a lot of footage and a lot of ideas, so I plan to explore the video realm with gusto this year.

Stay tuned. . .

Here's a YouTube vid that has quite a few females, including a former NRA president, speaking about the 2nd Amendment (a new Supreme Court decision is pending in March!) as it applies to practical, daily life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgNUqtkXTQ8&feature=related

I also found a great site called On The Issues, your one-stop-shop to find out where every presidential candidate stands on every issue, and compare them!

http://www.ontheissues.org/Gun_Control.htm

In the Sunday Times Magazine of 1/20/08, there was an article titled "Art in the Age of Franchising" by Virginia Heffernan, detailing the "washout" of a tv show called "Friday Night Lights."

The gist of the article is that even though this show has a large and dedicated following, that is not enough to compensate for its lack of merchandising and online spinoffs, like all the other popular shows have.

But what really got me was this part: ". . . the show is a bona fide washout. Six or so million people watch 'Friday Night Lights,' compared with around 13 million for NBC's hit 'Heroes.' . . . In popularity, it lags far behind [here some stupid sounding shows that I never heard of are named]. . . even now that the Nielsen ratings try to account for viewers who digitally record a show and watch it within a week of its air date, the show's numbers are lousy."

Lousy? SIX MILLION folks watching a show is LOUSY?

Excuse me. When did this happen, that six million people's votes don't count?

To put things in perspective: A Gold Record is half a million unit sales. A Platinum Record is 1 million unit sales. A Multi-Platinum Record is 2 million in sales.

So if 'Friday Night Lights' were an album, it would have gone Multi-Platinum three times already.

To appropriate a comparison from my favorite guru--we live in a world of zebras. The zebras like one thing, the lions (that's us) like another.

I guess that's why this blog, written for lions by a lion, has not been picked up by a major network for a new reality series.

Even with the writer's strike and all!

Well, if in today's zebra-world, six million people are nothing, lions can only bemoan their fate. Or not. Will you walk with me across the ruined savannah, slowly and with dignity, while we search for the meaning that makes life bearable?

The other day I was attending an event which took place in a school gym. I got there early and went into the building to wait.

After having a nice conversation with the maintenance guy, I noticed a parakeet in a cage in an adjacent office.

The parakeet was grooming a smaller bird. I went in to take a closer look.

The parakeet was so intent on grooming the other bird that it didn't notice me right away. Then it hopped over to another perch, and I was stunned to see that the smaller bird was made of rubber!

It reminded me of Tom Hanks in Castaway, where he's marooned on a deserted island for years. He paints a face on a washed-ashore soccer ball with blood. He calls it "Wilson," for indeed, that is its name.

Sometimes you just need someone to talk to. And if you say the wrong thing, well, at least she doesn't get her feathers ruffled.