Music Diary

Saying that the summer of 1991 was the dawn of a new era in rock music might sound like hyperbole, but when you look at how Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam burst out of Seattle to topple the corporate hair-metal that continued to dominate after the close of the 80’s … it all seems clear. Nirvana was the clear ‘poster child’ for the grunge and alt-rock movement, with Nevermind being the touchstone moment when the music went from local hit to nationwide phenomenon in a matter of weeks. But just before Nevermind, another Seattle group – Pearl…

A few months ago a 13-year old girl named Rebecca Black became a YouTube sensation with ‘Friday’, a much-maligned but very catchy pop song that became a viral hit that garnered a massive amount of views but had more ‘dislikes’ than ‘likes’. People hated the irritating vocals, obnoxious use of Auto-Tune to cover very limited vocal skills, and shockingly awful lyrics … yet they couldn’t keep themselves from watching it over and over again! Well, it is almost four months later and after much drama involving rights struggles, report of parents looking to milk their 13-year old cash cow, and…

By 1977 Wayne Shorter was already a jazz legend. He started with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and quickly became music director, had some commercially and critically successful Blue Note followed by several years with Miles Davis in one of the greatest bands in recorded music history (jazz or otherwise), then went on to form Weather Report with Joe Zawinal – which along with Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra produced some of the most creative post-Bitches Brew modern jazz/rock fusion music and dominated the 70’s jazz scene. Steely Dan had already released five popular and critically successful albums before recording…

OK … one thing I have to say – while the Wynton Marsalis Grammy appearance is amazing and something we couldn’t imagine happening today, having Marsalis up there in a tuxedo playing Baroque music and mainstream jazz is like the Academy Awards giving the trophy to Ghandi – while not the personal viewing choice of many, it will make the academy feel good about themselves without being too challenged. But the year before the Grammy producers arranged to get one of the true living legends in American music – Miles Davis – to perform on the show while also presenting…

Billie Holiday has always been a fascinating and captivating story for many reasons – she was a jazz singer of immense talent, an African-American women who rose to super-stardom … but then crashed and burned due to her own personal tragedy and ended up destitute and exploited to feed her addiction. She was more than ‘just’ a singer – her methods of interpreting melody and harmony were immensely influential in every field of music, both with vocalists and instrumentalists. There is not a singer today who doesn’t bear some influence from the woman Lester Young nicknamed Lady Day. There have…

This is simply amazing stuff – I have been listening all afternoon in the background at work, and the video and sound quality are excellent! This is a full-length concert from 1958, appparently the earliest known such event recorded on film! A couple of years earlier Duke had experienced what he called his ‘second birth’ at Newport, a concert famously recorded and available on CD. Here is the full blog post: The film I’ve put on my YouTube channel features the earliest known filmed full-length concert by one of the 20th Century’s greatest songwriters and bandleaders. Filmed at Amsterdam’s famed…

Have you heard the analogy ‘throw it all against the wall and see what sticks’ as used to see what works from a bunch of ideas without using critical thinking? It is based on the cooking test for pasta – you throw a piece against the wall and if it sticks it is done. You see it all the time in entertainment – movies that try to appeal simultaneously to all demographics by dumping in elements they assume will appeal to those groups without considering the greater context. That approach is fairly typical in music videos, where the goal is…