Arlo Parks Prediction
Arlo Parks is the first post COVID artist to have a show moved from the Entry to the Main Room.
Collapsing Under the Work
I’ve clocked in a lot of good situations in the past couple weeks, minor wins, but still good wins. I have successfully changed my relationship with social media. Everything is off my phone. The posts I do for myself/trivia mafia and theoretically Heiruspecs on Instagram are done on my wife’s phone. I’m not scrolling past your beautiful lives anymore. I use twitter actively when I DJ. When I do other work on twitter I schedule it in advance so I’m not hunting for likes constantly.
In general during the pandemic I’ve been successful in keeping my health up. One of those metrics is my weight. I find being overly sensitive to weight, especially for people who may be close to their goal weight, is super dumb and can only hurt shit. I feel I have a good relationship with the scale and a nutritionist who is really supportive of that healthy relationship. But I know that when I had my first daughter in 2017 I ended gaining a legit 20 lbs across a year and a half. I didn’t go to the gym, my schedule changed, my energy for myself waned. I slept less. I wanted to see something different with my second child. And in that account I succeeded. I peeled off about 12 of those pounds. But I’ve been struggling the last couple weeks. Returning to life, returning to gatherings, entertaining, sitting down at restaurants. These activities bring me into some bad habits. But I don’t even want to call them bad habits. They bring me into some situations in which I enjoy the fuck out of a plate of food. But, I have to relearn limits, listen to where my body is. There was a time where two bottles of champagne and some plates of food was a great situation or so I thought. I eat different now, I drink different now. And, I need to recalibrate in regards to my father. He changed how he ate when he got diagnosed with diabetes, and he changed even more after my mom died. He changed for the better but I felt it was an abandoning of how our family ate. Seeing him split a fish entree and a garden salad with his new wife made me feel like an exchange student with some strange new family. But it’s his business, and I’m sure those fish entree splitting nights are part of why he is in good health now even though he’s getting up there. I can change how I eat and not change who I am, and so can my dad.
I didn’t even come here to write about food. I came here to write about collapsing under the work. I took on more work during the pandemic. Trivia Mafia was and is profoundly broke, so there was little outsourcing. I took on a YouTube trivia night, I took on a short IG video duty on Thursday nights. But there wasn’t much work to go around, we weren’t doing much trivia. You’d be amazed how easy it is to do payroll when you aren’t paying many people and it’s the same folks every two weeks. The Current had more work for me after a while in the pandemic. At first, it was thin times. No interviews, no live shows, no action. But working from home was a learning curve, I took on Wednesdays when Mark Wheat left. I started doing The Warming House on MPR News, I started doing more interviews, I took on the Local Show when Andrea Swensson left. I lost supports and help for Purple Current when other schedules got full. I volunteered to do cool shit cause a radio station should do cool shit and I had some cool ideas. So I get that all together, and where am I. . .I’m collapsing under the work. I work 4 days a week and one night for MPR. I work 1 day a week and one night for Trivia Mafia plus a little IG thing that doesn’t take more than 1 hour total. I am going to back to weekly live trivia starting next Sunday. I have two daughters, they are both in full time daycare but you know it’s still a lot. I am lucky to be in a healthy relationship with my wife, we share a lot of duties, but there are a lot to go around. I want to do this work, but I can’t enjoy any of it, I am doing things I always wanted to do, god I wanted to do the hip-hop show on The Current, now I get to with Sanni. I wanted to be the guy reading underwriting on MPR News, and now I am. I dreamt of getting to do a show on MPR News and I got to do that (and I hope to get to do it again). But, I don’t have the time to do it right, and I don’t have the time to think on it. It’s just keep firing, keep moving. I’m double booked and missing events I heartily endorse that I know I’ll never be able to go to. I work 48 Saturdays out of the year in a normal year. That leaves one date, one vacation, one Heiruspecs show and one wildcard most years. One of my days off is a Monday, so all those holidays on Mondays, I’m already off those days. Why am I telling a blog this? Cause I’m pretty sure nobody reads it. I need to just type it out and say that it’s so frustrating. I took a lot on to try and make it work during the throws of the pandemic. And now I’m navigating how to live that, while also having family to come visit, and concerts to attend, concerts to play, rehearsals to have. There was this steadiness to pandemic life, it was monotonous, but you didn’t miss the good stuff that you had scheduled. There was a regularity to it. I’ve carved a schedule that is just kids and work. They’re fun kids, it’s fun work. But that’s it. I see Martin for coffee on Sunday mornings. I see my neighbors on Friday if things are decent at the homestead. That’s more than some people get. That’s more than Rachel gets some weeks. But that’s it. The rest of it is work. Most of it for MPR, plenty for these kids, some of it to help Trivia Mafia lose less money, But I’m collapsing, I feel my spirit draining cause I don’t have time to process. I think changing the relationship with social media is helping, but only to a point. Ultimately, I have to get realistic about what I can take on and still make quality work. But I’m so scared to ever take something off my plate cause entertainment and entrepreneurship is cutthroat. I have to take it, if I can do it I should do it. I trained in on what I consider two of the hardest shifts in the week for The Current. Morning radio is damn hard. Request radio is damn hard. Those were my first two shifts. I can handle a lot of different shifts on the Current. I’m proud of that, but it means I get called a lot. I’m proud of that, but it’s a struggle. I’m proud of all of it, but I can’t front, it's a struggle.
The Best Reading I’ve Done About Israel/Palestine
The news has probably reached you that there is a hot war goin on yet again between Israel and Palestine. The asymmetrical warfare that is leaving a death toll 20 times in Palestine than in Israel is unforgivable. Sovereign countries have a right to defend themselves, they do not have a right to commit war crimes and many (not all) believe that what Israel is doing is a war crime. It is also shallow to believe that any critique of Israel’s actions is a form of anti-Semitism. What a sad and illogical defense. Here’s some of the articles I’ve read on this topic:
Bernie Sanders - Senator Sanders recently wrote an Op-Ed for the NY Times that I got a lot from.
I’m sorry to say that the other compelling NY Times opinion piece I read this morning is no longer online. I’ll try to find it and re-share it when I can. Thanks for reading.
The Sum of Us - The Most Inspiring Book I’ve Read In Some Time
Last night I finished the book “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee. A couple months ago McGhee made the rounds on some of my favorite podcasts, Ezra Klein and The Political Gabfest. The book captured my interest primarily cause it felt like adding a new angle to an old problem. The book also did an incredible job speaking plainly and persuasively and helping me see some new angles on an old problem.
Old (and accurate) Angles:
Ending White Supremacy is Morally Sound - I believe this premise is accepted by the grand majority of people in the United States. Being willing to take steps to end it or sacrifice to end it is quite a different story.
The Responsibility of Ending White Supremacy Falls Squarely on the Shoulders of White People - I think there are less people who agree with this statement. I agree with it and find it hard to offer an alternative. If your claim is that it is dead white people who created white supremacy and they should’ve taken care of it. . .well they’re dead Elizabeth. So if a group is responsible to end an evil, it ought to be the beneficiaries of that evil.
New (at least to me) Angles:
White Supremacy hurts everyone - Though I have believed this in an internal way for a long time, I have never read an academic book that lays out clear data to establish it. At the policy level white voters will tighten their own belt and starve their communities of services to make sure they don’t have to share those services with black people. This is frankly worse than zero sum. This is a willingness to suffer to maintain white supremacy. The actions outlined in this book show the willingness of white leaders to limit their offerings to maintain a racial hierarchy.
The absence of white supremacy helps everyone - Black people struggling because of laws that are enforced differently on black bodies, loans that are not offered to black people, job opportunities that are never extended - none of this helps me whatsoever. None of this makes my life better as a white man for one minute. It makes my life worse, here’s why. 1) Everything I do achieve in life, no matter how hard I worked for it, is asterisked with this idea that I did it all on an unfair playing field. I can certainly still be proud of my achievements, but I can feel that asterisk in every step I take. (worked with my therapist a lot on this one). 2) People winning is just good. People getting a raise, people getting a job, people buying a house, people releasing a song. I love to see people win, that absolutely 1000% includes black people. What horrible kind of person are you if you don’t want to see EVERYONE win? What is wrong with you? Who taught you that?
When you read this book you’re going to love it. The last 50 or so pages were just clear point after clear point delivered with optimism and honesty about what we are losing everyday by supporting white supremacy. Thank you Heather McGhee for this awesome book.
Rest in Peace - Milford Graves
Some months ago we lost the music legend Milford Graves. Milford Graves was a master percussionist and healer. He taught at Bennington College in Vermont. I went there for one year in 1999 and I had the chance to study with him. It was one semester but he connected me with a musical energy that has fed me throughout the next 20 years. On registration day I was trying to get into his improvisation ensemble. As a freshman that was a dicey proposition, but during orientation I had already endeared myself to some of the older players at the school and they knew that I wasn’t a total newbie on the bass. When I got up to Milford Graves in line I told him I’d like to register for his class but that it generally doesn’t include freshmen. He looked at me and said “can you play"?”. I said yes confidently, which was true, I could play. He registered me right there. I was very excited about the class.
The first session was such a rush. With a really large group of musicians on different instruments with different skill levels Milford Graves both conducted, reacted, suggested and encouraged. There was an openness and a joy in that room that was really different from the musical spaces I had been in. High school and college musicians can be relentlessly competitive, often to the detriment of the music. This was different, it was much more collaborative and inspired.
At the end of the first or second session Milford Graves held my electric bass and said this was the first time he had touched the instrument. He laid it on his lap, contemplated for a moment and coaxed sounds out of it I had never heard. He had a sense of harmonics, of physics that was audible. He understood music to the point where understanding feels like the wrong word. There was no friction observable to me.
Milford told amazing stories, including talking about saving a Cuban band that was struggling with nothing but a cowbell. Apparently the band couldn’t get their groove right and the bandleader asked Milford to stop their gig after Milford’s gig and help the band out. All Milford brought was a cowbell, but he said that was all he needed. He brought the right feel in and Milford said the dance floor filled up, the solos got more rambunctious. I didn’t understand the power a cowbell can over a have a 12-piece band or a dance floor but now I have no doubt.
Many of Milford’s guidances were very loose in the class, a little guidance to just get this or that started. On a night when the improvisation had kind of run dry Milford told the class “play like the cops are coming, play like you know the cops are coming”. He asked a drummer named Paul who was one of the more senior players in the class to set it off. Paul started smashing the cymbals and cooking up the loudest sounds we had probably heard since the class started in September. The class looked please with this development and we were ready to let rip. Abruptly Milford halted the class, “no no no! that’s not how it’s done”. This level of binary authority wasn’t common in this class. Milford simply added “when we were playing in New York, we didn’t want the cops to find us. If we knew the cops were coming we played as quiet as we could, but we had to keep playing”. For the next twenty five minutes we all played at this whisper level that’s unlike anything I’ve ever done. Solos came and went with saxophonists whispering into their reed, guitar players found out the volume knobs on their amps went down.
My story is one of the smallest ones. So many musicians connected with Milford Graves throughout his life and I am so thankful for the energy that he put into the world. I’m glad I got a chance to spend a semester studying with him. Rest in peace to you Milford Graves.
Heavy Joni Period
I’m on vacation from my radio job at The Current this week and I’ve been taking a break from listening to the radio for the most part. That’s pushed me back into album’s and I decided to do some Joni work this morning. Why? Well, on the final episode of Season 1 of the Warming House I played the record The Last Waltz from The Band. I had never really taken in the majesty that is Joni’s background singing (from backstage no less) on Neil Young’s rendition of Helpless.
And then seeing her do Coyote, I think she’s the best guest of the whole show. It’s incredible.
Then of course I went to the wikipedia page for the tune and found this amazing comment about the tune for Ruth Charnock: "either the most flirtatious song about fucking or the most graphic song about flirting ever written." That line comes from Charnock’s book “Joni Mitchell: New Critical Readings”.
I love this song. But it comes from one of the album’s from Joni that I wasn’t as connected with. As a bass player I should love Joni’s work with Jaco and with all the great players in the late 70s. But I have always preferred Joni pre her connection with jazz players. But, I knew it was time to give Hejira a listen after reading this entry on Princevault.com about Prince’s amazing fretless bass work on So Blue.
(from Princevault.com)
According to André Cymone, So Blue was inspired by Joni Mitchell's album Hejira released in November 1976 while Prince was working on his first album, and specifically the song Blue Motel Room which Prince has covered during the Nude Tour in 1990. The cover of Hejira can also be seen briefly during a scene in Under The Cherry Moon. This album has also been mentioned as one of the six records bought during the 2016 edition of the Record Store Day at the Electric Fetus along with a volume of Swan Silvertones' Inspirational Gospel Classics, The Chambers Brothers' The Time Has Come (1967), Stevie Wonder's Talking Book (released in 1972), a 1987 Best Of Missing Persons and Santana's Santana IV (the latter being released on 15 April 2016, the day before the Record Store Day and a few days before Prince's passing).
So I gave Hejira two run throughs this morning and it’s stunning. The arrangements are incredible, I probably didn’t like it as much the first time I tried cause I thought the fretless bass was cheesy. I was just wrong. The guitar work, the floaty energy, the vibe of the record is wonderful. But since the last time I listened I’ve learned to listen more closely to the lyrics from a song. And no surprise here, Joni doesn’t disappoint.
Why not go listen to Joni Mitchell, Prince and other amazing music today?
40 years old today
Today is my 40th birthday. I am doing some very 40 year old man things today. First, writing on a blog as opposed to twitter feels very gen X aspirational. I’m finishing the trim on painting the porch. I am going to buy some plants. On my 30th birthday I was driving in to Seattle with Dessa on her first headlining tour. I had no kids, no wife, no house. Life feels really really different and there’s no doubt that this period: global pandemic, glaring clarity over the disregard for black life by our government that has been with us forever, a louder and more public reckoning with how men abuse women. . .can’t really make this one a sentence. Our world is facing immense change right now. There’s no doubt that I am in a dark period right now, I have optimism about a lot, but the missteps of our country and of more specific communities I’m a part of are in broad relief right now. It is easy to see that we are facing a period of immense change. I believe we will come out better for it. But at this moment, I recognize that belief doesn’t do enough. I can take steps to be a part of this world getting better. I am taking those steps. 40 years old, a lot to learn, a lot to share. A lot of work ahead, and some porch to paint.
Project Listen To People
People tell you exactly who they are with their actions, their morals and their backbone or lack thereof. Listen to those actions and adjust accordingly. Advice from a vacationing DJ on the last day of his 30s.
Do you have home pants?
I went to the doctor today to have the progress of a vein surgery from last year reviewed. I swear to god the nurse’s first question was “do you have home pants?”. I said yes because I do have home pants, thin grey sweatpants that feel wonderful. Turns out she asked if I have home care. I do not. But man, these pants.
Die slow twitter long live Bing & Ruth
I’m trying to kick my Twitter habit using this blog to share thoughts. I get lost in a Twitter haze and twenty minutes disappears. I don’t mind disappearing into my brain or even into your brain for twenty minutes. But to spend twenty minutes in everyone’s surface, it’s not helpful. I’ve probably mentioned before that I love the band Bing & Ruth. I’m not listening to much radio this week so I thought I’d share what I am listening to. It’s this creepy climbing organ exploration. https://open.spotify.com/track/1SzxPH1bfrbkFexEVct5FL?si=9_LIM88rRdurB7jLjv4xMg And for the hipster record I own it on vinyl (actually two copies on accident). But I’m listening on the comp. okay see now I’m not on Twitter but I still shared what I’m feeling. Simple. Take that Jack.
During My Plank Today
I do a one minute and five second long plank every morning. During this time my 4 year old daughter Sadie often hangs out upstairs with me and also shows me yoga poses. This morning about 5 seconds in my plank she started poking a metal cookie cutter shaped like a bird into my sweat-pant covered butt crack, saying “chirp” “chirp” “chirp” while I kept on planking. Also, she think its called “blanking” not “planking”.
Because Our Kids Come From The Pandemic
Children of the depression were changed, they weren’t like their parents, and they weren’t like their kids. I think my daughters (4 and 1) are likely going to have similar relationships to this pandemic. They’ll have masks in their pocket throughout their lives. They’ll keep extra food somewhere weird (we keep it in the shower and we call the process ghostbucketing). I think we will all spend so much time in the coming years helping make sense of what this pandemic means to us. How it changed us. And we won’t be able to divide those changes from the social upheaval and realignment that we faced during the pandemic. Are you standing up the next time you can during the National Anthem? We don’t know exactly who we are as a country. And I don’t know how I relate to this country. I have so much hope for how this country can get better, can deliver better. Singing or not singing the National Anthem is a political act, and I don’t know if I’m ready to just do it cause everyone else is doing it which is where I’ve been at for years. I don’t really know who I’ll be when I get back out in person in a meaningful way. And I have no idea how big the memory of the pandemic will loom in our heads. I read that after the Spanish Flu everybody stopped talking about it, it didn’t show up in novels, it didn’t show up much of anywhere. I can’t see that happen. But maybe we will want to forget. We will force ourselves to pretend it didn’t happen. That’ll be a tragedy in and of itself, we have to learn from this, and we have to change.
A Hypothetical for White Readers
You receive your monthly water bill. It reads as follows:
Your water bill for the month is $56.22. Starting next month we are changing our policies. We are continuing to charge all customers and we will still use the power of collection agencies to seek remittance from all customers. But we are only going to provide water for our white customers. Please fill out this form and identify the race of all members of your household. Thank you in advance.
What do you do? With the bill, with the form, with your actions outside of this bill.
It Doesn’t Feel Good Anymore
I need a break cause the social media doesn’t feel good anymore. Just listened to Bomani Jones and Michael Smith on Bomani’s podcast and I just realize that I need to move away from the dopamine hit that I count on from social media. I don’t need to look at it. I also need to stop feeling that the only way I can be part of positive social activism comes from social media. That is not the only way I can make a change in my life. That’s not the only way I can get better.
I started paying the wildly expensive $12 a month for Squarespace to keep me off of twitter and IG, but it’s not working. I need to make it work. I like texting, I like seeing friends, I can also see more friends than I expected. I actually get too much dopamine, I get too much feedback, why do I want more. I got on twitter to get on things like the radio. Now I’m on the radio, but I have to stay on twitter to stay engaged and make sure people listen to the radio. But I think I can see the limits to that. And in addition to that, I just need to recalibrate, it used to be easy to know that I was on social media as a necessary duty to do my other music, but I don’t get to say that anymore. I’m on twitter for the feedback and the positivity. I’m on twitter to learn from people, to see people say good shit about me. I need to find a way to be inspired by thinkers, artists without the social media channel. I can find that. I also don’t have to make a monster statement every time I’m on my own website. Cool, this all wrapped up, what a treat.
Crush, Kill, Destroy Stress
I have a rambling brain today. At the center of my professional career is being a radio DJ. That’s been relatively true for the last 5 years but especially since COVID hit my job at Trivia Mafia has primarily been to observe the loss of thousands of dollars a month which doesn’t actually pay very well.
And being a DJ takes more time than it used to. The work is more important. For a lot of people, myself included, radio is some of the only social interaction time we get. Connecting with a song, with a fellow listener, with a DJ, that might be the big news headline for my day and that’s true for many of our listeners. Getting the music right matters more now than ever, I feel a mandate to offer better, more thoughtful and more adventurous programming. Additionally, I have heard loud and clear that there is so much more The Current could do to make Minnesota a better place. We could do more expansive programming, we could recruit a more diverse staff and let our offerings and organizations change thanks to the new voices and perspectives that come into our fold. We could rebuild trust we’ve chopped away in fits and starts throughout our history. In my non-management capacity I am working on a number of those goals. A lot of these goals don’t require management. They require the folks doing the work that I’m doing to do a better job. I’m listening to DJs in other cities, in other formats, and to curators outside of the radio world to get inspired about how to present music, what to present and beyond. One DJ I’ve gotten stuck on is Larry Mizell Jr. from KEXP in Seattle. He is on from 1-3pm Pacific time and that’s lined up nice as an end of the afternoon time for me in Central Time. I called this here blog entry “Crush, Kill, Destroy, Stress” because Larry’s programming last week absolutely did that for me and it was thanks in no small part to his use of the Organized Konfusion album “Stress: The Extinction Agenda” (note: not on Spotify).
And frankly, combining the calming effect of music and the NPR announcement on Saturday that Biden was our President-Elect I have felt some stress roll off my body in ways that are very strange to me. I am reading the Resmaa Menakem book about body stress and white-body supremacy and it had me more ready to imagine bodily reactions to big news, but not this ready. I feel better rested, I can notice things from further away when taking the dog for a walk, music sounds better than podcasts, I am reaching for my phone less. I am not diluted in thinking that Joe Biden is the panacea for all of America’s woes. What is clear to me is that for four years Donald Trump moved between being a constant troubling hum to a pounding message that succeeded in capturing my attention at every level. His missteps, his lawsuits, his comments, his tweets, his dominance of the news cycle, it was not good for me, and I don’t believe it was good for the American people. I understand that many people believe his policies were good for the American people. I don’t feel that way, but that’s an argument I’d entertain far quicker than the idea that his demeanor, his absence of decorum, his style was remotely good for the American people. But to bring it down to the micro, he made the last four years harder for me. Did he make them unimaginably harder for other people? Absolutely. Did I wade in the national news with little to show for it for four years. 100%. In fact, one reason I’m not through with Resmaa’s book yet is that every night I felt it was more important to read the top five stories from the Strib and NYT than to knock out 10 more pages of the book. I don’t think that was true, but as I settled down to bed I wanted to see the last headline more than I wanted to learn something or enjoy something.
Now, I’m thumbing through books, I’m thinking of new recipes, I have a desire to play my bass, I want to reset my turntable, I think I should make some pies for friends, I’m reading Resmaa’s book, I’m listening to Larry Mizell Jr.’s show. I am less stressed, but what I do with that absence of stress cannot be purely selfish. As a white man living in a society that is designed to support and protect white men every single piece of media yells out “be selfish!!!”. I am never considered as part of a voting bloc, if I am interested in mainstream political ideas I am not identified as engaging in identity politics, they just call them politics for me. If I choose to stay selfish I can still expect many years of me and my children not being targeted by police for petty reasons. I can expect a quite cushy life, with a spectacular job and a currently failing business that I think will recover. But, that requires the tunnel vision and short-term thinking that has plagued the last four years of my life. I’m going to die within fifty years of today and I don’t want to think: you did the bare minimum to make your world better. You did the bare minimum to make the Twin Cities more equitable in the arts in general and the music industry in particular to unapologetically black voices. You did the bare minimum to make sure that the organizations you worked for or started served all the people they claimed to serve. You did the bare minimum to make sure that the political leaders of your city, state and country worked to dismantle white supremacy, counteract climate change and provide equitable economic opportunities for all people in our country. I’m going to die within fifty years of today and I do want to think: you made pies, you read and wrote amazing articles, the organizations you worked for or started became more equitable during your tenure, you worked hard to bend the arc of the universe towards justice cause you stopped believing your leaders are oriented towards bending it. I want the joy that comes from doing the most I can with the absence of stress I have been afforded.
I fall short all the time. I disappoint myself and I let down the people I want to serve. The pain stings and it slows me down in the right way and speeds me up in the right way. I try to digest it with a diet of self-love, pride in the things I’ve done right. If I just think that I’ve been doing a great job my whole life and have been flawless in making the world a better place I would be completely out of touch with how to make the second half of my life more useful and better. At this moment I can feel this roadblock of constant headline vigilance being lifted as the “Trump is President” era ends (I fear the era of “Trumpism” is far from over). I’m writing this to remind myself that headline vigilance needs to be replaced with mission vigilance. If I want the Twin Cities music community to be a more equitable, profitable and hospitable place for black artists and fans, and for women artists and fans, and for transgender artists and fans, I can’t take this respite from stress and just bring the relief back into my headphones, into my kitchen, into my family. If I want Minnesota to stop having reprehensible achievement gaps I can’t take this respite from stress as an opportunity to alphabetize my records. If I am going to destroy stress it is going to take much more than a clear mind.
Working Harder to Get Fatter
Sat my nutritionist and plain as day for the first time in my life I said this simply in one sentence: I work really hard and aim to be successful so that people seem as successful first and as fat second.
It’s a fact I’ve known for a long time, it’s a thing I’ve said in paragraph form, but never just this plain. And it leads me to also some shitty eating behavior. I work late, I feel entitled to a snack, cause I’ve been working my ass off. But then of course, you’re going to eat those calories, crash, wake up and work hard. That’s all I’ve got, but what a thing to notice and take. I get a lot of working with Amber and finding the right way through these problems. I love working hard, and I love my body. But it’s toxic to push my mind, my career and at times my body hard into extra hours of work just to obscure a thing I should be comfortable with in the first place, which is my body. A lot to think about. I need a better relationship with sleep, a better relationship with late nights, a better relationship with my career identity and with my body.
But getting through that thought in a simple way felt like a good step.
Feeling Horny
Now you’re listening. Listening to Purple Current today and I am just realizing that I will want to double down on live music when it becomes safe to get together with players and collaborate again. To me in a live setting there is nothing more exciting than playing with a horn section. I haven’t played with a real live horn section in any consistent way since 2014. And that was like two or three gigs with a tenor and a trombone. Horns are beautiful, amazing instruments and music never feels liver to me than with live drums and live horns. I don’t know how the hell I’ll afford it, but I have to find myself next to a full horn section playing some music in the coming years. There’s a force, a power, it’s so real. What are my favorite horn sections you ask? Rick James in the early 80s.
are you kidding me? this is the best it gets.
It’s so tight, it’s so explosive. It is perfect. How bout in a jazz setting? what is your favorite writing in that setting?
What about horns on a rock song? What is best in that world? Look no further than Allen Toussaint doing the chart’s for the Band’s Last Waltz concert.
In This Case, We Maraude For Ears
Kimani Rogers is a rapper from a group called Masterminds that came out of NYC in the late 90s. He ran a Caroline distributed label during that time called Third Earth. By the early 2000s my hip-hop group, Heiruspecs, had built up the smallest of national buzzes. The whole time Heiruspecs was working I was still working with other projects in Minnesota. I’m eternally grateful for that because it kept me connected with other genres of music and helped me draw inspiration for what I was doing with Heiruspecs. Outside of Heiruspecs my big focus was a rock band fronted by Bill Caperton called Ela. Bill was and continues to be one of the most gifted writers I’ve ever worked with. With Ela we were trying to take influences like Spoon, Death Cab, Wire, Pedro The Lion and make our own thing in that space. I’m writing today not about Ela’s music, but about the way our album got released and the impact it’s having on the way I think of my musical identity nowadays.
Kimani’s label, Third Earth, wanted to release this album from Ela. Up to this point they had strictly been releasing hip-hop music (Roosevelt Franklin, Oddjobs, Jean Grae, Dujeous). I was excited that any label with distribution wanted to release the music and I was excited to be the Slayer of Third Earth (Slayer was the one non hip-hop act signed to Def Jam during their legendary 80s run). But, being the music business focused person I was Kimani wanted to take me out for a piece of pizza while I was on tour in New York to talk about what he thought Third Earth could do for Ela and vice versa. The conversation stuck with me for a couple simple reasons: Kimani is one of the most soft-spoken label head I ever met. He had really good simple ideas, he got them out clearly and calmly and he didn’t promise the band the world. He These qualities are pretty different than my general experiences. But what stuck with me was his really simple idea about why he thought Ela would work on the label.
Kimani said we had the consumer all wrong. Music fans had bigger ears than any label was giving them credit for. They are looking for good music, genres be damned. And more accurately, genres shouldn’t be damned, but they shouldn’t be hallowed as immovable borders to never jump over. A lot of what Kimani was talking about in that meeting seems to be at the center of what GlassNote had cooked up when they signed Childish Gambino. Kimani asked me to list the last five records I had bought, I can’t remember all of them but it was a big blend of new, old, rap, jazz, rock. Kimani rattled off the last couple he picked up and it was the same situation. We were sophisticated music buyers and no label respected that, every label was pitching their stuff and imagining silos when the audience wasn’t bothered by the blend. He knew a label had to build an identifiable brand, but he didn’t think that brand had to be focused on one genre. I found the idea compelling then and in the last five years I’ve been coming back to it maybe weekly.
I work at a radio station, The Current, and the sonic center of our world definitely builds around rock and folk artists. Sonically I think of groups like Arcade Fire, Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine, Brandi Carlile and a couple others really sitting at the core of what we do. In my mind, these are some of the most elite writers and performers working today. I believe that sometimes we pair that music with music that locks up sonically with these artists but not in regard to their excellence. If you want to listen to the best artists making the best shit right now that commitment probably doesn’t shake when the genres switch. I think that’s why Kendrick Lamar has become a more central artist to the Current than Macklemore, he’s better. You have to get songs that sound good next to one another, and that requires making some choices about what blends but what fits. But ultimately I believe our target listeners have spent years trying to find the best music on Earth and they have decided to offload some percentage of that searching work to us. So there is a duty to put together a playlist that continues to bring them the best music on Earth. The new stuff and the old stuff. And I think the industry thinks that listeners that like elite critically acclaimed rock music want bullshit filler from their other genres. I see our programming fighting against that, but every time I do I’m thinking about Kimani. Kimani wanted to put out the best music on Earth, genres be damned. Now as I work in my radio gig I keep on thinking about the mandate to share the best music on Earth. I have a duty to remain true to our sonic center, and if I do my job right I put the songs together and present them in such a way that people stick around. Realizing that duty makes my job harder, but tremendously more satisfying. But I find coming back to Kimani’s courage and imagination at that moment to see a curatorial role that I feel was way ahead of its time.
Can You Pretend It’s Normal? Why?
I’m having a hell of a time pretending that the normal course of business and of life will continue somewhat unabated before the election and will then continue in some normal fashion after the election. We are in a pandemic, a life threatening pandemic, but there are restaurants that owe my trivia company money, there are programming ideas that need to get done for Purple Current and the Current. All I want to do right now is raise my kids, play music on the radio and talk to my friends in a yard. Everything else is terrible. And it’s fake terrible, these functions of life have to keep happening. They have to happen differently, but creators have to create, collectors have to collect. It’s painful to just grind into this Monday and try to do my normal life functions with so few of the life functions we used to have. How much energy could I derive from a regular old Heiruspecs rehearsal, or a show? How much enthusiasm could i find in a trip to the gym, that recentering feeling you get. You have to get it the way you can, you can get something off of lifting weights at home, off of doing an exercise video. There are substitutions, but especially once the weather gets bad we are going to have to seek analogues for so many things. I simply am not ready to face that, and aim to be legit productive and ambitious. And I feel as though I have to be. Being productive and ambitious is at the center of my identity, and finding that spark to stay that way in the face of everything about our world is eluding me super hard today. Dear void I scream into, have a wonderful day!
What Albums Taught You How To Make Music
John Birge, one of the DJs on Classical MPR drives a small fancy old car. I would notice his car even if we were both doing 70 on 94. So when I saw him in my neighborhood I was curious why. I asked him at work, turns out he lives nearby but was making his way to Jefferson and Snelling to see a big collection of maple trees that all turn scarlet at the same time. This struck as the most classical DJ thing in the world to do, but also something pretty incredible to see. So this morning, when I went out on my walk I made sure to get to Jefferson and Snelling. Friends, it was majestic. On my way up Jefferson I was finishing an episode of the NY Times podcast “The Argument”. This wasn’t exactly easy listening, I have a hate hate relationship with David Brooks though I generally do still seek out his writing and thinking. And he was pretty legit on this episode in my opinion. But I promised myself that on the way back I would listen to one of the greatest jazz records of all time “Somethin’ Else” by Cannonball Adderley.
In particular I wanted to hear their version of Autumn Leaves. It opens the record and it establishes the magic of this record. Miles Davis is wrapped up in constantly setting the vanguard for music. But for some reason he commits to taking second billing to the alto player from his own band. So what we are basically hearing is Miles Davis’ full ensemble working without the pressure of being Miles Davis’s Full Ensemble. The collection is relaxed, bluesy and friendly. It is vastly less ambitious than Kind of Blue and I am not mad at that in the least. As I let the sounds of Autumn Leaves surround me while enjoying the actual Autumn Leaves of Jefferson Ave I thought about to how many spins this record got when I was in high school. Although this album is not my favorite jazz record (Hank Mobley’s Soul Station is) I learned a lot about how I wanted to play jazz on this record; switching feels, bluesy solos, solid 1/4 note walking, brushes to cymbals, trading between horn players. Your favorite records aren’t necessarily the ones you learn the most from. I love Pearl Jam, but I’ve never really played rock the way they do. I think Lil’ Wayne has produced some of the best hip-hop in the history of the genre, but I haven’t taken a bunch of tricks from his records.
So I think I’ve learned the most in jazz from Somethin’ Else. Here’s what I’ve got for rock and hip-hop.
No, it’s not his best record. It might not even be his second best record (that’s debatable), but It Was Written gave me so many tricks for hip-hop arrangements and more. The actual track Street Dreams has almost every trick on it that Heiruspecs has used for arranging our own music - two measure pause before a huge snare on beat 4, drop out or lower the volume the sampled snares on selected 2s and 4s to emphasize the lyrics, add extra reverbed out snare hits. Plus, roll out all these tricks out slowly so there is an established sense of what the groove is before you start changing things. I give credit to ANT from Atmosphere for pointing this out to me. Heiruspecs was doing too much too soon to our beats on a lot of our songs, that change helped us a lot in my opinion.
Beyond the tricks, this album was actually very digestible as a live musician thinking about working in a live music format. Most of the songs can be communicated in a live band format, as opposed to early Wu-Tang records, which I think are often better than It Was Written, but didn’t have the same inspiration potential as a musician. It would also be disingenuous to not mention the Roots in this conversation: I think “It Was Written” gave me more lessons in how to support great rappers but the foundation on how to connect a band with a great rapper goes back for me to Organix, Do You Want More??!? and Illadelph Halflife.
I haven’t spent a lot of my career playing bass in honest to goodness rock bands. I’ve never felt completely right in a “rockin’ band” ala Pete Seeger et cetera. I’ve been drawn to blues and I’ve been drawn to rock music done weird. And to me Kill the Moonlight by Spoon is the ultimate rock music done weird record. The pauses, the patience, the willingness to delay gratification. I worshipped it and I think that in my work with Ela’s Stapled to Air (the rock project I am by far the most proud of in my career) we were aiming at the Spoon thing so hard. I remember the way that Peter Leggett (drummer) and I worked on the music. . .it was to find the skeleton, to add the special sauce while removing the burger. And in the world of Spoon at this time, the bassline always had to have a point, had to make an impact. I’ve been so comfortable in my career playing the root notes and making it work, but there’s something special going on with almost every moment of bass on this record. That’s how I aspire to approach rock bass playing.