3:33⅓ Vince Guaraldi - Skating
It’s snowglobe time here in Minnesota and I’m broadcasting on Jazz88. Yes, I’m playing a little Vince Guaraldi to get us in the spirit of the season.
I shoveled this morning. Why? I have no idea. It’s supposed to snow maybe 7 inches today, and I probably shoveled at maybe two inches. BETTER JUST GET A START, TAKE IT DOWN A NOTCH, IT’S LESS SNOW LATER. These are all dumb ideas. Shoulda just waited.
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3:33⅓ Ramsey Lewis - Funky Serenity
I just successfully replaced a cartridge on a turntable for the first time in my life. And I did it under a time limit and while using my thumbnail as a screwdriver. I feel amazing. First off, I’m really glad I had an extra stylus in my car. I got paid some nice money to DJ a wedding this summer and I didn’t want to mess anything up so I bought some extras and some nice headphones. I’m really glad I did that, I listen to the music on Jazz88 on great headphones everyday and it really makes a difference. ATHM30x is the exact style that I chose to go with. But I had the stylus hanging in a bag in my car and I was able to replace the totally shot stylus on turntable number two over here at Jazz88. What a treat.
I am the opposite of handy but I am working to fight that. I can figure out a lot of stuff in life, I should be able to fix simple tools and implements that I rely on for my livelihood and my family’s comfort. So, a big moment for me to get that thing fixed and sounded good in time to play some music from Ramsey Lewis and I just adore how Ramsey does it on the electric keyboard (in this case I believe a Wurlitzer, not a Rhodes, but I could be wrong). Yum. Thank you Ramsey, and may you rest in peace.
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Punk is everywhere
The spirit of punk is always part of the greatest artists whether they are punk or not. And I don’t think the spirit of punk starts with music called punk. I hear it in the greats from all generations. It’s that willingness to cut a corner and break a rule to get to the important work of music conveying emotion. Any rule that stands in the way of that impulse is worthy of being discarded when it stands in the way of connecting emotionally.
The Triumph Blues
I’m excellent and I’m having an excellent night. I play with some of the greatest musicians I know. My brother Steve is not a joke on blues guitar. He’s got incredible chops and writes amazing pieces. Josh Peterson is a world class texturalist and he also has outlandish chops. We came up playing amazing shit. We were awesome in high school. Peter Leggett is the most unimpeachable. He is that one on drums. The best in the city know he’s with them period. Maybe he works another job but he can have any gigs he wants in my opinion. I got a nice shout from my guy Mike today! He was cheering me on and it put a smile on my face. I spoke with Benzilla, with Medium Zach, with Matt Palin, Felix (more on him later) and just good energy. My dad was there, Brenda was there, a drummer named Andrew Gillespie was there. Even the guy drinking wine next to me brought the good vibe.
I’m part of amazing crews and Ive been with excellence since early. Felix was at the bar tonight. He can write. He can freestyle and most importantly he is an mc who has the fundamentals. He finds the right ride on any kind of beat.
These skills are on top of doing other things for jobs. Doing good work and on the grind for music and more.
I heard Bill Deville on the way home. He’s my guy. He’s got the skills, the conversation. The knowledge and the knowledge to know when knowledge isn’t helping.
I come home and my wife tells me how she talked the whole family into to coming out to a bar at 5:40pm. No easy feat with a five year old who has homebody tendencies. But my wife navigated that cause she crafted a strategy. She’s world class connected with our children. She’s so creative and ambitious.
I’m dancing to my favorite Nipsey Hussle song of all time. It’s called More or Less and I know that there are songs that are more of anthems to me. But as far as the song goes, More or Less is that unicorn. It is Jeep ready, it is as perfect on a lonely night as Nina Simone or Jeff Buckley or Satie. Right. It’s the triumph blues. It hits you so right when every day is a mix of the joy and the pain. When you are in touch with it nothing scratches the itch like Nipsey. I can’t explain the Nipsey thing. I also can never understand my age mates who don’t keep going back to find new hip hop. There’s classics made every day. every day.
But I’m happy. The holidays were a treat. A demanding treat. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. This whole day I was telling Rachel how I feel like a MInnesota success story. I’m proud of Trivia Mafia, I’m proud of Heiruspecs, I’m proud of what I’ve done on the radio. It works. It works for me. When I’m at my most resourced self (that’s language with my therapist) I know what I’ve done is special. I’ve been a part of great crews and I’ve been a part of that greatness. I don’t do mediocre. I do excellence and I love doing it. I’m lucky and I’m excellent.
Shout out to Anomaly
First off can’t believe I’ve lived in a world where I have a friend named Anatomy and a friend named Anomaly. Anomaly is the name of Jayson Heinrichs and he died recently. Impressive musician, sweetheart, short lived drummer in Heiruspecs. Always respected him. Always. I’m thinking about him tonight cause I knew him when I was YOUNG with a capital Y. Like senior year in high school young. He told me randomly once that he was heading back to Northern Minnesota for Thanksgiving and he added that everyone from his town would be at the bars on Wednesdays. He said “a bunch of people drink on the night before Thanksgiving”. I had no idea. It was as novel an idea as people loving to hunt swans on the day before Halloween or any other completely made upr idea because. But here we are. Hanging with the swans, hanging with you. I have love for Jayson Heinrichs. Rest In Peace.
A Video of Big Trouble playing Low’s “California”
Big Trouble wanted to do something to recognize the contributions of Mimi Parker to our musical world and we decided to work up a cover of one of our favorite Low songs, California. If you are not aware of Mimi Parker, a great place to start is Andrea Swensson’s Pitchfork article outlining six amazing tracks from Parker’s catalog.
As we were working on the arrangement I realized that it is one of the few songs that Big Trouble has ever covered that we all kind of equally knew, we were all well aware of the sound, the arrangement, the feel. This was a big record to so many people all around the world, but I must say it came for the perfect time for me and it is still my favorite album by Low. I hope you enjoy our cover. And I hope you enjoy seeing my basement. We’ll be playing it live on Saturday November 26 over at White Squirrel. Our set is from 6-7:45. Maybe you can make it out!
Big Trouble performs the song “California” by Low.
3:33⅓ to Boldly Go-Go Where No Jazz DJ has ever Gone-Gone Before
When I tell you that I need some go-go today you simply need to trust me. I think you do too. The world is too much to not let Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers serenade you on Jazz88. Join me!
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Everyone is a Story Teller
Here’s a simple truth about the world right now. . .no matter what you do for a passion or a job you are allowed to, on any podcast you are legally permitted to appear on, say “but really, I’m a storyteller”. Here’s a couple hypotheticals:
I design fancy mayonnaises
PODCAST ANSWER: “For me sure, I have to know my flavors, egg ratios, focus on emulsification. But at the end of the day, the reason I put that apron on, it’s cause I tell stories. (long stupid pause, host of the podcast goes “ahhh” about three inches off the mic) I’m a storyteller, cause without the story, what is it? It’s just a condiment. But when you tell the story, you can see the counter where we first discovered the chili powder that gives it the kick, you see the farm where our eggs come from. We tell stories with mayonnaise.”
I assemble high-end computer chips
PODCAST ANSWER: “Right, this microphone, your keyboard, the phone your daughter always has in front of your face. These are storytelling machines. You don’t buy it for the camera right? You buy it for the story the camera tells. And we tell that story with a computer chip. I want to pack every microfiber of that absurdly small surface with a place to tell stories. In a way, I tell those stories, I tell the story that you can tell a story from your pocket, that first story, copyright yours fucking truly, is my story about how this little microchip tells a story.
I play competitive table tennis
PODCAST ANSWER: “You can see the game surface laid out in front of you. You learn the rules pretty quickly. But what has kept me working the pong til late into the next day for the last two thirds of my life. . .that. . .it’s not the Franklin ball spinning in the air. . .it’s the story I’m telling. When I serve I’m saying “once upon a time, 19 to 13, one point away from game point, I’m gonna serve this ball right pass your stupid little paddle, happily ever after you poor sap.”
3:33⅓ with Betty Carter
Maybe you wish you knew more about Betty Carter, too. I’ve been in that boat but I’ve been learning a lot. She is a jazz singer’s jazz singer, constantly namechecked as the ultimate jazz vocalist. She started her own record label. She started a educational series called Jazz Ahead that was instrumental in jumpstarting the careers of talents like Dave Holland, Kenny Washington, Benny Green and others.
In my book if you are revered by your peers and your critics, you start your own label to control your career and you pay it forward onto the next generation, you’re the greatest. Plus, the instrument, the song choices, the courage, the vocal moves. She’s the whole package. Thank you Betty Carter.
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Love a Good Stunt - Give to the Max Roach Day
In radio, they call it a stunt. Go a little outside of what you usually do for some sort of impact, maybe comedic, maybe just musical. My favorite stunts are ones that are musically satisfying to listen to, but also make you chuckle as an idea. That’s why today for Give to the Max Day (a juggernaut fundraising day for MN non-profits and arts organizations) we are doing Give to the Max Roach Day. 3-7pm, almost exclusively Max Roach drum performances. What a treat.
3:33⅓ with The Gifted Ones
I’ve got an awesome co-worker here at Jazz88 named Andrew Diemand. I met him years ago when he hosted for Trivia Mafia but getting to know him at Jazz88 has been awesome. He brings great energy to his work and from time to time he brings me some vinyl to spin on the radio. In this case he gave me one of my favorite varieties of records: true masters having a good time and not trying too hard. It’s Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown and Mickey Roker. Are you kidding me? Legendary stuff. Thanks Andrew.
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3:33⅓ with The Pharaohs
I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’m playing all these beautiful records on Jazz88. I DJ there every weekday from 3-7pm, in fact I get started early on Fridays, doing an all new music show at Noon and starting my regular shift early at 2:30. Tune the F in. I loved the Bay Area label Ubiquity so much in the 90s that I pretty much bought everything they released. Including the Pharaohs release “In the Basement”. So when I saw the debut album from The Pharaohs, The Awakening, on sale at Barely Brothers I had to grab it. I love a large group putting down intense funk grooves with a powerful horn section and supporting percussion performance. It’s my speed, I hope you dig it too.
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How Do You Make Something Else Great While Raising Children?
We had a session with the couples therapist we’ve been seeing for about a year and as per usual it was a wonderful combination of enlightening, inspiring and mildly dread inducing. One of the reasons it is inspiring is I just almost always feel better after spending an hour with my wife. In this case, we get to drive somewhere together, celebrate the “90s is still alive and well” vibe of Rice Ave near scenic Lake Owasso. Our therapist shared that it’s generally thought that couples get back to having a significant amount of just the two of them time when the YOUNGEST CHILD IS TWELVE YEARS OLD aka a super long ass time from now. Remember 2012? The distance from now to then is the same as the distance from now to our youngest being TWELVE. The thing is, everything goes in stages, things change slowly, nothing changes overnight. This year has been about accepting not having as much control over my own life as I wish I did. I’ve spent some of this year with no kitchen at home, no running water at work. And having kids this age, I don’t feel like I have much control over my days, my weekends. I’ve heard many people say that work becomes some sort of sanctuary when you have kids, cause suddenly it’s less stressful than whatever you’ve been facing at home. Of course whatever sanctuary you enjoy while you’re at work, your partner might not enjoy the same sanctuary. And significantly for me, with my work starting later in the day, many of the hours of my workday are full on parenting hours for Rachel. What a treat.
I’ve made and been a part of great things in my life. I think Heiruspecs is a great band, has put on great shows, has made great songs. I think Trivia Mafia is a great company, has thrown great events, has provided great content. I also think I’ve made great radio, though that is notably more ephemeral. There’s a couple great pieces I could point to, things I could press play on, but there isn’t the same receipts you get from being in a great band or running a great trivia company. But all these efforts have required extra hours, long periods of time, longer than a full day. I think I’m beyond pulling all nighters, it seems very possible that I will never stay up past 3am ever in my life again AND GUESS WHAT MCPHERSON CLUBBERS, it’s gonna be partying with friends, drinking and smoking. I’m not staying up to get a mix right, I’m not staying up to finish the sixth round for a trivia night. My heroes did those things, I’ve done those things, but I don’t see those in my future considering the drain of what one feels like the day after pulling an all-nighter.
Okay, so at some point, it’s a matter of hours, it’s a matter of stamina, it’s a matter of energy. And your energy is needed a lot more places once you have kids. If I wake up, make the breakfast, set up the slow cooker for dinner, drive the girls to schools and daycare, come home, walk the dogs, exercise, go to work, schedule music, create new clocks, respond to promoters, schedule tweets, interview artists, play music on the radio, say charming things, give away tickets, drive home, eat dinner, put my oldest to bed, walk the dogs. . .I’m not chipping away at my masterpiece in the late evening hours. I’m writing this blog, I’m ready to work hard if other people are coming over, band practice et cetera. But I don’t want to go down to that basement. I’m sitting on my comfy ass couch right now listening to Larry Mizell Jr.’s KEXP show from today. I’m writing for a bit, and then Rachel and I are going to discuss the book “Bowling Alone” in bed before falling asleep. That’s a full ass day, hold the masterpiece. Here’s how I actually feel: once you have kids the shit you get to do that isn’t raise kids has to pay you or be incredibly rejuvenating. Now that’s not how I want it to be! I want to do some volunteer work, I want to fix up the garage, I want to learn how to really work a drum machine. . .but, not tonight, and not tomorrow night and not next week. And man, I’ve been a huge “if not now when??” kind of dude. Do you know about that Dylan Hicks “Emma’s Moving to Chicago”.
No, you don’t know this Dylan Hicks song. I don’t even know if Dylan Hicks remembers this song except every time I see him I tell him how much I love it. It captures this free spirit of a young woman moving from Minneapolis to Chicago. It captures the fear that Minneapolitans have about the bigger cities. We’re jealous and suspicious of everyone who is moving to the big cities and we secretly/publicly hope they fail. When they succeed we act like we knew it all along, when they fail we act like we knew it all along. But in my head the most important thing about this song is that it’s about the future tense. Emma will be moving to Chicago. Part of me thinks of this song as being suspended in time, capturing the moment when Emma thinks it’s a done deal that she’s going to Chicago, but who knows what actually happens on Saturday?
So for years when I talk to students about how to make a music career I talk about the fact there are always musicians in Minnesota who have spent twenty five years of their life “moving to Chicago next month”. It’s that bullshit. Put out your record, test the market here, make your pitch here. Stop putting it off. Stop mixing your record. Start building your legacy. But, now that I feel I’ve approached this moment in my life where I have ambition but no hours. . .I am in the situation where I am forever one week away from setting up the turntables and seeing if I can still do the merry-go-round, seeing if I can pull some music into a sampler and start cutting it up and making some beats. I can’t wait to do that next week. I even told a couple musicians I’d start thinking about some new music when I’m holding Heiruspecs VINYL in my WARM ASS HANDS and not one day sooner.
Making great things takes time. And I don’t mean pure inspiration time. I mean requesting the download cards, registering the songs with BMI, going to soundcheck, putting up the posters. I love all that shit/can’t imagine finding time to do it. But there’s no great without that work. At this moment I think it will take me being in a different phase of parenting life to do something that is primarily self-initiated greatness. I say that cause Felix wants to see Heiruspecs be more productive in the coming years (might I add, that is a low bar, being more productive in the next couple years than Heiruspecs has been in the past couple years is the equivalent of being “more chipper than a sloth!”. Your life is seasons, this season I don’t think I can make anything great. But you stay in the mix, you practice your bass when you can, you write with others, you keep this up to talk about what you’re going through. You do that. And you stay in the line to find some greatness when you can. Remember, you are a human who has sought out greatness and delivered, but under different circumstances, at a different time. It’s not that season. You can’t will it to be that season again, you just have to do what you can this season while you do one of the most important, rewarding and inspiring things in your life: raising these children. It’s amazing, but it ain’t quite the same amazing return in the moment of hearing beautiful music you helped write come out of the speakers. I know I’m supposed to tell you it’s better, because in the grand scheme it is better, or at least more important, but I can’t tell you that 100%. I can tell you if I could only choose one of those two feelings I’d pick the raising kids feeling. But if you say I can have both, which one do I like more. . .and the speakers the music is coming out of. . .they’re big?. . .and everyone else in the room thinks the song sounds great. . .Yup?. . .okay, I think that’s better. Sorry, I do. That doesn’t make me a bad dad, that makes me an honest dad.
3:33⅓ with Deodato
I feel compelled to get funky. And if you haven’t heard the Camp Lo song that samples this, well you should.
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3:33⅓ with Vince Guaraldi
It was a slippery morning in the Twin Cities. The first significant snow of the season wasn’t all that significant, but it was the perfect amount to make driving a real nightmare. But when that first snow covers the sidewalks of St. Paul I turn to a little Vince Guaraldi to get the season started. Weeks before egg nog, this is the musical start to the holiday season.
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Raise the Age For Social Media to 16
Now I’ve been drinking whiskey and the Timberwolves won, and neither of these things happen too often.
I just left the Boldy James record that Felix said I should listen to to check out the most recent episode of Pivot. Their guest, Jonathan Haidt, lays out the clear results of his research that going through puberty on social media is absolute hell. And whatever absolute hell it is for all of us, it’s worse for girls. Statistically worse. Empirically worse. I remember going through adolescence. Lots of joy. Lots of pain. Very few screens. Lots of TV. Lots of phones. Lots of fear. And sadly I thought it was all on some continuum. It was what my dad went through, what my mom went through, what my brother went through, what Felix went through, Rachel, Silas, Melissa, Slim, everyone. Different, but on a continuum. Now to know that people born after 1996 are in a different universe. How do I protect my daughters from it? How did these assholes create a format more addictive than me and my musician friends ever did? I remember being on tour in San Francisco with Dessa probably in 2011. Through my now wife Rachel we had dinner with two really $$$ people who worked at maybe YouTube and Google at the time. Now the jobs have changed, maybe it’s Facebook and Dropbox. But it’s all platforms. But they had the wild money. You still split the bill, but you know it’s just nothing to them. And the thing is, they were right. Putting an ad before the door where everyone goes is immensely more remunerative than having something behind the door that some people want to see.
Are my daughters slowly careening towards a world that will rob them of the human interaction I thrived on. Will they get to spend an afternoon in bed with a girl not knowing if she’s a friend or a girlfriend. Will they get to read something from a friend they think somebody else will never see? Is adolescence ruined? I think of social media as innocuous to me. I’m skipping it right now. I just went to check if Cecil Otter has ever tweeted since all the shit with DOOMTREE hit the fan in 2020 (no, he hasn’t). I read what Christin612 wrote most recently, I read it, I’m back. I read and I come back here and I think. Since pushing twitter a bit away I find my brain is working in different ways, I’m not looking for my brain to fits itself into tweets the way it was just a couple weeks ago. But, my daughters will be facing something different, something insipid, something worse. And isn’t that the biggest failure, to send your children into a world worse than the one you grew up in. The American dream of doing better than your parents was done once my dad landed the job as the President of Macalester. That’s an elite, spectacular job that paid handsomely in the 90s and pays even better now. If the rolling of the dice on my music career landed at a really high level I might take home that $$ for a couple years, but not for a career. But the dice didn’t land that high. I play jazz records in the afternoon. I own a trivia company. My daughters are getting a smaller pillow to land on than I had. But I had a pillow too big. I didn’t need all that pillow. My brother didn’t need all that pillow. I ignored a lot of that pillow, I didn’t use all that pillow. I needed something more than that pillow, I needed honesty about who I was, about who we were, about why I deserved love, why I was okay the way I was, why I should get love.
A subject change: I love sneaking into the world where I get my own minutes. The music is playing, it’s 1:18, I have to wake up at 6:34, brush my teeth, get S. to school, get N. to daycare, find out where the Trivia Mafia meeting is, pack up records at North High, cook dinner, play jazz records in St. Louis Park, play pickleball with the team from Trivia Mafia. But right now, I’ve got great music on the speaker, I’m typing and I’m not afraid. I’m in love with the world. I’m in love with Felix coming over for basketball and talking about KAT’s problems. I’m in love with my brother coming and drinking beers and looking at his phone. I know who I am. I have my friends, I have my goals, and never the two shall meet. The world is so confusing, but my world is beautiful. The work is just trying to do the best you can. Sometimes you’re jealous of Sims, maybe he’s never jealous of you, but you’re just trying to do your best. There’s no quarter in bellyaching. My daughter S. has started talking about S. land. She tells me what is true about is in Sadie land. How things work in S. land. She knows things are different in Sean land. She gets these changes, this mystery, this fiction. There’s no crossroads, there’s no blacks and whites. Don’t let social media change that, let the world be ugly in the same ballpark it always has been. Let being a fifteen year old girl be just as beautiful and horrible as it was in 1922, in 1956, in 1995. Don’t let the stadium change. Stay, stay, stay the same. Don’t let the algorithm eat your you.
The Night Went Great
A long week, a perfect ending. Rachel made Swedish meatballs. Yes there was the lingonberry jelly. And bedtime was great. Last night I was eating popcorn and Sadie, 5 yrs, said “do you like that popcorn, Dows it taste like it was made by a professional?? Cause, I made that popcorn.”
Tonight didn’t have the same one liners but it still was beautiful. And Martin said he would pick me up for a couple drinks at Burger Dive.
Walking in, perfect amount of people. Twenty-four people. Table of olds, table of charming young women who are living it up at karaoke and instagramming the whole thing. One ruggedly attractive dude out with them on girls night. A couple couples at the bar, a couple groups of three of four. Wolves on the TV, don’t have to ask for it. no tv showing the Wild even though it’s a hockey town in a hockey state.
One really good singer delivering the goods on Daniel Caesar, Bobby Caldwell, a sad song and Digital Underground. He knew his audience I’ll say that. The girls were singing along with every word. A West 7th celebrity.
We ran into Mona Quinones because of course we did. Because it’s the first cold bar night of the new winter. There’s something graceful about the new winter. Everyone is pretending like it’s cold when in three months this won’t constitute shorts weather per se, but there’s no way you’re wearing a jacket and a hoodie. Newwinter lays down its strictures:
whatever the fuck is in your car now stays unless you need it
The hoodie isn’t changing, so it’s up to the wearer if the shirt beneath it is, and how can you check anyway you can’t do leave me alone
Yes of course you’re going in the store while your gas pumps, there is no alternative
What a treat.
3:33⅓ with Etta James
If I made a list of the ten most important days in my musical life I think the day I saw Elvin Bishop, Etta James and B.B. King in one sitting at Tanglewood in Massachusetts would make it. Etta James was probably the first musician I ever saw “work over” a crowd. She was sassy, she chatted, she flirted with all the band members she wasn’t related to. She was stately, charming and raunchy all at the same time. I love Etta James and I’m so glad I got to see her live.
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3:33⅓ with Leo Nocentelli
Leo Nocentelli is a funk icon, his guitar work with the Meters is the blueprint for funk guitar. So it was astounding to find out that when Leo went into the studio on his own accord he brought a much more acoustic, singer-songwritery palette in. But it makes sense to some extent, if your dayjob is playing in the greatest funk band on planet earth maybe you want to do something else with your time off. I’m so glad this music got committed to magnetic tape. He delivers the good as a songwriter and the music still grooves like crazy. Enjoy it!
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