My Heart is Full, My Brain is Complicated
If you wait too long to write one of these posts it can just feel like there is too much to say. 2022 has a been a year of incredible change. My wife Rachel and I have faced a lot of medium difficulties and minor inconveniences throughout the year. I’ve navigated a big job and schedule change. I’m preparing to end my time as a weekly host of 331 Club trivia, a role I’ve held down for 15 years. My previous employer is also undergoing a tremendous amount of change. It impacts me as a listener to the Current but also as someone who is close with so many people on the staff. The world is a jumblin’ right now. But I’m in a pretty awesome place.
The work I’m doing at Jazz88 is incredibly satisfying. I’ve never worked as a Music Director with a capital M before. I did a lot of Music Directoresque work for Purple Current but the buck didn’t quite stop with me and I didn’t hold that title. Having the opportunity to review new music and dive into a truly impressive library of jazz music and figure out new ways to present it, organize it, celebrate it, expand it. . .it’s otherworldly. Sometimes I walk over to Andrew from Membership and point out that I can’t believe this is part of my job. Hilariously as I’m typing this Jazz88 is playing a the song Sidewinder for the second time this morning. Different artists, but I believe an ace Music Director probably wouldn’t be having that song air twice within the same four hours.
Here’s your inspirational Yearbook Quote:
“YOU LIVE AND YOU LEARN and you don’t play the smokin’ hot Lee Morgan standard more than once in a six hour period.” -Sean McPherson
The second half of my day is spent DJing and I love it. I talk to my mens Bob Jurek, Justus Sanchez or Mike Larson to get the skinny on traffic. We celebrate musical birthdays, we cover the news. I turn up the world’s greatest jazz quite loud and soak in the sound. I interact with listeners on email & twitter, but not with the intensity of a Radio Free Current. I get a couple phone calls, couple emails, couple tweets. I try to stay all business on twitter which I struggle with. I’m re-firing this here blog a bit cause I realized I was losing control over the social media again. Also I interviewed John Pizzarelli and he did a version of the Pat Metheny tune “Last Train Home” that I am obsessed with. Check it here.
LONG SOCIAL MEDIA ASIDE:
The company I co-own, Trivia Mafia, just spent $761 this morning on FB/IG ads. It feels terrible. I think some relatively large amount of that money goes back to Mark Zuckerberg, and I think he’s a garbage man who will be remembered very unfavorably in a world he will have completely changed. In the Atlantic the writer George Packer said that we are going to look at the way we permitted children to jump on social media at age 12 as one of the grandest mistakes we’ll ever have made as a society. I just wholeheartedly agree. I see this opportunity to treat the social media relationship that millennials and generation Z were permitted to establish as children as an aberration. My whole life is against the overuse of social media. I believe in live events, I believe in linear entertainment, I believe in print magazines. I’m no luddite, I believe in Google Maps, I believe in being able to listen to Soundgarden or Mobb Deep whenever I want in my car if I don’t like what the radio is playing. But I want social media to be a means to an end; an invite to something in the material world. When I open up the company wallet to be on social media I feel I am feeding a beast who deserves none of our hard earned money. It’s a transfer of money from an in person and linear event company to a company that en masse inspires people to stay home and hate themselves, no matter how many ads they put up about their hard of hearing basketball group on TV. ASIDE DONE.
We are settling into a better routine at home, the Timberwolves are still in the playoffs and someone else from Heiruspecs is in charge of completing the artwork for the album with our designer. So I’ll count that all as a win.
I turn 41 on Thursday and I feel blessed to be involved in so many great projects, to be a part of a great family and see horizons of more hours of reflection, of reading, of relaxation, of taking in concerts, of playing music, of existing.