This intentional dismantling of the old jazz standard, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” was a lot of fun the handful of times we attempted it with the other-wise fusion jazz minded group headed by Austin, Texas guitarist Mitch Watkins. I found it actually took a lot of concentration to play this bad. But there’s something strangely pleasing to me about it. Maybe it’s was a natural venting of frustration from playing this song for real about 1000 times too many.
I played a little jazz gig last week at a cool Austin steakhouse and bar, Perry’s. The photo on their site is taken from the perspective of the band which is humorous since it’s doubtful the band member’s can afford to eat there. When I arrived there was no room for a drumset so I crammed my drum stool in a corner next to the piano and played a snare drum and small cymbal. From this perch where I could easily rest my chin on the piano lid, I watched a facinating site as the evening unfolded. The darker it got, the more the room was illuminated by the ocean of smartphones whose owners were not content to leave untouched for the hour or two that they sat in the bar. At one point I counted 16 Blackberrys in action — one table of six people had four going at once. Many of these people were texting and others appeared to be browsing. I saw one guy show a woman a Youtube video of a band playing somewhere other than Perry’s. Somehow it was lost on them that live jazz was happening right in front of them while they strained to hear a compressed YouTube video of a band across cyberspace. But at least they turned their ringers off. Hallelujiah!
I snuck up on Doug banging around on a Fender Rhodes in our house one day and captured a few seconds of his improvations. That was the inspiration for this answering machine ditty. It’s still on of my favorites, and interestingly, I’ve grown to love his McCoy Tyner meets Liberache stylings. I’m thinking, maybe he DOES need to to an album.
(Excerpted from my forthcoming ebook, My Life in Gigs)
The second set (commencing at 11:45pm) was already painful. This was a “I wanna go to sleep” pain, nurtured by stacking on this fourth gig in a day after three separate outdoor festival sets with different artists in the sweltering Austin, Texas summer heat. At least I was indoors now. But the fatigue was intense, reminding me of those poor British officers who were made to stand for hours in The Bridge Over The River Kwai. I was thirsty. I could taste the dust in the air of this rat trap of a basement railroad bar.
Somehow I made it through that second set upright and found a chair to slump into for a short nap, unconcerned about the possibility of falling asleep and sprawling onto the bar floor. As I dreamed of a Posturepedic sleep I was finally awakened by the bassist. “It’s 1:10, man! Time for our last set.” Yea, right. Because there are so many cultured listeners who must hear jazz at that hour. Because the trained ear prefers jazz at 1pm when the players are on the verge of dropping into a coma. Because no one ever has the wherewithal to say, “why?”
So I said, “why?”
They laughed at me with that “I know you’re just kidding” face and the “because it’s always been this way” hand gesture. Three tunes into that third set I was fighting off sleep less and less effectively. Now our leader calls Sentimental Journey and applies the “watching the grass grow” tempo. One minute in I was sound asleep, somehow balanced perfectly on the drum throne arms dangling limp at my sides. I heard the sticks click as they hit the floor but thought I was dreaming. They sounded like chopsticks, and I imagined the aroma of a nice stir fried rice cooking in the distance. Wasn’t that a nice little tune playing on the jukebox? Sentimental Journey, I think. It must have been a minute or so before the quasi-slumbering bassist spoke to me.
“Scott! Wake up!” came the urgent whisper. “Wake up, man!”
I opened my eyes to the dim light of the cave and realized that, no, I was not in a comfortable bed sleeping in the middle of a quiet Oriental restaurant, as I had imagined. I was still on the gig, my sticks on the floor, saliva on my snare drum, and a clueless band leader who later commented on the beautiful and unexpected space I had applied to the middle of his solo.
It may be hard to believe, but all three of the stills above come from the same video short. I know what you”re thinking — this kind of depth in ensemble acting is almost non-existent today. Even though 15-years-old, the Inline Ontime Commuter video on roller blading safety is still one of our most enduring examples of progressive cinema.
Sometimes I wonder, if you met someone at a bar and grill (I added the grill part for non-drinkers like me) on another planet, what you would scribble on a napkin for directions to your house? Certainly it might include handing them something like the above. They might say,
Well, which planet is it?
and you might say,
Wait, I have a picture in my wallet right here. You can have it.
then you ask the bartender for a red magic marker, non-erasable, and you put this arrow on the photo.
then the other person says,
Got it! Blue and green planet, next to the dead one. I should land in the field next to the U Tote Em.
