painting with secret notes
whenever i listen to black market, by weather report, i feel happy and small. since i was a punk in high school, it’s torn me up to hear what josef zawinul, wayne shorter, and the boys created. zawinul hid so many notes in the mix, you could listen for 5 years straight and not find them all. 
in 10th grade i put together a band to perform the title track at a friday night band thing. the audience didn’t appreciate the hidden notes that i had found. ha! “dude, you’re good and all, but why do you play that weird music? nobody likes it.”
if we can listen to music when we’re dead, i’d like to hear ‘cannon ball’ (track 2), zawinul’s salute to his former band leader julian “cannonball” adderley. speaking of which, i don’t think i’ve heard anything to top cannonball’s solo on “love for sale”, from the 1958 miles davis session with bill evans, john coltrane, paul chambers, and jimmy cobb (available here and here).
one of my happiest moments was driving down the pacific coast highway in a convertible — top down, miles caressing “love for sale” with my main man adderly bringing in the horsepower. there was a woman in the car. i think she said, “what is it that you like so much about this music?” even that couldn’t ruin it.
August 26th, 2004 at 11:19
Wow! I LOVE “Black Market”. But “Mr. Gone” is even better, though it takes longer to get into, sorta like drinking Scotch.
Ever listened to those incredible faster-than-you-can-think unison parts in Mahavishnu Orchestra numbers?
August 26th, 2004 at 12:21
oh, sir, now you’ve gone and done it. see my review of mr. gone at amazon (scroll down to ‘context is everything’). played the title track off that with a band my second year of college. you wanna talk about some weird keyboard lines. dude! zawinul was the man. i also recorded a brian may type version of mr. gone at a 16-track studio back in ’84. only keyboard i used was piano for some stuff. most of the “horn” parts were done multi-tracked with a lit-up guitar through a screaming 100w tube amp. (that was my big thing in the early 80s.) funny, but i doubt i even have a copy of that anymore. might have something on cassette.
anyway, i saw weather report live many times from ’78-’83. saw jaco twice at a DC blues club. so strange to be that close to a deity. it may be trendy to say, but weather report really started to suck around the time jaco left. i almost walked out of the 2 live gigs i went to after he was gone. zawinul turned into a real creep. i think he needed pastorious like van halen needed david lee roth. but don’t get me started on van halen.
August 26th, 2004 at 12:36
forgot to mention: i was working on a project at the mises institute in auburn, AL last march, and ended up staying there all night to try to finish before i had to head home. don’t know if you’ve been there, but they have a donated 97-key, 9’6″ boesendorfer in a big room. believe me when i say that i spent a good hour on that on my way out — me, by myself, in the middle of the night, playing ‘young and fine’ like a big dog on a $150k piano from hell. it had just been tuned that week too.
if i ever got a job at mises.org, they could probably pay most of my salary in piano time.
January 9th, 2011 at 00:41
[...] still like to play the piano at LvMI [...]