New favourite webcomic. This is genius:

Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life
http://www.bohemiandrive.com/comics/npwil.html

adam

Just when i thought i'd had the universe well and truly figured out, once and for all...

Wow, I got a lot of presents. Thanks so much to all my classmates who got me stuff: abby, trees, sophie, zhiying, eli sharon and nat, and to the mind-bogglingly awesome jazz club people. I feel the <3.

'Get high?'
'I hadda give it up.'

- William Gibson, Neuromancer

The more I listen to Coltrane, the more I think of Shakespeare - they both manage such an incredible density of meaning that just the mere reading or listening leaves you breathless and slightly dizzy.

And the more I tell myself I must study the more I want to lock myself up and spend the rest of my life learning to play like that.

adam

... and the world conspires to keep music with me. Just when I had every intention of starting my studies.

Jazz is a capricious mistress. Her and that piece of worm-ridden modal filth that Miles Davis came up with. They're conspiring to frustrate me, I swear it.

adam

We dont need no education.
We dont need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teacher, leave those kids alone.
Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!
All in all its just another brick in the wall.
All in all youre just another brick in the wall.

-Pink Floyd

So i went to the room today cos Yvonne told me they're having practice. And i sat there and I almost reached for my phone to call everyone and get them to hurry up and practice.

It hit me then. I miss my job. Goddamn i hated a lot of it but now it's gone (and i don't like to admit this) I miss it a lot. It's like a phantom limb now I don't have it anymore sometimes I reflexively go through the motions, like standing around worrying my ass off that some particular band CMI oh no oh no what am I going to do the gig is on saturday!

It's not my business anymore. I mean, the standard of the jazz club will always be my business. But now i'm only going to be teaching. It's up to Royce to organise the where and the when and the what. I suspect i'm not such a good teacher as I think but i'll learn, also.

Shit.

adam

So it's over. I guess for most people it could be hard to fathom how important the club is without actually having been in it and kind of smelled the air during a jam session. Or without mark's constant nagging that really impressed his vision onto me, and it's also a difficult one to see without having been there.

So many regrets but if there's one thing jazz has taught me it's that the only difficult decision is the one you're making now because it's the only one you control. Your past could be a fiction and your future could be a daydream but what happens now is yours and it's real and it's in some ways the only thing you can count on. So hey, i'll move on from my mistakes; it's been fun.

I'd like to say a big thank you to my wonderful EXCO who did all the work while I was daydreaming:

Huang for being the oft-needed voice of reason and supporting my crazed post-bop tendencies. Also for being the only other guy in the EXCO.
Xiumin for covering up for my utter administrative incompetence and for being an absolutely swinging pianist.
Clara for being the hardest-working secretary EVER and making sure everything ran smoothly (albeit is smoothly as jazz will ever get)
Chermaine for being a ball of sunshine despite pretending to be angsty (rubbish!). Especially when I needed the smiles.
Sara for being there for me to talk to when things got difficult, and for putting up with my nonsense.

It may be over, but it sure as hell isn't OVER. Alumni here I come!

adam

Bought 2 albums today. John Coltrane's A Love Supreme and Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters.
A Love Supreme is concentrated post-bop awesomeness. Massive awesomeness.
Head Hunters is funk before it got stupid. Fantastic stuff.

It's tomorrow grrrrrrrhhhh. Then it'll be finally over and I guess i'll have to get to studying which I really don't want to do but oh well A levels loom there isn't much choice I guess. I want it to last forever but I'm only getting one more night. I'll make the most of it.

Life is not measured in durations but in moments.

adam

It'll be over in 3 days. Nothing in the world has made me feel so out of my depth like the chairmanship. Sometimes I'm so afraid of letting people down that I can't do anything but lie down somewhere and cry. At the end of it I hope I've done an OK job - it's been fun but I'll be glad when it's over.

adam

EAT MY DUST PW

honk

A spectacular vindication of the principle that there are 'no wrong notes- only wrong resolutions' is Dave Liebman's wild rendition of the sound of music classic 'My Favourite Things'. About halfway through his solo the guitar-and-bass rhythm section cuts him loose to explore freer territory with lots of emotive honking - and somewhere in there Liebman cuts loose on a huge abrasive flurry of notes that stretch the tenor sax range from the squeaking highs to the gasping lows and ends with a huge 'plonk' on the 3rd of the tonic chord.

At this point, all is truly right with the world.

adam

Southbridge

Went to jam at jazz@southbridge tonight with shawn. Played two long pieces, Softly as in a Morning Sunrise and what is quickly becoming my signature tune, Soul Cowboy.

Overall I think it was a pretty good jam, in that there weren't any harmonic clams or sudden dry spots and everything sort of flowed, but I think it was also lacking a bit in coherence. I tend to noodle or play a lot of outside licks when I run out of ideas. Comping was predictably bad - too soft, out of time and repetitive - will have to work on that. Mario Serio said I had 'nice lines' (although i'm sure he was just being nice - i need a reason to feel good) and I got a free drink from some guy who turned out to be an SSO player (!). Ken, I think.

Anyway, I've decided on an after A levels project. I'll need to get a band together to see if we can tackle the late-50s music of Miles Davis (pre-electric period, second great quintet) or any post-bop kind of styles. I've pretty much figured that's where I want to go musically from now. Of course it's still a bit far off, but a guy can dream! Mark will be in UK by then, so i'm taking offers for a bassist slot.

adam

EDIT: Martinis taste fucking awesome. Should have ordered one for myself. In fact, will do just that when I turn 18.

EDIT: I'm also looking for a trumpeter. But don't bother unless you are excellent.

EDIT: I will call my band Sex Machine. In honour of the late James Brown, and also inspired by the fantastic US band Sex Mob. The word Jazz originally had a lot of sexual connotations, if you all didn't know.

I think the state of my room reflects the state of my mind.


Currently it is very, very messy.

THOMPSON BIG BAND BASH

Hello to the diminutive readership of this blog! I'm performing at the BOTANIC GARDENS on the 25th of march with thompson jazz band. It's at 5 pm so come and watch! And don't miss the Thoroughly Embarrassing Guitar Solo either.

Ulysses is killing me. Day 3, i'm at page 21 - which is a good 7 pages a day. To tell the truth I don't quite understand Joyce's writing at all. He has a certain sense of humour which is pretty absurd, but no LOL moments, so far.

Also, he uses 'scrotumtightening' as an adjective. Whee intellectually degenerate happiness!

adam

a heap of broken images

Just went to Kinokuniya today to pick up a copy of Ulysses! I feel excited at the prospect of slogging through the 600-odd page nightmare. Interestingly, I was talking to Cheng at the Lit (J) section - we couldn't find a second copy of Ulysses which cost less than 30 bucks - and we wanted to change the terms of our massive Ulysses-reading suicide pact to something like a Portrait of the artist as a young man-reading suicide pact and then Cheng said
- No, but Ulysses is the challenge
and some random woman said, NO, Finnegans Wake is the challenge

which came out of the blue but was roughly consistent with what I'd been told. Hmm.

School is a miserable slog. Everyone comes, everyone goes, nothing happens, it's awful. But I know i'll have to start studying at some point which is a TERRIBLE prospect but inevitable I guess.

I just read Abby's blog and it got me Thinking. I complain a lot about school but if it ever came to the crunch I doubt i'd give it up. I mean, I could probably do without studying. Or homework. Or insidious references to invisible poultry. But School... maybe not. I think it's become too much a part of me that when I'm finally cut loose I think i'll take a few months if not a whole year just adjusting to the shock of not having to wake up in the morning and grope about for my uniform or having to wander about the house half-naked in the unholy hours of the morning griping about yesterday's frisbee game in which I sprained my knee. That's a scary thought.
It's scary that despite my unspoken promise to myself that I would never let school become my life, I've gotten emotionally involved in it (and it's a terrible thing to be emotionally involved with the enemy). There are some baggages i'll be leaving in the corridors of RJ, and Raffles Institution.

I didn't ask for it. I've tried for years to make school inconsequential because I can't deal with responsibility, so that I could do it with my eyes closed. There's still things which, against my better judgement, I like about school. And i hate that.

adam

A new blues that I can't explain

Woke up this morning, I feel 'round for my shoes
You know 'bout that babe, had them old walkin' blues.
Woke up this morning, I feel 'round for my shoes,
You know 'bout that babe, Lord, I had them old walkin' blues.

Leavin' this morning, I had to go ride the blinds.
I've been mistreated, don't mind dying.
This morning, I had to go ride the blinds,
I've been mistreated, Lord, I don't mind dying.

People tell me walkin' blues ain't bad;
Worst old feeling I most ever had.
People tell me the old walkin' blues ain't bad.
Well it's the worst old feeling, Lord, I most ever had.

--

My favourite blues ever.

I've come to the startling realisation that jazz is the blues and the blues is jazz and there isn't any difference. Ornette coleman plays the same blues that Robert Johnson did. Of course it's an infuriating matter to tell anyone what you mean by 'the blues' - at some fundamental level it exists only as an abstract idea or just a sheer feeling. But I'll have a go.

The blues is a descriptor for the African-American experience of life - it originated as a kind of working song, for shouting in the cotton-fields where a lot of african-americans worked as slaves, then later as sharecroppers.

So, on one level when we say 'blues' we're talking about a genre of music, the so-called 'country blues' which was a direct outgrowth of these working songs. On the other hand, the sheer number of other things which have been attributed to 'the blues' is mind-bogglingly upsetting. The Original Dixieland Jass Band plays 'St. Louis Blues'. Robert Johnson sings the blues. John Mayer says he's got a 'new blues I can't explain'. Charlie Parker tells B.B. King - 'I'm a blues player, B, we're all blues players.' But their music is worlds apart.

So where does that leave the blues? Nowhere, it seems. I don't have answers, if you were hoping. Sometimes you get an inkling though, of what it all means - what I have now, is that the blues means honesty. It means uncontrived emotion. What charlie parker and B.B. King and ornette coleman are playing sounds impossibly different, but at the centre of it is humanity, an uncluttered humanity; an african-american humanity.

Uncluttered is an interesting experience. What i've come to perceive is that some novice players tend to play better than people with very advanced technique. Case in point : I play the blues better on electric bass than on guitar. Highly disturbing, considering how much time I practice on the six-stringed annoyance. The explanation, as I see it, is simple enough : some technically proficient players tend to impose ideas on their playing. It doesn't work, it causes improvisation to sound contrived, unnatural, un-bluesy. What works is an un-judgemental state of listening, where what has been played and what IS being played filters through the collective of experiences present in our subconscious, and is used to come up with something else. No amount of intellectual posturing can account for the complexity and the emotion present in our experiences. THAT's the blues.

adam

Life is good.

School still sucks but school =/= life SO THERE. *rude gesture*

In any case, managed to one-up council today by organising an en-masse pulling-out of all the bands in talentime due to unacceptable working conditions. They panicked and caved in immediately. Haha. I guess revenge is slow and sweet.

I kind of felt bad about feeling good about that for awhile.

HELLO CRUNCH I AM SORRY YOU HAD TO BEAR THE BRUNT OF MY COUNCIL-DIRECTED ANGST. I DON'T HATE YOU. I JUST HATE YOUR ORGANISATION.
(could someone tell crunch please?)

Talentime song went pretty well too, considering all the stage-presence pep talk i've been getting from terence. Still not perfect, but my twitching-and-flailing act is still a step up from standing still. I guess.

adam