Late May 2019:

I DO A PROMO

When people recommend books or movies or musical things to me I notice myself considering my notions of what they ordinarily might dig. I'm sure you do that too, yeah?

I think my most productive state (don't get alarmed) is a kind of oblivion. Oblivion, for me, means I feel free to consider music and the moods it creates as something I can actually attend to wholeheartedly right now, even though I'm clumsy and there are wars going on and the phone is ringing and I'm getting old and looking for bannisters and the future encroaches like a train on fire.

The last couple of CDs I made, Old Man Dancing and Fifteen Songs From Moby Dick...they were recorded while I was, to the best of my ability, in that oblivion state, that is: not thinking about anything else but getting (what I thought of as) a mood going...and then keeping it up. And I made those CDs to please myself, really, because myself is all I really know. Listening to music is so personal. Did you ever play somebody something and had them talk all the way through it? YouTube is a good place to share music because you don't have to watch while they're listening. But this particular song/recording has such a mood. I love this piece of music and have loved it for years. (Listen)

NA BAIXA DO SAPATEIRO - Ary Barroso

I always love listening to this and sometimes I listen to it over and over and over. And (hello, promo) in that one respect that's the way I am about my last two CDs, which are not South American. But I do like listening to them over and over. Particularly Moby Dick. Melville's such a lyricist and the songs were so easy to write. On occasion I think I'd change some things, and then I think, oh man it's fine. I love them both. If you already get what I'm aiming at, they both work...I feel like Old Man Dancing is practically there, and that Fifteen Songs From Moby Dick is definitely on the money.

And some of you may well go, oh man, I wish he hadn't needed to go there, and talk through it, but really, folks: these two are pretty much what I have in mind. And it's so unlikely I'll change, only get more the same. And I'm grateful to have lived that long to get to say that about two whole albums, you know what I mean?: They're both just what I have in mind. And that's MY promo right dere. Oh, and also I won another Brad Pitt Look-Alike contest.

OK bye.

MARCH 2019:

I have learned these last couple of months that there really are very few problems in my life that cannot be pretty much solved by having a little more bread. But that's another story for not-here. For here, a little music thing:

I saw a movie recently where they featured Nina Simone doing "Wild Is The Wind" and so I went to YouTube to focus on it and it's much more sensuous than the Johnny Mathis version , which was popular when I was in high school. "Wild Is The Wind" is a really cool song, great intervals, kinda noir, like "Ruby". And Johnny Mathis is certainly a unique talent, and that song and he belonged together, to me. I thought he did a lovely job of lining out those sultry notes, coming out of the jukebox at the Valley Spa in Little Falls, New Jersey, but it sure loosened up and got sexy and heavy and lush with Nina Simone a few years later. I didn't get her at first, she was too hip for my room. She was a pretty smart and tough lady, a prodigious talent with a awful lot of presence, as you can witness in this YouTube from Montreux where she's doing a smaller cafe thing. She just starts talking and she's so cool, and so daunting... and the intelligence. You would not want to displease her.

By and by she sings this song called "Stars" which, if, like me, you knew not of before, you'd just assume was hers, because she reads it so intensely while she's up there playing amazing piano, like she's sort of thinking out loud about how things are in her world, a much hipper and more sophisticated world than mine. I just immediately thought: of course, she wrote this. If you listen to her read this song maybe you'll react similarly.

But, dig it, it turns out that "Stars" was written by Janis Ian, whom I opened for some time years ago. Very bright and aware person, similar to Nina Simone in her bearing and demeanor. Like, she's so not taking any shit. But very open and friendly, and honest...and memorable, I gotta say. I thought: no wonder she's heavy. Opening for somebody you don't really see them perform, because you're so full of stuff about yourself and how you did, etc. So I was like, very unaware of what Janis Ian could really do. And I go to her YouTube version of "Stars" and oh man, she just does the hell out of it, and on the guitar, too, and so you can see some of her cool inversions and this spectacular and touching and dramatic face that she presents when she sings, and wow, her face is so beautiful and her expressions so nuanced, and the reading is beyond perfect. It's Janis Ian singing directly at you, and wow. I had the same feeling of: "oh, NOW I get it", that I had with Nina Simone. "Stars" by Janis Ian, to me, this is a scarily good song. See and hear.

Grateful to have lived long enough to finally evolved the head to get into things, after missing the point so often, and grateful that all around me great art exists, lives, remains valuable, waits (for me to finally catch up to it).

January 2019:

SONGS FROM MOBY DICK

It seems to me that often when I'm deeply into some recording project, I'll get some abrupt, jarring signal that it's time to wind things up, time to either quickly finish this project, or simply abandon it, "as is", to its fate: I have to travel, or I have to get sick, or both. I often really resent each interruption at first (that is, resent the tumult and uncertainties of life, what a dope), particularly when I think of how I could polish things until they were Perfect, if I only had the time and/or resources. Now and again, however, I am shown that, more often than not, my original effort has more life and power than what I will come up with after second, third, fourth thoughts. A big fault for me: to always want to work too long on things. Insecurity, obsession, etc. Picky picky picky. I do this partially, I think, to live in that world more, to take refuge in it, to hide, really, to hide in it. And possibly because I have been taught not to trust myself.

So I tried to go that usual route with my latest project, induced and inspired by working with Blair Thomas, Greg Allen, Michael Montenegro and Michael Zerang in a series of theatrical meditations on Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Thank Heaven and thank these bright and frank professionals that I had to come up with songs quickly for these shows, so most of my potential dithering got aborted. I was dragged kicking and bitching to a new level. Oh yeah.

Mr. Melville, it turns out (d'oh), is a lyricist far beyond any imagining but his own, and made things so easy for me.

There are no lyrics in these songs that are not wholly Mr. Melville. That every damn one of these songs is successful I have no doubt. I am proud of this recording, which I have worked on for exactly the right amount of time. I find it so fun to listen to, and I think I have done an honest job. I have rewritten, and gone back to the original, re-recorded, and gone back to the original, tossed off and had success with, agonized over and failed with, etc. I have dropped songs I loved ...like Elmore Leonard (if he played the guitar), I discarded what I thought people might want to skip over, and tried to keep to the essential.

Soon this recording (Songs From Moby Dick) will be available for sale. I have to move (yeah, move) first, then I'll tell you where to order one. I'm not good at the business parts; I'll ask someone else to figure that stuff out practically speaking. But, boy, I think this recording is really good and I'm so proud of it. If I kicked off with Songs From Moby Dick being my last project, I'd go: well, OK, God, I got to do this, to work with lines like this: it's a fair wind for death and doom in the southern fishery.

OK bye.