Thanks guys. I really appreciate the kind words. So all of this came about because I got the flu last night/this morning. Woke up feeling like crap so I rescheduled the work I was going to do and stayed in bed. By about noon, I was feeling a little less like death and as I had been thinking about putting a Myspace page together for some time, I just went ahead and did it. It kept my mind off of how I was feeling. I wish I had done it a long time ago.
Since I was putting it together, I thought I would include a quick clip illustrating where I was technically with the guts. For those of you that don't know, I switched from Spiro Mittels to guts about a month ago. In the one gut string thread, I had been yammering on about how I was starting to get the hang of playing fast on gut strings which I had real trouble with early on. I pulled out the H2, stuck it on the bathroom counter and vomited out 2 minutes of fast runs tying it together with a quick but sort of sloppy Au Privave. So when you listen to that bit, remember it was an exercise done in a bathroom on an H2 by a guy with the flu.
My favorite piece that I have up on the site is the one I play slab (fretless Fender Jazz Jaco signature model from the mid '90s) on: Bursting with Love. The tune is based on a South African Highlife rhythm. The bit to listen to closely is from about 4:07 to the end when the two alto players start improvising together over the All Along the Watchtower like riff. I get gooseflesh every time I hear it. They are just amazing. They chase each other all over the place, finishing each other's phrases, sometimes improvising in harmony. It was an astonishing feat. Every time I hear it, I think to myself, "I made that happen. I created the situation where something like that could happen." I want this piece played at my funeral (in 50-100 years).
Other stuff: After the Croissant is my Coltrane tribute. It roughly works out into 3 sections. Outside of a very simple melody over a pedal, it was completely improvised. All of the harmonies were created on the spot by the 3 saxophonists. The 3 sections weren't planned either; they just sort of happened. The title is an allusion to Coltrane's After the Crescent. What better way to honor perhaps the greatest jazz musician in history than by dedicating a tune, named after a buttery pastry with a light, flaky crust to his memory? Also, if you listen carefully, you can hear my bass falling apart. This was the last tune we recorded in June of 2002. The studio was new and the air conditioning made noise so we had to turn it off during takes. It was a very hot June with really high humidity and it got really hot and wet in the studio. The glue joints were slowly giving out throughout the session and you can hear rattles that are pretty obvious in the solo bass sections. It went to Shanks the next day and he had it for 3 months to fix everything that needing fixed.
Shakespeare was Right is a little bebop number with a strange head; rhythm changes with an altered bridge. I like to write short improvised sections into the heads so that whoever plays it really has to make it their own. I don't remember what Shakespeare was Right about but it probably had something to do his "first we kill all of the lawyers" quote.
By Hook or By Crook is, aside from a titular reference to my favorite TV show of all time, The Prisoner, is a contrafact of Bernie's Tune. The highlight is the bari and alto trading and then improvising together near the end.
Rite of Way/Fallout has quick nods to Raymond Scott and second-line music along with over the top playing by the guys. There is a Zappa inspired edit in this piece. Rite and Fallout are two separate tunes recorded 8 months apart in two different studios that I edited together in much the way Frank Zappa used to edit his bits together. The recording of Rite is the rough mix from the session. The final mixes (and I had 3 done) never captured the raw energy that the rough has. The drawback is the snare is pretty loud. I almost called the tune: Concerto for Snare. I also had my action higher than I've ever had it before. I don't have the measurements but it was really high with Mittels. I was gigging at least 4 nights per week back then and had chops out the wazoo. When someone needed a nut shelled and didn't have a nutcracker, they called me for my left hand. It was that strong.
137 is a pretty tune in 6 named for the Fine Structure Constant of the Universe. Hey, I'm a physicist when I'm not playing music. Sue me.
Ferocious Boogie is a cheesy little boogie tune (as in "hey does someone have a tissue, I have a ferocious boogie") played full out with both altos improvising together all of the way through. It is kind of the musical equivalent of drinking from a fire hose. If you want to be amazed, though, listen to the saxophone break coming out of the first head at about :28. It is in 5 and NO ONE messes it up. It's so smooth that most people don't even realize it happened which is why I'm hear to point it out to you.
I have a ton of recordings so I'm going to be switching tunes out with new ones a regular basis.
mark
Watcher ass......Yeah, yeah, I know you're into martial arts n' all that ****, but the Boyz got some ugly weapons and know how to use them.
