Louis C.K. has done a bit for a number of years called ‘Hilarious’. Basically he talks about how hyperbolic everything speaks these days. Every joke is ‘hilarious’. Any event even mildly interesting is ‘amazing’. And then, of course, he spends five minutes giving an ever escalating series of penalties and tortures for offenders. Prog rockers? Epic, of course! But my pet peeve is ‘awesome’; which Webster’s describes as ‘inspiring awe.’

As Louis so rightly points out, if you start with everything on the top shelf, there’s no place left to go.

The thing that wears one down after a while, in any kind of modern music is the constant pounding. The lack of contrast.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

One reason I always jumped at the chance to play Cuban music was the huge contrasts. There’s no drum set, so the bottom is held down by a guy playing a double bass (typically this old thing called an Ampeg Baby Bass, which is made out of aircraft plastic.) And unlike pop music, the bass […]

You’ll notice few if any comments on this site. Occasionally, it’s because, well… nobody comments! But usually it’s because I don’t ‘approve’ them. And the reason is simple: as a rule, I don’t like how they usually work out.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the concept is fantastic. And I love it when there is a real discussion of most any topic. But the Comments section never seems to work out like that; not on this site and rarely on other sites I frequent regardless of the sites popularity or imprimature. (Wanna see some real food fights? Just check out the New York Times blogs! If they can’t have a civil engagement, I sure ain’t got a snowball’s chance in heck.)

And even when the comments aren’t spam, they are rather like the Facebook ‘wall’—just random ‘shout-outs’. But the only purpose of that for most sites is simple ‘SEO’—increasing ‘page-ranking’.

So please do use the comments to send me a note. I read and respond promptly to anyone who takes the […]

N.B. It has been pointed out recently that if possible, I am ranting even more psychotically than usual. I blame it on the weather… which in Seattle and Dublin has been the most crappest in perhaps a century. There hasn’t been more than 48 hours of straight FUCKIN’ SUN all year. And I can’t take much more of this. Even the littlest things drive me nuts. For example, right now some schmuck conductor is waving his arms and taking the Brandenburg #5 -way- too fast and I want to find him and stick his snippy little baton right up his ARSE for ruining my Chi. This whole global warming thing has come at a really inconvenient moment and I’m fairly well put out.

I can no longer hide it: I hate Harry Potter. Always have. I’ve tried to avoid coming out about it, but I can’t take it any more. I rant a lot about the decline of culture and the whole Nietschean weakening of humanity. And yeah, people like […]

I just happened to look in the paper last Wednesday and look who’s in town? Milton Nascimento! So off I go to Jazz Alley to see some live music. Which happens for me now… oh, the phrase ‘once in a blue moon’ comes to mind.  So why drop everything for this particular guy? Well, that’s the whole point of this little essay, now isn’t it?

Well, first off,  the word ‘legend’ is now something of a joke due to overuse, but Nascimento is truly that. I think it’s fair to say that he is to Brazilian popular music what Miles Davis was to jazz: a guy who maintained the highest level of musical integrity, reached a vast audience far beyond his home genre and who was able to really incorporate a number of other genre’s holistically into his work as he went. And to me—it’s that last part that makes Milton totally ‘prog’.

I first encountered Milton in 1980 […]