Official video from JCHMusic for the new album Songs From Detroit The Opera by JC Harris.

This is from Act II. The son has returned from WW II and is obviously depressed. Father meets him at a local bar and encourages him to snap out of his depression. Thinking to commiserate, he recounts his own suffering upon first coming to America. He then reveals that he has a ready-made business opportunity to share with him. Instead of being excited, the son explodes with anger. Father is clueless and turns away in horror. He now realizes just how truly damaged his son really is.

Just a quick note if you haven’t been to “the brown site” for a while. Obviously, I’ve moved things over here. The old site was good, but frankly, it got too frickin’ difficult to keep up with all the spam. (I wish ‘consolidating’ the actually city was as easy.)

I have yet to find a way to have organised discussions that don’t get outta control and it frustrates me no end because I actually believe in dialogue. But as I’ve said before, I fear that’s gone with Web 1.0. If you take a look at Facebook or Twitter it’s all ‘140 characters’ and more ‘look at this video I just saw.’

Anyhow. I’m gonna post the best threads as soon as I have a minute. Some good history and ideas there which really helped me during the writing. Big Cheers!

The next news I expect to have is getting the score prepared for school orchestra. The idea has always been to be doable by less than pro level players. Given the current dreadful […]

The first time I heard this word; the first time I heard that sentence, was the last time I wanted to hear that word or that sentence. My understanding is that the word came into being in the 70’s and I believe it. It is not a word created as were so many by Shakespeare or Milton. It is not a word of mercantile necessity from the 18th century. It isn’t even a word of 19th century commerce and business. It is a word of pure marketing and thus purely post-modern. Blechh.

OK, so how can I incentivize you to buy an album before December 24th, 2012? 😀

On December 24th I will be switching the ‘processor’ that connects my music to the various e-commerce sites. This is not the same as a ‘credit card processor’. Rather, this is yet another machination of the music biz. To keep out the riff-raff (get it?) every artist not linked to a major label must go through one of these ‘brokers’ in order to be […]

To compensate for the aforementioned (and frankly inexplicable) lack operatic income, I’ve been playing with some local funk and blues groups which were quite well paid but I found myself repeatedly self-destructing. (More on that in a separate rant.) So I’ve been begging, borrowing, stealing work for various local pit bands—community theatre, dinner theatre, etc. Since my various maladies, I sure ain’t the picker I once was, but thank goodness there are still gigs where reading is a pre-requisite; and thank goodness all the jokes about guitarists and sheet music ring truer than ever. It’s a living.

And it’s given me a chance to watch all the low budget ways that you can stage various gags. I kept getting hung up on ‘impossibilities’. There are so many events in any staged production which defy believability if you think about it too much. But it seems that I have to constantly remind myself the very thing I love about the theatre: people want to suspend disbelief. I don’t have to worry so […]

Trying to be ‘original’ is a lot like that ‘buy low and sell high’ advice about betting on the stock market. It’s not as easy it seems.

We’re taught from an early age to emulate something (or someone) that ‘works’. Which makes sense. But that strategy simply leads one off course if you’re trying to find your own voice.