Gunnar Madsen Blog

Father/Son Rock/Roll

2011-11-17T16:06:00.000-08:00

I've been too busy to blog, people. Busy flying to NY to record the band tracks for the cast recording of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World (due out later next year), busy helping my son step up to the world of 4th grade and homework, and busy collaborating with my son on a new rock album - "Slime" by Max Invasion - which is out NOW (free download for the first 200 customers).

Q came up with the whole shebang. He sings lead and is the lyricist. He composes many of the musical riffs, chooses the guitar tones and effects, and sets the tempo and mood. I play all the instruments (except claves) and come up with extra musical ideas that match his descriptions.

This isn't like anything I've done before. Firstly, Quinn wanted to really rock out (I tend to make music on the gentler side). 2nd, I usually to want to perfect things. Quinn's not like that, he wants to move on. So "Slime" is rough, we work fast (it's usually just one take for each track), but that gives the whole thing a sense of urgency and a true garage feel. 3rdly, as a singer I'm rather tuneful and sweet. Q comes more from the Lou Reed school of getting the words across. The result is the grittiest rock I've ever head from a 9 year old (and his ageless father). This ain't your papa's Donnie Osmond, man.

Check out songs 5, 6 and 7 ("Monster Truck", "Seed" and "Happy Life"). The cool beginning of "Monster Truck", where the music sounds small and tinny and then blossoms into full-on heaviness? The rockin' riff? That's all Quinn. On "Seed", I wrote and played to his specs - he chose the Fender Rhodes sound, and the Stephen Stills tone for the guitar leads. "Happy Life" was a not-quite-ready-for-primetime riff and mood. There was something good in it, but it wasn't working. Q came to it fresh a few days later and heard (and dictated) the verse sections, and built up the swirling noise and synths at the end, and Presto! We had ourselves a powerful bit of pop.

So, download "Slime" now (while it's still free)! Once the free downloads are gone, you'll have the chance to name your own price for this little hunk of rock n' roll history.

(FYI, you don't HAVE to download to enjoy - The Max Invasion "Slime" link allows you to listen to the entire album on any device. Downloading is allowed on all devices except iPhones or iPads (Apple only allows downloads from iTunes on iOS hardware).

Spotify - the New Radio?

2011-08-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

Radio is not dead - you can still turn it on and listen to a baseball game or NPR or someone yelling at the top of their lungs about how unfair they think life is. But as a way to find new music, radio just ain't happening.

With the demise of radio as a way to find new music, various hopeful substitutes have come along:

In the 90's there was Hear Music, a store with dozens of listening stations all with soft cushy headphones. It was dreamy, just put on a pair of those headphones and enter a magical world of great music. Everything sounded good on those headphones. And, of course, standing there on a concrete floor you weren't going to listen to a whole album, or give a song 3-4 consecutive listens to see if it held up under scrutiny. You'd listen to maybe 30 seconds, skip ahead and try another 30 seconds here and there, and, lured by that wonderful headphone sound, make a snap judgment to purchase that CD for $16.98. Only upon getting it home and giving it an unhurried listen would you realize that the thing didn't have any musical legs, and that you didn't like Country Music after all (unless it's 30 seconds at at time on headphones). Nope, Hear Music got me to buy a lot of music I never grew to like.

In the past decade, the ability to hear 30 seconds of a tune on iTunes or Amazon or wherever has been a boon, opening my ears to much more music than Hear Music ever could. But those 30 seconds snippets are still misleading. Just about any music can sound good for 30 seconds. But 3-5 minutes is the true test of a song - does it have structure, melody - does it have Legs? Even when iTunes recently upped the snippets to 60 seconds, it's still not enough. I've downloaded a lot of albums that worked great as excerpts, but turn out to have very little substance when played in their entirety.

And there are the services (Flyfi, etc.) that allow you to download individual songs for free, so you can spend time with them. The great songs reveal themselves over repeated listenings, and that's truly fine. But I'm an album guy. And purchasing an entire album based on one good song just doesn't fly. It turns out there are an awful lot of albums that have only 1 or 2 good songs on them.

Which brings me to Spotify. It's fantastic. You can grab whole albums and listen to them. For free. There are commercials every few songs (just like in the golden days of FM radio). So what? Like in the days of great radio, I'm finally getting to spend time with an artists' work and see if it's something I want to spend money on. I hear the songs over and over, and either gain an appreciation for what's there, or move on.

I don't know how the revenue stream will work, but ASCAP, the society I belong to that collects airplay royalties, signed an agreement with Spotify, and they are the ones that sent me the invitation. I'll soon see what the royalties from Spotify are like. Who knows, maybe it'll be better than radio ever was (for me, at least). And meanwhile, I've finally got a way to explore new music that suits me. I'm loving it.

Can't quit Shaggin' 'round...

2011-06-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

All Shaggs, all the time...

Here's a great little video for those of you who can't make it to NY for the show. Enjoy!

In case you missed it, the NYTimes wrote an article about what we're up to. Read it HERE.

Tickets? The show's at Playwrights Horizons on 42nd st. It's up and running, technically still in previews til June 7, but the show is locked and loaded. (Use this top secret code SHAGFLY when ordering tix for a special discount!)

love and blessings,
Gunnar

NYTimes profiles The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World Musical

2011-05-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

We're now in our 2nd week of previews, and the show is coming together nicely. Spectacularly. We spend time every day writing new material to make it better, and the actors rehearse 4 hours every day to incorporate the changes, making a fresh, new experience every night. Last night the show was on fire - and we still have 2 more weeks of previews to make it yet better!

Also, a wonderful writer for the NYTimes wrote an article about what we're up to. Read it HERE.

Tickets? The show's at Playwrights Horizons on 42nd st. Come see the fresh previews now, or see the fully-flowered show during its run from June 7 to July 3. (Use this top secret code SHAGFLY when ordering tix for a special discount!)

I hope I see you at one of the shows!

love and blessings,
Gunnar

Dave Werry, Shaggs and Electric Guitars

2011-05-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

(The Shaggs open May 12! Click for tix)

The first time I ever touched an electric guitar, I was awestruck. I tried plucking a note, tried to make it sing like the Beatles could, but it did not respond. I was at the house of my friend, Dave Werry. The electric guitar belonged to his mom. It was red, with a sunburst finish, and some kind of a hollow body. I had a slight tinge of disappointment, in that I somehow had the idea that a solid body electric was more modern and cool than a hollow body. But still. I had never been close to any electric guitar before. And even with the minor failing of it being hollowbody, and the fact that I couldn't make it sound like anything, I was totally stoked.

We had gotten his mom's permission to use it in a skit we were preparing for the school talent show. We were in 4th grade. I had memorized every word of the Beatle's 'Help", and had recruited 3 other guys to join me in doing a live version of the song for the talent show. I had a set of sparkly paper drums I'd gotten for Xmas when I was 4, and two black Beatle wigs. Dave had his mom's electric, and we borrowed a couple acoustic guitars. We practiced. We banged and strummed. We knew no notes, we knew no key, we were just singing the words at the top of our lungs and pretending to be the Beatles. On the stage of the cafeteria the day of the show, the only other "band" acts were lip-syncing. We were the real thing, making our own noise, and we were a big hit. 6th graders came up to us afterwards, telling us how cool we were. It was my first taste of the limelight. But it was my last moment with an electric guitar for a long time.

The memory of Dave Werry and his mom's guitar surfaced when I was asked what kind of guitars the girls in the Shaggs would be playing onstage in the upcoming production of "The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World". I'd grown up in a college town, in the suburbs of San Francisco, a fairly cosmopolitan place. Still, I'd never seen an electric guitar except on TV. While I knew there was a music store in town that carried electric guitars, I'd never been inside the store. I didn't think I had the right to open the door and approach an actual guitar. That'd be akin to riding my bike to the Pontiac dealership and asking to test-drive a GTO. If the reality of playing an electric guitar were so distant for a suburban-street-wise kid, how much more exotic might it have been for The Shaggs, who lived in a small town in New Hampshire? Where did their father, who knew nothing about music, find electric guitars? How far did he drive, what kind of store did he find, what was it like for him to talk to a long-haired guitar salesman? And when he brought them home as a surprise gift for his girls (along with a drum set), what was their reaction? Unlike me, they did not have an intense passion about music. They had never expressed any interest in music whatsoever. And if playing en electric guitar eluded a music aficionado like me, how much more hard and mysterious and frustrating would it have been for them?

Years later, when I was 16 and had been playing acoustic guitar for a year (self-taught) I bought a used Fender Mustang and rented a Sears Silvertone amp for 6 months. I still couldn't make it sound like I wanted it to. After 6 months I returned the amp and sold the Mustang. The magic of electric guitars would continue to elude me way into adulthood.

Shaggs Tix on sale Now!

2011-05-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

Greetings from NYC,

Tickets are on sale for the upcoming production of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World at Playwrights Horizons on 42nd st. Come see the smiling infant of a show during previews starting May 12, or see the fully-flowered gawky young adolescent of a show during its run from June 7 to July 3. (Use this top secret code SHAGFLY when ordering tix for a special discount!)

Do you like the graphic they made for us? I dig it deeply. The young hands pulling at the guitar strings, trying to break the guitar or escape or make some kind of sound (or all of the above).

The rehearsals are vibrating with an intensity that makes your head and heart buzz. The cast is thrilling - excellent actors and singers all. I've been spending long long days tightening up the story, the lyrics, the music, the orchestrations, the page turns for the band. I've never worked so long, with such intensity, on any other project in my life. Yeah, I know, that's no guarantee of a great outcome, but I'm telling you - I'm as excited about this project about any other endeavor I've done. It's on a par with The Bobs, or IsoBobs, or Svetlana Village, or...

Well, you get my drift. I hope I see you at one of the previews!

love and blessings,
Gunnar

Shaggs Time in NYC

2011-03-24T12:38:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

I've been meaning to write for the longest time, but I've been consumed with preparations for the Off-Broadway production of “The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World”. There's not only a ton of work to finish writing the play and the orchestrations, but being away from home so much means making sure there are people to fill in my job of stay-at-home-after-school dad. We've got a wonderful cadre of expert caregivers lined up, and my lovely and energetic wife will be doling out extra hugs and love, while I visit my family every evening via Skype. I'm going to miss them something horrible. But I have a feeling I'll be so deeply engrossed in my work in NY that the heartache and homesickness will only creep in at night.

So, have you bought your tickets yet? Previews start May 11 and run to June 6, opening night is June 7 and then it runs to July 3. This is a historic, first-ever co-production of Playwrights Horizons (Sunday in the Park With George, Assassins, Grey Gardens) and The New York Theatre Workshop (ever hear of “Rent”?). The cast is, whoa, so totally loaded with amazing talent. Tony Award nominee and Obie Award winner Peter Friedman (Ragtime and PH's Circle Mirror Transformation, After the Revolution and The Heidi Chronicles). Kevin Cahoon's credits include Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Roundabout's The Foreigner (for which he was Lortel Award-nominated). Annie Golden was featured in PH's Assassins and People Be Heard, and in Broadway's Xanadu and The Full Monty; she was Jeannie in the film "Hair." Steve Routman's resume includes Broadway's Broadway and Off-Broadway's The Fantasticks and Shmulnik's Waltz. The three Wiggin sisters are played by amazing young actresses - Jamey Hood, Sarah Sokolovic, and Emily Walton. And as Kyle, young up-and-comer Cory Michael Smith makes his PH debut.

And the band? Whoa, again - Aaron Gandy is playing piano, organ and Music Directing, Leroy Bach (Wilco, Beth Orton) will play guitars and small keyboards, Dave Hilliard (David Byrne, Dan Zanes) bangs drums, and, on bass, the fabulous Toobee Determined.

Hey, I don't blow smoke about the things I do. I mean, yeah, I talk things up and try to keep you all interested, but when I tell you I'm proud of something I'm doing, it's because I really think it's good. Of all the things I do and have done, this play is very close to my heart. It's powerful, it's deep, it's funny, it's sad. It rings bells that I didn't know could be rung. I am awestruck at how moving this has turned out to be. I was/am lifted by it all.

If you're near NY, you owe it to yourself to come see it. If you're thinking about coming from out of town, now's the time to buy a train or plane ticket and dig around for digs. And, while I may be insanely busy re-writing the overture or changing the keys of all the songs, chances are I'll be around, so don't fail to try and get in touch while you're in town.

Oh, and if you're around NY on April 17 and 18, come to the Guggenheim Museum, where I'll be on display along with my co-creators, being interviewed and offering bits and pieces of the musical performed by our cast. 7:30 pm.

Love and blessings to you all,

Gunnar

Favorite Recordings of 2010

2010-12-13T12:41:00.000-08:00

The end of another year approaches. I generally don't have much time to listen to music, but this year, somehow (was it the ipod I bought and ended up jogging and walking to?) I've been able to return to one of my great pleasures.

A gift of music can be, for some of us, one of the best things to receive. An aunt of mine, who knew a lot about rock music, once gave me 3 LP's for Christmas. Music I never would have thought to buy, but that opened me to entirely new musical worlds. One of my favorite presents of all time!

So I'm sharing with you some of my favorite recordings that I've come across this year. Treat yourself or, if a recording seems right for someone you know, give them a treat.
Love, Gunnar.

Tatiana Nikolaeva Shostakovich: 24 Preludes & Fugues. This was a gift this year from a former college roommate and fellow music student of yore. I have never enjoyed Shostakovich - his music is too dense, thick and forbidding somehow. But these? Oh my god, they are lyrical, witty, full of a direct and simple beauty. I may end up searching out some more Shostakovich this coming year...

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs. I came to this unwillingly. Their earlier work was just not to my taste - too sweeping and needlessly grand. They can still tend to that, but this work is much more modulated. And they hit a lovely, vibrant lyric nerve in their exploration of the suburbs. For anyone who ever grew up in the suburbs, this just might speak to you. It did me.

The Band - The Band. "Music from Big Pink" was a tremendous and lovely album. The next record I bought of theirs way back when was "Stage Fright". It was a huge disappointment. So I gave up on exploring their music more, and missed out on this other masterpiece. I happened on it this year when I remembered an LP I'd loved back in high school, "Journey" by John Simon. It faded into obscurity, but I've always remembered itl. The guy could hardly sing in tune, his piano playing is a bit ragged, but he writes marvelous melodies and fantastic arrangements. His lack of perfection and chops gave me the courage to follow my dreams of being a musician, all my imperfections notwithstanding. So, wondering what became of him, I looked him up. Turns out he produced "Music from Big Pink" and "The Band". Well. I gave "The Band" a try this year, and it's great. His own music is still great (you can find it on the web, he put out 2 albums) and he produced 2 fantastic albums for the Band. For real.

Isabelle Faust - Bach: Sonatas & Partitas for solo violin. I have other recordings of solo Bach violin music. It's all very well done, but not LOVELY. This, my friends, is LOVELY. She makes her violin sound so sweet, she takes such time with every line of notes. I just love it.

Alexandre Tharaud - Rameau: "Nouvelles Suites". Baroque music on the piano is something I love. Here is some non-Bach that is very very beautiful, and exquisitely interpreted. Included is Ravel's " Hommage À Rameau [Images, Premier Livre, 1905]". If you like piano music, this is a great one.

Big Star - #1 Record/Radio City. This recording is legendary as being the unluckiest record of all time. Or something like that. Made in the early 70's, the record label just chucked in the wastebasket somehow, and it was forgotten. But it's legend bubbled on over the years, and with the death of one of its masterminds, Alex Chilton, this past year, and with the advent of easy and cheap distribution via the internet, it seems to have finally made its way into the world. If you're one of those people who dream that someone will uncover a hitherto unknown recording by The Beatles or some other majorly classic group, this is for you. It is a true classic. Song after song is fantastic.

Galactic - Ya-Ka-May. I got it for me, but my 8 year old son latched onto it and played it nonstop for months. And I never got tired of it. A way cool blend of hip hop w/New Orleans beats and horns. The drummer is other-worldly, the best groove ever. And the songs are all catchy and well-written and stand the test of time. Note: There are couple songs with naughty words, so if you're child wants to listen, you might want to edit :)

Listening for Grammys

2010-10-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

It's the nominating season for the Grammy Awards. In the mailboxes of recording academy members like myself, CDs are arriving in droves, hungry to be considered worthy of nomination in their respective categories. (My own Two Hands is hoping for a New Age Album nod).

In most of the categories, it's a simple matter of popularity. Whoever is the most famous gets the most votes and gets nominated. But in a few categories, such as composing and arranging, the nominations are made by committees who actually listen to each of the entries. That's how the arrangement of "Helter Skelter" by Richard Greene and Yours Truly snagged a nomination. Groups of dedicated and knowledgeable Academy members across the country listen through hundreds of potential nominees, and present their chosen nominations. The Bobs were not a household name, but enough of a name to get a fair hearing - and a Grammy Nomination!

I'm too busy with fatherhood just now to serve on a listening committee, but back in the late 80's I did for a few years, and it was pure pleasure for a listening hound like myself. Not since high school had I had the chance to sit around with others who love music to just listen. Through STACKS of records .For hours and hours. And it was so exciting to hear, and honor with a vote, some little-known composer or arranger whose work, while not famed, shone with inspiration and originality.

Meanwhile, I'm having my own private listening party, checking out all the CDs that are flooding in, finding some nice gems, and happily casting my vote for the good stuff.

Bertolt Brecht and Me...

2010-09-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

In 1976, at the beginning of my Junior year of college, I was working at a little desk in the basement of the music department, handing out keys to the practice rooms. A professor of mine, John Swackhamer, came by and plonked a 3-inch high stack of xeroxed music in front of me. He had a glint in his eye (he almost always did), and he explained how this score had been smuggled out of East Germany by a fellow professor. It was the piano/vocal music to the Hans Eisler/Bertolt Brecht play "The Measures Taken". He asked if I had any experience in music theatre. "Um... I was a dancer in my high school production of the Music Man...And I sang the little Nazi's song in Cabaret..." Not a stunning resume. But to him it was as if I'd just said I was Harold Prince. "Excellent! There's a director who's putting on this play, and you'd be perfect as the music director! Call him!"

I called the director, who likewise seemed to have no problem with my lack of experience. So I gathered together a ragtag yet spirited band who taught me how to write for their respective instruments, and a choir of 12 or so. I really had no idea what I was doing. But the play was a huge hit. Shortly after, RG Davis, founder of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, opened a new theatre company, Epic West, the Centre for the Study of Bertolt Brecht. He asked me to be the music director. Big names from East Germany came to collaborate and teach, the productions had lots of great Bay Area actors in the casts, and while I was excited to be in the middle of it, my understanding of it all was pretty limited. (It was amusing to have my parents, longtime conservatives, come to the productions which were noisily marxist and densely intellectual. My parents were wonderfully supportive - My mother found and gave me a rare LP of Lotte Lenya singing)

I began to get work with other theatre companies, but my reputation as a Brechtian expert had been solidified, and I kept getting approached to do Brecht and political theatre. Ina Wittich, a famous (in East Germany) East German interpreter of Brechtian songs, came to California for a tour and needed an accompanist. Eisler songs are technically easy, almost like rock or folk music. Ina croaked them in a Lotte Lenya kind of way. But, for her big concert at Mandeville Hall in UC San Diego, she wanted me to play Eisler's Sonata for Piano. I'm not a fast learner, and his sonata is technically difficult, atonal, and huge. And I only had 10 days to master it. I begged her to let me off the hook, but, and perhaps this was the East German in her, she would not change her mind. Onstage that night, in front of 1,000 or so people, I flailed my way through it, just making up whole sections of atonality when the notes on the page blurred before my eyes. Afterwards, at the wine & cheese function, a UC music professor buttonholed me. He wanted to talk to me about my playing of Eisler's Sonata. The cheese in my mouth went dry. He said "That was the most brilliant interpretation I've heard. It sounded so fresh, so new!" Well, yeah, half that music had never been played before, by me or anyone else.

Is there Brecht/Eisler/Weill in the music I write? I don't claim them as major influences, but years of study and immersion must have left some traces. My predilection for simplicity and directness is something I tend to attribute to my rock and roll roots, but it's a strong element in both Eisler's and Weill's music, and in Brecht's lyrics and drama. Maybe it's a combo of both Marx and Lennon - Yar yar yar.

Edward Albee and I Chat in NY

2010-09-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

Edward Albee will moderate while I and all the other creators of dramatic works for Playwrights Horizons will chat. Onstage, with you in the audience tossing questions our way. And we'll enlighten you about the mysteries of the creative process (maybe). I'll probably just mumble occasionally and nod my head sagely. I will try hard not to embarrass myself, even. 7:30pm, Mon Sept 13 at the Tribeca 92nd St. Y.

What do I know of Edward Albee? Well, I knew he was famous as the writer of the huge hit film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", but I was too young to see it (or understand it) when it came out in 1966. Ten years later, when I landed the job of music director for the unapologetically political "Epic West" (The Center for the Study of Bertolt Brecht), Edward Albee's name was often spat with contempt by the people in charge there. Heck, I was young and excited to be in this radical marxist environment (I'd grown up in a Goldwater/John Wayne household), but I didn't quite understand all the fine political distinctions being made. I didn't really understand Brecht. And I'd never even read Albee, so I always wondered what he'd done to get under their skin so much.

Ever since, whenever I hear Albee's name, I'm brought back to that time in my early 20's when I was trying to make sense of the world of Epic West. Their disdain of Albee was pretty silly - their strict Brechtian dogma did not result in very good theater after all (I could show you the reviews...). And the bits of Albee I've read in acting classes in the years since? I rather like them.

I've worked with the Brechtians. It was an interesting introduction to theater. Now it's time to chat with Mr. Albee.

"Two Hands" Rockets to #4 on the Charts - Sale-a-bration!

2010-08-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

When "Two Hands" was released last fall, I hired a radio promoter and sent out hundreds of copies to radio stations all over the continent. But the promoter disappeared with my money, and all the CDs I sent out went unopened, unheard, and unloved.

So this summer I hired a promoter who has an actual physical address (note: don't trust P.O. Boxes in the Cayman Islands), and I've sent out another few hundred CDs. This time the results are stunning. Stations around the world are playing it and loving it, and it zoomed to #4 on the New Age charts for the month of July!

In celebration, I'm having a sale calculated to get "Two Hands" into the ears, the minds, and yay, the very playlists of every man and woman who reads these words.

From now to the end of September, you can either download or get the CD version of "Two Hands" for a mere $8. Click Here for downloads, or Here for CDs. It's that simple.

Those of you who have already demonstrated your love of and belief in this beautiful music - I thank you. And I ask, nay, I exhort you to tell all your friends, acquaintances and yes, even your enemies about this music. You'll glow in the feeling that comes from sharing something good.

May autumn leaves pour gold upon you - Gunnar

They say the Neon Lights are Bright...

2010-06-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

...On Off-Broadway! It's official, the musical based on the life story of The Shaggs, "The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World", created by Joy Gregory, John Langs and Yours Truly, is headed for a major production that is at the pinnacle of Off-Broadway on fabled 42nd street - at Playwrights' Horizons, the people who brought you "Grey Gardens", "Floyd Collins", and Stephen Sondheim's "Assassins", and" Sunday in the Park with George". Co-producing with them for the first time is the esteemed New York Theatre Workshop, whose productions include "Rent" and "Bright Lights, Big City".

Hoo-boy, I can't wait to invite my mama to this show! But first, I have to finish writing it. Yes, I know, we've been working on it for 9 years, you'd think it would be finished by now, but I'm born to tinker, and there's just a few things that need fixing here and there. It's great, it's good to go, but if I gotta rent a tux to go to the opening night, I want to make sure everything in the show is polished to perfection. As I last wrote to you about this, we were just about to do a reading at Playwrights' Horizons in December. That reading went very well, and showed us places that needed work. We worked those places, and had another fine reading in April, where we found a few more things to work on, and also got a fire lit under a bunch of producers. After a couple months of shaking things out, New York Theatre Workshop came on board to co-produce, and now we're on track to a full production this coming spring.

You can read all about it in the New York Times, or the New York Post, or Playbill, or...

The rumors are all true.

Svetlana Village now on DVD/Download!

2010-05-07T10:48:00.000-07:00

In the fall of 2000, I traveled to Russia to make a documentary film about a farm that my brother had been working at for the previous 5 years. A Camphill Village, where half of the residents were disabled. I spent a couple weeks filming, and 10 months writing and editing, and then the film was released to good reviews and success. It was selected for the prestigious Ojai International Film Festival, and was picked up by the venerable Berkeley Fine Arts Theatre for a week long run. It played other film festivals and helped raise money for the Russian farm and village.

The film was also released on VHS (the format of the day), and many copies were sold, and local video stores in Berkeley displayed them proudly in their independent features library. But VHS, and independent theatres, are gone the way of the dinosaurs. We are just now witnessing the eclipse of DVD's and the dawn of downloading.

Svetlana Village: The Camphill Experience in Russia is now available on DVD and via download! Restored to the full digital glory which it was originally captured with! Own a DVD your family will cherish for generations, or instantly download it to your favorite viewing device! All proceeds from downloads and DVD sales go directly to Svetlana Village, so you can watch a good movie and do a good deed at the same time!

I'm still researching how to make the film available for free viewing (YouTube does not allow long films). If anyone has knowledge of places that will show the film online so it can be shared with an even larger audience, please let me know.

I'm Alive!!!

2010-04-13T10:54:00.001-07:00

I'm alive, baby. I'm vibrating at ultra-high frequencies, even. Below are 4 reasons why you haven't heard from me lately:

1. Rewrite of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World for another reading at Playwright's Horizons in late April. They're excited about the play, I'm excited about the rewrite, it's a lot of work.

2. Writing music and sound design for a new video game. It's great fun to go back and forth from writing music for a musical to writing music for a horror-genre video game. Variety is the spice of life.

3. The promoter I hired to get "Two Hands" to radio and press ran off with my money and left the project stranded. I'm filing legal papers against her (in case she tries to bamboozle YOU, her name is Kathryn Monohan - be warned!), and meanwhile gearing up to re-issue the CD with a different and much more reputable promoter. It's no small amount of work to launch a recording, and I've got to do it twice :(

4. I'm a stay-at-home dad with a wonderfully intensive boy to tend. I've got my hands full even if 1-3 above were not brewing, you know?

In further news, my 2001 film "Svetlana Village: The Camphill Experience in Russia" is now available on DVD and for download HERE. And, "Two Hands" is one of 5 nominees in the IMA's Vox Pop awards. Please cast your vote for "Two Hands" by rating it on my home page in the IMA widget. Just click on the stars!

I love the recording studio.

2010-01-13T12:16:00.001-08:00

I still feel a thrill every time I'm in a recording studio, with the huge consoles full of buttons, the mics, the speakers, the layers of glass between the control room and the recording space. I was pretty stoked my first few times in rather flea-bag 4-track studios, hearing my music with reverb on it, making it sound "just like on records". But I was jaw-droppingly transported when I first was in a top-notch studio (Russian Hill Recording, in San Francisco). The huge 2-inch tape decks, the quiet, the looming mic stands. All the photographs of the Beatles in the studio that I'd studied in my youth - that's what this was like. I'd finally arrived. This was my dream - even more than performing in a concert hall.

For many people, the sense of "this will only happen once, never to be repeated" is what they love about live performance. For me, the same thing is true in the studio. If it's not fresh in the studio, there's no way it will withstand the test of repeated listenings as a recording. You have to stay present, over and over, take after take, delivering the absolute best, liveliest performance you can. And that, to me, is every bit as challenging and exciting as a live performance. Just me and the microphone. And then, when the work is done, it's preserved forever, to be enjoyed over and over. I LOVE that.

Of course, there is no audience in the studio, no sense of love and reciprocity, no implied challenge of winning them over, no applause. So live performance does have some powerful and unique aspects that the studio can't deliver. I can dig that..

But, as in many areas of my life, I can get tired of doing the same thing on a routine basis. Performing in a long run of a play, or singing the same songs night after night... sometimes boredom starts to edge in. I know how to look for the ways of keeping a performance fresh and alive over the long haul (heck, I sang Psycho Killer over a thousand times, and rarely did it ever get stale for me.) But I tend to itch, yearning to move on. In the same vein, I've never been able to stay in a job for long. It's how I'm built.

Being in front of a microphone and exploring the moment and knowing that whatever I do will be captured is an ultimate high for me. And...when the work is done, I get to move on to something new. That's nice!

Happy New Year

2009-12-30T15:37:00.001-08:00

Here's a note of thanks for the year just past. Thanks for a son who is insatiably curious and who has a fantastic sense of humor. Thanks for a partner who also has a fantastic sense of humor, and is a polar opposite of me (and is thus a marvelous balancing force). Thanks for the elegant and soul-filling experience of recording "Two Hands" this past spring. Thanks for the energy to do the recording, and the fathering, and all the little chores that are a part of this life. Thanks for the support of fans, who allow me to make a living at what I love. Thanks for all the teachers and caregivers in my son's life.

While the year has presented many challenges, it was filled with much light, and I am grateful for it.

May we all be blessed with a good year to come.
Love, Gunnar.

My Romantic Tendencies

2009-11-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

I have always been a closet romantic. I enjoy the sentimental side of things.

As a pre-teen, listening to my little panasonic transistor radio every night late into the night, it was almost all love songs, and the music meant everything to me. (Not the love-song lyrics necessarily - I remembering recoiling in 10-year-old horror at the saccharine "La La La La La Means I Love you " by the DelFonics. But most love songs I blithely took in).

My teen years were simmered in Zappa, who sneered at love songs. I learned to sneer, too. I vowed never to write a sappy love song. I laughed at love songs, ha-ha!

Sure enough, in my writing for The Bobs, I kept love at arms length. Well, more than arm's length. And even when I thought I might try my hand at writing something romantic, it just didn't work for me. I was more comfortable being funny. Yet, I still wanted to write beautiful music. Even when the lyrics avoided romanticism, the music to my songs tended to be consonant, not acidic.

When I write for the theatre or for film, where one writes for a character or a situation, I am able to explore my romantic tendencies.

For I am a romantic. I love beauty for its own sake. In the past I loved music and art that was acrobatic and virtuosic and acerbic and anti-sentimental, but now I crave music and art that tries for beauty. I still like acerbic. I don't like grossly sentimental things. I'm bored by virtuosity. But I love good music. Honest music, I like to call it.

Two Hands? It's my first time giving in fully to my romantic side. It's not written for a play or a character or a commission - it's written to please myself. And St. Cecilia. And anyone who cares to listen in.

The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World LIVES!

2009-11-16T13:28:00.000-08:00

It's been a few years since The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World was produced. The legal problems which held it back were recently lifted, and an exciting developmental reading is slated for early December at Playwrights Horizons in NYC. I and my collaborators (Joy Gregory, playwright, John Langs, Director) met up in LA recently to look over our acclaimed musical. We came to it with fresh eyes and ears, and while we found many things to improve upon, the overall feeling was of exhilaration at having created such a fine piece of theatre. It's really good (he said with all humility). I'm currently spinning out new music for the reading. While the reading is not big enough to open up to the public, I can tell you that it sports a fantastic cast, including Tony Award Nominee Peter Friedman as Austin, Jamey Hood, Hedy Burress and Sarah Hays returning as the sisters, and broadway veterans Matt Doyle, Kevin Cahoun, Steve Routman and Anastasia Barzee filling out the cast. Returning as music director is the marvelous Aaron Gandy, leading a rocking band. This is, we hope, the first step towards a long run (Off-Broadway, anyone?)!

Recording Bandon at Skywalker (video)

2009-11-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

Here's another video taken from the recording session for "Two Hands". It's not the take that is on the CD (that take was not caught on camera). If you compare them you can hear the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in performance. This one has some nice moment (but the one on the CD is deeper and better).

This piece, "Bandon", is particularly poignant for me. In the summer of 1964, when I was nearly 8 years old, I took a two-week trip to visit my great aunt and uncle on their cranberry farm in Bandon, Oregon. All by myself (along with 18 or so passengers, and a very nice stewardess who had very red nails and gave me a pilot's wing pin), I flew up on a DC3 or DC8 or some such old plane. The visit was much more playful than the music suggests, yet this is the music of the memory: Fishing for trout with a spool of thread and a bent pin; the swimming hole with the zip line running from the cliff to the beach; driving a tractor with my uncle; arguments over Elvis vs. Beatles with the local tomboy (in her room lined with posters of the King); picking blueberries; and struggling to sit still while my Aunt Gunny (Gunhilde) painted a watercolor portrait of me. That portrait still hangs on the wall of my parents' house. It's titled "A Poor Attempt at the Beatle - 1964". I must have been a non-stop Beatlemaniac that summer. When they asked if I'd like a souvenir to bring home from the trip (they were probably thinking of one of the locally made toy models of fishing boats) I pulled them to the record shop, where they bought me "Meet the Beatles" - in Stereo! My smile couldn't have been bigger. Their puzzlement couldn't have been deeper (I recall they played nothing but soupy Henry Mancini in their house). Aside from the Beatles, my visit with them was one of the highlights of my elementary school years.

Our Amazing Brains (aka My Sony Tape Deck)

2009-11-04T13:53:00.001-08:00

When I was 15, a friend and I worked most of the summer painting my family's house. With the money I earned I bought a reel to reel tape recorder. It was one of my proudest and most useful possessions. Not only could I record my nascent songs, and experiment with sound-on-sound and varying the speeds (the wow when you played something back at 1 7/8 ips was REALLY cool), but at 3 3/4, I could put 2 entire LP's on one 'side' of the tape. 4 LP's on one 7 inch reel! it was an early form of piracy, before piracy was even an issue. But I was a poor teenager, LP's were expensive, and I could borrow records from my friends, tape them, and expand my musical library, while having to live with a modicum of tape hiss.

Here's the really cool part - I had always gone to sleep while listening to LP's. But you only got 20-25 minutes of music that way. But put a tape on, and you got 4 times that amount of music. And the music went deep into my brain, a kind of sleep teaching if you will. And even though my piracy was relatively cheap, tape still cost money, and my listening library was still very small (by today's standards). I listened to the music I had over and over and over.

I didn't realize how deeply this music was in my brain until recently, when I treated myself to a couple of recordings that I'd had on reel-to-reel, but hadn't heard since (the tape deck fell apart from constant use by the time I left for college).

One of the albums, Tower of Power's "East Bay Grease", I got a couple months ago. It was SO great to hear it again. It's a flawed record, but there's great stuff in it, too. I was a devoted fan of them when they first appeared on the scene, they gave a great live show, and I devoured their record when it came out. I've listened to it a few times over the past couple months. And then, while gardening in the back yard a few weeks back, I started humming the sax solo from "Back on the Streets Again". And I kept going. And I realized, I know every squeak and honk of that solo, and all the horns hits behind it. It's all in my brain, every moment of it! That shocked me.

And now, just the other day, I treated myself to "The Bill Evans Album", another recording I used to go to bed to night after night. I downloaded it, heard the first notes, and was instantly transported to my 16 year old self, the joy, excitement, and comfort of this music. I LOVE this album. And as it played on my computer, I realized I know every note of every solo. Especially the bass solos, I love humming Eddie Gomez's lines. But I know every stab and comp of Bill's too. This music is deep inside me. I thought I'd forgotten it. But hearing it just once brings it all back instantly. Aren't our brains amazing?

All in Three Quarter Time

2009-10-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

Here's something you might not have noticed: All the music on "Two Hands" is in 3/4 time.

I didn't really plan it that way. I did have it in my mind to someday do a follow up to "Spinning World: 13 Ways of Looking at a Waltz ", and so my sketchbooks of ideas did have a lot of 3/4 time pieces. But for "Two Hands" I did not want to be constrained in any way, so I wrote and rehearsed and even recorded some pieces in other time signatures. But none of those pieces fit on the final album. They stood out awkwardly, interrupted the flow of the CD. And some of them are really really good compositions (they will someday see the light).

Even though the music is all in 3/4, "Two Hands" does not feel whirly, or light-headed. Very few of the pieces are played in strict tempo, and those that are ("Oak Sky" for example), are more moody and insistent than danceable. This is not a CD about dancing. it's a CD of mood and emotion - in any way or form. It just happens to be in 3/4 time.

Desert Rocks and Gunnar - the Connection?

2009-10-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

Rob Jenkins - master of the lens.

None of us involved in putting "Two Hands" together can explain why Rob's photo (of the mysterious rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley) seemed the perfect compliment to my solo piano music. It just was. We considered lots of other cover ideas, but none was as soulful and complete.

Rob is a charming and amazing guy (you should see the complex shadow-box creations he's made for his wife!), and when he takes a camera into his hands, it dances and finds the moments that beg to be recorded. His nature photography (like on the cover of "Two Hands") is elegant and fresh. His portraiture, especially of kids, is remarkable for its honesty and simplicity and, again, elegance. I know of no other photographer who is so adept at revealing the complex emotions of those fleeting glances that children have. His sense of color is startling, and he frames everything with a true artist's eye. Check out the work on his site RobJenkinsPhotography.com. He's in NYC.

Marie Antoinette & Gunnar - The connection?

2009-10-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

I've known Kent Sparling, the producer of "Two Hands", since he was a young man. I've known his music since he was a teenager.

Back in the early 80's I had a few piano students, and one of them was a wonderful teenage girl. She gave me a tape of her boyfriend's band, Riis Spargo. Yeah, okay, your boyfriend's band, sure, I'll listen...

But it was GOOD. I played that little cassette over and over.

Years later, I hooked up with her boyfriend - Kent Sparling. He was in a monoprint class that my wife was taking (Yes, he's one of those multi-talented types). We became friends. I played keyboards sometimes in his follow-up band, Eyeland. Kent is a wonderful carpenter/electrician, and together with a craftsman pal of his helped us build the studio where I've done much of my work over the past decade.

But besides being a visual artist and a songwriter and experimental musician and electrician and craftsperson, Kent had another dream - to work at George Lucas' Skywalker Sound. To get there, he moved to Vancouver, BC, where he apprenticed in the sound for film world. His experiences there filled out his resume, and he returned to the bay area and knocked on the door at Skywalker, and they hired him.

Nowadays, besides being a visual artist/experimental musician/etc., he's also a highly respected and sought-after mixer for films. He's done many of the the foreign language versions of Star Wars, he helped sink the Titanic, he's mixed a ton of films including some knockout ones you've seen and heard, like "Lost in Translation", "Adaptation" and "The Virgin Suicides" and, yes, "Marie Antoinette". And then, he makes his own wonderful, ethereal/trippy music using state-of-the-art retro synthesizers. And he does his own cover art. And he wired his own studio. And, (how lucky can I be?), he's produced 3 of my CDs along the way. More on Kent at his website.

Miles Davis and Gunnar - What's the connection?

2009-09-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

Janet Boye Jenkins is the creator of the glorious design for Two Hands. It is by no means her first CD cover. Straight out of Pratt Institute (where she was my wife's irrepressible roommate) she went to work for Elektra records, where she designed dozens of discs. From there she went on to Sony where she designed yet more fantastic CD covers - Her design for the Miles Davis Quintet 1965-1968 Box Set on Columbia was nominated for a Grammy. She went on to design for a variety of other labels, before branching out and working at Nike and Sesame Workshop. I was able to lure her back into the music business for this project :)

As a young child, Janet was into crafts. Graphic design was a logical career step. But her inspiration comes from many places: listening to architects talk about their work; evocative movies titles; walking in NYC and Tokyo. She says "I once saw an Alexander Calder show that blew me away, he just never seemed to stop creating. This is so not me but it is inspiring, the idea of creating without needing everything to be a perfectly complete piece."

Some of her favorite jobs? In the music business, she claims that I am fun to work with, and loved Keb Mo because he was such a pleasure. "He let you do your job. And he had enough success that the label allowed it." One of her favorite Nike projects was working on a beautiful retail space in Kyoto, which "allowed me to be in Kyoto during Cherry Blossom season. How could I not love that :-)"

Recording Nino and Me (video)

2009-09-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

I did not wish a camera crew to intrude on the intimate, sequestered recording process of "Two Hands", but we did set up a stationary camera to capture some of the proceedings. Here is an alternate take of Nino and Me, played by just me (if you look very closely, you can catch the shade of Nino sitting on my shoulder). Click the rectangle in the lower right to enlarge to full screen, or click on the YouTube logo just above that to watch it on YouTube. The audio is from the video camera, so it is not full quality :)

2009-09-09T10:12:00.001-07:00

A solo piano recording? From the singer Gunnar Madsen?

Piano is really my main instrument. I taught myself guitar and piano from the age of 15, and then started classical piano lessons at the age of 17 (practicing 4 hours a day), then went to UC Berkeley as a music major, where I took both classical and jazz piano lessons. I sang in the choir at UC because it was required, and while I enjoyed singing, I never took lessons. I was primarily a composer and a pianist.

By starting The Bobs, I did not intend to leave piano behind. But, of course, the Bobs success led me towards singing more and more, and left me with little time for piano playing. (And with all that singing I got serious and started taking singing lessons.)

Before the Bobs, I was doing quite a bit of work as a pianist. My skill set is limited, but I dove in head first to just about any job...

While a sophomore at UC, a professor gave me a score to the Brecht/Eisler play "The Measures Taken" and encouraged me to arrange it and music direct a local production. I had no idea what I was doing, but the show became a huge success nonetheless. Based on its success, I was employed as the music director of the newly-minted center for the study of Bertolt Brecht, "Epic West". I continued to learn on the job, about theatre, about Brecht, about arranging, about actors. It was all rather intellectual for my tastes, but I was grateful for all the experience.

When the noted interpreter of Brecht/Eisler songs, Ina Wittich, came from East Germany to give a California tour (1981 or so), I was recommended as the local Brechtian expert. Hah! One of my rules of life is to almost never say no to a job, so of course I said yes, and became her accompanist for the next two weeks.

Eisler's songs are pretty easy, and Ina croaked them out in a Lotte Lenya kind of way. Piece of cake. But for our performance at UC San Diego, she wanted me to play Eisler's Sonata for Piano. It's dissonant and difficult technically. After 2 weeks of intense practice, I still was nowhere near having it. Onstage at Mandeville Hall in San Diego, in front of 900 or so people, I flailed my way through it, making up parts and then picking up the real notes where I could. After the show, at a wine and cheese deal, a music professor buttonholed me. He looked at me very seriously, and said that my 'interpretation' of the sonata was the absolute best he'd ever heard. Well, he certainly heard the piece as it had never been heard before :)

With the plum job of accompanying the diva of East Germany under my belt, I started to get other piano playing jobs. I got a gig playing for a semi-famous Broadway vocal teacher. Lots of private lessons, lots of practice transposing at sight (I could, at the time, play "Memories", a big hit at the time, up or down any number of half-steps). But I was fudging my way, using the chord symbols to get the basics, and reading only some of the notes.

This teacher took me with her to teach a master class at UC Davis. A student put an intricate version of "I Could Have Danced All Night" in front of me. No chord changes - just thousands of fly specks! And she wanted it down a minor third - Aughghggh!!! I was freaking. This was not like faking my way thru the Eisler sonata in San Diego, these were notes that everyone would recognize. Everyone but me, that is, because I had only a fuzzy idea of the song, so faking it was beyond me. Uhhh...I played it, but I somehow grokked it was a waltz, so I was comping chords in 3/4. The student was totally lost, and stopped me. The teacher was puzzled - she thought I knew how to play, and how to read music. I'd fooled her for a whole year before she found out what a charlatan I am when it comes to reading music!

Apologies for CD Baby problems

2009-09-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

Some of you have had problems trying to order from CDBaby this summer - they're the company that have, for years, provided such excellent service for people buying CDs from my website. Well, they were recently bought by another company, and it appears, from the anecdotal evidence, that they've fired everyone that used to work there and have hired one person to work weekends to replace them. It's a shame. I'm hoping they'll get it together, and I'll let you know if/when they do. I'm so sorry for any problems you've had. I recommend for now that you buy your music from Amazon or your local trusted store (if you have one) or whatever your favorite music outlet is (you can get my music just about anywhere, you know - Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.)

Jobs I've Had

2009-08-07T17:22:00.000-07:00

I find it reassuring when I read of someone successful that I admire, and find that they've had a series of 'normal' jobs and lived a pretty much 'normal' life before they found their success. It should be self-evident, that successful people are not born full-fledged successful from the brow of some god, but I can get jealous or envious, thinking that somehow they've been blessed with a special life. I recently read, and loved, Steve Martin's biography "Born Standing", where his slow rise to the top is warmly and honestly told. Yes, magic eventually happened, but it came after years and years of hard work and more or less 'regular' life. So, in the spirit of Steve Martin, or humanity in general: Here are my jobs and experiences. Just in case any of you were thinking that my successes, such as they are, were just handed to me on a silver platter. (Although I must say, I do feel very lucky and very grateful for the life I've been given).

Cutting apricots
Selling YMCA peanuts door-to-door
Paperboy sub
Babysitting
Recycling Center
Garbage Man
Record store clerk
Dishwasher in Fraternity
Custodian
Practice Room Clerk, Concert Hall Guard
Dishwasher (1 afternoon)
Sheet Music Store Clerk
Singing Telegrams
Music Teacher
Piano Accompanist
Video Store clerk (assistant manager, even!)
Music Director/Composer for dozens of theatre productions
Jingle Singer
Actor/Singer/Performer
Jingle Writer
Composer for dance, film, TV, radio, etc.
Filmmaker
Composer for Video Games (Atari, etc.)

Cutting apricots. Age 8-9. Yuch! Lots of worms, lots of cuts on my fingers, 50 cents per 4x8 foot tray. I probably netted 10 cents an hour (I was slow and un-motivated).

Selling YMCA peanuts door-to-door, age 10. I would rather cut apricots! I HATE selling!

Paperboy sub (2 weeks), age 10. I don't think I was a particularly lazy kid, but getting up at 5am for those 2 weeks was murder. I had always envied kids with paper routes. This job ended my envy forever.

Babysitting, age 13-18. Now this was work I could enjoy! 50 cents an hour for playing with some kids for an hour, then putting them to bed and either practicing my guitar for a few hours or listening my way through the family's record collection. Not bad!

Recycling Center, age 13-24. My dad ran the Palo Alto Sanitation Company, and somehow it was legal to hire young kids to work at the recycling center at the Palo Alto dump. I was one of the lucky ones. I liked the work, really hard and sweaty, and it paid pretty well. My weekends were usually spent working. And later, hungry for work after college, a friend of mine ran the El Cerrito recycling center and hired me there, where I ran truck routes and got my forklift driver's license.

Garbage Man, age 18. My dad set the rule that his boys would work for one week as a garbage man, a kind of rite of passage to prove one's manhood and know what real work was. He also refused to pay for any kind of higher education (except Chiropractor College - go figure!). So, I went beyond the rite of passage and worked full time as a garbage man, saving up enough ($3,000) to pay for my first year at UC Berkeley. I worked until my back gave out, then moved on to retail...

Record store clerk, Banana suit, age 18. Working in a record store, a dream come true! Half my money went to buying records at wholesale price, so it didn't contribute much to my college fund, but it increased my record collection substantially. Also provided my first paid job as an actor: The store was called Banana Records, and they had a huge foam banana suit that I would dress in and wave to passerby on El Camino, enticing them to either buy records or go elsewhere and buy a banana split.

Dishwasher in Fraternity, age 18. $3,000 for a year of college ain't much, even in 1974 dollars, so I worked where I lived that first year, Pi Lambda Phi. I was a good dishwasher, and it kept my fingers limber for piano playing!

Custodian, age 19-20. Moved into an apartment for the summer with my good friend Dan Phipps. He had a cush job as a custodian at UC - like $10 hour! These were jobs that were usually reserved for high-profile athletes and other anointed ones, but I pestered the hiring guy so persistently that he gave in and hired me for the summer.

Practice Room Clerk, Concert Hall Guard, age 20-22. Another great couple of jobs. In order to use the practice rooms in the music department, you had to sign out a key. Various students were hired to watch over the keys and the rooms. You could get in a LOT of chatting while sitting in that chair! And, being the guard at Hertz Hall meant having the keys to the hall, letting in famous visiting musicians for rehearsal (Beaux Arts Trio, Tokyo String Quartet, etc.), listening to them rehearse while doing homework, then locking up. If you just happened to be a pianist and the piano just happened to be needing to be put away, you could while away some time playing the 9 foot Boesendorfer or Steinways...

Dishwasher (1 afternoon). age 22. Fresh out of college, I had a vague notion that waiters made good money, and that being a waiter would be a good way to get by until I figured something else out. I dressed in my best clothes and went from restaurant to restaurant one morning, ready to sell my talents. Everyone wanted someone with experience. But, one manager looked me up and down and asked if I had experience dishwashing. I sure did! He handed me an apron and set me to work. Here's a tip - washing dishes for a fraternity is very different than washing dishes during a very busy lunch hour in a restaurant. Believe me. I ruined my best shoes and pants, and got $20 and a stern look that said they never wanted to see me near their dishes again.

Sheet Music Store Clerk, age 22. In a musty shop, where all the sheet music was kept behind the counter in rows of SteelCase file cabinets, I revisited the retail workforce. It had none of the glamour of a record store, it was sometimes hard to stay awake.

Singing Telegrams age 22-24. My dream job. I dressed up in a bellboy outfit and was sent out to sing to people at home, at work, at restaurants, at parties, wherever. Sometimes there'd be hours between telegrams, and I'd stop in at a local library to read, or read a book at a local park. I LOVED the improvisatory aspect, where even though you knew the song you were going to be singing, every circumstance was new and unknown. Some recipients were deeply embarrassed (and I had to somehow make it easy on them), some wanted to take over the show (and I'd have to muscle them out of the spotlight), sometimes you are singing to someone alone at home, sometimes you have to take over a whole sports bar and make them be quiet. I just loved it.

Music Teacher (private piano, Crowden School) age 23-26- present. I've taught in short spurts over the years. I absolutely love turning people on to music, exploring it with them, finding new ways of reaching people with music. But I also tend to burn out quickly. So I teach when the mood grabs me. I just finished two years of teaching choir at my sons school. It was great. Now I need a rest!

Piano Accompanist age 22-26. Sight reading is a challenge for me, but I can read chord symbols and basic rhythms and thus fake my way through most broadway fare (especially if I've heard it before). So I worked for a time for some voice teachers, and learned much of the broadway songbooks. My biggest faux pas? Playing for a master class in UC Davis, and someone put "I Could Have Dance All Night" in front of me. Original score, no chord symbols. I thought I knew it, some kind of waltz, isn't it? So I plowed right in. The singer was totally lost. It is not, I learned, a waltz. Poor singer...

Video Store clerk (assistant manager, even!) age 23-24. The singing telegram company I worked for was going out of business, and I found good work at a video rental store. Got to take home a VCR and all the movies whenever I wanted, and spent my days hanging out and talking about movies with other movie fans. Low pay, but great benefits!

Music Director/Composer for dozens of theatre productions age 20-present. A dear professor in college got me hooked into arranging and writing music for theatre, and I got all kinds of great experience, taking any job that came along and claiming I could do anything (and then learning how to do anything while on the job). It's still the way I work, basically. AND, this got me into an appreciation of and love of acting and performing.

Jingle Singer age 26-present. I'm rather out of the loop these days, but when jobs come up for talented singers, why, I'm available. There were some busy days back in the late 80's and early 90's, when there was a fair amount of advertisement in SF, and when they used singers for everything from Hondas to detergents.

Actor/Singer/Performer age 25-present. I got bitten by the theatre bug when I was music directing a lot in the late 70's and early 80's, and longed to be more in the spotlight. To that end, I started the Bobs, and studied method acting for 4 solid years. The stage is a place where I feel comfortable and free. And I love having an audience.

Jingle Writer (one only) age 29. Whereas I had no problem singing the praises of cattle for the National Beef Council, I found it almost physically painful to write music for commercials. I wish I could have found a way to enjoy it, for the money is useful and very good. But I only eked out one (for H2O, a Pepsi brand of bottled water).

Composer for dance, film, TV, radio, etc. age 26-present. I feel like I'm talented in many ways, but the easiest skill and task for me is composing. Lyrics? Kinda hard to squeeze them out. Writing? Difficult. Performing? A thrill, but hard work. Composing? Sure, sometimes it's work, but it most often feels effortless, and thrilling to see what comes through me.

Filmmaker (for my dad's garbage company, later for Svetlana) age 40-present. I was hungry, poor, in debt, and my father, who used to own and run the garbage company in Palo Alto, offered to pay me to make a series of training videos for his company. I learned a lot about filmmaking in the process. After that, I studied screen writing, and even wrote a screenplay or 2. Then, the farming community my brother was working at in Russia needed someone to make a documentary of their work to help them do fundraising. I jumped at the chance for adventure. It was 3 weeks of adventure traveling and filming. And then 10 months chained to a chair in front of a computer, editing the film. Maybe again someday...

Composer for Video Games (Atari, etc.) age 38-present. I was pretty down-and-out financially in the mid-nineties, and my prospects for employment were grim. A degree in music just don't go that far in the marketplace. But lo, via a friend of a friend, I heard that Atari games was looking for a composer. I applied, and even though I had no computer skills at all, they liked my skills as a composer, and hired and trained me. The first 6 months were learning programming and the arcane way of writing for their hardware (these were coin-op games). I'm SO grateful for everything I learned there. And I enjoyed the challenges of writing for video games. The musical needs of the game, the aurally assaultive environment of the video arcade, having to fit all the music on one tiny 128k chip. Kind of like writing for a string quartet. Or an acapella quartet :)

Best $10 I Ever Spent

2009-07-29T12:27:00.001-07:00

There are things, little things, little manufactured things, that I am grateful for every day. They are, like, miracles. They make life so much easier. And none of them require you to win the lottery to enjoy them. Some of my favorites:

Curved shower curtain rod ($40). Our bathroom is tiny, a one-person-at-a-time affair. We dream of someday remodeling our house and making our bathroom more spacious. But that would require winning the lottery. In the meantime, I bought a curved shower curtain rod. When you're in the shower (over the tub), it gives you a mere 5-6 inches of elbow room, but it feels like heaven.

Soft-close toilet seat ($40). Speaking of bathrooms, when our old toilet began leaking and had to be replaced, a plumber friend insisted we go with a Toto toilet. They come with a 'soft close' seat. Meaning, the seat never falls down with a bang. It gently closes - always. Paradise!

Butler software ($18). For the mac. Spotlight has taken on most of its functions, but for years it was simply the best thing I'd ever spent money on, computer-wise. Utopia!

TypeItForMe software ($18?) Again, for the mac. I just make up shortcuts for typing things (like typing "gm" for Gunnar Madsen) and voila! I use it ALL the time. Zion!

Plastic key color-code thingies ($0.25) - What a simple, unadulterated joy to take out my key ring, and know what each key goes to, because I splurged on these little color plastic doohickeys. Shangri-la!

Phone headset ($12) - My neck was getting sore, my arm was getting sore just holding the phone up to my ear. Then I bought a panasonic headset to plug into my work phone. Now, now soreness, and I can waltz around the room, dusting, doing small chores while talking. I bought one for the house, and now we all use the headset. It might seem like a small hassle to put it on (and it is) but once it's on, it's manna.

Enidicia postage ($16/month) - If you run your own business, say a record company, and you're mailing off packages all the time, this program is just fantastic. For years I used a postage meter, and that was too complicated - putting postage in, buying the expensive inks, etc. Now, it just prints out from my regular printer. Rapture!

GPS ($99) - It's not so very cheap, but way worth the money. Especially when you're on vacation or a business trip, this little thing GETS you there. Magical. Transporting. Ecstatic.

Dads in Uniforms

2009-05-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

Coming from the library the other day I passed by our local uniform store. Pleated, boring cotton/poly blend workclothes and uniforms were awkwardly displayed behind barred windows. And I suddenly felt comforted.

Comforted? I've always hated uniforms. I never wanted to join the boy scouts, 'cause I would have had to wear a uniform. The military? I have some moral qualms about it, but I think my biggest problem would have been having to wear a uniform.

And then I thought: Milkman, Baseball Player, Garbageman, Fireman, Policeman. The uniforms tells the job. There's no ambiguity. It's comforting.

And then I thought: My father ran a garbage company since the time I was 4. He came home every evening in his uniform. My relationship with my dad was not simple or easy, yet when anyone asked what he did, the answer was simple: He's a garbageman.

Some kids' fathers wore suits to work, and there was no way of telling what they did. It was unsettling - "He's an accountant." "He's a professor." ." He's a stockbroker." The words were vague, the jobs were vague, what did they possibly DO in their suits? They all got on the train to San Francisco, they never sweated, so what did they DO?

I heard an interview with the daughter of Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls) recently. As a girl, she didn't know what his work was. She saw her father pacing around a room, running over to the piano to plunk notes, muttering under his breath for hours on end. What kind of job was that? What could she possibly tell her friends?

Well, I'm afraid my son may have the same conundrum. I'm going to go over to the uniform store today and see if I can't find a uniform that says "Composer". It might provide comfort to him for me to wear such a thing. Heck, it might provide comfort for me.

Gout? From an MRI?

2009-05-21T13:17:00.001-07:00

A year ago, while I was out jogging, I had a strange episode. Coming to a cross street, I glanced to the right to check for traffic, and just then I lost a piece of time. It was just a fraction of a second, I didn't even come close to stumbling, but it was a strong sense of "Where did I just go?" It was trippy, cool, a little unsettling, but I just kept jogging. Then, 30 seconds later, it happened again. That wasn't so trippy, that was a little scary.

That got me to contact a doctor, and a preliminary EKG suggested a small heart attack. So, I underwent a barrage of tests: a stress test, another EKG, Carotid artery scan, heart scan, and an MRI. According to all the tests, I'm in great health, nothing discernible to be concerned about, no heart attack, brain looks like it should be firing on all 2 cylinders.

A week or so after all these tests, my thumbs began really hurting. I couldn't remember injuring them, I hadn't been doing a lot of computer work, but they both hurt tremendously whenever I tried to do a pinching motion. Helping Quinn with Lego's was impossible. Lots of things were impossible. I went to a hand therapy center, and we did weeks and weeks of acupuncture and therapy, but my recovery was very slow. My entire summer was proscribed - no boogie boarding, riding a bicycle hurt my thumbs, everything hurt.

In the fall, my sister, who is an MD and anthroposophical doctor, saw me and gave me an injection which gave me the first relief from thumb pain in 5 months. It was great! I had to learn to give myself injections, but it was worth it. My local doctor, who also knows anthroposophical medicine, commented that the injections she prescribed were for gout, and that gout attacks the thumbs and toes.

Gout? Isn't that one of those ancient Elizabethan complaints? What the heck is gout? I looked on the web, read up on it. One of the triggers for it, apparently, is the dyes they inject when you have an MRI. Whoa. Sure, they gave me a phone-book sized sheaf of papers to sign before I did my MRI, and I'm pretty good about reading through anything before I sign it, but if it mentioned gout I must have missed it.

My thumbs hurt only mildly now, I'm grateful for the medicines my sister gave me. But be aware, that seemingly non-invasive things like MRIs can have strange and sometimes big consequences.

Scat Attack

2009-05-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

Back in December, my pal Tito Uquillas, who has a hip rock group for kids called The Hipwaders, asked if I'd do a guest vocal on his upcoming EP release "Goodie Bag". I love Tito and his band's work, they have a real groove goin' on. Tito digs Captain Beefheart and other 'other' musical genres, and it all bubbles up into the stuff he's doing.

So, he came over to my studio and had me improvise a bunch of scatting over the tracks for his song "Goodie Bag". It was a blast, and in an hour we had some pretty cool-sounding vocals. Here's my part:

The Titan of Tenors? The Gepetto of Falsetto? I'm happy with those monikers...

2009-05-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

I feel like a king. A good king. I had such a royal time recording at Skywalker Sound. When you drive through the gate, your jaw drops at the beauty of the place, the rolling green hills, longhorn cattle chewing grass, hawks circling above. Nestled against a hillside of olive trees and surrounded by grapevines is what appears to be a 150 year old building, some kind of huge barn of stone and wood. You walk through the doors, and the smell of fermenting grapes is noticeably absent. Something's different, off. Go through a few sets of double doors, and you're in heaven - If you love recording, that is. The smell of quality electronics giving off their heat, metal and plastic and glass, that's the smell in here. Yes, fermenting grapes or aging cheese is a 'better' smell, but if you love recording studios as much as I do, that technical smell can be quite heady, too. Through the huge wall of glass, you can see it -Acoustic Nirvana. A huge room the size of concert hall, made expressly for recording. It's a 5 minute walk just to get to the piano sitting in the middle of it. A lovely piano, fit for a king. Polished, gleaming, every note tuned perfectly, the pedals operating effortlessly and soundlessly, the keys giving way as if they were in love with your fingers. You sit. The red light turns on, you play. You play again, the red light glows red, you play and play and play, losing track of time. Eventually, your stomach tells you it's time to eat something. Reluctantly, you pull yourself away from the piano, and walk out the doors...

Hawks circle, cows chew grass, it's peaceful and beautiful. This is not a parking lot in Burbank blanketed by a brown hazy sky. This is paradise.

So, apart from feeling like I'd spent a few days at a five-star resort, I also got some great work done. I had prepared, and we were able to record everything in 2 long days. I'm now editing the takes (some pieces are one-take wonders, others will benefit from a bit of slicing and dicing) and working up the song order for the CD and writing the liner notes and etc. The CD will be done by this summer, as promised, but due to the exigencies of distribution, it won't be in stores and downloadable until late summer or fall.

Santa Cruz Concert Saturday!

2009-04-09T12:36:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break from practicing to REMIND you of my first solo concert in over 4 years: This Saturday at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz. April 11, 4pm. I'll be performing songs from "I'm Growing" (for the 1st time ever) and from my entire catalog of musical stuff. The Show is geared towards kids (that's why it's at 4pm) but, like all my shows, it's really for EVERYBODY. So get yourself to Santa Cruz, enjoy that wonderful town with it's wonderful ocean, and grab a rare concert appearance by yours truly. I will LOVE seeing you there!

BTW, the recording sessions at Skywalker were marvelous - we recorded 18 pieces in 2 days, and everything just felt right. We'll be editing and mixing over the next month or so, and it really should be out by early summer.

Yours, Gunnar

1st Concert in 4 years, Piano Fingers on Fire!

2009-03-22T17:52:00.001-07:00

I've been sequestered, not pestered, alone with me and a piano for weeks now. For a few hours a day at least. Then it's time to pick up our son from school and do daddy time. I mentioned a couple months ago that I was gearing up to record an album of solo piano pieces, and it's all coming together. I've researched pianos and studios around the bay area, and settled on the concert Yamaha at Skywalker Sound, on their scoring stage. Lush, baby. My good friend Kent Sparling will be producing. We've decided to record 18 pieces, and 3 of them will have violin on them as well (played by the wonderful Irene Sazer).

Also on deck is my first solo performance in years - at one of my favorite places to play, the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz. April 11, 4pm. A show for the whole family (geared towards kids, enjoyable for all). So, in addition to practicing the piano for the upcoming recording sessions, I'm dusting off my guitar and voice, and playing through old favorite songs and working up some new ones for the upcoming concert. It feels like spring!

Cock-a-doodle-doo! love, Gunnar

The Ultimate Rejection Letter

2009-03-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

I used to dream of being on a major label. When I was with The Bobs we dreamed of it, and held out for a few years, waiting for the offer that never came. (That's one reason there was such a long wait between our 1st and 2nd releases). When I left The Bobs and 'went solo', I was still pretty green as a songwriter and singer, and my demos from back then are, in retrospect, not great -The major labels were wise to pass on me. But I had chutzpah, and I sent my demos out in the world with confidence in my talents. I was going for a major label deal!

Some people in the record industry were kind, and recognized my potential while politely declining a contract. A few were more brash and brutal in their dismissal, and most simply didn't return phone calls. But one guy in particular sent a form letter that purported to help me (and countless others) figure out what was 'wrong' with their music.

So nice of Tom to offer his assistance!

Performing as Catharsis

2009-02-16T18:26:00.001-08:00

I was watching Janis Joplin in "Festival Express" recently. She was cathartic. I don't think she knew how to hold anything back. Performing for her seemed like an all-or-nothing thing. I was thinking how other blues singers "know" that they're putting on a show. They're not faking it, but they know it's a show, they save a bit of themselves, in the best sense. They deliver the message without hurting themselves irreparably. I get the feeling Janis was really going through hell up there, even if the release and catharsis felt good to her.

Performance used to be catharsis for me, too. If I didn't go through something real, if it didn't somehow hurt, then it hadn't felt or been real. I needed to break through, or break, something. Performing was about salvation, breaking myself so that I could be real. I had no other way of being true to me.

Nowadays, performance for me is about being present, being real. I no longer have to go through primal therapy onstage. I don't have to sweat to be a good performer, tear my vocal chords raw or make my fingers bleed. And I'm not knocking what I used to do, those days had a special something to them. What would rock and roll be without sweat? And I don't mean to say I hold back now. I simply take care of myself. I give from a quieter place. I feel like now I "give" more, whereas before the performance was about me gaining release, and appreciation. Now it's about giving of myself to an audience.

I went to a harpsichord recital a couple weeks ago, Davitt Moroney at UC Berkeley. He has chops to burn, one of the most respected harpsichordists in the world. But there was no flash on display, no pyrotechnics, nothing virtuosic. He attended to the music, he made it clear, and he had tremendous patience, giving each note all the time it needed to sing out. The attention to what the music needed was stunning. I suppose that's more of where I'm at these days. My "Janis" days are behind me. Now I aspire to the kind of musicality of a Davitt Moroney. Rock and roll, baroque music, it's all music, eh? I would love to witness some sweaty, cathartic Baroque music - that would be pretty damn cool.

New Year, New Hope, New Stuff...

2009-01-29T14:38:00.000-08:00

I promised in my last blog entry, some time back, that I would be working on new piano instrumental pieces. I have been, eagerly, and I'm very pleased with the results. All I need now is a few weeks of practice time before I can get them all recorded. Which won't happen til February, most likely. Because I've got a few other fish to fry:

Over the past year I've been talking with novelist Barbara Quick, author of "Vivaldi's Virgins", about a musical adaptation of her book. We hadn't gotten anywhere substantial on the project, but I had some thoughts about how it might work, using Vivaldi's music to construct songs that would work in the context of a musical. Yeah, I know, Vivaldi's music is already pretty good, why mess with it? Well, because I'm just not into Opera, and that's the genre that Vivaldi's vocal music falls into. And, I don't really have an interest in just compiling a bunch of Vivaldi's music. It's just not my bag. But the idea of using his music as a springboard into writing new material is intriguing to me.

By a grand stroke of good fortune, we find ourselves enrolled in the Theatreworks Writer's Retreat this month. They put us up for a week, provide us with singer/actors, and we pound out ideas and try them out. A week of solid work should reveal to me whether or not my ideas of adapting Vivaldi's music will work. I'm excited about it. And I'm very much enjoying listening to the wealth of great music that Vivaldi has written. Don't worry, I don't PLAN on ruining it :)

I rented a FANTASTIC movie recently...

Jazz on a Summer's Day - A documentary film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and the America's Cup that went on concurrently. A documentary, you say? Snooze-ola. Of Jazz? Double snooze-ola. Au contraire, my friends. I confess, I like jazz. I rented it for myself, and it took ME a while to get around to putting it in the DVD player. As I did, I apologized to my wife, saying "you probably won't like this, but I'm curious to watch just a bit of it, okay...?". From the first moment, we were hooked. The images are stunning, like Richard Avedon portraits come to life. And while it takes place at a jazz festival, and there's lots of fine and fantastic performances therein (a young and un-guarded Chuck Berry, a stunning Anita O'Day), half of the film is of the audience, all caught unawares, and all tremendously fascinating. It's one of the most beautiful and unique films I've ever seen. I guarantee it.

New Piano Works in the works

2008-11-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I got a case of pneumonia. NOT the rockin' pneumonia. Just the too-tired-to-get-outta-bed-and-my-lungs-hurt pneumonia. A shot of rhythm and blues did not, alas, cure it.

But as I slowly began to recover, I spent some time at the piano. Just 10 minutes at a time, then back to bed. I still didn't have the energy to confront emails or serious business, but I did have the energy to languidly noodle at the piano for short stretches. It was midwinter, I was really sick, and I enjoyed writing pieces that expressed the mood. I recorded these pieces on my little voice recorder, and later transcribed the ones worth keeping.

I added them to a folio of instrumental pieces that I'd been intending to record someday, a kind of follow-up to Spinning World: 13 Ways of Looking at a Waltz.

The folio sat on the shelf for a couple years while I busied myself with yet further education in "how to be a father". The folio continued ripening on the shelf, while my first major creative act since the birth of my son turned out to be recording and releasing of "I'm Growing" (in 07-08).

Only now, this fall, has that folio of material tugged at me for attention. I opened it up, and liked many of the pieces there. It got me in a mood, and I wrote a bunch more pieces. The idea of recording a follow up to Spinning World: 13 Ways of Looking at a Waltz had seemed daunting - It's a lot of work to score all that music for an ensemble, and it costs money to hire the musicians and rent the studio. But, I suddenly reasoned, why not just do a solo piano recording? It's cheap - Free, even, if I record it at home on the 1927 Knabe I inherited from my grandmother.

So, I set up some mics, and settled into practicing and then recording some of the waltzes. I'm very excited, the music is, if I do say so myself, and, heck, who else is going to say so since no one else has heard it, beautiful. Was that a sentence? Never mind. I really like what I've written, and I like the way I play them.

My piano is a decent, solid piano. Not a gorgeous piano, but a nice, upstanding kind of piano citizen. Hearing it in a recording, as a solo instrument, I have my doubts about whether it will be good enough. I want to hear a better piano. But I've got an emotional attachment to it. My grandmother's father bought it for her back in 1927, and letters from my Grandfather at the time were full of warm appreciation for his wife's constant playing of it. At the time of my grandmother's death, in the mid 80's, the piano had spent 25 years in the enclosed patio in her back yard. It was a mess. I had it totally restored and refinished. All the instrumentals I've composed were composed on this piano. It's a rare thing to hear music performed on the exact instrument that it was composed on. The limitations of the piano itself inspire me to play in certain registers and use certain voicings. A different instrument would inspire other music, other keys.

I may end up finding a better piano to record on. My inner jury is still out on that. But I'm really enjoying practicing and burnishing these pieces, many of which were still unfinished, and finding the structure that they call for.

I'm hoping to be able to post some of them in the coming weeks, to get feedback from my friends around the world as to which pieces move you, and why. It'll be fun to share the music while it's being made. A CD will come, hopefully in Spring of 09.

Tibetan Book of Balding

2008-10-12T13:27:00.000-07:00

When you start to go bald, you face yourself squarely. You didn't cause it, you didn't earn it. It is not retribution or karma. It is simply destiny rising up in front of you. You can try to hide it with implants or fine woven rugs of hair, but you cannot escape it. It's like an early death. Except that it's only a loss of hair.

But it was, in my case, good practice in getting used to the concept of mortality. Baldness. Mortality. They both are final, non-judgmental, and jam-packed with unavoidable destiny. If you can learn to accept baldness and get on with your life, you can probably learn to accept death. It's coming; that's a no-brainer. Why worry about it? Hey, once you've gone through the grieving stages of losing your hair, you've got all the practice you need in dealing with the grim reaper. He carries a scythe, right? First he shorns you of your hair, later he comes back for the rest. Relax, already.

Reminds me of the guy who was afraid of relationships and commitment. Someone suggested he start with a pet. But even the idea of caring for a goldfish was more than he could take on. So he started with a houseplant. Got used to routine plant care, moved on to fish, than reptiles, then mammals, finally fellow humans. We should get used to mortality in baby steps, too. Include and accept all the little 'passings' that are constantly presented to us. Then when the 'big one' comes, you've got some skills to deal with it.

Of course, check in with me when my time comes. See if I'm so gosh darn sanguine about it.

(and even though 'shorn' is the past participle of 'shear', it just somehow sounded right in the sentence above. So sue me. You can't shear me, that's already taken care of.)

The thing about Singing Telegrams is...

2008-10-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so you've just graduated with a bachelors degree. You studied music theory and composition. You've somehow got to make some money. You've got to get a job.

You write music for (and direct music for) theatrical productions, but it's not enough money, and it's not steady work.

You dress up in your best clothes and go around trying to get a job as a waiter - no luck, but you do get hired for one lunchtime rush of dishwashing, at which you are horrible and which ruins your only good shoes.

You get a job as a sales clerk in a musty sheet music store, where all the music is stored behind the counter in dozens of file cabinets. Minimum wage, but at least it's a job in the music business.

You try your hand at teaching piano to kids. But you're just not the kind of guy who can get excited about "Hot Cross Buns", and you're not really the kind of guy who knows what to tell a kid who says "I hate practicing". Your instinct is to tell them to give it up if they don't like it. Heck, I did, and look where it got me...I ended up being a musician anyway.

Then you get your dream job. Singing Telegrams. Oh, it may sound hokey. It may BE hokey. But here's the thing about it...

Me and my brother, circa 1980

Every situation is brand new. All you've got is an address. You've got your bellboy outfit on, and you have to go find a particular person and sing them a witty song (memorized beforehand). You may be singing to a couple sitting at home watching TV. You may be singing at an office party where you've got to grab attention as if it were a bull. The recipient may be mortified - You've got to tone down the performance and work it to minimize their sense of embarrassment. The recipient may be thrilled - Give them the thrill of their life. The recipient may want to sing with you and take over your job - You've got to maintain control of the situation in the most friendly and funny way possible.

It was improv at its best. No, you're not making it all up, but you're paying attention to your own performance, you're paying attention to your audience, there is no fourth wall, the people you're singing to need to be reassured, your presence may embarrass them, but you have to take the sting out of it, and yet make it as funny and sweet as possible. I loved trying to take all that in and make the situation work.

And there was the down time between telegrams. Sometimes you'd drive 20 miles to deliver one, and then you've got another one in that neighborhood in 3 hours. You go to the local library, read some books. You go to the park, stretch out under a tree and write some music. The down time was a wonderful gift, too.

Nervous? Almost never. Singing to celebrities? No problem. Amazing to think that when I sang for Mrs. Walter Mondale (the Vice President's wife), I was not vetted, did not have to sign a loyalty oath, I just went to the restaurant and sang to her. Different times, eh? The one time I got nervous was when Jim Henson sent a telegram to Frank Oz on his wedding day. I was given an Ernie puppet, and was to sing a custom wedding song in the style of Ernie. I was out of my depth - I don't know puppets, and I'm not an instant mimic. I was nervous. I showed up at Frank's parents house somewhere in Oakland, and it was just Frank, his new wife, and 2 or 3 others. They looked at me like I was from another planet. I warbled the song, feeling foolish with the puppet on my hand. I was glad when that was over.

I got my biggest tip in the same neighborhood some time later, At a house where there was big party going on. The telegram was addressed to "Stoney Feeney". The sweet smell of pot was everywhere. I was offered tokes, but Bellboys don't do that kind of thing. I found Stoney sitting on a bench in the semi-darkness of the back yard. I sang my song, and held out the telegram for Stoney to take from the silver tray. He took the telegram and, reaching into a large brown grocery bag, put a heaping mound of vegetable matter on my silver tray. It was the biggest tip I ever got (in terms of dollar value), but it was rather awkward trying to get it home. I ended up putting it in my leather "mailbag", and later spent an hour trying to get all the seeds out of that thing.

The singing telegram gig only lasted 2 years at most. "Western Onion" (aka "National Onion") was bought up and mismanaged into insolvency. But really, the days of the singing telegram were numbered anyway. Pet Rocks, singing telegrams, dance crazes- they all have their time, and then fade away.

Wedding Lover goes for Gunnar Music

2008-09-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

Take a tip from the pros - if you're planning a wedding, get the wedding music that hard-core wedding afficianados get - Music by Gunnar Madsen. From "News of the World":

Andrea Tsarbos makes wedding plans despite no groom in sight

London, Aug 4,2008 (ANI): She might be looking for a groom, but Andrea Tsarbos, from Britain has already planned her dream wedding to the last. Lack of a fiance hasn't stopped 23-year-old Andrea from planning every last detail of her wedding, including the lingerie she'll wear on her wedding night. “I know people think it's mad I've planned my wedding when I'm single, but I've not been able to help myself,” News of the World quoted her as saying.

“I'm passionate about weddings. I daydream about my own and it's developed into a full-blown plan. “Of course I need a groom before I get married, but I'll meet Mr Right one day. In the meantime, why not start preparing?”

She devotes much of her spare time on planning her wedding. “I think about it when I'm walking to and from work and when I'm at the gym. I talk about it with my future bridesmaids. If a magazine has covered a celebrity wedding, I'll make a beeline for it and pore over the photos.”

She has chosen a waltz by Gunnar Madsen for her first dance, but concedes she may let her groom select his music. “It would be lovely to have a special song I share with my husband-to-be,” she said. “I'm not a brilliant dancer so I would consider having lessons to make sure our first dance was perfect,” she added. She has also planned a lavish champagne cocktail reception. (ANI)

What is Jazz?

2008-09-19T10:56:00.001-07:00

I was in the drugstore a few weeks ago, picking up a prescription. While I was waiting a young pharmacist, a guy in his early 20's, was telling a co-worker about Harvey Mason's drumming on the Herbie Hancock "Headhunters" album. I really enjoyed listening to his enthusiasm, it was a great way to spend my waiting time. It was also refreshing, uplifting even, to know that a classic old recording was alive and being appreciated in the now.

It was funny, too, cause just a couple days before, I'd heard a cut from that recording blasting from a car driving past. Not the typical sound one hears from car windows these days. And, hearing it coming from the car, I had been mildly electrified, feeling again the intense pleasure of the sound of that music.

So, this morning I put it on. I still have the LP I bought when it came out in '73. And yes, it IS still so good. Classic. And I don't use that word lightly. Classics are very few and far between in my book.

I stumbled upon another classic when I was a teenager babysitting at a house where the parents were very cool - hippies. (My parents were decidedly NOT hippies). After the kids were asleep, I scrounged through their record collection, and came upon an old record from the '50s - Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue". I put it on. It was old fashioned, but it was not corny, like Glenn Miller or Sinatra. It was cool. Jazz fusion was the jazz of the moment, what I'd been listening to. Here was something that was old but fresh. I played it over and over that night. I saved up and bought my own copy.

"Headhunters", too, has held up over time. It was surrounded by 'controversy' when it came out. I don't recall if it was with my saxophone teacher, or the guys I worked with at the record store, or my band mates in the "jazz" band at college, but I remember heated conversations about whether or not "Headhunters" was jazz, about how Herbie was wasting his talent doing this simplified funk music. It was hearing these discussions that made me go out and buy it. Wasting his talent? Not in my book. This record cooks.

Is it Jazz? Now that "jazz" is any music that doesn't have words to it ("The Quiet Storm" and al), it seems like a silly question. Is Kenny G jazz? That's definitely debatable. Is "Headhunters" jazz? I say yes, but, aw, heck, who cares? It's just plain good.

Back to School

2008-09-14T10:39:00.001-07:00

School year started. Man, oh, man, I had no idea the world worked on some kind of schedule. Oh, sure, I was once a kid, I remember the long lazy days of summer, the "Back-to-school" ads on TV and in the paper, and the nearly violent yanking from summer days to regulated Fall school time. But that was a long time ago. Since then, I've been a musician, for gosh sakes. Calendars and seasons mean very little to a musician. Sure, you can book a gig for triple the normal asking fee on New Year's Eve, and you have to always remember never to book a gig on Super Bowl Sunday (which isn't a holiday that shows up on regular calendars but is the absolute worst day on which to be playing a concert). But "Back to School"? Sorry, it doesn't cause even the tiniest ripple in a musician's consciousness.

But now I have a son going to school. He needs jeans that can reach all the way to his shoes, he needs shoes that don't squeeze his growing feet, he needs school supplies, the teachers need to meet his parents, he needs to meet his teachers, there's a whole ton of stuff that needs to be thought of and organized. And, while I know it was hard for me as a kid to gear up for a new year of school with a new teacher and classmates and all, it also just kind of blindsided me back then. I wasn't self-aware enough to know my own fears, and I just kept rolling with summer until all of a sudden I was being packed off to school with my lunch in a pail.

Now, as a parent, I am acutely aware of what a big deal it is for my son. He was, like the little Me of decades ago, merely blindsided by actual first day of school. He was overwhelmed and yet rolled with it all. By now, after a week and a half of school, he's enjoying the new routine. Loving it, even. And he has no idea of the preparation that went into getting him to his first day of school :) Parenting is a hoot, and a kick, and a whole lot of niggling work that I just never expected. Once again, I've been blindsided!

Mongolian Camel Bell Ringtone

2008-09-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

I was at home with Q last Sunday when the phone rang. It was M, our wife and mother and fun companion. She'd found these beautiful Mongolian Camel Bells and wanted to buy one for me. But there were so many to choose from, and I'm so particular about sound and music, that she wasn't sure which one to get. Cell Phone to the rescue! Granted, a cell phone is not hi-fidelity. Not even lo fidelity. It's pretty much sub-fidelity. Nonetheless, she rang each bell over the phone, and I narrowed it down to one that sounded, at least over microwaves, like a beautiful gong.

It came home, and it's lovely. A rich, deep tone, like a cowbell slowed down to half-speed. The clapper has a gorgeous tassle on it, and the leather band which it hangs from still smells very ripe and dusky/musky - I suppose it's the smell of camel. (Hey, I'm not from Mongolia already). Here it is outside the studio...

Graham Cracker Smacker

2008-09-08T10:56:00.001-07:00

Here's how it all started. My son, Q, is fascinated by all things mechanical. He has a book in the ISpy series in which there's a picture of a convoluted balloon-popping contraption: It involves dominoes, rolling marbles, teeter-totters, pulleys and the like. He has spent many hours looking at that picture. So, one day, I decided to look up Rube Goldberg, the original inventor of such wacky contraptions. And it turned out that were a ton of super-cool videos of amazing contraptions on YouTube, from around the world. Well, Q spent many hours memorizing those contraptions. Then he announced he wanted to build his own. He's full of ideas, that boy. Me, I'm full of ideas, too, but usually they're ideas about music or stories. I'm not really much of a handyman. So we invited a handyman friend, David Jouris, over to help us build a contraption. The goal: Pour a glass of milk, and cause a graham cracker to split into pieces so you can dip it in the glass.

I'm telling you - it may seem short, it may seem simple, but it takes a lot of tinkering to get even THIS little contraption to work. We learned a lot about the concept of patience :)

Novelty? No thanks.

2008-08-01T13:59:00.001-07:00

Novelty songs. I generally don't like them. Yet I do like humor in music. Obviously. (see "The Bobs" or my family music)

But just because I end up writing humorous songs sometimes, I don't really listen to humorous songs very much. I love music so much that, even if it's funny, it better have some serious musicality to it, or it'll make me mad. So usually I'm listening to more serious music (from Leonard Cohen to Bach to Rufus Wainwright to...).

I had a roommate my first year of college who loved Fats Waller. Fats is acclaimed as a great piano player and all, but I just couldn't get past the fact that he was yapping all over his songs, like he didn't know when to shut up. Somehow, he crossed the 'humor' line for me, obliterating whatever music was going on with his patter.

Spike Jones? Even as a kid, that kind of humor made me slightly queasy. On a par with Jerry Lewis or the Three Stooges, the "I'll do anything for attention" kind of humor that makes me run the other way.

Weird Al? Yeah, he rubs me the wrong way, too. Then again, every time I think of "Another One Rides the Bus", I smile inwardly. So there's some kind of magic going on. His work, being based on hugely successful melodies, has the advantage of having musical cajones at its core. And, as silly as his lyrics may be, I'd much rather be singing the lyrics to "Like a Surgeon" than the original vapid version.

The Coasters - There was real music there sometimes, some hummable tunes, but the humor wears thin for me. I give them 2 and a half stars.

Zappa - some sublime music, then mixed with such low attempts at humor. A bizarre mixture. Still, his music had integrity, and lifted him above being just a novelty act. And, his championing of 'art music' led me to composers such as Stravinsky, Varese and Stockhausen. I was listening to all kinds of contemporary music in high school, all because Frank said it was cool. I thank him muchly for that. And I find myself humming and singing "Peaches en Regalia" quite often, and it makes me smile. It has no words, it's not trying to be funny, but it's an odd bit of music that just makes me smile.

It's a funny thing, humor and music. I think that, for me, it comes down to music being an essentially emotional art form. Even when it's striving to be detached and un-emotional, the effect it has on me is still an emotional one. And there's a difference between a funny song/lyrics and funny music all by itself. When I think of attempts at making 'funny' instrumental music through the centuries, they all fail. Music can be witty, but not ha-ha funny. Lyrics can be ha-ha, but I can't think of music that achieves that all on its own.

What think you?

Strangers in the Night

2008-07-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

Some songs just don't go away. Even when it seems like they should. Even when every fibre of my being screams that a song is no good, I am sometimes drawn, against my will, into an intimate humming relationship with a particular song.

It came to me again this morning, as I did the dishes. I sing it mockingly, as the lyrics are laughable and unworthy of serious consideration. I hate the song. And yet it has been lodged in my gray matter since 1966, and hardly a week goes by that I don't find it wafting through my semi-consciousness.

Oh, there are tons of other bad songs that are hummable and memorable and get stuck in my brain, but usually they have more sinew, more of a self-knowing sense of their own silliness: "The Addams Family", "Sugar Shack", "Yummy Yummy Yummy". Not so "Strangers in the Night." It masquerades as a classic. I hate it for that. And yet, my god, it is so HUMMABLE! I must admit that, somehow, it is a classic. I love the melody, even though it is so lamely predictable. Perhaps this afternoon I'll sit down at the piano and analyze it, try to determine where its magic lies...

But as of right now, this morning, at the kitchen sink, I just put aside the soapy dishes, took off my gloves, and went to the computer. I had to know more about this damnable cursed song. Wikipedia Ho! (as in Westward, Ho!)

Both my fascination with and my revulsion against the song seem vindicated. It was a number one song in 1966, and the title song from Sinatra's most commercially successful album. Apparently, I'm not alone in finding it hummable. According to Wikipedia,'Sinatra despised the song, and called it "a piece of s**t", and "the worst song I ever f***ing heard". Hmm, I'm with Sinatra there.

Who the heck wrote it? Well, Bert Kaempfert is credited with the music, but he probably did not write it. According to Wikipedia: The music was originally recorded by Ivo Robic´ for the music festival in Split, Croatia. Robic´ later sang the song in German ("Fremde in der Nacht", lyrics by Kurt Felitz) and in Croatian language ("Stranci u Noc´i", lyrics by Marija Renota.

Aha! So it's some Eastern European hybrid/approximation of American Popular music. That explains it! That's why it feels and is so 'four-square', lacking in the jazzier syncopations and surprising phrasings that an American composer would have naturally put in. And yet the composer hit it spot on, making the stolid repetition of phrases balance near-perfectly. So that, when I'm doing a mindless task, I don't sing "I Got Rhythm" or "Puttin' on the Ritz". Nope. When I go mindless, I go for the gold. "Strangers in the Night".

I Wish I Were a Troubadour

2008-07-10T11:53:00.000-07:00

A couple years ago I was in New York and went to Little, Brown & Co. to meet, for the first time, my editor for the book of "Old Mr. Mackle Hackle". I came into her office and she said "Where's your guitar?" A bit surprised, I said that I don't always carry one with me. She said "When Dan Zanes comes in, he always brings an instrument, and gets the whole office singing songs." Wow, that is SO cool. I sure wish I could be like that.

But music for me is more private. I'm a bit shy. Oh, sure, put me on a stage and I lose all inhibitions. A stage is a place of ultimate freedom for me, where my shyness does not interfere. But without a stage I don't know what to do with myself.

Also, I don't remember songs very well, so when someone asks me to sing a song, I truly don't remember them, even the ones I wrote. I have to practice them to have them at hand.

At a concert I gave at the Cafe du Nord in San Francisco some years back, someone in the audience requested a song of mine. I replied that I didn't remember it. They said "But you wrote it!" I replied, "Yeah, well Steinbeck wrote Grapes of Wrath, but it's not like he could just recite it from memory."

The line got a laugh, but I don't think the person believed the truth of it, that I really don't remember songs I've written. Perhaps it's why I don't get tired of my own music! Really, I love so many of my songs, and maybe it's cause they're always a little new to me.

As for just getting up and singing at the drop of a hat, I need some encouragement to perform. Not a lot, but a little nudge from outside of myself. I heard Glen Hansard ,from the movie "Once", interviewed on the radio. He just picked up his guitar one day and started busking on the streets of Dublin. His faith in himself allowed him to just go for it. I've got a lot of faith in myself, and I'm grateful for every ounce of it, but I can't do what Glen did. I admire that. Perhaps I'll have that ability in my next life. If I come back as a snail, be on the lookout for a singing snail on a street corner near you.

Haruki Murakami

2008-06-30T13:26:00.001-07:00

There's a novelist whose invention and soul and style I am so in love with: Haruki Murakami. His is the kind of writing that I'd like to think I would do if I were a novelist. I rarely fall head-over-heels in love with an artist's work. I SO love when it happens!

Sometimes my love of an artist's work includes awe, in that I can never imagine myself doing what that person is able to do: examples in that category include Ken Kesey, Aaron Copland, Tom Waits. Other times, it is more a feeling of a kindred spirit; that that person is doing exactly what I want to do, and I can even envision myself achieving the same kind of thing: examples include Thelonious Monk, Rufus Wainwright, Haruki Murakami. Not to sound big-headed, it's just that I understand their mode of creativity at a 'friendly' level. I feel comfortable in the presence of their work. And somehow, what they're doing feels like the same kind of thing I'm doing (or imagine myself doing).

So, it was fascinating to read Haruki's recent piece in the New Yorker, in which he spoke some about his life. ("The Running Novelist," The New Yorker, June 9, 2008, p. 72)

He writes of how the idea of becoming a writer came to him in a precise flash. He was at a baseball game, taking in the clouds, the game, just chilling and enjoying, when he suddenly knew that he was going to write. I get a chill from that, because it's a feeling that has happened to me so many times: There's a flash inside my brain, and suddenly I know the next thing I've GOT to do, and I know it deep in my belly. Most people never speak of this, so, uh, I keep it to myself. But Haruki knows the feeling. It's comforting to know there's someone else out there who gets these strange flashes. And it's so cool that it's someone whose work I feel such a deep connection to.

Want to read some Murakami? Start with "Kafka on the Shore". Bloody brilliant.

2008-06-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

Top ZZzzs, Listen up!

Want a record that will put you to sleep, but never drive you crazy?

The absolute best lullaby music, chosen by our son Q himself, is "Wings of Slumber" by the Banana Slug String Band. It's been playing every night for over a year, sometimes more than once in a night, sometimes in the very same room I'm trying to sleep in. They have created a CD that has just the right blend of styles, melodies, off-center phrasing and gentle surprises that add up to the perfect nighttime experience. I'm REALLY hard to please, so, please, take this as the highest of high praise. This is the lullaby CD to get.

Small, eentsy caveat: There's a song somewhere in the middle with a vocal by Laurie Lewis, that when it comes on just seems louder than all the rest. It always jolts me a little. I re-recorded it at minus 6db so it fits in better. If you're putting it on an ipod or some such, you may want to simply drop it from the playlist. It's a nice song, but if sleep is your goal...you get my drift(log).

Evolution of a Musician Part 2

2008-06-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

The Listening Years...

Up until February of 1964 (when I was 7), music just didn't really mean much to me. On that particular night, we were at my grandparents house in Los Gatos, California, and me and my sister and maybe some cousins were in front of the TV watching The Wonderful World of Walt Disney. I don't remember what was on that night, it must not have been that great, because when my teenage aunt came into the room and abruptly switched the channel, saying "the Beatles are on!", none of us complained much. Heck, sometimes what was on Ed Sullivan was more fun than what was on Disney...

Then the Beatles came on and I was electrified . I don't recall ever being so excited in my life. I'd had some fun times, some good toys, some fun experiences, but all of a sudden I had a purpose in life. This was something important, something I was meant see, meant to do, it was something powerful, a force.

Thereafter I dreaded my weekly crew cuts with my father. I wanted my own Beatle hair!. That wasn't about to happen (and wouldn't for another 7 years). I received 2 Beatles wigs as presents, and wore them with a mixture of pride and sheepishness (and itchiness) as I sang along with the records every day after school.

I remember my sister Lynn, older by three years, getting our first Beatles LP. "Introducing the Beatles" on VeeJay records. I remember the Beatles fan magazine she had. I remember buying my first Beatles LP, The Beatles Second Album". I earned $0.25 a week as an allowance, for mowing the lawns, washing the car, taking out the trash, and it took 12 weeks to save up to three dollars that an LP cost in those days. For the next few years, all my allowance went towards Beatles LPs.

In the summer of 1964, I was sent to visit with my great aunt and uncle on their cranberry farm in Oregon for two weeks. I got to drive a tractor, fish in the stream for trout with a spool of thread and a bent pin, and ride the zip line across their swimming hole and fall into it on my way across. There was only one other child around there my age, she lived down the road apiece. Her room was covered in Elvis posters. I remember some really heated discussions about who was better; the Beatles or Elvis. When I went into town with my aunt and uncle they asked if there was anything I wanted (perhaps to remember the trip by). A sampler of the famous local cheese? A toy fishing boat? No. I really really wanted "Meet the Beatles". They bought it for me. The stereo version! (Not that I had a use for stereo on our sleep teaching device...).

Around this time we got a piano in our house as a gift for my grandparents. My sister started lessons right away, and she was good. After about a year I took some lessons too. It didn't really excite me, because I didn't sound like the Beatles. I practiced, but listlessly. I performed in the talent show at school, a piece called the Happy Hop Toad. Snoresville, daddy-o. My piano teacher got some Beatles songs "Yesterday" and "Michelle", and simplified them for me, but still, it just wasn't rock 'n roll. Yes, it was the Beatles, but it wasn't rock. After about a year of lessons I quit.

Our neighborhood in Palo Alto butted up against the back of a huge luxury hotel called the Cabana. It was kind of a Caesar's Palace of its time with huge colored fountains in the front featuring armless statues of Greek or Roman origins. Very fancy, very impressive. That was where the Beatles were reported to stay when they came to play San Francisco. I remember spending long summer hours perched dashingly on my stingray style bicycle, hanging out with other Beatles fans at the big wooden gate at the end of that street, which looked onto the back parking lot of the hotel. We all speculated about how the Beatles might arrive. Long string of limousines? Hidden in a laundry van or milk truck? Maybe they'd arrive more royally in a helicopter. So, the sound of an approaching helicopter, the arrival of any delivery van or large car, would send us all to the fence peering over it hoping for a glimpse of our heroes. (Here's a blow-by-blow account of The Beatles' stay in my neighborhood. It turns out that they did indeed exit in a delivery truck, and they used the very exit that we all hung out at.)

For Christmas of '65 I got a transistor radio. Wow. All of a sudden I had access to all kinds of music. My favorite station was KYA, a top 40 station out of San Francisco. I went to sleep with this transistor radio every night. There were the dippy songs that were catchy but that I didn't like that much ("Judy in Disguise", "Yummy Yummy Yummy", the soupy songs by The Delphonics ). And then there were the Great Songs. "Dock of the Bay", "Heard it Through the Grapevine", "White Rabbit", "Light My Fire". While the Beatles were number one with me, there was so much more music out there and I was on fire with it all!

Playing The Happy Hop Toad in the talent show was an experience I never wanted to repeat. The next year I had a whole different idea of what I wanted to do for the talent show. I wanted to do a Beatles song. I knew a guy that had paper drum set. I had my two Beatles wigs. And I knew another guy who had whose mother had an actual electric guitar. I had a toy acoustic guitar. None of us knew how to play any of the instruments, but that didn't matter. I knew the words to the song "Help" backwards and forwards and I taught the guys all the words. And we wore the guitars and the wigs while one guy sat at the drums and we just yelled the words to the song. We practiced a lot, I really pushed them hard, and we took it to the talent show.

All the other "rock 'n roll" acts in the Talent Show were lip-synching to records. I was somehow weirdly proud of the fact that we were actually "singing" it live. And, oddly enough, the crowd went wild. A bunch of older kids ( fifth and sixth graders) came up afterwards and said it was really funny. One of the few times in my elementary school years when I was considered cool (if only for an afternoon).

As my tastes in music expanded, I sometimes found myself a little frightened by what I heard. My teenage aunt gave me "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison", and while I absorbed it, I found the cheering of the prison crowd at the words "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" really chilling (still do). The Doors records she leant me were rather spooky. And even the Beatles were getting dark and strange ("There's people standing 'round, who'll screw you in the ground, they'll fill you in with all the sins you've seen.") That was a heavy lyric for a boy growing up in a strict born-again household (more about that subject some other time).

In seventh grade (first-year of junior high school), we were required to do half a year of choir followed by half a year of band. I didn't care for choir. I found it dippy. When it came time for band, however, I really really wanted to play the drums. There were about 10 other boys, all much cooler than me, who also wanted to try out for the drums. I knew I didn't stand a chance against them, so I set my sights on the trumpet instead. And I really kind of liked playing it. But after a few months the teacher told me that my lips were shaped wrong for trumpet playing, and that I should give it up. Discouraged, I gave up playing music again.

Oh, but I still listened and dreamed. Apart from rock music, my aunt gave me the soundtrack to "2001:A Space Odyssey". I saw the movie on my birthday 3 years running (it ran for over 2 years at the Cinerama theatre in San Jose). There is some really wild contemporary art music by Ligeti and others on it that intrigued me. I went to sleep to it every night for a few months.

Then, I went to my first rock concert on May 19, 1968. The Northern California Folk-Rock Festival (lineup was The Doors, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Grateful Dead, The Animals, The Youngbloods, Electric Flag, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, and Taj Mahal). It was scary (I was only 11, and there were lots of drugs, including bad acid being passed around). It was also a dream come true (just look at that lineup!). It was a marvelous, sunny Woodstock-like experience (before Woodstock, even). But then the headliners, The Doors, began setting up. Dark clouds covered the sky, and by the time Jim Morrison took the stage, the sky was brooding, and the crowd's mood changed. Someone threw a full can of beer over our heads. It hit a guy on a blanket 10 feet in front of us, and his head was bleeding from a nasty cut. Someone threw a cherry bomb that exploded a short ways away. Jim Morrison was spitting on the audience. It was huge, awesome, thrilling, terrifying, and it was exactly where I wanted to be.

As I entered my teenage years, I found more fantastic new music by Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Tim Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Donovan. I spent after-school hours at Pacific Stereo, drooling over component stereo systems. I worked extra jobs and saved, and when I was 13, my older sister and I went in together on a $300 system. (I still have, and use, the amplifier from it)

But I only listened. Playing music seemed impossible. I didn't know how one could become a rock musician, that path was invisible to me. I didn't know that there might be guitar teachers or drum teachers. What I listened to was everything to me, but nothing that I could ever do myself...

Gunnar Music on YouTube

2008-06-09T12:13:00.001-07:00

A recent search on Youtube unearthed some interesting uses for my music. None of them with my blessing, so don't think I had anything to do with them. It's a hoot to see where my music ends up.

Ants in my Pants - Some cool and interesting images and juxtapositions going on here:

Here, "Anna" is used to score a montage from the TV series Heroes:

Anna is used for a slide show of stills from the 1964 movie "Angélique, marquise des anges". I don't know the film, don't know exactly what this is about...

And then, you can even put your makeup on to my music:

It's a big, wide world out there, eh?

My Solution to Global Warming

2008-06-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

"It's also a great Axe grinder!"

Here's my idea. Some kind of huge pedal-powered flywheel. I mean huge. 6 feet in diameter, one foot in width, made of stone or metal. I'm not a physicist, so I don't know if this is the most efficient way to translate pedal power into electricity, but I think we need to be able to SEE what our work is doing, or we'll get discouraged and give up.

If one were to pedal to charge up a set of batteries, you wouldn't get visceral feedback about what your work is getting you. If you hook up your pedal generator to a TV so that the TV works only while you're pedaling, you can see what it takes to power a TV, but...so much for being a couch potato.

And usually people want to exercise for half an hour in the morning and then get on with their day. If by pedaling you set this giant flywheel in motion you GET it, in a wonderful big way. The flywheel's energy can then be stored in a battery. For use throughout the day or night. There would be gears just like on a bicycle so that when you first start pedaling the gear ratio gets the flywheel going without too much struggle, and as you get faster and faster you can change gears and really get that flywheel moving.

I got this idea while biking around town. When I bicycle up the hill, I'm very aware of how much energy it takes to get my body and the weight of the bicycle up the hill. It's a lot a work. All these cars fly by me, most with just one person at the wheel and no passengers, and our cars are so powerful that the driver really has no sense of how much energy is being expended to lift all that steel and plastic up the hill. As such, my invention is not just about creating or harnessing the energy from an exercise regimen and turn it into electricity, but also about helping people to realize how much energy it takes to run a light bulb or a washing machine or a television set.

While walking the other day, I passed a woman who was blowing leaves with an electric blower. Now, leaf blowers are pretty ridiculous any way you look at. Are they really that much easier to use than a rake? The simplest way of reducing the energy used by leaf blowers is just to stop using them. But this woman's house had a huge solar array on the roof. So, ostensibly, she was just harnessing the power of the sun to blow her leaves around. Much better than using a gas powered leaf blower or electricity from a coal-fired power plant. Still, harnessing the sun's energy is not without its costs (the manufacture of all those silicon solar panels, the chemicals involved, et cetera). I believe that she, and all of us, need to understand how much energy it takes to blow those leaves around. If someone had to pedal a generator like mad so that she could blow leaves around the yard, we'd be back to using rakes in no time.

So I look around my house and I think about the things that I really depend on, or like to use, and the things that are not so important. I really love using the computer, I love having a music studio (which is mostly run by electricity), and it's great to have lights in the evening and the early morning. Whoa yeah, and the dishwasher and the clothes washer - those are really handy. I would love having a huge flywheel that I could spend 30 minutes on each morning and know that it would power my computer for four for five hours. I'd get exercise and I'd feel really good about the energy I was using. I'm pretty sure that even if each member of my family was peddling for two hours a day, we probably still wouldn't make enough energy to totally supply our daily household energy usage. But it would make a dent. And it would show us how precious the energy that we do have really is.

Dancing with Heavy Machinery

2008-05-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

Did I say I never get to watch movies? Well, not entirely true. I love movies so much that I generally won't watch them if I can't arrange to sit through a film in its entirety. But some movies (like light comedies) don't suffer too much from being viewed over the course of 2 or more sittings.

So, my wife and I watched a variously inventive and charming film over a couple of nights last week: "Across the Universe". Although I'm a huge fan of the Beatles' music, the film had gotten lukewarm reviews, and I'd had no intention of seeing it. But a friend recommended it so highly that we rolled the Netflix dice and took a chance.

Firstly, I was very impressed, sometimes jaw-droppingly so, with the re-imagining of the Beatles's music. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had always struck me as insipid faux-teenage puppy-love kind of stuff, with a melody that just wasn't their best. In the film it's done as a heart-wrenching ballad, and the lyrics, when divorced from the original bouncy beat, have a beautiful yearning in them that I'd never recognized before. There were many such moments in the film, where the depth of the Beatles music is revealed by audacious and brilliant arrangements.

Secondly, the visuals were often stunning (directed by Julie Taymor, of Lion King fame). The legendary puppet street-theatre troupe Bread and Puppet is used, and there was choreography that was grounded in the drama, not pasted on as it is so often in musicals. It reminded me very much of the work of ISO, the dance troupe that The Bobs did shows with in the 80's. As the film rolled on, more and more of the choreography was SO brilliant, in a way that I have never seen outside of ISO. I was beaming to see such great work. And when the credits rolled by, why, surprise! - the Choreographer was indeed Danny Ezralow, from ISO. I'm so glad that some of his work has made it to the big screen, in such a fine way.

I searched for youtube examples of his work - there are some, but I would say just see "Across the Universe". It's not a perfect movie, but it is full of beauty.

And, 2 other members of ISO, Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland, have their own dance company called BODYVOX (in Portland, OR). They, too, have that powerful, witty ISO style that is so unique. I highly recommend catching them in Portland or on tour. And, they do happen to have a couple of youtube videos that are worth watching. They are short films, featuring dancing with heavy machinery. Do take a moment to watch:)

TV shows that are better than movies?

2008-05-28T11:27:00.001-07:00

We've been watching a lot of TV lately. Well, not TV, not stuff that comes on a cable or over the airwaves, but shows we're renting from Netflix. We miss watching full-length movies, but by the time Q goes to bed we're exhausted, and need just a mere 25 minutes of chill out time before we're ready to hit the hay. And I'm sorry, but life is just too darn short to spend any of it watching commercials :) So, TV shows on DVD have been a godsend for us.

Some favorites we've been watching?

Slings and Arrows. Wow. This is truly better than just about any movie out there. The writing is so real, the cast is so true, it's so funny and so heartbreaking at the same time. It's from Canada, so chances are you've never even heard of it, but I'm telling you, this is the real deal. Rent it NOW! What's it about? Oh, golly, it's too much to encapsulate - Read about it on Netflix, for goshsakes! But it is kind of a "Waiting for Guffman" thing set at a Shakespearean theatre company.

Freaks and Geeks. So many great shows seem doomed to early extinction. This one focuses on high school years, and is one of the best explorations of the reality of high school I've seen. The parents are rather 2-dimensional, but the kids are very real. Funny and true.

WonderFalls. Only one season, so if you fall in love with it, know that it's doomed to end too soon. The heroine is a marvelously mixed-up college grad who has taken a deadening job in a souvenir shop at Niagara Falls, as a place to kind of 'drop out', only to find that various souvenirs 'talk' to her and convince her to do things which complicate her life terribly. Kind of like Joan of Arc, only funny. Or maybe Joan of Arc was funny, but this is funny in a different way.

Arrested Development. Best thing I've found on U.S. TV. A mixture of humor - reminds me of what Woody Allen would be doing if he hadn't gotten so darn serious. If you haven't seen it, give it a try. Better than so many movies (really!).

The Office. This is a funny series, but it can make you squirm uncomfortably. So, be forewarned, it may not be for you. If you've EVER worked in an office, however, you should be required to see it. (NB, I found the British series to be too acidic for my tastes - I just couldn't handle that much copper in my mouth. The U.S. version is somewhat lighter)

Sorry, gotta go. Time for more TV.

Crowing, crowing...gone

2008-05-24T13:25:00.001-07:00

Goodbye, little crow...

On the ides of May, I found the little crow dead. The parents had already gotten the news, and though they still hung around in the trees for a couple of days, they no longer cawed or circled overhead. I missed their fierce protectiveness. I picked up the crow with a plastic bag, it was so very light. It's gone now.

An amazing couple of weeks. On May 1 I was out jogging, and about 25 minutes into my jog I had a brief zzzt, a blip where I lost consciousness. I remember turning my head to the right as I came to a cross street to check for traffic, and then the briefest moment of 'static', and when I came to I felt like I'd missed a moment of life. Very strange feeling. Heck, I'm wired differently from most people, my fibromyalgia sends electricity shooting up and down my body from time to time, my thoughts are often a little out of left field, but this was a totally new sensation.

Anyway, I kept jogging, but the same thing happened again. So I walked the rest of the way home, felt light-headed. For a few days felt kind of dizzy, so I went to the doctor. She listened to my heart, sounded fine. She explained what it probably was, an electrical misfiring of the heart. Then she had an EKG machine rolled in, just to check and see if everything was okay.

NOT, apparently. She said it looked like I'd had a heart attack. Whoa. But I always take everything with a grain of salt (metaphorically speaking only- I've got to watch my blood pressure!), so I chilled on the freak-out, left that all to her. She was freaked, I'll tell you. So I was sent for a bunch more testing. Carotid artery free and clear, stress test checked out normal, cardiologist says it doesn't look like a heart attack, looks like I'm fine. Whatever happened while jogging was just 'something'. Nothing to worry about.

Okay. I'm cool. Still, it was a couple of weeks of uncertainty. And much of that time I had crows cawing and swooping at me. Enough to give a guy a heart attack!

I'm Crowing

2008-05-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

I've had a few days of being hectored and cawed at by nervous, anxious parental crows. Their fledgling disappeared the day after it was found here, and the Mom and Dad have kept a hawk-like watch on me ever since. They think I stole it.

Whenever I go near the windows of the studio, they Kraw out a loud alarm. When I cross the yard, they swoop down from the redwood tree where they're keeping watch. But their baby was, until today, nowhere to be seen. I searched the yard for the stray feathers that cats and other crow-eaters leave behind after a meal, but there were none. Still, the chances of the little crow's survival seemed dim, as the parents still seemed to think I had it hidden away somewhere.

Then, this morning as I came home from Choir, the fledgling was in the road in front of my house. I tried to shoo it to safety, but its parents came swooping when I threatened to get near it. I was heartened to find it alive - I was starting to feel really bad being yelled at by crows all day long for the kidnapping of their child. Now they could see their young one was alive, and would leave me alone.

Not so fast. The fledge found its way back to my backyard - it can fly well enough to get over fences, but still not so well to return to its 75-foot high nest. Now its been in the backyard for a few hours, and it caws in its little crow voice, and its parents caw back from their redwood tree, and I have to cover my head and run for it every time I leave the studio - the parents are VERY protective now.

Sheesh. Life with crow.

Crows in my yard

2008-05-09T10:18:00.001-07:00

This morning there's a pair of crows cawing raucously all around my studio. Here's why...

As I was about to open the door to my back stoop yesterday morning, I noticed a small crow sitting there. On the doormat. A strange sight. I considered if it might have hurt itself, but there were no windows it would have crashed into, and it's an odd area for a bird to land in. But when I opened the door, the crow merely blinked, looked at me, and apparently wasn't about to move.

My first thought was "Sick bird? West Nile Virus?", so I called their hotline. They told me that unless the bird was dead, they weren't interested. They told me to call back if it died, and they'd be happy to help. Well...uh, okay.

I'd seen injured birds perk up and fly away, so I decided to give it a few hours and see what happened. Maybe as the sun moved onto the stoop, the warmth would help the bird.

A couple hours later, the bird had moved just enough to get itself out of the sun and into the shade. I went up to it to say hello and to see if I could determine any obvious injury, but a loud cawing went up from the surrounding trees, and a couple of crows came swooping over, so I retreated.

I called the local Animal Control to see what they could do. Almost immediately a guy came out, armed with a net, a box and some gloves. I led him to the back yard, and as he picked up the small crow, the 2 vigilant crows from the trees swooped around us. "Get under cover", he said, "they might peck at you."

He examined the bird, and found no injuries. He explained it was a fledge, and he quickly spotted the nest it came from, in a very tall tree a few hundred feet away. He said that often Crow fledglings didn't make it far on their first flight, and sometimes took a day or two to finally get the strength and gumption to fly back up to the nest. There was a risk of the young crow being eaten by a cat or some such, but that risk was better than taking the fledge somewhere 'safe', as the handling by humans would imprint it and doom its ultimate survival chances. So, he told me to leave the young crow alone, and that it should be off and flying in a couple of days. Sure, I'm cool with that.

This morning, I wondered if the young crow had already made its way home. As I opened my back door to go to my studio, however, loud and very close Crow Caws attacked my ears. I backed into the house. They were being very vigilant. I put on a hat, let them swoop out of sight, and dashed under the shade trees to my studio door. As I type, the Mom and Dad crows continue to caw. I can't see the fledge anywhere from my windows, but I suppose the parents are making a noise to urge their young one to fly. Crows never sounded so sweet!

45's were sleazy, mp3s are...?

2008-05-06T18:03:00.001-07:00

Early on (like, when I was 10 years old) I had a moral judgment against 45 singles. They were a ripoff (LPs had a much better song-per-dollar ratio); they were a shallow glimpse into an artist's work (way too short); they were the sound-bites of their day. I don't know how my little 10-year old brain came to this judgment, but there it was.

This is odd, as I loved AM radio at the time, and AM radio is nothing but 3 minute songs, all artfully done, all hugely appreciated by me.

I suppose part of the distinction is that radio goes on and on. A song is played in a context - a context of other hits songs, a dj with a personality, advertisements, weather reports, etc. When you put a 45 on a record player, it begins playing, and 2 or 3 minutes later it's over. That's it. Empty silence. The song feels small and cheap when it's laid bare like that. An LP included and embraced the song with others, all by the same artist, in a large canvas of sound that went on and on... (for 15 minutes). I Loved, and still Love, an album of songs.

Okay, and there was one other thing that made me dislike 45s. When I was an immensely shy 11 year old, I'd somehow managed to land a girlfriend while in summer school. We went on a double-date to this guy's house. He had a make-out room in his garage, with a record player that played a stack of 45s. The music was dumb, it was make-out music intended to make girls somehow melt. But I was frozen in fear-of-kissing-a-girl land, and the sound of this gawdawful music along with my cold-sweat fear made my stomach turn. I loved music too much to have it used in such a way. It was sleazy. Cheap. Tawdry, even.

But, like I say, my general dislike of 45's predated that experience.

Another 45 vs. LP experience involved discovering the one-hit-wonder phenomenon. A hit song of '70 was "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum. I liked it. Still like it. A friend of mine had the LP which contained the song, and one day at his house he put it on. Bad LP. One good song on the whole thing. I didn't know that there were artists who made such good and bad music at the same time. I was used to the Beatles, the Doors, Led Zeppelin - people who made good LPs.

So, what about mp3s? Are they the 45 singles of today?

Being a lover of albums of songs, the playlist "revolution" that we're currently in is not my bag. I still love to hear a group of songs by an artist, all of a high caliber of artistic integrity, in an album format. One-hit wonders are okay, but just okay. But mp3s are not sleazy. Unlike a 45, they offer good value for the money. And, it's so easy to put them in a playlist and surround them with other good stuff .It's like having your very own jukebox. Which, I must admit, I did rather like when I was a lad (even if they offered very poor value for the money).

Music Doesn't Smell

2008-04-30T13:28:00.001-07:00

Don't know why this crossed my mind, or if it's even true, but it seems to me that music doesn't smell. For such a powerful, visceral, emotional art form, that's a strange thing. But I think it's true.

Name me a music that smells - cause I can't think of one.

Oh, there's music that stinks out loud, but I'm not talking about judgments of taste.

I go to a museum, somehow a painting has a smell to it. Sculpture? I can smell it. Pencil shavings, charcoal, they all have an olfactory component.

Theatre - I can smell the actors.

Movies - well, there's popcorn isn't there?

Poetry, books, that musty smell, that inky smell.

Various musical instruments have their smell. Woodwinds, brass have metallic smells, their cases have slight moisture in them, slightly mildewed. Guitars, violins, etc., they've all got that old wood musk, old varnish tang to them. Pianos with their polish and their wool felt smells. The musicians themselves? Sure, they smell.

But once the music is in the air, the notes themselves don't carry the smell. The notes are super-fresh, clean, devoid of smell. It's not bad. It's just profoundly curious.

Profoundly curious to me :)

Do I chill to Barney?

2008-04-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

What do kids' musicians listen to when we're not on the job?

Do we worship the Wiggles? Boogie down to some Barney? Relax to Raffi? Sip some Chardonnay on Sesame Street?

Get real. We're grown-ups. We like all kinds of music (including, in my case, some Sesame Street).

Still, even I was stunned when fellow kids' musician Tito Uquillas (of Hipwaders fame) and I got into lengthy talks about Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. I mean, I know I grew up with that music, it's part of my musical heritage, but somehow I didn't think any other kids' musicians were hip to it. Man, Tito knows his music, he's way into getting the groove right, and his tastes stretch into the far cobwebby corners of pop. It's really exciting talking with him, like high school days when my friends and I would sit around all afternoon and discover new music.

I recently did an interview with musician and blogger Eric Herman. We went on and on about about Zappa and other influences from our past. (I can go on and on when it comes to music...) Can you hear Zappa in either of our 'canons of work'? I doubt it.

I've sat with Justin Roberts in his apartment, digging some mid-60's Wayne Shorter. He spun some Kurt Elling and some new stuff I hadn't heard. Now, Justin's music for kids bears little outward signs of his appreciation of Jazz. But, the music that a songwriter listens to informs his music in ways that usually have more to do with quality and depth.

Do the Hipwaders sound like Beefheart? No, but you can hear the attention to groove and musicality. The appreciation of music is evident.

Lately I'm listening to mainly classical music. A ton of Mahler. Did it make me go all classical on my latest CD? No. Perhaps it did get me to pay even closer attention to orchestration/arrangement and interplay of voices. Or maybe not. The main thing is, I'm still thrilled to listen to music. Just about any music (except Barney or the Wiggles). You dig?

Touch the Sound - What a film!

2008-04-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

I saw the most beautiful film the other week. It's called "Touch the Sound", about the soulful and amazing percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who happens to be deaf. She lives and breathes music, and she has learned to hear with her body. The film is drop-dead gorgeous, remarkable footage that is stirring and evocative and so fresh. It reminded me of the great Chinese cinematographers of the past decade in its attention to color and movement.

The movie, by filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer (RIVERS AND TIDE: ANDY GOLDSWORTHY WORKING WITH TIME), takes its time - if you're in the mood for an action pic tonight, this probably won't fit the bill. But when you're ready for something in a thoughtful vein, you've just got to see this.

It features a lot of duet work with guitarist Fred Frith in a huge abandoned factory in Germany, and includes solo snare drumming in Grand Central Station, a fantastic jam session with Taiko drummers in Japan, a visit to Evelyn's home farm in Scotland.

Don't miss the scene where Evelyn teaches, via a bass drum, a young deaf girl how to hear with her body. It's powerful and wonderful. Our bodies and minds are capable of SO much. This movie is affirming, of both humanity and art.

Evolution of a musician - Part 1

2008-04-18T13:08:00.000-07:00

Before I saw/heard the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show along with the rest of America in 1964, music was not a passion of mine. There were no musical instruments in our house. My parents had a slim collection of LPs. Our record player was a strange sleep-teaching device with a clock built into it that my dad had bought to try and learn more via sleeping.

My mom was the one that played records or listened to the radio. She would sing while vacuuming, and I thought she sounded pretty good, like Barbra Streisand.

When my mom and I went on errands in the car, the radio was always on. AM Radio, circa 1960-1963. With my mom. Her stations...I liked Nat King Cole ("Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer") and Barbra Streisand.. Maybe I liked them 'cause they were on TV a lot at the time, and I liked their personalities. I didn't like Sinatra or any of the Rat Pack. "High Hopes" really bugged me - Sinatra sounded stupid singing about little kid stuff, I did not trust him. He seemed vaguely mean.But Bobby Darin, Mack the Knife? I liked when that song came on.

I had a teenage Aunt, who played the radio around my grandparent's pool. Top 40 radio. It didn't grab me. "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny", Elvis, Beach Boys, it just didn't do it for me. Elvis seemed old-fashioned and corny. I remember seeing a Beach Boy record at a neighbors' house, and even though surfing and all was cool, something about the cover made me feel that they were 'uncool', out-of-date. Before the Beatles arrived, music in general felt stale to this 7-year old.

Still, since I remember all that earlier music, it must have some kind of influence on me. Here is what music looked like in my house in 1963 (our entire record collection):

Keeley Smith? - A nice record, but I didn't love it.

Spellbound - I hated when my mom put this on. Very spooky music, scared me like crazy.

Tito Puente - Not something I ever requested to hear, but it did have a good party atmosphere to it.

Harry Belafonte - Love is a Gentle Thing. I loved this record. Harry's voice was so comforting to me.

Barbra Streisand. I thought her voice was SO pretty. I had a 6-year old crush on her.

Allan Sherman - A funny record. Harvey and Sheila? I didn't quite get all the jokes, but I knew it was funny. I puzzled over the cover a lot. What is a celebrity? Why are those people standing in a field?

I loved this record - recorded live, so that even if I didn't get a grown-up joke, I knew it was funny 'cause the audience was laughing. I laughed right along with them. It was a special treat when years later I got to appear on their show. And yes, Tommy is very smart and organized in real life, he seemed to be the one holding the show together.

The Limelighters - Like the Smothers Brothers, recorded live, so I could clue into what was supposed to be funny.

Kingston Trio - I actually borrowed this from my parents a couple years ago, to revisit. I can see why I liked it as a kid - some humor, some good songs and singing, high energy. But some of the humor is really racist and distasteful. It doesn't hold up so well over the decades.

Porgy & Bess Soundtrack. This one was a little scary to me - the overture is very dramatic and big and dark in a way. But I did love the music very much, and Gershwin remains one of my favorite composers. This LP is deep in me.

The Music Man - "Marian the Librarian" was a favorite tune. I loved the way the long note is held out on "Maaaaaaaaaa-rian". And I loved the way Robert Preston sang. There are a lot of good songs on that record.

Glenn Yarborough - I never put this record on myself. When my mom played it, it was okay, just not my thing.

Dinah Washington. I loved her voice. More than Barbra Streisand's (although I didn't develop a crush on Dinah). Some of the record goes awash in Nelson Riddle-style arrangements (which I've never cared for), but some of it swings hard and true. And her voice is ALWAYS good on it.

Gershwin for Moderns - Ted Heath. While this music has been re-released, I couldn't find a picture of the original cover art. I don't remember anyone playing this record when I was young. I think it was my dad's record]. Since he never listened to music, that would explain why this record never got played. He claimed to like Stan Kenton, but his record collection was all on 78's in the garage.

A huge, wonderful memory of my early years was when the whole family went to the record store one night. Only that one time, never before or since, we just got up after dinner and went to the music store, where you could listen to records in listening booths. We each got to pick out a record to take home. Wow! I got this Huckleberry Hound story LP.

And that's what I was listening to before the Beatles arrived.

Economics Lesson for Today

2008-04-14T12:18:00.001-07:00

Okay, so it looks like we're headed for a recession. Alright then, we're in a recession. Whaddya want, you want me to say, "this is the worst financial crisis since the 2nd World War"? What was the financial crisis before then? Oh, yeah...the Great Depression.

Well, that's what some say is going on. I'm not a wall street guy. I don't get simple math, let alone high finance. But there was a remarkable interview on "Fresh Air" with a guy who was able to explain the current crisis in simple terms. I mean, it was almost fun, to be able to get my mind around everything that's going on. Almost fun, except that the news is pretty grim.

However, I thought it was important enough, and enjoyable enough, to let you know about it.

"Fresh Air from WHYY, April 3, 2008 · Perplexed by the U.S. economy? You're not alone. Law professor Michael Greenberger joins Fresh Air to explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis, credit defaults, the shaky future of other types of loans and what we can expect from the U.S. financial markets."

Happy listening!

Radio interviews this week

2008-04-09T12:38:00.000-07:00

Did an interview with KPFA's Dean Suzuki on Sunday night. His show runs from 10-12pm. My bedtime is usually 9pm these days. And Q has been on a night-terrors tear for a couple of weeks, so sleep has been at a super-premium. Still, I figured I always love talking music with Dean (he's a doctor of music, puts his stethoscope to new music of all kinds, from minimalism to pop), and that I could manage to be coherent.

I don't know how it sounded out on the airwaves, but I was struggling to find each word in a sentence. I had things that I wanted to say, but my brain and my tongue had gone to bed a couple hours before. Ah, well...At least we played tons of music, from Fall of Troy, I'm Growing, and even the cut I co-wrote with Richard Bob and sang on from the latest Bobs CD (Funk Shui from Get Your Monkey Off My Dog).

I've got another radio interview later this week - with a Vancouver BC radio station (Brent and Woofy), but that's at 10am on Saturday. Don't know if I'll be any more coherent, but at least it won't be past my bedtime!

And it's rather trippy, going from being interviewed by a doctor of post-miminmalism to a guy with a talking stuffed dog. Is life weird, or what?

How to Find Good Music

2008-04-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

Listened to some of an interview/guest DJ spot with Ray Davies on All Songs Considered over breakfast this morning. (Great interview, btw) He recounted radio in the UK back in the 50's, how there were just 2 stations in the UK proper, then the US Armed forces stuff and radio Luxembourg. Got me thinking, reminiscing of my own days in the 60's of twisting the dial on my little AM transistor radio, looking for new music. The mystical, magical activity of twisting the dial slowly back and forth late at night, hearing something great, but fuzzy, trying to tune it in, only to have it disappear into the cosmos again. The local stations were strong and dependable, but finding even them was not completely scientific - the dial just swept across an arc of 160 degrees, there were no presets, you had to listen for what you want.

Fast forward to today, and there are new ways to find new music, or, to put it more precisely, music you haven't heard before. iTunes, iLike, Lastfm. They work, kind of. My favorite so far is Goombah. They really do seem to lead me to new stuff that I haven't heard before. I have my tastes, just like anyone, but I want to be surprised. They seem to deliver.

But I wonder if Goombah, or anyone else out there, could devise a device that simulates an AM or a short wave radio. You sweep the dial, and you hear snatches of music. When you hear something you like, you try to tune it in. Boy, that would be heaven! Perhaps its appeal would only be to a nostalgic older generation. But I think its appeal would go deeper.

Playlists, as they currently are, are intended to be turned on and left alone. Yes, you can skip past songs you don't care for, but the interaction is sporadic. With a radio dial, the interaction is in the moment, intense. You are concentrating on finding something, and only when you find a station that you like do you sit back and see what comes next. It becomes a moment of concentrated musical discovery.

If someone develops this idea, let me know. I don't need credit, I just want to use it!

Post Reviews Please

2008-04-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

Some really fine reviews and notices for I'm Growing have been coming in. Emails of appreciation from people like you, and reviews from newspaper, magazines and blogs. I'm so glad people are liking it and hip to it.

It's especially sweet when a reviewer not only likes it, but seems to understand why I had to make this cd. From zooglobble, the reviewer writes: "One of the things I like most about the kids' music genre is the feeling that artists are following their own muse, no matter how skewed, when they jump in...Which brings me to Gunnar Madsen."

Or this, from KidsMusicThatRocks: "It's incredibly interesting to see how the course of Madsen's life affected the development of these particular tunes: Madsen didn't simply make up and throw together a bunch of songs just to have a kids' album on the market."

Makes me feel all warm and cuddly!

But I still need help getting the word out to more people. Will you help?

Post your own review on iTunes or Amazon or CDBaby. Just click on a link to post your review and/or comments. Add your voice to some of these blog reviews:

"Brilliant arrangements and performances. Period. And funny! And fun! And entertaining for everyone in the family! What more could a kid and his grownups want?" - KidsMusicThatRocks.blogspot.com

"Deliciously good music" - Thingamababy.com

"The best "Beethoven's Wig" piece never written" - Zooglobble.com

"Overall, this one disappoints" - OutWithTheKids.blogspot.com

"Spirited, quirky children's CD" - CommonSenseMedia.org

I am deeply grateful for all your support. Making music is a huge part of my life, and I couldn't be doing it without people like you!

love and peace,

Gunnar

Too Good for Kids?

2008-04-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

I just had a little email conversation with Bill Harley, about a comment he received after a recent concert. The person told him "You're too good to sing for kids."

Well, that's a nice compliment in its way. I suppose one way to interpret it is "most music for kids is pretty bad, but your music is good." And that's nice. Somewhat true, even.

But, TOO good for kids? It's not like "Well, I got pretty good at writing music for kids. So good in fact that I moved on to writing for teenagers, then I got super good and started writing for college age kids. But I'm SO past that now - I've been writing fantastic music for middle age people, and now my agent says I'm ready to launch into music for the silver set..."

The goal is good music - for whatever age. I was a kid. I still have many thriving inner children, and every one of those inner children inside me wants good stuff. I suppose I have inner teenagers, inner middle aged men...So I write for me, or, uh, them, or, uh...you know. For all of me.

In a recent review of "I'm Growing", the author has a witty interchange with his wife about the 'appropriateness' of the song "Pumpkin Hair" for kids. She maintains that lyrics like "If she will let me be her guy, I'll never go free-rangin" aren't right for young kids. He counters with "But he's talking about marrying a woman and committing himself to her. Isn't that what Mom and Dad have done?" The review (on Thingamababy) has sparked a lot of comments. What is appropriate? Opinions vary,obviously.

Dan Zanes writes that one of his most-requested songs is an old sea shanty called "Pay Me My Money Down", which sings about jail, a bar, money ;the usual concerns of sailors of yore (perhaps of sailors of now, too). He apparently didn't think twice about putting it on his CD "Night Time".

Lately I've been teaching choir to grades 4-6 at my son's montessori school. It's a cool challenge to find songs that will capture them and inspire them. I mean, my childhood experience singing choir was generally snooze-ville. I wanted rock and roll, please. But rock and roll and 60 voices don't really work (except for the intro to "You Can't Always Get What you Want"). Sea Shanties survive the choir treatment well, so we're doing "Drunken Sailor". A song that cannot be done in public schools (see "drunken"). The kids LOVE it, and it's inspired some great discussion. One kid knew of other verses, including one about doing something with the captain's daughter - Why didn't I include that verse? he asked. Because, I said, that verse was inappropriate. We went on to talk about why sailors (of yore) felt the need to get drunk, and how a "dose of salt and water" was to make the sailor throw up and get sober faster ("eww, yuch!").

Kids know a lot about life. Sheltering them from inappropriate things is, well, appropriate, but they're bound to learn of things outside of your control, and then they're going to have questions about that stuff. Are you just going to pretend not to hear? Why not let sea shanties about drunken sailors and jail be a starting point for talking about these real issues? Songs offer a 'safe' way for kids to explore and approach issues that are all around them and can feel overwhelming.

It's not like I have any songs about jail or drunkeness on "I'm Growing", but still the review on Commonsense Media has a kind of disclaimer, saying that the cd "might require just a bit of discussion or explanation". I would hope! What a wonderful thing to fill a child (or a grown-up) with questions, with a yearning to find out more? That's why I don't dumb-down the words in my songwriting. I want kids running to the dictionary (or the computer) to figure out what "obfuscate" means. I want them to challenge their teacher to use it in a sentence!

I want music that a family can enjoy together. My family all sat around the record player and laughed when we put on the Smothers Brothers. Much of it was over my head, but because my parents were laughing, I wanted to know MORE. And this was something we could share together. My dad didn't like the Beatles, I didn't like my mom's LP of the soundtrack to "Vertigo", but we could all get behind the Limelighters and the Smothers Brothers. (Okay, I'm beginning to carbon-date myself...)

So it is today. I'm writing music for families to enjoy together. That's what Dan Zanes is doing. That's what Bill Harley is doing. Making music that's too good to be JUST kids music.

Welcome to the Blog Spot

2008-04-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

Hello friends,

Why blog? I need a way to keep in touch. So I decided to write to you on my website.

It's not as good as sharing a delicious meal together and chatting long into the night. It's not as good as a phone call, hearing each others' voices. It's not as good as a letter, where the words are scratched onto the paper by a hand that you know and love. I know, it's not even like email, where there's a back and forth to it all.

But I had to do SOMETHING, fergoshsakes!

I miss performing in front of living breathing sneezing laughing people. I even miss the part of touring that meant that I came to your town and sometimes had time to share a delicious meal together and chat long into the night (though I don't miss sitting in airports and on airplanes).

But life takes us in unexpected directions. I knew life would change when we decided to have a child 5 years ago. I just didn't know how it would change. That's the whole point of adventure, right? To NOT know where you're going.

Well, it's a fine adventure so far. I had pretty good, concrete notions of what love and exhaustion were about. But then Q was born, and it felt like a piece of my heart lived outside my body, like love was an actual physical part of my body that could be held and amazed over. And it felt so precious! I understood that fierceness that comes with parenting, the need to guard the precious being. And then, there was the exhaustion.

Hey, I know exhaustion. I'm in the performing arts. I've gone weeks without sleep to get a show on its feet, working 20 hours days. Don't tell me about exhaustion!

But let me tell you about exhaustion. When you're involved in a project, say a play, you work long and hard, but there is an end in sight - an opening night, a closing night. There are limits, boundaries to it. This does not apply to parenting. Sure, you can look forward to school starting at age 5, or college starting at age 18, but we're talking years on end of 4-5 hours sleep a night. It's a whole different ball game. And, now that Q is 5 and has started school, it turns out that starting school was an ephemeral boundary. Yes, we're no longer changing diapers, but there are other, new, screamingly important issues that need to be addressed. And, in our case, Q still rarely sleeps through the night. I'm exhausted!

As for my music, much of it was on hold for the first few years of Q's life. I was able to tend to projects that were already in motion, but had no time or energy to do new things. That began to shift 2 years ago, and I now have a sketchbook full of new ideas for instrumental music (Spinning World 2), and was able to write and record and put out a new family CD ("I'm Growing"). That CD took so much longer than I thought it would. But I only have a few morning and afternoon hours when Q's at school to do my work. After that it's childcare, cook dinner, get to bed and grovel for grains of sleep until the sun and Q pop up.

Will I perform again? You betcha. I really do miss it. It's just not the right time now for me to get outta the house. Q needs me, my body needs to rest. So here we are, communing in cyberspace, making a connection that makes sense for the time being. While this blog is currently not set up to take comments, you are of course welcome to email me. Or write to me, a real letter!

What about the guestbook? Well, it was getting spammed hard, and took too much energy to clean up all the time. Sorry I couldn't keep that open.