Wedding Lover goes for Gunnar Music

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?

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

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

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

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 :)