New Orleans Travelogue - Part 4: Did I mention there's music?

If you've ever wandered down Bourbon Street after dark, or even during the day, you know there is no shortage of music to be heard. You also know there is no shortage of touts trying to push you into their joint, or sometimes half-naked girls trying to pull you into theirs. Curiously, though, I actually found jazz pretty hard to come by.

When I say jazz, I mean jazz. On my first afternoon in New Orleans, Mrs. S and I went straight to the Music Factory music store. There, they have jazz broken out into several sub-categories such as: blues, traditional, vocal, modern, ... and such. They also have zydeco, New Orleans jazz (?), and a couple of categories that didn't make sense (to me). I relay this as a point of reference in that, in the city that may or may not have invented jazz, you can't really walk up to someone and say, hey, where can I go to hear some good jazz music, one - because there are so many places where one could go, and two - because they won't know what kind of jazz you are talking about (and you might not know, either).

So on our first night in the Big Easy, we cut to the chase and went to Preservation Hall. We weren't too keen on paying $10 to stand in a non air conditioned barn, but we figured we owed ourselves the experience. Plus since the band only does 45-minute sets, we figured that would be good enough.


Well, it was touristy, but I have to say, the band was very good and the experience was worth it. It was a sextet, with alto sax, drums, trombone, tuba, piano and lead trumpet. They sang a few songs, but mostly just played. You couldn't really hear the piano unless she (a Japanese woman no less) was soloing. But the sound was good and very, I'll say "traditional". Of course, they try to make money selling you nondescript CD's and by taking requests. I paid $5 to hear St. Louis Blues, mainly because I think I was the only native English speaker in the audience and it was the only song name I could think of that I thought the band could play. They seemed to appreciate it, though, and I was accommodated also with a piano solo. But it was hot and muggy, so when that set ended, we called it a night.

Here's me in front of the hall the next day.


We stumbled into some more live jazz the third night of our stay, but I'll leave that for my next post.

New Orleans Travelogue - Part 3: The tenuous connection

When we stopped at the Louisiana welcome center on our way to New Orleans, we took a few minutes to browse through the many tour and destination brochures they had displayed there. I came across one that said Cemetery/Voodoo/Jazz across the top.



Cemetery voodoo jazz.

Although I consider myself relatively more knowledgeable about voodoo than the average American (I sleep on two different kinds of gris-gris - how about you?), other than the fact that several noted voodoo practitioners called New Orleans home, I'm not sure what the connection is. And while the above-ground, mausoleum style cemeteries are well known, when you think about it, there is really nothing so different between a New Orleans cemetery and a "regular" cemetery in Anywhere USA. You still are six feet from the bodies, there just isn't all that dirt between you and them. So I consider the connection between cemetery, voodoo and jazz to be tenuous at best, and I don't think the best way to appeal to tourists is to throw everything you've got all at them at once. Besides, I imagine the following conversation.

So, are you a swing era musician, or do you like be-bop?

No, man.

Okay, post-bop then, maybe fusion?

No.

Free jazz?

No, man.

What then?

Cemetery voodoo jazz.

If this is the new standard, other tourism promotional possibilities that come to mind are:
San Francisco: Gay Alcatraz Sea Lions
Los Angeles: Hollywood Tar Pits Jack Nicholson's House
New York: Empire State Building Broadway Mugging
Phildelphia: Liberty Bell Cheesesteak Rocky Balboa
Orlando: Mickey Mickey Mickey
Las Vegas: Magic Gambling Neon
Cleveland: Rock 'n Roll LeBron Rust
Seattle: Rainy Boeing Salmon
Alabama: Cottonfield Plantation Whatchou lookin' at boy?

But I digress.
So, part three of my travelogue is finished and I still haven't written about any music. But it is coming, probably with the next post. Y'all come back now, y'hear?

New Orleans Travelogue – Part 2: The Birthplace of America’s Music....NOT!

So, on the way to New Orleans, driving from Alabama, we obviously go through Mississippi. I was somewhat astonished that when we hit the state line, we were greeted by a sign that said, “Mississippi, Birthplace of America’s Music”. My very first thought was, “Does Louisiana know about this?”



When I hear “America’s music”, I think “jazz”. It is quintessentially American, like baseball, apple pie and all that...hey! All that jazz! So where does Mississippi get off calling themselves the “birthplace” of America’s music? Shouldn’t we define what “America’s music” means first?

Personally, I just don’t like such bold and broad sweeping claims. I think if I was governor of Louisiana or otherwise had some skin in the game, I might say something to somebody in Mississippi. “You’re full of it,” comes to mind.

Anyway.

Was jazz invented in Mississippi? I don’t think so. Was it invented in Louisiana? Probably not. So let’s clear this up: Mississippi may or may not be the birthplace of the blues. Maybe. Jazz and/or blues may or may not be able to lay claim to the title of “America’s Music”. Maybe. And jazz may or may not have been “born” in New Orleans. Maybe. Whatever the case may be, I guarantee you that the German and French tourists at Preservation Hall the other night were not in America to visit Mississippi.

Mississippi needs to come up with a better slogan, and it better not be, “At least we’re not Alabama.”

New Orleans Travelogue – Part 1: Food and Edible Insects

Obviously, this blog is about music, but on my recent trip to New Orleans (July 6-9), I ate REAL good, so I’m going to write about that first.

Here’s a brief rundown:

Dinner first night: The Pelican Club. The place was practically empty, so we got first rate service and attention, which always makes the food taste better. I had steak, Mrs. S had fish. I picked out a nice Marlborough white that went with both. Excellent.



Lunch second day: Po-boys in the Riverwalk food court, shrimp for him, oyster for her. Cheap, fast, and good. I was able to eat everything despite having snacked on crickets (“chocolate chirp cookies”), wax worms (in cinnamon and brown sugar – see photo), and meal worms (in olive oil and hot pepper) at the Audubon Insectarium. (Highly recommend that destination. It’s fascinating.) All the edible insects were very tasty and even though Mrs. S almost threw up just watching me, I’ve seen enough of Andrew Zimmern that it really didn’t bother me. They allowed you to eat as much as you wanted, so I had three or four of everything. No reactions or anything, just good eating. I even bought a scorpion sucker to munch on at a later date.



Dinner second night: Stella. Got the full seven course meal with wine pairings to celebrate Mrs. S’s birthday. Place was packed but service was good and the meal was absolutely unsurpassed. We’ll never miss revisiting here whenever we come back.

Lunch third day: Muriel’s at Jackson Square. I thought it pretty average, but Mrs. S loved it. I had a middling, muddling crawfish etoufee, and Mrs. S had goat cheese crepes. She definitely out-ordered me.

Dinner third day: Arnaud’s. Average-to-below food, terrible service. Menu was funky and they wouldn’t sell you some stuff on it, at ANY price, if you didn’t order it the way they wanted to serve it. (Yeah, stupid.) They had a banjo trio playing jazz music, which was alright, but you really pay for the atmosphere. I would say unless you are dying to feel and be treated like a backwater tourist, this place is a definite pass.

I ordered Samuel Adams at EVERY single restaurant. Not one carried it. I drank Abita as a rule, which is better than your run of the mill Bud’s and Coor’s, but really not all that great. I’m writing a letter to Jim Koch (Chairman of Boston Brewery) to let him know about this wide open market with no penetration yet.

Virtuoso? More like "lazy so-and-so"

It is said that in order to be a virtuoso in something, you have to practice whatever it is for 10,000 hours. That would make you “world class” or put you into the top 1% in that field, or something like that. In other words, make you a virtuoso. As of this August, I will have been formally studying jazz piano for two years, and while I have not tried to keep track of every single minute that I play the piano, I have tracked the majority of the time that I spend practicing, playing, taking lessons, rehearsing with bands, etc.

Now understand, I have no delusions here. 10,000 hours is a long, long time. To put it into perspective, if I were practicing piano as a full time job - that is eight hours a day, five days a week - it would still take five years to become a virtuoso. If (for example) I worked at it full time, and worked twenty hours every weekend as well, it would still take three years, four months to reach 10,000 hours.

Folks, I can’t even SIT at a piano that long, much less sit at it and play something. (I’m ashamed to admit it, but since school ended, I’m pretty sure I haven’t played ten hours all together. I just haven’t felt like it.)

Given that, the fact that I’m pretty close to having five hundred hours under my belt is actually pretty amazing. If you throw in my plonking around time, plus some of the time I had as a kid learning to play the organ, I’m probably up around two, maybe three thousand hours total. Still, a long stretch to the 10,000 total.

It is entirely possible that I won’t play ten thousand hours of jazz piano in my life. If I do somehow stick to it and play, say, five hundred hours a year (two hours a day, five days a week for the entire year ... yeah right, not likely), I’ll be 65 when I reach the virtuoso total.

What’s the point? I’m not sure, but I think the point is that I need to set manageable, near-term goals, or the title of “virtuoso jazz pianist” is going to fairly and completely elude me.

Only 9500 more hours to go. Let's shoot for two hours today, anyway.

Critical listening project update

Well, in the face of a two week furlough from my regular job, things are looking up for my various jazz related projects, in more ways than one.

Regular readers of this blog will recall my critical listening project. Knowing that I am going to be off for two weeks, I've spent the better part of the last three weeks acquiring some new recordings, so I was only a little surprised when I revisited my CLP notebook and found I hadn't listened critically to a recording in over two weeks. I was happy that I chose to revisit the CLP with The Amazing Bud Powell Volume Two. It's a wonderful record that suffers a little from technological limitations, but not as many as Volume One, and not enough to detract from the enjoyment of the music. I also think the song selection is better on this recording. Bud seems to have more fun with the songs. Anyway, this was a good one to kick start the project again.

It will be important that I fire on all cylinders in the project during the first week of the furlough, because the second week of the furlough I'm going to be in New Orleans with Mrs. S., soaking up the live jazz scene. I might even do some remote blogging and if I win enough money at the poker tables when I'm not in the jazz clubs or out picking up some fresh gris-gris at the voodoo shop, I might stay even longer. Hell, my company doesn't care if I take time off (saves them money), so maybe I just need to oblige.

Folks, jazz is where it's at, and I'm there!

Halfway There

With the recent acquisition of the recording Air Time by Air, I have officially managed to obtain 93 of the 185 recordings of the "core collection" as set out in the eighth edition of the Penguin guide to jazz recordings. (And yes, I know there is a ninth edition, but I started the eighth edition and that is the list I'm working to.) When I started my jazz recordings collection almost two years ago, it was a relatively easy task to find recordings in the core collection that I didn't have and to learn about the stars and great recordings over the history of jazz. Having progressed this far, however, now I am encountering certain "issues":

1) Most of the low hanging fruit has been picked. Of the 185 albums on the list, some are obvious classics, multi-million sellers, and are sort of like "Witness" T-shirts in Cleveland: they're everywhere. Now that I've got those, I'm left with fruit that is well up in the tree. Hard to find, yes, but in some cases, even impossible.

2) The higher-up hanging fruit is not only harder to find, but more expensive. Remaining single CD's on the list mostly go for $12-17, even used, and sets for anywhere from $20 to $77, and higher. One example: early last week, I found a copy of The Art Ensemble of Chicago 1967-68 on e-bay. The seller wanted $150 for it. It normally sells for between $125 - 180 on various music websites. Since I don't much care for the avant-garde work of Roscoe Mitchell, I certainly wasn't going to shell out that kind of money for a set I wasn't going to get much play out of, so I offered $35. One other buyer offered $78, which is what it eventually sold for. But with $5 CD's pretty easy to find and less than $10 the norm, I find I like my jazz music the same as my wine: Why pay $35 for one you might not like when you can get three for $30 that you will probably like at least as much, if not more?

3) The remainder of the list is pretty esoteric and often, not even enjoyable. Even jazz musicians and fans I talk to don't always know what I'm talking about when I ask them "What does Alexander von Schlippenbach sound like?" and, "Where can I pick up Tomasz Stanko's latest CD?" I mean, I once went to great lengths to track down a boring record by Evan Parker - The Snake Decides - buying it from the UK for about $20. I listened to it once. I even found Stanko's Leosia at a decent price last week. (Haven't got it yet, so don't know if that's going to work out.) Nothing sucks more than spending two months and $25 to get a recording that you just don't like. It's one of the perils of jazz music collecting, however, so I'm putting up with it, but that won't stop me from griping about it here.

So, why do it?

Well, the thrill of the chase, and all that. But really, you only have to look at the Yoity Tot list to find a number of records you may or may not have heard of (at least 95% of them were completely unknown to me two years ago) that really are worth hearing and will more than make up for the money and time spent ending up with duds. It is a collection, after all, and it's mine.

But let's not forget: I might as well keep going, because...

I'm halfway there.