Far, Far Away.................

My younger brother came to visit and to meet his niece this weekend. It was a great time.

The timing of his visit, however, was not as we had planned. You see, my younger brother is a professional trumpet player. He has wanted to play in an orchestra since he was smaller then the trumpet. He went to college and grad school, all to learn how to be an orchestral trumpeter.

Now all that dedication has paid off. After a summer as a fellow at Tanglewood in Massachusetts, he landed a gig as the Principal Trumpet for the Beijing Symphony. Yup....the one in China....yup....halfway around the world. They want him there in a couple of weeks. Insanity.

I'm proud of the lad....he always had a focus that I never did. I'm never happy unless I've got 30,000 different tasks going at once. For him, it was always that trumpet.

That said, it was tough to say goodbye. Hopefully, he'll make it home for Christmas.

He and I weren't close as kids. The seven years of age difference made that hard. Over the past few years though, as I grew out of being a self-righteous prick and he matured into a pleasant human being, we've grown much closer. I'll miss him.

Good Luck, Zebediah. I know you'll blow them away. I'll save my pennies for a trip to Beijing to see you play. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Oh, and I promise I won't set your hair on fire.

Perspective and Retrospective

My lovely wife and I just had our first child.....crazy. So, without further ado, here she is:



As you might expect, I'm not getting much sleep. Like many new parents, I've spent a lot of time singing to the Katherine, trying to soothe her. In the first days of her life, I realized that I didn't remember many little kid songs. The first one went something like, "The itsy bitsy spider...la la la la la la." Again like many other parents, I fell back on things I knew and started singing her some Mark Lanegan, Johnny Cash, and some less appropriate things like some of Phil's lyrics....

This prompted me to think about the music that I've listened to over my life. So here it is....thirty years of good and bad. I thought I'd break into some phases instead of just a monster list. Here's my musical memior, with some amusing samples:

The Early Years

In the early days of my life, say ages zero to eight, I was at the musical mercy of my parents...this meant lots of classical music and some soft rock. Consequently, it would be middle school and high school before I learned classic rock. Top albums from this period:

Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
Neil Diamond - Hot August Night
Mozart's Requiem

My First Albums

When I finally got a mind of my own (and some money...) I started getting some of my own music. These selections, purchased from when I was ten until I was about thirteen, were mostly influenced by my family and friends. Here are the first three albums I bought....a sign schizophrenic music stylings to come:

Van Halen - Van Halen
Charlie Daniels Band - Greatest Hits
Chuck Mangione - Children of Sanchez

Middle School

It was at this point that I took a hard turn.....The 80's took hold and I started playing drums and started being interested in women. My tastes split on those lines....in hindsight, this was probably the dark ages of my musical taste....I sported one hell of a denim jacket with a huge arcing Metallica patch on the back and smaller patches of Kiss, Dio, and Iron Maiden. I wish I had that jacket just for posterity and to mortify poor young Katherine. Here are some samples:

Iron Maiden - Somewhere in Time
Metallica - Master of Puppets
Motley Crue - Shout at the Devil
Ratt - Out of the Cellar
Whitesnake - Whitesnake


High School

In high school, I realized that I wasn't going to get chicks listening to hair metal....or maybe it was my horrible curly mullet...I dunno. I started to get exposed to a lot of different music through private drum lessons, jazz band, new friends, etc. I was all over the map again, listening to some classic jazz and bebop, jazz fusion, and progressive rock. High School was also the time when I finally got introduced to classic rock. I won't include that in the sampler, because it wouldn't be nearly as funny. Luckily, I escaped much of late eighties pop until I got married......Samples from this era? Well, since you asked:

Fates Warning - Perfect Symmetry
Dream Theater - When Dream and Day Unite
Rush - Exit Stage Left
Miles Davis - Bag's Groove
Chick Corea - Electric Band
Dave Weckl - Master Plan

And yes, I did listen to Pearl Jam, Phish, Sarah McLachlan and many others.....they are not as funny as Fates Warning and remembering that Dave Weckl had a mullet too!

College

I went to college for music and engineering. I was exposed to a ton of different stuff. Over my college years, I explored funk, jazz, eclectic classical, world music, and just about anything I could get my hands on. This was my departure from my rock roots...I focused on a lot of other things. I didn't come back for many years. Oh, gone was the mullet (finally, maybe Junior year) and I had no time for rock bands. My connection to rock was through Frank Zappa, Living Color, again trying to get chicks (with stuff like Counting Crows)....and the funk. I played a lot of ethnic percussion in reggae bands, steel drum bands, etc......and here it comes.....wait for it....

Babatunde Olatunji - Drums of Passion
Brecker Brothers - Return of the Brecker Brothers
Frank Zappa - Apostrophe
Paliment - Give Up the Funk
Glen Velez - Internal Cumbustion
Santana - Abraxas
Living Color - Vivid

The Aftermath....

In the aftermath of undergrad...gosh, it's been almost 10 years now. I'll skip the drama...lot's of ethnic percussion and jazz for the first few years. In the past five, a big shift to Latin Jazz and back into rock. I've come full circle, in some respects....back in a rock band. Here's the highlight sampler from these ten years:

Trilok Gurtu - Glimpse
Mongo Santamaria - Afro Roots
Eddie Palmieri - El Rumbero del Piano
Rumba Club - Radio Mundo
Jeff Buckley - Grace
Mark Lanegan - Whiskey for the Holy Ghost
Maynard Furgeson - Brass Attitude

It's been a long trip. I've listened to some good and some bad. Katherine, let's sing some "She's got the looks that kill"