Bon(ed) Soir

"a musical wasteland of endless bass solos and fart-like runs ... "

 This was all I could muster after seeing Wycliffe.

I don't know if the music was lacking, it was the overall vibe of the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors crowd (most of them there to see Randy Newman this night) ... younger now, but no less pretentious and trying-too-hard-seeming as when I used to live across the street and (barely) attended auld FU.

Or, have I finally stopped trying too hard to dig jazz?

When I used to immerse in the scene, in the clubs, eating cheeseburgers ... waitresses (swimming in sax!) ... with the crowing, old voices of jazz legends nightly, and Wryly Sardonix demanding I leave ... which I did one night, mid-set, when he yelled from the stage that he sounded "like shit" and the cause of that mess fell on my deaf ears ... WHAT!?

I stormed offstage that night before he did!  There's only one King, bitch, and I left the building!!!

... Where was I?

Oh, right.  So Wycliffe Gordon ...

I went to see James Brown once, back in the day when we lived in America ... and shuffling around the stage at Radio City Music Hall at one point with an RK-100, he launched into a noodling rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" ...

Now don't ever let anyone try and tell you that James Brown, 'the Godfather', was NOT a show-stopper!  He stopped that show dead ... ground to a halt, as he strutted and poked on his shoulder-slung Korg, an eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth verse.  Of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".

Really.

"The hell is he doing?" a guy behind me asked his date.  Something large and thrown fell just short of the stage ... A chorus of "boos" began, like an imagined cliché scene, and rose in cresecendo until filling the theater.

James Brown stripped to his undershorts and started kicking Rockette-like, as the curtain came down and there wasn't an encore.

Just kidding!  Nobody really threw anything.

But I remember that night well ... I hooked up with a girl who thought she had tickets to see Jethro Tull ... and experienced something like it last night seeing Wycliffe.

Or maybe I wasn't in the mood.

Blah Blah (Versions)

About Jeff Glovsky
on ...

LinkedIn (DE)

Dividing his time between München and New York City, Jeff Glovsky is a dedicated business owner / entrepreneur with an ear for writing and an eye for photography; and a multimedia / presentation support specialist with a background in live music and years of hands-on experience in touring, club, festival, hotel, university and Tier 1 financial settings.

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XING

Jeff Glovsky offers corporate event services, AV / production support and renewable (solar) energy consultation to an established private client database. He is a photographer / "raw" image content provider and a published writer of exaggerated non-fiction ("faction") short stories and prose poetry.

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Viadeo

Jeff Glovsky is a corporate event services and executive travel consultant, as well as a boating enthusiast and yacht and private jet charter partner. He has been a jazz and world music booking agent, and currently works with the non-profit Global Music Project® as a regional events director.

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Music2Deal

As a live 'Tonmensch' (sound engineer), Jeff Glovsky has mixed sound at the Blue Note, Jazz Standard and Birdland jazz clubs in New York City, and for Sue Mingus and the Mingus Big Band / Mingus Orchestra.

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AVglov (Jeff Glovsky)

[ ... is an Audio-Visual technician / operator with a corporate event services skill set and background in live music and sound mixing.  He is a regional events director with Global Music Project®, and a freelance photographer and raw image / content provider.  His portfolio of idiosyncratic Photo(s) by Jglo can be seen on Behance, and across the ongoing "Lo-Fi Project" on Tumblr and WordPress. ]

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LinkedIn (U.S.)

Dividing his time between New York City and Munich, Germany, J(eff) Glovsky is a corporate event services and executive travel consultant, as well as a boating enthusiast and yacht and private jet charter partner.

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If You Dig

S U P P O R T  n  J O I N

(Blue) Noted Passing

"I don't care much about music.  What I like is sounds." - Dizzy Gillespie

"Clouds float in the same pattern only once." - Wayne Shorter

"When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them." - Don Cherry

"Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you are doing, even if it takes them fifteen or twenty years." - Thelonious Monk

"Don't play the saxophone.  Let it play you." - Charlie Parker

"I'll play it and tell you what it is later." - Miles Davis

"You can have tone and technique and a lot of other things but without originality, you ain't really nowhere."

Lester Young

*

Without being hip to the fact at the time, each of the cats quoted above, in his own way, blew a eulogy for Ornette Coleman.

Ornette was "out".  He was different.  He 'couldn't play', yet "rewrote the language of jazz" (no small feat in a musical landscape of perpetual innovation (once), and the ethereal dissipation of improvised note bursts nightly, on a 'moment's notice').  Maynard Ferguson thought O.C. had "bad intonation, bad technique".  Miles Davis, judging by the sounds Ornette's axe made, concluded that "talking psychologically", he must be "all screwed up inside."  Another trumpeter (oddly), Roy Eldridge, thought Ornette Coleman was "jiving, baby."  And even kindred free musical spirit, Thelonious Monk, likewise known for "playing wrong right", was heard to exclaim, "Man, that cat is nuts!".

One of the few who seemed to 'get' Ornette was Charlie Mingus, who, another kindred musical spirit, was able to recognize the "organized disorganization" of Coleman's (non)playing ... yet at some point complained, "he can't play it straight."

Now as everyone acknowledges, and some admit (vehemently), there is a lot of jazz garbage out there.  There are the Spoogers, just gacking out notes for no reason ... the Noodlers, annoyingly poking, inserting ... the Vocalists (most of them), entirely disrespecting the "songbooks" they pillage (not to mention audiences' time, patience, money) ... There are literally people "performing" who shouldn't be.

"Hell is full of musical amateurs."  - George Bernard Shaw

I myself am no musician.  I don't capably play any instruments (yet?  One of my biggest regrets in life, so far), and I'm no authority.  But I do know well and appreciate jazz:  its humor, its sense of chaos, its combustible spontaneity ... and above all, its take it or leave it, 'is what it is' ethos, too often exploited because, Hey! It's Jazz!

"Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things & still be Jazz."- Sonny Rollins

... For better or worse.

Unlike many (rabid) fans of the genre, I am not hagiographic.

But I don't get the sense that Ornette Coleman was spooging (or noodling, or ever "jiving").  I think he was onto something bigger than jazz ... Not only taking the invisible music -- silences and "mistakes" -- received and famously transmitted by Monk, to inevitable next levels (albeit on every tune!) ... but also culturally prescient, in foreshadowing our present day aversion to "labels" - to being labelled, (mis)categorized, (mis)identified ... this rejection of easy, or 'normal', classifications, indeed a 'shape of jazz to come';

and in being cool with imperfections -- perhaps, limitations -- yet rightfully expecting to be accepted, at least heard.

*
"It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something."

"I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about." - Ornette Coleman
1930 - 2015

Are You Hearing Me?

For many years, I have had the good fortune to be a live sound engineer - mixing bands that can play actual musical instruments ... so that I, as any actual live "sound engineer" should be able to do, can discern between the varied sounds and tones of each instrument (the human "vox" included) ... as opposed to, say, sitting behind a computer (a digital sound console) and lazily babysitting "presets" (watching the faders zoom up and down together).

writes Mr. Nice Legz

As any self-respecting musician (or opinionated windbag in the business) will tell you, there is nothing worse than a lazy sound guy.

That said, there are clearly advantages to going digital in a live sound environment.  Because digital processing is self-contained -- that is, all of the effects, equalization, compression, etc., can be accessed from within the sound console itself -- there is no longer any need for racks, and stacks of "outboard" gear cluttering the tech. table or mixing area ... so when babysitting digital presets myself, I can at least put my feet up.

Once I was doing this hotel gig, and we started discussing the lunch that was going to be served that day.  As we were finishing breakfast, waiting for the morning's first presentation ... the in-house sound guy I was working with blurted, "Salmon!  Never been much of a salmon guy.  Just give me a nice piece of friggin' swordfish!"

And then he fell mountainously asleep at the sound board.

See, that's what I'm talking about!

That's the main difference between analog and digital audio mixing.  It's apples and oranges ... salmon and swordfish!

V Day

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Obnoxious

For most of my adult life, since first being subjected to, quite literally, 'music free commercial marathons' on New York City radio in the late 1980s, I've opted out as a radio listener.

To me, there is nothing -- no thing -- more grating, like nails on a chalkboard or through the skull, than a shouting, hyped-up radio ad.  Annoyingly crass, too often unfunny, always talking too fast and demanding I hear ... There has been, and remains, no single thing that will make me move quicker to turn off or unplug an inaminate object, than an obnoxious and overlong music- and energy-sucking commercial on non-public radio.

Inasmuch, society's "hits" have never meant anything to me.  I couldn't say thirty years ago what you, as a kid, were 'dancing' to; I certainly can't tell you now.

Wait, that's untrue.  In fact, I'm "hipper" today ... better informed musically, from a societal (or "Top 40") perspective, than I was in that era when U2, Whitney Houston, Roxette and Lisa Lisa -- and Crazy Eddie -- all shared the airwaves and vied for attention.

This, of course, has as much to do with social media, as it does the little "rugrat" vying for my attention (guilelessly bopping now to One Republic :) ... not only the Internet, but the prevalence of Things.  Music -- news, weather, awareness in general -- seep in today, more than they ever were able to.

Today then, is a forced content (non-"on demand"), overly ad-serving platform like radio even necessary?

Along these lines ... Should anybody really be surprised about Beck winning Grammys in 2015?  Be asking, even jokily -- like Kanye stalking forth to claim "his" prize (for Beyonce!) -- "Who the fuck is Beck?"?

You know who Beck is!  Even you, little "Rugrat" ... Inconceivable back when Beck was 'losing', you're old enough now for 'lost' worlds to seep in ... You should add a Republic!  A Direction or two!  Become multi- ... Span generations.  Expand.

And above all, learn ...

to respect artistry.

Über ...

In the gross, crass world we've all become ... of "reality" monsters, Frankenstein face-making, Facebook perversions of expectations -- to be private; to be left alone, not to be "poked"; to exist without "proof" - by (over)sharing or "checking in" -- 

our unprivate, unreal world of "belonging":  of "registering", "joining", being forced to "sign in" ... Of psychotics and legal drug pushing, abuse ... Of oversex; joky promotions of gluttony ... Clashing beliefs about health, diet, wellness ...

It's a miracle any of us functions normally.

What is even "normal" anymore?  There are three (3) sexes now:  two genders and a "neutral" ... and we're asked to select one when giving birth.  We've become science fiction.  Test tube animals.  Experiments.  Targets, in both the traditional and ad-"serving" sense.

We fight back hysterically ... pinching ourselves ... Histrionically flailing for affirmation; some foothold to keep us from being subsumed ...

Yet don't get me wrong.  I haven't entered Nietszche mode ... Man, Woman, Brucekind has my respect.  My utmost support and best, fervent hopes.  And if you're in on the joke our new world has become, I want to tear that shit up!! why, I respect you that much more ...

Nietziche, y'all!

(Some) Musical Influences

"A-B Road"

"Liam"

"Integration Blue(s)"

"Disraeli Geared"

"Sunday Morning"

* * *

"Walk on the Wild Side", ©Jeff Glovsky

Head, Refrain

On my musical LinkedIn recently, there was a question about jazz.  Specifically, whether or not the recent attention and flurry of words about the genre were helping to keep jazz "marginalized".

And Jeff Jumps In (Too):

I don't think Jazz is marginalized so much, as simply ignored by most. Much of this, unfortunately, has to do with overriding truths in the Justin Moyer Washington Post piece: a lot of jazz music today is perceived as "elevator music" (in the same way Classical is cast off as "stuffy" or "fusty") ... There continues to be an overreliance on the tried and true, but increasingly tired, "American songbook" comprising "standards" ... and along these lines, too much jazz is performed lazily, going through motions without any e-motion: smiling blankly, pausing significantly, "This next song...". Or the predicable 'insert bass solo here' live jazz moment.

Beyond this, there is the ridiculously furious circling of wagons whenever attention IS brought to Jazz. "Kenny G" mutterings, for example, if anyone inside gets too popular ... or admonishments, in no uncertain terms, to 'leave jazz alone!!' if anyone outside comes to play. Witness the Django Gold / "Sonny Rollins" New Yorker debacle (on which, incidentally, I also blew).

Frankly, I think I could've pulled that one off better than Django ... but I get what he was trying to do. Too many refuse to.

As long as Jazz remains disinterested in making an effort or expanding its appeal, it's going to keep being d(ism)issed ... Not "marginalized", because nobody's marginalizing Jazz except insiders - the jazz community itself.

"L'Esprit de Jazz", ©Jeff Glovsky

Song Without Music

für Elise Claudia

My biggest regret in life -- apart from wishing I'd spelled "recognize" correctly in the 8th grade spelling bee ... I'd have taken State!!  To this day, I think about that brain fart moment when I dropped the g, and puttered out "r-e-c-o-n-i-z-e" ... and the judge then, pausing significantly, completely ignoring me, turning to my opponent and intoning, "Recognize?".

... My opponent remembering the goddamn g!  Spelling "recognize" CORRECTLY, and setting off my lifelong descent into failure.

"Needless to say, you failed" ... my driving instructor also intoned to me, several years later, as I dinged a parked car while parallel parking.  I didn't get my license that day, my first try, at sixteen, and my piss-poor, abyss-diving life drove downward ...

Brother Theodore on Letterman:  all angsty pangsty, acting like he just burped up from hell.  Dark chords were struck, a bond was born, his shtick of torment, mine as well ...

-- but where was I?  Failure ... Regret!

The (second) biggest regret of my life is that I can't play an instrument.  Bopping sub tactilely, digging "the" jazz, doesn't qualify me as a Soundcloud "creator".  House all piano-less, tuneless fingers ... notes and tones just heard, unplayed.  Oh, would I spoke the languages of nature (plants) and music!  I can only see and hear ... Appreciate.

But not create.

And then, that one who got away.  You know who you are (Claudia) ... You 'got' me, understsood my Drang, my Sturm, und stood beside me.  You, who laughed at my suggestions, my sad efforts at suggestiveness ... You laughing, tousled hair and bird-like visage, made my losing less ...

Could we have played things differently?  If I blew notes, instead of all that air when we togethered??

Would we each be part of One, still?  How I wonder where you went!

But I digress ...

The parking meter's hungry.  I can ill-afford another ticket ... Traipsing out to feed her and I trip upon my laces, sprung undone because the shoes are cheap, like a bed in a hostel instead of a suite.

It's raining, as I'm on the street ... Getting up 'cause a cop on his beat comes to greet me.  Otherwise, I'd die here ("lie" or "lay"?) and just forget you.  But I can't forget you, Claudia!  Feel you playing still, my instrument ... You taught me all the things I could've kept, to keep in time, you mine ... but me, I tuned them out, and we ...

Our concert's over.

Now I try my best to solo, but I can't create the music!

No, the biggest regret of my life -- beyond the lack of talent and the 8th grade spelling contest -- is that blue, I note our lost motif and recoGnize it won't repeat ...

A Death of Self

... would've loathed what the internet has become

Cold, War and Otherwise

Though spring has sprung in Deutschland, in the States, the cold weather's unrelenting and winter storms -- for some reason, christened like hurricanes now! -- keep howling and blowing.

Also howling and blowing is western media, every time there's a new "global conflict".  Usually so ridiculously narrow and self-interested, reporting breathlessly the "breaking" news of Oscar night parties, celebrity deaths (all too often, self-inflicted) ... and/or imperious, like dolts in a small town, poking fun at perceived foibles: "Sochi problems", for example, or an "inept" investigation (or the opposite: escalating random acts of breathing -- those naturally occurring, every day things we all do because we're supposed to, and most of us are wired that way -- into newsworthy, larger than life acts of "heroism") ...

Where was I?

Oh, right.  So usually the media, particularly in the US and UK, is carrying on this way, perpetuating its curious combination of smug isolationism and Big Stick condescension, the whole time relying on unpaid contributors to file "i-reports", in order to fill all the 24/7 content platforms) ... but Vladimir Putin "takes" Crimea, and suddenly, hot.cool.Sochi gets forgotten; the meaningful Paralympics all but ignored, and CNN and the US start clucking, 'What to do about UKRAINE?'.

Geopolitically speaking, the US should have nothing to do with Ukraine.  The people of Crimea are speaking, and they seem to prefer not to be part of 'the west'.  This (so far) peaceful expression of self-determination should be recognized, in fact, allowed.

Beyond this simple statement of what seems, to me, obvious, I offer no public opinion.  My thoughts on politics, like religion and like my home address, telephone number, love and sexual doings that actually matter to me, are private, and will remain that way ... at least until they matter less, and/or I am ready to "share" them.

Does this mean, though, that I can't opine?  I don't have a politcal thought, or opinion?

"Gloaming Looming", ©Jeff Glovsky

Once I was sitting outside a jazz club where I used to mix sound.  It was a beautiful spring night, and I stepped out of what was, at that time, the stereotypical smoke-filled room to gulp in some fresh air.  It was during a bass solo ... These always tended to go on forever anyway, so I figured I had a few minutes, at least, before the singer would come in again and start gesticulating (wildly) toward her ear, suggesting (none too subtly) that she wasn't able to hear herself, or the piano.

As I was sitting there, pleasantly digging the gloaming, this homeless guy shuffles up to me and says, "Nice night, huh?"  He sits down on the brownstone stoop beside me, and offers up something about the second Gulf War ...

Well, I'd always been taught, and took pains to adhere to, the common sense adage about not talking to strangers.  I took this literally, and to this day -- fast-tracking to fifty (!) years old -- I struggle with its application.  Innately shy, to the point of awkwardness, if not coming across as 'differnt' (as in, 'that boy ain't right!') in most social settings, I was struck even dumber by my new companion's next and final communication.

After commenting about G. Dubya Bush, our troops in Iraq and September 11th -- all still very fresh wounds at the time -- and receiving zero response from me, this homeless guys says, "Man, I thought you were an asshole, but you might just be stupid."

Then sneeringly, he shuffles off.

I go back inside the jazz club, not offended or defensive, but really struck by what the homeless guy just told me: that I was an asshole, but I might also be stupid.  I'd never thought of myself as "stupid".  Throughout my academic career, with the exception of some shaky punctuation, Geometry in high school and five years of college, it was always the opposite!

But as I made my way back toward my sound booth that night, noticing that not only had the bass solo ended but the first set as well ... that the house lights were on, the stage was empty (though an amp was buzzing) and people were standing up to leave ... it occurred to me the homeless guy was probably right.

Yeah, Yeah ... No!

Recovering from the rush of "addiction" apologists -- falling over themselves, as they have been this month, to try and justify the high profile heroin overdose of Philip Seymour Hoffman -- it was refreshing to be distracted this past weekend by the The Beatles' arrival in America and appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show fifty years ago.

While I tended to prefer the Sex Clark Five growing up, to "ageing musician" Dave's bunch and the rest of the early British Invasion . . . like millions of people before me and after, I did grow up in a Beatles household.  Introduced to their music on old Scotch cassette tapes, which my dad had recorded for my mom back in the day, I was intrigued at first by the musical whimsy ("All Together Now", "I Am the Walrus") ... the overall happiness of their early sounds ... then the melodies and singability became apparent ...

I remember cruising around our backyard on a riding lawnmower once, singing "I Should Have Known Better", and our neighbor complaining about the noise.  "The lawnmower is fine," I remember him shouting.  "Just lower your voice!"

Later, the bash and steady beat of The Beatles' 'college music', as I used to call it -- "Helter Skelter", "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and "Day Tripper"; those three, in particular -- would keep me hooked ... and ultimately, there were the lyrics.  John, the poet, as the cliche goes ... but there was George, waxing wise about "the space between us all", and deadpan singing, "Love me while you can / Before I'm a dead old man" ...

There you go:  whimsy and poetry!

For that matter, the Ringo line, "You were in a car crash, and you lost your hair", I always found to be hilarious (regardless of whether or not it meant Paul was dead).

So suddenly last weekend, it was 'fifty years ago today' ... and sadly, John and George could not make the party.  There was George's son, Dhani Harrison, on-stage, representing.  There was Yoko, instructed to dance, representing.  There was Sean Lennon, looking disturbingly like his father ... There was the new and latest Lady McCartney ...

But how cool would it have been to see Sir Paul's son, James, and Ringo's son, Zak, a part of things too?  If not to perform something together there, with Sean and Dhani -- because let's face it, "Sean, James, Zak and Dhani" (in fact, the Post-Fab Four roll call would need to be "Sean, James, Dhani and Zak" to align with "John, Paul, George and Ringo" in the 21st century) just sounds weird - and that's without them even playing a note together!  It certainly would have been unfulfilling musically, for everyone --

If not to perform, then at least to speak together, reminisce a little ... and let the evening, not to mention the legacy, embrace them.

Perhaps they didn't want to be embraced.  The legacy already instilled within them, what need do James McCartney and Zak Starkey have to show up anywhere - let alone to what amounts, for them, to be just another family reunion with, quite probably, annoying relatives?

That said, the biggest omission of Sunday night's Grammy Salute to The Beatles -- an omission too often made in the grand Beatles' scheme of things, I think -- was Julian Lennon.  John's first son, and, arguably, the most creatively gifted Beatle offspring ... deserving, if anyone, to be included; invited, to carry a legacy.

Where was he last Sunday night when they were all together?  He was a no show man (goo goo g'joob) ... Hey, Jude deserves the torch passed down!  Not to keep getting burned, kept at bay, from The Beatles' ongoing and present flame!

... But what do I know?  I'm not in the Beatles' realm, and certainly don't claim to know any internecine goings on there.  I just think it would've been cool, and a richer golden anniversary -- not the golden slumbers that we saw and heard, and which came and went with seemingly too little forethought -- if all of the relatives could've been in the same room.

Vicious Bandwagon

"It always bothers me to see people writing ‘RIP’ when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop-out. To me, ‘RIP’ is the microwave dinner of posthumous honors."

 

Photo(s) by Jglo

We lost a biggie last week, with the passing of quintessential New Yorker, not quite glam rocker, punk rock godfather and irascible, not lovable poet "curmudgeon", Lou Reed.

Musically, Lou and most of his incarnations were secondary to my listening interests:  influential, sure.  Groundbreaking, no doubt.  Could he play guitar?  Listen to his attack, with Mick Ronson, on "Vicious" - but to my ear, something was always missing.  He couldn't sing to save his life, first off!  That droning, aggressive monotone in which he spoke his songs was clearly effective in serving the material -- imagine "Sweet Jane" or "Walk on The Wild Side" delivered any other way -- but in the end, it was alienating.

And that's exactly what the man, and the material, wanted:  you didn't connect with, or "get", Lou Reed ... You didn't "relate" to Metal Machine Music ... and even if you did, or claimed to, you weren't wanted.

As a listener, Lou Reed could take me or leave me.  And I was generally indifferent to Lou Reed.

Though musically (creatively, artistically), I may have found his 'don't give a fuck' shtick vaguely compelling in an arm's length, respectful way ... personally, in terms of the guy's overall comportment - Lou Reed, by most accounts, was a twat.  And I'm sorry (no I'm not), but he doesn't deserve the canonization he's been receiving from members of the press and others who suffered his "curmudgeonly" abuse, and it's somehow excused now -- no longer painful or professionally embarrassing -- because he's dead.

Typically hypocritical, and desperate to be loved-sounding.  "I was there ... a part of things.  I get Lou Reed!  And now he's no more, but his music lives on and I feel that too:  Look, I'm downloading "Perfect Day".  Isn't that neat?".

It's like the selfish parent refusing to let go, and dressing the baby in punk and rock t-shirts; or the onrush of simpletons suddenly buying Steinbeck ... misled by the vaguely slinky title into thinking there's something Fifty Shades-kinky about East of Eden (before diffidently stalling on page fifteen, when it's realized there's no page of biblical passion!).

It's like a CE (Christmas / Easter) Christian ... High Holiday Jew, or an idiot who lines up to wait to eat out:  just a bandwagon jumper ("I don't even like hamburgers!"); or a 'friend', 'fan' or 'follower' without knowing why.

But you know people get all emotional / and sometimes man, they just don't act rational / You know, they think they're just on TV - Street Hassle (1978)

Simply put, enough with the Lou Reed eulogies.

Apparently, Lou Reed could be an asshole.  I never met the man, but I did deliver musical gear to his wife once (at the time, I think, his girlfriend) ... and she was an asshole!

No, that's not true.  At all.  Let me state unequivocally, that I'm joking:  Laurie Anderson, in the seven-second glimpse that I caught of her while I was humping an amplifier into place, was certainly civil ... and likely, she knew and loved the "real" Lou Reed, not the "Lou Reed" of (velvet) underground music ... the (john) caged "artist", the New York doll from "out on the Island" ... the asshole that comprised "Lou Reed" - which the real Lou Reed would deign to show us ... real people rarely the way they're perceived ...

There he goes now ... May that spirit of punk be left in peace, to rock on undiluted.

"Walk on The Wild Side", ©Jeff Glovsky

I Can Dance!

I don't make music.

I can write and take pictures (I can bitch slap shade throwers) ... I can mix sounds and voices and instruments live.  I find comfort and meaning and rhythm in words, and can lyricize random poetix with ease.

Oh, I can compose things ...

I can even plink and tinkle a little.

I know what sounds right, I'm not tone deaf and I know what's 'in key' (though I'll never be there!).  I'm not an aggregator of esoteric crap on an i-pod ... There is nothing more curious, or annoying, to me, than knowing that for some reason, you've collected more than 5,000 songs (are there even 5,000 songs??), with a healthy dose of Inuit, bagpipe or "chakra music" in your song library.

Now I can appreciate some sexy throat singing every now and then ... Get down to a little Achy Breaky Mani Padme Hum on a Friday before last call.  But to walk around with that shit in my earbuds for any stretch of time is beyond my capacity ... and yours too, if you're going to be honest!  You don't need to be streaming it - and I certainly don't need you showing me that you're hip enough to 'get' or "like" it.

Anyway ... I'm not a musician.

I'm musical, and music has informed my life ... but a creator of music (or a designer of sound), is something I'm not.  I also can't draw, but that's a whole other post.

So whenever I find time to hang out on SoundCloud, I'm generally wondering why I'm there.  Why would I, not being a musician or creator of "sounds", sign up there?

Why would most people? then, becomes the question.

Whenever I bang around on SoundCloud, I'm praying it won't algorithmically single me out ... like, "Jeff Glovsky plays Barry Manilow on SoundCloud" ... That would be mortifying.

Because that's all I do there -- that's all I CAN do -- is listen to ("play") music, and then repost ("share") it.  I suppose I could put a couple playlists together ... and those would be, like, my "sounds", right?  Isn't that how it works?

Or maybe I'll record myself reading my writing - the ultimate self-absorption ... a maximum masturbation session!

"Amsterdam Avenue, holy midnight", I'll intone enigmatically ... my deep yet keening voice, preening dramatically.

"...on my knees...like Romeo!  Verona, in my pantaloons!  Elizabethan trappings, Al Pacino in delivery...Like, "Attica, oh Attica!  Oh, wherefore art thou...ATTICA!?

"I'm screaming.  No one hears me.

"But now give it out how I'm a writer...Writing!  No more shitty gigs...No odd job mental patient lot, no theater, theayter...NOT!  I'm never gonna work again!"

Yeah, I could read that.  My overwrought and written words pouring out inconceivably:  me reading and recording them!  See, reading a prose piece or poetry live, at an open mic. -- or better, by invitation -- is one thing.  But taking the time to record and promote something ... that's not what I do.

... Yet.  Like working up the nerve to dance ... 'cause that's also something I don't do.  I might bop to the beat like a tactile transducer, or stamp my foot up and down like a farmer ... or maybe even twerk a little.

But I don't dance, and I don't write or play music.

I can only share my own sounds.

September... Auf Deutsch

I've begun reading, just for shits and giggles (as they say in the old country), Extrem Laut und Unglaublich Nah - which is Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ... auf Deutsch.

Photo(s) by Jglo

Now the fact that I can't speak, read or fully comprehend Deutsch without a dictionary, or a drunk companion, does not deter me.  I am giving it the college try!   I started at the beginning of this summer.  I am already on page six.  I've found that if I skip around to the English bits -- words that I recognize, like "New York City" ... "Money Can't Buy Me Love" ... "Stephen Hawking" -- the pages turn faster.

Der Herbst, autumn -- in fact, life in general -- is all about the pages turning.  I approach fifty ... My parents, still living, are in their eighties.  My brother, still stuck in the '80's, is forty (Just kidding about my brother ... He isn't really forty!).

We're OLD, dude.  Alten Säcke!  And yet, though I still might rage (or flail) against the "machine" and show petulant, (sort of) tongue-in-cheek truculence toward Facebook and "its" generation, I still dig sounds I know Gen Y finds interesting ... can get up when I fall still, and have all my hair.

Beyond this, I have begun doing the same thing Gen Y is all doing:  putting my "work" out there ... unabashedly, shamelessly tiring you with it - my writing and imperfect photographs ... Words & Images, Random Poetix and Faction by Jeff Glovsky.

The key difference between me -- that is, my own generation, so aptly (nondescriptly) labeled X -- and the Facebook / Gen Y crowd -- the so-called millennials -- is that I leave the house.  While Gen Y hides behind its computers and smart phones and mixers and apps, I enjoy nothing more than walking, live music, fresh air and potential ... while still creating, doing, being, like Y does ...

It's not entirely Y's fault, though - the fear and feeling of What's the Point? that it has.  Gob-smacked with the Great Recession and trying to feed itself and excel in the worst economy in 80 years ... with guns creating daily havoc and so many jobs out there not worth the pennies (or "experience") they insultingly offer ... the running for the comforts of (mom's) home and "man caves" -- not to mention the support and opprobrium of vast "communities" of global strangers -- can be sweetly tempting ... in the same way I loved lying on my bed or sofa, "channel surfing" and talking to friends on my land line back in the day ... I get it.  I get the urge, almost the need, to stay home.

What I don't understand, and never will, is the eschewing of normal, everyday, whole life functioning.  Millennials seem to have collectively blown off driver's licenses, cars, homes, careers, marriages, children ... adulthood.  Intellectual curiosity ... anything with the faintest whiff of active participation.  They are a musical bunch, to be sure - capable of passively (aggressively) tuning out; but give them an instrument, or a book, it will languish untouched - unless it's an i-Something.  If it's a shimmering, vibrant keyboard graphic, or wildly animated guitar or drum kit ... That, they will pick up and click on, to "play"!

But I'm lumping now ... painting with broad strokes.  Like a racist or homophobe, I'm lazily generalizing.  Like every alter Furz (old fart) gone beyond 40, I'm trying to root for my own generation, and the certainties of the world I knew when I made the rules up while going along, and the paradigm shifted for my demographic.

I am over.

As the torch becomes past ... and the leaves of youth fade and fall like sex around my ankles, I can only watch, helplessly mixing metaphors ... hiding away inside a new world I wasn't born into, and don't (yet ;) fully comprehend.

"Verzauberung (Enchantment)", ©Jeff Glovsky

Sick and Ridiculous

Playing ...

on SoundCloud

Sick ... Ridiculous:

Gifts and Ripoffs

"Thanx to all the cats ... in our brotherhood." - Boris Koslov

I was digging around some old notebooks the other day, looking for a phone number I knew I'd scrawled - an old (212) number from 'back in the day', before telephone land lines (or spiral notebooks, for that matter) became obsolete ... and I was struck by what a fan I'd been.

In learning the craft of writing, and of becoming (more or less) myself, I seem to have tuned into a few of the biggies ... certain manna, and ticks and inflections of theirs, picked up by my young and thirsty antennae, all bursting with needing to take it all in.

All words and text below are mine (by Jeff Glovsky), as they were written -- sometimes thirty (!) years ago -- in the (sometimes overtly) sampled stylings of ...

John Lennon: 
Taking a might bath arggh, wee Bob?  I'll go ant pack me baggies!

Bruce Springsteen: 

Crucifix Jemina crossed me off the sidewalk.   Didn't have a leg to stand on anymore.

Charles Baudelaire: 

This city, even under the weight of fat tourists, reeks of thirty years ago:  all the noise and crime and ghetto-blasting; drugs, ill-tempered ugliness ... Its beauty become horrible, its awfulness old hat.

Henry Miller: 

New York now is dozens of little acceptances, all at once working to keep you down.  You're not a success, for one example -- or even taken seriously -- if you're not shelling monthly, say, two thousand for your hellhole.

Jack Kerouac: 

It's Tuesday, 10:15am ... What job to go, to do all day?  Resumés - Too many in the past too many each weeks.  Yet the phone's as sick and dead as soul.  Now she won't call.

There's been Steinbeck and Steely Dan, Dylan and Ginsberg, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain ... and, when needing to take Mathers into my own hands ... a little Eminem even enters my prose mix.  I've got a work-in-progress with a title Charlie Mingus might be proud of, and I reference Mingus (Mingus, Mingus) often ...

... the Clown's Afraid Too

All of these influences have shaped and informed not only my writing, but my disposition as well.  While certainly not "sunny" overall, I can make (and sometimes take!) a joke, and efface myself on a regular basis; overall, though my life has sucked at times, it's a blessing to be in for an eighty year plan - which, if I ever do happen to become "sunny" (or in the parlance of DeathClock.com algorithmics, "optimistic"), might convert to 90+.

Thus simply, if not moronically, assured, I was strolling through Greenwich Village last night and I ran into a bass player I've known for the past ten years.  Boris is a valued member of the New York-based Mingus bands, all of the various configurations officially sanctioned by Sue Mingus, the Yoko Ono of Jazz (in a good way) ... in addition to playing out with his own groups and projects.

As we were chatting and catching up (I'd been a sound engineer for the Mingus Big Band), a woman came up to us and asked if we knew where Beyoncé was playing.  Totally rando (as the kids say) - having nothing to do actually with what the jazz bass player and I were discussing ... nor with the jazz bassist or myself at all.  Beyoncé and her (substantial) slice of the music universe light years beyond and away from the both of us, it was nonetheless common ground for the woman to approach, introduce herself and begin sharing her own dreams and small histories in entertainment ... Connecting in a way that only artists know how, because like attracts like, but we're all attuned:  to different stations, perhaps, but all with thirsty antennae and the radio on ...

Now if I could only find that phone number.