One of the reasons I stalk people on the Internet: I don't like to lose touch with anyone. What if 15 years from now, I have an AHA moment about something and want to share it because it concerns that person?
Or in this case, almost 30 years...
It's a touch ironic that I was writing just this week about how music can hurt. Must have been having a bad day at work, and I've been listening to my iPod in the afternoons lately to make the work day go by faster. But there are certain songs that are still dangerous on that sucker...liable to sneak tears out and stab my soul when I least expect them to. Have I mentioned in the last 4 years that the gods had no business taking Dad early and leaving me with these feelings? I have? Yea, OK, moving on...
In elementary, junior high, and high school, I played extremely mediocre trumpet in the school bands. I shouldn't say extremely mediocre...the year everything clicked for me grade-wise, 11th grade (because I had zero social life/friends, so what else was there to do but better myself personally through grades and music), was also my best music year...I inexplicably nailed my midterm exam (which was a seriously foreign situation for me, involving going into an empty practice room with a mic and doing scales, exercises, and sightreading into a tape machine for the teacher to go over later) and ended up 1st trumpet 3rd chair in a decent-sized trumpet line the rest of the year. I was in symphonic band and marching, and we marched at Disney that year. And I was reminded in an old journal entry recently of a solo I pulled off at one of my senior year concerts. Those feelings of accomplishment, when you remember them years later, it's like it was yesterday. Good stuff.
As a band geek, you remember every teacher, but if one's special, they stick with you. That person was "Chief" for me. In our hilariously rural setting in backwoods CT, this teacher taught individual instrumental music at the 3 area elementary schools and band and theory at the junior/senior high school. The guy was a little busy...and he had a short temper at times, but it was obvious he cared big-time for all of us. I remember him methodically trying to beat Intro to Theory into my head before school more than once, because it wasn't getting past the brick wall in my head during class. It never did fully sink in, the relationships between minors and majors and what makes them that. But band was almost always fun, lots of laughs and good music as the end result.
This is a long one...I apologize...but there are roundabouts here to get to the meat of the story.
I remember being in his office once for individual trumpet practice, and the conversation turned to Ray Charles. All I remember is me saying I didn't care for his music, and Chief's reaction was incredulous. I couldn't have been more than 13 or 14, and I pray he dismissed my negativity at the time for the ignorance of youth. It was that, and so much more.
So I have a crush on Hugh Laurie...
Yea, sorry, I told you this was a long one...
Been watching House since its inception, and I'm quite whipped. Hey, when you're married, it's still nice to have a little fantasy on the side. When House finishes off a show with some introspective piano playing or guitar, it's a gift...I'm also drawn to his acting, blue eyes, and streak of depression. Guy's the total package, and quite yummy. ANYWAY...
He fulfilled a life dream of recording a blues album this year. It went on the list in the back of my head under "things I'll purchase eventually when we have money for more than bread and milk"...so it wasn't a priority these days.
This past Friday, PBS's Great Performances was an hour-long special about Hugh Laurie's album, with a side story of him traveling from Texas to New Orleans to get a taste of the backwoods where American blues originated, percolated...where its heart is. There were several songs played from the album, in various settings, and excellent close-ups of the instruments and musicians that made you feel like you were sitting in the room where they were playing. Close enough to feel the beat of the standing bass and bring shivers to your back as a metal bar works the strings of a lap steel guitar...
I watched it on the good TV, first with delight at the little things ("this album has helped him blossom at 52...he seems so much more comfortable with himself than when he's talking about acting...wow, poor guy's losing his hair big time..."). Then once the music really started, it drew me in like I was hooked to a fishing line. Listening to Allen Toussaint's musicians bring incredibly soft and controlled music out of the trumpet, trombone, and alto and bari saxes...I know the level of control and practice required to nail that, as it's something I always struggled with, making a trumpet sound like anything more than a brassy noisemaker. I was in awe, positively struck dumb by the music, from Laurie's gorgeous piano playing to the minor twangs of the guitars and violin, to the soft beats of the brushes on the toms and snare drums, to the guest singers who crooned those old tunes with such style...
It's as though I've never heard the blues before Friday, and I can't wait to hear more, learn more, try and learn to play some (on trumpet, guitar, or other instruments), find ways to bring that music more into my life. Don't ever let yourself be turned off by the name "blues"...this ain't depressive music by a long shot. I think of symphonic music as meticulous in its writing, but the word that came to me as I watched these blues musicians play was "deliberate". Every note has a meaning, and when the beat speeds up or slooooooows way down, every single musician is in time with his neighbor, nailing the essence of the song...
Yesterday with that music still resonating in my head and heart, I bought the whole album on iTunes. Milk and bread are overrated, and at $9.99 for 16! songs, it ain't a hardship. Thankfully, Hugh's liner notes are on his website, because he names some seriously obscure blues artists on there whom I wish to research. And puttering around the house last night, late, trying to make myself sleepy, I was suddenly reminded of Chief and my dissing of Ray Charles, and I instantly wished Chief was on FB or something, so I could send him a note with just 4 words: I GET IT NOW!!!
So maybe, just maybe, this will help me bring music back into my life without so much sadness attached. The blues are an art form, and I'm so glad I watched that show because listening to the album this morning in its entireity, I was envisioning the players working their instruments, creating that music. How their concentrated looks stem from being inside the song and have little to do with the notes on a page. I know that place. I want back in.
Image from here.
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