Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman

Maybe it's coincidence that in their 76th year(s) on this planet, both Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins have released albums that show the old masters to be lyrical, exploratory, and 100% vital. Ornette has always followed his own path. He's a musically-advanced thinker like Monk (who, unfortunately, has a hard time teaching his ideas to people unless they actually play in his bands) who reexamines all the premises of music and comes up with his own idiosyncratic but very musical language. Sonny is a surviving first-and-a-half-generation bebopper who has used his debut on his own label to show off some styles (including some very chromatic/modal solos more like Coltrane than like "St. Thomas") he hasn't played in awhile. One thing I treasure about the art of jazz is that it has room for really talented old, old guys--and these two are some of the best there are or have ever been.

Buffalo Springfield

If you applied eletroshock, I would probably be forced to name this band my personal favorite rock band of all time. I first heard them when I was 10, during that brief and thrilling time in which I discovered rock radio and rock radio was home to the Byrds and Brenton Wood and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin and James Brown. A lot of people were trying a lot of interesting-to-way-out things in 1966--Revolver and the other Beatles singles had raised the bar pretty high, and you could hear some awfully strange guitar sounds and production techniques.

So from out of nowhere, here comes this mysterious song called "For What It's Worth" that sounds like a bunch of people marching around and being harrassed by cops. I just heard this song again in the gym tonight, and it still kind of dazzles me--Neil Young's cowboy-mysterioso tremolo lead, Steve Stills' acoustic lead guitar, the harmonies, the crazy bass.

Two more lovely singles of theirs creased the charts: "Bluebird" with its lead guitar duels (Stills on acoustic again) and "Rock and Roll Woman," a delicate ballad kicked wide open by a couple of organ blasts and some tasty guitar from Stills. Of course, I had to buy the album, Buffalo Springfield Again, which is the American version of the Beatles' "White Album." Garage rock, country, jazz, James Brown soul, musique concrete, Phil Spector orchestra (arranged by Phil Spector's orchestrator, Jack Nitzsche)--they all found their way into complex, multi-part songs that were full of space, full of different guitar sounds, full of harmonies.

And then they fell apart. Neil quit the band, rejoined, quit again. Bruce Palmer got deported. Everyone got busted for pot with Eric Clapton. Jim Messina pulled together the lovely (but again badly-mixed) Last Time Around from songs that sounded like each songwriter recorded his own songs with little help from the rest of the band. I got the word that they were finally calling it quits when I was staying at my dad's in California. I felt gut-punched. They played two farewell shows at the Long Beach Arena in May, '68 but I was too young to get my dad to drive clear from Orange.

Ever since, they've seriously influenced how I thought about arranging for a band. They managed to make three guitars work beautifully together, each playing a different part. And the more singer/songwriters, the better--especially if the material from each writer complements the others' work. I don't think I'm the only one who listened--see also Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Eagles, Radiohead.

A Mission Statement

This is an experiment in literary hero worship. Creative people have inspired me and given me ideas that get filtered through all the creative channels in my work. Most of all I want to convey appreciation for these people who lived and did something beautiful and powerful while they (and, usually, I) were alive. Here's why I love the artists I love, what they mean to me and what I've carried from my engagement with their work.