Media Watch

At 3AM on a Friday morning in London, the gloooooooorious Nation's Capital, Mike has been checking out, of late....

BOOKS:

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton - Good Aussie reading, some positively beautiful imagery, makes me think of all those dry yellow fields swaying under a.....whatever!

Free Play by Steven Nachmanovich - more about THIS one soon, picked it up from the footnotes of 'Effortless Mastery' by Kenny Werner, covering similar material but am finding it in many ways to be much more stimulating and inspiring....on those doubtful days of late where contemplation of one's musical existence reaches unbearable zenith, I pick up this book, read a couple of pages and I'm like RIGHT, baked beans until retirement, I'm an artist forever! And then I pick up a phone bill or something....

MUSIC:

Bundeena, Bernie McGann - Oz saxophone national treasure - I get the impression sometimes that players seem to only like music (or think that others like music) that involves the particular instrument that they play i.e, trumpet players only listening to trumpet music, and I've come across this in various people's record collections, but not so here. Nevertheless, I'd kind of forgotten about this until I saw a great gig with UK trumpet player Tom Arthurs the other night at Vortex, and so went back to this particular side, with only bass and drums....a pure treat, ARIA award winner and all....

Robert Glaspar, Canvas - I came home the other Sunday afternoon from lugging my keyboard to the end of the Northern Line for £20 and for various reasons felt like giving up, the whole thing, going and getting a 'real' job earning something allegedly 'real' like money....then I put this on and thought I have to be part of this music, not just a listener, there is hope....wikkid outing from latest US pianist on Blue Note, gorgeous originals la la la.....

Michael McDonald, What a Fool Believes - Did a funk gig with a sax player the other night and we started talking about 80s music, so much attitude, so I opened up the Standards Real Book to one of it's highlights, a chart of this song - the opening piano part isn't just piano, it isn't even 80s piano....it IS the 80s! When I hear this music and particularly that really high style of singing that was around in late 70s early 80s, I start thinking of the toy department in my local Woolies back in the hometown (i.e, piped music), but when you get into it, this song has awesome lyrics, tells a great story. And of course Michael McDonald is of course an awesome singer, having done BVs for, that's right, Steely Dan....

And of course that brings me to an honourable mention of a couple of music websites I've come across lately, namely acquisition.com (mega fast free downloads of anything you can think of)....just like to add here that although free downloads are killing the music industry, I think we're all guilty of it a bit, and I sure didn't think twice bout a couple of songs here and there from Lionel Ritchie or Michael Jackson whose careers I'm sure won't be drawn and quartered by such action....

.....have a go too at pandora.com, which creates a radio station based around the musical characteristics of a particular artist or song of your choice....chekkit!....