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The Bad and Ugly, and (GBK) the Good

Author: Peter
Date: 2003-01-16 17:55

The bad and the ugly:

We used to have two PBS/NPR radio stations in Miami: WTMI and WLRN. WTMI had excellent daytime talk shows and great jazz programs in the evenings. The best jazz program was with a Harry Sharp DJ person. But the station closed a couple of years ago.

WLRN is a barely passable daytime talk station and can have some really awful jazz programs at night. Recently, while listening to one of them I had the misfortune of hearing St. Louis Blues sung and played to a definite rock beat. And the DJ, apparently, thought this was just wonderful. I thought I was going to gag. I haven't tuned them in again.

Then, over the phone line while on hold with a client I heard King Louie's song (I Want to be Like You) from Jungle Book, one of the best pieces of jazz, originally by Louis Prima, done in a techno re-mix. I can't begin to tell you how awful it was.

Last, but not least, at a recent school concert, I heard six pieces of music played by their "jazz band," supposedly led by a teacher who is loosely considered to be a jazzman. The pieces should have been jazz, but two of them were a poor attempt at badly played jazz; one was something I have never heard of before or want to hear ever again and sounded like it was out of sync; the others were played to a rock beat.

The speakers were blaring so you could hardly hear the notes being played for the screeching coming out of them. This included electric guitar and bass (complete with special effects electronics) drowning out the brass, whose speakers were also way too loud and screeched in their own right!

Is this what we are coming to? Can the people re-writing these things not hear what they sound like? I'm all for freedom of expression, but for heaven's sake, musically speaking, this is awful!

Anyway, the good :

I am proud to announce that, officially, there is now a GBK folder in "Music 1."

The original tape contained six pieces of jazz, one classical piece (Mozart’s Violin Sonata, K.304) and Isaac Albeniz’ Tango (is it “Tango” or “Tango Flamenco?”) and it's absolutely fantastically well played music.

In the first three pieces of jazz, which included one of my all-time favorites, Kid Ory's "Do What Ory Says," our GBK plays with his jazz band and wields a really mean lead clarinet (Pete Fountain, eat your heart out!) The second three pieces, he plays the saxophone with his big band (The Big Band East, out of the Hamptons, NY) and the last two were piano-accompanied clarinet solos, which really showed him off. (He didn’t show off, just did one heck of a good job of playing the music.)

Truly, I know we have some excellent players in this group, but GBK outdid all my expectations by a quite a-ways. He exhibited excellent control, great intonation, perfect timing. Nice sound! We've been listening to it, off and on, for three days now and still not tired of it.

Apparently, other people must also think this is so, as he is both teaching and playing with his bands regularly, with a very busy schedule at both endeavors, and in demand for other playing situations. In this day and age, where professional working musicians are a slowly vanishing species, that says a lot for our GBK.

I think that the best compliment I can give any musically inclined person is to say that he/she is a NY class musician, and that’s our GBK is, no kidding! (To hear him…you’d think he really knows what he's doing!) :-)

I must say that there was one drastically, absolutely and devastatingly disappointing thing about that tape: There was nowhere nearly enough of it!

Thanks, GBK, for a great listening experience!

Peter