Little sunflower

The second jazz piece Fab and I ever learned, yet no recordings have arrived on the internet yet! Well, here's one from the End cafe from March 23rd. Fab's not on this one - he had something fah more important to attend to than play some trivial cocktail music - if he was, the recording would go up on glissando. Some new material will be appearing on that page soon.

Steve Kaposy - drums / Jason Walters - tenor / Jerry Boey - trumpet / Ian Cameron - bass / Yiorgos - organ / Ridley - alto / Jim Burns - guitar

Click here!!

Mediums?

We had an English assignment in which we had to write a poem that had a lot of very strict rules. It wasn't a specific form, they were just arbitrary regulations. It had to be twenty-four lines long, and each line had to have some specific things - for example, line one had to have a noun, a number, and a colour. So I went to work on this, talked about a guy named Pauline playing a bass solo. When I had ten lines left, I thought, "Maybe I'll submit a bass solo with it!" I wrote the solo, then decided to just complete the assignment as usual, keeping the solo for something else. I was still interested in combining two media in one piece, though. I told the Cosmic Cop about it, and asked if she'd be instristed in cola-BO-rating on something. She agreed. Now, I've been working on some music for three days, and am going quite fast. When it's done, I'll record it and submit a cassette to the Cosmic Conundrum and she'll illustrate it. And it just might be the greatest piece of art of all time!

Short story

This is my first ever attempt at writing a short story - it was for skuule. Anyway, I kinda like it, so here it is.

Short_story_Ridley_Budden

The colour of the overcast sky was matched by the concrete landscape surrounding the small coffee shop. Though the area was under constant construction, it was always eerily quiet. The grey attire of the ground and buildings were like the visual equivalent to a low drone - comforting in a way, but relentless - smothering. Walking into the establishment, it seemed to me that everyone tried to avoid sitting near the western wall of the place, where the largest window was, but it may just as well have been that no one wanted to get in the way of the man behind the counter. He had spilled something and was quietly shouting at the rag he was using to pick the mess up. Despite the clean-looking man’s antagonism towards his task, and the clientele’s lack of enthusiasm to interact with him, the interior of the coffee shop wasn’t as hostile as the outside. I recognized some of the people sitting down, but I wasn’t sure whether I’d actually met any of them before or not. I was taking a seat, having decided against getting anything until the man at the counter had calmed down, when by coincidence my friend, Leung, came out of the washroom and took his place at a table facing away from me. His bag and coffee were on the table already. He was dressed for summer weather, looked like he was getting ready to go on an adventure. Watching him take in his beverage was as enjoyable to me as consuming one myself. He held his cup and stared into empty space, and turned his head when the door opened and a man walked in. He was a close friend of Leung’s whom I’d only met once before in passing, and whose name I couldn’t remember, except that it sounded Irish. He was wearing a surgical mask, since he had just come in from outside. He said hello to Leung and nodded at me. “Hey,” I said. Leung heard me greet his friend and turned around, surprised because he hadn’t noticed me before. He said hi, then turned back to the Irish man, who was still standing just inside the door. He never sat down - he just lingered next to the door, as though he had a time limit. They talked for a moment while I stared at the wooden floor - Leung was congratulating the Irish man for something or another, while the latter just kind of sloughed it off. “To tell you the truth, I’m still a bit drunk,” he said. When I looked up, he had taken his mask off, so I could see his face. As he continued talking, there was nothing about his speech or movements that seemed off, but it was in his face - he had on a cartoonish expression, and parts of his beard looked almost like it had been drawn on with crayon. He was definitely intoxicated. He looked like a beatnik. “Well, I’d better head back to work,” he said after a few minutes, replacing his mask. As he turned to go, he took a sticker out of his pocket that said “I am red” - some kind of political slogan. He tried to stick it to the inside of the window, but had forgotten to remove the backing from it. It just didn’t seem right. I stood up and took it from his hand and said, “Get out of here, you’re drunk.” He left without a fight, and I placed the sticker in my own pocket. Leung had gone back to sipping his coffee and hadn’t noticed any of this commotion, and I decided to leave him in peace. I watched the Irish man disappear around the corner before I went outside myself. I had a horrible feeling about what he might do - he had seemed harmless enough at first, but that was inside. Even stable people could do weird things outside, brought on by the way their footsteps would echo inside their own bodies. I put on my own mask as I walked down the steps of the coffee shop.

It was rare to see a car in the area, but there was one parked outside a construction site right nearby. There were two workers talking next to it. They said nothing to me, but if they had, it obviously wouldn’t have been friendly. I got the impression that the workers didn’t like being there, noiselessly shading in the skeletons of future towers each day. They existed only to work hard and hate themselves. They were known to sometimes explode with their suppressed anger, with a force as powerful as a maternally enraged gorilla.

I was walking past the side of a tall building that was usually covered in posters, but that had recently been hosed down. Without looking, I removed the “I am red” sticker from my pocket and stuck it to the wall, very casually. I had nowhere else to put it, and it would get covered up by another poster soon anyway. Half a block on, the sidewalk ended abruptly at a brick wall. Every step I took towards it, I felt it impeding me more. I wanted to walk through it, and reached out to touch it, hoping it was possible. The cold, rough surface told me to stay out. Knowing I couldn’t just made me want to embed myself in the mortar all the more. I wanted to be very small and live where derangement couldn’t follow me. But I duly continued walking down the middle of the street, and saw the Irish man turn the corner just up ahead. I ran forward and peeked around the corner at him. When I was sure he wouldn’t notice me, I crossed quickly to the other corner. He turned his head just before I was out of his line of sight, but didn’t seem to care that I was there. I was relieved by this. He was heading in the direction of his workplace, so I felt secure that he wasn’t going to do anything in bad taste. Considering my chore complete, I headed up the street. It went up a slight incline, and ran alongside a park with a single enormous tree in it - the only green space in the area. The sun was beginning to come out, and so were the people. They seemed almost to bubble over the crest of the hill and into the park - their bodies would one day sink into the grass and fertilize it. I wondered whether the park would one day be engulfed by cement, or whether reeds would penetrate the surface of the streets over the years. I guessed it had to be one or the other.

Journal from February twenty-second

Tea is the life-blood

When ya wake up, ya gotta have that extra kick. And while many choose to destroy their existence with coffee¹, tea is clearly the superior beverage.

Tea has meant a lot to me since I was very small. I started with regular, and remember clearly the first time I was offered earl grey tea. I was no older than five. Earl grey is one of my favourite teas², and some others are green tea with brown rice, peppermint, and Cambridge. What is Cambridge tea, you ask? Here’s how to make a cup for yourself: get a cup and fill it slightly less than halfway with milk, and fill the rest of the cup with hot water. Then, add a teaspoon of sugar, and a tiny amount of vanilla extract. To top it off, sprinkle some cinnamon and grated nutmeg on top. It’s the house specialty!

Now, let’s get back to my love of tea from an early age. I recollect a time when I was just four years of age, and my parents and I had just finished eating supper. I had begun to walk away from the table, when my parents offered me a cup of tea. Naturally, I couldn’t refuse! So, I started back over to the table, and as I neared it, I fell forward, catching my lip on the edge of the table as I went down. I had to go to the hospital to get my lip glued back together! So you see the things I go through for a damn cup of tea!!

Some people, who think they’re really “hard-core”, always take their tea black. I, however, always take milk and sugar in my tea, whatever kind it is. It tastes better! Now, I’m going to finish this cup of mandarin orange spice tea.

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1: Alright, I have nothing against coffee - I enjoy a good old cup every so often - it’s just that the ‘morning kick’ is usually associated with coffee, and I had to make it clear that I much prefer tea for this purpose.

2: The best brand of earl grey is Ridgeway’s Organic. It comes in a blue box, and is obtainable at Donald’s Market and Capers. It’s about five bucks a box, and the boxes contain forty bags. Even with that many bags, we still go through a box a week!

Note: The title and inspiration for this journal came from a conversation I had with Phoebe on the bus today. I said, “Tea is the life blood of….” and she rejoined, “life!”

An old tradition revived

Remember how I used to write about dreams all the time? Well, I have something for ya.

It alllll started about a week ago. I was playing guitar, and I thought, "Hey, I'll try to figure out how to play 'Purple Haze'!" I couldn't, so I quickly gave up. Then that night, I dreamt that I was trying to play it again, and still failing. It took place on some kind of soccer field with a hill and a huge fence.

After fruitlessly trying to play it a few more times in reality, I had another dream about it. Then last night, I finally figured it out! I don't remember who I was with, but I told them, "Oh, I'm glad I figured that out, 'cuz I keep having all these dreams where I'm trying to play it!" Then I woke up.

Another entry about jazz at the End cafe? Boring!

That may seem like the case, but it's quite different now, because I'm not just listening anymore. I wrote a journal about it on January 27th.

Original title:
"Why this journal is late"

The reason I couldn’t submit this journal last monday is simple: I didn’t have time to write it on the weekend, because I was getting ready to play at the End Café on sunday night. So now I figure that I ought to write about what that was like.

Two sundays ago, The Fab and I were listening to live jazz at the End Café, as usual. Then Jason, the tenor player, came up to our table and asked, “So, when are you guys gonna come and play?!” “When we’re good enough,” I replied. “If I waited until I was ‘good enough’,” he said, “I would never play.” He made us promise to bring our instruments the next week. So we did.

We had four songs in our repertoire: “Equinox” by John Coltrane; “Little sunflower” by Freddie Hubbard; “Tune-up” by Miles Davis; and “Mr. P.C.”, also by Coltrane. I had been nervous the whole day. When I stepped onto the stage, though, all my questions of “What scales should I use?” etc. just disappeared. The band was Jason, Ian (bass), Graham (drums), and Jim (guitar). Ian began playing the distinct intro to “Equinox”¹. I was standing next to Jason. Were we going to play the melody together, or would I play it on my own? I opted for the former. Then, when it came time for solos, Jason and I soloed at the same time (I guess you’d call that a duet). This went on for some time - the drums got louder and more intense.

One of the most interesting things about the experience was finally being able to hear what musicians talked about on stage. Jason was guiding me through it: “After this bass solo, there will be a drum solo, then there might be a vamp coming up, or we might just go straight back to the melody, so be ready for that.” The said drum solo was incredibly dynamic - during one insanely quiet bit, I was kneeling right next to the bass drum, wondering if anyone else could even hear it.

We then played “Little sunflower”, and took a break. Fab and I returned to the stage at about twenty-to-nine for the last two songs of the night - “Tune-up” and “Mr. P.C.” Both were much faster then we were used to, and the band was bigger - we were joined by Jerry (trumpet) and another Jim (alto). There was also a different drummer, Alicia. My solo on “Tune-up” was probably my best that night, and Fab’s solo on “Mr. P.C.” was explosive. Jason told us, “You’re welcome to come back and play any time you want.” It was an excellent learning experience.

And That is why I didn’t do any homework last weekend.

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1: “Equinox” is most commonly played in the key of C minor, but according to The Jazz Theory book, “the best players like to play it in its original key, C-sharp minor” (the latter being a harder key to play in). When Jason asked which key Fab and I played it in, he was quite impressed that we fall into the “best players” category.
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We played the following week as well, but only on two songs, and took a break on the third week. This coming sunday, we'll play again, and just an hour ago I learned a new song: "Maiden voyage" by Herbie Hancock. I'm going to aim to learn Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" soon as well.

Swansolian

So, as you may be aware, crispmush occurred the other day. Up until last year, I hated crispmush, but then I realized that, guiltily, I somewhat enjoy it. The best thing I got was from Iris; a book of her poetry, augmented by illustrations. Beauteous! I also received Outward Bound by Eric Dolphy, Pithecanthropus Erectus by Mingus, and Backlash by Freddie Hubbard, among other discs.

I was very much looking forward to hearing the Hubbard record, as it features the original recording of "Little sunflower". (I also thought that Eric Dolphy played on it, but I was wrong about that.) However, I discovered that the last tune on the album, Bob Cunningham's "Echoes of blue", is also of supreme quality. My first reaction was, "Swans in jazz form!!!" - then I recollected something. About a year ago, Occupant penned a series of blues songs, featuring the creepy guitar work of Nils. The third song we recorded, "Think of something to say, but don't", was something of a murder ballad with a two-note bassline. Right after we wrote it, my reaction to that song was also "That was like the Swansiest thing of all time." The guitar work went from being tentative at first - Nils playing with a little plastic ruler here - to blasting, reminiscent of Swans' "Blind love" (from Children of God). Too bad the mood was kinda thrown off by my less-than-subtle bass solo.

These two songs are suggesting to me an interesting genre - some kinda ultra-slow blues - and I want to explore it. I've also been thinking about recording the blues I wrote recently - still untitled - as a shoegazer-type of tune. Distorted and acoustic guitars overdubbed and interlocking - Loveless stuff. Y'know, I always have all these ideas for music I want to write, and I never get them down in time - it's like creative A.D.D. I have to get my shit together, and school's not helping!!

Journal from December eighth

The subject was "An important leader" - however you interpret that.

An Important leader

If you were to ask me, “Who’s Sun Ra?”, I’d simply say, “He’s a jazz musician from Saturn.” He was a pianist/keyboardist, and led an ‘Arkestra’ of about thirty members, though the personnel changed constantly.

The Arkestra lived in a house with him in Philadelphia. To pay rent, they operated a corner grocery store. Ra taught the Arkestra members not only about harmony (a subject on which he was very knowledgeable), but about his ‘Cosmic philosophy’. In Robert Mugge’s documentary ‘Sun Ra: a joyful noise’, we see Ra in interviews in an Egyptian exhibit at a museum - they couldn’t afford to fly him to the pyramids - saying things like (I’m gonna have to paraphrase a bit here), “Each of my songs tells a different story. The sunrise doesn’t repeat itself - why should I repeat myself?”, and “Some call me Mr. Ra, others call me Mr. E. You can call me Mr. Mystery.”

In an interview outside the White House, he says, “I’m standing outside the White House, and I’m looking across the street, and I don’t see the Black House. A thing cannot exist without its opposite.” You see, he’s just proved that the White House doesn’t actually exist, which works for me.

One definition I’ve found of the word “Leader” is “a person who inspires others” - Sun Ra was definitely this for his Arkestra, and for many others, to be sure. One of the few longstanding members of the Arkestra, tenor saxman John Gilmore¹ is asked in ‘A joyful noise’, “You’re one of the most respected saxophonists around - why do you stay here with Sun Ra?” He says, “Well, I used to play with Mingus and Monk, and I thought they wrote some mean intervals². I’d been playing with Sun Ra for six months, learning this song, but I’d never really got it. And then, all of a sudden….I just got it. And I said to myself, ‘My lord, this man is more stretched out than Monk!!’”

I’ve known about Sun Ra practically since I was born, but didn’t ‘get into’ him until just last year. Of everything I’ve heard by him (which is relatively little), the album Lanquidity is easily my favourite. Sometime in the new year, I’m hoping to do an arrangement of the song “Where pathways meet” at a Coffee House.

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1: John Gilmore joined the Arkestra in the ‘50s, and is now one of its leaders as Sun Ra has returned to Saturn.

2: Mean Intervals: An interval is the name given to the difference in pitch between two notes, either sounded in succession or in unison. For example, the interval between a C and an F is called a fourth, because they are four notes apart (counting the C and the F, not just the notes between them - C-D-E-F). Now, Gilmore is using the word ‘Mean’ in the same way I would use the word ‘Wicked’ when referring to the guitar technique of ‘dead-stringing’.

Journal from December fifteenth

It seems I write my best journals when Gary tells me, "Write whatever you want." I sat before my beputer for roughly an hour, not knowing what to write.... and then, it hit me! Given the subject, it had to be relatively long, but if I'd written everything there was to write on the subject....well, I'd run out of space on my hard-drive. And here is why:

Things that The Fab complains about

Like a life-support system, Fab always needs something to complain about. Get him started on any of the subjects I’m about to list, and he could literally go on for an hour. The reason for this is that he has the strange ability to segue seamlessly from one complaint to another, and the way he manages this will soon become apparent.

“Elephant talk”

The Fab and I are big fans of prog rock - Yes, Jethro Tull, and the like. A fave, though, would be prog veterans King Crimson (known to their enthusiasts as ‘Crimso’). Fab will endlessly quote songs like “Epitaph” or “21^st century schizoid man”. So, what’s there to complain about? Well, in 1974, ol’ Crimso called it quits, and then they resurfaced in 1981 with a new lineup, including the singer/guitarist Adrian Belew. They released an album called Discipline that year, featuring the lead track “Elephant talk”. Basically, the song is Adrian Belew pulling out his thesaurus and reading out all the words that have to do with talking. “Arguments! Agreements!” he yells, doing his best David Byrne impression¹. Each verse features words starting with a different letter - “A”, “B”, et cetra. He even informs us of this extremely complex formula in the “D” verse, saying, “These are words with a “D” this time.” The only reason this song exists, and the reason for its title, is that Adrian Belew had cleverly found a way of making elephant noises on his guitar, and needed a way of showing this off.

When I played it for him, The Fab nearly died from being exposed to such repugnance. On one occasion, he complained loudly about the song for about half an hour on the bus, weaving it in with other complaints, as he is wont to do. I must agree - the song is of a very low quality - but I like the rock’n guitar solo (and admittedly, the guitar-elephant sounds), so I can stand it.

The lack of large trees on his block

Here in East Van, on 6^th avenue, there are some pretty spectacular trees. On The Fab’s block however, the trees don’t reach his high, high standards, which have grown to suit trees more along the lines of 6^th ave’s beauteous arbors. He says that when they were planting trees around Vancouver, they intentionally neglected to place large trees on his block, just to piss him off. He says that this allows his “worst enemy, the sun” into his room - so really, it’s the sun he hates.

Jaslene

Well, I’ll have to tell you straight up; we watch America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) pretty much every week. Last season, there was a girl competing named Jaslene. The Fab would see her on the screen and yell, “Eat a frikk’n sandwich!!” He felt she was too thin, and that she looked like a man. For most of the season, it was pretty fun for us all - The Fab liked complaining about Jaslene (because she gave him something to complain about), and the rest of us enjoyed laughing with him. Then something happened that totally wrecked it (for The Fab, anyways) - Jaslene won! I think that The Fab screamed when he saw that. Now, whenever he sees an image of Jaslene, even for a split second, he goes, “Ahh!! *&%^ing Jaslene!!!

“Tarantula”
“This dust makes that mud”

“Tarantula” is a book by Bob Dylan - over one hundred pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. I remember the first time I opened it, being in awe of how little sense it seemed to make;

“Aretha / crystal jukebox queen of him & hymn….”²

I challenged The Fab to make sense of the book - huge mistake. He looked at it and went, “That doesn’t make sense! Bob Dylan is a crazy lunatic!!!!!!” All the time after that, virtually every time he came over, he would pull it out and say, “Okay, I’m going to make sense of this!!”, and naturally, he would just wind up getting more pissed off.

“This dust makes that mud” is a song by New York-based experimental band The Liars. It is thirty minutes long. The first eight or so minutes are like a normal song (well, normal for The Liars, anyway), but the remaining twenty-two minutes drive The Fab up the wall. Those twenty-two minutes are entirely composed of a four-second loop, continuously repeated. It’s not noise - there’s a drum track, bass, guitar - it’s just a cool loop! But The Fab says, “It’s music for insane people!!!”

One day, The Fab and Cosima were over, The Liars’ album They threw us all in a trench and stuck a monument on top was playing, and The Fab decided, once again, to take another stab at ol’ “Tarantula”. After The Fab discarded it in disgust, Cosima demanded to see it, and quickly proclaimed, “This makes perfect sense!” I decided to read it aloud for a while, and I agreed with Cosima - it made plain sense. As this was happening, “This dust makes that mud” was playing, and The Fab was discovering his extreme dislike for it. These things combined must have made a significant impact on him, these things he detests so.

My Chemical Romance

A band that I, myself, have never actually heard. The Fab makes them out to be absolute criminals, though. He says, “You have to hear them, so you can know what I’m going through!” I say, “Why would I want to do that?” He says that as long as I haven’t heard them, I’m not allowed to complain about him complaining about them. Along with My Chemical Romance, he is ready to complain about Fallout Boy, Panic! at the disco, +44, Blink 182, Angels and Airways, and so on, at any hour of the day. You may wonder how he even knows about all these bands that he despises so much. Well, that leads us to the final complaint, the root of all evil, the thing that every complaint he ever had will eventually trace back to….

Graham

Graham may seem like a normal guy; enjoys a laugh, has some hobbies, likes his friends. Little did The Fab know, Pure Evil lurked below that funny, slightly portly exterior. By The Fab’s account, one day Graham came up, shoved his ear bud headphones in his (The Fab’s) ears, and said, “Listen to this My Chemical Romance, isn’t it great?” He also subjected The Fab to all the bands I mentioned above.

Now, regardless of what he is complaining about, The Fab will almost invariably end his rants (which we’ll get to in a moment) with, “Ugh, I hate Graham!!” To sum it up, I’ll give you an analogy that The Fab makes often; if The Fab was Jerry Seinfeld, Graham would be Newman.

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1: David Byrne was the singer from the Talking Heads. His style was less singing and more yelling in a sort of preacherly way. When David did his thing, it was original and witty. When Adrian Belew, who played guitar with the Talking Heads, ripped him off, he sounded like a jackass.

2: See Bob Dylan’s “Tarantula”, p. 1.

End notes

The Fab’s preferred medium to express these complaints it The Rant. The Fab is a master of the Rant, which is no small achievement - if you’re a bad Ranter, you’ll quickly bore your audience, and The Fab is no bore. His ability to segue from one Rant to another holds one’s attention, and he never runs out of things to complain about. The Fab is an actor, so he sometimes finds clever ways of Ranting in a certain character. The supreme example of this is the Great Peeping Tom, an artful conduit by which The Fab Rants about Gangsta Rap. Peeping, as he is sometimes called, is an unfathomably prolific white rapper, releasing a new album every five minutes or so (all of them concept albums). I remember his birth; we were playing video games in The Fab’s room, and suddenly, he began talking in Peeping’s imitable voice. “Ah kiwed a man when ah was six yeahs owd, y’undestan? Ah was inna stoodeeo, recoydin mah firs EP, anna recoydin engineeah disst mah rahms, so ah bit his heddoff, y’undestan. An dat became th issperation fo mah firs album: “Bitin’ a man’s head off in the studio”.

It didn’t occur to me until recently to ask The Fab, “How is it that you wound up hearing all those My Chemical Romance/+44/whatever songs all the way through?” He said, “I was being polite!”

It's great to get comments again!

Luckily, I had the option today of sleeping in, so I'm not sick anymore. The reason I had this option is because I had an orthodontist appointment this morning at ten - my last official orthodontist appointment, to be precise. I arrived fifteen minutes early, and they called me in twenty minutes late for my five-minute appointment. Contrary to what I would have thought, I still have to wear my retainer at night, two-to-three times a week. "...Ideally," he said, "if there was such an ideal, for the rest of your life." The page he handed me regarding this simply says to do it for as long as I'm willing to.

I went to the place where I usually catch the bus from the Fairmont medical building to downtown. After three non-downtown buses passed, I elected to ask a driver whether downtown buses even run along Broadway anymore. I was told to go to the other side of the street, as the #50 would turn down Willow street and take me to my destination. I had just missed it, so I waited fifteen minutes.

The bus stopped in front of some sort of housing complex near Granville island, and on hopped this fairly old lady who was obviously insanely cool. She greeted the bus driver very kindly, and just seemed very normal. A younger girl sat down next to her and they talked about the rainbow that was visible yesterday. Then this old man got on and sat next to me, and said, "Hello!" "Hello!" I echoed.

The bus went all over the place. This group of about six kids got on, who were on their way to some snowboarding destination. One of them was looking for his ticket, failing to locate it, when the older lady offered him change. She had a British accent, it turned out, and the boy she was offering the change to also had one, it sounded like. Everyone on the bus was clearly in an excellent mood.

I took it one stop too far, and so I tried to figure out which bus to take to get to school from where I was. I figured out wrong, and went quite far in the exact opposite direction I needed to. So what I did, I just walked over to Georgia street and caught my usual bus. The guy who got on ahead of me was carrying a sax case. He sat in front of me - or rather, I sat behind him. He pulled out the Charlie Parker Omnibook and some music paper, and seemed to be trying to figure something out in his head - he was tapping his hand the same way I do when I'm trying to write some unfamiliar rhythm down. The bar he started at was still empty when I got off. I felt like saying, "Good luck!" I arrived at school just in time for lunch. Then there was math, and then I came home.

When I was sick yesterday, I wrote a blues in E major. I'll teach it to Fab soon so we can play it at the next Coffee House. My first jazz piece! I'm excited to play it.

Journal from October eighth

Another "Write whatever you want" deal.

How I came to love jazz

An interesting topic, for it wasn’t as straightforward as it might have been had my parental units been jazz fans. My first real encounter would have taken place just before my birthday in 2005. I was dropping by a friend’s house, and her dad, Neill, had on this incredibly upbeat music. I was familiar with the sound, but I didn’t even know the name of the genre. I said, “I love this kind of music!” and borrowed the album.

On the morning of October eighteenth, my fourteenth birthday, my mother showed me an e-mail she’d received that she fancied to be quite comical, showcasing some ridiculous Halloween costumes. I, however, was quite un-amused, and elected to retire to the living room and listen to the album I’d borrowed; Misterioso by the Thelonious Monk Quartet. I had taken up the bass guitar two months previous, so my focus was primarily on the bass player, Ahmed Abdul Malik. The long, unaccompanied saxophone solos of Johnny Griffin also made an impression on me.

Now, I have no recollection why, but I returned the album soon after and didn’t ask to borrow any more jazz. It was not until sometime in mid-2006, when I began listening to Frank Zappa, that I became interested in jazz again. How this came about was simple; my mother decided that, since I was playing guitar, I should hear Zappa, and bought me a copy of Hot Rats. The thing that caught my ear more than anything else on the album was Ian Underwood’s sax solo on ‘The Gumbo Variations.’ Hearing this, combined with my discovery of the band King Crimson (whose early material features the sax prominently), made me think, ‘This is the instrument I have to learn.’

Around the same time, I was profusely studying music theory in The Guitar Handbook, which I had also borrowed from Neill. There was a short segment in the book describing everything a jazz guitarist has to know - virtually every imaginable chord and scale, and, importantly, he or she must be completely aware of what all the other members of the band are doing at any given time. (Of course, I didn’t know that this pretty much applies to jazz players on all instruments.) The very same day that I read this, I went to an opening at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where there was a live jazz trio playing - guitar, bass and drums. In retrospect, it was basically just ‘mingling’-type music, but I was still quite enthralled. I couldn’t fathom all the things happening in that guitarist’s nodding head.

I began listening to all the jazz that was available in my immediate sphere, mostly Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy. I began taking saxophone lessons in December, 2006 with Colin Maskell, and attended a gig he played at The Main on, you guessed it, Main Street. This gig was my first encounter with Joe Poole, whom I’ve mentioned before as my favourite drummer. My second favourite drummer is Shelly Manne, whom I’ve heard on Sonny Rollins’s Way out west album. His solo on ‘Wagon Wheels’ is one of my favourite moments in music.

I am still playing the saxophone, though Colin unfortunately is unable to teach privately anymore. As I’ve mentioned many times before, I attend live jazz nights every sunday at the End Café, and am reading The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine.