
Monday, December 19, 2011
3 Elvin Ideas

Monday, December 5, 2011
Gear and stuff
Sunday, December 4, 2011
The Jazz Jobber
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Taste
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Programming note
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
The price of tea in China....
Monday, November 28, 2011
Ted's weekend of getting his butt kicked!
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Ted's Warren Commission at The Jazz Room
Friday, November 25, 2011
What we can learn from Paul Motian (if only we would listen),
Influences and aging
Thursday, November 24, 2011
....And we're back!

Saturday, November 19, 2011
Articulation
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Cascara part 2

Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Cascara!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011
20 km Jazz diet
Monday, November 14, 2011
Jasmine!

Hey folks,
Saturday, November 12, 2011
"Carrying the Torch" vs. "Hip and Modern"
Friday, November 11, 2011
Stephen King and music.

Thursday, November 10, 2011
5 Beat figures in triplets
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Odd groupings in 3/4!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Inside the drummer's studio, Installment 6!

Saturday, November 5, 2011
The gig triangle
Friday, November 4, 2011
Yet another rant!
Monday, October 31, 2011
Little green monsters, just in time for Halloween!
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Brian Dickinson Trio
Monday, October 24, 2011
More Brushes


Saturday, October 22, 2011
The Vertical Squirrels & Jane Bunnett
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
A little Jam
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
The left foot, the final frontier!
Monday, October 17, 2011
3 brush patterns
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Stan Levey
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Shhh part 2

Friday, October 14, 2011
Shhhhh!
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Cold for teacher?
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Brush circle comping
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Don't phone it in!

Monday, October 3, 2011
Where's 1?
Saturday, October 1, 2011
If you dig it, don't keep it a secret!
Friday, September 30, 2011
Frank Zappa Coffee Achiever!
Here's some great info about Frank Zappa from website ineedcoffee.com Definitely a site I need to check out, (Thanks to Kate for this.) Without getting into too much detail, in the past I indulged in many things that ultimately didn't make me a better human being, let alone a better musician. I have been sober for awhile now and have been enjoying life a lot. I've even changed my eating habits and dropped 18 lbs since the end of summer. One addiction, however, that still has a massive hold on me is coffee. I have no doubt because of the amount I drink I will have to give it up eventually but until that day I plan to enjoy my last non musical "Jones". It's cheap, legal, and available everywhere!
"To me, a cigarette is food," said Zappa in his autobiography, The Real Frank Zappa Book. "I live my life smoking these things, and drinking the 'black water' in this cup here." Alas, my friends, this is not INeedCigarettes.com - we shall concentrate on the latter of the two aforementioned vices. Many are ready to assume that Zappa followed the lead of the herd of fellow '60s musicians in consuming a rich spectrum of drugs. His often trippy 1966 album Freak Out! was released a good year before the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band set the industry standard for psychedelic rock. The bizarre lyrics and sometimes grotesque instrumental features on Freak Out! and subsequent albums led many a listener to believe that Zappa's influences were chemical. However, Zappa's eccentricities were not born of narcotic drugs; a Zappa feature in a 1976 'Suosikki' Magazine article says it all: Q: Do you have a drug problem? Coffee: A Driving ForceEven without the specific references to coffee drinking, it is apparent in Zappa's lifestyle and his art that coffee was a driving force. His approach to making music was not the erratic one we might expect from a rock musician. Rather, he played with the ethic of a genuine workaholic. Biographer/groupie/musician Nigey Lennon describes her baptism by dark roast in her book Being Frank: My Time With Frank Zappa. Upon her initiation into Zappa's band, the Mothers of Invention, Lennon was permitted to play only after gulping down horrifyingly strong and dark coffee. When the rest of the Mothers had been similarly wired, the band was finally ready to begin its marathon jam sessions. "I work as many hours a day as I can physically stand to," he said during an interview with Don Menn for Guitar Player magazine. "The average is about 15 now." Little wonder that his fellow band members had to drink the most potent of coffee to keep up. The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of CoffeeZappa's love for coffee was not bound to the rehearsal room, as he drank it on stage as well. Coffee even made it into the recording studio, often home to noise creations by Zappa that challenged conventional definitions of 'music'. For a man who spent his life seeing, smelling, and tasting coffee, it makes sound sense that he would eventually want to hear it, too. "The other great noise was -- there are two people in this group who play didgeridus," Zappa recalled in an interview with Bob Menn in Best of Guitar Player. "One of them is the woman from Australia who is also the oboe player. And one afternoon, I imagined this awful sound that could be created if one were to take a didgeridu and play it into a partially filled coffee pot. And I asked her whether she would do it. She said yes, and let me say, it is truly nauseating. I was laughing so much I had to leave the room." Overachieving, overreaching, overworking, Frank Zappa's approach to his work and art is reflected in the incessantly wired world of coffee drinking America. INeedCoffee.com salutes him as a true coffee achiever. Further Reading
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Here's the man himself playing the beautiful instrumental "Watermelon in Easter Hay" What Frank, no coffee? |