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Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Did you ever wonder where figure skating music comes from? And the outfits? Figure skating is such a beautiful sport, a wonderful combination of grace and athleticism. But why must everything else about be so aesthetically jarring?

The music is just plain weird: overblown, sometimes quasi-symphonic, other times quasi-ethnic. Where does it come from? Is there a whole segment of the music industry that is dedicated to figure skating music? It's somewhat akin to the music played at Hollywood awards shows, or maybe at Disney World. But why isn't a regular symphonic or pop piece of music good enough? Is this terrible music really easier to skate to?

And the costumes--those silky, sheer fabrics. Those flesh-colored panels that are supposed to look like skin from a distance. The sequins. They look like rejects from Elton John's dressing room. Do the people involved look at these say, "Oh, wow. That makes me look really cool. Do you have anything a little more shiny and garish?"

Could I Be Back?

I got an e-mail out of the blue the other day from someone who had become a fan of Julia Dales (the Canadian teenage human beat box phenom) after seeing a YouTube video of her on this blog. Like most human beings, I like to be liked, so knowing that someone was actually reading and being influenced by this blog was inspirational. But is blogging really for me? I don't know. I am told that you have to stick with it for it to amound to anything. I have a lot of things I'm already stuck to--work, family, guitar practice--that I don't know if I can realistically be stuck to anything else.

There's been a lot of changes in my musical life over the past few months. I don't know if it is all good or bad; it's just changes. I'm interested again in playing songs, and wouldn't you know it, I have several song-related projects, or almost-projects, going right now. Deb Colvin-Tener, who some of you might remember from my old band Hipswitch, and I did a very successful evening of songs by Bertolt Brecht at the OSU Urban Arts Space last November, something we're repeating on February 27 up at Bela Dubby in Lakewood, OH (western suburb of Cleveland). We also starting digging into the great American songbook and did a succesfful jazz gig at Espresso Yourself in Powell, OH, the other week. I've also done a couple of gigs with Tom Davis, an extremely talented younger guitar player here in Columbus. He's one of the only jazz musicians I've ever worked with who really knows the old standards, words and all. Like a lot of jazz musicians, I'm sometimes guilty of viewing standards as vehicles for blowing over changes, not as real songs that mean something. He's really inspired me to think about these tunes anew.

I'm also planning a project with my friends Nick Mancini and Lori Parsley, who I used to play with in their band The Sure Things. We're planning on getting togther as a band and learning about 10 classic county/rock tunes and see where it goes. Nick and Lori are two of my favorite people to work with. They're smart, serious, and know music really well. They are also excellent, excellent singers. And today, out of the blue, my old friend Eileen Motok contacted me about getting together for guitar lessons, and possibly some gigs. Eileen, too, is an excellent singer. Our daughters went to preschool together, and she contacted me a few years back to start teaching her guitar, and I think she wants to bring her skills to the next level. This will all be good.

I don't think I'm giving up my more experimental side, though. The Marotta Hour concert series that I've been curating at the OSU Urban Arts space is by far the most successful series I've even promoted. I've been extremely blessed with an extremely supportive gallery staff whose expectations are perfectly in line with what a new music series in Columbus, Ohio, can realistically accomplish. Ironically, by not demanding huge audiences and piles of money from me, the series has been allowed to grow to a point that the average audience is a lot bigger than I ever imagined that it could be, and my acts are sometimes making a nice amount of money for their time. I'm also happy that I'm able to be diverse. I've had electronic stuff, free improv, singers, songs, and no one seems to have been alienated by the eclecticism. This is all good. I hope this lasts for a long while.

As far as my improv actiivities go, I'm not sure where I'm heading. I don't feel like I've ever quite hit a level of success that I would have hoped for as an improvising guitarist (success, of course, being an extremely relative term in this case). I'm concerned that I've spent a lot of my time trying to adapt my playing in a way to get more work and interest in what I do, but I am concerned that I am getting further and further away from what I would play if I played whatever it was I wanted to play.

I think my general direction right now is to do whatever I want to do, work with whoever asks me to work with them, with no particular agenda. Present the package of what I do and see who is interested in it and what actually sticks. You see, there is a benefit to aging--you finally start figuring stuff out!

What a Difference a Day Makes?

Last Friday, improvising with Ryan Jewell and Ben Bennett at the Robinwood Concert House up in Toledo.



The next day, scouting for frogs, snakes, and baby turtles with my daughter.



Strangely enough, improvising with musicians and looking for reptiles and amphibians in a murky pond are very similar activities. In fact, they're just about the same thing.

Toledo? Toledo!

If it haven't said it before, one of the rewards of getting older is seeing the world improve. It is cliche for older folk to opine about the sad state of the modern world and point back to some Ozzie and Harriet time when everything was as sweet as orange sherbert and 7-Up. But so much seems so much better to me than when I was a kid.

One of my greatest joys is to see the notion of two or three dominant music centers surrounded by an ocean of mediocrity slowly disappear. You can no longer say that the only good music comes from New York, or Berlin, or London, or Osaka.

Living in a medium-sized city myself (16th largest in the US!), this issue is near and dear to my heart. When I moved to Ohio from the east coast in 1990, I got a lot of attitude from some of my east coast friends and family about moving to the heartland. Some of them still don't understand it and assume that I must live in the middle of a corn field (which wouldn't be such a bad thing, now that I reflect upon it). Since I came here, I have always been impressed by the amount of talented people, and we have an excellent new music scene.

There are certain benefits to doing new music in a city like Columbus. First of all, there is not a tremendous amount of competition for a limited audience. Usually there is just one key show going on at one time. Another thing, it is a lot easier to set up gigs because there is no cut-throat comepetition for a limited number of gigs. And there aren't a few experimental superstars who rule our scene that everyone else has to suck up to. There are not arch hipsters too whom everyone looks for guidance. Our free music scene is actually pretty free.

So in one week, you can see analog noise at Skylab, fringe rock at Cafe Bourbon Street, punk at the Legion of Doom, free improv at the OSU Urban Arts Space, and -- the latest member of our community -- the New Music Collective at Ohio State who very ably presented works by Stockhausen, Feldman, Reich, and others at a concert last weekend.

So now Toledo has been getting to the act. Our colleague Gabe from the KBD group has been presenting house concerts with great success. At this stage in my career, house concerts are probably my favorite performance venue. The acoustics are good and you feel really connected with the audience. It suits quiet free improv really well.

So this Friday, Gabe has...

Jack Wright (sax) and Bob Marsh (violin) duo

Ryan Jewell (drums), Larry Marotta (guitar), Ben Bennett (drums) trio

fluxmonkey (electronics) and J. Guy Laughlin (drums) duo

Music starts at 9.

The Robinwood Concert House is at 2564 Robinwood Ave., Toledo

There is more information about the concert at http://toledobellows.wordpress.com.

Pimalia/Smatterings/Amazon

Loyal listener and supporter, I need your help!

Pimalia, the label which has been releasing my silent film soundtracks, has secured a promotional deal with Amazon (yep, that Amazon) in which Amazon is offering Smatterings, our CD label sampler, for free download. (FYI, my track is Anemic Cinema.) Obviously, we're trying to create as much of a buzz as we can while we have this rare opportunity.

So how can you help? It's easy!

1. Download the CD. It's free and there's good stuff on it.

2. Write a short review and post it to Amazon.

And that's all you have to do!

Could this be success?

Well, once again the Marotta Hour series at the OSU Urban Arts Space went very well last Thursday, May 21. We had about 30 people out -- a big success in my world -- and everyone seemed happy, including the performers, who made a decent amount of money. At this point, I almost have to think that I am finally being successful at this new music promotion business. By eight months, any initial honeymoon period should be long over, and I am continuing to see new audience members at each show. At this performance, there were even people who left. This means that folks are taking a chance on these shows; it's not always the same people, the initiated.

I'm still puzzled that with the series at an odd time -- 7 p.m. on a Thursday -- and in a bad place -- downtown Columbus, which dies after 5 p.m. -- that everything seems to be working. Maybe by doing everything different, everything is in the correct alignment this time.

I'm not sure if I know how to deal with this.