A few weeks ago, the season opened with the HBO (Hollywood Bowl Orchestra) and the annual induction of famed musicians into the HB Hall of Fame. One of this year’s honorees was BB King, who is still out touring and playing over 300 concerts a year at age 80. (I get tired playing eight shows a week just staying in town.) He may be sitting down while he plays on stage these days but his energy and enthusiasm is boundless.

I was talking to drummer Brian Miller in the wings before the show when he motioned to look beside me. And there she was…Lucille! Sitting on a guitar stand waiting for her man…priceless!

The next week, Cheap Trick came to play a Beatles set that included the entire Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Evidently, this is something they’ve been doing here and there for the last few years along with an invited group of guests. This time they brought Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins and Ian Ball from Gomez, as well as Simone (Nina Simone’s daughter) and Rob Laufer. I played a little rhythm guitar on Magical Mystery Tour, lead on Strawberry Fields and electric sitar on Norwegian Wood. The Beatles’ engineer, Geoff Emerick was at the board and the original George Martin arrangements were on the music stands of the HBO. The orchestra sounded great, though I wished that CT had paid more attention to keeping good time, and it was tough to hear Blackbird (sung by Simone) played in such a high key with capos on the guitar accompaniment.

In the first week of July, the LA Phil took over and played a baseball-themed pops concert for three nights celebrating the LA Dodgers 50th anniversary and Independence Day. On the last night, after Tommy Lasorda finished his ever-expanding nightly monologue, Randy Newman was introduced as the “…Oscar Award-winning, Grammy Award-winning musician/composer whose family raised four award-winning Hollywood composers.” Randy walked out, sat at the piano and said, “Yeah, and my family raised a lot of substance abusers, too!”

I love LA…

Here’s a piece I wrote in May 2007 that bears repeating:

From the archives | Why The Fed Is Wrong About Inflation

In an online photography forum that I frequent, a member tossed out this question.

Asked:

Has anyone here missed something in composing a shot only to process the film, produce a print then realize an uncanny resemblance to a ghostly figure? Or religious icon?

…and answered:

No apparitions, but in 2004, I got a pair of animal crackers stuck together at the buttocks; appropriately, one was an elephant, and one was a donkey. I should have put it up on EBay.

Thanks for understanding…

“Yes?”

“This is Musician’s Local 47 and I’m calling today to tell you that if you don’t pay Local 7’s fee in order to resign in good standing, we’ll be forced to drop you from membership.”

So began a recent phone call from my local chapter of the musician’s union, Professional Musicians Local 47 located in Los Angeles.

It all began a few years ago when I joined another local (in addition to my LA membership), Orange County’s Local 7. You see, each city or region around the country has a local chapter that’s responsible for dealing with musicians’ issues in that area. When musicians move to a new city, they usually join the local chapter in order to derive the benefits of working there. In my case, although I had been a member of LA’s local for more than 20 years, I had an 8-week job coming up in Orange County, which meant I needed to join their chapter, too.

After that gig was over, I had no reason to continue to belong. I never work there, it’s too far to drive when I have plenty of work here in LA, and why not save the over $100 a year it costs to belong, so I didn’t pay my membership fee the next time it came due. Well, it’s not as easy as it would seem. You have to resign in writing, because if you don’t and it comes time to pay up, you’ll be expelled!

Big deal, right?

Well, it seems there’s this little by-law from musicians’ headquarters in New York (believe me, that’s a story for another day) that says no member who has been expelled can be a member anywhere else. Is there a way around this ridiculous rule? Sure, please remit the appropriate fee of $115 and you can resign in good standing.

I’m surprised the letter from the OC people didn’t come with cut-up letters from magazines and newspapers because it sure sounded like ransom to me.

So I paid up; what could I do? And get this…they send me a letter telling me they reviewed my request and payment at a board meeting, and it was passed and seconded to accept the payment and allow me to resign in good standing.

Not much to do down in Orange County, is there?

I’ve written before about what we’ve gained as music has moved into the digital realm, and also about what we’ve lost. One of the things we’ve lost is a greater connection to the artist and his complete vision, a connection facilitated in great part by the now-lost record jacket.

In 1970, Creed Taylor formed CTI Records, an independent jazz label that grew out of his work at A&M Records. Together with a roster of incredible jazz musicians he forged a new acceptance of jazz among both musicians and the general public. The attraction was visual as well, for Taylor understood that there had to be a way to make his product stand out alongside all the others in the record bin. That difference was photographer Pete Turner.

Pete Turner is responsible for more recognizable and iconic images than any other photographer working in the music business. Armed with only an album title, Turner would search his files or create anew a bold and striking image that would forever bond the music with his photo in our minds. The full-bleed 12-inch image (or larger, often wrapping around to the back cover as well) made for a stunning package, with Turner’s trademark vibrant saturated color screaming out at you.

Pete Turner: The Color of Jazz is a beautiful collection of the work he did for CTI, Impulse and Verve; almost all of this work was commissioned by Creed Taylor. The book, presented in the 12-inch square format of the originals, is printed beautifully. Each jacket is accompanied by a short description or anecdote about the making of the photograph. It was a real treat and jog to my memory to see all these wonderful photos again. As I turned each page, the sound of the music from each album came back to me as alive as the first day I heard it.

That’s a great testament to the power of imagery and its link to music in the hands of a master like Pete Turner.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

- Martha Graham

A big thanks to composer Ed Alton for sending this...

Apple’s iPhone, which as everyone knows by now, includes an iPod music player, email and wireless internet access along with a few other choice apps, is different in that it doesn’t treat the extra features as little add-ons. They’re all full-fledged apps/hardware that are first-rate.

As I wrote here earlier, I felt that the iPhone was overpriced at the time of its introduction and was hampered by being available from only a single provider, AT&T. I was proved wrong as people flocked to the iPhone regardless of price and switched carriers in the process. The controversial price drop a few weeks after its release, helped ease my mind about the cash outlay but the switch to AT&T was a deal breaker.

Well, that may be changing as I’ve heard recently that Apple’s iPhone will be available from T-Mobile and possibly other providers by the end of the year. In the meantime, I picked up a new Motorola Razr V3. It doesn’t have a music player or wi-fi, but it’s probably the best design out there and at $29 (originally $250+ a few years ago), it’s a steal.

Well, opera has come a long way in the last 100 years and especially in modern times. Some divas and divos may still be in our midst, but they’re not as tolerated as they once were. Opera is a big money venture and there’s no time for such nonsense. It’s been said that the only thing more expensive than opera is war.

I just finished a 5-month stint with the LA Opera beginning in November of last year with Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in which I played a short aria on solo mandolin with string accompaniment. Every night I entered the pit with the orchestra at the beginning of Act 2 and snuck out a few moments later after the aria was finished. Short and sweet, but very exposed.

Next up at the opera was Recovered Voices, an ongoing long-term personal project of LA Opera’s music director James Conlon, consisting of two one-act operas written by composers who were silenced by the Nazis. The Broken Jug, written by composer Viktor Ullman is a comedy farce and included a banjo, as well as a saxophone; instruments you don’t normally see in an orchestra, let alone in an opera pit. The Dwarf by Alexander Zemlinksy had a part for both guitar and mandolin. Because the instruments hardly ever played at the same time, I ended up playing both parts. There was also quite a large banda in The Dwarf. A banda is the term used for an offstage or onstage band that consists of music that the characters themselves in the opera can hear. In film music, it’s known as source music. So at one point somewhere around 20 players left the pit quietly and made their way to the wings. The Dwarf was a marvelous piece with echoes of Mahler and Strauss, with a bit of Korngold thrown in for good measure.

At the same time as the above project, the opera was also presenting Verdi’s Otello. In Act 2, there was a small 3-piece banda with guitar, mandolin and English horn. I remembered playing this opera many years ago when Placido Domingo sang the title role. Brian Head played guitar and Stuart Horn played the double reed. The tempo was incredibly quick and I had to play 16th notes in a very fast 6/8 time. Once again, it was only a short little bit, only two pages long, but incredibly exposed.

One more note before I wrap up…James Conlon is a great maestro who knows how to rehearse an orchestra and then inspire them during a performance. He’s down-to-earth, approachable and friendly. You can’t ask for more from a conductor. As for the LA Opera orchestra, I don’t think there is a harder working group anywhere, sometimes rehearsing all day and then playing a 3-4, and even sometimes 5 hour performance in the evening. This schedule can continue for weeks at a time, and they keep making incredible music at every turn.

I wrote about playing this piece with the Philharmonic (see here and here) and the incredible rush it was for both the players and the audience. I happened to meet Alex at rehearsals for the piece, as he was in town gathering material for a subsequent New Yorker profile on Esa-Pekka called The Anti-Maestro.

In October of last year Alex’s book, The Rest Is Noise was published and since then it has been on everyone’s Best of 2007 list. It’s a brilliantly written survey of classical music in the 20th century, all at once fresh and original in a way not usually experienced with books on this subject. I highly recommend it. Also, in a brilliant stroke, Alex has a collection of web pages that have musical examples illustrating the book’s contents chapter by chapter. It’s one of the most interactive, symbiotic and useful examples of pairing traditional publishing with the web I’ve seen that is elegant in its execution; a simple Flash/Java media player that maintains focus on the original page.

Alex will be appearing at the 2008 Ojai Music Festival in Ojai, California on June 6, along with conductor David Robertson and composer Steve Reich for a discussion of new music. I’m looking forward to attending this event while performing at this year’s festival. It’s always a fun and fresh way to start the summer. If you’re anywhere nearby, you absolutely owe it to yourself to come down and check it out.

AT&T will team up with Starbucks to offer “hot spots” at all 7,000 of its domestic US stores beginning this spring and rolling out until the end of the year. Starbucks has had a six year program, now ending, with T-Mobile whereby customers paid $6 per hour, $9.99 per day or up to $39.99 per month for access to their in-store wireless connection. AT&T’s deal trumps that by a huge margin. Current AT&T broadband customers will have unlimited free access under the new deal, plus any Starbucks customer who uses a Starbucks card for purchases will automatically receive 2 hours of free access per day.

AT&T has had a “hot spot” program in place for a while that includes most McDonald’s, Barnes & Noble and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf locations, however this latest deal with Starbucks is a breakthrough not only because of the sheer number of locations but also because Starbucks is seen as a center of community in many neighborhoods.

We all know how hard it can be to find access while out and about, many times coming up short. Now, access is as close as the nearest Starbucks and that can be pretty, pretty close, to paraphrase Larry David. As the married couple in Christopher Guest’s Best In Show describes their first encounter, “We met at Starbucks…not the same Starbucks, but two Starbucks across the street from each other. I saw her in the window…”

Jazz (and classical music) has always been the ugly stepchild of the commercial record business during most of the last 50 years, getting shunted aside during the Grammy broadcasts in favor of the flavor of the month, many times to the embarrassment of the Grammy establishment. Can you say Milli Vanilli?

So, it is an incredibly joyous moment when someone with the talent and integrity of Herbie Hancock is recognized for something other than being popular and selling a few million copies. Maybe there is hope for the Grammys…on the other hand, during the post-show reports the talking heads of the music business bemoaned the state-of-the-industry once again blaming illegal downloading for the claimed 36% drop in sales since the year 2000. I’d say that’s not too bad, since the aggregate list of nominees seems to show a drop in talent and creativity of at least twice that.

The French horn must be really hard to play, because it sure sounds like it.

- Wayne Bergeron, trumpet player

And to prove that he has indeed arrived, Pink’s, the legendary hot dog stand on La Brea Avenue recently named a hot dog in honor of our future music director. The Gustavo Dudamel consists of a “stretch” hot dog with guacamole, American and Swiss cheese, grilled veggies, jalapeno and tortilla chips.