F. Scott, Redux

On the requests of a slew of readers, from both her site and mine, Sarah Brown and I returned to my living room about a month back to record a second episode of The F. Scott & Friends Bourbon and Brylcreem Hour.

Sadly, it’s not quite as raucously funny as the last one, largely because we kept forgetting what we were talking about, leaving me to slave poorly over Garageband for the last month, cutting random short bits together into something vaguely coherent.

It does pick up after a bit, though we get sort of NPR towards the end as we sober up, at least until we leave the table to get more liquor and then return to give up on podcasting altogether, defaulting instead to singing “Jackson” very, very badly along with June Carter and Johnny Cash.

All in all, it’s good stuff. But the next one should be even better. Sarah and I are hitting the microphones again this weekend, this time with some topics and stories planned in advance, and I guarantee it will be at least as hilarious as both episodes added together and squared.

Until then:

The F. Scott & Friends Bourbon and Brylcreem Hour, Episode 2

[On some browsers, you may need to right-click and ‘save the link as…’]

(Time: 38:33; Size 18.2MB)

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Guest Blog: Josh Lilienstein on Medeski Martin & Wood

With recorded music ever easier to find, fewer and fewer people take the time to go see their favorite groups perform live. Which is a shame, because a good live show is an experience completely unmatched by disembodied sounds floating out of living room speakers. My old friend Josh Lilienstein recently emailed along this summary of a MMW concert he attended. I’m posting it up here in the hopes that it will get a few more readers out of their chairs, and into clubs, bars and concert halls.

If you go see one popular band this week, this month, this year, or this decade, these guys should be on your radar. When was the last time you saw a concert where all three members of the group (plus the special guest) were ALL incredible musicians? When was the last time that you heard improvised music that made a crowd get up and dance? When was the last time you saw a jazz concert where each of the musicians onstage traded off leading the group, instead of trading solos?

As soon as i could find a musical reference, they were on to the next. Ellington degenerates into chaos which is rescued by funk slipping into blues, at which point the guy on the standup bass grabs his bow, hits the reverb pedal, and launches into Hendrix, soaring into a Miles Davis bebop breakdown and across the Florida keys to mid-century Cuban dance hall, shimmies out to Mariachi shores and back-to-Africa tribal chants, dropping the bass into some deep house, devolving into 80s metal, with country western rock and roll gracefully saving the day, and Indian raga bringing us back into downtown New York jazz. And that was just the first song. They played for two hours.

Medeski, the keyboardist, is a master of his craft. He actually used, often in ridiculously complex combinations, three keyboards, a moog, a sequencer, a sound board, and a record player. Often, in order to somehow account for genius, we imagine that impressive people had been born in the wrong decade; thankfully, this guy was not. Using a historically-informed musicianship and contemporary instruments, he shows up an entire generation of DJs and computer geeks.

The Bros holla’ed. The tube-top girls grinded. The fat man clapped and jumped along. The hippies twirled. The stoners passed joints with a smile. The intellectuals bobbed their heads while scratching their chins. Something for everyone!

When was the last time you saw a drummer who was subtle? Who had a real dynamic range? Who used every snap, crackle, bop, wheeze, and thump he could think of to move the music instead of making noise?

When was the last time you really wanted to hear the bass, and actually could? Have you ever seen a standup bass played like a Stratocaster? Ever head a saw (yes, a saw, placed on the bridge of the bass so it resonated) ROCK the party?

Those of you who were involved in improvisational music thirty years ago need to see the fruits of your movement. Those of you who feel alienated from popular culture need a reality check. Take your kids. Get high. You musicians out there, go get inspired.

[Catch an upcoming MM&W show near you.]

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Follicular

It was about three and a half years back that I decided to grow a beard. I did it on a whim, as an exercise in sheer laziness, and for what, I assumed, would be a rather short stint.

But, after a month, having drawn nearly positive reviews, I decided to stick with it. I settled into a medium length – setting five on my now trusty Remington Precision MB-30 Beard Trimmer – and weathered such early bearded conundrum as whether I should shave pre-tropics, to ward off the apparent peril of inverted beard-tan should I stick with the beard in the short term, only to decide to lose it mid-fall.

As the priority of faux-aged gravitas waned in favor of general indie hipness, I clicked my Remington down to setting four, and then, about nine months back, to setting three. By now, even a day or two past setting three scruffiness (or, as per this weekend, four solid days past), I start to look and feel a bit too ‘man of the woods’ for my own taste. So, increasingly, I’ve taken to nearly daily trimming. And to nearly daily neck-hair trimming, a region I previously shaved completely, as it – if allowed to grow past its current merely scruffy state – yields a distressingly Amish look.

But, through it all, and despite subtly varying forms, I stuck with the beard. A few times along the way, I shaved completely, curious to see whether I still preferred my more hirsute self. And, each time, the beardless version looked, well, a bit less like me.

So, for the foreseeable future, at least, the beard stays in the picture. Which, taking into account savings on razors and shaving cream alone, should get me retired to the Bahamas just that much sooner. Albeit with a rather serious inverted beard tan.

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