The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

LaMont Johnson, the Answering Service, and Improvising Music

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[This micro-story is adapted with permission from the Appendix in “Easy Touch-Style Improvisation,” a method book for playing two-handed touchstyle bass, by Traktor Topaz and Henri DuPont.)

Los Angeles, January 29, 1969: There was this jazz piano-player named LaMont Johnson, who was a roommate in our large house on Western Avenue. He lived from October 1941 until October 1999, but back then 30 years earlier, at that time he was very much alive. He bristled with energy.

He was very, very good as a piano player, ranging from funk to jazz and it all rocked. He had played and done recordings with Woody Shaw toward the end of bebop, and with Ornette Coleman, George Benson, and other luminaries of jazz.

I mention him because I had decided to learn how to play music. I wanted to learn how to improvise like he did, making up new songs on the fly. That’s what drove me. I wanted to be learn how to improvise.

And so it was that I asked him a simple question —

What are the good notes?

What are the notes to play?

Now, although he could play the “good” notes, [Read more…]

Charlie’s Big Adventure

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Medford, Oregon, April 25, 2016: I guess he’s been getting restless. I’ve been lousy about taking them for walks, and running around the back yard has probably grown passe.

Of course, Daisy is getting old. She’s creaky, slow, and her back legs erratic. But Charlie, though almost as old, still has a lot of Get Up And Go. And the fact that Daisy is now mostly Got Up and Went gives him no pause. He’s a busy guy.

Today started out normal, like any day, and since I wanted to get soup for lunch at Great Harvest, I herded the dogs into the garage/backyard, and sure enough, the soup was swell.

When I arrived back home and parked in the driveway, behind me cars began stopping in the street, a line of them in each direction. And that was because Daisy was wandering around on Siskiyou Boulevard. [Read more…]

So Long – Prince

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Minneapolis, April 21, 2016:  Prince is gone.

I remember the first time, around 1980, in a record store just off Geary on Arguello, in a bin I saw this strange, skinny, prissy-looking latin guy on the cover of the self-named album, “Prince.”

Who would have thought that, all these years later, yesterday for no reason the songs “Purple Rain” and “Rasberry Beret” were spinning around and around in my head all day long, and I kept visualizing a scene from his film, as he pulls away on an oversized motorcycle, looking such a tiny tough guy.

And today, Google had a google-doodle. It was purple, and pressing the play button I saw streaks of rain.

And now, I miss him.

His Royal Badness
His Royal Badness

 

Good Vibrations

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Dallas, Texas, 1966 — I was living in Dallas when the Beach Boys released their song “Good Vibrations.” Here’s a video of them performing the song …

And I have a little story.

As it happens, when this song was just about to come out, I was living in a rather Deco white apartment building at Lemmon and Oak Lawn in Dallas. I was also, for the first time, reading Lord of the Rings, and I had almost reached the end of the third book — spoiler alert — where Frodo and Gollum will struggle above the chasm of Mount Doom in Mordor.

As you will recall, Gollum called the One Ring his “precious,” and as he and Frodo struggle, Gollum suddenly bites off Frodo’s finger with the ring, and dancing and holding it up and exclaiming “My precious! My precious!” Gollum slips and falls to his death into the chasm, which also destroys the One Ring.

By an amazing co-incidence, as I sat alone in my small apartment that afternoon, at the very moment that I was reading this scene, on the radio I heard, for the very first time, the song “Good Vibrations,” and at the very moment that I read of Gollum falling into the chasm, in the song, I heard (for the first time) the song’s lyrics, and they were singing … “Good … good … good … good-bye precious … Good … good … good … good-bye precious.”

The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

And to this day, whenever I hear this song, they are singing “Good … good … good … good-bye precious”

As you listen to the video, I’ll bet that you can also, if you want to, hear them singing “goodbye precious.” See what you think.

For myself, I think these little coincidences are God’s jokes, and I’m glad to know that God has a sense of humor. And it is my hope that He/She will perhaps forgive some of my stupider moments, for this reason.

One can always hope. Right?

Writing and Marketing

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Medford Oregon, January 23, 2016:  Two writer friends and I had coffee yesterday, because they wanted to talk about marketing their books. One of them has published a couple of books but his last one has not sold much yet. The other fellow is still working on his book. Both books are novels.

I confessed that although I’ve written several books and have published them in one way or another, I’m no big expert on this subject.

However, as the get-together unfolded, between my marketing experiences and their ideas we actually did put together a couple of plans that seem very likely to be effective.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

Today, I got an email from one of them, and in his email he said:

“All very interesting, and I want to know more, but my purist streak pulls me back to the Dark Side, to wit: Why don’t I just learn how to write a Story that makes a reader want to burn through it before lunch because I have made this huge promise and they are hungry for their payoff?”

As I began to respond to his question, it reawakened something I learned many years ago from my client Jerry Richardson, the author of “Powers of Persuasion,” which became a national best-seller, about how we humans leave out parts of sentences. I have found it very useful over the years. Perhaps you will find interesting this response to my writer friend —

Hi,

To answer your question —

You asked: “Why don’t I just learn how to write a Story that makes a reader want to burn through it before lunch because I have made this huge promise and they are hungry for their payoff?”

Errors of Omission

Your answer is inside your question. All English-speakers engage in a practice that linguists would call “omission” or “deletion.” We delete parts of the sentence because they are “understood.” An example: [Read more…]

The Edges

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[December 20, 2015, Medford, Oregon — Now and then I read Seth Godin’s blog. His post today was so thought-provoking (and short) that I wanted to share it with you. If you like it, maybe you’d like to subscribe to the feed at Seth’s Blog. And if you follow the link below on the word “infinite,” you’ll find a mind-bending article about the life and death of the Universe.]

Is the universe infinite?

If it’s not, the first question a smart person will ask is, “so what happens at the edge?”

That’s how we define things… by the moments where they begin and end, by their edges.

This clearly applies not just to the universe, but to every project and concept and institution in our lives.

  • What does your organization not do?
  • When does this promotion/product/service end?
  • What’s it like to start? To end it?

Defining the edges of performance and the promises you make defines who you are and what you do.

We live in the middle but we understand at the edges.

— Seth Godin

 

 
 

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