When my father died last year, it sort of put a whole new perspective on my life. When I saw the writeup on him in the New York Times, and all the many others, and how they listed all his accomplishments, I sort of realised how I hadn’t ever done the same thing for myself… just sort of plodding along doing what I do… which is interesting in itself. But I realised, I have this entire, gigantic body of work that I’ve done, that’s never seen the light of day for one reason or another. (I will get into the deeper significance of that another time.)
So, since December, I have been going through this voluminous, shall I say mess, of tapes and manuscripts and old photos and publications. I am simply blown away by the sheer volume of work I’ve done, and sort of left behind. It’s almost like I’m looking at the work of a different person. My father’s death put me in mind of thinking of my life’s work as an entirety, and I realised that while I’ve done a lot, virtually none has been published, aside from the Noel Pointer tune and a few other things here and there. And I truly believe my work is good, if not phenomenal, and that it should be heard. So… you can look forward to the imminent release of a CD of new material, and perhaps one following of my best older stuff. And you will always be able to browse this site to hear a virtual smorgasboard of other interesting nuggets that I will post as I dig them out, asitwere.
And I will remind the listener that my idiom is so called “urban” jazz, funk, Latin jazz and R&B with a progressive bent. So if you don’t like any of those things, well, ba-bye.
So I’ve been going through all these old tapes and one by one, transferring the worthwhile stuff to digital media, in fact importing them into my recording studio where I can manipulate them in ways scientific and dangerous. I’m posting interesting things I find here, for example, I have created a page where you can listen to a bit of a concert with Norma Jean Bell I did back in 1983 when I was working with her at Axel’s in Detroit. I just found a tape I made with RonRico Morris of Quit Cryin’ fame on drums and it is just great, not only the performance, but the recording quality. Great find. I’m not sure whether to post it now or produce it more before I release it. I’ll let you know… I was in a phenomenal group in the 70s called the Martian Entropy Band that played my originals live, we’ve recently gotten ahold of a CD of the music and I’ve posted one of those on the front page of this web site, a piece called Warp Factor 217. I’m quite proud of having written that when I was fifteen years old, sitting at a kitchen table scrawling on a manuscript book in the wee hours. You can find images of that original manuscript in the manuscripts area if you are curious.
And, If hearing Warp Factor 217 does not satisfy your need for Martian music, we have temporarily made available for listening an entire concert by the Martian Entropy Band at their web site. So feel free and cruise over there to hear an afternoon’s free concert of maniac seventies culture and music (warts and all.) We will probably be removing the entire concert at some point and replacing it with excerpts and offering a CD for sale, so soak it up while it’s free 🙂
Also, I’ll mention that one of my best friends here in Miami, I’m proud to say, is Jesse Jones Jr. Jesse is considered one of our city’s most precious cultural treasures. I invite you to meet him, listen to his music, and perhaps buy his CD if you are moved. You couldn’t be helping a more beautiful person so don’t hesitate if you like his music (and you will if you like Jazz!)