25 April, 2012<\/p>\n
Ok, so i’ve worked out how to update my own website without having to pay someone else how to do it. Very liberating feeling.<\/p>\n
I do intend on blogging more and posting links, video’s, audio and whatever else I like as well as things I don’t like.<\/p>\n
My mother recently passed away from battling with cancer for 2 years. In her last month\u00a0I got to spend time with her and those moments\/hours spent with her are so precious to me for many reasons. One of them is that she actually told me that I’m obsessed with JAZZ. I smiled and took it on board, but it stuck in my mind. A few days later I realised that yes I am obsessed with JAZZ.<\/p>\n
The next time I saw her we sat and watched the cricket in hospital\u00a0(Friday day-nighter Australia verses Sri Lanka)\u00a0and I really wanted to ask her about why she told me that and what does it mean, but I didn’t want to talk about myself knowing that my mother is in hospital with not very much time to live, I wanted to talk about her and what was going on with her and wanted to just hear her voice as I knew it wasn’t going to be long before I’d never hear it again. Anyway after general chit chat she asked me “how’s the trumpet going?” in the same way she’s asked me that question a million times before, and so I had to ask her about her comment toward me in the previous week.<\/p>\n
Without going into the awkward silences that you normally go through when questioning someone on something they said about you, to you. In the end I was happy to be obsessed with jazz, as I love it so much, but then mum asked me “what’s the problem with being obsessed about jazz, you have been since you were 10 years old and would listen to that Art Farmer record all the time”. It’s moments like that, that make me miss her so much and also makes me understand how much she knew about me that I didn’t know about myself.<\/p>\n
So, explaining to her that, well, jazz really isn’t cool and when I was in high school I was teased not just by other students but staff would also laugh at me because when asked who my favourite “band” was, I would say “Miles Davis”. I was being honest (another thing my mother would instill in us kids) and I thought I was also being cool, because I thought Miles Davis was “cooler” than all the bands that all the other kids were listening to like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Metallica, Bon Jovi and the list of hard rock bands from the late 80’s and early 90’s goes on.<\/p>\n
Having the conversation made me realise (again) that being “cool” did not matter. And from what I’ve learnt from jazz has been so much more valuable in my daily life than what being cool could ever do. I know I’ll never be one of the “cool” kids because I don’t value it, I value jazz.<\/p>\n
CODA<\/p>\n
Last night I had the great pleasure of presenting Kristin Berardi and James Sherlock at a club that I run called the ‘Turnaround Jazz Club’ the gig was great. They’re both excellent musicians and absolutely wonderful people. I found myself (post-gig) at Kenny D’s place (a place I love being because of the challenging of music ideas and concepts through conversation, listening to all sorts of music, great laughs and Cooper’s (this place will remain nameless to protect the people there, no names will be mentioned but pseudonyms may be used, if needed)). Once I forced Woody Shaw’s ‘Stepping Stones’ album on them, someone else told me they had a Woddy Shaw album they wanted to give to me, after going through the track names on this album I realised it was ‘Night Music’ and then this person was trying to remember who the personnel was, I prompted him with Steve Turre, Mulgrew Miller, Tony Reedus, either Cecil McBee or ??? and yes I was right (not surprisingly given my obsession) then I realised that this was the exact band that my father Greg toured to Australia in 1979\/80.<\/p>\n
On my way home I realised why I’m so obsessed with jazz, because it’s been in my life since I was born. I don’t know of any other Australian (other than my sister’s and brother) that had the likes of Woody Shaw, Mulgrew Miller, Tony Reedus, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Johnny Griffin, John Scofield, Dave Liebman, Adam Nussbaum, Steve Swallow, Randy Brecker, Rufus Reid, Jim McNeely, John McNeil the list goes on… anyway these people\u00a0would come over to our house and have dinner\/parties\/barbecues. This is why I realised i’m\u00a0obsessed with jazz is because of my connection to it. I feel so lucky\u00a0and privelaged to have this in my life, i’m not boasting I’m\u00a0only justifying my existence (which helps me to remember how not “cool” I am).\u00a0\u00a0I had Johnny Coles (if you don’t know him, he played on the Gil Evans\/Miles Davis recordings) play happy birthday to me at my house when I was 4.<\/p>\n
So, please expect more from me, as now all\u00a0I have to remember is the password to my website. I’ll be putting to some clips and audio up from my gigs, I would love to hear some critical feedback (something that is sacred to jazz is critical feedback, it helps the music get better and progress (this topic will come up again)).<\/p>\n
Today is ANZAC day and I’m off to a birthday party, CIAO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
25 April, 2012 Ok, so i’ve worked out how to update my own website without having to pay someone else how to do it. Very liberating feeling. I do intend on blogging more and posting links, video’s, audio and whatever else I like as well as things I don’t like. My mother recently passed away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-blog.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dqjazz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dqjazz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dqjazz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dqjazz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dqjazz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/dqjazz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"http:\/\/dqjazz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dqjazz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}