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Thank you WordPress!

Blogging? Looks like I’m late to another tech party…

Oh – well, that’s cool. I hope to make up for lost time. And hey, at least I’m never late for *real* parties…

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I Love Jazz: Part 2

Here are some albums that you should check out!

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Eric Dolphy

Eric Dolphy: Out There (f. Ron Carter on bass) – his 2nd album as a band leader and some generally more “accessible” groundwork before he broke down all the doors with “Out To Lunch” four years later.

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Bill Evans

Bill Evans: Waltz For Debby (recorded live at The Village vanguard days before legendary bassist Scott LaFaro passed away) – Amazingly intimate, emotive sessions by a trio that could take you to another world. Amazing to hear the sound of the people clapping at the end of the tracks. To think that this heavenly art was available and happening and so few people were there.

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Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Roland Kirk: We Free Kings – His story alone is one for the ages: blindness, the dream/vision and playing three horns at once. You have to hear this to believe it.

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Art Blakey

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: Moanin - A drummer as band leader with the fabulous and under-appreciated Lee Morgan on trumpet. All tracks are great on this legendary session.

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Sonny Rollins

Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus (f Max Roach on the skins) – the album that elevated “Newk” to the tenor major leagues.

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John Coltrane

John Coltrane: Giant Steps – Buy this if you always wanted to know what all the fuss was about… And, if you want to see why he became the most important saxophonist of his generation and one of the great visionaries who began to take jazz and music into the highest, most spiritually experimental places, also see his album called “A Love Supreme”

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Jimmy Smith & Wes Montgomery

Jimmy Smith & Wes Montgomery: The Dynamic Duo – A cool jazz marriage made in heaven! Featuring Jimmy’s Hammond B3 and Wes’ inimitable, octave-driven sound. Waaaaaaaaayyyy cool, baby.

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Miles Davis

Miles Davis & Gil Evans: Sketches Of Spain – Third stream indeed! One of the most soul-stirring marriages of the jazz soloist with supporting orchestra ever. Gil and Miles were really something else. Others tried to do similar things, but no one touched these guys… well, except…

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Charles Mingus

Charles Mingus: Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus – Legendary bassist? Yes. Accomplished pianist? Yes. Known eccentric and bi-polar personality? Oh, yes. One of the greatest composers of the 20th century? Y E S . That is Mingus’ truest legacy. This album is just a beginning of the depths at which one should explore Mingus.

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It is my hope that you will experience these albums for yourself soon, and that they will speak to you as they have to me.

: )

Jocelyn & Eric October 10, 2009

On October 10, I had the distinct pleasure of being the Master Of Ceremonies, Music Programmer, Deejay and Sound Engineer for Jocelyn & Eric’s wedding celebration at the beautiful and historic Hollins House at Pasatiempo in Santa Cruz.

They were a fabulous couple to work with: mellow, nice, intelligent folks who, over time, were able to really hone in on the most subtle and important details of how they wanted their wedding day to unfold. In every nook and cranny of their wedding, you had a palpable sense of the fact that you were at Jocelyn and Eric’s wedding, not just “a wedding”, and I was so proud to be a part of making it all happen.

The ceremony was outside on the gazebo lawn, with a beautiful vista of the Monterey Bay off in the distance. Jocelyn and Eric had a quartet of their college friends come up from Southern California to play as a string quartet for the ceremony and I mic’d that separately so that it would come through the PA and enrich the overall coverage of the music: it worked beautifully! And this quartet – let me say that I have heard string quartets far and wide, most of which are passable, some of which are quite good and others which, truth be told, have been an audible embarrassment to themselves. This group of young ladies, however? This group was tight. They were in-tune, had great intonation, nice tone and had obviously played together for many hours (if not presently, at least at some point). It was a pleasure hearing them, as they rendered the pieces with tasteful detail and dynamics. Bravo!

Jocelyn’s uncle from Ohio led the proceedings in a very nice and personal way, and then, it was off to the cocktail hour and reception!

Hollins House Wedding Gazebo - The ceremony's over, but the glow lingers into the night.

For the cocktail hour, Jocelyn and Eric wanted a real signature sound, featuring the music of Belle And Sebastian, Vampire Weekend and other like-artists. They burned me a couple of CDs of all of their favorites and then I keyed and BPM’d all of the songs and set about putting together a smooth, musically sensible playlist that would get all of the songs in. Again, after a little bit of time spent, it worked beautifully!

Dinner was… wonderful! You cannot expect it to be anything else with the crew at the Hollins House in charge! Margy Siefert, my long-time friend, is one of the most experienced and respected wedding professionals in the Santa Cruz area, and her seamless, sure-handed control of the execution of every aspect of this wedding paid off as it always does with her and the Hollins House: perfection.

The Hollins House table setting... what a view, huh?

Then, of course, it was time to dance. I was lucky enough to be able to play a dance set that stretched for well over three hours (although for me, that is a walk in the park – I have DJ’d weddings that have gone 10-plus hours before… and no repeats, either! ; ) and featured a wide variety of hit music from all eras and styles. And the neat thing is that when you have that much time to dance, you don’t need to just skim the surface of each genre: you can really dig in and play some exciting, atypical, great music! The dance floor was moving the whole time to all of it, and I was happy that what I did ended up working so well.

Jocelyn, Eric, families and friends enjoying a spin...

In the midst of it all was a cake cutting that featured a whiskey toast to all of their guests from Jocelyn and Eric. This was carefully planned in advance by them, myself, Margy and the catering staff at the venue, and as a result, went off perfectly, without any delay, and was a signature highlight of the reception. Fantastic, fantastic stuff, huh? : )

The whiskey toast - a signature moment... I'll have mine after I get home!

All of the pictures you see above are from another good friend who is one of the top photographers you can hire, Steve Kurtz. He set the bar in Santa Cruz many years ago that all other area photographers aimed to reach, and after many years in the business, he hasn’t slowed down even a bit. He was a great match for Jocelyn and Eric; I can remember how delighted I was the day they told me they had chosen him: “a perfect match”, I remember thinking. Be sure to check him out if you want clean, classic, technically perfect photography that will never look dated or go out of style.

Flowers were by another good friend of mine, Wendy Melrose of Fionna Floral. If you are looking for a fun, friendly, artistic local florist who is one of the very best around, she’s your gal!

All in all, dear readers, a wonderful day that I won’t forget. If you’d like to consider me as your wedding DJ and MC, please call Sound In Motion today at 831.427.0700.

Jocelyn & Eric - Thank you for having me!

Emily & Brett July 18,2009

What a fabulous, fabulous time!

Emily & Brett are two very down-to-earth, fun-loving, genuine people who wanted to have their reception at their family home in the hills of Woodside, CA.

I have always believed that the best way to maximize the success of private residence weddings is to do a thorough pre-event technical and logistical walk-through at the site. This does a lot of good: it ensures that I know where it is, how to park and load in, and most importantly, what equipment and how much of it is needed to have the best coverage and “event flow” possible. I like to think that 20+ years in this business has allowed me to accrue valuable knowledge and experience that can be shared with my clients to both optimize the potential successes and avoid the potential pitfalls of their event. Think of it: I do this every week, yet they probably are doing it for the very first time, so I am just glad I can be of help!

The party went late into the night, with people of all ages having fun and dancing the night away. Emily & Brett danced their first dance to “Come Fly With Me” by Frank Sinatra, which was a fantastic choice.

Also, they selected Sound In Motion’s terrific “Love Story” package: DJ, MC, full sound coverage, PLUS we make a photo montage (set to music) in advance that covers everything from baby pictures to the engagement shot. We then shoot a full-length HD video of the wedding from pre-ceremony bride’s prep to the last dance and send off, edit it down and produce four copies of a custom-labeled and packaged DVD for the bride and groom and their families. Additionally, at the cake cutting, we bring in a full big-screen projection system and show the montage to everyone as part of the reception’s entertainment! It really is a great “personal connect” for our clients to their guests and tells the story of how we all got to be there on the wedding day!

Here’s some dance footage that will really give you the feeling of what it was like to be at this special celebration:

Again, it was indeed a grand celebration. Overtime? You bet we went overtime… thought we wouldn’t? : )

I Love Surf Music (or, “Evidence herein shows that reports of Surf music’s death in 1966 were premature…”)

Take Some Guitar, Add A Little Bass, & Some WILD Tom-Toms…

Well, here I go again!

“Surf music” is something that you may miss entirely if you blink your eyes at the wrong time.

Now, most folks will knowingly nod their heads when you mention Surf music because to them, it instantly conjures up images of fun, sunshine, surf and sand; of tan young men and women without a care in the world somehow stuck in a snow-globed ’60s time warp that they can glance at very occasionally as if it were stuck away on some far up shelf in their mental bookcase. They see Jan & Dean, The Beach Boys, The Ventures and The Surfaris… they hear “Surfin’ USA”, “Little Old Lady From Pasadena”, “Wipeout” and “Walk, Don’t Run”… they think of “Gidget”, Frankie and Annette, or The Endless Summer.

Since most of the groups were from Southern California, Surf music and surf culture were immediately identified with our great Golden State, but, ironically, the 1964 hit “California Sun” by The Rivieras was penned in that group’s home town of… get this… South Bend, Indiana!

From its birth in 1959 all the way into the mid ’60s, Surf music had a great run, but by the time of the birth of psychedelia and the Hippie movement, the carefree good-time vibe of Surf was passe, and the socially-conscious, introspective themes of those newer movements ushered away the innocence of Surf seemingly overnight. But, like any good music that has a relatively brief heyday, it never dies or goes away, it just goes underground. And the man who took it there for safe keeping was Mr. Dick Dale, one of the pioneers and true originals of the genre.

Dick Dale - Surf Music Pioneer

(Note: If you are curious, there is a decent article at Wikipedia on the history of the genre)

Now, Add Reverb…

Reverb is the phenomenon of reverberation: a prolonged resounding succession of echoes. In the case of Surf, what could possibly be a more fitting signature for both the sound of the music and its enduring cultural relevance? In the early 1980’s, long-time Surf Music aficionado Phil Dirt re-emerged as a DJ on the influential Northern California college radio station KFJC 89.7 fm. Phil had a stint there in the early 1960’s but left due to “irreconcilable differences”. Upon his return, however, Phil began a journey into the deepest recesses of the genre that turned him into the world’s undisputed #1 Surf Music fan and keeper of all things Surf. You want to really check him and this Surf stuff out? Simple: go to Phil’s website at http://www.reverbcentral.com/ and live a little!

In 1985, under the influence of Dirt, the Bay Area’s Shockwaves were born from that very same scene at KFJC. On-air personality Jeff “Stretch” Reidle joined Randy “Rude Rudy” Hyden and Frank Novicki to form a formidable and authentic Surf band who scored a minor radio hit with their Surf reinterpretation of the Batman theme crossed with the Surf hit “Wipeout”, creating the infectious and fun “Batwipe” – a mash-up decades ahead of its time! The Shockwaves eventually put out a vinyl EP called “Primal Twang” which preserved their sound and influence on the local scene for posterity. Yes, I have one : )

Fast forward now to 1994 and influential filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s landmark film “Pulp Fiction”. Thanks to this man and his film, Dick Dale’s career catches fire again and Surf music is formally introduced to the 20-something “quasi-hipster crowd” (i.e. hip enough to see the movie, not hip enough to know much about Surf music) who immediately embrace its wild, unbridled sound. Dale’s signature version of “Miserlou”, a traditional Greek song that is also popular throughout the Middle East, became the movie’s signature track, and other Surf songs from bands like The Tornadoes, The Revels and The Lively Ones added to the soundtrack’s Surf leanings that Tarantino described as “Rock ‘n Roll Ennio Morricone music, Rock ‘n Roll Spaghetti-Western music”.

And Dale’s “Miserlou” wasn’t done yet, because in 2005, the Black Eyed Peas took the song and transformed it into their multi-platinum hit “Pump It”, which begs the question: what exactly IS the shelf life of a Greek traditional song made into a Surf music classic back in the late 1950’s?!

What Now? Is That It?

One song, a cover song at that, being re-made and re-synchronized over and over again?

NOPE.

FAR FROM IT.

Which is why I bothered to sit down and type up this mess.

When Dick Dale took this thing underground, he planted seeds in all the subsequent generations of musicians and corners of pop music. So many bands of all styles have traceable Surf music influences, it’s amazing if you really look and listen.

But even more interesting are the keepers of the flame for this past couple of decades… the instrumental-peddlers and reverb-mongers who tirelessly tour the small clubs and occasional festivals. The bands who have not just been inspired by their forebearers, but have committed themselves to elevating and expanding the art form, sometimes even pushing it beyond its reasonable boundaries just to see what’s possible. These are the bands that have me curious and inspired.

So, with that, here is some more suggested listening for you!

Slacktone - Holy CRIPES, these guys can play!

Artist: Slacktone
Suggested Tracks: Rell Sunn Aloha, Mysterioso, Reflection: Life Or Lemming, Rosarito 3 Day, Nocturne, The Bells Of St. Kahuna

Artist: Laika & The Cosmonauts
Suggested Tracks: Crosstown Canyon, Fadeaway, NY 79

Artist: The Mermen
Suggested Tracks: With No Definite Future and No Purpose Other Than To Prevail Somehow, Quiet Surf, Ocean Beach

Artist: The Penetrators
Suggested Tracks: Deception Bay, Checkpoint Echo

Artist: The Vanduras
Suggested Tracks: In The Dark, Dinner With Robert

Artist: Los Straitjackets
Suggested Tracks: Pacifica, Dreamland, Challenger 64

And – be sure to keep your eyes & ears open because Fascinating Creatures Of The Deep are coming soon!
Enjoy : )

COME TO 49ers FAMILY DAY!

This coming Saturday – 6/13 – FREE for you and the whole family to get in!

Games, music, food, locker-room tours, meet the players… it’s gonna be AWESOME!

See you there!! Wave at me up in the press box : )

Technology and Love: who would have ever thought?

By now we all know, or at least have probably heard about, someone who has fallen in love on the internet. With the myriad of dating services available online and computer-assisted matchmaking, finding love in this great sea of humanity is more possible than ever before.

Back in the summer of 1994, I and my closest friend Steve Corona founded the first commercially-focused wedding planning website in the history of the internet. We named it Weddings Online, and though there were already wedding newsgroups at that time, no one had yet envisioned and actualized the things that we did: an index of vendors available all over the US, with sample portfolios and even walking virtual tours of facilities. Suffice to say, we were way ahead of our time, and spent most of our hours educating people about what the internet was, let alone why they had to advertise there. To put it in perspective, we were doing this when Yahoo just started and eBay, Amazon and Google were way off in the future, and I hand-coded every single page of the html (2.0) myself! Funny enough, only now are some of the things we thought of back then coming to life. We both look back on those days fondly and laugh at how audacious it was for the two of us to be out there trying to change the way the world was doing business!

Well, anyway, here we are in 2009.

A client of ours named Catherine, a very sweet woman who used to work with us as a facility special events coordinator, came in to the office the other day to pay her balance because she is getting married on Sunday at Peachwood’s in Santa Cruz. One of our other friends who still works at that facility is going to be the Maid Of Honor, and we though that that was pretty neat, but it turns out that there is more to the story: she is actually just standing in for the “real” Maid Of Honor. You see, Catherine is from England, and her best friend/sister-in-law can’t get to the US due to visa issues. At our meeting, Catherine was barely able to contain her tears when she came in and told me the story.

Well, me being me, I told her kiddingly that if her DJ, Kevin O’Scanlon (one of our star staffers) was a real DJ, then he’d Skype video call her Maid Of Honor in live at the wedding for her toast.

Catherine looked up at me with an incredulous gaze… and as the realization that this was possible hit her, she was overcome with happiness.

She already used Skype! With her best friend in the UK – that’s how they talk to each other! She has the camera setup already and everything!

So I had her sit while I called Kevin to explain and then called the facility to check connectivity capabilities.

It looked good! Kevin would need to borrow my personal laptop to make it happen, but Peachwood’s has a router right in the banquet room. We’ll tie the audio right in to the sound system…

But, because I had to be sure, as soon as Catherine got done crying in my arms with joy right there in the office, I got into my car, zipped up to the facility and tested the whole system live.

It worked.

!

And now an already awesome wedding was going to be just *that* much better : )

As I told Catherine and my Mom (who was there doing her bookkeeping for us – thanks Mom!) in the office, isn’t it wonderful when a DJ can make a bride cry about her wedding, but not for the usual reasons that DJ’s make brides cry about their weddings? LOL!!!!

Cut to today, May 24,2009:

Well, it went off tonight and couldn’t have been better: the entire crowd got up and crowded around the screen to see and be seen! The girls in the UK were in nice dresses and had champagne. We let the first toasts go and then ran the whole crowd through the process LIVE: the dial out, the answer, the opening of video, the click to full-screen. By sharing the process and not just cutting to an already-live “reveal”, it created excitement and anticipation and became a moment. Tears flowing, glasses in the air. It gets no better.

And, let me add that it is all the sweeter that it wasn’t me who presided over that moment and shepherded it to fruition. In the end, it was Kevin, a guy who I hired and have known since he was a sophomore in college and who we have trained and nurtured to become the outstanding professional that he is today, six years later. Kevin is just one example of what makes Sound In Motion DJs & Video the different and special company that it is.

And that, dear readers, is reason #4,372 why I have the best job in the world.

A celebrity wedding, and a story for the ages…

Deep breath…

OK -

First things first: due to the nature of this story and particularly what happens in the end, I decided that the only way I would post it would be with all the names missing. It is just way too personal of a thing to share in public without anonymizing the good people who were part of it and protecting their privacy.

On March 21,2009 I had the honor of DJing a wedding for a well-known professional football player from an East Coast team and his fiancee. He was a collegiate National Champion for a West Coast university who now plays Defensive Tackle in the pros, and his fiancee’s brother used to play for the 49ers. His referral to her got me the job.

It was an 8 hour ceremony & reception to be held at a world-famous venue on the Central California Coast. For those of you who know, that is about as classy as classy gets. I mean off-the-map. In fact, I have been told that DJs are a relative rarity at this venue.

The bride and groom four-walled the place. They had every single piece of existing furniture individually blanket-wrapped and loaded by a crew onto a cross-country sized moving van, which was parked down the road. They then brought in custom everything, transforming the private club into their wedding venue. At the end of the night, the truck would then be backed in and unloaded, and by the next morning, you would never know that a wedding had been there at all!

The music was beautifully customized for the ceremony by the bride, and all songs had entry/exit cues. I tied into the superb venue-supplied audio and she walked down the aisle to Chrisette Michele’s “Golden”… absolutely breathtaking. The ceremony was expertly led by their Bishop, flown in from the East Coast.

On to the reception -

I am a jazz nut, so when they asked me if I could play Miles, Mingus, Monk, Coltrane & Diz for cocktail hour through two separate systems inside and outside simultaneously, I just winked, nodded and smiled, and so did they.

After the Grand Introduction and First Dance on a Gobo’d, virgin white, gloss-finish dance floor transported up from Southern California, it was on to the dinner set.

The venue during dinner service

The dinner set was all about Maxwell, D’Angelo, Jill Scott, Alicia Keys, Erykah Badu, John Legend… and even classics like “Westside” by TQ and “Get On Up” by Jodeci. It was just *awesome* watching this crowd slowly start realizing during this time that I understood the vibe and that this night was going to be special!

The toasts happened right after dinner, as a prelude to the Father-Daughter & Mother-Son dances. There were many nice toasts, and some very funny moments, but it was capped of by one of those one, maybe two toasts a year that we as DJs are all lucky enough to hear: the ones that nourish our souls and stay with us long after the wedding day itself, and the ones that remind us of what makes our job so very special and such an incredible privilege.

That last toast was given by the bride’s father. It was as much a blessing, really, as a toast. Given from his seat in his wheelchair, it was delivered deliberately and poignantly, pouring from his heart on to his daughter and new son and all else who were there. It lasted just over four minutes. And when it was over, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house and the entire room was up on its feet in applause. Somehow, I was able to regain control of my own emotions and I closed the toasts gracefully and segued into the parents dedication dances into open dancing.

The Groom's Cake - almost 100% edible!

Two probing Motown plays got a little reaction, and I’m glad I did it out of respect for the older folks in the room, but when I hit The Cupid Shuffle, the dance floor exploded. Holy crap – there was one of the NFL’s premier quarterbacks and a few other teammates gettin’ down! They were having a great time! Good news: I wasn’t going to get my you-know-what kicked after all! Whew!!

Ram-JAM!!!

I ended up hanging out with “the quarterback” quite a bit that night. A *cool* guy all the way – appreciative, fun, outgoing and loving his Old School. He was even clowning around with the waitstaff and actually put on a waiters coat, folded a napkin over his arm and started pouring people drinks! How cool is that? I actually got some video of that, as well as a good still shot. And later, when a young lady in the audience plainly lacked the courage, even with the prodding of her mother and the groom, to ask him to dance, I stepped in, put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Heya bud, I *think* there is a young lady over here who would like a dance with you.” He dropped what he was doing, smiled and said “where?”, and then… well, the room got so bright with her smile that I was actually blinded for a moment : )

The night went on, the party raged and the hours flew by. At 12:00, after eight hours, they wanted more, so I played a half-hour of overtime! Great stuff…

At the end of the night, a huge rain and wind storm blew in from off-shore. The wind blew so hard that it basically exploded a huge tree in the parking lot. Large chunks of the trunk flew in all directions and one huge branch smashed into one of the loaded shuttle buses and blew out the entire windshield. Thank god no one was hurt, but it scared the you-know-what out of a lot of people and completely blocked the parking lot exit routes. Eventually, all was cleared and everyone was able to leave safely.

Mother nature at work!

Most importantly, after all was said and done the bride and groom were thrilled… and, so was I.

Fast forward to April 1, 2009 –

I had promised the staff that I would send that pic of “the quarterback” mugging with the servers. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll cc the Director of Events, the Food and Beverage director, etc, all of whom I had met at the event and had raved about the job I did.

It was through this contact with the Director of Events that I learned two things:

1) That I had been officially added to the preferred vendor list at the venue and, I quote, that they would “be referring me to any of their clients from now on looking for a great DJ.” Made my day : )

and

2) That two days after the wedding, the bride’s father  had passed away.

I was shocked.

After sharing with him one of the happiest days of his life, he was gone.

After giving everyone in that room such a gift with his toast, he was… gone.

Just like that.

Then, I remembered:

That because of my participation in an international DJ group that is fiercely dedicated to self-improvement, and thus meeting my friend Jim Cerone and hearing him speak, that I had, just after our industry conclave in Vegas, invested in a tiny, high-quality mp3 recorder to begin recording my entire set every night.

All my voice work, all mixing… all board output, actually, and then critiquing myself after each event.

And so, on that little recorder

was the father of the bride’s wedding day toast to his daughter.

Today, I stopped what I was doing and immediately edited that toast and emailed it to her with a short but very personal note.

How can I possibly describe the feeling that I had in doing that?

---

Coda -

So how do I end this story?

Maybe it hasn’t ended.

Maybe it is just beginning.

DJ Adrian Cavlan to present at the ADJA Summer educational conference “Empowering Your Dreams” in Chicago!

American Disc Jockey Association

The American Disc Jockey Association is the largest, most powerful DJ organization in the world. At Sound In Motion, we are proud members of this fine association and continue to become more involved in it.

This summer, in July, the ADJA will be presenting its first-ever large-scale, national educational conference, and, as with anything being headed up by the inimitable Dr. Drax, the focus will squarely be on the betterment of our profession.

The lineup of speakers is a veritable “Who’s Who” of the mobile DJ industry: people like Mike Walter, Jim Cerone, Randy Bartlett and Scott Faver are household names in our industry – so much so that most of the time they are referred to by first name only and you know exactly who is being talked about – which is why I am so honored to have been asked, along with several other up-and-comers, to join this cast in being one of the presenters at this conference. It is truly an honor.

On July 13,2009, I will be giving a presentation called “Mixing For The Pop Music Professional”. It is described on the ADJA website as follows:

Mixing For The Pop Music Professional picks up where beat-matching leaves off, with a particular emphasis on Harmonic Mixing and Programming. Techniques discussed will include how to determine the key signature of a song, how the key signatures interrelate, how to “fix” dissonance in your mixes and how to utilize harmonics in new ways to make your mixes sound better than ever! Additional topics include Phrase Recognition, Overlays, Cut-Mixing and Narrative Mixing. To top it off, Adrian will reveal his most powerful mixing and programming tool and describe in detail how you can make one too!

I am very excited to share this knowledge with such a large audience. I have done the presentation one other time, in Minneapolis for the always-superb Northern Disc Jockey Conference, and the response was very good. After considering some great feedback from my friends Jim Cerone and Brian Harris, I will be honing it even more and hope to be able to really break down and connect these rather complex topics to everyone in the room, regardless of experience.

If you are a DJ and are reading this, I heartily encourage you to join the ADJA and attend this conference in Chicago!

See you there?

I love Jazz…

You may see more of these posts periodically…

Music.

It’s a funny thing.

It’s my love, my profession, my obsession…

When it comes to music, I am like a jigsaw puzzle made up of thousands upon thousands of pieces. In the end, you see the picture, but the vast array of individual pieces that make it up can be very difficult to understand on their own.

I think, and hope, that this is one of the things that makes me interesting as a DJ, particularly as a wedding and special event DJ. You see, most wedding and special event DJs have a relatively narrow palette when it comes to music. If you don’t believe me, I would recommend that you look across as many play lists and suggested song lists on the websites of these folks as possible and then try to argue that point.

The reality is that the kind of DJing that I and people in my profession do is (and should be) client-focused and service-oriented. That is to say that if my clients want straight-up mainstream music programming, I am happy to give it to them because I know it makes them happy, which in turn, makes me happy. That’s a whole lot of happiness, isn’t it? And all from just playing music that people like and want. See? I told you: I love my job! But the funny thing is that, perhaps not coincidentally, so many of my clients are complete music hounds. I guess it takes one to know one.

Since I have already confessed the almost(?) ridiculously deep role that music plays in my life, it will come as no surprise that I have some pretty strong likes, as well as a few dislikes, when it comes to music.

Let’s start with dislikes: I dislike bad music. It’s that simple. To me, style is incidental: good music is good music regardless. I always tell people to try to not close their minds to any music. Let it in, let it rattle around a bit and look for the good in it. It may not be there, but why not look? And don’t forget, some music is so bad that it is actually good, so try not to get confused ; )

Of course, some music is so obviously good that you don’t need to look very hard. As an example, I have a hard time with people who roundly dismiss The Beatles. I mean, really, what does that say about their ability to understand and appreciate well-done music? You don’t have to like it, but you can’t deny its quality. Or how about people that say “I don’t like Opera – it’s boring.” Well, if you insist, perhaps you may find the librettos boring or an individual rendition of a given opera poorly-acted or sung, but to hear Puccini emanate from the soul of a genius like Luciano Pavarotti is such a triumph of humanity that I find it difficult to understand how anyone could not be emotionally moved by the experience.

Now, regarding likes, or in my case, mostly “loves”?

Seriously, you don’t have the time.

Which is why I warned of more posts like this to come.

So, with that, I’ll leave you with two absolutely stunning, awe-inspiring Jazz albums to check out if you’d like. One is quite conventional but in an oft-overlooked style, and the other is just plain other-worldly and gives us hope that the boundaries of Jazz have yet to be set. One is a nod to the past, the other a bold javelin being thrown into the future.

They are:

Dave Holland Big Band - What Goes Around

Dave Holland Big Band – What Goes Around

and

Eivind Aarset - Light Extracts

Eivind Aarset – Light Extracts (click here for a review that says it all!)

I hope you enjoy these recommendations. Please feel free to let me know if you end up buying these!

Getting to know John “Johnny Mojo” Munnerlyn…

John Munnerlyn, a.k.a. Johnny Mojo, is one of the most special people I know.

Now, for any of Johnny’s and my mutual friends who may have just read that line, this post is already over because they are literally busting a gut laughing out loud so hard that their drink is shooting out their nose…

But, I am serious, so for those of you who are not in this particular group of friends, I am happy that you will be able to read on.

Johnny is one of those guys who is kind of like a mad scientist. He generally speaks slowly and deliberately, and doesn’t stop speaking until he has finished sharing his entire thought on a subject. Which is not to say that he is particularly long-winded, just that, like my dear father, he is a man of great intellect and talent, and has definitive, unique and well-thought-out positions on most subjects he bothers to talk about. There is no small talk with Johnny Mojo, and there are no five minute check-in phone calls either. It’s almost as if he’s from a different time, a different era… and it’s very, very cool.

Also like my father, Johnny is a gifted musician. He can play a number of instruments well. In fact, this Merle Travis-inspired fingerpicking guitar specialist made himself good enough on drums to actually play in a band with a few of us a while back, and play well. Just did it. No drama, no learning curve, and no ego issues with others playing guitar in the band that he could have smoked with one wing tied behind his back. But, as good as he is, music not his profession, it is his hobby: his main axe is art.

Have you ever noticed that the bottom/underside of a manufactured skateboard usually has custom artwork on it? For example, a given pro skateboarder like, say, Stevie Caballero will be signed to an endorsement deal with a given skateboard manufacturer, like, say Santa Cruz Skateboards (not actually, in this case, but just an example using two of my faves). When the deal is made, the company asks the skateboarder what he’d like his model to feel like (how long, wide, concave, etc) and look like. Once the skater sits down with the company’s graphic artist, they come up with a design and the artist draws or paints it, silkscreens get created and when the board is manufactured, it ends up looking something like these (which happen to be from from Beer Run Skateboards):

Beer Run Skateboards

Well, Johnny does that (and very well, of course… say, are you sensing a theme here yet?). In fact, he is one of the world’s foremost and pioneering skateboard graphic artists. His designs are featured in books and museums devoted to skate culture all over the world. Here he is with a few of them:

Johnny Mojo SkateArt

The bottom of skateboards are just one of Mojo’s canvases, however. His work goes well beyond the skateboard world and has been seen on at least a dozen record and CD covers, on canvas and wood framed fine art pieces and even on the backsplash of a kitchen stove!

I thought it might be fun to highlight three of Johnny’s latest projects, so let’s take a look:

1) Built To Grind – 25 Years Of Hardcore Skateboarding: Johnny worked hard on the graphic layout of this entire book! 316 pages of maddeningly meticulous Mojo perfectionism for your education and delight. If you are interested in the history of skateboarding, and particularly that of Independent Trucks, this book is a must-have.

2) American Sideshow: This is Johnny’s new brand, and it is already looking like it will be a huge hit. Clothes, stickers and, thankfully, an inspired new collection of skate decks that bring back the classic feel of the ’80’s and early ’90s. His website will be coming soon, so make a point of checking it out. Of course, all the really cool kids here in Santa Cruz already have their first-issue t-shirts ; )

American Sideshow - Mojo's new brand

And now, a personal favorite and shameless plug for Johnny’s fantastic new CD release:

3) John Munnerlyn & Lee Jeffriess – Guitars In Perspective: So remember back a few paragraphs ago when I was mentioning Johnny’s Travis-styled fingerpicking guitar? Well, this CD captures some of his finest work yet. And, to make it even better, he recruited world-class lap and pedal steel player Lee Jeffriess from Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys to play with him. They added a few more good session musicians to the mix and recorded a fine album of Western Swing originals, mostly penned by Mojo, but also with a few Jeffriess compositions rounding out what I believe is a very listenable and enjoyable collection. It is so good and universally accessible that I would readily recommend it to people who don’t typically like this kind of thing. The early word is that HBO got hip and has already licensed a few of the tracks for use in their film and TV productions, so you may hear this CD soon enough whether you realize it or not.

The “shameless plug” part? Well, I had the difficult task… and pleasure, truth be told … of mastering this CD with and for Johnny. We did it in my home recording studio on the very laptop I am typing this post on now. How amazing is that? The idea that you can run a decent mastering studio (full recording studio, really) on a laptop in this day and age is a small miracle, particularly to those of us who grew up paying $40/hr. to record at eight track studios running costly Ampex pancakes through Studer tape machines!

Anyway, we used Ableton Live software (the compressors and equalizers got a good workout) to master with, as well as a Studiomaster mixing board and the amazing Adam P11A studio monitors to make it happen. And, while I’m plugging away, I’d like to remind you that if you are a potential wedding, corporate or sports music client of Sound In Motion, you can hire our studio recording, editing and voice-over services to create unique audio and video that will memorably enhance and personalize your event – just ask your salesperson!

Here’s the finished CD (can you guess who did the cover art?):

Guitars In Perspective - outside front & back

Guitars In Perspective - inside artwork

If you’d like to listen to a sample of some snippets, click here. If you like it and want to buy one, click here.

So that’s my friend Johnny.

Now, you know him a little bit too : )