lowquality.net

Looks very much as though I have a job at the Governor’s School for The Arts in their Jazz band pro­gram. I had all but writ­ten off the pos­si­bil­ity of work­ing at the GSA when a for­mer high school teacher of mine who works there called me to say that their bass guy just left. I am wait­ing to be con­tacted by their HR per­son so I can get W2’ed, fin­ger­printed, and TB-tested. It’s because of this wait­ing non­sense, part of me is still not cel­e­brat­ing because I haven’t even stepped foot in the class­room yet. This is the first job I have ever be offered over the phone. I’m just not believ­ing it yet, I guess. We’ll see what happens.

I don’t know how much money this GSA gig will fetch me. I still may need some­thing else in the part-time job depart­ment.. but I have been pick­ing up some new stu­dents because of this web­site. That will def­i­nitely help, not just for the money, but also it will get me back in the rou­tine of play­ing every day. Hope­fully that will con­tinue to hap­pen. I would really, really like to be play­ing with more peo­ple.. par­tic­u­larly more Jazz.. or Jazz-related funk. Some­thing like the Grey­boy All­stars where the rhythm sec­tion is straight-up JB’s but the chords and melodies are almost fusion-y.

I did a search on some of the Berklee alumni related sites to see if there were any alums in Hamp­ton Roads. I appar­ently, am the only one in Nor­folk, at least on the reg­istry. That kind of hurts my feel­ings. I really wish I knew more peo­ple around here that played the kind of music I want to play. The prob­lem is that music is a social busi­ness and you really need to make a face to face con­tact with them. Very often musi­cians aren’t the most inter­net savvy crowd but even the few who are will be just as skep­ti­cal and para­noid as the rest and won’t respond very quickly to a guy who emails them and says he wants to jam. The inter­net helps bands once they are together, but it doesn’t do much to get them together. Blog­ging is kind of like a send­ing out a mes­sage in a bot­tle.. once you release the post it goes out to all of the ping sites and then google and if some­one is look­ing for you, they will find you. In my case, this works bet­ter than email because I never know who to get in touch with.

Here’s a Top Five list from me to you… I’m not pro­vid­ing links. You gotta do the research yourself

Top Five Albums of The Moment

• Fred­die Hub­bard — A Soul Experiment
• The Meters — Look-Ka Py Py
• Grey­boy All­stars — West Coast Boogaloo
• Brand New Heav­ies — Brother Sis­ter
• Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings — Nat­u­rally

Totally Unre­lated Bonus Disc!!!: Tor­toise — TNT

That was fun. I’m gonna do more of those.