Back by unpopular request, here are some blues songs I recently recorded. Luckily I’ve been able to play again with Maybank of late and we’re having a swell time of it. But we can’t record currently, garshdonnit. So here are a few solo blues songs to cheer you up. What? Cheered by the blues? How can that be? I don’t know either. First, here’s Bill … Continue reading Blues
Hail December! The Twelfth month! Hail to the number twelve. Three cheers (four times) for the ol’ 12, the number on the top of the clock!! The word twelve, whose early English-Germanic roots derive from “two left”, or two left over after counting to ten, completes a certain cycle for us. After twelve o’clock we start to count the hours again. Twice every day we count … Continue reading December Magazine
Hail December! The Twelfth month! Hail to the number twelve. Three cheers (four times) for the ol’ 12, the number on the top of the clock!! The word twelve, whose early English-Germanic roots derive from “two left”, or two left over after counting to ten, completes a certain cycle for us. After twelve o’clock we start to count the hours again. Twice every day we … Continue reading December Magazine
I don’t write too many songs nowadays. I used to. I think I wrote a couple of good ones in the past. In a fit of self absorption, I started to look through my old garageband files to see if I really had any good ones. I found ten that I think are good. Not all of them are old. Some of them are fairly … Continue reading Original Songs
What is the Blues? How does one define the “Blues Genre”? And why does one (or even two) have to define things all the time? What’s this with all these definitions? And what’s this with all these “genres”? For instance, San Francisco Bay Blues has too many chords to be called a blues, and, in my humble opinion, San Francisco Bay Blues is not really … Continue reading More “Almost Blueses”
Contents: TWO POEMS, A SALUTE TO DECEMBER AND TO THE NUMBER TWELVE, plus some Duogesimal Meanderings A SCIENCE POEM E=mc2 Nothing is faster than light I conceptualized the race (It was a thought experiment) And, well, Nothing won… ****************************** A CHILD’S POEM Fat and Skinny had a race All around the pillow case Fat fell down and broke his face Skinny won the … Continue reading December Magazine
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out, was written in 1923 by Jimmy Cox. The great Bessie Smith recorded it in 1929 and had a big hit with the song. Not surprisingly, the song soon became associated with the great Wall St. crash of ’29, as it tells of a riches to rags reversal of fortune. That’s how it goes on the stock market, … Continue reading Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out
We’ve discussed this before. This business about “getting better”. I was discussing the music I work on with Maybank: how we think we are getting better at it, how we feel encouraged by our “improvement”. I was saying that it’s a noble goal to get better. And I think it’s hard to argue with the proposition that generally it’s a good thing to get … Continue reading More on Getting Better
Some Blues Love In Vain by Robert Johnson, popularized by The Rolling Stones, tells a story about a young country boy whose sweetheart leaves town on the afternoon train. Poor guy. He followed her to the station and she just got on the train and left. Goodbye Charlie. All the good songs tell a story. We tried it a bit differently this time Here’s … Continue reading Some More Blues
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out, was written in 1923 by Jimmy Cox. The great Bessie Smith recorded it in 1929 and had a big hit. Not surprisingly, the song soon became associated with the great Wall St. crash of ’29. It tells of a “riches to rags” reversal of fortune. So goes life, so goes the stock market. Things go up and down. … Continue reading Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out
Every Day Another Story 