Vinyl Adventures in a Quieter Mode

I put together a second stereo for the OnceWereBachelor Pad.  This latest one is not as "totally awesome" as my first.  But in at least one way, it's particularly special to me, as it is partly comprised of my father's old sound system from his dark, solemn den in Manila.  While I found the Sansui 1000X receiver, manufactured in 1969, and the Kenwood KD-5077 turntable from the Seventies both on Craigslist (a place becoming for me more and more like an online heroin shooting gallery), the Standard Radio Corp. speakers in walnut and black and matte steel (very Bauhaus) were smuggled over from Tokyo by my dad in 1968 in a spare pilot's bag.  They are compact, well made, and absolutely beautiful.  They followed us over from the Philippines, along with my dad's own Sansui 5000x receiver and SD 7000 reel to reel.  The latter two pieces gave up the ghost in the Eighties, but my dear mom lovingly stored the surviving speakers away, for me to find decades later.

The whole system is not the powerhouse I have downstairs.  But I leave that for the punk rock.  This upstairs unit, just steps from my and my son's rooms, doesn't threaten the same wattage, but for things like Sinatra at the Sands with Count Basie & his Orchestra, conducted by Quincy Jones, a record pressed in mono in 1966, it's perfect.  I like to think of my upstairs system as a spiritual successor to Don Draper's stereophonic console.

A Memory of Brubeck

I described one of my Greatest Dates previously, but I am reminded of another on the day the news breaks that Jazz Immortal Dave Brubeck passes.

It was 1998 and I was a datin' fool.  Perhaps the reason I can't elevate this night to the Greatest Date ever is because I can't remember my companion's name.  But she was a pretty attorney from across the table who at some point during a gravely inconsequential litigation commented to me that she was a classically trained concert pianist.  One deposition turned into three and the timing became right for me to ask her to see Dave Brubeck and his sons when they came to play at the Blaisdell Concert Hall here in Honolulu.  She leapt at the opportunity, probably more for the performance than for the companionship, but in the end ... well I'll show you rather than tell you.

It was a wonderful night that started with drinks at a nearby saloon to loosen us up.  Fortunately, we had tested the waters with a pre-date and we knew that nothing awkward would ruin our intended night of listening to Mr. Brubeck's odd time signatures.  (I think the previous week, we had Thai food and saw "Titanic").  As we were standing in the lobby waiting to enter the concert hall, I spotted an old friend scurrying around, and I quickly remembered he was in the entertainment business, so I hailed him over.  Understand, I never miss an opportunity to show a romantic interest that I am Kind of a Big Deal.  Sure enough, he was involved behind the scenes in the production.

So my pal comes over, we chit chat and I introduce my date.  He gives her the approving once over and we finish up with more small talk and then proceed to our seats.  She is pleased to find that I haven't gone cheap.  Our view is spectacular, eight or nine rows back and just off center.  When the time comes, we'll be able to see Mr. Brubeck's fingers.

The lights dim and Brubeck leads his sons out and they take their places.  They are dressed timelessly in white jackets and black bow ties.  My date and I share the intimacy of beautiful music, and at one point I lean over and confess to not understanding the time signatures.  As a self-trained rock drummer (really, I am), I am unaccustomed to counting to anything beyond four, four times.  So she leans over and places her ten fingers on my thigh and, with her fingers and whispers, counts fives and sixes, for a few bars as the Brubecks are playing.

So the intermission comes and we decide to keep our seats and continue our music-oriented conversation.  We are busy impressing each other with our knowledge when my pal suddenly appears.  He slides in one row in front of us and says he's been looking for us.

He looks at my date and says, "How'd you like to present Mr. Brubeck with a lei onstage before the encore?"

"Would I?"

As the final piece of the set started, my pal came and got us and led us backstage, my date pulling me excitedly by my hand, me trying to act as if I had made all of this happen, feeling like Kind of a Big Deal.

And that is how we found ourselves standing not 20 feet from Dave Brubeck's piano as he played his iconic Take Five, with a luxuriant green maile lei draped around his neck and falling to the floor.

Woody Allen's Manhattan

Paragraph 1: George Gershwin's iconic Rhapsody in Blue plays over pristine black and white images of classic New York tableau ... (nah, too declarative. And "iconic" and "classic" in the same line? Bleah.).

Let's see ... Paragraph 1: If you could only choose one movie opening to say everything there is to say about a city and person who lived in it ... (mmm. Who am I, Bill Moyers?)

Uh. Paragraph 1: Woody Allen, in his day, was New York City's biggest fan and greatest ambassador. In his love letter to Gotham, Manhattan, he can be found making some bold, and pitch-perfect artistic choices, even within the first three minutes. (Oooh, I love this ...). Truly one of the great opening scenes in the history of cinema, we start with the New York Philharmonic playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Need anything more be said about that piece? The voice over, often considered a sign of laziness in a screenwriter, here isn't really a voice over at all. It's just Isaac Davis struggling to come up with a paragraph to open his oft-promised, never-started novel. Black and white, was there ever a more flattering way to depict images seriously? (Wait, where the hell am I even going with this? Maybe I should try Queens).

I just learned that my favorite Woody Allen film, Manhattan, is being released on Blu-Ray. I am looking forward to sharper blacks, crisper whites, clearer jazz, and the same sharp crit of pseudo-intellectual bourgeoisie and urban male neuroses that I was so captivated by when I first watched it amongst other film geeks in college. But most of all, I am looking forward to this in high-definition:

Isaac Davis's darkened apartment, he descending a spiral staircase, and his 17 year old girlfriend, played by a sublime Mariel Hemingway, seated far to the left, thumbing through an oversized book. Both are bathed in the only light sources, reading lamps, in the room. Man I love that image, a portrait of a man wandering through his things, struggling to find his way through mid-life, destination known.

Now more than ever, I feel like I live in that darkened room.

Miles Davis Quintet in Europe

I don't like to shill, but sometimes the news just has to spread.

A Coupla Bars

I'm starting to feel somewhat human again as this whole divorce thing winds down. I don't recommend it and it wasn't my idea, but there it is.

Not to steal a pal's thunder over at The Epic, where he occasionally will post Fuzzy Photos From Great Bars but ...

Recently screwing up the nerve to go back out with friends, I hit two of my favorite bars in Honolulu. The first is in Chinatown. The neighborhood has evidently experienced a renaissance in the years I was OnceABachelor and all but absent from the rosters of the bar-hopping. Wonderful martini bars and intriguing lounges have replaced the sailors' dives and pool halls of my underage. There are about a dozen great joints to go tie one on in Chinatown, which all manage to avoid the "nightclub" feel that poorly-executed spots have.

The Dragon Upstairs is a former 2nd floor tattoo parlor. It boasts nightly acoustic jazz of surprisingly authentic quality. If you're gonna drink in Chinatown, it might as well be in a room with red walls, a mural of a giant serpent -- held over from it's inking days -- guarding the entry, and oversize voodoo masks glaring at you.

Across town you will find a rotating restaurant called the Top of Waikiki. I would give their dinner menu a fair-to-middling review if I were so inclined, but their bar -- which rotates around its central pillar of premium liquors -- is something to behold, something akin to a Bond villain's lair. A Sean Connery Bond villain's lair.

A Sean Connery Bond villain's lair complete with pictogram proclaiming "The World is Not Enough". Which is NOT the attitude to take when going through a divorce.

Mediterranean Sundance or "Everyone Needs a Hobby"

Let's face it, OnceWereBachelors concerns itself with esoterica. It is essentially a diversion about procrastination. Or an exercise in procrastination that focuses on diversions. When you've got a wife, kid, mortgage, private school tuition, career, you want to think that you can have a sanctuary of interests, activities, collections, a sanctuary of time and place, where your wife, son, colleagues or clients can't get to you. Sometimes it's in the garage. Sometimes it's in a bar. Other times on the ocean, or beneath some expensive headphones, or a cold, dark theater in the afternoon, in front of a movie your wife or son would never watch with you. Whatever, it arguably makes you a better dad, husband, law partner, citizen.

My newest diversion is this:



There is a backstory to this tune and where it fits in my life, but its personal. When I get paid the publisher's advance to do the print version of OnceWereBachelors maybe I'll tell it, but that would be filler. For now, just let the tune speak for itself. Al Di Meola and Paco De Lucia playing "Mediterranean Sundance" at the Warfield Theater on December 5, 1980, recorded for posterity (on vinyl) as Friday Night in San Francisco. A legendary concert featuring jazz picker Di Meola, fingerstyle flamencoist De Lucia, and John MacLaughlin (another jazzbo), playing as a trio, unplugged so to speak.

No, I'm not going to watch it over and over again seeking sanctuary. I'm going to try to learn it. On the floor of my office at home. Legs crossed, Ovation roundback in lap, and beer within reach. Poring over a tablature of the tune I found off the internet at a website called Fretplay, while the CD repeats constantly, or while I study the above clip, or clips like it, on YouTube.

Thus will I repeat a ritual that has changed little (changed due only to technological improvements and disposable income) since I was a wee student. Teach myself guitar. I've done it with Social Distortion. R.E.M. Los Lobos. Stevie Ray Vaughn. This is my first jazz piece. I give myself until September to learn it.

Wish me luck. Or at least time and space.

The Modern Jazz Quartet

I have only a modicum of understanding when it comes to jazz. Call it the common knowledge of any person who has shared an American college dormroom with someone in the intellectual East. Also, being amongst classmates prepping for the Foreign Service Officer Exam, we were reminded that jazz was one of the only originally American artforms, evidently a question that was always asked during the FSO interview.

But beyond that I can tell the difference between the variety of jazz sub-genres, dixieland, cool jazz, bebop, swing, et cetera. I can identify the giants, and spit them out catechism style by single name like the Hipsters do: Miles. Dizz. ‘Trane. Sonny. Bird. Monk. Et cetera. I can even appreciate what guys like Wynton were trying to do by perpetuating the traditional styles versus what guys like Stanley Clarke and Billy Cobham, even Spyro Gyra and Pat Metheny, were doing with jazz fusion. But no, I could not grasp Ornette Coleman. Or Kenny G for that matter.

I would venture to say I’ve got enough jazz schooling to have a reasonably topical discussion with a bunch of aficionados at a smoky club over rye highballs before the house band hits the stage. If I want to, I can even whip out the story about how I got to meet Dave Brubeck backstage in 1998 at the Blaisdell Concert Hall, when a promoter friend asked if my date would like to present him with a lei after his performance. “Would I” exclaimed the attractive classically trained pianist I brought.

But, if I really want to up my cred I’ll mention my favorite jazz artists, the Modern Jazz Quartet. No I don’t have encyclopedic knowledge of their recording or label history, but they’re obscure enough not to be iconic, yet iconic enough not to be obscure (the same can be said for Charlie Mingus, and frankly I could be writing this paragraph as much about him as about MJQ). I first became aware of MJQ when Signet Bank in D.C. ran a series of memorable black and white TV ads profiling time-tested artist-unions of great renown. Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn were featured. I think The Everly Brothers. And these guys, Milt Jackson on vibes, John Lewis on piano, Percy Heath on bass, and Connie Kaye on drums (I had to look that up on wikipedia), talking about creative partnership, dressed in matching black turtlenecks and amidst their instruments. MJQ were confident enough to completely disband in the 70s. They re-formed on a semi-permanent basis in 1981, for the sole reason that they wanted to. In jazz, there is no cashing in for reunion tours a la Van Halen, Black Sabbath, or Quiet Riot.

Listen to their performance of Django. You can’t ignore how unique the vibraphone sounds in context; better for my money than the acclaimed intimacy that Miles Davis’ soft horn offers. It’s the kind of music you listen to because you’ve concluded a long day working late. The wife and son are already asleep but you’re not ready to get in bed yourself. You want to enjoy your darkened home, alone, in solitude.