Episode 744 - Kamasi Washington / Ben Ratliff
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck, Anistas?
Marc:What the fuck, Tuckians?
Marc:What the fuck, Anadiens?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Good morning.
Marc:Good afternoon.
Marc:Good evening.
Marc:Hope work's going okay.
Marc:Keep doing it.
Marc:You can finish this run.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Put another 10 pounds on.
Marc:You got this.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Trains do suck.
Marc:What, you're just painting in your studio?
Marc:How's that going?
Marc:Just pace yourself, take your time, think it through.
Marc:Yeah, do all those things in all those different places if you're listening to me in one of those environs.
Marc:Look, I got a pretty amazing show here today on my hands.
Marc:I got a pretty, like, I learned some shit on this show.
Marc:Today on the show, I've got Kamasi Washington, the master sax man, the new jazz guy.
Marc:He's the guy.
Marc:Look, I actually think he is, but I don't know a lot about the big, broad world of jazz.
Marc:Since I've talked about him a little bit, I get emails educating me even more about the jazz thing.
Marc:I don't know if I have time to go fully on down into the rabbit hole, but I do enjoy it.
Marc:I'll talk about that in a second.
Marc:Also on the show today, for more jazz information,
Marc:Ben Ratliff, who used to write over at the New York Times, but it's funny because Ben...
Marc:Literally like the day or two before or after he did the podcast, he left the New York Times.
Marc:So he's the former New York Times jazz critic.
Marc:He's got a bunch of books out that I'm in the middle of many of them.
Marc:So it's a big jazz Thursday here on WTF with Kamasi Washington.
Marc:And then after that, a conversation with Ben Ratliff.
Marc:How's that grab you?
Marc:I will throw a little plug in here for a couple of dates that are coming up quickly.
Marc:This weekend, Saturday, the 24th of September, there's two shows at the Wilbur.
Marc:I don't know how many tickets are there, but there's a few tickets left.
Marc:I don't know for which show.
Marc:October 21st, I'll be at Campbell Hall at University of California, Santa Barbara.
Marc:Those tickets, I think, yeah, there's definitely tickets for that.
Marc:Largo, October 22nd, here in Los Angeles.
Marc:And the Ice House, October 23rd.
Marc:here in Pasadena, and the Now Hear This Festival, October 29th in Anaheim, with my producer and business partner, Brendan McDonald.
Marc:We're gonna do a live talk thing.
Marc:So those, and Carnegie Hall.
Marc:There are a few tickets left, but they're aerial views.
Marc:uh november 4th at carnegie hall but still worthwhile it'd be nice to look down upon me from the rafters but uh excited i'm excited about that is that okay with the else there's another thing i want to do i talked to my my buddy um danny labelle he uh i ran into him and he's been on the show he was on this show back on episode 398 and a couple of weeks ago as you know i had gad gad el male on the show he's the french comedian the french jew
Marc:The French Moroccan Jewish comedian who's now touring the States who had a nice talk.
Marc:And if you want to hear Gad in a little different element, he's the guest on my buddy Danny LaBelle's podcast today.
Marc:That show is called Modern Day Philosophers.
Marc:It's basically he talks to comedians about one particular philosopher, whether they know about it or not.
Marc:He brings up something the guy wrote and you kind of talk about it.
Marc:I was on it a while back.
Marc:I talked about Spinoza.
Marc:He's had Maria Bamford on talking about Sartre.
Marc:Did I say that right?
Marc:Colin Quinn talking about Dante's Inferno.
Marc:It's a clever show.
Marc:It's a good show.
Marc:He's a sweet guy.
Marc:So you can check that out wherever you get the podcast, Modern Day Philosophers.
Marc:And that was a plug out of love.
Marc:Oh, the other thing, this is also a plug out of love because I'm involved with it.
Marc:You know, look, a lot of you guys have been with me a long time, and a lot of you guys have seen my growth or my spinning or my cycling around with incremental growth, to quote the president.
Marc:Not unlike a democracy for me, incremental growth...
Marc:has meaning.
Marc:It's the only thing we can hang any sort of hope on is incremental growth.
Marc:And I think I've grown incrementally as I cycle through the patterns that I still persist in.
Marc:There's a little bit of incremental growth and then the pattern changes a bit in terms of my understanding of it.
Marc:Anyways, not to be too vague, but I'm in this thing that premieres tonight.
Marc:Joe Swanberg,
Marc:Joe Swanberg, who's been on this show and is a great and very real independent film director.
Marc:He's a great guy.
Marc:He directed a couple years ago, Happy Christmas with Anna Kendrick.
Marc:That was funny.
Marc:Drinking Buddies.
Marc:He did All the Light in the Sky.
Marc:He's made a lot of movies for a little money, and he's a solid dude and a very...
Marc:Kind of a brilliant director because I'd never done anything like I did with Joe, really.
Marc:The show is called Easy.
Marc:It premieres on Netflix tonight.
Marc:I'm plugging it because I'm in it and I'm very proud of my episode.
Marc:I think it's number four, but they're all really good.
Marc:Each one sort of follows a character's life for one episode in Chicago.
Marc:And I play a somewhat over, what is it?
Marc:Washed up, maybe.
Marc:Maybe not even washed up.
Marc:I play a graphic novelist who had a couple of big books and now he's released another book and he doesn't quite have the following he has.
Marc:So he's a little bitter, a little nervous about the future and he feels a little irrelevant.
Marc:And the way that Joe shoots is all improvised.
Marc:And I really look, I know I can improvise on a stand up stage or in conversation or whatnot.
Marc:But on a set, you just go with very basic information and you lock your own emotional choices into the thing.
Marc:And I was surprised.
Marc:Because the episode I did with Emily Ratajkowski and Jane Addams, who I love, was pretty like I watched it and I was like, this is kind of deep.
Marc:It's funny.
Marc:It's sad.
Marc:It's deep.
Marc:It's sweet.
Marc:I mean, I had all these things that when I'm in it.
Marc:I mean, I can only feel what we were doing.
Marc:I don't know how the hell he pulls all this stuff together as a director.
Marc:You really got to have a unique way of thinking to improvise that much.
Marc:And also as you're doing it, you know, think about continuity, how you're cut in and out of things.
Marc:But the whole series is great.
Marc:And I'm very proud of the work I did on that.
Marc:I'm just telling you because I'm excited about it.
Marc:I'm excited about that being out there to watch.
Marc:So that's on Netflix tonight.
Marc:All the episodes of Easy will be on.
Marc:And they're unique.
Marc:They're like little movies.
Marc:And they're worth watching.
Marc:How often does that happen?
Marc:The modern media landscape is...
Marc:challenging you know sort of like driving past a landfill and you know your first thought is look at all that garbage but your second thought is i bet you're some good shit in there i bet you there's a box of money in that dump well easy is definitely a box of money so kamasi washington
Marc:Here's how I came to Kamasi, Washington.
Marc:Look, as I said before, I like jazz.
Marc:I got a mind for it.
Marc:I don't understand it or really how it's put together.
Marc:I'm going to talk to Ben Ratliff about that.
Marc:I do know it resonates with me.
Marc:I got a cousin, my cousin Jane.
Marc:She'd listen to jazz, and it would make her anxious.
Marc:She literally could not listen to jazz because it caused her too much anxiety.
Marc:I guess what I have is that jazz is actually a Ritalin effect.
Marc:Like, I'm already a little hyper and a little nuts, and jazz kind of levels me out, and I can sort of get fully in to the exploratory groove that the cats are...
Marc:are putting out.
Marc:And I can tell the difference between a few people, but I don't know a lot.
Marc:I just know that when I put it on, it's always consistent.
Marc:I always lock into it, whether it's bebop, whether it's older, whether it's big band.
Marc:I listen to some Artie Shaw.
Marc:I read Art Pepper's book, which changed my life, Straight Time by Art and Lori Pepper.
Marc:There's a book about heroin and a little bit about jazz.
Marc:And I remember one time I saw...
Marc:this was really like this weird these moments i remember about jazz is like dizzy gillespie was on uh was on he was being interviewed on some show and i just saw him do this like he was just trying to do like make an example of a swing beat and he did it with his hands he clapped in a certain way and i was like that's so fucking cool i gotta learn how to do that was like uh
Marc:Like I had to learn how to do that because Dizzy did it to make an example of something.
Marc:My buddy Dan Cook down at Gimme Gimme Records turned me on to Kamasi Washington.
Marc:He had this new record.
Marc:It was Kamasi's first album and it's a triple fucking record.
Marc:It's called Epic.
Marc:So I didn't know what I was getting into, but I knew the cover of the record meant business.
Marc:I knew Kamasi meant business.
Marc:So I took this album, three albums home, and I put on...
Marc:And I was like blown the fuck away.
Marc:So many layers.
Marc:So much time travel.
Marc:Everything was there.
Marc:It was one of these records where you listen to it.
Marc:I'm like, it's all here.
Marc:Everything is all here.
Marc:Everything about jazz is here.
Marc:It's all leading up to this.
Marc:Kamasi Washington's epic.
Marc:And I went to see him when he returned to L.A.
Marc:He's from L.A.
Marc:And he had broke his ankle.
Marc:So he was just sitting in the middle of...
Marc:on basically a throne, playing sax with an elevated foot, surrounded by at least 20 musicians of all different kinds, singers.
Marc:There was orchestra musicians, cello.
Marc:There was two keyboards, two drummers, a couple of horns, a thundercat on bass with his five strings.
Marc:I just was like, holy shit, this all happens in real time.
Marc:Mind-blowing.
Marc:Had to talk to him.
Marc:So this is me and the master, Kamasi Washington, talking right here in this garage.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:So how's your leg, man?
Marc:I saw you when you came back to L.A.
Marc:That first night, you fucked your foot up.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's getting better.
Guest:I mean, it's still not 100%, but it's definitely getting better.
Guest:I can get around now.
Guest:I can, you know what I mean?
Guest:What happened?
Guest:Man, I was in Stavanger, Norway, and I was walking down this cobblestone road, and it started snowing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm from L.A., so I don't know anything about the snow.
Guest:So I thought, like, Air Force Ones, they're basketball shoes.
Guest:They should work perfectly in the snow.
Guest:And I literally, we got to this real steep hill.
Guest:These people are showing us this really old part of the city where all the homes are like 500 years old or something crazy like that.
Guest:So we got to this really steep hill and I was like, are we really about to walk down this steep, this extra steep hill?
Guest:And I started walking down and I literally started sliding down.
Guest:And I should have just fell on my butt and slid down to the bottom.
Guest:Oh, you tried to stand?
Guest:I tried to stop myself.
Guest:And it ended up, like, flipping.
Guest:And I looked down, and my foot was, like, going the wrong way.
Guest:And I was like, no!
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:And I kind of, like, popped it back in place.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And felt the most extreme pain.
Guest:It was, like, 2 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:I was like...
Guest:laughing hysterically from the pain.
Guest:It was like the weirdest.
Marc:Oh, that's all you could do?
Marc:That's where you went?
Marc:Yeah, that's all I could do.
Guest:How many people you're with?
Guest:There was like five of us.
Guest:No time for crying.
Guest:No, no time for crying.
Guest:It was one of those moments.
Guest:It was definitely like a very like...
Guest:fundamental reaction was going to happen.
Guest:It was going to be a baby-type cry, like a wah, wah, cry, cry, or a laugh.
Guest:That was the only things I had.
Guest:I was like, I don't want a baby cry because I don't know all these people that well.
Guest:So I guess I'll just laugh hysterically.
Guest:Oh, good.
Marc:So they think you're crazy, but not a wimp.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So I have a lot of questions, man.
Marc:And I imagine I'm not unlike a lot of people.
Marc:I imagine that when you live the life of a jazz artist, you're not going to be like, I'm going to be huge.
Marc:There's only one or two jazz guys that have that, and they're not that good.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:There's a global community around the music, and there's people that can appreciate the music, but it's one of those things that not everybody gets.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But do you ever teach?
Guest:I taught a little bit when I was right out of high school.
Guest:I taught music theory.
Guest:There's a school called the Sessa School.
Guest:It's the Southeast Symphony's weekend music classes.
Guest:I taught theory, I taught piano, and I taught drums.
Yeah.
Marc:You started as a drummer?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So let's start there.
Marc:You grew up here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where at?
Marc:In Inglewood.
Marc:You come from a musical family, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because I think, didn't your old man play with you?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, he played saxophone, flute, clarinet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was playing soprano saxophone at that show, though.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So you grow up.
Guest:How many brothers and sisters you got?
Guest:I got six brothers and sisters.
Guest:Is everybody music?
Guest:Everybody's talented.
Guest:Everybody plays a little bit of music.
Guest:Pops makes sure that we all play something.
Guest:I'm the only one that really kind of stuck with music as my main thing.
Guest:Like I have an older brother who's a photographer, but he also plays piano.
Guest:I have a sister who's a painter, but she also plays a little piano, makes beats and stuff like that.
Guest:They all got it in them.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:So there was always that in the house that there was sort of a necessity to have the understanding of it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And now, who'd your father play with?
Marc:Did his dreams come true?
Guest:Did he do the thing?
Guest:Well, you know, he went to Lock High, too, so he grew up playing with, like, Patrice Rushin and the Dugu Chancellor and all those people.
Guest:Their local jazz guys?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He played with Earth, One, Fire for a little while.
Guest:He did a lot of little stuff like that.
Guest:But then when the brother that was older than me, when he was born, he made a decision to stop touring and just start teaching so he could stay in town and basically be here...
Guest:For the kids.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And where'd he teach?
Guest:He taught at Hollywood High School.
Guest:He taught at Southgate High School.
Guest:And his last name was at Helen Bornstein.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So he's an educator.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And when you were a kid, was your mom in music too?
Guest:My mom plays flute, but just for fun.
Guest:She's more like, she's a science teacher.
Guest:They're both teachers.
Guest:So she would pick up her flute on special occasions on Easter.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Some people wear a hat on Easter, my mom will play your flute on Easter.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:A flute, that's a tough one, it seems.
Marc:And not really, because when I saw you, here was the reaction.
Marc:Here's how I found out about you.
Marc:I went down over here to Permanent Records, which is used in some new record store down on Figueroa, the guy Dan over there.
Marc:And he says, did you get the Kamasi Washington record?
Marc:I'm like, no, I don't know who Kamasi Washington is.
Marc:And then I go up and I pick up this record, which I brought out here.
Marc:It's like he goes, this is his first record.
Marc:And I look at the cover of your record, The Epic, and I'm like, this fucker means business.
Marc:this is his first record and there's three of them in here and it's a history of of everything you know and and like i bring it home because you know i listen to jazz but again because i'm i'm sort of uh uh not not down the rabbit hole so i bring your thing home the epic and i put it on and right away i'm like what's happening
Marc:Because the first thing that struck me was the choral arrangements.
Marc:And I never heard that before in jazz.
Marc:And then all the other stuff that's going on, and I'm thinking, this guy must have spent hours producing this.
Marc:And then I go see you live, and it's all happening live.
Marc:Like the chorals there, the two keyboards, the magical bass player, that wizard Thundercat.
Marc:And then everyone's playing different instruments.
Marc:People are coming in.
Marc:Some people are singing.
Marc:I'm like, holy shit, what the hell is going on here?
Marc:So like in what I understood, I guess I'm just going to talk at you for a minute.
Marc:is it seemed to me that you were honoring the actual honest progression of the jazz that I knew, of bebop and of Miles and those guys, that you weren't doing fusion, really.
Marc:You were integrating something of the history of jazz into creating something that had all elements working, balanced.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, what I tried to make it be like is like a person, you know, like a musician has all those things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, you know, like for me, like I'm trying to make it like who I am.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:So I have like jazz.
Guest:There's jazz in me.
Guest:There's funk in me.
Guest:There's fusion.
Guest:There's classical music.
Guest:There's choirs.
Guest:I grew up playing in churches and stuff like that.
Guest:There's all these things in there and they kind of just exist.
Guest:together yeah you know i mean so you know that's why there's so much in there because i was just like well i want to make a record that's kind of like me right so i was like i'll pour this in there i'm pouring that i'm pouring that i'm pouring that i'm pouring that and i'm stirred all together and that's what you get yeah see what happened and i always knew that that would work because i i just felt like music is is so much more connected than people kind of
Guest:Let it be?
Guest:Let it be.
Guest:We get these terms.
Guest:If you go back in history, James Brown had his whole band with jazz musicians.
Guest:All those guys are all kind of everything.
Guest:Everybody was everything.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, as those...
Guest:individual words kinda get bigger, then they kinda start spreading out.
Guest:But the reality is, it's like branches on the same tree.
Guest:So I was like, well let's just get back to the tree for a little while, because the branches are so... Yeah, they've lost their, they've gone into the ground and grown a different tree.
Marc:So you can't feel the connectivity of everything.
Marc:So when you started out, when you were a kid,
Marc:What was going on in the house?
Marc:What was the first music that registered with you that compelled you to live the life of a musician other than your dad being a musician?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, for us in my house, it was like everybody's playing the instrument.
Guest:Little kids, like...
Guest:I mean, there's a bit of an age gap between some of us, but my three brothers, the two brothers that are around my age, we were all playing music, and it was kind of like a daily thing.
Guest:So I don't even remember when that started.
Guest:I just know I always kind of played music.
Guest:But when I was about 13, well, before that, when I was like 11,
Guest:I got into jazz.
Guest:And that's when I started taking music seriously.
Guest:It wasn't just like, it was almost like, you know, you can imagine like, you know, you're a kid, everybody rides bikes.
Guest:You're not like a bike rider.
Guest:You're not like a stud.
Marc:Once you're up, you're up.
Guest:You got it.
Guest:You ride bikes because you ride bikes.
Guest:So I played music just to kind of play music.
Guest:I just played it.
Guest:It was like...
Guest:fun sometimes you know pops got too involved he got a little he got a heavy you know what I mean but he got the way and let us just kind of play around with music he'd get into it and be like you're not on the beat yeah you're not playing changes you know yeah yeah so but you needed to learn that too yeah no yeah and we learned right because of him yeah you know um when I was about 11 I got into jazz what did it
Guest:I had a cousin that, his dad had a really crazy record collection.
Guest:And so he kept asking me to, I knew how to read music and he didn't.
Guest:So he would bring me over to the house and ask me to, he had this thing called a real book, a bunch of jazz songs.
Guest:And so I played clarinet at that point, I wouldn't even be playing saxophone.
Guest:and drums huh yeah and drums yeah i mean i was mean i mean it was kind of more i mean i still played i always kind of kept playing drums and piano uh-huh but i was always i would always have a main instrument so at that point my main instrument was clarinet really that one huh yeah yeah i didn't want to do i wanted to be saxophone i wanted to play saxophone but my dad didn't want he wouldn't let me because he played because he was a woodwind player yeah and i can you know back in the 70s you're a woodwind if you're gonna be a saxophone player you really had to be a woodwind player and like double
Guest:oh so you had to get you had to know it was like that was your entry level yeah yeah learn the read on the clarinet and then you can step up to that because the saxophone is easier than clarinet right clarinet's like a harder instrument so if you start off on saxophone you're never gonna want to go play that old ornery clarinet you know what i mean so so uh uh i used to go over his house and like you know i was i would read songs for him like and so show him how to play stuff
Guest:Oh, because he wanted to know how to play it so you would almost transcribe it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he gave me a tape with a bunch of jazz songs on it.
Guest:And I looked up to him and he, you know what I mean?
Guest:So at that point, you know what I mean, I was really like in the N.W.A.
Guest:and stuff like that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I got this Art Blakey record.
Guest:And I just really got into it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And somehow I got my friends into it too.
Guest:So we were all like, we all turned into these Art Blakey fans.
Guest:And you're a bunch of NWA guys.
Guest:Yeah, we're a bunch of little kids, Southern 4th Street Elementary School, like sagging pants, every other word is cuz.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we like Art Blakey.
Yeah.
Guest:So that's how it starts.
Guest:Yeah, and then, you know, so at that point, now I'm trying to play the saxophone stuff on clarinet, and it's hard for me.
Guest:What were you playing on clarinet?
Guest:I was playing, like, classical stuff.
Guest:I was playing, like, stuff from Method Books and little stuff.
Guest:This little kid stuff.
Guest:I was like 10.
Guest:So I was little kid stuff.
Guest:You weren't opening it up.
Guest:All of a sudden I'm now trying to play Donnelly and I'm like, this is hard.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But the saxophone players are making it sound easy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so one day my dad left his saxophone out and I just took it.
Guest:And I was like, let me see if I can really, because he's always said like, man, once you learn to play clarinet, you can switch the saxophone and it all transfers over.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't really believe him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So one day he left it out and I just took it and I could play this song that I really like called Sleepin' Dancer Sleep On.
Guest:Is it Blakey's song?
Guest:It's a Wayne Shorter song.
Guest:Oh, Wayne Shorter, right, yeah.
Guest:It's from my R. Blakey record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I played it and I ran into the room.
Guest:He and his friends were sitting there chilling.
Guest:I was like, look, I learned how to play saxophone.
Guest:It's too late.
Yeah.
Guest:It's too late.
Guest:Done.
Guest:He kind of just like, okay.
Guest:He kind of laughing.
Guest:That's when he took me to my uncle's church and made me start playing at church like that Sunday.
Guest:The sax.
Guest:On saxophone.
Guest:I didn't know what the notes were or nothing.
Guest:He was like a real like dive in half first kind of person.
Guest:So I was up there in front of him.
Guest:you know, the whole church playing saxophone, didn't know.
Guest:With what, what was the music?
Guest:Just gospel music?
Guest:Just gospel music.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so it was like, you know, so I kind of dove in head first and once I dove in like that, you know, it kind of really, it grabbed me full fledged.
Guest:Like I switched schools, I switched like a music academy school.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which one did you go?
Guest:I went to the Hamilton High School.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:And so like that moment,
Marc:Because it's hard to, were you aware that this was, because if you're just hanging out, you listen to pop music, and then you get, you grew up with the jazz in the house, but all of a sudden you had this personal relationship with Blakey.
Marc:Were you able at that moment to see that there was a whole world of that stuff?
Guest:It took a minute.
Guest:At first I was just into Art Blakey.
Guest:I like Art Blakey.
Guest:I was Blakey.
Guest:He was your guy.
Guest:He was my guy.
Guest:And then from Art Blakey, I got into Wayne Shorter, which kind of led me to Miles Davis, which led me to Charlie Parker.
Marc:And I guess playing gospel music in a church is going to give you a good foundation for the basic core of the changes, right?
Guest:Well, it develops your ear because everything's by ear.
Guest:It develops your ear and your intuition because everything is intuition and everything is ear.
Guest:It's like...
Guest:There's no one telling you what to do, but they get really mad when you do the wrong thing.
Guest:In jazz?
Guest:In gospel.
Guest:I mean, jazz is a little more forgiving, actually.
Guest:In gospel, it's like if you don't feel what's the right thing you're supposed to be doing.
Guest:Oh, because you're following something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're following the room and you're following the song may not be complicated, but it's supposed to serve a purpose.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's an inspirational thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you got to learn how to lock your feelings into it and follow that lead.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:They say, you know, follow the spirit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And if you're not following it, it's like, what you been doing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What you been watching?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, you got some evil in you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You've been up to no good.
Marc:You don't have the clarity necessary to follow the spirit.
Guest:Was church a regular part of your life?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, before that, it was interesting because I grew up in church, but I never played in church until then.
Guest:Until you were 11.
Guest:No, I was 13.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:Well, you say that like, you know, like, I was there a long time before I played.
Guest:It felt like a long time.
Guest:It felt like I'd been there forever.
Guest:Because that was the one thing that I was surprised at myself was that I was playing in church and there was songs I'd never played before, but I heard them so much I could just play them.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like which ones?
Guest:Just old spirituals?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Just all kinds of stuff.
Guest:Like the old spirituals, some of the new church songs.
Guest:I mean, it was just all the songs that we had been singing all those years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All of a sudden I could just play them.
Guest:And I was like, it kind of, I was realized all my, my ears tapped into my fingers and like, I don't even, I couldn't tell you what the notes are going to be.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I could just play them.
Guest:So that's that instinct.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's got to serve your whole life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So like, but, and I'm picturing the church, you know, maybe in a, a sort of a narrow minded way that it was very, like, there was a lot of.
Marc:The people at the church were involved.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:They cheer you on, especially when you're young.
Guest:That's all right, baby.
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:I know you played the wrong note, but it's okay.
Guest:Keep on playing.
Guest:It was like...
Marc:All right, so you go from that, so now you got a head full of gospel music, you're 13, you got a head full of Art Blakey, and you're starting to listen to Miles, and then you start going to the school.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then do they kind of refocus you on theory then?
Guest:Well, around about that time is when I got into John Coltrane, and then it was like nobody could tell me anything except him.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I was, like, really into trains.
Guest:So I got to my school, and, like, I guess, I mean, they're real supportive of me at Hamilton because they could see I was talented.
Guest:But, like, me and a friend of mine, the piano player that was playing with me at Nokia.
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:Cameron Graves, the light-skinned guy.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We were just full-fledged John Coltrane head.
Guest:So we were just wild.
Guest:We were in this high school jazz band, and we were, like, going out there.
Guest:all the way out.
Guest:Double time stuff and take long solos.
Guest:Completely change the chord changes and drive the band director crazy.
Marc:How do you go into, where do you start with Coltrane?
Marc:Outside of just knowing you play sax and knowing that that guy was above and beyond anybody, where do you start to understand what he's doing?
Guest:You know, it's almost like I needed to have, because my dad was trying to get me into Coltrane when I was young, and I didn't get it.
Guest:I didn't even like it.
Guest:I was like, this is weird.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's almost you have to have a bit of a musical foundation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Train is so emotional that if you can't wrap your mind around what he's doing, then all that emotion just feels...
Guest:crazy right so what's the trick of improvising like that landing is letting go yeah it's almost like like like what like bird and all those other guys that they they ran to the edge of the edge of the cliff yeah and they would they may have one pinky toe left on the cliff right but they would always run to the edge and stop right like with train you gotta be able to run and jump off
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And just be okay falling down this cliff and have the confidence that somehow I'm going to land on my feet.
Guest:So it is about landing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you're going to have to re-enter, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like at some point, the trick to that type of improvisation jazz-wise is like when all of a sudden you look at the drummer and the bass guy and go, okay, I'm back.
Guest:yeah or they can sense it yeah they can sense it uh-huh it's like we all jumped off yeah right we're all like where are we gonna land we all like point look at that there's a tree we can land on that tree let's go land on the tree we gotta make it to the tree and you know that's that's that's so you started experimenting with that like at 14 or 15 yeah yeah and i stayed there till i was about i'm still probably still there
Guest:yeah but uh i mean no i mean after that i mean i was stuck on that for a while yeah and like that was like what we were we were all on that too so what were you playing in like uh four piece we had a quartet called the young jazz giants uh-huh and we terrorized all the jazz clubs of l.a
Guest:We would show up in numbers and just, you know, play the songs extra long.
Guest:And were the people that were running the place, the patrons, like, who are these kids?
Guest:Oh, man, everybody.
Guest:We used to go to places and sneak in.
Guest:We used to go to hear Kenny Garrett.
Guest:Like, the first time I met Chris Dave, we had to go hear Kenny Garrett, and Chris Dave was playing drums with him.
Guest:And mind you, we never met Chris Dave before, ever.
Guest:And so we all walk in there.
Guest:None of us have any money.
Guest:And we're like, yeah, we're on Chris Dave's list.
Yeah.
Guest:And the next day we come in, we're like, we're on Kenny Garrett's list.
Guest:We didn't know Kenny.
Guest:We would just do it every day.
Guest:We would go places and just, that was like our thing.
Guest:Like, we're going to get in.
Guest:So there was a big jazz club scene.
Marc:There still is one?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah, there was the Leimert part.
Guest:And especially when I got a car.
Guest:I was the first one to get a car.
Guest:When I got a car, we were all over the city.
Guest:We would go.
Marc:Like, I don't know anything about that world.
Marc:So there's still, like, you know, jazz going on every night in Los Angeles.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:There's still jazz going on.
Marc:Like, real shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's such a unique and somewhat insulated world, isn't it?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you kind of, like, I imagine jazz musicians kind of know of each other.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Especially in the city.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know when a new guy's coming up, right?
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:When somebody moves in town, it's like a ripple goes through the...
Guest:Who's this guy?
Guest:What's he got?
Guest:It was like a new guy that came out of the Matrix.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like somebody woke up.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So when did you start learning about classical music and the sort of layering that would lead up to something like the epic?
Marc:When did you start putting that stuff together?
Guest:When I got to Hamilton, all of a sudden they had an orchestra.
Guest:They had a wind ensemble.
Guest:I was taking piano.
Guest:I was in jazz band.
Guest:I was in wind ensemble.
Guest:I was in orchestra.
Guest:How were you at the piano?
Guest:Good?
Guest:I was pretty good.
Guest:So I was like four music classes in high school.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, that was mostly what you were doing.
Marc:How was the other stuff going?
Guest:I was pretty good in school.
Guest:My mom was a science teacher, so she always was pushing me on that level.
Guest:And I always had an affinity for learning.
Guest:So I was pretty good in school, actually.
Marc:Yeah, that's good.
Marc:So you started playing in the orchestra, and you could read music from a very early age, so that wasn't that daunting to you.
Guest:No, no, but it was different.
Guest:Because it was like, you know, I never played in an orchestra before, so it was a different way of playing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not as expressive, per se, and you've got to be part of a team, in a way.
Guest:Yeah, you have 78 bars of rest, and then this really important part that you play.
Guest:So it was like... You're waiting.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:A lot of waiting.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And what did you take from when you started to... I imagine, like...
Marc:I don't know jazz structure, but I imagine that the basics coming out of Coltrane and bebop and stuff, there's a set of basics that you're gonna run with and break and do whatever you want.
Marc:But I imagine once you get to classical music, you're like, what is this world?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They wanted me to play with a different kind of tone.
Guest:On the sax.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was the first time I was really reading music that had really crazy odd meters.
Guest:Like, you know, we're going to play in 1716.
Guest:I'm like...
Guest:Why?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But you could do it.
Guest:You could wrap your brain around it.
Guest:I don't even know what that would be.
Guest:What would that be?
Guest:It means that each measure has 17 sixteenth notes in it.
Guest:It was ridiculous.
Guest:Stuff like that.
Guest:But the cool part of it was I was meeting these classical musicians who were giving me albums.
Guest:People were giving me, oh, check out The Rite of Spring.
Guest:Oh, here, check out this, you know, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.
Guest:And this stuff was like...
Guest:really opening my mind up to just different worlds of music.
Marc:Right, so just like you were with Blakey, you got these people that are like that with Mozart or whoever.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So when you started listening to that stuff, what was the difference for you in if you got somebody like Coltrane taking you out there over the cliff
Guest:you know looking to land you know what what was your first impression of what those classical composers were doing what they were doing because i was into the out composers i was in the like stravinsky so stravinsky is like writing this music that's so dense and so like heavy that it could stand right up next to what train was doing oh right right so it was like i was like oh wow so the other people that had the same kind of intensity and energy that like i like over here this is over here too
Guest:and it's old it's old yeah yeah it really made me want to start writing i was like oh man like this is i'm into this you know that was what inspired you to kind of like start composing yeah like uh like with discipline yeah as opposed to just riffing yeah well i was already kind of like writing little tunes and jazz but i was like man i want to learn like so like by the time i was done in high school i knew when i went to college i wanted to learn how to write for the orchestra because i was just like man that would be and did you feel like it was because i know when you're working with a quartet
Marc:That there's like a one mind trust thing, that you're kind of reading each other's signals and knowing the feel of the music.
Marc:But when you're working with an orchestra and you've got a conductor, you know, keeping the pace and, you know, you have to honor this piece, that collaboration is very different than working with a quartet, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you're kind of part of this like giant body, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's interpretation as opposed to creation.
Marc:Right, improvisation.
Guest:It's like there's still a connection you have to make and you still have to be creative in a way.
Guest:But your creativity is coming through in how you interpret the music.
Marc:So what makes any one orchestras or any one conductors different in terms of... It's how they approach or pace the music or... Yeah, how they pace the music, how they phrase it.
Guest:It's kind of like subtlety, more subtle differences.
Guest:But you can tell.
Guest:But you can tell, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it contains... I mean, the tempo of a song can completely...
Guest:change the whole feel of it and like right how because a lot of classical music also had a lot of music that was like the the tempo is is is much freer right so it's like the music kind of like has this kind of like elastic time feel to it oh wow so it's like it's moving in this way that's not so set where like it's jazz it's like yeah and you have to like lock into this groove yeah a lot of the time yeah
Guest:I mean, there's also jazz that has a similar thing.
Guest:But like in classical music, there was a lot of this elasticity.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like, how are you going to play this?
Guest:Right.
Guest:How are you phrasing it?
Guest:And so it's subtle.
Guest:But it's also part of a bigger arc.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like if you're playing a symphony, I mean, you're in for a while.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I guess some of that must have informed the structure of the epic in a way.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You see this as one piece.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:so that's like that's directly relatable to classical that you have that flow and that elasticity but it's honoring the story or the arc of the symphony yeah yeah wow man this is good i'm learning so so where'd you go to college i went to ucla and you studied only music i studied ethnomusicology and and composition
Guest:Oh, so that must have been mind-blowing.
Guest:And jazz studies.
Guest:I was all over the place.
Guest:I was playing in the jazz bands.
Guest:I was taking ethnomusicology classes, and I was taking composition classes.
Marc:So you got a degree in ethnomusicology?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Now, what did that introduce you to?
Marc:So I'm assuming that that means that you're dealing with...
Guest:indigenous music from everywhere?
Guest:Well, there's music from all over places.
Guest:I mean, we were studying North Indian classical music.
Guest:North Indian classical music?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What does that even mean?
Guest:People like Robbie Shankar.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Marc:That's considered classical music.
Marc:That's good to know.
Marc:I just got a Shankar record.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Live in 71 at his house.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so people like Robbie Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan and there's
Guest:So you had to learn about the structure of that, of the ragas and the... Yeah, and the scales and their whole way approach of listening to music and hearing and their whole approach to music.
Guest:What other stuff?
Guest:What other type of music?
Guest:I got exposed to this music called gamelan music, which is from Indonesia.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And it's all based off these ostinatos.
Guest:So they create, they might go like, da, dee, da, da, da.
Guest:So one person will play it slow, and someone else will go, da, dee, da, da.
Guest:And someone else will go, da, dee, da, da, da, dee.
Guest:And all these layers create these really amazing kind of textures and harmony.
Guest:So it was like, I was learning that kind of stuff.
Guest:It's like almost trance, like, just even you doing those two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, man, you get caught up in it, and then they put a melody on top of that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I was learning that, and I was listening to these Irish boy choirs that had these really crazy textures.
Guest:There was just music from all over the world.
Guest:I was listening to some music, some Native American music, that you almost couldn't even recognize it as music.
Guest:But it had a function, and it really just opened me up to the reality that there was anything that was possible.
Guest:Even the classical music, one of the things that was crazy to me is that
Guest:you know those songs long last like two three hours long like one right one joint and like the people love it yeah like oh man so we have like this we think we can only do three minutes they're doing three hours so anything is really possible you know i mean and also i think like you know i i've sort of thought my and i and i've talked a little bit about before is that you know music really is sort of magic and
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like it's not like spoken word, you know, where where language has, you know, so much power.
Marc:And it's not like what I do, like stand up comedy, where, you know, you're waiting for a turn of a phrase to get closure.
Marc:But music, you can actually enchant people and you can do it over and over again, even with the same piece of music.
Marc:Like, you know, there's nothing like, you know, like you can listen to the same piece of music over and over again at different points of your life.
Marc:And either it'll take you back or it'll take you where it took you or it'll take you a new place.
Marc:Yeah, I always thought that.
Marc:Did you feel that initially when you're getting into Coltrane, that there's a personal journey?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That it was not necessarily like a shared experience outside of the guys you're playing with?
Guest:Yeah, well, I think it's almost like it's a conversation.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I feel like music is communication beyond your control.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like, I'm going to strip away...
Guest:all of my knowledge and my core is going to communicate with your core.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that's what happens.
Guest:So you hear Coltrane, it's like you hear his core communicating with McCoy Tyner's, who's communicating with Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison.
Guest:So they're all communicating.
Guest:And as a listener, you're kind of like, you're receiving...
Guest:And it's just how open you are is how much of it you can receive.
Guest:That's why I think it's almost an infinite.
Guest:Sorry about that.
Guest:Yeah, the big cane.
Guest:You can receive a lot or you can receive a little.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I find that over the years, I'll have a piece of music and I'll hear it and like...
Guest:And sometimes I'm hearing a whole nother part of it that I never even realized was there.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I have that experience with your record.
Marc:Like every time I put it on because there's so much going on that you can sort of move your listening to different elements of it.
Marc:Like they're all sort of carrying you through, but you're sort of like, you know, like I got locked into that choral stuff.
Marc:I'm like, what is that?
Marc:What is going on?
Marc:And then you kind of shift over and you got two keyboards going, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then it's sort of like, oh my God.
Marc:Like it's mind blowing just the event of it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, and then when I saw you do it live, I'm like, I don't know if I can take it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that's an interesting way to put it, because if a musician is doing his job or doing his art that, you know, when he's done, if it's recorded, you walk away thinking like, well, it's all there.
Marc:You know, I did it.
Marc:I did my part.
Marc:So when anyone else is going to do, it's really on them.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And that's sort of what jazz is.
Marc:It's like people who are like, I don't get it.
Marc:And then if you're like, well, maybe just sit with it longer, it's like, oh, I'm kind of getting it.
Marc:And then all of a sudden you're like, holy shit.
Marc:That's the best that can happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:That's why you rarely hear someone say like, yeah, when I was younger, I was into jazz, but I don't like it anymore.
Guest:Once you get it, it's one of those things, because it's so wide.
Marc:So now let's talk about the epic, because it is definitely something to be reckoned with.
Marc:And what I was really excited and impressed about it, about the record, was that, because I listen to jazz, but like I said, I'm not in any way, like I got a jazz encyclopedia over there, and look at the size of that book, and that's 15 years old.
Marc:And it's like, how am I ever going to even tap that shit?
Marc:It's quite crazy.
Marc:I'm like, I gotta go listen to 90 Zoot Sims records to understand anything.
Marc:So when I put this on and I couldn't stop listening to it, you wanna listen to the whole thing.
Marc:And it's not like I can remember all the melodies and stuff, but I was completely compelled the whole time.
Marc:And when I look at it, like this happens with Jazz of Light, you look at the titles and you're like, well, this gotta mean something.
Marc:Because there's a volume one, a volume two, and a volume three, and they all got titles.
Marc:So there's a whole other level that I may never get to access.
Guest:So what was the plan?
Guest:So the plan, so those three different albums are like three different parts of my life.
Guest:So I wanted the album to kind of like...
Guest:be a a example of who i was so the plan like that's that whole time i told you about we were young and we were like so intense yeah like becoming like we read a joke saying like nobody's like i want to be huge and jazz but we really did you wanted to be what we want i mean we want to be great yeah and we thought that we we were gonna we were in high school we really believed that we had figured out a music
Guest:that was going to make people understand jazz right because our friends did so we all had we all grew up in the hood we had regular regular extra not deep 40 drinking weed smoking you know yeah regular people friends yeah and we used to convert them into jazz heads uh-huh
Guest:And it was like they would love our music.
Guest:They would come to our shows at the world stage and be like into it.
Guest:Like these really extra hood people.
Guest:So we were like, man, we are playing a music that we can like.
Guest:Yeah, we're going to save jazz.
Guest:We're going to save the world.
Guest:We're going to bring the world to jazz and everybody's going to like, minds are going to be open and expanded.
Guest:So we were working really hard.
Guest:We were practicing every day, eight, nine hours a day.
Guest:We're going to every jam session, like I said, every concert.
Guest:Even if we didn't have any money, we didn't care.
Guest:If you came to LA, we were going to be at your show.
Guest:Even if you had, one time we ran out of gas and we had to ask, one of the guys, we had to ask him for some gas money to get home.
Guest:We come to your show and ask for money.
Guest:And what are they gonna say?
Guest:He's like, we came.
Guest:I don't see a lot of people here.
Guest:So like we were determined to do that and yeah, like what happened is out of high school So that's that was the plan and that means a lot of music I plan like was is either from that time period or it's music I wrote thinking about that time period, you know, and then the glorious tale The second record is like after high school like we got a high school and we all ended up on gigs that were not jazz gigs Yeah, where'd you end up?
Guest:I did a plan with Snoop.
Guest:Yeah
Guest:Thundercat was playing with Suicidal Tendencies.
Guest:Brandon was playing with Brian McKnight.
Guest:But so you were just working for a living?
Guest:Yeah, we were all on tour with these really big artists that we really respected.
Guest:What were you doing with Snoop?
Guest:I was playing horns.
Guest:Playing this horn section.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the road.
Guest:That was fun, huh?
Guest:Yeah, it was super fun.
Guest:And I learned a lot musically and as far as life, too.
Guest:I learned a lot.
Guest:So it was important for me.
Guest:So it was almost like... But I remember we were all thinking in our minds, like, when are we going to do that thing that we... Yeah, when are we going to save the world?
Guest:Yeah, when are we going to save the world?
Guest:And so for years and years, we were just...
Guest:But the opportunities were so cool and there were artists that were so cool that like- But you all must have been learning different things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What'd you take from the experience with Snoop?
Guest:So Snoop, when I first got in Snoop's band, the first thing I realized was that their whole approach to music was different.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were hearing things in music that I wasn't even hearing.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:So they'd tell me to play a line.
Guest:They'd tell me to go like, shut up, bud up.
Guest:yeah bow and i go i play that go but up but up bow and they go nope shut up bought up bow yeah and i thought but up bow and they go nope that's not it because i'm i'm just placing the note ever so slightly oh really and like my phrasing is ever so much different and so i was like oh you really are hearing the microscopic differences like that like like they hear music almost like you know most people hear music like they're hearing this
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they're hearing like.
Guest:They're hearing like.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So hearing the music chopped up in these little bitty, bitty, bitty, bitty, bitty pieces.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if you're not in the exact right spot with these little bitty, bitty pieces.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And if your phrasing and your tone and everything else is not exactly right to them, you played it wrong.
Guest:And I'm like, so I started hearing music like this.
Guest:I was starting to really pay attention to where do you want me to play this?
Guest:How do you want me to play this?
Guest:And I would really listen to how exactly you wanted me to do it and where you exactly wanted me to put stuff.
Guest:And it was kind of like the thing of church where you have to really...
Guest:You have to feel it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:To understand what you're missing.
Guest:And he's like one of those dudes that definitely has his own groove.
Guest:Yeah, he has his own groove.
Guest:And he's like, they're aware of it.
Guest:It's not like, I mean, they don't necessarily verbalize it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But they're hyper aware of it.
Guest:So if you're not locked into that...
Guest:that special place yeah you know i mean it's like so you did you're whack yeah you could play a hundred you could play giant steps at 400 bpms yeah they don't care can you play bow right there and play a light there every single time you know yeah
Guest:And so I kind of expanded my mind on the importance of the subtleties of music.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:And you never thought you'd learn that from Snoop, right?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:And it made me appreciate to be able to play jazz.
Guest:We were on tour with Snoop, and we'd get off the stage playing with 60,000 people, because there was a couple of us that were jazz musicians.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of us were jazz musicians.
Guest:And we'd be like on a hunt for a jam session.
Guest:And we'd show up in our Snoopy uniforms because we had to wear khakis, chucks, and like a jailhouse t-shirt or something.
Guest:And we'd walk in there and they'd look at us like, what are you guys going to do?
Guest:And we'd play giant steps and blow them all away.
Guest:And they'd be like, what?
Guest:What is going on here?
Guest:So we liked doing that too.
Guest:That's fun, man.
Guest:So it was like, you know, now we're all about- So you get to a town, you'd be like, where's the jazz, man?
Guest:We're done with Snoop.
Guest:Where can we go to blow this out?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they would look at us like-
Guest:What do you want to play?
Guest:You want to play Sugar or something like that?
Guest:Like, no, no, no, let's play Countdown.
Guest:And they'd be like, Countdown?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:All right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, it's too bad you weren't videoing all this.
Guest:Oh, yeah, it would have been funny.
Guest:It would have been funny because, like, I can tell you that people, I mean, almost every time they would look at us like,
Marc:You got nothing.
Guest:You don't know how to play jazz.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We loved it, too, because we were at soundcheck, backstage.
Guest:All we were doing was playing, you know, playing Eternal Triangle and just shitting every day.
Guest:It was like, I practiced probably more on the roll with Snoop than I did with Stanley Clark.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right.
Marc:Because you're in it with Stanley Clark.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And when you're with Snoop, you're just making sure you still got it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it was...
Guest:I learned a lot, you know.
Guest:And so for years, we just kept going from one.
Marc:And so it was almost like you guys were becoming pros is what you were doing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so then that second part is you guys coming back together.
Marc:That second part is that whole time period when you're apart from each other.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I wrote a lot of songs on the road with Snoove.
Guest:It's about that want to get back.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And then the third part, the historical repetition, is basically when we went in to record this, it was 2011, and I just had a revelation just reflecting.
Guest:A lot of us are second-generation musicians, and I just saw how a lot of our fathers...
Guest:basically did that like they got their talents it and kind of got wrapped up into using their talents to help someone else yeah and kind of neglected their own music the vision yeah and so like we all kind of came to this place and we were like we gotta do our own thing we gotta do it like it can't be next year we gotta do it like right we gotta do it right and so we basically
Guest:quit all of our gigs for a whole month.
Guest:It's hard to do.
Guest:People were like, you can't do what?
Guest:I can't do anything in December.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because I'm recording my own music.
Guest:Why do you need a whole month?
Guest:Because I'm not recording my music, I'm recording his music and his music too.
Guest:So it was a hard thing to do, but we did it.
Guest:And that part of the record is just my homage to learning from the past.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, so you would say the third record is the pure new stuff.
Guest:Well, no, the third record is really a reverse.
Guest:It's like moving forward in the future through understanding the past.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:So the whole thing.
Guest:Yeah, that's what that's about.
Guest:So that's why I'm taking the past and moving it forward.
Guest:So all the old songs that we do, we flip them.
Guest:Like we play Cherokee and we completely flipped it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Play Claire de Lune, we completely flip it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Learning from, like Malcolm's team is like what I learned from reading his books and stuff like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even reruns.
Guest:I took a song that we already did.
Guest:I'm learning from myself as well.
Guest:Looking back to where I was and the plan.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:That was the whole energy of that record.
Marc:So this is a full life record.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:right here yeah now these when you talk about we you're saying that all the cats that are on this are the guys that you've been with for a long time yeah yeah we all grew up together like i met i met ron thunder cat when i was three years old ron's dad and my dad had a band together yeah when i was three i was a drummer yeah and i got a drum set and so uh i was at the party and like um
Guest:I was playing my drums and Ronald Bruno Sr.
Guest:showed up.
Guest:And I knew Ronald Bruno Sr.
Guest:but I don't think I ever met his kids.
Guest:They were younger than me.
Guest:So Ronald Bruno Jr.
Guest:was like this little baby.
Guest:He was like one.
Guest:He couldn't talk.
Guest:I swear he couldn't talk, man.
Guest:And he got up and he played the drums like a...
Guest:Like literally like a 13 year old.
Guest:He was one.
Guest:I was like, he was like way better to be.
Guest:I was like, what the heck?
Guest:What is this?
Guest:What kind of setup is this?
Guest:It's my birthday.
Marc:now what's the uh what's the deal with this kendrick fella oh man he's a real live genius you know um i like his records i listened to the records i haven't listened to the newest one yet my girlfriend's a huge fan and like i'm not a huge like hip-hop dude you know so like i gotta really pay attention and uh he definitely has his own time zone that guy
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And how do you know him?
Marc:Through that Terrace Martin.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:That guy I grew up with.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but he's a saxophone player.
Guest:He grew up with us playing jazz.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that same band, the Multischool Jazz Band that we were all in.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He was in that band.
Guest:And so he has a record that just came out called Velvet Portraits.
Guest:It was really, really dope.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And so I was working on that record with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he heard about it.
Guest:This is like an...
Guest:this is in 2000, this is like before the EPIC came out.
Guest:So he'd heard about it, but he hadn't heard it.
Guest:And so I played him a record, and when he heard it, he was like, oh man, I got something I need you to do for Kendrick's record.
Guest:And I was like, oh, okay.
Guest:Was he producing it or something?
Guest:Yeah, he was producing it.
Guest:And so he took me in, and like,
Guest:They played me the record and I was like blown away.
Guest:And at first I was just supposed to work on that song, Mortal Man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That skit that happened after it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was like every time they played a record, someone was like, oh, you should put something on this too.
Guest:And that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that.
Guest:So at the end of it, I ended up playing a lot.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Doing a lot of stuff for the record.
Guest:Did you help do any of the arrangements?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's what I was doing.
Guest:I was mainly doing string arrangements.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And so you added that whole layer.
Guest:yeah yeah yeah so it was that was amazing because I was I was there and like and you didn't know Kendrick before I know I knew of him but I didn't I never met him uh-huh I never met him and um you know the amazing thing that I was really struck first off was that he was so hands-on yeah so like first day one like like okay come on see write some stuff to this I'm like okay you want to give me the files I'll go home and come back and like no
Guest:You got to write this here.
Guest:You don't get to leave with anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was like, oh, okay, wow.
Guest:So I had like some manuscript paper.
Guest:So I'm just kind of sitting there listening to the music and I have like a little piano set up and I'm sitting there writing and Kendrick is just sitting on the couch watching.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it wasn't like a vibe of like, let me make sure you don't do anything I don't want you to do.
Guest:It was more like, I'm just curious to see how this process works.
Guest:And I was like, wow.
Guest:I mean, most artists, you don't even meet them.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's like, you just do it and then you mess around and be at the Grammys and be like, hey.
Guest:Yeah, good job.
Guest:I wrote some stuff on your record.
Guest:Or I'll play it on your record.
Guest:And you're like, oh, really?
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Is that this thing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was so hands-on.
Guest:And then I would see him do superhuman stuff.
Guest:Like one time Terrace brought in a new beat.
Guest:And I saw Kendrick just create a whole song while he was hearing it for the first time.
Guest:And it felt like a complete song.
Guest:I was like, did you just create that right now?
Guest:Like while I was sitting here, like as you were listening to it for the first time,
Guest:I was like, wow, man, that's amazing.
Marc:Yeah, so he's got that thing that you got from Jazzy, you got from Coltrane, that's sort of tapping into the spirit and being in the moment and moving through it.
Guest:And he's got it.
Guest:He's got it full-fledged.
Guest:And he's also got the spirit of music in that he understands that...
Guest:the best music you're gonna get from someone is who they are.
Guest:So he would really let you do whatever you wanted to do.
Guest:I felt completely free to do what I wanted to do.
Guest:Put some strings on this.
Guest:I'm like, okay.
Guest:You usually gotta do something really simple and you try to sneak a little cool thing in there.
Guest:And it was like, nah, man.
Guest:Go.
Guest:Dude, go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like, four-part harmony?
Guest:Go.
Guest:Five-part harmony?
Guest:Go.
Guest:Six-part harmonies?
Guest:You know?
Guest:And I was like, you know, it was like, we were just like, I was like, all right, you sure I go this far in?
Guest:And like, yeah, yeah, go, go.
Guest:So I was like, oh, wow, this is really cool.
Guest:You don't get to work like this.
Marc:And that was a huge record.
Marc:Yes, a huge record.
Marc:And that was to Pimp a Butterfly.
Guest:Yes, and it's such a beautiful, and I have to say, I mean, like, when I came in, they'd already created this beautiful thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I felt honored that they wanted me to, I was like, what the hell you want me to do?
Guest:This is already so good.
Guest:And they're like, nah, we hear something that you could do to this.
Guest:And I was like, wow.
Guest:I mean, I was blown away that I was honored to be a part of it.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And that's true collaboration.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, see, that's the interesting thing.
Marc:And I think, I imagine you recognize in yourself that the evolution from, you know, the
Marc:The original band, the Giants of, what is it?
Marc:The Modern Giants of, what was the first?
Marc:Oh, Young Jazz Giants.
Marc:The Young Jazz Giants, the evolution outside of your own skill and your own ability to open your creativity was the ability to really collaborate on a big level.
Marc:yeah right yeah so like you know when you're you know doing arrangements for you know the the basically the small orchestra you put together for the epic that you know the the trust and the that conversation you're talking about just gets bigger and bigger and so when you work with someone like kendrick i imagine where they're like we trust you yeah you're a real guy dude do what you do yeah that that level of collaboration is rare and it's great yeah it's beautiful what are you working on now
Guest:um i have a new record i'm about to start um next month actually i'm i'm right now organizing in my mind like what i'm gonna try because i have so much music so i have to kind of like pick like yeah yeah who gets the who gets the hit today yeah yeah yeah and so like um same crew same crew i have some other people i want to involve in it too there's some young guys i've been exposed to recently that are like young guys how old are you oh well they're young like 17 okay
Guest:17, 18, they call me Mr. Washington and stuff like that.
Guest:I'm like, yeah, I can come play, but you got to stop calling him Mr. Washington.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you, and thank you for spending the time and educating me a little bit.
Guest:Oh, man, thank you for inviting me, man.
Guest:Let me hang out with the mushroom.
Marc:Yeah, you got it.
Marc:yeah kamasi washington that was exciting for me i i don't i like learning things and i like talking to artists that's what i like to do hey all right let's jazz it up some more now ben ratliff
Marc:is a jazz critic.
Marc:He's a guy who writes on jazz.
Marc:His recent book, Every Song Ever, 20 Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty is available wherever you buy books.
Marc:He's also written books about the most important jazz records.
Marc:He's written a book on John Coltrane, which I'm trying to get, but I had an opportunity to talk to him
Marc:and he was out here, and I wanted to learn.
Marc:I wanted to learn about jazz, but he's a good guy, and I learned about also the life of a critic and what compels somebody towards that gig.
Marc:So this is me and former New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff.
Marc:Where do you live?
Marc:I live in the Bronx.
Marc:Really?
Marc:All the way up there?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you got a house up there, like past a... An apartment.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Just in the Northwest Bronx.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just into the Bronx.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's Riverdale.
Guest:Right, Riverdale, that's it, yeah.
Guest:And Riverdale has a part with big houses near the river.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And a part with, you know, normal stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm in the normal area.
Guest:Yeah, you been there a long time?
Guest:No, just a couple of years.
Marc:Oh, yeah, but you've been a New York guy forever.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Where'd you grow up, there?
Guest:I grew up in, well, born in New York City, lived in London briefly, because my dad worked there, my mom was English.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and then Rockland County, north of New York City, most of the time, growing up, and then I went to Columbia.
Guest:Columbia, that's what did it?
Guest:That's what sealed the deal?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I'm going to be a New York guy.
Guest:I mean, you lived in New York.
Guest:Did you know that Columbia has the greatest radio station in the world?
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the programming then, at least, maybe still now, is about 60% jazz.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:So as a student, you could go in there and you encounter these huge lockers full of records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's like in 1985, that was the internet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The room full of records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you do what everybody does.
Guest:You figure out what you know, and then you work backwards.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The three things you know, and then you keep going like, oh, fuck.
Marc:What's this?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What led up to the tiny amount that I know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then you put it all together.
Guest:Because I think that way.
Marc:When I have someone in here who's a musician, and I know...
Marc:That it's not going to make a difference.
Marc:But I'll buy every one of their albums, even if there's 20.
Guest:And I'll sit there and do that.
Guest:You know that it's not going to make a difference whether you know a little about the musician's work or a lot?
Marc:Well, I know that ultimately, you know, how I'm going to take it in when I do that.
Marc:Like, I don't have a lot of time.
Marc:And I don't necessarily, I think, arguably, in that respect, research-wise, put the time necessary into sort of really doing the lifelong.
Marc:In my mind, it's like, well, if I'm going to sit down with Neil Young, I got a lot of fucking work to do.
Marc:But what you don't know is Neil might not want to talk about shit.
Marc:Right, that's right.
Marc:So, and, you know, you might only want to talk about one thing.
Guest:And your entry point, whatever that is, even if it's limited.
Guest:That was earnest.
Guest:Means a lot.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I mean, it's really authentic.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, you know, you don't want to do a disservice to the freaks out there.
Marc:No.
Marc:That are sort of like, what, he didn't talk about Zoom.
Marc:Yeah, there's freaks everywhere, right?
Marc:I know.
Marc:I mean, pedants.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You know?
Marc:I know, but what you want to do is at least give them something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what I learned over time was that, you know, if I get him in here and he talks about his truck, you know, that's going to be more exciting for the nerds than if he gets... Okay, sure.
Guest:So you want to create something of value to the people who really care.
Marc:Well, just so they're like, I didn't even know he had a truck and I've been listening to him for 60 years.
Marc:You know, whatever it is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I like this idea that
Marc:like what like because you've been a um what would you call yourself a music critic for a long time you've been at the new york times for what for 20 years over more than 20 years 20 years exactly yes so you're in you're you're following in big shoes as far as you know new york jazz music reviewers like i does henthoff lumarch right sure uh i don't know a lot of the other ones but him is like he seems to be the guy sure for years nat henthoff
Guest:And very present to me, too, as a writer.
Guest:He would call up sometimes and say he liked something.
Guest:He could only be reached by telephone.
Guest:No internet.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Did he pass?
Marc:No, he's still around.
Marc:He's still around?
Marc:What are they, cranky calls?
Marc:Are they like, I think it's a misread?
Marc:No.
Guest:no really good oh really yeah was he a mentor of sorts no no you wouldn't give him that just a distant very positive presence oh that's nice though like it's history because he was a definer in a lot of ways right yeah i suppose so i mean he um he wrote books about jazz he also wrote tons and tons of of liner notes you know right like really important records he was in the studio with people he
Guest:he really got to know people like Coltrane.
Guest:So his writing must have been of some value to you.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:Well, that's a whole other issue.
Guest:I mean, I guess I'm such a sentence guy rather than a historian or somebody who wants to help the consumer decide what record to buy.
Guest:I actually love sentences.
Guest:And so I guess I pay close attention to people's prose, you know?
Guest:And I mean, I guess I get more, sometimes I get more juice out of people that I can apply to my own work that aren't writing about music at all.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you say sentence guy, does that mean you're more like, because in this, in your new book, you're sort of seeking to create a new context.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:yeah yeah through which people can appreciate music right so like that's outside you know sort of taking from history the idea that there was a time where there were there were communities and populations that could only listen to one kind of music there was a mainstream music and we all got fed the same type of popular music and there are people that like classical there's just country people but now the idea is that everything is happening all at once with no fucking context yeah
Marc:So how do you sit with that and be okay with the movement through it?
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So history obviously gets somewhat short shrift in the new system in a way.
Marc:Sure does.
Marc:By nature.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And when you say that you're a sentence guy over a history guy, does that mean you go with your gut, that it's a feeling thing, that it's poetry?
Marc:Is that what we're talking about?
Marc:No.
Guest:I think that music criticism is a really vital thing.
Guest:You know, it's not just a service.
Guest:It's not something dry.
Guest:It's something about interpreting and almost communing with the thing you're writing about, the music.
Guest:And respecting it.
Guest:Yeah, it's a form of respect.
Guest:It is a form of respect.
Guest:I mean, you could be saying what you don't like about it, but that's still a form of respect that you're getting very close to it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's partially just the discipline I came up in, you know, starting writing about music in the early 90s.
Marc:um what were you doing before that like let's go back to that that record room i mean what you know how do you like you where what you say you're in england for a while you go to columbia what were you studying i studied classics uh latin and greek so you're english major or classics classics major so you read latin yeah you did all that yeah and what'd you what'd you take from that well sentence sentence structure
Guest:This is where the love of sentences came from.
Guest:Getting really close to sentences and how sentences work.
Guest:For sure that.
Guest:And also, I mean, I read a lot of really good literature in Latin and Greek.
Guest:But then after that, I worked in book publishing for six years.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:For who?
Guest:For Little Brown and William Morrow and Henry Holt.
Guest:As an editor?
Guest:Yeah, like a baby editor.
Guest:Oh, Baby Editor.
Guest:Did you get disillusioned or you just... Yes.
Guest:And also at one point I was told directly, you know, you're just not going to make it here.
Guest:And I was so grateful to hear that, you know.
Marc:It's nice when somebody hits you with some honesty.
Marc:It really is, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Were you writing at that time?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So you were going to be a novelist or...
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I was really interested in like music criticism specifically, cultural criticism generally.
Guest:Like who were your guys?
Guest:Like Northrop Frye?
Guest:No.
Guest:That was too English major-y for me.
Guest:I mean, I was- Benjamin?
Guest:Yeah, well, Walter Benjamin, pretty cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I mean, I guess I really read a lot of sort of like mid-20th century people writing about music, but also writing about other arts.
Guest:Like Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, Manny Farber writing about movies, Pauline Kael.
Marc:So you saw criticism, both cultural and art criticism, in the way, and distinguishing between a reviewer and a critic, that through the art, you explore all levels of humanity in a way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that that's your portal in that you respected the form of criticism, which is falling away a bit culturally in the sense that I don't know that people really appreciate it or understand the difference between like if you say he's a movie critic to be like, wait, reviews movies.
Marc:Yeah, they don't understand the weight of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I have an ideal about criticism just for what I want to do with it and what I get out of it, which is like you take something in and you are able to isolate the part of it that is maybe essential to it.
Guest:But like if you...
Guest:took it out the whole thing would just kind of crumble yeah yeah so you get that little piece which is representative right and and you describe it as closely as you can uh-huh and the description of it becomes a sort of ritual act uh-huh you know and and you're and by doing that again this is like my ideal version of what i do but you're a real guy so this means something every once in a while i get close to the idea most mostly don't get anywhere near but um
Guest:you know and then so you know you all you can do is you take a representative part of it describe it bear down on it like crazy interpret it and and somehow the essence of the thing can sort of rise up through the writing right and when and i just feel like that's it that's that's it that's that's a lot that's enough so that's the job right for me so in this new book
Marc:You sort of like do that.
Marc:You compartmentalize that process.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you literally make song lists as examples of your point of essence in each of these different areas that you're using to appreciate music.
Marc:Yeah, that's kind of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I guess the book starts with a question and then becomes like a meditation on different ways of listening.
Guest:And the question is like, okay, stop for a minute.
Guest:Here we are.
Guest:We have in our pockets...
Guest:Not every song ever, but it can seem like that.
Guest:It's like as close to what people thought about the great library of Alexandria.
Guest:Not the whole sum of human knowledge ever, but it can seem that way.
Guest:We've got it in our
Guest:pockets right so like alright so what are we gonna do with it yeah and how can we access that stuff that we all have and are we gonna rely on streaming services and and recommendation engines to tell us what we like we're gonna kind of give them control over our taste
Guest:Or are we going to figure out ways to get back and, you know, reach back into the depths of what's there?
Guest:Or surprise ourselves.
Guest:Surprise ourselves.
Guest:There's always the shuffle option.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And learn how to encounter something new and not be alienated by it.
Guest:Learn how to encounter something you've never heard before and say, oh, yeah, that is about me also.
Marc:Right.
Marc:About me.
Marc:That's the big distinguisher.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, there is this sort of element of popular music that has always been there, that it's designed in its magical structure to grab you and make you react somehow.
Marc:Right.
Marc:and uh that's always there you can't i mean it's there pretty far back right yeah and the hook the beat whatever it is the the the time that the the song came out this was designed you know we want you to write songs to sell songs we're selling songs to people here make them dance make them feel something but then there's this more of the world of music has none of that intention and
Marc:And I don't think people realize that.
Marc:I'm sure they do.
Marc:But even myself, when I started buying records, I never knew about these smaller labels, secondary labels, these kind of 1,000 pressings of some band that disappeared.
Marc:It was actually a surprise to me.
Marc:I guess if I really thought about it, I would know it, that there was really...
Marc:There's always mainstream.
Marc:And then you meet the guy at the record store and you realize like, oh, there's this other thing.
Marc:And then you meet another guy that only listens to one weird ass music.
Marc:And you're like, holy shit, that's there too.
Marc:But then you realize like there's a whole other second history to modern music that goes completely unappreciated and unheard.
Marc:And that kind of blew my mind how fucking brainwashed we are.
Guest:There's always more, isn't there?
Marc:There's always more.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:But so earlier in this conversation, you were saying, like, in relation to jazz and that big blue book over there, that it kind of made you feel a little overwhelmed.
Guest:And that seems to be the conversation I keep hearing around music, around the new muchness, like the infinite accessibility.
Guest:People kind of shut down and go like,
Marc:ah it's too much what do i you know i don't i don't know what to do it's it's it's intimidating and what do you suggest well i just think that we should like why why why why think that well it's also the decision is like is it part of your life or isn't it like you know i went out of my way in recent times music's always been a part of my life and i've always wanted to be up to speed on things and and hear new things yeah
Marc:But, you know, with everything else going in our lives that, you know, you got to make time to just not even make time.
Marc:You just got to put it on.
Marc:Like I have those records in there and I'll just put on records all day.
Marc:I don't know what they are.
Marc:And sometimes I'm not even paying that much attention.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I'll just let them go.
Marc:And occasionally, you know, there's just always music going now.
Marc:And occasionally I'll go like, well, what's that?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And then you go in and you like listen to it again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like I don't put too much pressure on myself.
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I think that's the key.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And maybe people are worried that if they listen to too much music, it becomes a selfish act or time wasting act.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Well, you don't have to, like, you know, it's your choice.
Marc:Like, even with that big stereo in there, people are like, you just sit here and listen to records.
Marc:Sometimes, sometimes I just put them on like we used to.
Marc:You just go flip it, you know, and keep going.
Marc:You know, I don't know what people expect.
Marc:I mean, your job is, I mean, I saw when we were in the house,
Marc:And, you know, I told you about my new elevated awareness of the kinks.
Marc:When I put that on, that like I looked over at the couch and I saw you in like what must be your listening mode.
Marc:Like you're like, there was a lot going on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're like, all right, I'll give it another shot.
Marc:And things were going.
Marc:The abacus was working.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that's a different kind of listening.
Guest:You know what I loved with that was, well, we were talking about how I just don't know that record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The Village Green Preservation Society.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's a blind spot for me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you're a guy that knows records.
Marc:I mean, I'm reading this book and I'm looking at this list.
Marc:I'm like, where the fuck did that even... I don't know.
Guest:Apparently, I'm a guy who does music.
Guest:But everybody's got blind spots, so that's one.
Guest:I just never got into the kinks that much.
Guest:But...
Guest:Like, I couldn't believe that I was hearing this famous record for the first time.
Guest:Like, it was all new to me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Nothing was coming at me like, oh, yeah, yeah, I heard this once.
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, totally new.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's weird.
Marc:You can do that every day, though.
Marc:Yes, you can.
Marc:But that fits into what you're saying.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just like, I'm hearing shit for the first time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because we, well, I'm doing it on records, but now the part of what you're saying is that...
Marc:that possibility is is always there now yeah and it's a it's a sort of an amazing thing to have that experience and but i think we're all prone to thinking like i missed it or it's too late or whatever but all this stuff happens now it's all happening now kind of yeah i i think a lot now about the the meaning of the past versus the meaning of the present yeah and what do you get um
Guest:The past is the present.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like, you know, the past has great present day meaning.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:You know?
Guest:It's all cumulative and relative.
Guest:Is this in relation to music?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because I have some concern.
Marc:Part in general.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I guess, but it's sort of like I have this struggle going on in my mind, too, and I think it's relevant, is just that if we lose the context completely, you know, how do we learn?
Marc:about progress, evolution, change, the good things that we're supposed to get from surviving.
Marc:That scares me a little.
Marc:But with music, I think it's a little different.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, there's been a lot of kind of hand-wringing recently about how with music, we're just looking backwards all the time now.
Guest:We're into bands that are playing music that sounded exactly like it was coming from the 1980s or the 70s or whatever.
Guest:And there must be something wrong with that.
Guest:That seems terribly wrong.
Guest:That seems like a lie.
Marc:Like a lie or sort of stuck or it's hackneyed or appropriation has taken over originality.
Guest:I'm not convinced.
Guest:I'm not convinced that it's a lie.
Guest:I think there's something real about it, something authentic about it.
Guest:And maybe this is something actually that I got from a degree in classics.
Guest:Just thinking about the past as something that is continually influencing the present.
Marc:Can we talk about jazz for a few minutes and then talk about the new system?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:The new system.
Marc:Because like, look, I've always liked jazz, but like I said before, I always feel like I'm missing the key to it.
Marc:Like I like listening to it and I get it and I can jump on the journey.
Marc:What do I need to know?
Marc:To sort of like, you know, and even when I'm reading your Coltrane book, you know, you're appreciating the timing and the space and what he's doing that's differently and where it's coming from.
Marc:And, you know, what I got out of that book was I know that people say that jazz comes from the blues and I'm a blues guy.
Marc:But I'm a one, four, five blues guy, just stinky blues.
Marc:And I can go back in time with that and find those rhythms out of Africa or whatever.
Marc:But like, I don't quite...
Guest:understand the shift from blues to jazz sure how that opens up right you know how does duke ellington play in in you know how did the those guys do you know i don't know if you have to worry about that so much no i mean i think that i mean you because you know 145 you're you're going to be able to hear blues blues language sometimes when it comes up in yeah you know right in in any kind of jazz um but then you know i feel like with jazz
Guest:uh i mean strong melodies are are nice yeah you know they're and they're they can be durable and usable through the ages or whatever but um jazz is more about um like in jazz material is almost neutral uh-huh you know what you're dealing with is it's you know it's the whole thing of
Guest:you know, it's not what you do, but the way that you do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, so, so you're dealing with the sound of a band and, and, and how full and integrated and, and original may be this, that, that group sound is right.
Guest:And how they communicate with each other, they communicate with each other.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I always listen to the drummer.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I listen to the drummer.
Guest:I focus on that and listen really hard to what the drummer is doing.
Guest:Is the drummer making the beat different all the time?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And how is the drummer connected to the bass player?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then who's following whom?
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And...
Guest:And is it all one?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's always my sort of comfortable place to start.
Guest:Then I think about what the soloists are doing.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And tone and logic.
Guest:So I don't need to be insecure.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Like, what's the point?
Guest:Because I want to know more.
Marc:What will the insecurity do for you?
Yeah.
Marc:Nothing, I guess, well, that's a good question throughout the entire, that's, for me, a broader question.
Marc:I see.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, I know what you mean.
Marc:You know, like, I mean, that is the question.
Marc:You know, some of it's resolving itself.
Marc:I think, unfortunately, I seem to need to think that I'm, you know, not quite doing what I need to do.
Marc:Well, okay, do you know this?
Marc:This is your other book.
Marc:This is the one I don't have.
Marc:The Essential Library of Jazz.
Marc:Jazz, The Essential Library, New York Times.
Guest:It's the hundred jazz records that, at least in 2002 or whatever that was.
Guest:Oh, this will help me.
Guest:I thought one ought to know.
Guest:Oh, this will help me.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Why didn't I have this before?
Marc:Don't know.
Marc:But see, the weird thing is, how do you decide this Jerry Mulligan record is the record?
Marc:I mean, he's one of those guys.
Marc:What's he got, like 30 records out?
Marc:More.
Marc:So you listen to all of them?
Marc:No.
Marc:See, so you're not a completion, you're not the guy that has the, you're not the catalog guy.
Marc:You're not the guy that's like, you're okay with making the decision.
Guest:If we had to know everything before making a decision about something, we would never do anything.
Guest:We'd just be frozen.
Guest:No time.
Guest:We'd be sitting there frozen, you know, shaking.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's my life.
Guest:Maybe I should have more acceptance.
Guest:No, I think you can deal with... Okay.
Guest:You know about the new way of listening?
Guest:I think that...
Guest:And like we have the good thing that immediate infinite access does for us is that it can give us the sort of outline of a musician's career really fast.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, the example I always think of is like, let's say somebody dies, you know, like Lemmy dies.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you see it coming up on your Facebook or whatever, and you're like, I don't know who Lemmy is.
Guest:So, you look up that, and, you know, within two minutes, you've got...
Guest:You can see all the overhead records.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And you can find a place that tells you what the best period was and whatever.
Guest:And you can figure this all out in about an hour.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You can see the outline of the whole thing.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Between seeing the records and just doing a Wikipedia or whatever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Online, you can kind of get the arc.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I think that's useful for some artists that has 80 records.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No, it is.
Marc:It is useful.
Marc:And it's also like the weird thing is, is somebody like him where, you know, that's a sound, that's a lifestyle.
Marc:You know, that's a there's a method there that, you know, if you're going to lock into that, there's not going to be necessarily a lot of new things.
Marc:There's not going to be a period of Lemmy unless you go back to Hawkwind for those two records where he played bass and sang some that it's going to shift a lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I guess there's a comfort, but there's also a sort of like, if you're one of those people that needs to hear everything, you can kind of like hear the important records and then kind of click through the other nine records.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So now I have this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What do you think of Kamasi Washington?
Marc:I really like him.
Marc:Great, right?
Marc:Yeah, I really like him.
Marc:Now, let me just ask you a question.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Like, I'm coming to jazz.
Marc:You know, I know, like, I've listened to it.
Marc:I've listened closely to it.
Marc:I read Art Pepper's autobiography.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:But when I put on that Kamasi record, you know, first of all, epic and the cover art and the fact that his first record is three records, it's like, all right, he means business.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I talk to him in here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:nice guy it's great guy yeah yeah smart guy sweet guy got shit together but when i put that record on like right away like i was like there's a lot happening here yeah and and then when i found out that it was all played live i'm like the production this must have taken hours to sort of like take that and put that here but he does it all live right that's baffling
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think that record would go into the density chapter in my book.
Guest:But yeah, well, the guys in Kamasi's band have all played together since they were kids, which is that's so meaningful.
Guest:Because of the communication thing.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, uh, and the, I mean, I only started to see them.
Guest:I came out to LA like a year before the record came out and I saw that band for, for the first time.
Guest:All 90 of them.
Guest:Well, it was maybe only 10 that night.
Guest:I know people out here have known about him for a long time.
Guest:But in New York, we just don't hear about what Kamasi... We didn't know about him.
Guest:And I had that very pleasant experience seeing him and his band for the first time of like, what is going on?
Guest:I don't get it.
Guest:I don't understand how this group knows...
Guest:what one another is doing all the time.
Guest:I just don't get, like, this is mysterious to me.
Marc:But it was great, right?
Guest:It was really good.
Guest:And I guess you learn to trust yourself, too, that when you have that feeling of, like, whew,
Guest:i like this i like this a lot and i don't and i don't know where i am all right i don't know i don't know what's going on that's a really good uh that's you can trust that that's the magic thing yeah where you like there's something whole here well yeah and it's connecting with me yeah music is is mysterious yes like it's supposed to be that way yeah that's why it does you know yeah music is not words
Marc:I can remember all those things.
Marc:And I imagine that with this one, the essential jazz library here, this book, these records, that there's definitely, you can really remember when your mind got blown.
Marc:with music.
Marc:And you can remember who turns you on to it, because it's usually every time you get, whether it's you buying a record or whether it's someone going, you gotta listen to this, it's almost like this portal opens to an unknown world where you're like, holy shit.
Marc:All right, let's talk.
Marc:I feel like we could keep doing this with every artist that we talk about.
Marc:But I do want to sort of engage in the desire to create context where there is none in this world where we can have anything, anytime.
Marc:Right now, you could say, like, can we listen to some throat singing from Tuva?
Marc:I could be like, hang on a second.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And there it is.
Marc:The first time I heard that, I'm like, there's a lot going on.
Guest:I don't know about it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, I got really interested in the 20th century tradition of music appreciation, the music appreciation movement.
Guest:There was a movement?
Guest:Yeah, like starting late 1800s and then going really up to the 50s or 60s.
Guest:There were a lot of books that came out with the basic premise of...
Guest:So you want to be a reasonably educated person about music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Here's what you ought to know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was an attempt to democratize taste and all.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So there were these very influential, widely read books that came out.
Guest:And, you know, things that they were taught in high schools and stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was really entirely about, just almost entirely about Western classical music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sort of like Bach to Brahms.
Guest:and um and so i mean all that that movement is totally dead you know for many reasons yeah one of which is that we now understand that the western classical music is just like one thing among many right out there and um i thought but there's something about those books that i found really interesting i thought well if a book like that were to be written now what would it look like
Guest:And I thought, well, the first thing I thought was it wouldn't be about what the composer wants you to understand.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because listeners have so much more power now.
Guest:So it might be more about what it feels like to listen, you know.
Guest:So in a way, this book, Every Song Ever is like a music appreciation book from the listener side of things.
Guest:And instead of writing about music in terms of genres or movements or, you know, this is harmony, this is melody, this is rhythm, the chapters are based on experiences of hearing repetitive music, experiences of hearing slow music, you know.
Guest:Things that like everybody understands what slow.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Slowness is.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Repetition.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't need to have heard any song.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, to know what that means.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I just feel like these could be keys to, you know, so you like one kind of slow song.
Guest:Well, maybe you might like another kind of slow song from the 16th century that you have not encountered before, or from another continent, or from a culture that is different from your own.
Guest:Or some experimental musician.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a chapter about quiet and silence, that kind of thing.
Guest:That's different than slow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You have to be really slow to be quiet, I guess.
Marc:But those are the headings of these essays.
Marc:There's slowness, speed.
Marc:There's quiet, silence, intimacy.
Marc:Stubbornness in the single note.
Yeah.
Marc:yeah and you're able to track it you know with songs so that's i think that's the beautiful thing about what makes this book you know modern and relevant is that you know i went on spotify and i checked out the you know you put together uh a list what do they call it the spotify uh my publisher for our strauss made made a made a spotify playlist of like
Guest:almost every piece of music I refer to in this book and it's great 15 hours long right yeah but anyway in these chapters yeah like I mean the sort of stealth thesis of the book is that we should all listen to everything you know I mean like what what's why should we limit ourselves right so so genre is kind of out the window and
Guest:In this book.
Guest:And so like the repetition chapter, I write about James Brown and Steve Reich.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Rihanna and I don't know.
Guest:Kesha.
Guest:Yeah, I mentioned Kesha's song.
Guest:But just all these different pieces of music that use repetition.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I write about what is it for?
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:How does repetition work on you as a listener?
Guest:What's it all about?
Guest:And this is not one of these neurological books about listening.
Guest:I'm not a scientist.
Guest:I don't understand that.
Guest:But I can write about it as a listener, as an essayist, as somebody who knows something about how music works.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And these are suggestions about how to think about kinds of listening experiences.
Guest:Like these 20 ways to listen are not the 20 ways to listen.
Guest:It's just a way, it's to get people thinking about how they can, about how they're good listeners.
Marc:Right, and also, and I think the biggest trick,
Marc:in terms of people that will be interested, you know, that want to think about this stuff.
Marc:I think as a critic and also as somebody, you know, who wants to have an open mind and be an educated, sophisticated person, I think mostly what stops people from doing it is like, that sucks.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then what stops people from opening their mind is like, who the hell's that guy?
Marc:Also, there's a thing of like- Who the hell is this Ratliff dude?
Guest:What does he know?
Guest:Well, there's that.
Guest:I'm familiar with that.
Guest:But then there's the thing, when you're listening, yeah, there can be that reaction of somebody like me doesn't like that kind of music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Someone like me.
Guest:This music is not for someone like me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that bothers me.
Marc:Yeah, it bothers me, too, because like a lot of times, like, I mean, I don't think I've quite said that.
Marc:What I usually say is like, I don't know a lot about that.
Marc:You know, I don't know, like, because when people go hip-hop, I'm like, you know, I didn't grow up with hip-hop, so it's not, like, it's not a fundamental to me.
Marc:But, like, I've listened to a few, you know, Connie records, Jay-Z records, Cypress Hill records, you know, even going Ghetto Boys records, I mean, I've listened to those over and over again, but for me...
Marc:The primary reason with rapper hip hop is like, I'm not fundamentally a lyrics guy.
Marc:And the amount of active listening I have to do is a little hard.
Guest:I was gonna ask you about that.
Guest:You know, because we were listening to that Kinks record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And everybody talks about Ray Davies being really good with words.
Guest:Yeah, he is.
Guest:And I was about to confess to you that I think I'm maybe not, words are not really the highest priority for me.
Guest:Oh, not me either.
Guest:I love words.
Marc:I rarely know what they're saying.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And it's weird because I don't process it.
Marc:And like I've had to recently try, you know, there's certain songs like, there's certain songs I know the words to.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And blues songs there, I know the words to some Velvet Underground songs, some, yeah, but sometimes words aren't even easy to hear.
Marc:I like their country songs, I can take the words and I enjoy listening to them, but for the most part, I'm listening for tone and for mood and for rhythm and for how I feel.
Marc:Rarely until, and I'm a writer guy, I like poetry, but when it comes to music, it's not my first thing, I wanna rock.
Guest:right right yeah you want that feeling yeah i do that feeling yeah yeah that that that motion you want that feeling of emotion yeah yeah but so back to jazz for a minute sure i mean you're a you're a stand-up comedian yeah so so you know about improvising
Marc:right but like i just recently like as of the last two days you're getting me a good good day here that you know you hear about that yeah you hear about riffing i want to talk about that word okay can we do a little sidebar sure yeah
Guest:Riffing.
Guest:I always understood the riff to mean like a short, repeated statement.
Marc:I think that is, yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Whatever.
Marc:Yeah, power riff.
Guest:A short thing repeated.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then I think maybe in comedy, the word took on another meaning, which is the opposite, meaning improvising, going all over the place, never necessarily coming back.
Marc:What do jazz guys call it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, in jazz, we talk about riffs being those short, repeated statements.
Guest:Like Ellington wrote great riffs.
Guest:Right, the catchy thing.
Guest:Riff tunes.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But anyway, I feel like it's one of those curious words that has, over time, changed its meaning completely.
Guest:And so I wanted to ask you, like...
Guest:Have you always been aware of that word to mean just going off?
Marc:Yeah, I thought that's what it meant.
Guest:And never necessarily coming back to my name.
Marc:But I knew the definition you're telling me, but I never really thought that there was something, like I know a power riff.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, and they're important.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like people talk about the riffs that have defined rock music.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But riffing, I guess, yeah, maybe it has taken on a different meaning, but it does mean improvising.
Marc:So let me shift it in terms of like, like I had this realization about what you and I think I might have gotten it, you know, in some ways from reading the amount that I read in the Coltrane book was that.
Marc:Because I write improvisationally.
Marc:I don't write jokes.
Marc:It all happens on stage.
Marc:It all has to be organic.
Marc:It all starts with conversation.
Marc:It all starts with me thinking out loud and finding it.
Marc:That's just the way I do it.
Marc:I've always done it that way.
Marc:It's not an easy way to do things.
Marc:But it takes a certain amount of confidence and willingness to run into the dirt.
Marc:You can fucking go, and then you just end up in a ditch.
Marc:But you start to find the things that work.
Marc:And then like for me, it's always been about like, well, there's other places that you can go further.
Marc:So what I do is that if I'm on stage and I have a premise and that gets a laugh in that moment, if I'm feeling it, you just keep going.
Marc:And that's how I write.
Marc:I don't know where it comes from, I don't know where it's delivered from, but it's that moment where that happens for the first time, and I'm like, that was the whole show for me.
Marc:They can walk out after an hour and go, I really liked the show, and I'm like, yeah, but that one line.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:That was what was delivered.
Marc:And I know that.
Marc:But like you were saying with Coltrane and these cats is that once you lay down the groove and the structures there like the blues, like that's I think what I'm drawing from essentially is that whatever the 145 or whatever the minors are, whatever they add to that, that's the groundwork and that's where you depart from.
Marc:And you can land there.
Marc:Right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's the groundwork.
Guest:That's the framework.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or the consensual language between a group of people.
Marc:And that I started to realize more concisely about what I do.
Marc:I'm not tooting my own horn.
Marc:It's just the way I work.
Marc:That you do it innately.
Marc:It's like, well, here's the shit.
Marc:We're warmed up.
Marc:Table set.
Marc:Now let's go.
Marc:And I'll come back later.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:But you also must be really proud of certain things you've done that involve brilliant structure.
Marc:Well, that's the last special I did.
Marc:I was very clear about it.
Marc:I'm going to repeat this shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm going to get it tight.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's going to be callbacks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's all going to come around at the end.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And there's a little bit of an arc to it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's a piece.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, definitely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I'm not fundamentally like that because I like, I don't know if it comes from the insecurity or not.
Marc:I like it when it's sort of loose and like I can walk away going like, I didn't think that would happen.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, but that's an act too sometimes.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But in the book, what you do throughout it all is you provide this context of appreciation.
Marc:That's really what you're doing.
Marc:And I guess what I was saying before was that even when I read a book like this, there are moments where...
Marc:you think that it's not so much of a pressure on me as a listener or whether or not I trust you or your tone.
Marc:There's something that implies like, no, I got homework in some level in a way.
Marc:So in the sense that I'm listening to the Spotify list and I'm enjoying it and I'm going through stuff and I'm seeing how it connects to the essay headings and what your point you're trying to make.
Marc:But I think that's one of the reasons why
Marc:just in general, politically, personally, otherwise, people don't like change.
Marc:They don't like new things necessarily, because they're set in their ways.
Marc:But I think what you provide here is this, if they look at the book as kind of a fun process, that you can open minds, because it doesn't matter if people go back to it.
Guest:it just matters that you know you've widened the the the perception that's it right yeah and um like i mean i see that i i feel that that is its own virtue i really do like you know what what good is it to know about um cuban music if you want to know more about punk
Guest:In a way, it doesn't make sense.
Guest:But I just feel that it gives you a wider frame of reference.
Guest:Having a wider frame of reference is just intrinsically good.
Guest:No, absolutely.
Guest:But also, that was the job I stepped into 20 years ago.
Guest:It was like, you know, one of my...
Guest:predecessors was this guy Robert Palmer yeah I remember him and he and the people that followed him he was a rock guy though primarily wasn't he but he wrote about jazz and Cuban music and African music and whatever and he was just he was wide open you know
Guest:And by the time I got there in 96, that was kind of what I was expected to do.
Guest:And it was amazing that the expectation was that, you know, I'd be writing about Ornette Coleman one day and Janet Jackson the next day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and a metal band.
Guest:So that was part of your education.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I'm really grateful for that.
Guest:Specialized knowledge is a weird thing.
Guest:I mean, having done this kind of work for a long time, I'm always running into people who know everything about this topic.
Guest:You don't want to be that guy, though.
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:No.
Guest:And I'm glad those people exist because they're very, very helpful.
Guest:For an hour.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Or in small doses.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because that's the nerd element of that, of the specialized nerd.
Marc:is so control oriented and, and also sort of like, you know, I know it all.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you're right.
Marc:They're useful, but you know, you can, you have to limit your coffee time.
Guest:I also don't want to feel like I own anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I don't want to feel like a sense of, um, property.
Marc:Right.
Guest:About any of this, you know, um, um, and, and, or wanting to patrol it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um,
Guest:I just want to connect things.
Guest:You know, like I want to describe, interpret, connect.
Marc:So you're gunning for the thing, like we talked about before.
Marc:The one thing that if it wasn't there, everything would fall apart in music as an entirety.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Yeah, you want to pull the curtain back.
Marc:You're probably, I don't know.
Marc:That's going to be a lifelong thing, I think.
Guest:Well, also, again, it's like the results of the training because we don't really write about concerts anymore in the New York Times.
Guest:It's kind of weird.
Guest:Why is that, you think?
Guest:Very recently, it's been understood that most concert reviews don't get read widely enough.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because people think, like, well, I wasn't there.
Guest:Or is there another one coming up?
Guest:That's definitely part of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I think maybe people are tired of the box with text in it called review.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:They want something different.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So...
Guest:uh anyway i you know for 20 years i go to a concert i've got my notebook i just write things down because it's a habit but i don't use practically anything right that i've written down what it comes down to the next morning when i'm writing is i remember something just a little detail yeah one or two things and that's where i'm going to start from that the act of writing sometimes just solidifies it in the brain yeah you know
Marc:So do you dance?
Guest:A little.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Guest:I move.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:I move.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah, that's good.
Guest:No, I mean, I'm, you know, I don't, you mean, do I go out and dance?
Guest:Do I go to clubs to dance?
Guest:Well, I mean, like at home, like, you know, when you're listening to your guy who listens to a lot of music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you move around a little bit?
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want to know how that feels.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, like...
Marc:um that's sort of what it's all about yeah you know yeah engagement on sure yeah yeah get something going yeah you know i don't do it out in public as much sometimes i'll do it at home a bit you know i'll feel it you know yeah i don't know why like i think someone's got to write a book about dance that like this book
Marc:I think it feels like dancing is a joyous thing that we're all a little embarrassed to do.
Marc:I think that if everybody danced a little bit, like maybe if there was a dance break during the day in this country, like other countries take naps, it might be helpful.
Marc:That's a great idea.
Marc:Dance day.
Marc:That's a really great idea.
Marc:Well, it was good talking to you.
Marc:Do you feel like we did it?
Guest:I think we did it.
Guest:Did something?
Guest:I think we did it, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You want to hear one song of that remixed Get Your Yaya's Out on My System?
Marc:Yes, I do.
Marc:All right, Ben.
Marc:Thanks for talking.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Okay, that was a pretty full episode.
Marc:I hope you all go out and buy some jazz records.
Marc:Get that epic Kamasi Washington.
Marc:Before we go, go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:No music today.
Marc:I gotta go to set.
Marc:I'm shooting a thing.
Marc:Glow.
Marc:Gorgeous ladies of wrestling.
Marc:I'll tell you more about that.
Marc:I will tell you a little tidbit here at the end, but my character has a mild propensity to do a little blow occasionally, so I wanted to make sure I got that wet inside the nose vibe, so I was doing that thing that those of you who do blow know where you take a little water and you snort a little water, dump a little water in your hand, or
Marc:running under the sink with your fingers and pull it up into your nose.
Marc:So I was doing that out in public.
Marc:So at least one or two people on set probably think I'm really doing blow.
Marc:But I'm not.
Marc:Boomer lives!