Just in time for Epiphany, 2025.
Saturday, January 4, 2025
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Tempus fugit ...
and sometimes things actually get done along the way. Haven't posted anything here for a long while, but this link my discography at Spotify should fill in a few gaps.
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Revenant Psalms
Revenant Psalms is the seventh record in a twelve-month, which started with The Great Western Road on June 29, 2020. You can listen to it and access streaming services (four up, more being added) at Hear Now:
For other musical activity, see the last year of blog posts over at The Year D Project.
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
The Great Western Road (CD)
Well, it has been a really long time in the making, or rather, in the aging process, but here is my third album, The Great Western Road. Combining some of my oldest material and some brand new things, it was recorded (mostly) in early June. Like A Soundtrack for the Close of the Age, it is instrumental, though unlike that first album from 1991, which was mostly keyboards and some guitar, this is mostly guitar, with some keys, and is more contemplative (in the style of Ant Phillips). This will be clear from the very first track. After I finally got the audio files uploaded, I discovered two other records from the twenty-teens with the same or similar album title. I have not heard those albums and have no idea what style they represent. But since the title of this record comes from the eponymous guitar suite and that suite was featured in a concert (and in an intended, but never released "live album") from 1994, an "event" also promoted under this title, I think I can claim the oldest sell-by date, for whatever that may be worth, as well as a less urban focus (if those album covers are any indication).
Based on some comments I had from folks last November/December, however, it became clear that I could be a better steward of this material and should probably record it before I forget how to play it. If I can get the old demo and live versions from that concert—my one-stop, one-performance "world tour"—up to a listenable state for an archive sequel, that would at least help clear out the "vault."
It just so happens this record came out the same week as my latest book: Elaborations of the Psalms (1—50), which I also started writing some time ago (in 2005) and took up again and finished earlier this year (2020).
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Of the giants, humans, and ants of progressive rock OR A bunch of blatant name-dropping by a starry-eyed little boy in his sixth decade of life
Time to post something on this blog again, despite the fact it has never quite caught on. I am thinking about Keith Emerson today, and of those who have been posting tributes, memorials, and condolences, including the likes of Peter Gabriel and Dave Stewart (Egg, Hatfield, National Health, Bruford, Stewart/Gaskin), both of whom spoke most wistfully and adoringly of Emerson's work with The Nice, although they were also appreciative of his work with Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.
The Nice were before my awakening to what was then current and cool. I think I was probably more into Snoopy and the Red Baron than progressive rock when The Nice were covering Bernstein. I was only introduced to ELP through my brother, his friend William and William's brother John, with which little foursome I went to my first concert. It was ELP's Works (I) tour. Soon after I went to see Genesis (...And Then There Were Three, plus Daryl Stuermer and Chester Thompson) and Jethro Tull (Heavy Horses), Rush (Farewell to Kings, or so I think). Needless to say, I was hooked on the big shows, the most ostentatious bands, especially those with the craziest time signatures. It was the 1978 concert season. What a thrill. Anyone who thinks the 1970s produced no good music was listening to the wrong stuff.
So it was interesting to read this week, before the latest details emerged, of the gigantic impression Keith Emerson made on these two guys (Gabriel and Stewart) whose reputations have appeared gigantic to me. Such comparisons are, by nature, relative. Duh. But it is the scale of the multiple comparisons I find striking. Well aware that Emerson had in many ways completely reinvented keyboard for rock, I had not known, however, that Jimi Hendrix (who clearly did the same for the guitar) was close to joining The Nice at one point. One can now see how, in ancient days, mere suggestions and brushings of elbows among the great ones could spawn whole new quantum stages for legend and imagination. (Little known fact: at one point Elton John—who borrowed his name from Elton Dean for the stage—was considered for joining King Crimson, but thank goodness for all concerned that never happened.)
Meanwhile, Dave Stewart writes so humbly and admiringly of Emerson that, if one were not aware of his own massive and inspiring oeuvre, one would think he really is as minuscule as the mouse, or the ant, currently running across this very different keyboard.
I think I mentioned in a previous post that in my "year of study abroad" (1992-93), I dropped by a little house east of London one day to deliver an unsolicited tape to what I thought might be Stewart's address. The chap inside was not he, but was very pleasant nevertheless and did not seem to mind the interruption; he was kind enough to take the tape and promised to pass it on. We agreed that, if one wanted an opinion on the merits of a record with lots of keyboards, Dave was "the man" — his words, to which I nodded deeply and reverently.
Not long thereafter I received a postcard (which I have buried somewhere, but not lost). It featured Barbara Gaskin's artwork, I think, and a cordial, supportive message from Dave, with his signature half-note surrounded by a corona of dashes, which I took (perhaps too optimistically as regards the quality of the record) to be saying, "Nothing to be ashamed of here," but also suggesting: (1) I needed a bigger variety of sounds in my palette (i.e., more expensive gear), and (2) I might want to rethink the obvious, upfront religious agenda signaled never so subtly by uttering The Apostles' Creed unaccompanied, unadorned, and naked as a jay bird, on Track One.
Needless to say, I never quite managed to cobble together enough gear (or enough talent) to have a proper musical career, but I am indebted to Dave Stewart, not least for his courtesy in responding, but also for an article in Keyboard magazine in which he suggested a compositional crowbar to get you unstuck when you need to resolve a section or a solo and move on: a cascading arpeggio thingy that I did indeed use to complete the middle section of "Oran Mor" and move on to the closing cacophony. As I recall, other than "Imago Dei," which did not come along until Glasgow in 1993 under the mixing boardwork of Andy Thornton, this was the last section of A Soundtrack for the Close of the Age that finally fell into place before going into Jack Black's Jump Studio (no relation to the School of Rock guy, sorry).
O nostalgia. Walter Brueggemann has recently written his warnings against it, to which I can add nothing, except, as I wrote to a friend recently who is aching for the past and for loved ones since passed away: "I too long for former days, but then I am reminded, as Kierkegaard said, 'we live forward,' so then I ask God to take all my nostalgia and remake it and reserve it for the future, when we shall never again run out of time with one another." That — the fellowship of the saints — is a large part, but just a part, of the promise of the resurrection to eternal life.
I am glad I at least had the chance to recite the Creed for one of my progressive rock heroes, who (it turns out) is a mortal human after all, who himself regards Emerson as a giant, and next to whom I am in turn, by comparison, a mere musical microbe, unworthy of any comparison at all.
Meanwhile, the whole "family" of British prog rockers, folk-rock and jazz-rock fusion types, from the Canterbury tea-totalers to the Skye-dwelling frontman often mistaken for a guy named Jethro, et al., are much on my mind these days and much in my prayers. I hope they will, one by one, reach out to those of their ilk, such as Rick Wakeman or Steve Hackett or any of the handful of their graduating class, who appear to have heard and believed the good news of Jesus Christ. I also hope, before they start up a medicinal regimen of prescriptions that include suicidal side-effects, they will first spend some time reading and praying the psalms and maybe even discover The Secret of Salix Babylonicus, the purpose for which we are given tear ducts, and the gracious promises of the One who invented tears and even "records" them, along with inventing the entire musical and aural dimension, and, yes, the whole of creation itself. If the great high Triune God who set the table for music itself is himself knowable, then I would say to one and all of my musical heroes, this God is well worth knowing.
The Nice were before my awakening to what was then current and cool. I think I was probably more into Snoopy and the Red Baron than progressive rock when The Nice were covering Bernstein. I was only introduced to ELP through my brother, his friend William and William's brother John, with which little foursome I went to my first concert. It was ELP's Works (I) tour. Soon after I went to see Genesis (...And Then There Were Three, plus Daryl Stuermer and Chester Thompson) and Jethro Tull (Heavy Horses), Rush (Farewell to Kings, or so I think). Needless to say, I was hooked on the big shows, the most ostentatious bands, especially those with the craziest time signatures. It was the 1978 concert season. What a thrill. Anyone who thinks the 1970s produced no good music was listening to the wrong stuff.
So it was interesting to read this week, before the latest details emerged, of the gigantic impression Keith Emerson made on these two guys (Gabriel and Stewart) whose reputations have appeared gigantic to me. Such comparisons are, by nature, relative. Duh. But it is the scale of the multiple comparisons I find striking. Well aware that Emerson had in many ways completely reinvented keyboard for rock, I had not known, however, that Jimi Hendrix (who clearly did the same for the guitar) was close to joining The Nice at one point. One can now see how, in ancient days, mere suggestions and brushings of elbows among the great ones could spawn whole new quantum stages for legend and imagination. (Little known fact: at one point Elton John—who borrowed his name from Elton Dean for the stage—was considered for joining King Crimson, but thank goodness for all concerned that never happened.)
Meanwhile, Dave Stewart writes so humbly and admiringly of Emerson that, if one were not aware of his own massive and inspiring oeuvre, one would think he really is as minuscule as the mouse, or the ant, currently running across this very different keyboard.
I think I mentioned in a previous post that in my "year of study abroad" (1992-93), I dropped by a little house east of London one day to deliver an unsolicited tape to what I thought might be Stewart's address. The chap inside was not he, but was very pleasant nevertheless and did not seem to mind the interruption; he was kind enough to take the tape and promised to pass it on. We agreed that, if one wanted an opinion on the merits of a record with lots of keyboards, Dave was "the man" — his words, to which I nodded deeply and reverently.
Not long thereafter I received a postcard (which I have buried somewhere, but not lost). It featured Barbara Gaskin's artwork, I think, and a cordial, supportive message from Dave, with his signature half-note surrounded by a corona of dashes, which I took (perhaps too optimistically as regards the quality of the record) to be saying, "Nothing to be ashamed of here," but also suggesting: (1) I needed a bigger variety of sounds in my palette (i.e., more expensive gear), and (2) I might want to rethink the obvious, upfront religious agenda signaled never so subtly by uttering The Apostles' Creed unaccompanied, unadorned, and naked as a jay bird, on Track One.
Needless to say, I never quite managed to cobble together enough gear (or enough talent) to have a proper musical career, but I am indebted to Dave Stewart, not least for his courtesy in responding, but also for an article in Keyboard magazine in which he suggested a compositional crowbar to get you unstuck when you need to resolve a section or a solo and move on: a cascading arpeggio thingy that I did indeed use to complete the middle section of "Oran Mor" and move on to the closing cacophony. As I recall, other than "Imago Dei," which did not come along until Glasgow in 1993 under the mixing boardwork of Andy Thornton, this was the last section of A Soundtrack for the Close of the Age that finally fell into place before going into Jack Black's Jump Studio (no relation to the School of Rock guy, sorry).
O nostalgia. Walter Brueggemann has recently written his warnings against it, to which I can add nothing, except, as I wrote to a friend recently who is aching for the past and for loved ones since passed away: "I too long for former days, but then I am reminded, as Kierkegaard said, 'we live forward,' so then I ask God to take all my nostalgia and remake it and reserve it for the future, when we shall never again run out of time with one another." That — the fellowship of the saints — is a large part, but just a part, of the promise of the resurrection to eternal life.
I am glad I at least had the chance to recite the Creed for one of my progressive rock heroes, who (it turns out) is a mortal human after all, who himself regards Emerson as a giant, and next to whom I am in turn, by comparison, a mere musical microbe, unworthy of any comparison at all.
Meanwhile, the whole "family" of British prog rockers, folk-rock and jazz-rock fusion types, from the Canterbury tea-totalers to the Skye-dwelling frontman often mistaken for a guy named Jethro, et al., are much on my mind these days and much in my prayers. I hope they will, one by one, reach out to those of their ilk, such as Rick Wakeman or Steve Hackett or any of the handful of their graduating class, who appear to have heard and believed the good news of Jesus Christ. I also hope, before they start up a medicinal regimen of prescriptions that include suicidal side-effects, they will first spend some time reading and praying the psalms and maybe even discover The Secret of Salix Babylonicus, the purpose for which we are given tear ducts, and the gracious promises of the One who invented tears and even "records" them, along with inventing the entire musical and aural dimension, and, yes, the whole of creation itself. If the great high Triune God who set the table for music itself is himself knowable, then I would say to one and all of my musical heroes, this God is well worth knowing.
Friday, December 5, 2014
"… And They Were Given Seven Trumpets" [A Soundtrack for the Close of the Age]
[UPDATE: December 5, 2014] Make that twenty plus four. Sorry to say that Amazon has since nixed offering .mp3 samples of CreateSpace audio, so even that short appetizer is now gone.
Meanwhile, tonight the UD chorus will be performing a selection of Christmas music, the narrative interludes for which yours truly contributed the text, with frequent quotations from Scripture and a previously published poem based on Matthew 2:1-12, which can be found in The Just, Quiet Wind (p. 12). Twenty-four years after my first "music only" recording (instrumental but for the Apostles' Creed), this "words only" contribution. It will be fun to hear what the readers do with it. Perhaps if you are in the area you can come to Heritage Center at 7:30PM.
[FIRST POSTED: December 5, 2013] "It was twenty (plus three) years ago today," … I went into the studio (Woodland West) and recorded this "... And They Were Given Seven Trumpets."
The title is a quotation of Revelation 8:2. It was inspired by an extraordinarily robust, even beefy, trumpet patch on my Yamaha SY-77. Unfortunately, you don't catch that sound on the MP3 sample, and until I migrate over to Bandcamp or something, sampling auditors have to make do with Amazon's short snippets.
Meanwhile, rhythmically speaking, the drum track with its meticulous fills is nicely augmented with the four-mallet vibes. OK, the vibes are also a keyboard patch, but having played in a high school jazz band once with a guest vibraphone player, it only made sense to me that a realistic vibe patch begged an equally realistic use of the same. A musicologist friend of mine, on hearing this piece, said, "The vibes make the track." More recently, someone commented that the "register" reminded him of Rick Wakeman's synth-based work from the early seventies. As for me, I like the way the classic Yamaha DX-7 Rhodes patch (overused though it may be) takes over after the break—a pleasant sound to stabilize matters after the disruption and atop the resumed driving beat of the HR-16 drum "kit." Oh, and I do always enjoy the hair-raising burnouts.
I'm happy to say, it still rocks.
Meanwhile, tonight the UD chorus will be performing a selection of Christmas music, the narrative interludes for which yours truly contributed the text, with frequent quotations from Scripture and a previously published poem based on Matthew 2:1-12, which can be found in The Just, Quiet Wind (p. 12). Twenty-four years after my first "music only" recording (instrumental but for the Apostles' Creed), this "words only" contribution. It will be fun to hear what the readers do with it. Perhaps if you are in the area you can come to Heritage Center at 7:30PM.
[FIRST POSTED: December 5, 2013] "It was twenty (plus three) years ago today," … I went into the studio (Woodland West) and recorded this "... And They Were Given Seven Trumpets."
The title is a quotation of Revelation 8:2. It was inspired by an extraordinarily robust, even beefy, trumpet patch on my Yamaha SY-77. Unfortunately, you don't catch that sound on the MP3 sample, and until I migrate over to Bandcamp or something, sampling auditors have to make do with Amazon's short snippets.
Meanwhile, rhythmically speaking, the drum track with its meticulous fills is nicely augmented with the four-mallet vibes. OK, the vibes are also a keyboard patch, but having played in a high school jazz band once with a guest vibraphone player, it only made sense to me that a realistic vibe patch begged an equally realistic use of the same. A musicologist friend of mine, on hearing this piece, said, "The vibes make the track." More recently, someone commented that the "register" reminded him of Rick Wakeman's synth-based work from the early seventies. As for me, I like the way the classic Yamaha DX-7 Rhodes patch (overused though it may be) takes over after the break—a pleasant sound to stabilize matters after the disruption and atop the resumed driving beat of the HR-16 drum "kit." Oh, and I do always enjoy the hair-raising burnouts.
I'm happy to say, it still rocks.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Harmless helicopters
There was a guy walking on our roof yesterday, leaf blower in hand. His crunching footsteps overhead got my attention, as did the gobs of autumnal debris that came sailing out of the gutters onto our deck. This happens every year. This year, though, he kindly blew the stuff off the deck as well, so the subsequent sweeping would not be quite the chore it has been in the past. As I heard him make his way toward the kitchen side of the condo, I ran to the sink and watched as he sent a great plume of maple seeds flying, a tiny, silent invasion force of harmless helicopters drifting down, down, down, three stories to the wooded creek below. It was beautiful. It reminded me of my dad, whose architectural logo—on business card, letterhead, and sign—was the maple seed.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
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