Dear readers (of the ABEL class and elsewhere),
Early this evening I visited Iowa City's Real Records (on Market and North Linn St., for you Iowans who haven't made the trip) for the purposes of collecting albums that might pertain to this blog and to an understanding of the financial side of brass playing. I picked up (cheaply) a reviewer's used CD of Herb Alpert's "South of the Border," and a fascinating LP: a 1978 A&M Records release entitled "Herb Alpert*Hugh Masekela." For those of you who don't know South African flugelhornists Hugh Masekela, he probably has the best-selling flugelhorn instrumental in history with the 1968 smash-hit "Grazing in the Grass." (Eat your heart out, Chuck Mangione.) The single sold 4 million copies. (Imagine me saying that in a Dr. Evil voice, and it's pretty funny.)
Recipe for success, ya think? If you haven't heard "Grazin'" check out this interesting little NPR piece on him a few years ago, that covers his anti-apartheid heroics as well as his commercial success and later artistic collaborations.
Both will generate future posts, as will a two CD set by trumpeter Dave Douglas, on cornet actually, in Dave Douglas Quintet: Live at the Jazz Standard. That link will send you to Greenleaf Music, a label Douglas founded to release his own music. During a week at the jazz club, his quintet would release that night's entire set via download the next day from his label's website, so that there were six straight days of absolutely new content with "no carbon footprint." In all there are 44 tracks, from which Douglas chose two CDs worth for Koch Records (who distributed the two-CD set). Douglas has been self-producing for a few years following a stint at RCA records, where his albums were uncommercial as ever. In a future post, though, I will examine his liner note essay in this album that is almost an apology for the album itself! He talks about the conflicts of being a 44 year-old lost in the shuffle of the download age and wanting to catch up.
But when I first walked in the store, I walked into a hilarious conversation. A hipster girl was categorizing CDs, and told the grizzled white-haired owner,
"That's so tacky! That's a really disgusting name!"
to which he replied
"What?! It's the name of the instrument! They're an amazing instrumental funk band."
"But still..."
to which I chimed in, not having heard the group but having heard the name from the other ABEL folks,
"Hey, are you talking about Bonearama? They're really amazing. It's seriously intense music."
The owner almost smiled, and I established, through my virtual ESP, some totally unearned hipster cred.
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1 comment:
It is simply too mind-blowing a concept for me to wrap my head around that anyone can outsell Chuck Mangione!
Funny story about Charles...My father-in-law always tries to relate to me as a trombonist, so he will tell me about somewhere he saw one or some movie that had trombone in it. There were four times in a row where we visited them and he put this soundtrack on - written by Chuck Mangione - where there were trombones. I don't remember the name of the film. I should get it though.
Also, it was bad....
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