A quick note: some of you may have read this story already, in print or online; aggregating my work at one site can lead to this sort of thing. Apologies to those of you for whom this is not new.

On the night of January 16, 1958, at the Pershing Lounge in Chicago, Ahmad Jamal sat down to play piano.  He was joined, as he had been on many nights previous, by Israel Crosby on bass and Vernell Fournier on drums. The three were artists in residence at the Pershing, and had been playing together for months.

On that Thursday night, though, Jamal’s performance would change a few things. It would change how people thought about jazz. It would change the way musicians approached their craft. And it would change how I thought about my father, albeit after he died, by becoming part of a gift he gave me.

It was a gift we never talked about, one he gave unknowingly, one I did not realize the value of while he was alive. But it was a gift all the same as I’ll explain in a moment. For now though, all you need to know is that January 16 was the night that Ahmad Jamal’s performance of “Poinciana” was recorded.

The song had been a standard in Jamal’s repertoire for long before the recording was made, and as I have no friends that were regulars at the Pershing in the late 50s I have no way of knowing if that particular night’s rendition was in some way different from those that came before or those to follow.

But that’s irrelevant; the fact that it was recorded and released on vinyl made that night’s performance incredibly important. Because that’s what would allow it to reach well beyond the confines of the Pershing, and last far longer than the few minutes it took to play.

At the time, great jazz players were often judged by their ability to create fireworks. Virtuoso runs, complex arrangements, and mastery of an instrument demonstrated with jaw-dropping playing were what mattered. But Ahmad Jamal’s brilliance lay not just in how he played, but in how he didn’t. Jamal was far more subtle than most of his contemporaries; he was a master of time and space.

Musicians like Miles Davis, who once said “I live for the next Ahmad Jamal album,” may have venerated Jamal, but the general public had yet to be hipped to his style. That all changed when At the Pershing: But Not for Me, the original album on which the Pershing Lounge recording of “Poinciana” appeared, was released.

Unlike any jazz album released prior, it would remain charted for over two years, and more than a half-century later the recording of “Poinciana” still stands up as one of the most perfect jazz piano performances I have ever heard. And it’s not just me that thinks so: for years following its release, Chicago-style jazz was synonymous with piano, with Ahmad Jamal, with that performance of “Poinciana.”

But there’s another time and place relevant to this story: the time was almost 20 years before “Poinciana” was recorded, and the place was Princeton University, where my father was attending school. His major was engineering, but he had an unofficial minor in music. Dad, apparently, liked to sing: something I didn’t learn until long after he had given it up.

In 1941 though, he was still singing. Originally in the glee club, dad and six other Princetonians decided that they wanted a little more freedom of choice in what they sang and formed their own close-harmony a cappella singing group called the Nassoons.

The details of the Nassoons’ formation seem to vary slightly depending on who’s telling the tale, but there is one common thread: the group’s big break came at a Yale/Princeton concert (or football game, or both – 70 years tends to introduce a bit of fog) at which the Nassoons were asked to perform. They chose to sing a song that the glee club had been banned from singing due to racy lyrics, “Perfidia” (Eminem wasn’t around yet, apparently).

A standing ovation followed the performance, and my dad and his fellow Nassoons, having nothing else ready, performed the same song a second time as an encore. Their performance that day, like Jamal’s would two decades later, reached far beyond the date and place it occurred. The Nassoons are a highly regarded a cappella group that still tours and performs regularly, and even 70 years later they close every performance with “Perfidia.” In fact, you can see the 2007 Nassons sing it here, 66 years after dad and his friends did:

During the decades I knew him, my father didn’t sing much. At times, he’d jump in and improvise a bass line to something on the radio, or he’d sing the old Nassoons theme or perhaps “Perfidia,” but he was quiet about it. Not that he was embarrassed of his singing; he wasn’t.

I think, instead, that was worried about enjoying it too much, or letting people know how much it meant to him once upon a time. He rarely talked about the Nassoons and I regret not asking him about the group when I had a chance, but he rarely talked about himself at all. If and when he did, I expect I paid him little mind, being more interested in girls and my own teen-aged angst than tales of an era that I assumed meant nothing to me.

Despite that lost opportunity to connect though, he did pass his love of music on to me, if unwittingly; though he may have walked away from singing, he never walked away from jazz. He had a ton of albums spanning decades that he listened to regularly, some of which I still have, and among them was the original release of that 1959 recording of “Poinciana.”

He never overtly let on how much he loved music, and he never sat me down to listen to something he thought particularly brilliant. But the music was always there, a soundtrack to the living room or den in which he worked. He played music when he was happy, when he was angry, when he and my mother wanted to dance.

It was Miles, or Ahmad, or Herb, or Erroll, or Benny that filled the house when I was young and demonstrated for me the transformative effect on mood that music could have; on his mood, on my mood. Had we spent the time to sit down and listen to music together, to talk about it, I think we might have both been a bit better, and happier, for it. Music has a way of doing that.

But although that was never something my father and I did, it’s something I’ve been doing with my children since they were tiny. My daughter, in fact, became a Bjork fan while still in utero (no, I’m not kidding). She now plays French horn and argues with me about the relative merits of music I wish didn’t exist (at least she’s passionate about it).

My son also loves music, and has eclectic tastes: he recently developed an odd affection for Rammstein, the German industrial metal band. He appears to be heading towards being a drummer, though today he mentioned wanting to act (of course, that may be a 10-year-old’s idea of a great way to meet girls – we’ll see).

And me? I’m sure that growing up listening to dad’s records, and watching him listen to his records, helped develop my love of music and my desire to pass that on to my children. “Poinciana” held a particular place of honor in that experience, and every note, every pause, every moment of that performance has stayed with me for me for forty years.

Today when I hear that 1959 recording, I’m reminded of the gift my father unwittingly helped give me, and that I’d like to have talked to him about it while he was alive. And then I think of the opportunity I was given with my children, and the gift I hope to have given them: that regardless of what horrid, auto-tuned disasters they choose to listen to now or in the future, Joe Jackson, or Led Zeppelin, or Lou Reed, or Yes will in some way be their own “Poinciana.”

If you’re interested in hearing the that night’s version of “Poinciana,” you can click here for a 30 second teaser at Last.fm. Better yet, there’s an import CD at Amazon.com that includes the entire original “But Not For Me” album plus a ton of bonus cuts. $15 well spent, trust me: Ahmad Jamal Trio – Complete Live at the Pershing Lounge 1958

If you’ve read Bone in the Fan or The Meatist with any regularity, you know I’m a Ty Segall fan. I caught his live show in Austin during SXSW 2010, and, despite the fact that both Death and alt-press liplock recipients Surfer Blood were playing at the same venue, Segall’s set was by far the best of the night, and one of my favorite shows of the entire week.

The thing is, and perhaps this is a function of me being a bitter old man born in the 60s, an awful lot of bands I hear these days, particularly those that might be loosely termed “punk rock,” strike me as a bunch of pathetic, derivative poseurs that wouldn’t have lasted though one set in NYC or DC pre-’85. Sorry, Attack Attack!.

Ty Segall, on the other hand, is exactly what I wanted to hear. An authentic player who throws himself into the show, with no apparent planning for what might look cool, instead opting for doing what the fuck he wants to do, and with whom. Segall’s show wasn’t a copy of something he saw in a film about the old scene, it just happened to be as good and authentic as a set from back then. I even chased Segall and his chick drummer down after the show to tell them so, though I may have come across as a fawning, inebriated douche that longed for the old days (partly true, that) and somehow managed to cop backstage access (actually, I was an inebriated douche covering SXSW for legitimate press outlets).

It was just what I needed that night: a trip back in time to what could have easily been CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, Mudd Club or the 9:30 Club, venues in which I spent many a night in the late 70s and early 80s. So it seems fitting that he’ll be releasing an actual 12″ vinyl recording on Record Store Day, April 16, this year. The actual media I used to buy, from the stores I used to frequent.

The record has six T. Rex covers on it (“Ty Rex,” get it?), and it’s really, really good. I’m a big Marc Bolan fan, so it’s tough to think about T. Rex being covered any more has already been done, but Segall totally pulls it off. He brings the vibe, confidence and obvious love of playing that you’ll find at his live shows to the six song record, and it’s exactly the antidote I need for the plethora of computer quantized, auto-tuned, Las Vegas stage-showed horse shit that monolithic zeros like the Black Eyed Peas get paid to perform choreographed dances to instead of serving burgers and fries, which is what they’d be doing if there were musical justice in the world.

The clear vinyl record will be available at Segall’s live shows, as well as at Goner Records and other independent record stores on April 16th. After that date, any remaining stock, as well as (thankfully) the digital version, will be available from Goner directly, or from the usual digital music outlets.

Buy this. It’s totally worth it even if you don’t pine for NYC circa 1979. See for yourself with the opening track, “Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart:”

Ty Segall – “Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart”

Complaints about “young people today” probably go back to the Australopithecus complaining about “those damn kids, what with their evolving, and their using tools to do things, and that whole standing erect thing…”  For the most part, these sorts of comments seem to come from a generation that either secretly wishes they could go and hang out with those damn kids, or simply want to piss and moan about how the whole country, hell the whole world, is just going right down the shitter.

Not in this case.

On my way home tonight I pulled up next to a car filled with kids listening to the kind of horribly unoriginal formulaic music that actually makes me miss Scott Muni.  And I thought: “holy shit, that looks like a fucking awful place to be trapped for 30 seconds, much less an entire evening.”

And something clicked for me.  It may have been the contrast between what they were listening to and the Houses of the Holy cd that I was listening to, but a gear turned, a switch flipped, and I realized something really surprising: for the first time ever, the current generation of young people (I’m referring to kids aged, say, 16 to 25 years old), is actually getting less cool than the last one.

Really.  Consider which of the following scenarios is more appealing:

A) Smoking pot while hanging out in a beach parking lot at midnight and listening to a Led Zeppelin cassette blaring from poorly mounted 6×9 speakers that were stolen from Caldor’s and installed in the back of a 1975 Chevy Malibu while you discuss the relative merits of the latest Clash album with a bunch of chicks that aren’t wearing bras and love to make out, or…

B) Huffing Dust-Off in the Office Max parking lot crammed into a lowered Honda Civic with boy-racer bodywork, fake neon mounted under the dash, and over-sized faux chrome tailpipes that sound like a someone in gastric distress is farting into a plastic bottle while Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift is excreted from a bass-heavy stereo system and the two chicks crammed in the back seat try to shout over it to discuss the relative merits of the most recent book in the Twilight series.

I rest my case.

I know most people name “Goldfinger” as the best Bond picture, but I have a major soft spot in my heart for “Dr. No.”

It’s grittier and less gimicky than any 007 film that followed, Connery was just a ridiculous badass, and it has that great Ursula Andress beach scene.

“Honey Ryder: Looking for shells?”

“Bond: No. I’m just looking.”

And trailer voice-over copy that reads “licensed to kill whom he pleases, where he pleases, when he pleases” is really rare these days… Check out the original trailer, if it’s not enough to prompt you to guy buy a copy, I don’t know what is:

It happens every spring as SXSW approaches: I start thinking “how can I get sent to Texas to cover the music?”

I made it in 2010, covering for New Times (and myself as well), missed 2011, and likely will miss 2012 – it’s tough to get media outlets to do anything other than the bare minimum these days.

But I was looking through some photos from 2010 and came across two of my favorite moments from 2010 : Ty Segall’s indoor set at the Mohawk (which blew away media darlings Surfer Blood, who were playing outside at the same time), and the unexpected Noah Engh set at Manic Fest Destiny.

I’d expected neither; I hadn’t really paid attention to the Mohawk lineup (except I knew I had to see Surfer Blood per a New Times request, and I personally wanted to see Death play), and Noah Engh wasn’t even on the list of performers that day.

But those are really really the best parts of SXSW: the stuff that happens BETWEEN the stuff people go for. With SXSW becoming almost a parody of itself (and doing some sleazy shit with performers), it’s people like Segall and Engh that still make me long to cover it. See for yourself, with this short clip, badly shot, of Noah Engh making Austin worthwhile:

There’s more, but by no means all of, my 2010 coverage here.

For those of you that don’t live in South Florida but are interested in reading it, there’s a digital version of the article available here (I’d suggest using the zoom tool by clicking on the page).

It’s not often that one gets to hang out with a good bunch of people in the pits at Daytona, watching them race Ferraris. But I did, and I want to thank Scott, Yoyo, Cosmo, Ed and Derek for their time, the access, and the great conversation.

A quick story: Scott Sharp gave me a ride (in a hopped-up golf cart, not, sadly, a Ferrari) from the transporter to the pits for night practice. As he went wide around one corner I leaned over and told him he’d completely missed the apex. His response:

“Yeah man, by a mile. I totally blew that one.”

Like I said: a good bunch of guys.

I dislike most mainstream comics. I find humor that’s very broad, obvious and hacky to be irritating, not funny. To rank anywhere higher than the level of what I associate with eighth grade, comics need to be smart and original, not derivative.

Guys like Doug Stanhope, Colin Quinn, Marc Maron,  Dave Attell – and Bruce, Carlin, Pryor, Hicks, Kinison, and Michael O’Donoghue (one of my favorite satirists ever) before them, don’t (or didn’t) rely on bad pop culture references to get a laugh: they go much deeper and smarter.

Recently I was watching an episode of “Louie” (staring another smart and hilarious comic, Louis CK) , which generally consists of 22 minutes of smart and highly uncomfortable comedy that CK has clearly mined from deep within his not-insubstantial insecurities, and CK made this simple and profound statement to a stand-up audience:

“Finally I have the body that I want – and that’s a thing people really covet it’s hard thing to achieve, and I did. And I’m going to tell you how to have exactly the body that you want: you just have to want… a shitty body. That’s all it is. You have to want your own shitty, ugly, disgusting body.”

I thought of that episode while I was considering this week’s column. With New Year’s Eve mere moments away, most people start considering New Year’s resolutions; I don’t. Perhaps it’s just an excuse for my failure to keep past resolutions, but I’ve found that change comes when I’m ready for it, not before, and certainly not simply because I’ve decided that this year will be the year that I finally fix whatever it is that’s broken. I’ve recognized that to make 2011 a personal success, what I need is a group of anti-resolutions, not unreachable goals. So this year, I resolve to accept and continue the following questionable behaviors:

Anti-Resolution One: I resolve to keep eating poorly. This one’s a layup for me, and it’s my go-to anti-resolution. Anyone can decide to chase heady goals like cutting down on fats, eating more greens and drinking less coffee, but it takes someone with real intestinal fortitude to commit to another year of well-marbled steak, sausage and onion pizza, smoked pork and copious amount of caffeine to ward of the inevitable post-meal lethargy. It’s not easy being stuck on the couch for an hour after every meal, after all. You folks go ahead and start eating well, I’ll continue to eat delicious foods and tell you about them. Besides, the way I look at, all these fats create an internal gym for my heart to work out on, and working out is good for you.

Anti-Resolution Two: I resolve to continue my minimal exercise program. A perfect anti-resolution that fits well with my first, the last thing I need right now is the inevitable self-recriminations caused by going after six-pack abs but remaining an endomorph. This year, then, I’ll be keeping my exercise program simple and consistent, with regular strolls to the coffee pot and out to my Weber grill. Staying strong here may be harder than you’d think though, since basketball with my kids, going to the beach with the family, or skateboarding around the neighborhood might be considered weakness. In light of that, I’ll take the 80s pop culture advice to “give myself a break,” and allow all of those activities as long as I don’t spend more time outside getting my heart rate up than sitting in front of my computer getting carpal tunnel syndrome. The lesson learned from Louis CK should come in handy with these first two anti-resolutions.

Anti-Resolution Three: I resolve to continue staying up too late and oversleeping in the morning. This one is particularly tough, especially as it results in my wife having to get up much earlier than me to get the kids off to school, but I’m willing to continue making that sacrifice. It’s not all bad though: the late nights give me more time to work on anti-resolution number one, and the extra sleep cuts into my day and increases the pressure I’m already under to meet my writing deadlines. This in turn ratchets up stress and helps exercise my heart. Hopefully, all that heart work-out won’t count as breaking anti-resolution two.

Anti-Resolution Four: I resolve to continue waiting too long between haircuts. Pulling this off isn’t easy because “I don’t have time to make an appointment” won’t wash as an excuse; I cut my own hair with clippers. Despite the fact that my wife insists I get more obnoxious the longer my hair gets (unlikely: I’m already about as obnoxious as even I can stand), I’m going to continue to wait until it’s well past due for a trim, perhaps even until it approaches my high-school level of puffy afro (I seem to have aspired to looking like a cast member from “Hair”) before cutting it off. I’ll just have to keep putting up with looks of irritation from my wife and dealing with an infrequently itchy back for one more year.

Anti-Resolution Five: I resolve to avoid cutting down on video games. When I was a kid growing up in New York City, I spent more than a little time in the local corner store or pizza parlor, feeding quarters into a Space Invaders, or Galaxian, or Asteroids, or Defender machines. Almost nothing but proximity to a cute girl in the smoking lounge at high school got my blood going more than walking through the doors of one of the Times Square arcades with a pocketful of silver.

My affection for video games continued through my twenties when I picked up a hardball addiction to the game Mr. Do. When I became older though, I put away childish things. In my case those childish things were machines into which I needed to put quarters; I replaced them with (in order) ColecoVision (it came with Donkey Kong!), Nintendo, Sega Dreamcast, Sega Game Gear, Gamecube, Xbox, Wii, and Playstation 3, the last four of which we still have, and the last two of which were, um, for my kids.

It’s been tough, being a grown man in his 40s who still plays video games, but accepting my inner basement-dwelling anti-social geek is a huge part of properly approaching this year’s anti-resolutions. I may not have much time for them anymore, but I’m absolutely resolved to doing whatever I need to find the time to sit with my kids and waste hours playing Monkey Ball, Call of Duty Black Ops, or Donkey Kong Island Returns. I even resolve to continue pretending to care who wins, and to practice all alone after they’ve gone to bed. Because that’s the kind of dedication I bring to anti-resolutions.

Anti-Resolution Six: I resolve to not worry about getting a “real” job. Like my first resolution, this is another one that speaks to an inner strength. Anyone can sit back at a big corporation and take advantage of fancy cush benefits like health care, regular paychecks, vacation time and sick days, not to mention getting to go home at the end of the day and forget about work.

But that stuff just makes you soft: it’s embracing what you love and living paycheck to paycheck that builds character, and it takes a deep well of denial to plow through life without going to the doctor for a check-up. Thankfully, I’ve got just that kind of denial. The economy is bad enough in South Florida that I’m in little danger of being tempted to break this anti-resolution, so I’m confident I’ll be able to finish 2011 just like 2010: as a freelance writer scraping by and pretending he can’t get sick. I’m so confident about success with this anti-resolution that I’m issuing an open challenge to readers: I dare you to test my resolve by offering me a creative job with great pay.

That’s it: I think six is a good number, and I don’t really want to overtax my lack of resolve this year. After all, I suppose it’s possible that by the end of 2011 I’ll be employed full time, in fantastic shape, sleeping a full eight hours a night and extremely well coifed; any more failure than that I don’t think I could handle.

Or that’s the way I’ve felt until today, when I found out that Moog released a synth for iPad called Animoog.

I hit the Moog site and listened to some samples, and it’s just incredibly cool. For musicians, or wannabe-musicians that have dropped the cash on an iPad, it’s a no brainer.

Normally priced at $29.99, it’s available for a limited time (for 30 days, but I think that started a while ago) for $.99. Yeah, 99 cents.

Go buy it, play with it, and make me regret my aversion to iProducts.

Sound samples and more information here on the Moog site or just dig it right here (I want one so bad…):

Tell me you can watch this without loving this:

I know –  you cant, right? Hell, I even dig the page on their site on which they embedded it.

Oh, and they’ve given me one more reason to be pissed I moved out of New York: they’re playing in Brooklyn  on November 11 at the Brookly Electronic Music Festival. Awesome -  panelle specials AND Eclectic Method, all jammed into one fine borough.

More live dates here.

It takes a lot to drag me out of my stupor to write these days, but a press release I just got from Penguin Prison’s publicist did it. If you don’t know Penguin Prison, it’s a retro synth-pop band (person?) headed by a dude named Chris Glover that has a mediocre retro synth-pop song out called “Don’t Fuck With My Money.”

I guess the song never broke big enough, so tomorrow (that’d be Saturday) Glover will try to leverage the Occupy Wall Street  protest by filming the song’s official video in Liberty Plaza.

From the press release:

“See you tomorrow and remember to SPEAK LOUD AND CLEAR TO WALL STREET!

‘DON’T FUCK WITH OUR MONEY!’”

(emphasis theirs, except they spelled “fuck” with a couple of asterisks because they may be rebels, but they don’t want to offend anyone).

The release also claims that the song is “already steadily becoming the anthem for this movement!” (yes, the bang is theirs, not mine). So it reads like it was written by a coked up tween that lacks not only solid writing skills, but an understanding of #OWS. Try these lyrics on:

“…you’re gonna have to learn,
you fuck with my money
and you’ll be sorry.”

Come to think of it, the other day I heard a family of five that had just lost their home in a crooked foreclosure proceeding harmonize on that tune while the Sheriff put their belongings on the street. Oh wait.. no… I’m confusing them with the Brown Brothers Harriman dudes that were snorting coke off hookers’s tits at a labor day party in the Hamptons. Sorry.

For those of you musicians that actually do want to support #OWS, try something simple and selfless, like leaving the camera crew at home and going down to play an impromtu gig, like Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel) did last week, a cell phone video clip of which I present herewith:

Thank you, Jeff Mangum, for not only making one of the best records ever (which you can grab a download of of for only 5 bucks on amazon.com),  but also for not being a large penis.