Stephane Grapelli

Stephane Grapelli is my all time favorite violinist.  He made a name for himself playing with Django Reinhardt in"Quintette du Hot Club de France ."  This was a while ago, back in the thirties. This style of music became known as "Gypsy jazz."  Its carefree playing of the melody line showed that improvisation would shine more than sheet music could ever hope to.  The music was about virtuosity and not a stiff rendition of a song read from sheet music.  Some, including myself, think that this was the beginning of the appreciation of the jam session, where there was structure with the rhythm and bass line but plenty of room for instrumental improvisation.  Standard blues structure with a twelve bar turn around and then turn the players loose.  American jazz evolved from this.  Listen to Stephane.  Smooth, delicate, fast. Delectable.  Goes down smooth and easy.

I became a fan of Stephane's in the early 80's.  I was living in Northeast Oregon, working in a band, later to have my own band there, and working during the day.  I worked a lot. Maybe that's what saved me from becoming a crushing alcoholic. I also had to get up and go to work.  After playing until 2AM, not sleeping until 6AM, then being at work by 8AM, my body screamed for sleep and mercy.  Since my job involved travel, I slept whenever I wasn't driving.  Yeah, that's right, when I wasn't driving.  I was expected to pull my weight and drive once in a while.  If I was lucky, I remembered to save some coke from the night before and do a line or two before work.  Then I could drive.  And work.  Even talk.

I got laid off from my day job for a few months.  I began listening to the college FM station in town.  What a load of crap, I thought.  I went to the college.  I went upstairs from the library to the radio station itself.  I asked to see the station manager.  I asked him what I had to do to be a DJ.  He said you have to take the Broadcasting Class.  I signed up the next day.  I had no experience.  By the time that stint was through, I had won an award as best dj and was the most requested voice over for sponsor spots.  Since it was public radio, commercials weren't allowed but sponsorships were.  I heard my spots were still on the air four years after I left town.

After a few classes, I was on the radio.  The classes helped familiarize me with the control board, the switches, and the turntables.  The one thing I had not considered was the music.  I had talked to a dj about the music and he said he brought his own albums from home.  Yeah, I could do that.  Thing is, once I got to the radio station to work, I discovered they had a three thousand long-playing vinyl library.  My eyes popped wide open.  I was a kid in a candy store with all the money I needed.  That's how I discovered Grappelli, thumbing through the vinyl.  I think because the album title had "Boogie" in it, I decided to try and find something to play off the album, "Brandenburg Boogie," with Elena Duran and Laurie Holloway and Stephan.  Even Wikipedia does not list this album in Stephane's discography.  It is difficult to find and I got my copy off of eBay many years ago.  It is now a collector's item.  Lucky me.

It opened me up.  I wasn't ready to give up my hard ass drinking and rocking but this was a different music for me and I knew instantly that this guy knew what he was doing with the violin. He was talking with it, whispering, screaming, laughing, singing with his violin.  There was no sheet music.  His heart led his fingers up and down the fretboard as his bow left its mark on the violin's strings.  It was not like anything I'd been exposed to. It flowed like air through a window.

Pandora

The time at the radio station was pure learning.  I learned how to make awkward transitions work.  I once went from a Police song to the bluegrass hit, Rocky Top, and made it worked.  It was mentioned when I received my award.  To me, it's like putting together a soundtrack, a soundtrack for daily living.  Kind of like Pandora is now. Pandora is theoretically "intuitive," that is, it predicts what music you might like to hear.  It uses some sort of code to figure it out.  If a song comes on that you like, just rush to whatever device Pandora is coming from and hit the like button and Pandora remembers.  Weird.

I have a Wilco station on Pandora.  I watched a documentary on them called, "I am Trying To Break Your Heart."  It is about them recording "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," a breakthrough album for them. My favorite songs off of the recording are "Kamera," "Heavy Metal Drummer," and "Jesus etc."  Hell, they were even introduced by this guy at Farm Aid.  Look!  There's Beck playing lead guitar!

Let us end this type fest with this.