It may seem pretty unlikely, but The Commander is still out there somewhere, fixing leaks, kicking ass, and taking names, not neccesarily in that order, or even literally. And note, by “out there,” I don’t mean hunkered down in a bird sanctuary somewhere in the great state of Oregon.
In other news, here’s a Happy New Years video. Hope everything winds-up great for your year! Ha! Er . . .
Trombonist and proprietor of Hip Bone Music Michael Davis has been running his excellent Bone-to-Pick interview series for a while now. A little over a year ago, Davis featured the incomparable trombonist Bill Watrous. Watrous, who is full of stories, observations, and the occasional joke*, is a natural for this sort of thing, and that makes the interview fun to watch.
Watch the entire interview if you haven’t already, but for the joke as told by Carl Fontana to Watrous, check out 32 minutes 13 seconds.
When recalling his earliest — and fairly obscure — LP solo recordings, Bill mentions one whose title seems to be a 60s zeitgeist send-up: Love Themes For The Underground, The Establishment & Other Sub Cultures Not Yet Known. Watrous remembers the arranger Walter Raim talked him into the project when he was in New York City doing other recording work. Love Themes For The Underground, The Establishment & Other Sub Cultures Not Yet Known had interesting instrumentation in addition to Watrous’s trombone, consisting of string quartet, vibes, guitar, bass, and drums, plus voices. “I still have a copy of this. You can’t get these anywhere,” says Watrous.
Well, over at my favorite used record store, Hymies, I did find a copy of, you know, Love Themes For The Underground, The Establishment & Other Sub Cultures Not Yet Known. It was recorded in 1969 for MTA Records in New York (not to be confused with the current label of that name). Despite the high concept title, the recording is a standards outing with Aquarius (from the 1967 musical Hair) added in. (Also, did Aquarius ever really become a standard?) To be sure, it’s easy listening, but as the liner notes mention, using a string quartet — as opposed to a huge string section — changes up the usual “easy listening” texture. The arrangements are interesting — the tracks on this LP could have easily been used for Mad Men music cues.
Happy New Year to all those who came by this website in 2013, and even those who didn’t. Sorry Commander Trombone wasn’t updated more often. I’ll endeavor to do something about that this year. Maybe a nine part series on trombone slide lubrication? Or slide maintenance? It’s a simple process, really, but you’re going to need a belt sander and your own lathe . . .
Recently visited Chicago, the City of the Big Shoulders. One of the days was foggy. How did that fog come in? On little cat feet, maybe? It was gone the next day. Click a photo for a larger version.
Back when I was in high school in the late 70s, television stations actually ended broadcast for the day. What often directly preceded the impending
TV “snow” was the poem heard in the video below, High Flight, by aviator John Gillespie. The short film depicted an airplane doing all kinds of tricky maneuvers as the poem’s words were intoned. Yeah. If you were going to “Slip the Surly Bonds of Earth,” this was how you did it, in a shiny, American, cold-war airplane. It’s still unclear to me what any of it had to do with signing off, but what it actually meant was, “Look — the broadcast day is over. This station has done all it can for you today. No more Petticoat Junction reruns. Nothing more to see here until 6 am. Get some sleep. Goodnight.”