Fun Stuff
- Jazz! What I often wish I could do full time...
- ...and perhaps would, if I weren't such a chicken about how to support myself and my family, is play jazz piano for a living. I love it, but don't care for just any old kind of music. So, the problem is economics. It would be interesting to see how many jazz pianists on the planet make the same or higher salaries than academic economists. Oh well.
I studied jazz piano starting at about 16 years old with a guy named Ted Alexander in Denver. Ted was Bill Evans' roommate (Ted said anyhow) at Julliard, and it was cool to see some of Evans' old charts. Later, I studied with the pianist, Art Lande (ECM recording artist) in about 1979 in Seattle. Boulder/Denver had a lot of great musicians and so, here are some people I got to play with, mostly an embarrassingly long time ago...
- Mike Miller, guitarist who played with Chic Correa and Bonnie Rait. Got to play with him only 2 nights in Boulder, Colorado in 1979. Boy can he play! He writes incredibly nice tunes too. Check out his solo cd, called Save the Moon, on Marsis Jazz (2001). He is also on Chic's record, Paint the World (GRP, 1993) and plays his &*^^ off.
- Tom Fowler, bassist with Frank Zappa, Jean Luc Ponte - on the same gig as above. Tom comes from an incredibly talented musical family. One of the only bassists whose playing I like, who played with a pick a lot of the time. His brothers, Walt (fantastic trumpet player!), Ed (bass/keys), Bruce (trombonist in Zappa's band), and Steve (reeds), are all excellent musicians. I got an e-mail recently (Jan. 2008) that updated me: Bruce is making it as a film composer in Hollywood these days.
- Kent McClagan, upright bassist. I grew up with Kent (presuming that I have, in fact, grown up!). Kent recorded with the sax player, Jane Bloom. He lives in Denver and occasionally plays these days with trumpet player, Ron Miles. I still try to play with him in summers, in Boulder, Colorado.
- Bill Frisell, guitarist. 197?? Ok, ok, so we were only 17 or 18 years old then, but Bill lived in Denver and I got to play with him quite a few times. You could tell, even though he was only that age, he was destined to be a brilliant and unique guitarist.
- Bobby Rangell, saxaphone/flute. 1980's. Bobby lives in France now and plays regularly over there. His brother, Nelson, is a known better in the U.S., but Bobby is more of the jazz purist, I think (see Nelson's records on the defunct lable, GRP). Anyway, the band Bobby had in the late 1970's and early 1980's was called Les Zazous. Also in that band was Marshall Wood, who recently (Jan. 2008) told me that he plays professional stand-up bass in the Boston area and is doing pretty well. He has recorded with Mike Metheny, and plays often as the bassist in Tony Bennett's show. I don't know what happened to the other guys in this band. I have a cd we recorded (most of it was on a single take in a Denver Studio called Applewood, if you'd like a copy.
- Holly Hoffman, flute. 1980's. Holly is a great flute player. I think she lives in NYC these days - I see she gets gigs that are listed in the New Yorker magazine from time to time. Check out her cd's, like "Miracle" - great stuff.
- Kim Stone, Bassist. 1970's/1980's. Kim was one of the best bassists in Boulder, we all thought. He got snagged by the jazz/pop group, Spyro Gyra and he did that for years. He also played with a band called the Rippingtons. I saw Kim in the 1990's up near Lake Tahoe with the Rippingtons. He was doing well, but I thought it was unfair that he wasn't a wealthy musician. Anyway, a recent e-mail from a woman named Susan says he is still playing with the Rippingtons (Jan. 2008). But side men in jazz typically don't get rich, right? Now, I'm an economist, so there should be no surprise there. Hmmmmm. That could be an economics paper...
- Larry Wilkins, guitarist/composer. 1980's. Sadly, Larry died way too young. He was really fun/talented. He did a stint in Eric Burdon's I Band in the mid 1990's. I got to play a little bit in Larry's Boulder band, called Gangbusters. Kim and Bobby were mainstays in that group too.
- Other great past or current Boulder/Denver musicians include Russell Bisset (played drums with Jose Feliciano, Mike Fisher (percussion on one of Joni Mitchell's albums), Chris Engleman (great bassist, still in Boulder but plays/records with Molly O'Brian and others). In my groups at one time or another were Jeff Uhrlaub (drms), Chris, Fly McClard (sax), Bob Newnam (tmpt), sometimes Adlof Mares (bassist who did stint with Buddy Rich), Kent McClagan, Steve Owen (sax), Bones Jones (gtr). Eric Gunnison is a fantastic Denver pianist, who did a long stint with Carmen MacCrae), and there are lots of musicians you'd think should be famous in NYC or LA - they are that good.
- Jill Sobule, singer and guitarist/composer. 1980's. Jill is a very naturally gifted singer and musician. You might remember - her commercial hit was "I Kissed a Girl"...Playing with her was kind of the end of my professional career, though I do actually play some gigs still now and then. At that time I had to decide between music and finishing my PhD in Economics. Did I make a "rational" choice?
- Favorite pieces of music? Impossible to say one, but here are some: Bill Evans, Symbiosis
Mozart's Requiem, Joni Mitchell's Hejira, Charlie Haden's American Dreams, Marc Johnson's Shades of Jade, Lyle Mays' first album.
- In 1972 or so, my friend John and I were responsible for getting the band for our senior high school prom dance. We loved this band in Denver called "Stray Dog" (they also were called "Aphrodite" for a while, and we got them. We were nearly lynched by our peers. They didn't like the band because they did originals and stuff. Turns out that the guitarist in the band was a guy called Snuffy Garrett Walden. John and I thought he was a fantastic rock and roll guitar player. So guess what? This same fellow is an L.A. t.v. music writer - wrote the score for 30 Something, and also for the West Wing. We may have picked the wrong band for the prom. dance, but we had good taste! You can google Stray Dog and you actually can find a cd from a record they made in the 1970's. See for yourself.
- Here is another funny story. In the 70's also, we played with a guy named Frank Sarafine (flute). He had a wonderfully good ear for music, but I though he was sort of a "jive" dude because I was a jazz snob. I thought - man, the guy couldn't read music! Boy did I miss it on that one. Frank went out to L.A. and he got into all the electronic doo-dads. He ended up playing strange "outer-space" sounds on the soundtrack for the First of the Star Trek movies, and launched a whole career doing that. Go figure, huh?
- My Other Activities that I Love (besides doing stuff with my family!): Rock Climbing! Biking too...
- See pictures below (l to r: me, Mary Riddel, me (or my bottom) belayed on a fantastic crack pitch at Joshua Tree by friend Jack, and finally, one of my long-time partner in "crime" and all that, Paul Jakus (at Cochise's, discussing the beauty of the place while up on a wild pitch).
Some of my economics pals know that I have done work on rock climbing with my friends, Paul Jakus and Therese Grijalva. But we all three climb and love it. Two of my three kids are interested a little bit so maybe more climbing is ahead for our family. Check out the stuff on the economics of climbing at Therese's website (http://faculty.weber.edu/tgrijalva/demand_for_rock_climbing.htm), and you can look at a (now) old synthesis of the research at the website for the UIAA journal (see http://www.uiaa.ch/article.aspx?c=234&a=163). My one and only boooondoggle (sorry Paul!) was in getting to go to the 100th anniversary of the Year of the Mountains, in Italy. This started my friendship with Mara Thiene, who asked me to come, and led to me getting to climb in Italy with Mara's husband, Giordano.
- The prettiest place I have climbed is probably in the Dolomites, with Giordano. This is where they filmed the stupid climbing movie, Cliff Hanger. Contrary to popular belief, the only climbing that Stallone did was in a movie studio. The stud in that movie is the late, Wolfgang Glowicz.
- The least pretty place I have climbed is probably in the Texas A&M Rec. Center, at the climbing wall. Don't get me wrong. I love this place. Keeps me sane! Other places I have rock climbed are Estes Park (Lumpy Ridge), Eldorado Canyon, Boulder Canyon, various routes on the Flatirons, several dome and other routes in the South Platte, Shelf Road, and Penitente Canyon, all in Colorado. I've also climbed various crags around Lake Tahoe, and my favorite there is Lover's Leap. Have been to Yosemite and to Tualomne Meadows, and to a little state park near Monterey (forget the name of it). Also in Nevada, have been several times to Red Rocks, which is fantastic. The wildest place maybe is Cochise's Stronghold in Az. Out east, I've climbed a lot at the Mohonk Preserve or Shawangunks. Have also been to the Adirondacks, and climbed at White Mountain in New Hampshire, and at Otter Cliffs, in Bar Harbor Maine. Now that's a special one!
- ...and perhaps would, if I weren't such a chicken about how to support myself and my family, is play jazz piano for a living. I love it, but don't care for just any old kind of music. So, the problem is economics. It would be interesting to see how many jazz pianists on the planet make the same or higher salaries than academic economists. Oh well.
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