A Few Jazz Notes

...is a jazzonian e-newsletter published weekly unless the author is somehow incapacitated. It details the thriving jazz scene in Columbus, Georgia and the surrounding Chattahoochee Valley, written exclusively by

Rusty Taylor, the jester-singer for the vocal jazz band Southern Standard Time

Salutations Fellow Jazzonian,

Greetings!...Welcome to your weekly excursion into the ebullient world of playful rhetoric sponsored by the words jingoistic and nebbish:

Example:

Within the confines of a relatively insignificant (yet desperate to be acknowledged as an viable population of jingoistic nationalists) gaggle of easily goaded adults that splotch the map of our nation with seemingly innocuous boundaries, there exists a myopic mindset of U.S.A. citizens who justify their indifference to penury by staidly proclaiming a hubristic manifest destiny that stretches to include the right to expand one's desires as far as she covets, which is followed almost immediately by building walls (around her palatial estate, her business, her nation...) to shut out the dismal reality that many human beings suffer silently in filth while indifferent couples insouciantly ride by in shiny chrome carriages with tinted windows that reflect the face of a nebbishy nonagenarian mendicant with a crepitating face as he nervously stares at his own emaciated reflection in the vehicle's window on the other side of which a grinning, long-legged socialite unintentionally hides as she haughtily laughs, Champaign foam silently falling onto a lush white carpet of the limousine that quietly crawls along serpentine curbside walkways through specious urbanity toward epicurean satiety where the gay couple will dine in four-star elegance... the vagabond staggers into a cardboard box for the evening.

--Anonymous

* * *

Before I officially begin this week's rhetorical journey, I want to tell you the story of my trek to Venkman's in Atlanta that I took with my friends Alia Torres, Jenny Dunford, and my nephew Austin. The venue promotes Joe Gransden's weekly high-energy jazz jam. 

Nothing much happened on our drive to Atlanta unless you want to count, which I do (because it is important to cherish each allotted terrestrial moment), a bunch of mirthful confabulation and singing, a cappella, a lot of sound but no fury, no electronic music only panegyric and dulcet expressions of love for one another, an acknowledgement that, within our current manifestation, times shared with friends are among the most valued of treasures. 

Jenny drove. She's a retired policewoman, and she's a fairly aggressive driver. (Yes, I'm trying nearly too comically to employ the literary technique of understatement because I don't want anyone to know that her driving scares the shit out o' me; fortunately, I wore my brown pants, which is the joke I told after a harrowing "near miss" when, in a psychotic lane change, a tiny and nimble sports car with a maniac driver nearly clipped the front-right fender of the van that I recently purchased, which is another story, but I digress...) Austin slept. 

I told the two jokes that I made-up just that day:

Joke one: I'm not a procrastinator because I don't get paid.

Joke number two: I never multiply 12 by 12 twice... it's too gross.

We told more jokes and sang more songs, and I was smiling with a grin that shamed the iconic felicific and beatific feline dreamed up by the explosively creative mind of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. We arrived at Venkman's, got seated, and waited while snacking on quaint hors d'oeuvres. Jenny drank a beer; Alia had shots of something; Austin had Coke, and I drank water. Slowly, the musicians gather until, nearly magically, the core band started to play: Joe Gransden (emcee of the evening's jam, vocals, and trumpet), Kevin Bales (keyboard), Craig Shaw (bass), and a drummer I didn't get a chance to meet. We were all blown away by the superior quality of jazzonian musical acuity.

Joe called me up to sing the second song of the jam: "Come Fly with Me" in Bb. I did very well. Well... the crowd approved lovingly, and many of the musicians lauded my singing, so I'm encouraged to believe that I had done pretty well. It's been recorded, live-streamed on facebook. So...

Alia was called up to sing "God Bless the Child," and she killed it. She had the voice, the stare, the smile, the subtle sway of her hips, her silhouette gracefully transforming her physiognomy into ethereal seduction, her spirit delighting in the moment. She easily won over the crowd. She easily won over the musicians. She easily won over Joe. Later, she was called up to do a duet with Joe, and they nailed it. They were simply adorable. They hit it off almost instantly. 

I was called up later and sang "Cherokee" in Bb. Unfortunately, I could not hear the bass really well, so I was behind the beat the whole time. After the jam ended, we hung out a bit just talking, flirting, and simply enjoying the moment of communal camaraderie. We had already planned to return on December 5 before we loaded me in the van and headed south. Jenny recorded the binary images of me and Alia on a new recording devise she recently purchased. She said that she'd put 'em on YouTube soon. I'm a bit anxious to see/hear the recording, but I'm really looking forward to returning next month.

I count myself one of the most serendipitous of persons alive. It is great to visit Hotlanta from Cool-umbus, but I am very fortunate to have a home at the Eighth and Rail in Opelika, Alabama, a cozy venue that has a weekly jazz jam also on Tuesdays, and it'll be good to get back there this week, especially since Auburn University's football team spanked the Georgia Bulldogs who were undefeated and ranked number one in the nation. The jam at Eighth and Rail doesn't draw the number of musicians as does the jam in Atlanta, obviously, but the quality of musicianship is just as spellbinding. The pace is less frenetic but the love and friendship that it draws is one of the most powerful in the Universe. Either way, it seems that the two jazz jams I dig the most add so much peace to their respective communities that I would love to share them with everyone. World Peace would then be inevitable.

Last Week at The Loft

Columbus, GA's Weekly Home for Jazz

It was standing room only as the internationally renowned Schwob Jazz Orchestra dazzled the packed room of about ten thousand people last week in the Music Hall of The Loft for a special edition of the venue's weekly jazz concert. OK. The room couldn't possibly hold that many people, but the room was wall-to-wall with raptured people, each of whom were riveted to the stage by the sheer musical thaumaturgy of about sixteen enchanted minstrels leading the audience on auricular journeys that transported each listener to individualized destinations wherein peace, melody, love, harmony, and rhythm danced together in elegantly woven tapestries by which the entire city was embryonically wrapped.

Personal Concern For the Week

Within the zeitgeist of today's terrestrial manifestation it seems that all the men of a certain advanced age have, at sometime in their sublunary existence, sated their lascivious urges by domineering the emotions and/or physical vitality of weaker people in order to either expose their salacious intentions to penetrate the vulnerability of their victims or they actually ejaculate their unrestrained sexual cravings into unwilling biologic folds simply to satisfy their insatiable egos, not as a show of affection but as a model for unabated power, I fear, as fifty-three year old male who has been confined to life in a wheelchair for the past thirty-one years, that when I hug a female, especially if she's uncommonly attractive, my arms (over which I have limited control and no sensation) may slip and come into contact with certain parts of the female's anatomy that may encourage consensual sexual intentions, or it may also quicken disdaining reproach for attempting to enforce unwanted coitus, yet I must reiterate that I have no sensation below my shoulders; my decrepitated hands feel nothing, so if, by chance, my fingers touch another's pudendum or derriere, it is not to successfully complete the task of President George H. W. Bush's favorite magician: David Cop-a-feel; it is instead, purely incidental contact.

Weekly Area Jams

Red Light Cafe Jazz Jam

Every Wed at 8 pm ET

I have not been to the weekly jazz jam at Red Light Cafe, but it is hosted by the Gordon Vernick Quartet, and I am a huge fan of Gordon's, so I'm planning to go soon, and when I do... Ha! I'm very likely to get excited. Fo' mo' info, click here.

Apache Cafe in Atlanta

Every Wed at 9:00 ET

Al Smith's Midtown Jam Session @Apache Cafe!  Contemporary Jazz , Soul, R&B vocalists jam Session. Featuring live band led by keyboardist Al Smith! Vocalists are invited to sign the list and jam with the band, musicians can sit in too... a must attend! Different Dj spinning on the back patio each week! SPECIAL GUEST HOST EVERY WEEK! Doors open at 9pm and list-sign up is at 9pm. Event admission, the day of, at the door, is CASH. Fo' mo' info, click here.

1048 Club in Montgomery

Every Sun at 9:30-12:30 CT

The 1048 Cafe is in Montgomery, AL. The weekly Jazz Jam led by Sam Williams, 9 pm CDT, $5 cover. I don't really know that much about it, but the 1048 has a jazz jam every Sunday from 9ish 'til whenever. Apparently the jam draws some incredible musicians. Fo' mo' info, click here.

On Thursdays at Noon, make a lunch date with our region’s finest musicians. A Little Lunch Music is an informal, come-and-go performance presented by JCSM and coordinated by musician Patrick McCurry. You can sit in and listen to the entire performance, dine in the Museum Cafe from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. CT, browse the Museum Shop or explore the galleries.

For more info, click http://jcsm.auburn.edu/event/a-little-lunch-music-fall-2017/2017-09-07/.

Jazz Association of Macon

We Promote Jazz in Macon

and Middle Georgia

Our purpose is to:

Encourage and support creation, presentation, and preservation of jazz music.

Support the creation of new audiences for jazz music.

Provide education and information about jazz.

Encourage young musicians to learn and appreciate jazz.

Develop a network among local and regional jazz advocates.

Increase awareness of jazz events and musicians in our community.

To read their blog, click here.

Area Musicians

Actually, this is a link to a page of my personal website, but it makes it much easier t maintain. It is a dynamic list of area musicians that will, hopefully, be continually updated until I can no longer do it. If you are a musician who is not listed or you are listed but with invalid info, please let me know, and I'll make the appropriate revisions. Thank you, and click here to visit the link.

High Museum of Art: Atlanta Jazz

Live jazz in the Robinson Atrium at the Atlanta High Museum of Art every 3rd Friday of the month. Fo' mo' info, click here .

On-line Radio

Video of the Week

I have been grooving on Crosby, Stills, and Nash for about a half o' a year now. No lie. These cats sing with serious harmony. I've been really groovin' on Daylight Again, which has ominous Civil War allusions that seem relevant in today's social malaise. The lyrics are hauntingly poignant:

Daylight again

Following me to bed

I think about a hundred years ago

How my father's bled

I think I see a valley

Covered with bones in blue

All the brave soldiers that cannot get older

Been asking after you

Hear the past a' calling

From Armageddon's side

When everyone's talking and no one is listening

How can we decide

Do we find the cost of freedom

Buried in the ground

Mother Earth will swallow you

Lay your body down

Stephen Stills

Valediction

Do you know how many times during the week that I look at a clock at around 3:30 pm on a glorious, cloudless day, and I think to myself, "What a glorious afternoon. If it weren't for ineffable benevolent puissance, I'd still be stuck in the wretched hell-hole of corporate indifference, festering away in the septic wasteland of emotional decay within a shining façade of capitalistic grandeur that brightly illumines false hope, a lighthouse that attracts inflated ambition toward an illusory fantasy that ultimately leads to destruction like the insectival curiosity of a moth to a flame?"

Peace Through Music