This Friday, Impressions will impress you with their skillful jazzonian banter. Nick Johnson blasted on the local scene a couple years ago like a PED-inflated tornado through a trailer park with mobile homes made from balsa. He's a musician's musician, which is a meant to connote that Nick is a creative improviser who listens to the other musicians with whom he communicates with soulful emotion. The same can be said about Impression's rhythm section. Yair Ophir (bass) and Tommy Embrich (drums) are the creme-de-la-creme of Columbus State University's Schwob Jazz Orchestra. Their steady rhythmic prowess allows the other improvisers a solid foundation that supports creative genius, and their solos are sublime.

And everyone knows Don Tipton, photographer, composer, film maker, founding member of Solar Quintet (that recently promoted their second recording that can be accessed by clicking the link to their website). Don is also the talent coordinator for Friday Evening Jazz at The Loft's weekly jazz concert series that keeps Columbus, Georgia in the groove. I expect these cats to play masterfully, and I'm looking forward to absorbing their collective energy.

Upcoming Schedule

Feb 2 - Solar Quintet reunion and CD release party

Feb 9 - Southern Standard Time featuring vocalist Rusty Taylor

Feb 16 - Impressions featuring Nick Johnson on sax

Feb 23 -   Reggie Sampson and Friend

If you're not aware, my band Southern Standard Time played last Friday at The Loft, "Columbus [GA's] home for live jazz music," so modesty prohibits me from overstating that we were great. Taylor Pierce (guitar) and I started the evening off with two vocal/guitar duets: "I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)" and "Devil May Care," which set the tone for the rest of the evening. The rhythm section then joined us onstage: Jeff Smith (bass) and Mark Parker (drums) complete the trio of musicians whom I adore... as musicians and men. The final song of the evening was Sonny Rollins' "St. Thomas," and Bryan Canonigo joined us onstage to provide soulful saxy poetry. Of course, I was funny, which means, very simply, that I told anecdotes that caused people to audibly moan... what I call "success." I hope it's obvious, but the real musicians and I enjoy playing together and sincerely hope that everyone digs our style.

The next time you go see a live musical group, check out the stage. Does it have a wheelchair ramp leading from the audience to the stage or are their steps? Is there a wheelchair ramp backstage? Is there handicapped parking where the performers load and unload? Chances are that the venue doesn’t provide these accommodations. It’s like this: my biggest challenge as a quadriplegic jazz vocalist is finding accessible stages on which to perform. I was once raised up to a five-foot high stage using a forklift and a wooden palette because the stage was not wheelchair accessible. Fortunately, I didn’t die. Point is that there are few wheelchair accessible stages; otherwise, I’d sing much more often.

It’s easy to see why this isn’t a mainstream problem: there are few “physically challenged” performers, but that’s merely an excuse encouraged by indifference. We handicapped performers exist and are eager to share our dreams with fans who dig what we do. But why are we unconsciously ignored? That’s easy: Being unable to perform even the most rudimentary acts of daily living is a major downer; the wheelchair, quite frankly, is a symbol of lost hope. Let’s face it; it’s a marketing problem, and this is where you come in to save the day.

Physical handicaps are wrapped in lugubrious imagery, but not every moment of life in a wheelchair is steeped in mournful decay. Believe it or not, I laugh every day… some days more than others, but if life were perfect, I, for one, would take a bite of forbidden fruit to find some excitement from the decay of entropy (the hypothetical tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity). What I’m trying so desperately to connote here is the fact that having a physical challenge can, at times, be fun and inspirational. What we need is positive imagery, and here’s where I ask for a favor from you, dear reader, and it has to do with social media, more specifically, using the ubiquitous #hashtag: will you help by coming up with a #hashtag meme that has positive connotations for the handicapped and send it to me. This could be fun. Maybe I can come up with prizes for creative contributions. Regardless, this could be the beginning of a social movement that witnesses an outcry of creative energy by talented people who have difficulty overcoming the obstacles that are hidden from people who can hop out of bed running full tilt. By the way, I’ve come up with a possible #hashtag meme that might work: #FantastAbility. What do you think?

The gauntlet has been dropped. Do you accept the challenge? Please reply to this email with as many suggestions as you want, and challenge your friends as well. Let’s see if we can extend this conversation internationally. (Actually, when you send in your suggestions, include the name of your hometown city. We’ll see how far this request goes.) Let’s make the wheelchair a symbol of fun… or grace… or intelligence… or, dare I say it? Let’s make the wheelchair Sexy!

Make Concert Stages Wheelchair Accessible

Categorization is worthy of the most severe, lamentable, and woeful condemnation imaginable to an urbane disposition. To put it curtly: It sucks. Well… within the music industry. It is probably a bane throughout all terrestrial existence, but Categorization definitely and significantly sucks within the lexicon that so callously delineates the Industrial Music Complex. Categorization has become the acknowledged measure of comparison for quantitative and qualitative value, which, quantitatively, isn’t nearly as offensive as expressing musical viability as the exclusive qualitative criterion. 

Categorization was once a convenient way to inquire about a certain piece of music. Let’s say you hear a song by George Jones and decide to go to a record store to purchase the 45.

Obviously, I’ve just dated myself as a quinquagenarian whose first LP album purchase was the Eagles’ Hotel California , so if you have no idea what a 45 is, Google it, or, better yet, ask your grandmother and watch her eyes brighten like aurora australis enhanced with throbbing high definition LED energy. Of course, I realize with the certainty of a Heaven’s Gate cult member that my writing style doesn’t appeal to today’s youth, the generation that begins every narrative with OMG! could not possibly groove on my aureate writing style; although, I dissuade no one from boycotting my written rhetoric simply because it’s been categorized as sesquipedalian . Hopefully, this is the main theme of this narrative.

So you hear the live version of George Jones’ “Fox on the Run” on the radio (before MP3s turned music into a digital, more easily accessible medium of entertainment… at the cost of quality, but the digital format facilitates downloading songs into more ubiquitous media thereby making things like a radio or turntable so passé).

You think to yourself, “Self!” …because you are in a formal relationship with yourself and thereby feel the need to address yourself in the third person. 

“Self!” …you continue unabated.

“Self! You must make your way to the redundantly appellative Yesteryear’s Archaic Days of Yore Antique Store of Good Ol’ Days Historic Antiquity to purchase the vinyl, analogue-recorded version of the song by George Jones.” 

So you saunter your way to the vinyl record emporium (because to saunter is what one did before the Segue made jerky ambulation a quaint episodic mode of transportation undertaken by churlish boors and Luddites unaccustomed to technological innovations that helped to make physical exertion obsolete), and you ask the vinyl peddler for the record.

“That would be in the Country section,” she would say with an edentulous smile.

And that is, in and of itself, fairly innocuous; although it seems to me that one could easily categorize music alphabetically in this technological age of ultra-high-speed binary digital databases cross-referencing authors, titles, publishing dates, performers birthdays, or even the most quotidian information regarding recorded music. Same goes with anything: genres of literature, poetry, weapons, cuisine, art, fiction, biology, anything. 

Categorization is no longer needed as a tool of Capitalism, especially when there are so many more effective tools to promulgate the avaricious nature about which Capitalism necessitates sycophantic justification by its cult members who are otherwise decent people but still justify their embracing the narcissism of “dying with the most toys” that encourages the caricaturizing of the poor as lazy goldbricks who suck on the government’s teat instead of the empathetic creatures their penury merited before Reaganism encouraged making them the enemy of prosperity.

Categorization is segregation, i.e. an effective and socially accepted methodology employed by certain factions of pedagogic demagoguery—who are inexperienced in mental cogitation—to irrevocably accept or reject certain types of music with illusory rationale simply because the urbane perception of musical genres is either positive or negative without regard to any eclectic possibility that such generalization oft precludes an acknowledgment that probity is possible even when contradicting existing methodology, that a wise man can, and does, learn from a fool whereas a fool believes her mental acuity to be irrefutable, the deceptively erudite yet crass aphoristic assurance by impassioned appeals to the emotions of the populace, such as: “All Country music sucks,” or “Jazz appeals exclusively to abstract hardliners who decry the consecrated emotional value of simple harmony accessorized with colloquial rhetoric employed by songwriters with very limited musical virtuosity.” Categorization is generalization, and as such, it fails to recognize the inner beauty of sincerity when it’s wrapped in hand-me-down clothes instead of arranged in hermetically sealed, hypoallergenic expensive brand name packaging of inferior quality. 

No. I have no idea what this essay blazons, but, despite its obvious superfluity, it is rhythmic and sounds erudite, and since I write this newsletter once a week and I have no desire to annoy the three fans of my writing who not only tolerate but actually dig my style, I will include this essay with the rest of this week’s newsletter; nobody else is gonna add rhetorical content, so...

Peace Through Music

The Eighth and Rail in historical downtown Opelika, Alabama is the venue for a wildly groovy weekly jazz jam as hosted by the Jane Drake Jazz Band. It's a cozy celebration of life that has become a buzzing collection of jazz-loving fanatics gathered together in a coterie of peaceful, fun-loving positive energy. I am downright proud as a peacock with enhanced LED-flashing feathers to participate in the jam on a regular basis, and I really love it! Proprietor Mike Patterson makes the wonderful sushi and Miss Tiffany keeps the affable atmosphere at a lovely level of emotive satisfaction. Plus... they serve an awesome cheesecake that'll make you wanna slap yourself so hard as to tell horrific knock-knock jokes to mimes. No lie. We have really talented musicians come in from the bi-state area: Auburn, Montgomery, Tuskegee, Columbus, LaGrange, Fort Valley, et al. The jam begins at 7 pm and ends at 10 pm CT. Hopefully, I'll see you there.

Eighth and Rail Website

Venkman's is a nightclub in Atlanta, a venue that Joe Gransden uses for his weekly jazz jam. This is where the Who's Who of the Atlanta Jazz Scene come together to dazzle us mortals. It's free and starts at 8 pm ET. Fo' mo' info, click link below. I've participated in this jam a couple of times, and I love it as well. Joe Gransden always welcomes me with a smile that will melt antarctic glaciers in the middle of winter, which, oddly enough, is during June through August... when it's so hot and humid in middle Georgia that my toenails sweat. Nevertheless, Joe's band often includes keyboardist Kenny Banks (sometimes Kevin Bales), drummer Chris Burroughs and bassist Craig Shaw, and these cats kick it. When I find the transportation, I'm going.

Venkman's Website