Writing About Running
So, my three favorite activities are making music, running and reading.
It would be ideal if these three activities could interrelate. I read quite a bit about music–and yes, I’ve heard the quote “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” (but who says dancing about architecture is such a bad thing?). I just finished a pretty good bio of W.C. Handy that came out last year. Not the most riveting biography I ever read, but I was quite interested in the story of the “Father of the Blues.” So those two, music and reading, for me anyway, go together.
How about music and running? When I’m on the running path, I’m always immersed in music. If I’m on a flat, paved course, I usually have my iPod, and I listen to a wide variety of music. (Most recently: Queen, Muddy Waters, Mariem Hassan, and, yes, a little King of Pop.) If I’m on the dirt trails, I’m thinking about music while I run. Music and running are a perfect fit, always entwined.
But I don’t do too much reading about running. I guess that’s because there are quite a few really great writers who love music and have figured out a way to make words about music interesting, but most of the folks who write about running are, well, jocks. There’s not a lot to say about running, I guess, really. There’s gear talk, details of training regimens, who had what time where. Unlike baseball, with its culture clashes, zen strategies, and great failures that provide the stuff of fascinating literature, there are not so many great books about the sport of running. The Murakami book What I Think About When I Think About Running is an exception. That’s because Murakami is a very good writer who happens to be an avid, longtime runner. I’ve heard nice things about a novel called Once a Runner, written by a runner, John L. Parker, Jr. Runner’s World called it “the best novel ever written about running.” (What are the runners-up?) I’ve been looking for it, hoping to find another runner who can write.
Favorite Things: Miles & Ruth & Harry
I was reading an article in Newsweek about the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue, which turns 50 this year. The article notes that the album is the top-selling jazz album of all time, and that it was so popular in the years after it came out that Miles Davis was a pop celebrity of the era. This is one of those cliche albums that you feel funny about putting on a favorites list, because everyone else has got it on their lists. Sgt. Pepper and Pet Sounds fall into that category as well. I have no hesitation about putting any of those on any all-time favorites list. They are masterpieces and, for me, they’ve stood the test of time. Quincy Jones points out that Kind of Blue sounds like it could’ve been made yesterday. I agree, but would an album like it have been made yesterday? Was an album like it made yesterday, and released into oblivion?
On my camping vacation last week (reading and hiking, but no running, due to my knee issues), I finished the wonderful book Lark and Termite and started on A Sight for Sore Eyes, a Ruth Rendell psychological thriller written in 1998. I seldom read books in that genre, but I went through a period during which I read quite a few of Rendell’s non-Wexford books, novels that invariably feature several unrelated characters whose lives very gradually become intertwined. And one of those characters always winds up being a psychopath. I enjoy these books, and Ruth Rendell is such a careful writer that they don’t seem like guilty plesasures. I picked this one up because it was on a list I saw of Entertainment Weekly’s “most readable” books of the past quarter-century. It didn’t disappoint. I went into town and bought another Rendell, The Water’s Lovely, which isn’t nearly as tension-building or labyrinthine, but nevertheless is a page-turner.
Yesterday morning, on my last day before returning to work, I put on one of my favorite LP sides of all time (yes, children, we used to think in terms of record sides): side one of Nilsson’s Nilsson Schmilsson. It’s a concept half-album of songs that seem to represent the conflicted feelings one has in the wee hours of the night and in the morning after. The songs, in order, are: “Gotta Get Up,” “Driving Along,” Early in the Morning,” “The Moonbeam Song,” and “Down.” A great mood piece. Side two is a mishmash.
Running: Waiting
I have determined without a doubt that I will not be running in tomorrow’s White Rock Half-Marathon. In the five days since I injured my knee on the trails of Cedar Ridge Nature Preserve, I have walked a lot, iced my knee, pressed it, tested it. But I hadn’t tried to run on it. At Kiest Park today, I took five running steps and could run no farther. I’m not sure what that means. I guess I’ll need to see a doc to figure out whether it’s something temporary that’ll go away after a little more rest, or something permanent and in need of repair. I hate to even think that it may be quite awhile before I can run again.
I got plantar fasciitis a couple of years ago, because I was trying to run in shoes barely suitable to walk in. In a very short time, the heel pain began and I couldn’t run. I bought some great SAS walking shoes and some good running shoes, and after a couple months I was ramping back up, and the problem hasn’t recurred. But it would be a drag to have to work back up to the distance I was getting used to. I may have no choice but to wait.
Also waiting to get final mixes of final three songs from my recording project.
This morning, listened to several Horace Silver albums, including the classic Blowin’ the Blues Away and the 1983 album Spiritualizing the Senses, featuring Eddie Harris. (My LP cover is signed!) I love all periods of Horace Silver stuff, including the late sixties/early seventies ultra-kitschy “Healing Feeling” series of songs with self-help themes, sung with period verve. Silver’s dad, immortalized by Horace’s Latin jazz classic “Song for My Father,” was from Cape Verde. This little island off the west coast of Africa produced another musical wonder, the morna singer Cesaria Evora. Their music doesn’t have a lot in common (although I could hear Ms. Evora singing “Song for My Father”), but I put both in the category “everything I’ve heard by them consistently good.”
Reading at 78 rpm
This is a pretty strange assertion, but since it involves music and reading, it caught my attention:
“A lot of it has to do with my music background. I studied voice and piano fairly seriously during my elementary and high school days, and as such, I became very attuned to rhythm and cadence and voice. So what happens when I read is that I can ‘hear’ the narrative and dialogue in my head, but what’s odd is that I’m both aware of the book at, say, an LP rate (33 1/3 revolutions per minute) but in my head it translates to roughly a 78.”
–Los Angeles Times “Jacket Copy” columnist Sarah Weinman, on how she read 462 books in 2008
As a music lover who’s also an avid reader, I understand the part about “rhythm and cadence and voice.” The best prose writing serves the the story and the characters, without breaking the tone or mood. Clunky sentences, jarring phrases that seem contrived, or wooden dialogue can kill a story quickly, and can disrupt the enjoyment of the experience as much as the same sort of thing (or a scratch on an LP) can ruin a musical experience.
But I don’t understand how anyone can enjoy reading that fast–well over a book a day. That’s beyond rhythm and cadence. And how can a reader pick up the voice at that clip? (Not to mention the fact that a three minute, twenty second version of Coleman Hawkins’ “Body and Soul” on LP is still going to last 3:20 on a 78.)
I read fairly slowly, and that’s OK, because I choose what I read to the extent that I don’t feel like I’m wasting time on a so-so book that doesn’t deserve it. It either deserves to be read at a leisurely pace or it doesn’t deserve to be read.
Eight Gentlemen in Verona
I think I may have just watched the best filmed live performance I’ve ever seen.
I’ve been a fan of Paolo Conte, the Italian songwriter/pianist/singer (well, it’s not exactly singing he does but it suits his music perfectly) for years–ever since I picked up the 1998 Best of Paolo Conte after reading about him. His songs captivate me like few others’ consistently do–Monk, Nino Rota, Weill, Duke and Strays. The music is some kind of Southern European jazz variant on gypsy swing, with lots of lush musical passages punctuated with showbiz flourishes and vocal “rat-a-tats” and growls.
OK, maybe that description isn’t selling anyone on Paolo Conte. Get the Best of CD or Reveries or Aguaplano. Wonderful stuff. And it doesn’t matter that you don’t understand Italian. You get the wistfulness or the playfulness or whatever the song’s conveying from the delivery and the arrangements.
For months I’ve been trying to get hold of a video of Mr. Conte and his multi-instrumentalist band performing a concert at the Arena in Verona. I finally got it last night. Because of the European region code, I wasn’t able to watch it the old-fashioned way, on a TV, but I was able to see it on the computer. I even got my wife to sit through the song “Max,” which I think is the best single performance on this best concert video ever.
It’s definitely the high point of a pre-vacation week during which I’ve been worried about my knee as the half-marathon steadily approaches. I didn’t want to run on it Monday or Tuesday, the days following the “incident” at the nature preserve. Yesterday and today, it’s been wet and cold and yucky. So, during a week in which I should’ve run several times and rested the day before the race, it looks like I may only get to run the day before the race, if at all.
If I can’t run, I just hafta forget about it. I’ll stay in and watch Paolo and the band in Verona again.
The Knee Plays
Yesterday, one week away from the White Rock Half-Marathon, which I’m signed up to do, I decided to try out the Cedar Ridge Nature Preserve trails. I’ve hiked there with family, and so I knew that the trails had bigger and steeper ups and downs than my usual trails. But there are no bikers allowed, so hikers and runners rule the road there. I had to check it out.
The run was, in places, strenuous, but it was a beautiful setting. I was deep in thought about my almost-complete CD project. No dwelling on missed opportunities, marketing, genre definitions. I was just thinking about music–really, just feeling it without thought. That’s the way to run. And then, at about four miles, there was a sharp pain in my right knee. I’ve had knee pains before that I was able to run through in just a few yards. I couldn’t do any more running yesterday. I walked back to the car, very concerned.
I consulted the book Running Injury Free, which advised ice packs, quad exercises, and rest. That’s what I did. It feels better today, but I’m not going to try even a flat, paved run till at least tomorrow.
Other than sports health guides, I’m currently reading Lark & Termite, the first book I’ve read by Jayne Anne Phillips. And the first book since The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao that I’ve read because the reviews made it sound so wonderful. And Wao’s author Junot Diaz is one of three favorite authors (the other two are Alice Munro and Tim O’Brien) who give the book “advance praise” on the back dust jacket panel.
The book is indeed wonderful.
Lately listening to: Bob Dylan’s 2006 album Modern Times. His follow-up is due out in April. I can’t think of any other set of songs that is so repetitive and at the same time so engrossing. Maybe Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, but that one’s an experiment in repetition.
Trail Angst
So, it was an abnormally wonderful March 7 morning, in the sixties at 8:00 a.m., and not too windy yet. And what would I expect to be thinking about on a trail run the morning of the final group session for my recording project? I would expect, of course, to be thinking about the song arrangements for the three tunes, locking in the segues, the fills, the lyrics. I pretty much wrote and arranged all of these songs on the trails, working them out as I ran and then writing it all down back at home.
But that’s not what I was thinking about this morning. I was instead thinking of missed opportunities. You know, I’ve been working toward this particular mixture of Beatles/Beach Boys/Nilsson harmony pop and Jelly Roll/Satchmo/Boswell Sisters vintage swing for a couple or three years. This project is it, and I’m on the verge of maybe figuring out what exactly to do with the finished product–how to get it to the ears that may want to hear it.
But yesterday I got two emails about acts performing in the area, groups doing twenties and thirties music, doing retro torch music, doing vintage close harmony stuff. And then last night, our slide guitar player mentioned a group of sisters he was intending to see at an area coffee house. They all play violin, evidently, and sing like The Andrews Sisters.
Now, I believe these acts are doing covers, and my CD is all original songs. So it’s still something different, I think. I’m just not so good at getting things lined out in a way that can get the music out there. I need others to help me with that. Problem is, most of them are about like me.
If, say, this project were to get some notice somewhere, that would be marvy. I just hope it’s not behind some curve by then. “Oh, everyone’s doing that thirties backroom swing sound. Where you been?” Ah, I wasn’t gonna worry about that kind of stuff any more–now that I’m an old guy. I’ll get past it. I’m past it now. The session went great, the project’s almost complete, and I am happy to have done it, regardless of who ever hears it.
And tomorrow morning, I’ll have a nice trail run and think only about the songs for the next project…
Folk Swing with Horns
The last three songs for my recording project are going to be recorded on Saturday. Now, right at the end of it, with a sound I’m really liking, my friend Toby has an idea. He’s a great Idea Man–always has been. His idea is to take this music, which I’ve recorded with a four-piece acoustic group (guitar, dobro, upright bass, and brushes-&-snare) and get it done up with horns. A horn section. I hafta admit, it’s an intriguing idea. Been trying to figure out what kind of music it is. I’m calling it “folk swing,” because it’s somewhere between old-style jazz, folk, and vocal group music. The horn section might make it something else. Hmmmm. Yes, yes, yes, intriguing.
Running on the Katy Trail–which is not a trail, as in dirt through nature– I wear an iPod. (When I’m on the nature trails running, I hafta have my ears exposed to the sound of oncoming bikers, but on the paved, straight n’ wide trails, I can listen to my tunes.) Today the playlist included the ever-present Boswell Sisters (”Heebie Jeebies”), Alex Bird, Ali Farka Toure, and Toots Hibbard’s wonderful reggae version of the Otis Redding classic “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember.”
Also have a few of the recording project songs on there. But now, as I listen to them, I’m imagining horns. The Boswells usually didn’t have much in the way of big band sounds behind them. Often just a piano. But they did sound great when a hot band was backing them up…Toby, what have you done? I will forge ahead with the last three in the same way I did the first eight. Then, we’ll consider the whole horn thing.
I need to think about it. While I’m running the nature trails.
Music to Run By
I haven’t posted anything in quite some time. Since my posts were always about music, and lately I’ve been getting back to actually making music and not just writing about it–well, I guess I got out of the habit. But my recording project is coming along nicely, thank you, and it’s been a little bit of a stretch for me. Very rewarding.
So, I think I’ll be writing more about my other addiction: running, and especially trail running. I know there are many out there who do a lot of running on trails–there’s even a club in my area that I’ve considered joining, The North Texas Trail Runners. But I don’t ever run into trail runners.
The trails I run on are bike trails–beautiful, winding dirt trails through natural areas. I realize that the folks on the bikes rule these trails: they created them, they make up over 90% of the users, and they go faster than I do. So I always am deferential to them. And I almost never see other runners. I’ve seen a couple on the Oak Cliff Nature Preserve trails in the year that I’ve been running there. And I haven’t seen any on the Boulder Park trails. There are occasional hikers and dog walkers. But no runners.
That’s OK. I know the rules, and I wind my way through the trails working out song arrangements in my head as I go, getting into the zone. But staying aware, always aware, of approaching bikers.
Trail running and musical exploration go together–no doubt about it.
Playlists Three
A blurb on the back of The Rough Guide Book of Playlists says “Rufus Wainwright to Thelonious Monk.” Sounds like another couple for me to do.
Rufus Wainwright is my favorite “new” artist. I know he’s not new any more, but his first album is only ten years old, and he was only about 25 years old when he made it. I love the lush chords, the harmonies, and the fancy, fancy arrangements. Poses is my favorite of his albums, but they’re all wonderful. Here’s my Rufus Wainwright Playlist:
- Foolish Love (from Rufus Wainwright)
- April Fools (from Rufus Wainwright)
- Beauty Mark (from Rufus Wainwright)
- Poses (from Poses)
- The Tower of Learning (from Poses)
- Vicious World (from Want One)
- Go or Go Ahead (from Want One)
- Natasha (from Want One)
- Little Sister (from Want Two)
- Tiergarten (from Release the Stars)
Thelonious Monk is one of the great national treasures, I think. I grab every record I see and enjoy them all. Tough to pick ten, but here goes my Thelonious Monk Playlist:
- Locomotive (from Straight, No Chaser)
- Pannonica (from Brilliant Corners)
- Crepuscule with Nellie (several versions–all good)
- Bye-Ya (Jerry Gonzalez version on Rumba Para Monk)
- Hackensack (from Criss Cross)
- Work (guitar version by Peter Frampton, of all people, on the Hal Willner-produced Monk tribute album That’s the Way I Feel Now)
- Well, You Needn’t (several versions–all good)
- Nutty (from Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane)
- Monk’s Dream (from Thelonious Monk Trio)
- Ruby, My Dear (from Solo Monk)
And there are some great covers Monk recorded: Just a Gigolo (Thelonious Monk Trio), and Everything Happens to Me (Alone in San Francisco) are two nice songs transformed into haunting ballads. The whole Monk Plays Duke Ellington album is great, too.
