Cheikh Ndoye, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and Life on the Road
January 15th, 2012 § 2 Comments
But of course, it’s music season. :) Yes, early.
Cheikh Ndoye & Friends, Blues Alley, Washington, DC
If you’ve not heard of this guy, I strongly recommend checking him out. Doubly so if you like Gerald Veasley’s brand of music: kicky, funky, with a strong bass lead. Unlike Gerald, however, Cheikh is less groove and more snap. His brand of music is a different deviation of bass-heavy jazz; a bit more serious, almost as though his bass, in and of itself, is a bit more thoughtful than its counterparts.
So this show, with Chieli Minucci, Lao Tizer, and Karen Briggs as special guests, was an impulse trip. I thought about it, then thought against it, and about two weeks prior to the show, I asked myself, “What do I have to lose? It’s DC, a new city, and someone new to see.”
Well, it’s not like my travel bug is that difficult to convince. But you already knew that.
The thing about Blues Alley – and my regulars will confirm this – is that it’s located, quite literally, in an alley off North Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. In my meanderings around Georgetown, I had ended up walking past it twice, before I glanced down the alley next to the sushi place where I just had dinner. Yep, there it was, and immediately, I thought of the old speakeasies, and the way they were hiding in plain sight. One glance inside, and the comparison is all the more apropos: the entire club is exposed brickwork and mahogany. The house lights, even when on, are dimmed, and the atmosphere is a modern look at an old-school concept. For an old-school soul like myself, yep – that’s what home looks like.
Cheikh definitely impressed me from the get-go, and that is because having a show with the electric bass as a lead instrument, balance is key, and he more than had it. If you’ve heard Chieli Minucci on stage, then you know that when he starts up on the electric guitar, he has no trouble overpowering the backing musicians. Karen Briggs on the violin – same. Cheikh clearly had lead on the stage, even though Chieli did indeed let it rip on the electric. The bass was front and center, right on par with the guitar and violin; snappy, a little introspective, and definitely front-and-center.
The others were also showcased on that stage. Scheherazade by Karen Briggs, a lovely deviation on a classic, and Special EFX’s Daybreak, that same bass that had led the game just a few minutes ago would blend into the rhythm on both songs.
One thing to note: Daybreak was pleasantly different last night too, and that is thanks to Lao Tizer. It’s usually a vocal-led song, and I’ve heard it in that variation effectively ever since I had started attending Special EFX shows. But this time, it was piano-led where the vocals would ordinarily be, and I found myself feeling the same warm little tingle down my spine that I felt the very first time I heard this live. Lao gave this song a whole new flavor, and it’s a flavor I should very much like to sample again.
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, BB King’s
If you are among my fellow jazzers and you’re not familiar with the band offhand, I recommend that you look up Mr. Pinstripe Suit. You’ll recognize some of the riffs from the Olympics and Carly Patterson’s gold-winning floor routine. You’ll also recognize this band as one of the players of the 90s Swing Revival.
Or, if you’re like me, you’ll see it as a trip right back to the 1940s.
I will say this outright: before I fell ass-over-teakettle in love with contemporary jazz, I had a love of an entirely different music: big-band and swing. I was maybe 10 when I started listening to it, and it was also the time of the Swing Revival, and I caught a rendition of Glenn Miller’s In the Mood. Hooked? Oh, come on, like you have to ask.
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was on that radar here and there, but with time, and with a love affair with contemporary jazz, swing receded to the back burner…right up until I saw the BB King’s schedule and saw that they were playing.
This was last week.
You know, BB King’s has a very under-utilized dance floor. It’s a dance floor that I usually see set with tables as part of its usual audience seating plan, but this time, in an anticipation of some people knowing the proper steps to the swing (who were, in fact, hotdoggin’ it on the floor later on), the floor was free.
Out comes Scotty Morris and the band, and I will say this without hesitation: that has to be one of the best horn sections I’ve ever heard. Trombone, two trumpets, a tenor sax and the very seldom heard bari sax – and you’ll find yourself saying only three words: let ‘er rip! But easily, the guys who stole the show were Dirk Shumaker on the upright double bass and backing vocals, who actually went on and spun that bass on its peg like no one’s watching, and Joshua Levy on the keys, who looks like and plays like a very young Dave Brubeck. Scotty may’ve brought Mr. Pinstripe Suit front and center, but between Dirk being Mr. Heatmiser and Andy Rowley on the bari sax, photographing this show fell by the wayside somewhere around Cab Calloway’s Reefer Man. That was somewhere in the first 25 minutes. The rest of the time…well, what else can you do when the music is just begging you to hit the dance floor?
My feet have stopped complaining at me since that show, by the by, but the day after was a lulu.
Life on the Road
Technically, I’m not on the road that much, if you consider the number of days out of the year that I actually pack up and get out of town to catch a show. The thing is, I’ve noticed lately that whenever I see something on the music radar that requires traveling, I immediately think of the tote bag in my closet, and how quickly I can assemble what I need to crash for two nights max. The rest is getting there, exploring, meeting up with people, and whatever else I need.
You’d think it’s ordinary, but not on short notice. I know a lot of people who would be thrown into a panic at the prospect of jumping and getting on a bus, train, or plane within any timeframe less than a month. Me…nope. In fact, the shorter the time, the more I like it.
I’ve been thinking, more and more, of why I keep doing it. What is it about even this moment, where I’m sitting in the back of a Bolt bus, on the free wi-fi network, nursing a soup that I grabbed right before I left Union Station, that holds the appeal? I’ve always known myself to chase adventure and chase jazz, and far as I can tell you, I do it out of love for both. At the same time, I’d love to take a couple of days and stay home and keep putting the apartment to rights.
And yet, if someone told me, “Great show at Warmdaddy’s; grab your camera!”, you and I both know that I will be on the next Philly-bound Bolt bus and booking a room at the cheapest hotel possible as I go.
Still, even in this frenetic chase of music, moments, and memories, there are certain things that give me cause to lean back and simply enjoy it. For instance, right now, the bus is about halfway to NY. The mushroom bisque from Au bon Pain is delicious. Free wi-fi. A fantastic musical high. Pause to reflect on the first two shows of the new year, and the first out-of-state trip of the year that, all in all, didn’t put a massive dent into my budget. And it’s a fabulous way to start off the year.
May the jazz season officially begin.
K.G.
When You Just Have To (Re)Write
January 13th, 2012 Comments Off
My editor and I have a very cool arrangement for how we overhaul my books. She gets a PDF of a chapter, opens it up, rips it into shreds via the markup and highlight tools, then tosses it back to me. Then I pull that PDF side-by-side with its Word-document twin and work it over per her instructions. Some instructions I follow, others I discuss with her. Sometimes, I overhaul it so completely that I have to re-send the entire chapter back to her.
It’s incredibly effective. It’s also the style of editing that I had adopted for my own business clients as well.
The thing is, though, is that I fillet my work before it ever goes to Gayle, and thus, am several chapters ahead. As it so happens, this way I get to see where my book had gone into, and what I have to do to make it an effective story. Gayle gets the refined draft, hardly ever the rough one. This way, I can also correct storyline inconsistencies before the story ever gets to the editor’s desk.
Usually, it’s a pretty smooth process, albeit time-consuming and eye-crossing, like most editing tends to be.
And then you have moments like I had recently, wherein you continue to edit, and then come to the realization that pretty much the entire second half of the book needs a full-scale consistency overhaul, a.k.a. a massive content edit. Or, better put, a rewrite.
…egad.
Rewrites are a funny thing. They’re definitely a step above a conventional copyedit, and are a very necessary thing in most cases. I have said it before and I will reiterate myself: a first draft is a first draft only. Few times, if ever at all, does an author get the novel right on the first go. Chances are, the first go is not the best book in the world, and it is often full of plot holes, bad grammar, and underdeveloped storylines.
Surprise rewrites of the breed that mine had happened to be are a completely different animal, though. They just happen after you had edited through a good portion of your first draft, and are feeling that you can clock through the rest of the manuscript without a major overhaul. It kind of creeps up and bops you over the head, and then you’re surprised and wondering how you can possibly overhaul this much.
You know what the answer to that is? Slowly, and without discarding what you have already.
Granted, I’ve done it before when, upon the initial re-read, the first half of Book 1 had struck me as so cliche that I couldn’t keep it in the book. I’m talking a full-scale I cannot believe I wrote that sort of moment. Thus, I spent the better part of three years rewriting it. It was an interesting deal; I had to work mostly from scratch on that first half, but the scenes that were already there had given root to what it had ended up becoming. For the most part, though, I was writing the entire beginning half all over again.
With Book 4, though, the content is all there, and even in the current state, the action ramps up and cools off at just the right pace. The thing is…it’s a series. And considering that, 1) this would wrap up the first arc, and 2) the second arc is already mostly written, the main purpose of this overhaul is to make it all cohesive. My task is to both wrap up all the loose ends from Books 1-3, and springboard the plot properly into the next arc. Book 5 is its own little set of adventures, and the beautiful thing about Book 5 is, when laid out in Scrivener, all those plot holes hidden in the wall of text that’s usually the end result of novel-writing in Word are suddenly as obvious as spotlights.
This is the approach that I would recommend for attempting the Surprise Rewrite:
- Read the remainder of your story. By this time, it had already sat around for a while, and after you’ve already started the edit, you have a pretty clear idea of where this story is going to go. If you have a look at the rest of your story with your editing framework in mind, you suddenly end up viewing your writing in a much more critical frame of mind.
- Take notes, and lots of ‘em. Whether Post-Its are your poison, the Notes feature on Scrivener had struck your fancy, or you like OneNote from MS Office, you have to take notes. Make them as detailed as you like, but make sure that you will be able to understand them two months after you take them.
- Go slowly. Scene-by-scene, paragraph-by-paragraph, it matters little how you do it, but make sure that you take as much time as possible. As I’ve said before, editing a mass amount of text at the same time can and will make your eyes cross. You can and will get lost in your own story. If you have to rewrite or insert a scene, make sure that that’s all you do for a given block of time. It will, without fail, take you a lot of time to get done this way, but your story quality will be glad for it.
- If you’re straight-out rewriting chunks of your story from scratch, don’t discard the original portions. Don’t. They won’t come in useful just for nostalgia moments, but for future inspiration as well. As I learned the old-fashioned way, you literally have no idea where your next story idea will be coming from. Copy-paste your discarded segments into a separate file, and store it somewhere in your archives. When you have writer’s block some months – if not years – from today, have a read. You never know.
As it is, I have inadvertently started the overhaul earlier today. I touched back onto a couple of points in Book 3 and realized that if I wanted to have a turning point for one of my characters, then that was the perfect way to engineer it. It may cost me half of a dialogue to do it, but it’ll be pretty great.
As far as deadlines, I’ve had a small chat with Ragan Whiteside, a hell of a talent on the flute and a great fan of my books, and realized that, realistically, there was no way to get this done early. So, with that said, the deadline for the release of Book 4 is…my 27th birthday, May 13th, 2012.
I think it’ll be a hell of a way to celebrate.
K.G.
This is a rare political post.
January 11th, 2012 § 4 Comments
(edited for tiny wording correction)
It had to happen. Seriously, with some of the things I’m seeing in the news – and why I resumed watching the news, my blood pressure and I have no idea – if I don’t say something about it, I risk losing my mind completely.
Now look: Obama had caved on several issues important issues, and that was disappointing. But on quite a good lot of them, he had stood firm. He started the Iraq pullout. He got Osama bin Laden. As soon as he had taken office, he had made it clear that he was a pro-choice president and reversed some abortion restrictions that Bush had enacted. He started the progress of, and right now, under that healthcare law, people can actually at least start to get medical care. Hell, even the job market is starting to show signs of life again.
We all know that the Republicans are not okay with what Obama is doing. Actually, no: that’s the biggest understatement of this year, and the year’s only 10 days in. To say that they’re virulently opposed everything that he’s doing – and I mean everything – would be approaching a decent description, but some of the behaviors I’m seeing aren’t even classified as infantile. There’s such a disconnect from reality with those people that I started to question their sanity. They literally have no idea what life is like outside their comfortable bubbles of McMansions, private flights, campaigns, expensive restaurants, etc.
As a preliminary note. I’m glad that Michelle Bachmann is no longer in the race. That woman heeds to return to high school to repeat US History, and maybe then I’ll believe that she has two brain cells to rub together.
And yeah, the Republican party had departed from any sense of conservative and went right into stark raving bat-guano insane. Let me break this down candidate-by-candidate, at least the ones who have even a fighting chance at the nomination.
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Newt Gingrich.
Let’s say it bluntly: he is a complete fucking bastard. I mean, truly. I cannot believe some of the things that had come out of his mouth before, and I’m confident that no one forgot when he had served his wife while she was dying from cancer. What sort of a sociopath does that, I’ll never know, and I have studied sociopaths for years.
This idiot said that he would go to the NAACP convention to discuss the importance of paychecks vs. food stamps and pulls out the “I have black friends, so I’m not racist!” defense. Look, it’s the same effect as someone who’s homophobic touting that they “have gay friends” – sorry, not buying it, and if those people knew your views, they would lose you as a friend, double-time. I’m pretty sure that if Colin Powell had been on hand when those things were said, then he would punch Newt so hard that the jaw would have to be replaced. If there is anything that anyone on public assistance had ever fought against, it was the infamous welfare-queen stereotype perpetuated by Ronald Reagan, a stereotype that is blatantly false, and the absolute last thing anyone wants is to be patronizingly explained why one should want one and not the other. Here’s a hint: no one who is on food stamps wants to be in the situation that requires them to be on food stamps.
Also, I have to ask…why does he assume that welfare recipients are necessarily black? Racial bias, hello there, long time no see. /spit. And recent stats actually turn that little bias on its head.
I’ve also not forgotten his attempt to blame the recession on the unemployed, which I’ve filleted on this blog last year. Again and with feeling: no one who is unemployed wants to be.
Also, his verbalizations on gay marriage make my blood boil. So, per him, gay married couples are only friends. So that thing that they do in the bedroom that the government is mandated to stay out of under Lawrence & Garner v. Texas (2003) is..? Yeah. Last time I checked, the Supreme Court had made it abundantly clear that the government doesn’t belong in people’s bedrooms. Considering Newt’s divorce, I severely doubt that this man has room to open his mouth about marriages, period.
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Ron Paul
Corporatist lackey, but this one doesn’t even make any effort to hide it. One of his popular stances is to eliminate the minimum wage. I’m sorry, what the fuck? Seriously. Are we looking for a comeback of the conditions of the Industrial Revolution era? Just because the people who had survived that time aren’t alive anymore doesn’t mean that it never happened.
He would also absolutely love to eliminate the EPA. Uh, okay…but let’s not forget that fracking is behind the recent spike in Ohio earthquakes. Funny how that never made the news.
Oh, and he wanted to eliminate OSHA. Required reading: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. That book inspired the actual formation of FDA and OSHA, and had also put Teddy Roosevelt, an avid hunter, off meat for some time. I think someone had skipped that in high school English.
Don’t click here if you don’t want your blood to boil with his take on the Civil Rights act. Fair warning.
Also, he went on to say that Social Security is unconstitutional. So to pay into my own safety net is unconstitutional? But it wasn’t unconstitutional when the little money that I paid into Social Security goes out as a government loan/bailout. Gee, funny how that works.
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Mitt Romney
Ah, Mittens. The guy who freely admits that he enjoys firing people, and we all know that he was so gung-ho for blocking the extension of unemployment benefits that he wouldn’t have given a damn for a government shutdown.
Also: Bain Capital had bankrupted one-quarter of the companies that it had invested in. Bain would leverage them with debt, then walk away with profits, while the company would crash and burn. In the world of business, this is known as a parasite. This isn’t free enterprise. This is leeching. I loathe leeches. Moreover, Bain Capital had received a bailout. So in other words, not only did he leech off other people’s money, but he leeched off the taxpayers’ money as well.
I also have zero tolerance for bullshit artists who can’t even keep up their own lies. European society and safety nets create more poverty? How? By actually taking care of their citizens? And how many people die in France because they couldn’t get to the doctor in time to catch that lethal cancer? Zero. Shock, horror, people there are taken care of! And oh, the Netherlands are closing their prisons because there’s not enough criminals. Of course, European society is soooo awful.
And I just found out about the dog incident. Intro to Criminal Justice class: the first identifier of a sociopath is harming animals. No person who will do harm to an animal should ever come to the White House, point blank. Do you want to know what animal abusers grow into? No? Good, you don’t want to know.
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Rick Santorum
First of all, Google what “Santorum” means. Let the jokes write themselves.
Now consider that this guy is a full-scale hypocrite.
He’s so anti-abortion that he is keen on criminalizing the process altogether. But never mind the fact that his own wife had to have a procedure done to save her life that classifies as “partial birth abortion” (a total fallacy of a term, just FYI; either it’s a birth or it’s an abortion). So the only moral abortion is the one in his family? So that mother of three kids who can’t afford to become a mother of four, or a teenage girl who doesn’t want to birth her uncle’s baby is an amoral harlot who should be in prison, but his wife is scot-free? Sorry. Can’t have it both ways.
The fact that he and his wife had brought the deceased fetus home to dress it up, sleep with it, and to have the kids say goodbye to it is, I’m sorry, sick. While I know that people grieve differently, and that it’s definitely normal to want to, say, photograph in the event of a child death, there is no reason to traumatize the children with it. If this was any other family, social services would be called immediately. No exception here, but oh wait, he’s a politician.
A complete racist, to boot, and spouting about Obama’s “elitism” for wanting all kids to go to college. While I’m not a fan of forced attendance, I find Obama’s sentiment admirable, because a lot of the high-school grads who want to go to a good school are unable to because they can’t afford it. And about cutting welfare as a Christian value? Now look, I’m an evil, amoral atheist and all, but I’m damn sure that the Bible made it abundantly clear to give to the poor, not the other way around. Just this thing called reading comprehension talking.
—
Oh, there’s more.
First of all, last time I checked, death threats are illegal. I don’t give a damn if you’re using the Bible to do it, it’s still a death threat. I would love for some men in suits with stern faces to knock on this guy’s door.
Secondly, about Michelle, and making the slur an immediate follow-up to the fauxpology. WHAT. You can’t even apologize for the fact that you acted like an asshole without making yourself look like an even bigger asshole?
Thirdly, Bush had spent more time on vacation in his first two years than Obama in his entire term, and you don’t see people bitching about that, do you? What about all the Republicans who had used the taxpayers’ dollars to send to their mistresses? Gay escorts? Oh, I have a long memory, believe you me, and it seems like every scandal involving a prostitute or a closet has to do with a Republican. Jim McGreevey seems to be the only normal person in politics who had come out of the closet in the past two decades.
I will make no bones of it: the Republican Party candidates are insane. Stark-raving, bat-guano, no functioning firing synapses in cranium insane. They will do absolutely anything to make sure that their financial gain will remain secured and that their equally rich friends will continue to have money to hand over to them, never mind where that money comes from. The environment, poor people’s backs, safety net money – doesn’t matter who gets hurt by their greed, they will keep pushing until they’re making like Scrooge McDuck and taking a swim in the treasury, while everyone and everything else be damned. Doesn’t matter that the climate is changing, doesn’t matter that there is an increase in natural disasters, as long as the treasury is full, right?
I have no idea when this sort of callous, sociopathic disregard for the outside world became the norm, but I am sickened to the core that those people are 1. on a national platform, and 2. broadcasting their virulent misogyny, racism, homophobia, and greed for the world to see with little to no repercussion. It wasn’t too long ago when expressing that sort of rhetoric would be warrant enough to get you torn to shreds in every medium, and quoting a Bible verse that Kansas Republican had quoted in regards to Pres. Obama would be cause for a visit from gentlemen with stern faces and crisp suits.
Really. Is the racism of the GOP so pervasive and virulent that, when the first black President had taken office, that it suddenly became par for the course for all the middle-aged white men who never got over the Civil Rights Act to spew out their verbal diarrhea?
Because really, that’s all I’m seeing here in the GOP primaries. A bunch of middle-aged white men who never got over the 1950s, who got rich and want to stay that way at the cost of anyone and anything. Bankrupt Social Security so that the elderly will have nowhere to go? Cut the minimum wage for a return into the sweatshops of the Industrial Revolution? Whatever works, right?
I find it disgusting. And I find it even more disgusting that they’re calling themselves Christian. I’m sorry, no. I’ve read the New Testament, and you can’t convince me one whit that Jesus had thought even anything remotely like those people. I can only wonder what he would say/do if he were around to see this sort of mess. Bloody hell, I’m not a Christian, and I have more compassion in my toe than those people have collectively.
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For the record? I’m a progressive liberal and unashamed of it, and absolutely refuse to vote for any candidate less educated and intelligent than myself. I am not party-affiliated, nor will I ever be. I am pro-choice, pro-regulation, pro-union, pro-Net Neutrality, pro-social safety nets, and pro-universal healthcare. And I will not hide that for a split second.
I also don’t post about politics very often, but this had gotten to me to the degree that my blood pressure had been spiking whenever I would turn on the news, and that means that it has to come out somewhere.
I don’t post political stuff often, and I hope that it’s the last time I will for a while. But really, enough is too much.
K.G.
January 10th, 2012 Comments Off
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Jump In With Both Feet
January 8th, 2012 Comments Off
The more I think about what I’m doing lately, the more my logical side is forcing me to ask the crucial question of, “Woman, are you planning to sleep?!”
Uh…not really?
And yeah, the lack of sleep is starting to make my short-term memory go off-kilter, which blows.
However! This year had started with some very exciting things, and I have been delighted to wrap up an edit for a client, do two new graphic designs for another two, and am kicking off the photo sessions with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at BB King’s tomorrow. Hotdamn, swing in the city! I feel all sorts of glamorous, even though I’m not quite ready… and yes, I’m breaking out the pencil skirt for this one. For those of you who know me, you guys know I’d rather keep my yoga pants on 24-7…but hey, swing music in BB King’s demands it.
…Now that the good stuff is out of the way…
I find myself gravitating more and more towards photography. In fact, I’m finding that a lot of my writing had become more visual, so to speak, and having been previously described as cinematic in my writing, I’m wondering if that’s the direction that I need to pursue in further endeavors. I briefly mentioned wanting to screenplay The Index Series, and I think I am going to get brave and do it. The only problem is, of course, is that I have no idea how the film industry works. A lot to learn and dig into, and if there’s a producer in this world who’s willing to take a shot and make this series something awesome…well, if it’ll help me finally have my own apartment, I’m game for it.
There’s a lot on the menu travel-wise, and what better way to start the year than DC? Yes, the capital. I’m going to see Cheikh N’Doye, a bassist, whose special guests include Lao Tizer, Karen Briggs, and Chieli Minucci. My camera and I are ready, and I’ll get into town early enough to do some sightseeing, and get out of there midday Sunday.
However, all that being what it is, I will be keeping my money very close to the vest for the time being. I’m not in good shape, and I know it. Tax time will be kind, but just enough to fill the stopgap; the real rescue will be coming to me in the form of overtime. By then, though, I will have the coveted Newport Beach tickets.
This is the thing with Newport: I will buy out the room, if I can handle it. If people want to share with me, fabulous – just reimburse me the costs. I will also get to CA early, rent a car, and hit the road…why? Because there are people and places to visit. I can’t wait to see San Diego.
My traveling will likely be limited, and I want to make sure that I will save up enough to not make CapJazz a misadventure any more than what it has been financially in the past. This time, I want to actually finish this year at zero revolving debt, if possible, while doing all the traveling I can.
But I will see to getting out of town often. NY is great, but life outside of NY is even better.
K.G.
Again, with feeling. Repeat ad nauseum.
January 6th, 2012 § 1 Comment
I found this on my Facebook feed, via the brilliant guitarist Ken Navarro (he wasn’t the one who replied to the ad, changing that bit for context):
Craigslist Ad: We are a small & casual restaurant in downtown Vancouver and we are looking for solo musicians to play in our restaurant to promote their work and sell their CD. This is not a daily job, but only for special events which will eventually turn into a nightly event if we get positive response. More Jazz, Rock, & smooth type music, around the world and mixed cultural music. Are you interested to promote your work? Please reply back ASAP.
A Musician’s Reply:
Happy new year! I am a musician with a big house looking for a restauranteur to promote their restaurant and come to my house to make dinner for my friends and I. This is not a daily job, but only for special events which will eventually turn into a nightly event if we get positive response. More fine dining & exotic meals and mixed Ethnic Fusion cuisine. Are you interested to promote your restaurant? Please reply back ASAP.
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Note that there’s absolutely nothing in here that says how the musician will be paid, or how much. In the restaurant circles, this sort of an ad is a thinly veiled notice that the musician will not be paid for this.
Let’s say this again. With feeling. Ad nauseum, until the message will sink in:
No one is entitled to receive creative services for free.
This is especially true of contemp jazz. While I’m perfectly aware that the terrestrial radio exposure for this format is on life support, if even that, there’s a massive online following, and the genre, contrary to whoever says otherwise, is alive and well. It’s just not mainstream anymore, and hadn’t been since CD 101.9 started off the chain reaction of format flips.
Is there any legitimate reason not to pay a musician for their work?
Really. Get with the program. The musician in this case would be promoting the restaurant as well as themselves. If the people come in to listen to the music and like the food, they will come back to the restaurant. So the restaurant is benefiting twice over from the musician’s presence: live music, and an uptick in clientele. The musician gets…what, exactly? Exposure? They can get the same exposure from a paid gig as opposed to a freebie.
“But they play for the love of music, don’t they?”
Cut that out. Seriously, stop romanticizing jazz musicians. They may do what they do because of the love of music, but they sure as hell do not get on a stage just because of the love. The love is great. It warms the soul. It does not pay bills. Love does not put food on the table. Love does not pay the income tax, because guess what: most of the time, the artist is working as an independent contractor, which involves paying the self-employment tax, which is a higher bracket than most W-2 income. And love especially doesn’t pay the mortgage, rent, or studio expenses that are requisite fees for the musician to ply his or her trade. You want live music? Pony up the dough. You want promo through live music? Pony up the dough. Life isn’t free, and I’ve yet to hear of any apartment building that lets people live for free that doesn’t end with “correctional facility” in its name.
This sort of an ad is only a drop in the heap of BS attitude of, “You’re just a starving artist who needs to be seen, and should be grateful there’s someone willing to throw you a bone, how dare you ask for money if you’re in this genre?” that even established, A-List musicians get on a regular basis from venues all over the world. It’s patronizing, disrespectful, outright insulting, and needs to stop immediately. And it’s disgustingly pervasive in contemporary jazz, because it’s not the “cool and popular” genre of music. The response to the above ad is absolutely classic and there should be more of such replies.
Really. Is there any legitimate reason not to pay a musician for their work? Because that’s what they’re doing when they’re on stage: working. They’re not doing it for the love, at least not only. They’re doing their job. They have lives, families, loans, bills to pay, and they are working so they could do exactly that. It’s no different from the owner going to the restaurant to oversee the running thereof, or a Joe Analyst going to a 9-5 job.
Long story short: pay the piper. Or the guitarist. Or the saxophonist.
K.G.
Say it loud…and it’ll work.
January 5th, 2012 Comments Off
This came up in a conversation with a fellow author, and a discussion in WriMore International on Facebook.
A writer had posted a simple statement: please tell me I’m not the only one arguing with fictional characters. And I answer, “By no means whatsoever.” What I also say is that sometimes, saying something aloud, or reading something aloud, would help you see exactly where the errors are.
Now, let’s extrapolate why, for a moment.
How many of you, my fellow writers, have tried to edit a heap of text on your own? If it’s past a certain amount, your eyes begin to cross. That is where you overlook certain things, and that is when a test reader would later come to you and say, “This reads awkwardly” or “This dialogue could be better.”
Whether or not you will have such feedback, or have received it already, there is much to be said for actually speaking in order to work through a scene. For one, you’re paying attention, and two, your involvement with your own characters is a little bit deeper if you’re actually listening, rather than just reading.
Come on, if you’ve ever yelled at the TV or movie screen, you know what I mean. You don’t yell at the TV out of nowhere; you do it because you’re in it, and you’re in it up to your neck.
Writing is something that carries a certain peculiar sort of actor-observer bias. Think about the yelling at the TV or movie screen. You get so absorbed into the story that you want to somehow reach the characters, because you know that there’s something that they’re not noticing. You feel what they feel, you feel as though you are caught in the situation right along with them, but there is still a fourth wall, so to speak, which separates the viewer from the character.
With authors, take the same sort of emotional involvement in the story, and remove the fourth wall, and add in the actor-observer bias.
While I technically shouldn’t use that term, I can find no better words to describe it. The author is in a very unique position: he or she is watching the characters interact, is writing out their interaction, and at the same time, is wanting to write or do something that comes from the knee-jerk reflex to tell the character, “NO! Do NOT do this! Not a good idea!” – even though the character must do this for the sake of the story turning out to plan.
I would often say this about my own books, and I’m sure that many people will tell you the same thing: the character tell the story for me. Character-driven stories involve quite a lot of frequent yelling at the computer screen, especially in the editing phase, wherein the author finds that the characters did a phenomenal stupid…or ten. But most importantly, it involves reading aloud.
Yes, your roommate, husband,wife, kid, dog, or cat may think you’re a little off your rocker, but know this: your eyes may not be able to tell what’s off in the scene, but your ears don’t generally hear a story being read. You’re cued in, and paying more attention. As such, whatever sounds off to you, whether you’re acting out your own character dialogue or are trying to get your scenery and phrasing together, then I can promise you, it will be better if you actually speak your story than just read and try to make sense of it. Because, as Book 1 had taught me the hard way, it is fully possible to burn out via your own story.
K.G.
Hmmm.
January 2nd, 2012 Comments Off
Apologies to anyone who had attempted to go to any of my CreateSpace book links. CS seems to be down at the moment.
Kindly proceed to the Amazon links to order in paperback…until CS restores its DNS servers.
K.G.
ABNA 2012, and the Importance of Long-Term Revisions
January 1st, 2012 § 2 Comments
First of all, a delightfully happy New Year to everyone! It is now 2012, which means…if you’re reading this, the world didn’t end.
Ahem. Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. :)
Anyway, let’s dive right in with the news du jour.
For my fellow self-published authors, A.B.N.A (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards) are coming up. If you’re unfamiliar with this, you can click the ABNA tag on my blog for past ramblings on the subject, or this link that explains it nicely.
For those who don’t feel like clicking, Penguin Publishing sponsors this shindig every year. If you’re unpublished or self-published, you submit your pitch, an excerpt, and your manuscript, and it gets vetted through multiple rounds of the contest (pitch, excerpt review, manuscript review) towards a $15,000 advance from Penguin and a publication contract.
Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?
This contest is something I’ve done before. I entered for the first time in 2010, and got through to the second round, only to be booted at the review stage. Second time was in 2011, and I didn’t make it. I kind of expected both of those outcomes, really, but I won’t lie that I was surprised when the reviews had come in. The reviewers, who I might point out are paid for this gig, are not matched by genre at all. So my urban fantasy/sci-fi series went to two people who don’t read it at all, and made it clear in the reviews.
Bummer. But them’s the breaks, and you can’t please them all.
The thing also is, I’ve entered the books of my series in sequence on this one. So this will be Book 3′s chance to prove its chops, and I’m feeling good. Book 3 has been an absolute hit in the e-circles, and for those who have glanced at the hard-copy books, the front cover alone had drawn them in, and Marion Meadows gets props for designing that one. (small spoiler: he’s helping out on Cover 4 as well). It’s also a lot funnier than the other books in the series, even though it takes a lot of what happens in Books 1 and 2 and begins to paint the picture of what’s really happening. And if you are a reader and you’re still wondering what the hell was going on in Book 1? Well…your patience with me is about to pay off. Together, though, all of these factors make for a really great possibility for Book 3 getting, hopefully, to the full-manuscript review stage, and that is when it will shine.
However – and you knew that there was a however involved in this – this is a Penguin contest.
Who remembers the Book Country issues?
Penguin’s credibility had been sliding for a while. Some of the worst-edited manuscripts that I have seen recently were Penguin books, and to release a vanity-press subsidiary is a nice sneer of contempt at authors, both at the self-pubs who are trying to get to the market,and the published authors, who had seen a steady decline in how much Penguin manages for them. More and more do I see authors – trad-pubs! – running their own marketing. This is with a Big-Six publishing house. Um, what the hell? I thought that the reason that people would go trad-pub would be to avoid having to do their own deal.
So if the prize is a publication contract with them, I’m hesitating. The $15K advance would be fantastic, considering that it would solve a good bit of my financial issues, but it’s the contract itself. On one hand, it’s great publicity for the series. On the other hand, how long would it take me to wrestle back my copyright if the book doesn’t do as well as Penguin wants it to?
Food for thought, that.
Now. recently, I’ve wrapped up the manuscript for Book 6. It’s an interesting story, in the sense that the plot had started to evolve – and I mean really evolve – closer towards the end. This, of course, means that I will have a nice time in retroactive editing next year, but the fact is, I wrapped everything up in time. This is only the second time that I had finished a NaNo manuscript in the same calendar year as starting one (the first time being with Book 1), and this actually leaves me quite a bit of room time-wise to play around with my writing.
Of course, this is keeping in mind with the fact that I want to take KG Creative Enterprises and make it a real money-maker…but I digress.
I have been thinking, and the more I think about it, the more I feel that I ought to shop the books around in film form. While Book 4 is getting put together and prepped for publication, it’s time for me to start researching and learning how to write a screenplay and actually putting together Mages as a movie. I’m not, however, too sure how to shop this around, which means that I will have to do a metric ton of research once again.
A lot of you who had read the books would likely be saying, “ABOUT TIME!!!” right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, been a while coming, but I got where I’m going. :p
Musically speaking, let me be the first to say that the jazz scene, which I had adopted as my home away from home, is pulling me in different directions. I’ve done the write-ups. I’ve done the graphic design. Now I’m getting into the photography, and I’m still keen on doing all of the above. Will it pay off? Possibly. Will it replace my day job, somehow? Hopefully. But one thing is for sure, this was a year of change so far, and I am finding it extremely important to keep focus on what’s coming up, and how to keep a close eye on what’s happening.
There’s a book I’m about to start up, before my fellow self-pubs, and it’s one written by Bob Baldwin, who took his knowledge and organized it into a music-business survival guide. As someone on the sidelines, and kind of sort of peripherally involved in the music world – at least in the imaging/writing capacity – I am keen on acquiring and applying this knowledge to the best of my ability. It can, and one of these days will, save my skin, I think.
I can’t even tell you how much I’m looking forward to doing all of these things. Of course, this means that this would very well be another year in which my personal life is nil, but I am confident that this will be for a good cause. Besides, if The Index will become a title that you will one of these days see on the silver screen, then I am sure that my efforts now will be worthwhile.
All of this, from screenwriting, to jazz writing, to photo, to graphic, to noveling – my stylistic flexibility is getting quite a workout. I will be the first to admit that I have never written a full-length movie script. I’ve read them plenty, and I think I will be able to figure it out if given enough time. It’s been some years since I’ve written poetry, and there’s a pretty good chance that I will be writing nonfiction in due time. I need to work out my style muscle very frequently, and very often.
Not that I make New Year’s Resolutions, I want to be able to write a vignette, a short story, or a prompt, once a week. If I manage to release an anthology, much like my editor had, then awesome. If not, then at least I will be able to say that I have had practice in multiple avenues of writing.
Happy first day of 2012, everyone, and at the risk of outing myself as a total nerd…may the Force be with you. :)
K.G.
ETA: WordPress was having issues in regards to the scheduling. I apparently had an auto-save that overwrote the entire second half of this post. Big no-no. Fixed. Sorry.
Wrapping Up the Year
December 28th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Today is interesting, so far. It finally got a little colder, my new eyeglasses are ready (because LivingSocial is awesome and six years of contact lens wear does tend to spoil the love a little), and it is also seventeen years since my blood family and I, myself being only nine years old at the time, touched down in a Tower Air jet into JFK Airport.
Now, it’s 17 years later, and while the flight is a highly blurred memory of time long past, this is usually when I think back on the year and look forward to the champagne toast to kick off the next one.
This year, I:
- Went to CA for the first time.
- Got my business registered and opened
- Got my photography on
- Published Book 3
- Right about quadrupled my readership…I kid you not; all the relentless Marketing 101 I’ve been teaching myself has been paying off big-time…and thank you all for sticking with this ramble-fest!
So, what’s on my agenda next year? Mind you this: I don’t exactly make resolutions. I just do. I keep a list, and cross it off. Call it an annual version of a bucket list, if you will.
My agenda iiiissss….
1. Get back into dance class. My teacher is back the first week of January. Hello there, hip scarf, I missed thee.
2. Get my SmugMug on. People have asked me about prints before, and I think this will be an awesome way to have a formal portfolio.
3. Get my Lens Collection on. The Sigma telephoto is not enough, ladies and gents. Lady wants a Nikkor 18-200mm, which is about $800. Lady also requires a 12-24mm wide-angle. And lady is definitely lusting after the 800mm super-telephoto lenses, but the lottery will have to preempt that purchase…
4. Release Book 4 and engage in a heavy marketing push. Self-explanatory. I want the books to work for me, after I spent the time working on them.
5. Contract more. Once again, despite Tax Season looming, I’m open to commissions for design. Book covers? Ad campaigns? Coaching on Marketing 101? Photo shoot? Bring it on!
And most importantly…
6. Enjoy everything around me just a little bit more. :)
But you guys know that.
Much love, and a happy New Year to all, in advance.
K.G.
