Artipantz's question answering thingy

I haven't had a visitor since I started recommending jazz albums, so I must have finally bored my two readers away for good. So I guess I'll give up on the Essential Jazz Library for now. But I'm between projects, and bored, so I'll post answers to the Artipantz questions from my sister's blog. I'm not an artist, so I'll substitute my music for art. Not that I'm much of a musician, either...

1. Name your best physical attribute and a little story that goes along with it.
I don't have many great physical attributes these days, but if pressed, I guess I would have to choose my green eyes. I never thought much about them, I've always thought blue eyes were better to look at. But my youngest girl has the same color eyes as mine, and they are gorgeous. It gives me a small sense of pride to look into her eyes and know they came from me. She also got my allergies, bad skin, and front tooth gap. Oh well, at least I know she's daddy's girl.

2. Name your top three favorite albums (past or present) and the moods you are in when you listen to each one.

• Traveling Wilburys. Mood: Humorous, light, happy. What genius to group these guys together.


• Harbor Lights by Bruce Hornsby. Bruce turns his back on "The Range" and commits commercial suicide, with guests Pat Metheny, Branford Marsalis, Jerry Garcia, and Bonnie Rait. Lots of good tunes. Mood: Just appreciative of good music without regard to Genre.


• Bright Size Life by Pat Metheny. It's really too hard to pick any single favorite Pat Metheny album - they are all so different, and most are all so good (once you let them sink into your psyche). The funny thing is, I can only think of a few PM albums I really loved right away - "American Garage" (the first one I ever heard), The "White Album", and "Trio 99->00". Most of the other ones you have to work at to appreciate. "Secret Story" is one of those - I dismissed it as fluff when I first heard it. Now, it's one of my favorites. "Quartet", however, just sucks. Don't bother with that one. I guess I picked "Bright Size Life" because of Jaco - I can just imagine Pat and Jaco, young lions (21, 22 years old) out to make their first real record together, and about to astound the jazz community with their talents. A couple of my favorite tunes on this album too - the title track, Unity Village, Omaha Celebration, Sirabhorn... But I really hated it when I first bought it. I wanted a combination of "American Garage" and Weather Report (Jaco's band at the time). This made no attempt to be mainstream or accessible. You had to work at it. And I never have much cared for Bob Moses' drumming on this album - I still don't much, to be honest. But this album made a statement, it was new, it was true, and it still resonates. Mood: Any before listening, awed and humbled afterwards.

3. Describe your artwork in three words.
Progressive wannabe jazzbo.

4. Who is your artistic inspiration?
Metheny, Montgomery, Frisell.
Gilmour, Livgren, Lifeson.

5. Describe one piece of clothing that you own that has a memory attached to it- explain the memory.
I have a really giant, oversize grey shirt that was given to me by my new bride just before our honeymoon. She gave me several new shirts and some shorts to wear in Maui. This one particular shirt was huge - I was swimming in it. I remember wearing it on our first full day in Maui. It was rainy, and we went to the center of the island in our convertible to visit the Maui Plantation. We have a picture of the two of us in front of a Kona Coffee bush, or a Macadamia tree, or something, and I'm holding the bottom of the shirt up a bit so my shorts show - otherwise it looked like I wasn't wearing any pants!

6. Name one thing about yourself that you want to pass down to your children.
The feeling that no one is better than anyone else, and that one shouldn't violate the rights of others to "get ahead".

7. Name three people from history that you want to take out for lunch.
From history - this implies that they are now dead. If so, I'll pick Ben Franklin, Wes Montgomery, and Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii. If we are talking about live ones, I'll pick Bill Clinton, Dan Brown (author of The DaVinci Code), and (of course) Pat Metheny.

8. If you could change one thing about yourself that would have made your high school experience less challenging, what would it be.
My only regret about high school is that I wasn't in the jazz band.

9. You have 1 hour by yourself without any obligations. You cannot go home. Where would you go?
Fazio's Frets and Friends music store in Webster Groves.

10. Describe the first moment you truly felt like an adult.
When my oldest daughter was two, she had a blood infection. This caused her temperature to shoot way up. She was delirious, and we called the doctor. While we were on the phone, she had a febrile seizure. It scared the bejezus out of me. We hung up with the pediatrician and called an ambulance. It must have been fairly late at night because I remember standing out in the dark, waiting for the ambulance to find the right street (I could see them in the wrong part of the neighborhood), and wondering if it would wake anyone up when it finally arrived. I wanted to ride with her, but they made me follow along in the car so that my wife and daughter would have a way to get home. We got to the hospital, and while they were whisked off to a room in the ER, I had to stay and fill out insurance papers. I was worried and weary and just wanted to be with my sick little girl, and everyone else needed me to be responsible and handle paperwork.