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Coming to Terms With Giant Steps: Music and Embracing Limitation

 In a career of all-time great performances, universally beloved arrangements, and some of the most forward thinking approaches to music in the 20th century, there is one piece which towers above all others in the legacy of the great John Coltrane. Released in 1960, Giant Steps , is a musical monolith. Performed by one of finest quartets ever assembled: John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Paul Chambers (bass), Tommy Flanagan (piano), and Art Taylor (drums), Giant Steps is the embodiment of the very concept of chops. Giant Steps , by sheer weight of its visceral power has developed a reputation among musicians, and due the institutionalisation of Jazz within music academia, it has become the great proving ground for any instrumentalist worth their salt. In the 63 years since it was first released it has come to be thought of less and less as a piece to be enjoyed but as a beast to be overcome. What it actually communicates is secondary to you proving that you are capable of improv...
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Brian Wilson: The Barenaked Ladies's Portrait of Loneliness

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of Anxiety Disorders, Disordered Eating, Obsessive Compulsive Disorders, and Schizoaffective Disorders Have you ever felt alone? I mean, really alone? The kind of alone where the thought of laying in bed and hibernating for years on end not only seems reasonable, but necessary? That's exactly what Brian Wilson, the genius behind The Beach Boys, did. Burnt out on drugs, drink, and failed attempts to produce a follow up to his magnum opus, Wilson retreated to bed for three years. He only left his bed to go to the kitchen for his meals. Eventually his mental decline worsened for the next two decades and new work and public appearances from the greatest producer-musician of the 20th century became increasingly rare. Coinciding with Wilson's reemergence into the musical sphere during the 1990s, Canadian Rock band The Barenaked Ladies released the song, 'Brian Wilson'. Using the cultural caché and public fascination surrounding Wilson's wildern...
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Penetrating Silent Lives: Guided By Voices

'Count the days that we have wasted from the start Eat the words, build a playground in your head Turn and run the angel's calling You say when and I say I'm falling Up and down from broken down buildings Back and forth but you know why I left you for so long' - R. Pollard In the last days of the West, prophesying the inevitable taming force of civilisation, Robert Ford reckoned he had publicly reenacted Jesse James's murder some 800 times. Ford eventually settled down, opened a bar, and got himself shot by Edward O'Kelly in 1892. O'Kelly was pardoned for the killing and went on to die in his own shootout with the police in 1904. The railroad came, the suburbs built, the common land seized, and life moved on.     In 1983, at the age of 26, a 4th grade school teacher in Dayton, Ohio, switches to part time and makes one last serious go at forming a rock and roll band. That band would settle on the name 'Guided By Voices' and, after numerous lineup chan...
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A Night on Earth: Bobby Chacon vs Bazooka Limon IV

  This was a time when title fights still went fifteen rounds and you could be the champion of the world and no one would know your name. On the 11th of December 1982, Bobby 'Schoolboy' Chacon fought Rafael 'Bazooka' Limon for the fourth time. The fight marked the only time the pair would compete against one another for a title, the WBC Super Featherweight Championship of the World, and it would be the final encounter of their careers. To the winner, the right to call yourself a champion and to fight another day; to the loser, the last big payday life. On one night in Northern California, Bobby Chacon freed himself from the shackles of professional sports competition and transformed a 17x17 ring into an arena of human experience so magnificent that if it had been Baryshnikov at the ballet the whole world would have stopped to watch. For Chacon and Limon however, this was simply another footnote in the history of a sport which does not care about your sacrifice.     Bobb...
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Madonna Clothed in the Sun

“I hate you. I need you to know that I hate you.” She repeated, passing the brush through the hair of her rival.  “I didn’t want you to come back. I kept telling him that there was no point looking for you, you know? I thought you were gone forever.” She’d been telling this exact story for four months now.  Isabel didn’t know what she expected. Eva died in 1952. It was 1972 now, and 20 years living as a corpse has a tendency to limit one’s ability to respond to questioning, no matter how many demands you make. Eva just stood there, propped up in the living room, erected in her own space between the flowers and the lamp. Kissing her on the cheek, Isabel rose and examined her craftsmanship. Neither Isabel nor Eva had seen Argentina since 1955. Everyday Isabel would comb through what remained of the hair, ‘so it wouldn’t tangle’ as her husband would say. It would be more accurate to describe him as ‘their’ husband, she supposed. ‘So it won’t tangle.’ She heard the way he talked t...
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