philip sherburne

Yet another first reaction

...because it's fun to blog before you've heard fully three minutes of a record.

But who the fuck let George Winston sit in on the new City Centre Offices release from Swod? It sounds like Windham Hill gone all Philip Jeck. (Now, the opposite could I suppose be interesting, if Jeck took some Nightnoise records, carved them into lock grooves, slowed them down to 16 RPM at -8, and FXed the fuck out of them. But treacling the ivories to the accompaniment of needlefluff -- and lemme guess, that's Siamese cat dander collecting on your Stantons, isn't it? -- is not ok.)

Kids: rococo noodling with your foot lashed to the sustain pedal (what is this, a Speed sequel set in a conservatory, with a bomber threatening to explode the piano if the note fades to silence?) is not acceptable unless your dayjob is as a purveyor of crystals and neatly wrapped bundles of sage.

[Full disclosure: I actually once took jazz piano lessons from a woman whose son recorded for some Windham Hillish label, the name of which I no longer remember. He also, however, played keyboards in Missing Persons, so that pretty much redeems him, and therefore myself by association. I certainly thought it was cool at the time. Actually, no; at the time, given that I was 14, I probably thought it rather embarassing. Looking back, however, I see playing keyboards for Missing Persons as immensely cool. (Whatever happened to Dale Bozzio, anyway?) This was, I believe, my first brush with Rock Fame and very likely one of the catalysts that sent me down the path towards becoming a wide-eyed freelance hack. All this has nothing to do with anything, really, but that seems to be the theme of the blog of late, so why fight it?]