03/15/2016

As I'm sure you're already aware, Gentle Reader(s), the great Sir George Henry Martin passed away last Tuesday at the age of 90 years. To all reports, Sir George's was a life very well lived. He was respected and beloved by a great many people, not the least of whom was a group of four lads from Liverpool whom Martin met at Abbey Road studios in London on June 6, 1962. After he signed the Beatles to EMI's Parlophone label George Martin went on to produce all of the group's albums, save for the last ('Let It Be,' for which he functioned in a production advisory capacity). Beyond his groundbreaking work with the Beatles, Martin was a key figure in the evolution of the professional recording studio from a stuffy, formal laboratory environment (which in Martin's early days still involved studio engineers wearing ties and white lab coats) to a venue for free form sonic experimentation and creativity. There are other producers who emerged from the 1950s and '60s whose names are as well known as those of the artists with whom they worked (Sam Phillips, Quincy Jones, Berry Gordy and Phil Spector), and some artist/producers whose visions for their own compositions incorporated the possibilities of the studio as a primary element (Brian Wilson, Jimmy Page, Todd Rundgren and Prince prominent amongst them), but George Martin was the true revolutionary. Be that as it may, it took time for the full measure of Martin's contributions to become acknowledged: In the Beatles section of the first edition (1976) of the epochal 'Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll' George Martin doesn't even merit a mention.
02/16/2016

This eagerly anticipated installment of the one-and-only Matador Playlist blogg represents an excursion into unexplored and potentially exciting terrain, Gentle Reader(s): Live (sort of) blogiating from the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, presented on the Tiffany Network, CBS, this very evening. The Grammys are usually held on a Sunday but considering that yesterday was both Valentine's Day and the night that new episodes of Downton Abbey air, the brain trust behind the primo music awards ceremony decided not to compete with the distractions of unbridled shagging that Downton Abbey inevitably inspires and put the Grammys off to the following night. The Dowager Countess of Grantham would doubtlessly approve.   Okay, here we go.
01/14/2016

Sometimes it's difficult to know exactly how much someone means to you and how much impact they've had on your life until they're no longer there. Unlike, say, the Beatles, I can recall a pre-David Bowie world. Therefore, I can say without reservation that the world was a much more interesting place with David Bowie in it. Now, sadly, we are in a post-David Bowie world and I am all too acutely aware of how much he meant to me. It would be cool to be able to relate some sort of direct, personal account of Bowie but, alas, I have none. We were once in the same room together, albeit quite a large room, and some people that I know knew him, rather well as it turns out, but for better or worse I never met the man.
01/12/2016

Ah, dear and Gentle Reader(s), I am returned from an extended hiatus from the posting of ruminations and lists of play upon these pages. The reasons for this extended silencio are various and sundry, but included amongst them are a) travel, b) more travel, c) distraction, d) physical malady, and e) (most dreadfully) f) deficit of inspiration. The travel is not a problem but whenever I think I'm going to get some writing done on the road I typically find that I am sorely mistooked. That's where the distraction comes into it—too much other stuffe to do and think about. The holidays snuck into the mix somewhere around the 25th of December as they are wont to do, and upon that very selfsame evening, right smack in the middle of Birthday o' Jebus observations, a rather dreadful throbbing began to manifest itself in the region of an upper right pre-molar, the lower portion of which had decided to bust a move for the Great Outdoors back in September (quite possibly inspired by a fairly dull Keith Richards documentary I had been watching on Netflix). The throb evolved into a mindbendingly dreadful pain that had Your Humble Narrator stumbling and mumbling about in a humble little mumble circle in his living room, groaning in agony—a state of affairs that continued intermittently throughout Jebus Birthday weekend. Timing, as is oft noted, is everything, and in this case the timing could scarcely have been worse. I survived till Monday when good Doctor Doug Reid was able to extract the offending article with dispatch, ending my holiday weekendus horribilis. It is said that if it don't kill you it makes you stronger and I am feeling quite strong at the moment.
11/18/2015

Gentle Reader(s), since the last installment of this weekly-ish report from the trenches of Santa Fe musical subterranea I have once again ventured to and from the land of my birth, the city that puts the 'Id' into 'Humid,' New Orleans. The day before my impending departure I woke to the sad news that a true titan of the city's music scene—the great Allen Toussaint—had passed away suddenly following a gig in Madrid. There are few passings that could shake New Orleans to the core quite like the passing of this extraordinary man. He was an integral part of the city's rich cultural life for 60 years, starting off as a fill-in sideman in Earl King's band in 1955. Toussaint was a pianist, vocalist, composer, producer, arranger, and musical ambassador for his native city, but above and beyond all that, to all reports (and I have heard a few) he was a lovely, humble, soft spoken person and a true gentleman. Toussaint didn't shy away from stepping out in a bit of boldly colorful couture once in a while and his trademark about town was his succession of Rolls Royces, but he was a down-home guy and absolutely not a single person that I have ever spoken to has ever had a bad word to say about him.
10/09/2015

Texas, baby. It's there, it's big, it's not going anywhere, and, if you're driving to New Orleans from New Mexico, there ain't no way around it. Of course, you actually could go around it but that would require either a sea worthy sailing vessel or a profound preference for the scenic pleasures of Oklahoma (I've long thought that the highway sign marking the Oklahoma state line should read 'Welcome to Oklahoma—It's Not Texas!!'). Being possessed of neither a sailing vessel of any degree of worthiness nor the patience for an Oklahoma detour, I decided to address the situation full on for my first ever driving trip from Santa Fe to my hometown. The Inky Prius was washed, recharged with fresh oil, pumped full of high octane Chevron petrol, and on a bright Saturday morning of mid-September in the Year of Our Lord 2015, off I went into the great semi-unknown.
09/05/2015

Strangely enough, tis a quandary, Gentle Reader(s). The situation is quandrous. Your Humble Narrator is quandrified. I am in a state of quandrification. Why, wherefore, and of which? you might well ask. Well you might. As previously established (see the March 5 posting on this page), YHN is a fan of the Great American Game of Baseball. The team to which my allegiance has been allegied for lo these many years is the Cubs of Chicago. One of the great institutions of this nation, the Cubs are the oldest active American sporting club, established in 1874 and having remained firmly rooted in their namesake town for the entire duration. They are also a storied hard-luck crew. They last appeared in the World Series in 1945 and have not been World Series champions since 1908. That's 107 years of woulda/coulda/shoulda tough breaks, bizarre incidents, self-induced collapses, purported curses and just plain rotten luck.
08/19/2015

La Ciudad Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assis is not a town that suffers from any lack of fascinating, unusual and talented people. Over the course of the past 180 years or so (give or take a decade) New Mexico at large has earned an enduring reputation as a mecca for creative types and eccentrics of all sorts. The list of painters, sculptors, printmakers, photographers, musicians, artists of the folk, dancers, writers and nut jobs that have called the place home over the years presents an impressive roster indeed. Starting with the likes of John Mix Stanley (circa 1840s) to the Meow Wolf collective (circa present and future), the artists have come to this place, drawn by whatever unique combination of physical, metaphysical and ineffable intangibles are manifest in this place, variations upon which have drawn people to places such as this place for as long as people have been drawn to such places as this. Or words to that effect...
08/06/2015

Ah, Gentle Reader(s), I am returned from an enjoyable and productive visitation to my benighted home town—the Snafu by the Bayou, the Migraine by Lake Ponchartrain, the Muddle on the Big Muddy—New Orleans of Louisiana. The forecast temperatures for this excursion were intimidating—in the mid-90s for the most part—but the humidity was relatively moderate so that life outside of the air conditioned unreality was rather less unbearable than might otherwise have been the case. A bicycle has been recently added to the inventory of the New Orleans digs and it got well used each and every day. I have not had a bicycle at my disposal  in New Orleans since I departed the city with extreme prejudice back in 1979 so it has somewhat revelatory to return to the two wheels. It remains my considered opinion that a) the bicycle is the finest mode of transport ever to be invented (the train being in second place), and b) there is no better way in which to get to know a place than from aboard a bicycle.
07/11/2015

Signs and Wonders, Gentle Reader(s), Signs and Wonders. We live in extraordinary times. Things are happening. Lots of things. The measure of these many things will require significant passage of time in order for the fullness of their significance to become apparent, but some of these things have an immediate effect. Two such things came in the form of rulings handed down by the Supreme Court of this land a couple of weeks ago: A stunning rebuff to the challenges to our president’s health care initiative and an epochal endorsement of the legality of same sex marriage. The former ends a challenge that has been brewing for only a few years but the latter is a landmark decision that has been generations in the making. Despite these setbacks to the regressive/repressive/conservative agenda no one should delude themselves by thinking that the forces of darkness will quietly fold their tents, take down their evil banners and fade back into the gloom from whence they arose. Quite the contrary. Many amongst the defeated will take these reversals of fortune as incentive to redouble their efforts to impose their fearful morality upon the lives of others (and no, I’m not talking about ISIS). Some may decide that the time to resort to more extreme measures is nigh. Celebrate, indeed, but the old adage remains as true as ever: One of the costs of liberty is eternal vigilance.