BREAKOUT: OUR JEWEL IS HOME

Good news; Julian Trogla von Smythe, III, fondly known to us as “Jewel,” has escaped from The Tammy Whynot Gentle Gentile Cure or Crack Forever Center in peaceful downtown Newark and is back at his desk in the corporate offices of Jazz Mechanica. Here is his report on the harrowing experience and his ingenious, daring escape.

Staff writer: Julian “Jewel” Trogla von Smythe, III 

First: I want to thank Madeline for screwing the Senator and getting him off our back. Good luck with your book. (Can I ghost it for you? I'm also available to ghost his jilted wife's book.)

Second: I want to thank everyone who voted for me in, “The Most Likely To Return And Never Go Away,” office pool.  I have just the place for the certificate over the sink in my van.

Third: It was damn nice of the gang to have the jelly beans and lovely pharmaceutical plant waiting for me on my desk, but who was the bastard that copped my bottle of Jim Beam? Not nice. I’m going to grab the one off of Yankie Frankovich’s desk because I don’t think there’s a chance in hell he’s coming back from Newark.  He’s blitzed bad and still trying to play that damn Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz on his accordion.

I’ve recently spent three weeks living in a cement circus tent filled with a bunch of deflating balloons. Now I’ve been around a lot of kooks, like the guys under the bridge before I got this writing job and the nutso chick who was my Saturday squeeze at the rehab center, but I’ve never seen the kind of Tooney Loons I just left.

We’re all about music here and I love being back amongst the highly professional musicians who pen the pages of Jazz Mechanica. (I’m going to start practicing my cello again soon, I just know it, but for now it’s best if I just critique the music scene and write about the lame musicians I hear. I assure you that my dream of practicing is alive and well.)

All of us who love music and musicians are brothers and sisters in the biz and we know that, unlike the high average found in other professions, only about 00.05 percent of musicians suffer from dementia, emotional issues and personality disorders. We rarely come across a screwed up cat, or one that’s hard to get along with, or even a little quirky. Well let me tell you – I just discovered where they send that 00.05 percent – to Dr. Savage and his Tammy Whynot Gentle Gentile Cure or Crack Forever Center in downtown Newark. And it broke my heart to see them.

 

Have you ever wondered what happened to Fronda Clavikordanza, the brilliant pianist whose Fazioli piano was rolled off the stage during her Carnegie Hall performance by a Citibank collection agency?  She is now in downtown Newark, playing every day, all day on an imaginary Fazioli.  I couldn’t bear to watch her.

And what about “Slunky” Scallon the dazzling alto sax player Downbeat Magazine flipped over a couple of years ago?  His CDs and concert tours were making headlines and every Berklee student was trying to copy his extraordinary licks. He was making big bucks and then Tom Cruise chummed him. What happened to him? He joined the Church of Scientology, gave all his money to the church and ended up having to sell his horns. Without a horn to play, he had a nervous breakdown and folded.  Dr. Savage bought him a pawn shop student axe to at least hold (without a mouthpiece) and Slunky now spends his days with his head pushed into the harp of a piano and claims that the piano is ‘speaking to him in strings.’

And where is the promising Divested String Quartet?  All four of them are right there in downtown Newark – every one of them cracked, barmy and pretending to play on fiddles without strings; their strings were confiscated because of their suicidal tendencies.  They still practice and hum their parts quietly to themselves – actually a very nice sound.  I spent quite a bit of time listening to them while I was there and I especially enjoyed their breaks.

Here is a talented Julliard bassoon student whose father disinherited him when he refused to join the NRA.

Another sad case.  Walter was a general business wedding band musician who desperately wanted to play jazz, but could never get the ideas he heard in his head to come out of his horn.  He now spends his days trying to channel his ideas into the sax, thinking that once they have been transferred and the horn is infused with his great licks, all he has to do is put the horn to his lips and they will come out.  I watched him go through the process a number of times, but all that came out of his saxophone was Tie A Yellow Ribbon, New York, New York, Edelweiss and Hava Nagila.

 
Not all of my stay in downtown Newark was a washout. Dr. Strangler, upon learning that I was a cellist, gave me a cello and a hammer and locked me in a room with it for a day saying I could do anything I wanted with the cello and practice if I chose to. I can’t tell you how this happened, I’m kind of blanked out about it, but I must admit to having felt a great sense of release. Don’t get the wrong idea; practicing is still at the top of my agenda.

The idea for how to escape started with this el-bonkos girl who lived in a laundry basket.  I noticed that the orderlies who took care of the laundry sometimes tried to dump her into the laundry cart that left the compound every afternoon.  Invariably one of them would catch the mistake saying, “That’s not dirty laundry.  It’s clean – don’t need washing.” (The laundry orderlies were not exactly on the high end of the salary or neuron totem.)

I studied their routine and decided that I would disguise myself as dirty laundry (a thought that repulsed me, but seemed necessary) and have the ladies push me out the door to freedom.

It worked. I dirtied myself up more than usual and flopped myself into a laundry cart. As I got pushed through the corridor I overheard one of the women say, “This thing is friggin’ heavy t’day. Friggin’ Savage musta lef his friggin’ bowlin’ balls in his friggin’ skivvies – only ones he’s got, I spect.”

I was put on a truck, driven across town and scared the bejeezum out of the guy who was trying to load me into a commercial washer when I bolted out of the laundry cart. I jumped a freight train and made it back to the Jazz Mechanica office. My plan worked and all is well.

Children’s Music Editor: Florence Estendergarten 

I believe that most of our staff will make it out of Newark once they learn to accept their failure with Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz. Some others who can't deal with it may try to escape. Estendergarten observed my moves as I was making my escape and I noticed that he had already begun to take on an appearance of dirty laundry.  It would not surprise me if he showed up at his desk soon. I will keep an eye on his Jim Beam bottle.

It’s good to be home and back in the scene.

Julian “Jewel” Trogla von Smythe, III for Jazz Mechanica.

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DEVASTATION: FAIRIE’S AIR AND DEATH WALTZ

Jazz Mechanica has received numerous letters, emails and collect calls from from chagrined readers wanting to know why there has recently been a dearth of new articles published in their favorite online magazine.  An explanation is due.

As loyal readers know, our standards are high here at Jazz Mechanica and we are proud of the large staff of exemplary musicians we employ to ferret out and write illuminating articles geared to weld together the weird world of music.

Three weeks ago our office was contacted by a United States Senator (who wishes to remain unanimous) who said he was  an alumnus of the PTL Club band, currently a tambourine player in a Salvation Army Band and an avid reader of Jazz Mechanica. He claimed that some of our articles were offensive, not up to snuff and even downright hokey (which we took as a backhanded compliment). The upset Senator said he strongly suggested we reevaluate our staff and hold auditions to determine the level of musicianship of our writers and weed out the pretenders. We hold that their are no pretenders on our staff and we set out to prove him wrong.

Normally, we would laugh off such a suggestion, but the Senator pressed further, saying he was prepared to launch an investigation of our organization because his sources (who wish to remain ignominious) claim we are un-American; noting that there have been no marital infidelities in our ranks and not one cuckolded man or betrayed woman has surfaced in our staff.  He warned he would use his position as Chairman of the Congressional Extra-Marital Affairs Committee to launch an attack.

We do not fear an un-American investigation. We welcome it.  We have a flag somewhere in a drawer that we pin to our window frame every July 4th, Memorial Day and Mother’s Day (don’t ask), and we have verifiable photos to prove it.

Still – the adverse publicity of such an investigation was worrisome, so we sent memos to all the staff explaining the situation and asking if at least two people (gender didn’t matter) would volunteer to have colitis, coitus, copopulation, or whatever they call it, together so we could meet the Senator’s standard for today's patriotic corporate Americans and public officials.  Not one member of our staff volunteered, so we had no choice but to hold music auditions and satisfy the (unanimous) Senator in that way.

We commissioned the formidable composer, John Stump, to compose an audition piece that would challenge the highly talented musicians on our staff and serve to rebuff the noted Senator’s challenge over the level of musicianship and savvy underlying our prestigious publication.  Mr. Stump composed a daunting piece he calls, FAIRIE’S AIR and DEATH WALTZ, which seemed to suit our purpose, but the results were unexpected.

The complex piece included parts for every instrument as well as some improvised instruments and we had faith that our staff would handle it easily.  We were wrong.  The auditions led to the complete shutdown of Jazz Mechanica.

One by one the staff attempted the piece on various instruments with the same frustrating results. Every writer-musician who tried to play it, some for as long as eight hours, melted into desperate, crying blobs and were reduced to raving madmen.

Our cute little Madeline, the oboist who fetches our Subway sandwiches and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer every day, volunteered to try the piece as well, but since she is not a writer, she was not allowed and was saved from the terrible fate of the others.

Our writing staff is now under the care of Dr. Saul Strangler of the Tammy Whynot Gentle Gentile Cure or Crack Forever facility in a peaceful setting in downtown Newark. Treatments of continuous Kenny G licks, Bruce Springsteen tunes and the required reading of the Rubank book, Everyone Can Read Music, have been working wonders and the staff is expected to be released, or escape, from the hospital within the next two weeks. Jazz Mechanica will be up and running again with everyone back at their desks, but we have a few niggling issues that need to be addressed first.

Madeline has magnanimously offered to have an affair with the noted Senator and that solves the inquiry problem. (Now that is loyalty going beyond dealing with the derelicts she has to fight through to get our Subway sandwiches and beer!) She is currently negotiating with the Senator’s wife over whose book about the affair will come out first, hers or the jilted wife’s.  We understand that an option for a leather bound matched set of both of their stories is also on the table, the only obstacle being whether the covers should be faux rattlesnake skin or faux chameleon skin.

Dr. Strangler is insisting on billing us for each of the five different personalities of our woodwind specialist who is a doubler extraordinaire.  We are holding the line on only paying for his baritone saxophone and bass clarinet personalities.  (He actually sucks on the upper register horns.)

And so good reader, we hope to resume our normal publication schedule again soon.  We eagerly await the return of our writing staff and have already decked their desks with fresh jelly beans, a bottle of Jim Beam and a lovely herb plant purchased from a pharmacy in California.

The best is yet to come, but it may take another week or so, depending on Dr. Strangler’s lawyer and the book deal between Madeline and the Senator’s wife.

Please stay with us during our period of misery, hopeless hand-wringing, transition and battle with the trusted, effervescent, all-powerful, all-moneyed, all-wise, you-elected-me-and-will-again, two-timing, tambourine playing offal.

We are also opening auditions for new staff.  Anyone interested in attempting the FAIRIE’S AIR and DEATH WALTZ may apply.

(Travel expenses and any subsequent medical expenses are the sole responsibility of the applicant.)

GLEE CLUB NOW GLUM CLUB

Heda Emotica, former conductor of the Laizedale Glee Club, reports on the amazing rise in popularity of their choral group after changing their musical mode from major to minor.

Our miracle began the day Sally Heartenbrok flew into my arms sobbing after a rehearsal apologetically saying there was no way she could sing the Hallelujah Chorus with sincerity. I had been having problems getting the spirit of the piece projected by the chorus and Sally pretty much spelled out the problem for me. “We’re just too bummed out by life, the wars, the economy, our lost jobs, the foreclosures and not enough money for booze and drugs to sing a stupid upbeat song,” she said.

Well wow; I hadn’t considered gloomy music while preparing programs. I reassessed the glee club’s direction and gave a lot of thought to why our concerts were only attracting a handful of sleepy old farts carrying tuna fish sandwiches in grease-stained paper bags.

The light blinked on and I realized that people really don’t want to hear happy shit; they don’t want joyous sounds and messages interfering with their well-tended wallows. So I began searching for a new conductor; one with a cynical, fatalist (even sadist) disposition who could keep the glee club sad, fearful and on an emotional edge.

The noted Heinrich Von Alcholstein was available and seemed like just the dour old bull who might fit the bill until I received an anonymous email from a woman claiming to be an alto in his last chorus who said, “He is a womanizer and we liked that, but none of us ever saw him actually get it up and that is not okay after you decide to make it with a jerk. Its probably because of the vodka.” Okay. Alcholstein was out.

Abram Spindler had impaled more than a few vocalists with his baton and it was a bit of an honor to be able to say you had been ‘Spindled.’  He answered our ad saying he was willing to relocate from Tel Aviv to Laizedale, but he insisted on only programming music written by Jewish composers, which would have been sad and downbeat enough I thought, but it would make for a very limited repertoire. Spindler wasn’t our guy.

Serendipity stumbled me into the perfect conductor. I read a filler article from AP in the Laizedale Gazette reporting that a gifted, somewhat morose, choral conductor was recently released from prison, paroled after serving fifteen years of a one hundred and fifty year sentence for the rape and murder of his mother. Bruin Brunt was noted for his ability to conduct tear-jerker compositions that left his prisoner audiences sobbing and gasping for breath.  Bruin was the man who might be able to turn our group and low attendance situation around.  I hired him without an audition and it was the best thing I could have done.

When Brunt came on board, he canned every member of the chorus who appeared to be leading marginally happy lives, or faking them.  As it turned out, that was about thirty percent of the chorus.  He then advertised auditions for vocalists who where extremely unhappy. Unexpectedly, we were swamped with applications.

A few fakers were eliminated immediately for being too together and sure of themselves. Brunt needed singers who were in pain and filled with insecurities - sots who were downtrodden and not in control of the universe.

Some had sad, penetrating voices, but they were just too damn sure of themselves to be able to sing a dirge with sincerity.

Most cleverly, Maestro Brunt (or Signor BB, as he preferred to be addressed) sent a few of us to sit in therapist’s waiting rooms to watch the patients, taking special note of those who came out of their therapy session more depressed and angry than before they went in.

Signor BB told us to also be on the lookout for dour children with depression potential so we could begin a training chorus to fill future slots.

Our greatest discovery came about quite unexpectedly when I was lost in West Virginia and stopped to ask directions from two guys in rocking chairs on a porch. As I walked up to them, I heard them singing a duet on Johnny Cash’s Hurt.  At the words, "And you could have it all - My empire of dirt - I will let you down - I will make you hurt," I dropped to my knees with tears streaming as I tried to catch my breath. The Loop twins, Buster and Luster, were singing from the melancholic devil-well of all of humanities’ sufferings. Our glee club simply had to have these despairing dudes.

They seemed agreeable (as best I could make out from their half sentences and indiscernible gurgles), but I got it that Mamma was going to be a problem, and she was.

Formica Loop was one tough nut to crack. “Them’s boize is prefessnal porch sitters ya gotta know an theyze ben puttin grits on the frikkin table fer me lots o yeers now.  Wha bout me if theyze decides to folla yer deevil lovin skirts ta the city, eh?  An wha bout all them folks who ain’t gonna haf no one on their porches when they gotta tend theirs stills, eh?  Wha bout them? Folks herebouts counts on Buster n Luster to sit on them porches when they can’t, an them boize brings home some mighty pork jaw an lightnin too. You ain’t takin ‘em way from me.”

It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally got it. People sat on their porches in these hills so that federal agents, who made regular rounds, would see that they were not tending moonshine stills.  Buster and Luster Loon were part of a sub culture of porch sitters hired as decoys to foil the feds.

 

I pulled two one-hundred dollar bills out of my pocket and Mamma Loon said, “Put one more o dem hunerts in it an you can take them suckers wherever you wants. They don’t talk nothin’ but sheet anyways an dey eats like pigs.  Good luck wid em.”

The Loon twins came home with me, Signor BB listened to them sing and cried his eyes out.  “This duo is the key to our fame.  We will build the chorus around them and from now on we will be known as the Kismet Glum Club.”

As you probably know, our transformed glee to glum club touched on the very heart of humanity and to the core of America. Who would have guessed that the true longing in the human heart was not for love and happiness as touted by the fairy tales, but for despair, loneliness, self pity and the inevitability of all things, regardless of promising beginnings, to turn into do-do.

Our popularity soared and we began turning down engagements.

We sang for doomed marriage ceremonies.

We sang for fiftieth anniversary celebrations of tortured partnerships.

We gave benefit concerts after national disasters, always donating three percent of the profits to someone in Africa who said their cause and efforts were hopeless.  We gave free concerts at Associated Press luncheons to reinforce the media’s commitment to report only the most discouraging, devastating, graphic, horrifically entertaining world events.

We sang outside of prisons (for a fee) while executions were being carried out and we sang in Irish pubs (for drinks). We sang at apre election parties for losing political candidates and next to police vans waiting to take convicted corporate criminals to prison after their trials.

We put out our first CD and it quickly vanished from the shelves to become collector’s items on eBay.

The power of wallowing in one’s pitiful shortcomings, shattered dreams and stupid life choices is the greatest power on earth and we have tapped into it by throwing away the silly notion of glee and embracing the minor modes of glum. Maestro Bruin Brunt brought it to our attention and the Loon twins have helped us to realize our new special powers. Their rendition of Gloomy Sunday makes you wish you hadn’t flushed your sleeping pills down the toilet. (It’s money in the bank for the Kismet Glum Club, and the media of course.)

No one leaves our concerts with a happy face and most walk away with tears streaming – overall a damn good feeling and a reinforcement of their innate understanding that Buddhists may actually have it right and life is indeed only suffering.

  The back cover of our first album.

You can buy our downlifting pocket patch and button on eBay.  Type, Kismet Glum Club into search to find them.

 

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THE OTHER "DUKE"

Now who could have guessed?!

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HAPPY BIRD DAY CHARLIE

Today we put aside the inanity paintbrush for a moment to bend a knee before the glowing portrait of one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, Charles Parker, Jr., aka "Bird."

Charlie Parker was born 89 years ago today, August 29th, 1920.  His intensity killed him 35 years later in 1955, but not before he had achieved immortality through his innovative music.

Bird's inventive, technically dazzling saxophone playing and understanding of harmonic extensions set the bar for those who followed.  To this day, he has no imitators, although many take up the challenge.

You can listen to his genius here in a montage of wonderful clips put together by Jazz On The Tube.

How Bird achieved such heights is no mystery.  He was completely absorbed in and ultimately absorbed by music and discovered a very personal way of expressing himself through it.

The rarity of genius such as his lies not in the end product itself, but in the obsession that creates it.  It is this obsession that we honor in people who achieve remarkable feats in all fields.  The obsessed are the often tortured anomalies who point us down paths we never dreamed existed or are too timid to take. Their ability to focus and live wholly in the present provides the rest of us with our pasts and our futures.

Shortly after Parker died, graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives", the source was thought to be the poet, Ted Joans.

"Bird Lives" sculpture by Robert Graham in Kansas City, Missouri.

Happy Birthday Charlie
and Thank You.

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