Johnny Kaye, R.I.P.

In a message to my friend Jack:

My niece Cheri just sent me an e-mail telling me some old fart I played with in 1985 died a couple of weeks ago just before I went into the hospital with cellulitis. His obit might have read "Furniture Salesman By Day, Bandleader By Night," and here's a link to more about him than I knew.

As I explained to Cheri, the experience was really intense because I had to practice elementary exercises (like your Mel Bay guitar stuff) to get a better, easier feel for piano fingering, plus I had to learn all the finger positions for all the chords in every key so that I was trained enough to recognize a chord on the charts Johnny handed out and immediately know how to play it.

Many times there was no melody line—just chords—so you would have to “comp” the chords (hit them in time to the melody player). (There may be another meaning to “comp,” as in “Play it a few times and I’ll fake it,” meaning I’ll catch on to the dominant chords and hit them while you play.)

I was actually starting to get good by my last gig, but then I got my first full-time publishing job. My view of Johnny Kaye was he was a BIG bullshitter who had a pretty decent show and a loyal audience but was a dick in private life. Still, as I said, it was an opportunity and a big incentive to put my best effort into something and to play in a group. I'm pretty happy to be playing in a band again, and as I've mentioned, there's nothing that sharpens your performance more than playing to a real audience.

This American Life

I used to catch this show on NPR every so often, and there were a few things I noticed about it that I did or didn't like. I did like the fact that some of the episodes were extremely good storytelling. I didn't like the fact that most episodes were narrated either by Ira Glass himself or people who sounded exactly like Ira Glass, speaking in an irritatingly nasal, clipped, and monotonous style. Further, nearly all of the stories were accompanied by sad or depressing or foreboding instrumental music, as if all stories of American life were inevitably bummers or worse--weird bummers.

After talking with a coworker, though, about the pros and cons of This American Life, I started getting the weekly podcast on iTunes and began burning the episodes to disk to listen to on the road. I discovered David Sedaris, whom I was surprised to learn was a man, and a very funny man at that, and I listened to many shows to the point that I felt more and more guilty about listening to the episodes while traveling while not supporting the show and I finally coughed up some money to donate to their expenses. That was just before Christmas 2009, and then they ran what I considered a very cynical, elite Christmas episode and I thought WTF am I doing supporting these arseholes when they are so fricking cynical about American Life?

I guess I'm past that now, only I am not especially disappointed when they air yet another episode narrated by an irritatingly nasal, montonous Ira Glass wannabe accompanied by foreboding "The Apocalypse is near" instrumental music. I just won't feel so guilty about giving these nonvarying dopes some money to continue their simewhat dubious stories.