Tonight is a
live-recording night. The jazz group whose album will come from this had done
this a year ago -- it was a disaster. At that session, the band leader was
striving for the impossible: A perfect, error-free performance. If someone
missed a note (including himself), he'd yell "STOP!! Do it over!" Everyone was wound so
tight. The music sounded stiff and two-dimensional. The recording engineer
supposedly "did a crappy job." I think the recording guy ended up
getting stiffed--at least on the editing and mixing end. With that swirl of a
cluster in the past, I'm nervous. They play a couple of warm-up songs and were
sounding O.K. -- except the trumpet player was sounding like a teenage-boy in
puberty; he'd hold a note and then it would break. "Crap," I thought,
"not the time for amateur-hour." The recording engineer says,
"O.K., with the next song, we're recording." From that point on, the
trumpet guy was on fire -- clear, forceful playing, with little twists to add
sparkle when it was needed. He was sounding better than ever. The recording
session seemed to go well. Our crowd appears to be new folks with a few
familiar faces. An old guy who hobbled in with his distinguished-looking cane
was singled out as a tenor who had tooted on the first of the 10 albums the
group has recorded. With a club that has a dozen years of history and band
members who've been in the scene for 30-plus years, I'm the wide-eyed
dimple-cheek chump to many who enter this hallowed space.
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