I had to fly myself down to LA just to audition like the rank and file rest of the people that auditioned for Frank. It was scary, you know, it was ridiculous. I walked in, […]
Category: very occasional quote of the day
Tony Williams interview
A nice 1983 interview with Tony Williams in Downbeat magazine, by Paul De Barros. Shared on Twitter by Richard Scheinin of SFJazz. Tony talked a little bit about his time studying with Alan Dawson: What […]
Very occasional quote of the day: ectopic pulse
Film editor Walter Murch talks about Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, conducted by George Solti, used in the famous “Charlie’s Point” scene in Apocalypse Now. Late in post-production Decca denied the filmmakers the right […]
Very occasional quote of the day: gabby pupils
An extended quote— extended is the only way to quote him— from George Lawrence Stone’s Technique of Percussion, which has been on my mind a lot lately: An instructor inquires what to do with a […]
Very occasional quote of the day: master from the beginning
I’m just thinking about a VOQOTD from 2017 today— from the painter Robert Henri: “An art student must be a master from the beginning; that is, he must be master of such as he has. […]
Very occasional quote of the day: style
“My style is copying the style of the people I love and the way I combine it and that’s nothing more.” – Ralph Peterson, interview with George Colligan
Very occasional quote of the day: Max Roach fast
“We’d have jam sessions at Minton’s where the tenor players were long-winded,” Roach explained. “Don Byas would play 20 minutes on ‘Cherokee,’ and then Johnny Griffin would play another 20 minutes, and then somebody else […]
Very occasional quote of the day: kindness
“When I was a young drummer, I never got that many compliments and I never got that much criticism. The men I played with liked me enough not to repudiate my shortcomings. They wouldn’t do […]
Very occasional quote of the day: the point of doing things
“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Mickey Roker on practicing
More from Mickey Roker’s Modern Drummer interview by Jeff Potter, October, 1985, on the subject of practicing the drums: It has always been hard for me to practice, because I get bored if I don’t […]