Live 365, the site that hosts the Evening Melancholy radio station (basically pays all royalties for a fee), provides a Shout-Out link for all listeners of the station. That link allows the listener to contact the owner of the station and give kudos, criticisms, requests, etc.

Today I received a Shout-Out from someone in Japan. The email was written entirely in Japanese. Of course, I do not read Japanese, but when someone from Japan sends the owner of an internet radio station a note AND it is entirely in Japanese, the curiosity factor goes way up. So, I took the Japanese email and used one of the Japanese to English translators on the web in an attempt to decipher what the sender of the note was trying to convey. In short, the note said the following:

A friend of 30 years worries for renal cancer very much.
But a heart is healed very much when I listen to music of here.
Thank you

Nothing I do on a day to day basis at my regular job could ever crumble and thrill me like these few words have done. Repeatedly, I am able to connect with people all over the world simply because of this wonderful thing called music. We have these quiet moments during our life when it seems like all we have are the thoughts that haunt us and the music that soothes us. During those times, everything else disappears. What an elixir music can be.

40+ hours a week I spend just “living the dream”. I need the job. I need the paycheck. But I’m not kidding myself. This is not the dream. This is the crutch I must use until, hopefully, the real dream comes along.

I had intended on writing a lengthy blog about one of my favorite music producers (of any genre), Blockhead. Unfortunately, time has gotten away from me and weeks have passed since I first set fingertip to key on this topic. So I have decided instead to include my initial scribblings on the subject and leave it at that.

Anyway, you can also listen to my all-time favorite Blockhead song, The Strain (I probably listen to it at least three or four times a week), as well as Four Walls from his latest album “The Music Scene”. I’ve also included some of the songs that either influenced or were sampled in Blockhead’s music. Seems to me that any person who can seamlessly combine Johnny Preston’s Running Bear with a comedy bit by Nichols and May deserves a respectful nod and kudos. And because of Blockhead’s “Four Walls” — which uses the now loathed vocoder/autotune, although I still really like the song — I was introduced to Eddie Holman. Holman’s concise version of Four Walls is both haunting and instrumentally divine. It does in less than three minutes what most songs never come close to doing in twice that amount of time.

There’s a scene in the Michael Mann film Heat where the following words are spoken:

You sift through the detritus. You read the terrain. You search for signs of passing, for the scent of your prey, and then you hunt them down. That’s the only thing you’re committed to. The rest is the mess you leave as you pass through.

To me, these words (enviable writing, by the way) accurately describe DJ and producer Blockhead. I first encountered Blockhead’s production chops in the fall of 2001. The album was Labor Days, the rapper, Aesop Rock. I had a four hour plane ride from Nashville to San Diego and was so enthralled with the album, both lyrically and musically, that it turned out to be the only cd I listened to during the entire flight. In fact, I spent most of my drive time in San Diego listening to Labor Days over and over and over again, seriously knocked out by what I was hearing. I have been enthralled by Blockhead’s music ever since.

Sift through the detritus, read the terrain. People like to goof on sampling. Many think of it as nothing more than petty theft. But it takes a certain brilliance, a keen ear and a steady resolve to sift through thousands of records and extract a sound that fits perfectly the vision you have in your head. Now imagine taking a collection of sounds and producing such a unique amalgamation that the initial artistic expression is mutated and rendered damn near unrecognizable as an altogether new emotion is evoked. To me, this describes precisely the unique and peerless skill of Blockhead.

I first heard this song about three or four months ago and it still makes my head bob. When I first heard it, I had an immediate idea of how the video would look. Boy, was I wrong. To be honest, this video seems a bit awkward and contrary to the lyrics of the song. But what do I know? The tune is still a tiny, four minute nugget of poppy bliss. And Kate Earl is a definite cutie (with talent!). So why complain?

If jazz music is my home, classical music is the next door neighbor I like but don’t know enough about to have drinks or discuss politics with.

I was sitting at home this evening, listening to the sleep inducing combination of raindrops pelting my windowpanes and a heady mixture of classical piano when Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53 began to play. Upon hearing the song, I immediately sat up and said, “That’s ‘Till The End of Time’!” I did. I said that. Out loud. Ask my cat. He heard me. He stared at me annoyingly before licking his hindquarters and haughtily sashaying out of the room.

I know that this little tidbit has probably been known by classical music lovers and Perry Como lovers for quite some time — that the composer of Till the End of Time, Ted Mossman, basically sampled Chopin’s song to create the melody for the 1945 hit song. Of course, people probably thought it was a brilliant “emulation” back then, whereas today, people refer to such a move as theft.

Anyway, perhaps you didn’t know, and you found this bit of information just as enlightening as I did. If you did, you’re welcome. If you didn’t, here’s the part of the blog where you haughtily sashay (click) away from this posting.

Soupy Sales died a few weeks ago and I would be remiss if I didn’t post something about him here. A lot of people remember the comedian and host of the Lunch with Soupy Sales show, but Sales was also a jazz buff. Frequently, he invited the top jazz musicians of the day to be on his nighttime show, Soupy’s On. In fact, the only known video recording of the famous and highly influential trumpeter Clifford Brown came from Soupy’s On. Not many highly visible champions of jazz around these days. So, hat’s off and a fond farewell to Mr. Sales.