Let's Call an Electron a Cell Phone

There has to be a reason why electrical anomalies are occurring. There have always been blackouts from time to time when our power grid becomes overloaded. There has to be a reason why one of the Azipod propulsion units on our ship just stopped working. The other was only operating at 75% efficiency. When we arrived in St. Thomas, their power was also troublesome. I had always wondered how they generated electricity on those Caribbean islands. You have a choice of a diesel prime mover or a gas turbine facility. Will it be jet fuel or diesel? At the pier there was a large noisome generator cranking out electricity. In the past it was never turned on. At the sky lift they too had their backup generator operating. The lights were out at the DVD store. It is hard to buy movies in the dark. The power went off this morning for about an hour. Why is it so difficult for people to discern some of the things that are causing these effects, global warming, and the onslaught of physical and emotional disorders new to the decade of the 90’s? If you look at our recent history, what is the largest single most influencer of pop culture? You guessed it. The cellular phone. What exactly is a “cell.” A cell in the telecommunications industry is a little area covered by one transmission tower. Transmission towers are antennae, but antennae for microwaves. In our country’s past the Federal Communications Commission (a commission of the U.S. government with authority to regulate radio, television, telephone, and other means of electronic communication), saw fit NOT to allow use of microwave frequencies of the spectrum of electro-magnetic waves known as physics. For some reason they deemed these frequencies potentially harmful. That changed and like magic transmission towers began springing up like beanstalks in Jack’s garden. You remember? Ugly, squat, towers reminiscent of the movie War of the Worlds? They look threatening. Is it the evil “Death Ray?” That’s what a lot of people thought, and some communities passed legislation keeping these towers away from our public schools. Over time as will happen, people forget. The telecommunications industry gets more suave at disguising towers or simply placing the antennae on objects that were all ready there and acceptable to society. Some examples of those would be water towers, bridges, FM radio antennae, the roofs of buildings. You name it and you can probably find a microwave transmitter on it. That does not make them safe. It’s just that people forget about the ill effects of microwave energy. What does a microwave do? To answer that question think back to the decade of the 80’s when the microwave oven first came out. Some people were suspect, but for the most part microwaves caught on, and they became a fixture in domestic American life. A microwave in your home has the magical property of heating your food. Put microwaves on a towers outside our homes, all over the country, in full view, and then wonder why there is Global Warming. Some writers have called this era in American history “The Electronic Age.” Is all this wireless technology such a good thing? It certainly has changed pop culture. Adolescent life used to revolve around the telephone. When did you get a phone in your on room? What kind of phone did you have? Was it a Mickey Mouse phone? Was is shaped like a football? Was it a candlestick phone? I remember when the touchtone came in. You no longer had to “dial.” You could merely touch the buttons, and they would make a lovely little sound. The touchtone was at the forefront of development of telecommunications services provided via a wire. You could check your checking account balance, ask questions, or order products all from pushing the buttons on your phone. Touch tones are analog. They are sound carried via an analog electrical circuit. It’s not the same with cell phones. Most of the phones they are trying to sell today are all digital. That is why they are unreliable. Digital is appropriate for reliability in computer technology. Sound, on the other hand, has always been resistant to digitization. It took much research and diligent labor to transform the recording industry to digital, and I am not sure that was a good thing. Is Digital sound really pleasing in itself, or does the process of analogization somehow augment the quality of sound? Tape is only Ferric Oxide on a plastic material. It is funny how sound can be produced and recorded via rust, but there is something "earthy" about that. The cell phone industry began as analog, and a majority of the reliable service is still analog. Digital is proving unreliable, because it is prone to interference, interference from the same medium we are discussing, electro-magnetic energy. The laws of Physics state electro-magnetic energy moves in waves. These waves have specific properties, one being that they can manifest themselves on preexistent energy. That means all of the microwaves in the air can and will cause interference with out traditional means of telecommunications. Electro-magnetic energy is attracted to and will travel down all the preexisting wiring in our power grid. There is the cause of many of the problems we are encountering today. On a more human note the buttons on a cell phone are too small. They are hard to see just like most of the palm held electronic devices on the market today. The buttons don’t have that tactile property. It’s hard to interact with a small piece of plastic replete with digitized electricity. Is this really something we want to interact with, a digital microwave transmitter held in our hand and up to our heads? It would be difficult to find harm in an AM transistor radio. It doesn’t transmit microwave energy. In the 50’s the youth of America carried them around holding them up to their ears. Do we really want to stick our heads in our microwave ovens and push the start button? We all know what happens, or at least there have been comical moments in film devoted to the exploding of a turtle’s head in a microwave oven. They heat and explode like some foods. Better not put metal in a microwave or it will produce sparks. I don’t think cell phones are a good idea.

God Says it is Okay to Feel Good... (but there is always JOB)

James Brown said it. "I feel good!" What are things that make you feel good? Maybe we can take a hint both from the biblical character Sampson and the decade of the l980's in America. There was also a Broadway musical with the same title. H-A-I-R. What is it about hair that makes us feel good? Now that I think about it, the 80's weren't the only decade fascinated and driven by hair. It started with the "Long Hairs." "Them long hairs!" Hippies. Long hairs. Long hairs. Remember the hippies? Hippies were intelligent, college-aged Americans who protested the Viet Nam War. They disagreed with Uncle Sam when he shipped off our young men to fight the Viet Cong in Viet Nam. "Viet Cong in 'Nam, man!" Charlie. Charlie company. War. World War ll. We as a country are not strangers to war. We have had war continually through the history of the United States, but war for what? Freedom? Respect. " R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Your propers." No one likes war, because war is violent. Violence. Does violence make you feel good? Does your hair make you feel good? There must have been something about hair, while we were at war, that made us feel good in a time when the state of our nation did not. Ronald Reagan did a good job at making us feel good as a country. He was after all an entertainer. Although our recent entertainment industry seems to have forgotten entertainment traditionally makes us feel good, most Americans remember. Who wants to go to a movie and come out feeling violent and depressed? Maybe that is why the majority of movies that have been released in the last few years have failed. Both CD and DVD sales have plummeted. There is the phenomena of the MP3, basically a good idea that came from the compression scheme of the minidisc recorder. MP3 lets you store lots of music in a small place, but movie-making specifically is not a small place activity. It is done on a large scale, a grand scale even. It is bigger than life! It is a concept that founded Hollywood in reaction partly to the genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany. "Let's call all a spade a spade." Senator Bullworth said, "I always put the rich Jews on my schedule." Rich Jews run Hollywood. They used to. Now it is the Japanese, because the Sony Playstation has infected many recent American films. Renderman. Renderman. Not reindeer. Steve Job's Render man, the software that, as one group of software designers said, seeks to blur the lines between reality and fiction. "Our goal is to make it impossible for the viewer/consumer to be able to tell the difference between film and animation. Is this a good idea? George Orwell would disagree if you use his novel l984 as an example. Most Americans don't fancy Big Brother looking over their shoulders, re-writing history to support a covert agenda, and using propagandist devices to change the thinking of our people. During Ronald Reagan's term in office during the l980's, hair was big. "Mall hair." Not mohair. Mall hair. Remember? The mullet? Big hair. Hair bands. Hair has always been an interesting and fascinating part of American pop culture. One thing that fueled hair in the 80's was pop culture. Many people don't know it, but there are three things that make a success and money in pop culture. What are they? They are...... "the envelope please!" Are you ready. Music alone as MTV and VH-1 proved. I take that back. Let me think a minute. When AM radio was still alive and living in Paris, I mean the U.S., and when radio was one of the few free forms of entertainment, it flourished. I don't know if you have noticed but radio died. It is dead. It literally died, left earth and headed for the stars. I think we have Google to thank for that, at least most of the popular TV studios would say that. Why advertise on television and radio when the youth population of America is online? Television used to be an educating force in the development of our youth. Not so anymore. Do you think there are any lessons to be learned by watching Survivor and American Idol? I will stop at that. Back to 80's hair and success in pop culture. Pop culture needs three things for success. They are music, dance moves to accompany the music, and a fashion statement to sell the music and dance moves. Think back to memorable moments in American pop history. Gidget goes to Hawaii. There was a specific type of music, say Surf Rock. There were dance moves that accompanied the music. There was a fashion statement like the beach wear of the l950's. This as a package makes, Ana Kudinova cakes. (sorry about that) I mean success in pop culture. Madonna accomplished the same thing. She actually went to the dance clubs in New York, listened to what the DJ's were spinning, and wrote catchy tunes in a similar style. Not only that she created a style of fashion unique to herself. Just watch the movie Bedazzled. Elizabeth Hurley's wardrobe is a pedagogy of good fashion back when the country had a fashion sense. Now our fashion must be veils for women and turbans for men. Let's hope not. Hair was big in the 80's because of the advent of the blow-dryer. Blow-drying, not blow jobbing, made your hair fluff. It went high and made it. It went sideways and made it. It was fun! Americans are not having fun with their hair anymore. Hair in current American media is flat and straight, just like our former Republican government. Plastered-down. Baked. Fried. Scorched. Dead. Let's hear it for a resurrection of H-A-I-R, because hair makes you feel good like war doesn't. It is okay to feel good, although thousands of Americans died in 9/11. It is okay to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. That is what our country is and always has been. Let's not let this wave of violence and the War on Terror stop us from enjoying the very things God suggested. "Let's eat fish and bread and drink wine and revel in the gifts I have given you." Then again some stealth force is trying to plant the seed of doubt in our minds that God even exists. What do you want in your life, to be at war or to feel good?

Let's Call a Spade a Spade

In times long ago before the advent of what is now camp Political Correctness, one could have "called a spade a spade." Whether some negroes would have taken offense to the phrase, that is both individuality and individualism. Individualism is very similar to a medieval musical practice known as "Musica Reservata." This philosophy suggests the needs of the masses are greater than the needs of the artists, usually the minority. If PC is judged using the connotation of individualism, it means offense taken from a slang statement is more important than the idea it is trying to convey. If there is no idea or ideology, then the offense could be merited. Anyone who is slandered has the right to protest, but in a case where the derogatory comment is meant to illuminate a potentially harmful social or political injustice, that is a different scenario. Calling a spade a spade is a phrase coined with eventual truth in mind. Any racial inferences should be overlooked for sheer integrity of the situation at hand. Political Correctness, a decade after its widespread seminal introduction into American society, should be called a spade. It simply was a socio-political campaign to quiet the American people against government. In all probability it was presented clandestinely as to appear to represent the American people themselves. In reality it was conceived as a movement coupled with religious conservatism meant to undermine the principle of democracy, our form of governmental rule in the United States of America. The retracting of prayer in our public schools, religious symbols in public government buildings, and the idea of God from our population along with the administration of political correctness has been simply a covert assault on our people and our country by an evil political regime. Let's call a spade a spade and let the definitions of integrity, spirituality, and hope prosecute the case.

Jazz Music

I see so little real jazz music on television or hear so little jazz music on the radio, sometimes I wonder if it ever existed at all. I studied jazz music in college. In fact I have a Masters degree in both jazz and commercial music. It wasn't until after I graduated I got serious about jazz music. If you grow up in an area rich with music, including jazz, you don't necessarily have to spend countless hours listening to recordings. You can go to the clubs and hear the music live. That's what I did. There were enough jazz musicians in both Chapel Hill and Columbia from which to learn some of the craft of jazz. You can't learn the entire history of jazz listening only to live players, unless the area in which you live is dotted with historical replica bands covering all the major style periods in the evolution of jazz music. Wow! That was a mouth full. That is why it is important eventually in your career as a musician to study, buy, and listen to jazz records starting at the beginning. The beginnings of jazz are somewhat vague, but it is easy to document the first recordings. It started in the l920's in Chicago. Jazz traveled up the Mississippi River to Chicago passing by Kansas City and St. Louis on the way. It was there the advent of recording technology began to preserve the efforts of notable jazz musicians. There is a lineage, an evolution so to speak of jazz music over the decades to come. Some of the basic style periods are: New Orleans jazz. Some people refer to this as "Hot Jazz." This was where it all started. A bustling port city rich in cultural heritage. The Creole/Cajun influence was there. French/Carib/Albino people. The brothel or whore house was an important place, because it was here this music proliferated. That should tell you it is related to some bodily function, and not eating. The "Red Light" district or French Quarter or Bourbon Street areas of New Orleans. Was jazz an illicit music? Maybe having a good time is no longer allowed in our modern American society. Snorting coke certainly went out of fashion after the l980's. I guess if you can go to jail for the rest of your life for 'trafficking' narcotics, that is an effective deterrent. (much like a majority of the over-the-top, knee-jerk reactionary legislation this neo-conservative, religious, right-wing government has enacted) Based in a reality of the human being? I think not. Along this line, how in history could the sport of skateboarding become... Are you ready? A Crime. What? A Crime. Riding a board with four little wheels over concrete and asphalt is a crime? I guess the "New School" of ollying and grinding has maimed or even destroyed public property. This has given the skate punks a bad name. They do mean to be rebellious as the catch phrase "Skate and destroy" suggests. This is why the Old School of skateboarding appeals to me. Surfing. Sidewalk surfing, a peaceful, serene, pacifying activity that nourished the soul and relaxed the mind. I never liked that term, "Skate and destroy." It is not effective propaganda for the mass acceptance of skateboarding as a national pastime. I think that needs to change, and skateboarding should be assimilated back into the mainstream. Let's get rid of the "Us vs. Them" way of thinking. Whereas Punk music once could be viewed as that avenue for rebelliousness, we need to find another style of volatile and VITAL music that characterizes our youth population. Anybody? Class? Bueller? Where is Ferris Bueller? I was startled and alarmed when a fellow skater stopped me and told me you could get a $180.00 ticket for riding a skateboard in the parking lot of a shopping mall. With the plethora of homeless people, thieves, and drug dealers in our town, I don't think the threat of a lone skater is viable. Threatened by a teenager riding a little board? Come on now. Back to jazz. The "Second Line was a style of playing that came from marching bands of the day. Black bands used to march in the streets of New Orleans, and like Glenn Miller's version of the St.Louis Blues March, the second row of snare drummer began to "swing" the formerly straight march rhythm because it felt good. I never knew that Second Line didn't "swing" in the sense of l950's style New York jazz. It doesn't really use the triplet as a subdivision. It uses syncopation like I talked about earlier. It swings with the feel of Ragtime, which I did know is straight. It swings because it is straight, and that is interesting in itself. When they attempted to shut down the Red Light district and clean up the prostitution, probably for religious and social reasons similar to the philosophy of the Bush regime, the musicians had to travel up the Mississippi to look for work in Chicago. Here, probably because of the colder climate and urban setting, the music became more "hard edged." It was faster and more aggressive, like the hustle and bustle of a large city. It stands to reason the environment in which a music is bred and thrives, like Vienna, Austria back in the High Classic Period of music history, is responsible for the "feel" of the music. There is a stark difference between Chicago, Illinois and New Orleans, Louisiana. Let's hope the powers at be are going to preserve the origins of this national treasure. Bill Basie was playing "Early Swing" in Kansas City, Missouri. When I discovered Early Swing, it took the place in my heart of what I learned in college as real jazz. It is more two-beat based music, like the feel from New Orleans, but it was a little more sophisticated as to serve as dance music for society. It didn't have the freedom or independence or improvisational character of the three horn based "Hot Jazz." It was more refined, more composed, and therefore more acceptable to mainstream society, just like Motown. Buck Clayton, Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, and Jimmy Lunceford come to mind. I love this music, because it is relaxed and feels good. Mainstream World War ll Era Swing could be epitomized by the traveling Glenn Miller orchestra. This began in the Great Depression, because people were hungry for good entertainment in the midst of a national disaster of the stock market collapse. Does this mean there needs to be a national tragedy to spark an artistic renaissance? I am still waiting after 9/11 for this to happen. Not so, it seems. Swing bands were combos or small groups. They played sophisticated songs and arrangements that later grew into the Big Band. What was the first Big Band? That is a good question and "I don't know." "Why do you continually disrupt my class Mr. Spicolli?" "I just thought we could have a little food on our time!" "I don't know." I learned in college if you don't know something, the answer to a question for example, then it is quicker and more prudent to move on. Simply say "I don't know." Count Basie, or Bill Basie ended up with a Big Band, but (alliteration) you need an arranger for this. Sammy Nestico was in the military learning to write arrangements. Gil Evans started early with Claude Thornhill. It is evident there were many things happening AT THE SAME TIME, and many of them were unrelated. Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstein, and Paul Whiteman all come to mind in a mixed bag of orchestra-like musical groups. Some had more classical instrumentation, but the classic form of the Big Band resolved as: four trumpets, five trombones, five saxes, and four rhythm. Often times there was a vocalist. Jazz musicians like to solo, and harking back to the days of New Orleans probably like to play music in a more "use friendly" environment meant for only a special few. The Lester Lanin model of playing for Victorian-styled society was squaresvill man. Bebop was invented. This music was meant for the musicians enjoyment. In New York they took the dance floors out of the clubs and the club owner had to pay a hefty tax to get it back. Bebop became listening music for this reason, not to say that you could not dance to it. Cause and effect. No dance floor, people sit, drink, and listen to the music. "Yea for our government!" More later.

Why Jazz Doesn't Work on a Cruise Ship

I have had both good and bad luck playing in "Showbands" on cruise ships. When I called my first cruise line about a professional music job, they just automatically placed me in the Showband. I had several choices of ships. Musicians will tell you "the run" is what determines to which ship you would like to go. Who would want to be stuck traveling to Nassau every four days for six months straight? This may be a good itinerary for the guests, but for a crewmember we need amenities at our ports. A simple drugstore or department store will suffice. Six months is a long time to go without underwear or shaving cream. These items tend to cost double in Caribbean gift shops. A good run is a seven day cruise with seven ports. (i.e. a port each day) That means there are no sea days on which you are stuck on the ship. Sea days are good for revenue, because people use the services offered by the ship. They gamble, drink, and buy photographs. Sea days can be hell for crewmembers. I was lucky enough to acquire probably the best run in the fleet. It was also probably the best band. What I discovered first was the bands don't know how to swing. Swing comes from jazz, and jazz is American music. If you didn't grow up in America, chances are you have little idea what swing music is. Even upon realization of what jazz is, it can take months to years to do the necessary study to play good jazz. It is a lifelong pursuit, and that pursuit is what jazz musicians commit to at an early age. Musicians that work cruise ships haven't or don't necessarily need to make that commitment. Or do they? I would say if you want to be a real musician, you have to study jazz. I became intrigued with jazz, because my father played piano. He played both piano and Hammond organ, and I was surrounded by this "feel good" music growing up. I just naturally wanted to do the same thing. The music was fun, fun to play and fun to listen to. My father taught me to read chord symbols with the vehicle of "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow." I started to pick that song out on the piano, and naturally embellished it with cocktail-style arpeggios. My parents couldn't believe what they were hearing. I had been taking classical style piano lessons for almost ten years. Reading music is not fun, and I didn't enjoy piano lessons although I asked to take them. I started in first grade, two years earlier than what they suggest. Your fingers aren't really big enough to learn the piano at that age, but because I was interested, they let me. When I saw an opportunity to play music that was more fun and promised some recognition, I jumped at it. Although I had good feeling and accomplished technique because of my classical training, I did not truly learn how to swing until after my Master's degree. I had a "feel," but it wasn't jazz feel. It came from my father. I managed to graduate with a Master's degree in Jazz and Commercial music without ever listening to ANY jazz music. Can you believe it? I listened to fusion/jazz because it had a beat I was attracted to. Wizard Island by the Jeff Lorber Fusion was my first album and still remains one of my favorites. It should have won the Grammy for best instrumental jazz album, although fusion shouldn't really be classified as jazz music. Fusion uses jazz-like harmony, uses complex melody, and puts it over contemporary and often Latin-oriented beats or grooves. It does "swing" in the sense of having real feeling, but it is not real swing. When you make the commitment to real swing, it changes you. It stands to reason when you begin listening to music that originated at the turn of the century, your modern upbringing and psyche will be changed. If you commit to the music, then you are committing to a personality and emotional profile that is not really modern. There is a classification of "Modern" jazz, but you have to go through the lineage first. Many young musicians make the mistake of thinking they can play Avant Garde style jazz without first studying what came before. This is a fallacy. The Avant Garde is the natural evolution of the styles of jazz that came before. Although it may sound cacophonous, it is highly organized emotion-based music. To get back to the point, should a ship musician have to have this education? My feeling is they should not, but only if they are playing in a jazz specific band. There are jazz groups on ships that work in jazz lounges. Of course these musicians probably will have the proper training in American jazz history. I say probably, because a majority of musicians that are working ships in all capacities of music don't. French/Canadian musicians don't swing at all. They try to swing in a way that is very "pop" oriented and based on the rhythmic accents of 1 and 3 rather than 2 and 4. In fact I had an Italian/American bandleader who loved swing tell me it wasn't until much later in the jazz lineage that 2 and 4 became the predominant accented beats. I can't imagine. The first big band record I heard was Woody Herman's Herd, and the four brothers certainly don't accent 1 and 3. 1 and 3 are "squares Ville," straight, man, Ricky Tick. If you look up the definition of Ricky Tick in Wikipedia, it says a novelty type music based on the plucking or twanging of strings, like the banjo. Does that sound appropriate for the use in a music based on the suffering of slaves? I think not. Bebop is the army that took early swing and hipped it up, although I have heard many white musicians playing Bebop that play it square. Doxy is the best tune I can think of that personifies accenting the OFF BEATS of an 8th note line rather than the on beats. There was a school of musicians that figured this out, and I remember that discovery as a senior in college. These were the guys that could really play, because they could create the feel of swing music without the rhythm section by accenting the off beats. Syncopation is the definition, and its inception was in Ragtime music. It is a crucial component of the definition of jazz music in any circle, novice, professional, or academic. Its predecessor was the rhythm of the Cakewalk. Syncopation is the heartbeat of jazz, the soul, the pulse. African tribal drummers were playing in different times signatures at the same time, the definition of polyrhythm. It took Günter Schuler’s enthusiasm with jazz to travel to Africa and notate such an occurrence. No one had been able to write down African drum music, because they are playing in differing time signatures at the SAME TIME! This is unlike Stravinsky's influence with his Rite of Spring which was the first written music to change time signatures within a certain piece or movement. This is called mixed meter. Extrapolating, you must use syncopation in your playing to be a jazz player. If you don't understand this concept, then don't call yourself a jazz musician. Most ship musicians, because they are required to play for production shows with 'sequenced" tracks, abandon this concept. These tracks often use the "pop" concept instead of the authentic or appropriate "feel" of the music they are exploiting. I say exploiting, because they are doing what Barry Gordy did when he formed the Motown record label. White America was not ready at that time to absorb both the tumultuous and intense music of Negroes, so Barry figured out a way to "water down" the original black R&B and Soul music. I guess, although I have not confirmed it, that this process may have been the beginning of most "pop" music. This is an ongoing debate with myself. "What was the first real American "pop" music?" I think it came from the Brazilian Bossa Nova, which emerged into the United States via Stan Getz in the l950's. That would make chronological sense. What would all the crooners songs be categorized as? The point I am trying to make is that swing-based music is difficult. Most ship musicians, especially new hires, don't have the proper training and experience to play jazz music, yet they are forced to do so. Where and why? The answer is.... "The envelope please." Dance sets. The last ship I was on, none of the bands, of which there were many, could play dance music. They were playing with MIDI sequences, often times faking real playing, and with no real knowledge of the music they were playing. Dance music seems to be D-E-A-D with a capital "D" Let me reiterate this. Dance music seems to be D-E-A-D! Pop music is NOT dance music, because the internal and insipid "strumming" of the acoustic guitar does not a rhythmic feel create. It is a joke, the enemy, El Diablo. In fact if you rhythmically analyze this "pop feel," you will find it does not even qualify as music. What is this? Because the definition of MUSIC is time organized in rhythm. That means the human being should be able to perceive the rhythm, because "All God's chillin' got rhythm." This naturally occurring rhythm does not exist in "pop" music. I have never been able to figure out if the use of this so-called concept was intentional, as to create a music that purposely has no rhythmic feel, or if it was born out of ignorance. The dilemma continues today, because the majority of the music on America's airwaves is this kind of "pop." It generates NO feeling, because of the lack of perceivable rhythmic pulse. Maybe some people, like most of the ship musicians I have worked with, seem to think making music with no real feeling of its own is appropriate. Of course Stravinsky himself said music by itself can not generate a human feeling, it has to be attributed to it. I can partly agree with that. If there is no HUMAN being present to be the receptor of the feeling, of course it won't exist. I do believe music can create a human feeling by itself. That's what music is and why it is an art form. As I have said before, you can project whatever emotion you want on top of music that says and means nothing. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of J-I-V-E. If you have no talent, then you razzle dazzle them, as the song in Chicago states. You can't call yourself a musician if this is your philosophy. Understanding the rhythmic content of a particular song is the only source of performing it. You can't play it unless you cognitively understand and can state verbally what the rhythm pattern or clave is. Simply put, what is the rhythmic pattern of the beat? Is it a Rumba? Is it a Bossa Nova? Is it a Meringue? All forms of dance music are going to have a pattern upon which the human body movements are based. How do you move your feet? You move your feet in the rhythm of the music most often generated by the bass line and drums. That is why it is a crying shame that most ship musicians are not American and don't know ANY of the styles of dance music. Techno, one style, doesn't qualify. To be qualified to play in a Showband on a ship, you must know your dance styles, period. Most don't. All of the computer-generated "pop" styled music on America's airwaves must then be categorized as JIVE. Arnold Schoenberg said, "The further music moves away from dance, the more it dies." Who is going to BUY music that is eye candy? Music by its very nature is meant to make the body move and feel good, not tranquilize it so that extraneous, unwanted, sexual feelings can be projected to a probable consumer. America has always been a country who attempts to sell products by sex. We have never been good at selling the commodity itself like Europe, because we USE sex to try to sell other products. I assume projecting a sexual feeling on top of what formerly was country music, is an attempt to do what? I don't have the answer for that other than fock up the appropriate sexual development of our youth population. At least television media is finally hipping up to the ill effects of misogynistic, cheap, superficial fodder of broadcasted mainstream American music. In continuing my thread about jazz and ship musicians, my feeling is the neurosis created by young musicians ill-equipped with the tools of swing is not worth the cruise experience. The cruise experience is a vacation for guests. Except upon very specific cruise lines, the majority of guests are not expecting a jazz-type experience that deals with deeper issues. They are there to party. I have played upon ship after ship where "jazz sets" fail, because the guests simply don't want it. Why project this responsibility upon otherwise capable and energetic musicians to create an otherwise avoidable predicament? I have changed cruise lines twice simply, because the musicians with which I have to play don't know their styles. When you do know your styles or can swing in the style of American jazz, they turn the tables and try to ostracize YOU. You are the anomaly, not the example of what is correct. I thoroughly enjoyed changing cruise lines, because recently for the first time working ships, I wasn't responsible for dance sets. Shows are enough. When you work a full schedule of production shows, fly-on entertainers, and jazz sets, the added responsibility of making a Showband play dance music is inappropriate. What is the role and function of all the other bands that are hired?