I love the saxophone – whether it’s Baker Street or Just the Way You Are – Lisa Simpson or Charlie Parker – there’s something about the instrument which is just – excuse me – fucking cool.
Born To Run
Clarence Clemons died this weekend and I’ve been thinking about his music; his playing touched me and made me smile. I remember being blown away by Born to Run – the album cover: this dude with a telecaster – clean and white – simple typesetting – a handful of songs and a big ass black dude with a saxophone. I sat up half the night listening to it
And the music; strings, guitars, stunning piano playing, that amazing horn and the stories…the stories were pure genius. I wanted to be the Rat, I wanted to be the Poet, I sure as hell wanted the girls and ended up marrying a Wendi.
I fell over laughing listening to New York City Serenade from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. The first three minutes of that song let me be a piano player in a rock band – it enabled me to pursue music in a way that made sense to me. David Sancious – and Bruce Springsteen – thank you too!
Bat Out Of hell
This Sunday morning’s playlist included Bat out of Hell; if you haven’t listened to it for a while – go take 45 minutes out of your day and crank it up - Paradise by the Dashboard Light taught me everything I needed to know about rock and roll.
More amazing music – more E street band players – and similarly to Born to Run – long songs. Funny that two of the best selling albums eschewed the single format.
Richard
It was Richard who left me alone with Born to Run 25 years ago – one of those evenings that imprinted hard on my 16 year old brain. He’s a super guitar player, singer songwriter and I love to play music with him.
We haven’t played together for a year – possibly more – but we grabbed an hour the other week – iPhone recording in the room...
We have recently adopted a new approach to the kind of content that will be appearing on music2work2. One of the things that Charlotte and I agreed upon at the beginning of the year was that we wanted to share more about how music really can affect us all.
We're using a new tool - Scoop.it which helps us stay on top of all the information out there - and when we find something that we think is relevant and that you'd find interesting, we'll post it here on the blog. We're also sending out relevant tweets and posting separate content to the new Facebook page.