Why Do I Write These Articles?

Mort Weiss

Contributor since 2012

Mort is a bebop-oriented clarinet player living it up in the state of Texas.

Recent articles (17 total)

Published: June 30, 2012

Please don't tell me about other professions that demand such hard work and study, I'm hip to all of them and I salute those of you who might be involved in same. But! In any other profession (except professional sports) if one is high up in the food chain of jobs: One, you always can find work; and two, you can take a year off and start back where you left off. A world-class musician or a boxer can't ever stop training; if one does, the phone is sure to ring! My old chum, Terry Gibbs Terry Gibbs
b.1924
vibraphone and I agree on one or two things. Such as, when practicing or playing your axe at home, one should be playing like you're in front of a thousand people.

Those of you that are familiar with my articles know that I like to mess with peoples' heads a tiny bit! But I am deadly serious with my solution of sorts with some of the things going on in school, re: the teaching of jazz performance. It should be mandatory in the graduating of anyone with a BA in same, that they (as part of the curriculum), have undergone an extensive course in learning to be a plumber and are skilled enough as such, to be employable at day of graduation as a plumber! This would guarantee that one could find work other than playing jazz for at least ten to fifteen years from now. With the onset of new technologies happening almost daily, I think being a plumber would give one employment (for the above mentioned time period) before someone invents a process that molecularly disassembles fecal matter and sends it and other waste by products into the sun. Don't laugh, it's coming.

What to do with all the unused sewers that traverse our cities? Ever hear of lofts? Considered very chic to live in one; usually found somewhere off skid row in some no- longer-in-use foundry or warehouse setting, rents starting in the area of $5K and up a month. It's so totally awesome stepping over passed-out winos on your way home and like that! Well, some enterprising young person will buy the right away to certain areas of sewers, clean them up, knock out a little cement here and there and bingo! The newest in tony/chic living. You got it! Sewer apartments. Drain Pads (whatever). I can see it now. Oh honey, isn't that John's manhole cover? No, I think his is just around the corner, Oy! It's been fun talking at ya, but I've got to go practice now. You never know, the phone might ring as it did in my archived AAJ article, Getting Ready for Showtime—When You're the Show. I'll leave you with a thought or two. This one kind of waters down some of my own strongest feelings and that is: "The future is under no obligation to mimic the past." George Santayana, I think.

And this one's killer. "No matter how carefully and assiduously and how deeply you bury shit, the American public will find it and buy it in large quantity. It's true, absolutely true." Artie Shaw Artie Shaw
1910 - 2004
clarinet .