Thursday, October 27, 2005

Time Travel

Today I went back 50 years in the past... playing a music job at the Carmichael Elks Lodge. At the beginning of the meeting they sang "God Bless America" and said the Pledge of Allegiance. There was also a little American flag behind glass in a frame. There was a hidden fan causing the flag to ripple majestically. ("These Colors Don't Run.")
(Conservatives have great nostalgia for a more patriotic past... when there were actual liberals in positions of power.)
Musically it was fun. It was a real jazz job, I had a great bass player and drummer with me and the people liked it. Jazz is now the music of old fogies. Shelley, the bass player, commented that when he was young and jazz was popular, the schools wouldn't touch it. Now that jazz is almost dead, there are great programs in the colleges (including Sac State). I said, "Soon, it'll be like early music."

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