Today’s musical selection :



My single favorite Coltrane album.

As is often the case I’ve latched on to a particular album or musician during a multi-day experiment. This time it happens to be Tom Waits, and in particular the Small Change Album, although Blood Money is running a close second place. Right now Step Right Up is getting the most play, but it’s just a great album to let play. I think it’d be a hoot to play that song in a little combo group. It’s not traditional jazz, but then again I’ve always enjoyed playing more than just normal “standards.” Plus there’s the whole thing about Frito-Lay abusing it. It just speaks volumes that a junk food company used a likeness of a song (and Waits’ voice) that ridicules hucksters in an advertisement for a new brand of snack.



I’ve really grown to love Tom Waits over the years. I first heard his music, as do many people, being performed by others. The first place I really grew to love his music was the Temptation album recorded by Holly Cole.

Plus, if we ever have kids I’m going to teach the toddler some Tom Waits songs to sing at kindergarten.

After watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos “remixed.” once, I’m not sure what to make of it.:

My initial reaction is one of cautious interest, mixed with doubt and unease. I also don’t know that I actually like the music/melody regardless of subject.

First, my unease... I love Carl Sagan’s work for science outreach. I grew up with a copy of his book Cosmos. His work, and those by people like Timothy Ferris, played no small part in my choice to pursue physics degrees and eventually to study science professionally. If you’re going to take his work and redisplay it, then my automatic reaction is going to be somewhat adversarial. It is up to the writer or artist to convince me that what they’re displaying is indeed going to adequately communicate his ideas and be true to his vision. If you’re going to remix Carl Sagan, then you’ve got plenty of things stacked against you in my mind.

Plus, starting from the whale-songs is a little... well, odd or disjoint. Anyhow... I can look beyond all that, if for only a single reason.

It’s not a matter of whether or not I like the music, the video, or whatever (so long as it’s not miss-representing him). I don’t need to like it. What matters is if other people like it and, upon seeing it, decide to learn something more about Sagan and his messages. If someone decides to go out and read Cosmos because they saw that video, then that’s a great success regardless of whether or not I actually like the “remix.”

I’m not really sure what to make of the music. I’ll readily admit to listening to “spacey” ambient music while driving out into the country with friends to setup a telescope on several occasions. There was even a really cool one that was largely inspired by S.E.T.I., complete with a small reading by Frank Drake. Maybe I’m too old for the Sagan music/video to appeal to me, but again, maybe that’s not the point.

After watching it a second time, I didn’t notice anything adverse with regards to taking Sagan out of context. What I did notice was more interesting, even just watching it and hearing a few of the phrases from Cosmos evoked rather powerful feelings of what it was like when I was younger and reading (or watching) Sagan. His inspirational messages still manage to touch me across all these years. When I was an undergraduate, I wanted very much to meet him, to convey my appreciation for his work to educate and inspire. Sadly he lost his battle with cancer just weeks before I was to leave to attend school in upstate NY and I never got that chance.

Anyhow, have a look at it (the whole thing, don’t just turn it off after the whale-song hooting) and meditate a bit on some of the beauty of nature.

Wow. I’ve had this album for about 7 months now and it’s still just incredible, Central Park West especially. If you like good Jazz, do yourself a favor and listen to it.

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I sometimes play with a big band in the northwest Chicago Suburbs. Think of me as the second or third “chair” for rhythm guitar. Anyhow, they’re putting up a new website and requested short music bios from everyone. When I started writing one up, I couldn’t help but make smart-ass comments about myself. Quickly it just turned into a complete joke that is included below. I went back eventually and put together a good one for them to use. However, I figured the “original” should be preserved. So here it is, my music bio :


Michael Pierce, Guitar

Michael Pierce is not a professional musician and never should be. Despite attempting to learn the guitar from an early age, his development was slowed by an interest in rather poor "music." During his late teens he grudgingly admitted that jazz was in fact cool and began playing in small combos. After high-school he enrolled at the University of North Texas to study music. The music world is thankful that he promptly dropped out without ever completing a single music class at UNT. Today his sound can best be described as "howling cats" and may in fact be a criminal offense in several states. By some miracle he is capable of providing a steady rhythm and a couple of chords. He is currently working hard to learn a third chord, but this is hampered by his inability to properly fret any notes. In order to spare the audience, the rest of the rhythm section will unplug his amplifier prior to any performance. Thankfully he is unaware of this trick and utterly incapable of reading this text.

One benefit of being at the beamline by myself is getting to listen to music. At the moment I seem to be leaning towards Kenny Burrell, in particular the album Midnight Blue.


Coming from Texas there’s a ready connection to how I first managed to get introduced to Burrell’s music (through this particular album). Stevie Ray Vaughn made a great recording of “Chitlins con Carne” that I listened to quite often as a kid. It’s a great song to play by yourself too. You can add the melody and the 8th notes from the bass line together, toss in a couple of chords in places and you get a really smooth stream of notes out; Melody, rhythm, and harmony all together. It was only one step from the liner notes of that album to Burrell’s music. This has got to be one of the best blues-jazz albums ever. Good stuff.

It has been interesting to see what has returned to me musically in the past week and what is more slowly developing.

One the whole, things associated with my head seem to be coming back much quicker than I thought they would while physical things appear to be returning at a much slower rate. For instance, coordination of my hands, speed of clean notes, sight reading, implicit and explicit memory of songs and progressions all are returning very fast. I've already started trying to play what would be considered somewhat challenging material. On the other-hand, finger strength and calluses are quite slow. Not having properly "prepared" fingers can make quite a few things either painful or impossible to play. I really like to bend notes, at least I used to. Many large but simple chords (typically requiring a finger bar) are difficult to play without accidently muting at least 1 or 2 strings.

It's also interesting that I'd had a large resurgence in listening to "good" music. It's something that I used to really enjoy, but in the past several years my ears had just packed up and left. It would seem that they've also returned and are happy with the change.

I did something bad yesterday.... very very bad. I picked up a guitar again.

Actually it started a few months ago. Through all these years I've kept my old steel string acoustic. At times it would go a year without being touched. The strings, a decade old by this point, were dull and dead and caked with dust. But regardless, I began to play it again. The past week had seen a particularly large increase in both frequency and duration of playing. However, it wasn't until we went for thanksgiving that I truly got hooked again. There I had access to a new, cared for, lively instrument. From that point on there was no turning back.

I'll admit to having crazy thoughts of the inverse of 12 years ago. At that point I decided to quit UNT and music in favor of something else (to be fair, class hadn't even started yet and I never really got moved to Denton). That something else led me to science, to physics, and to where I am today. Now I'm having thoughts (though not serious ones!) of the perfect, idyllic life of a jazz musician (let me know if you ever run across someone that has it). I could just pack everything up, quit science and start being "cool" again. sigh... being a post-doc will do that to you at times.

Anyhow, let me introduce our newest member to the family : a Paul Reed Smith 2000 McCarty guitar, complete with an amber finish and bird inlayed neck.
This is the kind of guitar I dreamed about having while I was a kid. Kerri has named the guitar Sufie after a bird.