blog | graham hawthorne aka FUNKYGH

Funny Hurricane Story, however tangential

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 00:55:10 -0400

So hurricane Sandy didn't really affect me at all - my house was spared any damage, in fact, it was very benign in my neighborhood - just some wind and rain. Hard to believe that 5 miles away in downtown Manhattan they had such hell break loose.
Here's my one hurricane fallout story.
Yesterday morning I went out to do a quick errand - one stop, before sticking my head in a coffee shop around the corner to say hello to a friend. When I got home I reached for my cell and it wasn't in my pocket. Assuming I had left it at home, I looked around for it briefly, then picked up my landline to call it. A woman obviously of foreign tongue picks up.

"Hello"
Me, realizing I must have dropped it or left it at the coffee shop: "Hello, you have my cell phone"
her: "Huh?"
"You have my cell phone"
"solly, no engrish"
(to myself), "oh for pete's sake", to her: "umm, PHONE. my PHONE. that's MY PHONE you've got in your hand"
meanwhile I'm thinking, she sounds brazilian....,
"are you portugese?"
"huh?"
"latin?"
"huh?!"
......this is frustrating....
now even louder: "P-H-O-N-E. MINE. WHERE ARE YOU? I WILL COME AND PICK - IT - UP, the PHONE"
"sorry, I no engrish; wait" (puts someone else on the line):
"hello?"
"yes, the other woman has my phone. or, er,... you have my phone, the phone you're talking on - It's MINE"
"huh? no engrish"
"fucking hell, you've got to be kidd..,"
"is there anyone there that speaks ENGLISH. PLEASE, I NEED my PHONE!"
this goes on back and forth for a good 5 minutes. I'm amazed they don't just hang up, and eventually I start getting very nervous that they're going to and toss the phone in the trash. I'm pacing.
finally,
"umm, portugese? spanish? french? italian? japanese? chinese?"
"YES! YES! ME chinee. You speak chinee?"
"No, but don't go anywhere. I'll call you back. I'll call you RIGHT back. DON'T LEAVE."

Diana Ross live

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 01:11:37 -0400

So I did a big party at the Metropolitan club a couple weeks ago, and I'm just getting around to writing this quick little blog about it.

I contracted a band, wrote a bunch of charts and played drums - we backed a russian singer named alexander kogan, who sang a mixed bag of pop tunes. it was as great show, and writing the charts was a big challenge cause it had to happen fast.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. In addition to us, there were a bunch of other musical acts, the most well known being Diana Ross.

She was GREAT. I was floored. She hit the stage like she was 25 or something - lots of good energy. singing great, working the room. I think her voice sounds better than ever - it's slightly huskier with age (she's 67 or 68), and there's no more of that slightly cloying thin sound and vibrato that she could sometimes affect. All the tunes were in the original keys, so she hasn't lost any range evidently.

It was a small audience for an artist accustomed to playing big venues, but Diana performed and behaved like it was a sold out stadium. It was as if it was 1965 and Berry Gordy was in the first row busting her chops to be a pro and do a good show no matter what! old school.

rants and raves

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:50:15 -0400

on the road solos

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:02:16 -0400

From the road.

sitting in mn airport, 11am. Waiting for a 1 pm flight to columbus. gate C13 on friday the 13th, and I'm feeling lucky.

Ordinarily I would be annoyed to have to waste 2.5 hours at the airport, but I'm feeling magnanimous because I'm enjoying just being out here doing what I do. Played with bst last 2 nights at a nice club in mn - maybe 250 seats, good food; very appreciative crowd. Makes a big difference to play for people who have bought tickets to see the band - so many of their gigs are no admission charge, for the gen pop who just happen to wander by.

Fun to play in a smallish club - band setup close together, everybody can hear each other better, the music gets tighter and more interactive, more details speak and they matter more. Tomorrow's my last gig with the band until further notice - I'm a fill in until their new regular drummer starts next week. Seems to be my specialty - the short notice sub for hard music gigs. To be fair, my sub status here probably has something to do with me having told the original singer that he was a fucking psycho - but that was years ago in my angrier days. He is retired now, and for whatever disagreements I or anyone else had with him (which were legendary, and plentiful), I now realize that he added gravitas to the music.

the nature of teaching/learning?

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 02:14:43 -0400

spent the day making the first in a series of videos on drum tuning for the Puremix website. puremix.net is an advanced audio tutorial website. it is interesting having to think and talk about a subject that one knows to others that don't know about it. I think that doing it well is the key to teaching - all teaching. In regards to the teaching he's done all his life, my father always says, "never forget the problems of the beginner".
the difficulty for me occurs when I don't remember them, because the material was learned so long ago.

How much of being a good teacher is throwing the student in the deep end of the pool and letting them sink or swim?
How much of being a good student is being willing to be thrown in the deep end of the pool, almost drown, climb back out and do it again, a little better?
these are the things I think about when teaching, mainly because I can be overly didactic and detailed, but also because a complete science of education is not known (nor is a complete science of anything). I remember growing up - much of the education I had in Chicago area public schools was pretty soft - not because the schools or teachers were universally bad, but because there was a liberal trend in education, or so it seemed.
did I get a better or worse education than I would have in a more heavy-handed system?
dunno.
maybe I would have bucked against stronger academic discipline. maybe I would have risen to the challenge. hard to say - from my current perspective I wish I had a stricter educational experience in primary-high school; but who knows what that would have done - maybe I would be a doctor and not a drummer!

my education (personal history)

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 20:57:09 -0400

Hi folks, sat down tonight (4th of July - holidays are for people who hate their jobs) to write a blurb about my education for my website, and it turned into this monstrosity. it's not spell checked, edited or any of that yet.

My father is a great drummer and teacher. When he got out of the army in the late 50's he moved to Chicago and studied at the Roy C. Knapp School of Percussion, which was the premier drum school in the world at the time. My dad eventually taught at the school, and became very close with Roy, subbing for him in staff orchestras at NBC and other places. Roy was my godfather.
I started loosely studying with my dad when I was a kid - don't even remember when or how, but I do remember a boast going around my family that I had a pretty good double stroke roll before I started primary school.
Years later after a successful Jazz, session and TV career in Chicago, my dad packed us up and we moved to Miami. He started teaching at the University of Miami, where he's still on the staff.
My parents split after only a year in Miami and my mom moved us back to Chicago, so my formal studies began just like most kid's do - in about 4th grade they came around to the classrooms with instruments and asked who wanted to play what. I said, "well I already play the drums and I even have a drum". so they let me, even though everyone wanted to play drums.
The teacher was just the band director - I don't think he was a drummer but he gave us a good foundation in the basics of reading. I remember feeling funny and sometimes frustrated because my hands and general ability was so much more advanced than the other kids, but I had no edge on them reading wise - I would get super angry at myself when I made a mistake when practicing alone, pounding on the box to my practice pad and shouting a litany of obscenities. Then I would practice and practice til I had the lesson nailed and go in to the group lessons pretending like it was a piece of cake.
I was always super competitive - a trait that helps musicians get good, but needs to be let go of once you're out of your formative years. Music is not a sport, and being competitive just messes it up. It's also a loser's game, because the music business is NOT a meritocracy in any way, making it very frustrating if you look at it competitively.