A couple years ago I was doing a lot of reading on the evolution of music and I recall being amazed that it took Western culture hundreds of years to ask, “hey, what if we played two notes at the same time?” And there’s some music forms — Indian music I believe, though I could be wrong — where this question was never asked.

But, when you really think about it, it’s kind of amazing man ever came up with music at all. Presumably, he started with rhythm by realizing you could divide a section of time up into equidistant subparts. That’s not all that amazing, nor requires the brain to have a pretty accurate sense of the passage of time. But to then arrived at the concept of tones/notes, and realize that different combinations can have different emotional connotations, and from there to start arranging them into scales and songs… well, that’s pretty impressive.

We really should take this moment to drink a toast to what is clearly the high point of all human music: “Crazy Crazy Nights” by KISS.

You’ll often hear some great conductor talk about how, as a child in the 40s, he would sit around listening to scratchy recordings of symphonies and be completely moved by the music. Or you might hear some artist talk about how he would stand outside of a private garden just to get a distant view of the sculptures within.

This has always seem like a very foreign reaction to me. I mean, I like music, but not enough to listen to scratchy, crappy recordings of it. And I would probably walked past a garden of statues even if it was open to public. I like art, but I’m not obsessively moved by it. Does this mean there’s something wrong with me? Does this mean I have no chance of ever being a “great” artist? I don’t know; I don’t really care. I made a pretty good hashbrowns, bell pepper and garlic mix for breakfast, so I’m happy enough.

If you like scratchy recordings of old music, the Library of Congress is now letting the public stream pretty much every song in their collection via this website. I’m listening to something called the “Hayseed Rag” right now.

… Most egregious example of inane gibberish disguised as jazz criticism goes to: Pat Metheny in his introduction to the DVD “Wes Montgomery live in 1965.”

He was an embodiment of the forward thinking improvising musician who looked with wisdom and curiosity into the heart of his own moment in time and played a music that commented upon the nature of that cultural moment through the prism that the sophistication of the form at its highest level mandates.

I would love to tie Metheny to a chair and force him at gunpoint to explain what he was trying to say. And why it couldn’t have been said in half as many words.

Devo has a new video out, viewable here and accompanied by an interview with Gerry Casale (whom I interviewed in acid logic.) The conceit of the video is that you can click on some of the objects presented and buy them, though I couldn’t get this to actually work. I take Devo’s point to be a condemnation of consumerist culture while simultaneously reveling in it — a theme of theirs which is getting rather tired.

Last night, I did a show with the group I play with occasionally called the Scott West band. Joining us on stage was a violin player, Alex Depue, who plays often with Steve Vai. He’s a phenomenal fiddler, and I thought I would enclose a video of him playing (this is a different show from last night.) Perhaps, in some small way, the glory cast upon him will shine down on me, and I can use it to lure teenage girls into sleeping with me.