Riffs, Rants & Remarks by Jason Hayward

Occupy is in the local public eye again because today is essentially the day they’re being thrown out of the park they’ve occupied since it all started back in October.

I haven’t been actively involved since standing in the rain with signs the first weekend it started, but I’m a supporter of the movement at heart.  I think I’ll become increasingly involved over time as I see ways that my efforts might be particularly useful. Frankly, not much is going on in St. John’s lately anyway, although I’m sure things will pick up again over the warmer months (and I’ll have moved away).  I’m dubious about what the local chapter can even accomplish because, honestly, St. John’s does not seem particularly receptive to the ideas expressed by the movement at large.  Recently, a poll suggested that the vast majority of citizens believed the following statement: “They’ve made their point; now it’s time for them to leave.”

I will just say that this makes me want to vomit.

Moving on (for now).  The local media would have us believe that the local authorities and politicians have been supportive but I will tell you this and be willing to stake money on it: they’ve been merely tolerant.

And let’s talk about tolerance for a moment.  Gay rights activists, for example, as well as many other minority rights lobbyists,  are no longer fighting for tolerance.  Tolerance is what you have for your beloved pet when it pisses on the floor.  Just as it became no longer valid merely to “tolerate” people of color during  the U.S. Civil Rights movement, for example, or women in the workplace, it is no longer valid just to tolerate minorities – who are entitled to equal rights anywhere - when “acceptance” is the order of the day.  My point, of course, is that there is a vast difference between tolerance and acceptance, even when, outwardly, they might amount to the same behaviour at times.  Or, more appropriately, “non-behaviour”.  It’s easy to feign acceptance when you don’t have to actually do anything to demonstrate it.  The local authorities are a case in point.  It comes as no surprise that, when push comes to shove, they’d behave like authorities elsewhere.  Occupiers were camping in the park over the fall and winter when no one was really using the park for anything else anyway.  Now with summer on the horizon, the situation is much different.

The notice provided by the City demanding that Occupy leave on May 15th was more or less to be expected since this is what’s been happening to Occupy movements all over the place.   But Occupy isn’t going away.  In fact, all in all, it is slowly picking up steam.   It won’t always be “newsworthy” but I think it’s here to stay.  Perhaps, when the movement reaches a point of “critical mass”, it might actually stand a chance of postively affecting the world order, in spite of the financial clout of the 1% that poses the greatest resistance.

The people who think any “point” has been made by Occupy thus far are, for one thing, delusional.  Furthermore, they grossly misunderstand the purpose of Occupy, in general.  We know society is far from perfect and most of us would like to see it change for the better.  For this to happen, it’s far from enough to simply “make a point.”  Awareness is only the first step.  For change to occur there has to be action. 

Occupy is about taking action instead of sitting on our complacent asses or behaving like lemmings or worse, contributing to the problem.  And that positive action sometimes ruffles feathers and pisses people off.  Better to create a disturbance (think: Rosa Parks) then to go with the status quo and take the crap.

You want the world to be better?  Do something positive that feels a little uncomfortable at first and then get used to it over time (it’s like stretching).  Then, you know you’ve made a difference.

Medical researchers have found that chlorogenic and neochlorogenic “phenols” ( essentially, mild acids), which are commonly found in fruit, kill even the most aggressive of cancer cells while leaving normal cells intact (onlike chemo therapy which kills both, for example).

Apparently, fruits with pits, like peaches and plums have an especially high concentration of these natural chemicals.

It remains to be seen if eating these fruits can be positvely linked to the prevention of cancer. But it can’t hurt to have something in your favour.

So, off to the grocery store I go. I can’t remember the last time I ate a peach or a plum.

Here’s a great article that Marion wrote recently.  We happen to share the same views on this subject, although she articulates them much better

http://worldrecordlabel.com/can-a-single-artist-start-a-genre–cms-37

Congratulations on your publication, Marion!

In particular, I’d like to say something about why I very much appreciate CBC Radio 2.

I love music. It’s basically my life. It is my number one passion and my most meaningful pursuit. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music on a daily basis – you might say I’m an audiophile –  and I do this for two basic reasons. First, as a career musician, I often consider it “research and development”. I feel it’s important to explore new music and be inspired by what my peers are doing in various genres that I enjoy and, in which, I work myself. Secondly, I listen for the pure enjoyment of it, generally, passing through phases or periods of time during which my listening is mainly centered around a certain genre, be it classical or jazz or electronic or pop, etc.

While it’s not my favourite genre (or family of genres) that I listen to, I do enjoy a lot of popular music. Most of my life I can remember listening to pop music and realizing that there’s some that I enjoy more than the rest, and very little that I detest thoroughly. This goes for the music that I can hear on commercial radio this very day as much as it does for the music I could hear back when I was in grade school.

Personally, I find the main limitation in listening only to popular music is the narrow range of musical parameters that are explored within that musical world.  There’s just so much more to the world of music at large: a vast ocean of aural fascination.  To limit one’s audio exposure to pop music alone would be like doing a survey to learn about the thoughts and opinions of a group of people – a city or nation, for example – and speaking only to 14 year olds, or 38 year olds, or 52 year olds, etc.  In other words, it is a very narrow “sample” and not at all representative of the bigger musical picture.

Unfortunately, the business of commerical radio narrows this sample even further.  Most stations stick to playing the popular music of a particular timeframe (“the 80s and 90s”) or the most contemporary “Hot 100″.   My most vehement complaint when I turn on the local commercial stations is that I hear the same stuff every single day!  I find this extremely boring and I’d imagine anyone who is interested in a lot of different kinds of music is as bored as I am.  I frankly can’t relate to the audio equivalent of having pasta for every single meal and throwing in a pizza occasionally for “variety”.  How lame (not to mention intellectually malnourishing).

But here’s the clincher: CBC Radio 2 is not like this at all.  What I love about this station is that it gives me something fresh every single day.  And when I’m driving in my car or sitting at work in the afternoon, my audiophile tastes are catered to with every new track played on my two favourite programs: “Shift “with Tom Allen and ”Drive” with Rich Terfry.

Recent Federal Budget cuts mean that the CBC as we’ve known and loved it is an endangered species.  It makes me terribly sad that CBC Radio 2, with all its refreshing eclecticism, may be eradicated from the reach of my ever-thirsty and ever-grateful ears.

Neon Skyline Revisited is an expanded and re-orchestrated version of “Neon Skyline”, an electronic piece featured on Wayward & Upward, the debut album (2010) of Spinoza Gambit – Jason’s electronic music alter-ego (www.spinozagambit.com).

The main ideas for the original piece were sketched in 2008 while Jason was living in South Korea and inspired by the urban landscape there with its plethora of neon signs, including the bright red neon crosses towering above churches.

The “Revisited” version is intended to explore the interplay between electronic sounds (sampled and synthesized) and the sounds of a wind ensemble (“blasts” from Jason’s MUN Music School past, as it were).  The piece features an extensive, contrapuntal development of the main ideas, essentially spliced into the middle of the Wayward & Upward version, newly orchestrated.  These new lines represent the interweaving stories of those awake amid a lit up landscape that never sleeps.

Here’s an article I came across online about DJ/producer, David Guetta who is now a mega star in the electronic music world.  Recently, he’s had a hit featuring Usher called “Without You”, and probably started to become well-known in the international pop world after c0-writing and producing the song “I Gotta Feeling” with the Black-Eyed Peas.  Born in France in 1967, Guetta has been working in the music industry since he was 17, DJing, producing, running a record label and managing a dance club.

The article is mainly a review of  the documentary called Nothing But The Beat, which is about Guetta’s career.  I haven’t seen the doc but I’ve seen clips and it seems pretty cool.  There’s a line in this article that I wanted to highlight here: “Nothing depicts Guetta as a DJ and producer like any other, someone who paid his dues in the clubs, worked his way up, and happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

In keeping with Malcolm Gladwell’s (author of Outliers) “social” theory and analysis of success, David Guetta becomes another case in point.  The whole idea behind Gladwell’s theory is that first, one works really hard – possibly logging the prerequisite “10 thousand hours” to become an expert in one’s field – and then, something happens by chance to make the difference.  Being in the right place at the right time and, likely, meeting the right person (it’s all about who you know, right?) are essential ingredients to success. 

Even minor successes create momentum as each opportunity builds on the last.  I think in Guetta’s case, his early collaborations are key, as well as the fact that he never stopped working hard.  I’m sure the documentary provides a lot of detail on this but the most important thing for us observers to realize is: while it may appear that an artist like Guetta is an “overnight success”, coming out of nowhere, nothing could be farther from the truth.

http://crossfadr.com/2012/04/06/nothing-but-the-beat-documentary-review-how-well-do-you-know-david-guetta/

This is an article about me which has just appeared in St. John’s Scene Magazine, an online weekly Arts & Entertainment publication:

http://www.stjohnsscene.com/spinoza-gambit-rpm-challenge-the-triple-threat/

Today is another blah day of wind and scattered showers. And I’m feeling kind of blah myself.

The second rehearsal for my new wind ensemble piece went well on Monday night. Although, I’m finding it hard to judge the reaction of the band, in terms of whether they like it or not. Sometimes I think any enjoyment they might have is overshadowed by the difficulty of some of the parts, or by the errors or omissions.

On the way to work today it dawned on me how few friends I have these days. Seems with all the extra work, I’m neglecting people. I wonder if a lot of people find they’re too busy for keeping up with friendships a lot of the time.

I’m so tired of working two jobs! As much as I enjoy aspects of my day job, it’s definitely not want I want to be doing. I feel like such a fraud in my life sometimes. What happened? It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.

Marion and I took the night totally off last night and spent it watching the the first half of season one of “Community”. What a funny show! I’ve probably never laughed that much before. I think I need to take more nights off to enjoy such things.

I started reading “Hunger Games” over the weekend. I’m looking forward to checking out the movie, too, but I want to read the book first. It’s really good so far, and I can see that soon, when the action really starts, it’s going to be hard to stop reading.

Looking forward to the holiday on Friday.

A pretty cool thing:

If you do a Google search for “original electronic music producer” or “original electronic music composer”, you will find my project Spinoza Gambit among the top results.

This is thanks to Marion Lougheed who has learned to optimize search engine results through her ongoing practice of cyberspace witchcraft, which she began learning at Hogwarts.

I’m hoping someday she will cast some spells so that a few people will actually buy some albums.  I don’t want to pressure her, of course… that would just be too dangerous.

Recently, I decided a major career move for me as a composer would be to concentrate on writing scores for wind ensemble.  Before that happens, I have a couple big projects in the works to finish, including a new Spinoza Gambit album with Rich Blenkinsopp and a score for a CBC documentary with Mark Hoffe, and once those are clued up, I intend to shift my priority and always have a piece in process.

In fact, I’ve already been working on my first original score and it’s almost complete, with a premiere performance by the Eastern Wind Ensemble scheduled for May 14th.  Back in university, I did an arrangement of Darius Milhaud’s “Braziliera” from his Scaramouche Suite, orginally for two pianos, for solo alto saxophone (to be played by moi) and full concert band.  Technically, this was the first time I wrote for a large group featuring winds and percussion.  This new work, “Neon Sklyine Revisited” is an expanded version of my composition “Neon Skyline”, originally an electronic piece, which is featured on my debut Spinoza Gambit album called Wayward & Upward. 

At first, the project was intended to be a relatively simple orchestration of the piece including electronics.  At 5 mins 32 sec, it promised to be a fair amount of work, especially amid all the other stuff going on.  However, once I began I realized that, in order to make the piece more idiomatic for wind ensemble and more substantial and satisfying musically for a large group, more material would need to be added.  After tossing around a couple of strategies for possible additions, I decided to splice in a huge section roughly in the middle that would feature the band much more.  It has now turned into a 10min+ piece and when all is said and done, it will likely be around 12 mins.  That is a lot of work.

The first read-through went fairly well this past Monday evening.  It’s a quick tempo and the main problem was musicians lagging behind the beat.  Once we have the PA set up and the band can play along to the accompanying soundtrack, sensing the tempo more strongly, this will no longer be an issue I’m sure.

I hope someday to get a publishing contract so I can build up a substantial income from sales of printed music.  A couple years ago, I adjudicated the instrumental component of the Rotary Music Festival in Stephenville, NL.   Part of this experience involved working with student wind bands.  In general, I was struck by the ”low” quality of the published works the bands played in that, while the students and teachers interpreted the music well, almost every piece sat well below the standard of what a “good” piece is in my opinion.   Basically,  I thought I could do a much better job!

At the Newfound Music Festival back in January at the MUN School of Music, I was inspired once again to work on wind ensemble scores.  Apparently, the demand for good pieces, which aren’t a rehash of all that’s been done, is quite high.  I think my experience with electronic music and jazz has enabled me to develop a unique creative “voice” that I can apply to this area of composition.  It’s very exciting.