What I though I’d do is occasionally give my thought on the preceding week’s interviews, if anyone cares to read. I’m a huge fan of The Jazz Session, and I can’t recommend it enough to all musicians of any genre. I think what attracts me the most is that I think Jason is more interested in the backstory of living and working as a musician than what scale someone plays over Bbm7 (although a major pentatonic works well).

One of Jason’s recurring themes is the lack of communication between musicians and the audience. This really resonates with me because I also believe musicians can do more to relate to and involve the listener. Telling a story about the music, looking like you’re having fun, working the room, it all goes a long way and believe me the club owner notices as well.

Jason did an interview with the saxophonist Jon Gordon (#261) that rates as one of the great conversations I’ve heard on any music interview program. Also the 2-show set with the great Gerald Wilson is terrific. Do yourself a favour and subscribe on iTunes or visit the site. Jason, please keep on doing what you’re doing and be sure to send me an e-mail when my membership is due again.

Anyway you can find the show here.

Also there’s a widget you can get that puts the podcast on your website.

I’d encourage everyone to sign up, pay a very small fee to have this legacy continue. And I love the fact that I’ve discovered so many talented folks for the first time through his show. Great job Jason, please keep it up.

Around the 19th century these war-announcing clangers became true musical instruments and the cymbal industry was wrought. Drummers assembled various bits of kit, “traps” and surrounded themselves with cymbals. K Zildjians were right there, and became the standard cymbal for kit ‘trap’ players. Of course there were other options such as UFIP and various chinese instruments. In 1930 or so Constantinople became Istanbul and the K Zildjians were K Zildjian Istanbul, a name which still gets drummers all sweaty and quiet.

In 1929 or so Avedis Zldjian moved his family and the business across the Atlantic to Massachusetts. Here the Avedis, or “A” Zildjian was born. The K Zildjian company continued to operate in Turkey, in competition with Avedis until the K Zildjian name was purchased back by the U.S. Zildjian company in 1968. Production of Ks was moved to what is now the Sabian factory in Meductic, Canada. K Zildjians have been associated with jazz drummers from the 40′s until now. Most of the greats played them, and they were distributed in America by Gretsch, THE jazz drum, a pretty good arrangement, and one that cemented both companies as the main choice for jazz musicians.

All of this is very interesting (or numbingly tedious, depending on your opinion). What’s really fascinating is the value, both in market terms and in social value that are placed on these K Zildjian Istanbul cymbals made in Turkey up to 1968 (which for the safe of brevity we’ll call old K’s). If you look on eBay, you’ll frequently see these cymbals selling for well into the thousands (I just saw one for $5,000(!!). Drummers, we’ve lost our marbles. Let’s get together and stop this craziness and bring prices down to where they belong. Here’s my rationale:

1. These cymbals don’t sound any better than the best cymbals out there like Spizziccino, good A Zildjians (trans stamps sound every bit as good, more consistently), Craig Lauritsen (a guy from South Australia that makes the best cymbals I have ever heard, I have 2), really good Sabians, etc. And these cymbals sure don’t cost 5K.

2. The ratio of crap old K’s to good old K’s is another issue. There’s lots of rubbish out there and people seem to be buying based on a stamp. I remember being in a drum store in Toronto that got an old K in. Clearly it was clobbered by a beautiful Bosphorous next to it, but consistently people loved it (once they saw the stamp). And, because people buy SO much on the web now, we’re forking out huge amounts of cash sometimes without hearing it! What the hell?

3. Here’s a paradoxical point; we may want the old K sound to emulate the great drummers that we grew up listening to. I’d love to sound like Max (or at least to get his sound) or Art with his magnificent cymbal beat. So, we buy the old Ks. The irony is of course that on those records we love, they were likely playing newer cymbals. They weren’t playing ‘old Ks’ in the 50′s. Maybe, at most a 10 year old cymbal. Maybe A 20 year old cymbal in the 60′s, but probably not. So it’s counter-intuitive that buying an old cymbal will give you that sound. They were playing new cymbals. Art Blakey went to Gretsch for new Ks all the time. So did Elvin, etc.

So, what am I saying and why am I ranting? I guess I just feel like we are being taken for fools and essentially taken for a ride by hype. I love the old Ks, I really do. I’ve got a couple. I’ve also got American As that are beautiful, and the aforementioned Lauritsens which trump everything. I play old K hi-hats and a glorious Istanbul Agop from good old Tony at cymbalsonly.com. So lets’s reject the hype and bring the price down to earth a bit. We as consumers have only one power, the power to not-buy. Then, we can work on bringing the price of old vinyl back down again, but don’t get me started on that.

1. Be very organized. Goes without saying but charts, keys transpositions, dates and times, all must be in order. Nowadays I’m seeing a lot more quality as opposed to the old Real Book lead sheets, that’s a good thing. It’s important to get charts to musicians as early as possible, and to provide any reference music. Here’s another tricky one. Do you send mp3 files? I’ve done it both ways where I’ve offered to pay for the download of mp3 files and where I have made my copies available. I think I’m going to stop that because I’d feel a lot better paying someone $10 for a few mp3 files then to circulate my copies.

2. Provide food. Doesn’t need to be master chef but crackers and cheese, some fruit, whatever always helps people feel appreciated.

3. What do you pay? I’ve asked a few people this one, and theres no solid answer but I recon if there’s a gig at the end if this, then it’s ok to ask people to rehearse, provided the rehearsal is organized and flows smoothly, and isn’t 6 hours long. If it’s a rehearsal to hear charts, or to test a concept then I think it’s proper to pay the musicians, even if it’s $20 for their petrol, but I think $50 is fair, particularly if the rehearsal is not during ‘gig hours’. Just my thoughts. I don’t get hot if I don’t get paid for rehearsal because it’s not a very common practice, especially if someone is trying something and I haven’t got anything better to do (ie I’m not giving up a gig).

4. Conducting the rehearsal. This can be tricky. I tend to try and run specific passages and not have too many solos because I use a rehearsal to develop the structured parts of the performance. I would expect the musicians to get the solo chords under their fingers on their own time.

5. Set the expectations for the performance by telling the musicians what the vibe for the evening is. I think this is important because too many gigs these day seem like jam sessions. Now don’t get me wrong, this is essentially improvised music, but within a framework and a structure. like to map out roughly who will solo when, which song is a feature for a particular player, etc. I like to ask a player if any of the tunes is favourable to them for soloing over.

6. There’s a few more points but, because I think I’ve gone on long enough, the last one. I think it’s very important to record the rehearsal, and to capture every comment about the music, and to have people write corrections on the charts. This helps me after when I’m making adjustments to the pieces.

I guess that’s enough about my thoughts on rehearsals. I probably could have summed it up by saying keep it brief, be organised and be a leader.