David Lee Roth explains jazz using The Beatles.

The Van Halen frontman was asked by Joe Rogan to explain jazz:

“…We will do it in the old Beatles style, here is the best way to go for somebody that’s interested [in Jazz]. The old Lennon note and McCartney note. The McCartney note is always kinda happy... There’s a darkness among those last three notes. That’s where you get a little bit of pepper in the chocolate, ya know. It’s a little wistful, a little melancholy and when you put them together it doesn’t sound like they do but if I could I would sing both parts and it goes together. Bittersweet like my fucking career, like my last three relatio-here we go!”

Rogan: "So you kinda have to listen to jazz like you’d taste wine?" Roth:

“The best for this is Thelonious Monk, the same thing, the right hand is Paul, the left hand is John, it’s working and you can’t tell is it happy or sad? I don’t know how was dinner last night? Same! It’s indicative of what’s around you because it’s not just happy, that’s Disney. It’s not just sad, think of someone just tuning his guitar to sad, think of Leonard Cohen. [Roth imitates Cohen] That sounded more like Bowie but whatever.”

Here's the whole interview.



I have not listened (yet), so I can't pinpoint the place where Roth plays the notes and Joe Rogan tries to sing like Leonard Cohen. If you know the timestamp, let me know.

Who said "I have tremendous respect for McCain but I don’t buy the war hero thing. Anybody can be captured. I thought the idea was to capture them. As far as I’m concerned he sat out the war"?

Al Franken! Back in 2000 in a Salon thing called "What's at stake in the 2000 elections?/Rosa Parks, David Duke, Steve Wozniak, Camille Paglia, Al Franken -- and dozens more -- talk about what inspires and frightens them about the political year ahead."

I wonder how many other old jokes are woven into the oddly woven head of Donald Trump.

I found that Salon piece via "Donald Trump Uses Old Al Franken POW Joke About John McCain/Franken 15 years ago: 'I don't buy the war hero thing. Anybody can be captured'" at Reason.com, where I went because of this tweet from Penn Jillette....

Donald Trump Uses Old Al Franken POW Joke About John McCain - Hit & Run : http://t.co/FvK6AbRFkn Al Franken! http://t.co/j3rReBx5Jm

— Penn Jillette (@pennjillette) July 18, 2015

... which I got to from a Bizpac Review article titled "Penn Jillette praises Trump as genius with no filter; libs go nuts trying to spin", which I only noticed because of my Google alert on "bob dylan":



From the Bizpac thing:

“Thelonius Monk [sic], the great jazz piano player, said — and it’s not a well-known quotation, but I love it — [Jillette] said, ‘The genius is the one who is most like himself.’ That’s what I love with Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, Tiny Tim — they were completely like themselves. Trump, for better or worse, is in that category... I have talked one-on-one with Bob Dylan, and I have talked one-on-one with Trump, and they do not have filters. They speak honestly and from the heart.”...

I'm sure there's a joke at this point about how that thing Trump wears on his head — his hair hat — could be used as filter, but let's be serious. Trump is some kind of genius. We can grant him that. But at the same time, it's pretty obvious, we don't want a genius President! Thelonious Monk, Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, Tiny Tim... that's a hell of a list. Trump is flattered to be put on that list by as fine a man as Penn Jillette. But neither Thelonious Monk, Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, nor Tiny Tim belonged in the Presidency.

Who would have made the best President?

Thelonious Monk

Bob Dylan

Lenny Bruce

Tiny Tim

pollcode.com free polls

"What I typically find with kid prodigies is that they come from this clinical, Western European way of accumulating knowledge."

"What I found with Joey is that he’s coming from a more intuitive, communal way of playing music, which is so beautiful to see."

Joey [Alexander] began playing piano at 6, picking out a Thelonious Monk tune by ear, which led [his father], an amateur pianist, to teach him some fundamentals. Beyond that, Joey recalled, “I heard records, and also YouTube, of course.”

He played at jam sessions in Bali and then in Jakarta, when his family moved there. At 8, he played for the pianist Herbie Hancock, who was in Jakarta as a Unesco good-will ambassador. (“You told me that you believed in me,” Joey recalled last fall, addressing Mr. Hancock at a gala for the Jazz Foundation of America, “and that was the day I decided to dedicate my childhood to jazz.”)

ADDED: I'm impressed just at the idea of "dedicating my childhood" to something. I mean, you might look back and see that you dedicated your childhood to something. (Did you?) But to come up with the idea, while a child, of having "a childhood" that you could "dedicate" and actually to decide to dedicate your childhood to something is very impressive — even if you don't also follow through. In fact, I think it might be better if you let yourself out of the task to which you bound yourself.