singing the unsung heroes

The Bad Plus has wrapped up their second invitational with answers from the great Billy Hart, and a nice recap. A few thoughts:

- I love the "underrated on your instrument" category, Django Bates' inside joke aside. A few names I didn't know, and many wonderful "oh, yeah!" moments. Notably, Fred Hersch highlights his teacher Art Lande, and absolute badass piano player, and a beautiful nut. I'm fortunate enough to know Art a little through my friend Khabu, and he is a great inspiration. (Must be something about Denver- Art, Ron Miles, Shane Endsley, Bhu, and many more- all great musicians and some of the most beautiful people I know) Fred, Michael Cain and countless others cite Art as an important teacher and influence.
I also wouldn't have equated Fred with Peter Gabriel's "Big Stuff".

- Count on Billy Hart to come up with two underrateds I've never heard of, so need to go hear now. I think many musicians would put Billy on their list- he deserves so much more credit than he gets.

- My list of hip-hop and world records just exploded. Again.

Finally, like so many others I am humbled and a bit confused to be named Time's "Person of the Year". (Actually, I'm confused most of the time, so I shouldn't blame a magazine for it.) All kidding aside, thus far this humble blog was originally devised as attempt to hold some sanity on Cruise Ship X. (which, by the way, was NOT a Celebrity Cruise ship, as has been reported. I'm trying to avoid alienating the cruise lines, on the ungodly chance that I need to work there again) It has morphed, obviously, into something quite different, and much better I think, and should only improve once I get off my ass and get my work on behearer.com really happening. Thanks to Darcy for a great model, and to Dave Douglas, Ethan Iverson and TBP, Mwanji and many others for their support.

Side note- incidentally or not, S.R. Sidharth, better known as "the Macaca guy" and a featured webizen in the Time article was Salon.com's Man of the Year. If you read the article, I'm also embarrassed to admit I recognize Tila Tequila from her, er, earlier incarnation. I most enjoyed the advice Mark Foley exposer (pun unintended, really) Lane Hudson gives: "Politicians have to start being themselves from the beginning, then they won't screw up so much." Good advice for everyone, I think.

Blogging will resume sometime next week, so I can take this time to do all the usual, delightful holiday stuff, notably see some relatives I've never met before, and to eat a lot. I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday, and pray for peace. It's possible if we do.

P.S. I apologize for in advance to the Bloglines and other subscribers to my blog. I am in the process of updating all the Amazon links to take advantage of their affiliate program, so there will be a lot of false new posts over the next week. In the long run, this is a really good thing, that I should've done long ago.