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I’ve been a fan of the song Nardis since hearing a version on a Ron Carter album many years ago and reading the songwriting credit: Miles Davis. It turns out the song has a twisted history and there has been dispute about whether Davis even wrote it — it has come to be most associated with one of Miles’ former pianists, Bill Evans. Any number of Jazz combos have interpreted it in any instrumentation you can imagine. It is a standard.

A few years ago I went on a tear and purchased five versions of Nardis by five different artists, including Evans original 1956 recording. Weeks after that I purchased a recording Evans did much later in life when his performance bears a heavier emotional resonance. Some of the emotion, perhaps, coming from the fact that the older Evans was not as nimble on the keys as the younger.

Evans once told a friend that a musician should be able to maintain focus on a single tone in his mind for at least five minutes – and in playing like this, he achieved a nearly mystical immersion in the music: a state of pure, undistracted concentration.

This article by Steve Silberman makes my exploration as a listener seem quaint by contrast – the author keeps a ranking of his favorite 100 recordings of Nardis handy at all times. Though Silberman clears up the song’s provenance in favor of Miles Davis, Nardis, to me, will always belong to Bill Evans in the same way that All Along the Watchtower belongs to Jimi Hendrix. Bob Dylan wrote it, but it’s Jimi’s song.

The article is not so much about the weight or skill of interpretation as it is of an artist concerned with developing a process that allowed for a career of exploration. We should all strive for such clarity.


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This shot is from before the screening of Rock Rubber 45s last night in Central Park.

When I was in college there was an amazing scene on campus. A kind of pan-ethnic people-of-color thang that looked like Heaven to me. But once I got out in the “real world” I couldn’t find anything else like it. I spent years looking for bars, clubs and events that resembled the simple, functional way that people I knew from different backgrounds were able to hang out. People would say, “the real world isn’t like that.” They’d tell me to stop looking for that place.

Rock Rubber 45s is the story of one person’s life. Bobbito’s life, his ups and downs, heartbreaks and successes. And yet, onscreen in interviews, talking, you see a black woman, asian woman, white woman, latin woman, black man, asian man, white man, latin man. You see the rainbow. You see people. Not as part of some cookie-cutter, paint-by-numbers scheme, but because those are the people who were there. Those are the people we needed to tell the stories. I don’t know if anyone will notice or even care that the film is constructed out of such a disparate group of voices. But I noticed, and it matters to me.

Coming to Central Park for the screening, I knew that scene would show up in force, in full color. The scene I’d been looking for since college, the scene you’d find at APT and Bar Sputnik and just a handfull of other places. I wasn’t disappointed. This is not to say that any one scene actually is a panacea. There are the trappings, the annoyances, the quirks. But, damn. I bet this crew has a better chance of saving the world than most.


UpdateRock Rubber 45s was just chosen as an NYTimes Critics Pick! The film has its theatrical premiere at the Metrograph this week and is scheduled for a run at the Maysles Documentary Center uptown in July. I’ll be doing a post-screening Q&A July 10th.


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Over the past year or so I’ve had the privilege to serve as the editor for the feature-length documentary Rock Rubber 45s. The film tells the life story of iconic New Yorker (and one of my personal heroes) Bobbito Garcia, aka Kool bob Love, who directed it as well. I think it’s an important story about perseverance and following your intuition. It was an inspiration to wake up each day and figure out how to help best tell Bobbito’s unique story. The soundtrack is killer, too.

The film had its US Premiere at the Kennedy Center in DC and plays in New York for the first time at SummerStage. For most of my career, I’ve wanted to make intelligent filmed content targeted at a hip-hop audience. In just the past few months I’ve been lucky to have a hand in two projects with just that aim. Take a look.


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Friends who are basketball fans get a kick out of the fact that one of my “hot takes” was selected for NBA Desktop. And so do I.


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Tongues were suddenly wagging on the DC playgrounds. That was the immediate impact of Michael Jordan. Every school recess was an opportunity to play basketball for fifteen minutes. It went without saying. And then out of nowhere, we all played ball with our tongues out. Especially if you were driving on a kid and knew you could score on him. This is not the reason that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time, but it is a fact.

Growing up, the inevitability of Jordan’s Bulls teams winning the championship felt unfair. He won so much that we wanted to storm off in a huff and complain to our mothers. And yet, on the court, we’d attempt to soar in Jordan’s dunk pose even if the apex of our leaps stopped a good six inches short of the rim. He was our standard bearer. There was no shame in failing to replicate his moves perfectly.

Read the rest of this entry →


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