pianogonzology: 2014

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Auld Lang Syne . . .

. . . no matter how hard we wish next year to be good, prosperous, happy, healthy or joyous, a year is a year. Like life, most of it will depend upon our choices. And as we well know we must go on when we lose people in our lives. But some part of them must and will live on.

This poem is for Paul Penwell, a longtime Frederick are open mike participant; regular performer and workshop presenter, blues guitarist and songwriter Marjorie Thompson; and Ricardo, the Divining Sage(Richard White), guitarist extraordinaire and an old soul who helped many . . .

ABSENT FRIENDS

It was not cold but overcast,

A neutral afternoon for Christmas,

Not pointing anywhere,

Not suggesting anything,

Limned by a room splashed full of

Scarlet and white poinsettias;

Neutral plants from Mexico,

When I heard a guitar line

Falter and fade, ascending;

We have our exits and

Our entrances…

Another year –

Auld Lang Syne –

For the sake of times gone by

We take a cup of kindness

Or a glass of wine or whiskey

And salute old friends;

Our cast of characters

Changes, despite our

Holding on tightly...

So, to absent friends, who

Enriched us here, thank you!

But you moved on too abruptly,

Though maybe leaving us with

Sage counsel, or echoes –

Whispers; notes rippling and

Ringing through our memories...

-Rod Deacey

What do you think?
Tell me at
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html or at
http://www.ohomusic.com

OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak. Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com

My latest solo release, '2014' of original, instrumental piano music, can be downloaded digitally at:

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Just More . . .

Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak Just More

Space
from Just More Music ©2014 by Ray Jozwiak, coming SOON!!

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Monday, December 29, 2014

Music . . .

. . . and the tremendous power that it holds will never be fully explained nor understood . . .

(from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/power-of-music)
“Where words leave off, music begins.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“Music is the universal language of mankind.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Where words fail, music speaks.”
― Hans Christian Andersen

“Who hears music, feels his solitude
Peopled at once.”
― Robert Browning, The complete poetical works of Browning

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
― Tom Waits

“Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.”
― Robert Fripp

"Even when involving an extremely unhappy topic, or originating from a most unlikely source, or presenting a disagreeable or plainly untrue thesis, music can still move me."
- Ray Jozwiak

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Sunday, December 28, 2014

A Blast . . .

. . . from the past . . . and . . .

(from http://archives.explorebaltimorecounty.com/news/6018220/rotunda-art-gallery-has-wiggle-room-sing-different-tune/ of January 31, 2008)
". . . The Wiggle Room was conceived as a multipurpose space by Nancy Graboski, who bought the Beveled Edge in 1998, when it was a framing shop under the Jones Falls in Woodberry. She added a frame design and gallery space on Falls Road in Mt. Washington "to be more in the public eye," she said. A flash flood in 2004 destroyed both spaces. Graboski then moved the retail space temporarily to the Mt. Washington Village shopping district and the production space to Clipper Mill, where it remains. She moved the retail business to the Rotunda, 711 W. 40th St., in November 2006 and reopened in February 2007. The open mic night at Gallery G is the brainchild of her brother-in-law, Jay Graboski, of Catonsville, a songwriters association member who asked her early last year to let him host an open mic night there. Now, it's a magnet for music lovers and a marketing asset . . ."

. . . and . . .

S/He
Working on bringing back an OHO gem with a new guitar and a new (as opposed to the album recording)lead voice, Mr. Graboski himself. (recorded at the Compound, December 2014)

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Saturday, December 27, 2014

OLD Friend . . .

(http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/23/372723222/woman-who-lied-to-facebook-about-her-age-dies-at-114 December 23, 2014)
Anna Stoehr became an Internet celebrity at age 113, when she owned up to fibbing on her Facebook account so she could join the social network. It was an unpredictable turn of events for Stoehr, who was born before the Wright brothers took their historic first flight. She died Sunday at age 114. "Anna lived alone on her farm in Potsdam, MN until she was 112," local KARE 11 TV reports. "She and her husband Ernest had farmed together. He passed away in 1998 at the age of 97." Facebook, whose software could not (and still cannot) account for a birth date before the year 1905, "sent her a bouquet of 114 flowers for her most recent birthday," the AP reports. Stoehr's story spread after her son Harlan, 85, went to a Verizon store to buy a phone for his mother. When she had trouble joining Facebook, she wrote the company a letter that included the line, "I'm still here." . . . The social network wasn't the only way Stoehr embraced technology late in life. When KARE 11 spoke to her before her birthday in October, she was using an iPad to hold video chats — in German — with a friend. "That's an aspect of my mom," Harlan told KARE in October. "She's been curious about everything all her life and continues to be curious about it."

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Friday, December 26, 2014

One Last . . .

. . . Christmas thought . . .

(from http://www.allthingschristmas.com/traditions/merry-christmas.html)

The term Merry Christmas doesn’t have any religious bias and is often used by people of all races and religious backgrounds, during Christmas time. It reflects that messages of love, joy and well wishes can be communicated irrespective of belief systems. It’s a greeting that makes total strangers make instant connection. It’s a message that dissolves anger. It’s a message that evaporates misunderstanding between loved ones and creates a bridge to the beginning of a new relationship. It’s amazing that these two simple words “Merry Christmas” can have this profound effect. In some places, people use a slight variation of the term “Merry Christmas.” In Ireland and Great Britain, some people prefer using “Happy Christmas” instead. However, the power and significance of the phrase is not diminished at all because of a difference in phraseology, because the intent of love and well being remains the same, no matter which phrase is used.

The phrase “Happy Christmas” was used by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and proceeded to gain popularity in that part of the world. In fact, in the concluding lines of his now famous “A visit from St. Nicholas”, Clement Moore actually used “Happy Christmas.” But “Merry Christmas” remains a very popular term in countries with large Christian population, like the United States, Great Britain, Canada and Australia. Other terms that are used around the same time of the year as a means of greeting are “Happy holidays”, “Seasons Greetings” and, of course, “Happy Christmas.”

There are groups of people who are opposed to the use of “Merry Christmas” and would prefer something more general term like the “Happy Christmas.” However, it’s interesting to note that in 2005 a survey discovered that more consumers used “Merry Christmas” than “Happy Christmas”, primarily in the message of greeting cards.

The fact remains that no matter what term you use, it’s the intent that matters. Use of words is merely an audible method of sending a message. Words have no meaning in themselves, other than the one perceived by the person who hears it. And when we are using something like “Merry Christmas”, is there any doubt about our intentions?

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Too Big To Fail . . .

. . . Too dangerous to exist

(from Senator Elizabeth Warren's comments to Citigroup)

A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt was America's trustbuster. He went after the giant trusts and monopolies in this country, and a lot of people talk about how those trusts deserved to be broken up because they had too much economic power. But Teddy Roosevelt said we should break them up because they had too much political power. Teddy Roosevelt said break them up because all that concentrated power threatened the very foundations of our democratic system. And now we're watching as Congress passes yet another provision that was written by lobbyists for the biggest recipient of bailout money in the history of the country. And it's attached to a bill that needs to pass or else the entire federal government will grind to a halt.

Think about this kind of power. A financial institution has become so big and so powerful that it can hold the entire country hostage. That alone is a reason enough for us to break them up. Enough is enough.

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Casualness and Formality . . .

(from Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann)
". . . They approached the matter about which they had come together, however, only reluctantly and with shrugs, skirting and backing off the issue several times, as if each side wished to suggest to the other that it would be better not to speak of it-precisely because the topic to be addressed, the matter at hand, was a subject about which it was necessary to maintain the appearance of disdain for the sake of a higher humanity. For, ultimately, it is the luxury of exaggerated objectivity, a pretense of priorities honoring refined formality, including a generous casualness about wasting time for formality's sake, that defines what is worthy of humankind: those things that are more than merely natural and therefore civilized. . . "

(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)

Also, be sure to visit:
http://www.rayjozwiak.com