Perpending. . .

When I was pre-adolescent, watching with wonder the antics, joy, humor and sensuality of the beautiful young people in such entertainment offerings as the 'Beach Party' and Elvis Presley movies and television fare like 'The Patty Duke Show' and even 'The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis' (in syndication, mind you, NOT the original run).

I recall vividly thinking that 'this is what it's like to be a teenager'.  Your biggest worries would be who to ask to the prom and should you tell your Dad that you scraped the car on the door frame of the garage last Tuesday.

I learned later that life would simply not be quite that romantically glorious nor as blissfully simple.

And, in my 20/20 hindsight, I'm actually GLAD that it isn't!

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My latest release, Black & White Then Back,
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I did not intend. . .

. . . for this to become a chronological revisitation of my indoctrination into the school of Zappa, but I must go on a bit.

From the irreverent, unconventional, iconoclastic ’Freak Out!’ I moved onto ‘Just Another Band from LA’, which was also (ironically?) IRREVERENT, UNCONVENTIONAL and ICONOCLASTIC. I remember listening to it, where I listened to all my music, (played in all it’s glorious, vinyl, hi-fidelity on a Westinghouse, console record-player – NO, it wasn’t even stereo – that we inherited from my Grandmother) in the basement, my forerunner to what is now called a man-cave, though mine was more of a musical, adolescent-cave, keeping a watchful ear on the door at the top of the stairway just in case one of my parents should happen to wander down and catch some of the colorful language on the record. [‘Freak Out!’, by the way, contained no objectionable language whatsoever!] And since some of the language was indeed so colorful, I will not post an audio or video clip of any pieces from J.A.B.F.L.A. here, in this family-friendly, [and I am serious, I was all about decorum when raising my children (there is time enough for them to learn those things elsewhere)] blog.

So just to take my education a step further, after J.A.B.F.L.A., and to be able to post a family-friendly excerpt here, I must tell you that I purchased THE GRAND WAZOO which was like something COMPLETELY different from what I had been listening to by Frank. It was ethereal. It was spooky. It was jazzy. It was intoxicating and it was addictive. It was. . .



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ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak

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But there's more. . .

. . . more what, you ask???

Much of my leisure time during my adolescent years was spent absorbed in music. Like the copier company in the Baltimore area with the humorous commercials, 'I lived and breathed the stuff.' And since my adolescent years were particularly uncomfortable, not only was music a distraction from school, uncomfortable social situations and my lack of self confidence, it also provided comfort. It was good therapy. And in more ways than one. While I was busy practicing, listening, transcribing and learning, I was absorbing theoretical concepts without consciously realizing it. Many Saturday evenings, when my contemporaries were 'out and about' exploring more prurient interests or logging invaluable experience with (as Zappa called them) 'the opposite camp', I was in front of a black and white television set showing Mary Tyler Moore with a sheet of manuscript paper in front of me, composing or transcribing my own solos or some Art Van Damme or Charles Magnante piece.





But download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak

Please Visit

http://www.rayjozwiak.com



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