Book Reviews On A Music Blog

Designing Disney by John Hench
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Artists can always profit from lessons delivered by the masters, and, often times, the lessons transcend the different artistic forms. Musicians can learn from writers. Painters can learn from architects. Dancers can learn from sculptors.

As John Hench says in this book, "The rules of art are the rules of life." The things that make art work do so because art - in all its forms - is both a reflection and an expression of human experience.

Given all of that, plenty of books have been written about the Disney empire's business model. This is the first I've had the opportunity to read that has delved into what drives the creative side of one of Disney's greatest artists. It's a peek behind the curtain with one of the men who went back almost to the very beginning. If there was an authority on Disney's artistic design concepts - both for animation and the amusement parks - John Hench was probably it.

The book is not a long read, and it certainly left me wanting to know more about the details of Disney artistic philosophy. I would have welcomed more depth, to be sure. But there are some brilliant and thought-provoking insights provided here that all artistically-inclined people can learn from, such as: genuinely appreciating & liking your audience and doing your best to see things from their perspective (Walt himself used to walk through Disneyland in disguise in order to interact directly with its attendees), the vital importance of paying attention to small details (like proper period doorknobs & cash registers to keep with the theme of attractions, shops & restaurants), and the invaluable nature of trial-and-error experience (like the 26 attempts at finding the right shade of pink for the castle in Disneyland Paris).

Hench is, as many masterful artists tend to be, somewhat enigmatic and ambiguous. But, his insights and stories are well worth reading. I came away with a new found understanding and respect for the attitudes and artistic worldview that created some of the world's most famous cultural icons, and any artist looking to glean a bit of inspiration can definitely find it here.

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Facebook, Hayley Williams, & Redefining Success

Recently, one thing led to another on Facebook and I found myself looking at a picture someone had posted of Hayley Williams, wishing the singer a happy birthday. The picture and post were completely innocuous and not at all the point of this post, but a comment someone left underneath the photo read like this:

I hate when super amazing successful fantastic people are younger than me. Blergh.

Interesting.

I was struck by the tone of the comment because I couldn't find it within myself to believe that it was at all in jest. I really do believe that this person, while no doubt being a fan of Hayley's and Paramore's, feels an acute stab of failure due to the fact that she is not as successful as Ms. Williams at this point in her life. Allow me to offer a few thoughts on why this kind of thinking is both nonsensical and unnecessary.

Let me first admit at the outset that yes, I understand that YOUTH is the god of all things in our modern society. I understand that there is immense pressure to succeed while you're still young: mediocre artists not yet 25 receive Grammy's while the old masters linger on the margins, Forbes posts articles about the "Top 30 Under 30", and almost all of popular marketing is directed at young people regardless of the product. I get it. I'm with you.

But this pressure is born of commerce and not reason. It's designed to generate money and income, not to help inform human purpose or elevate human creative experience. To summarize, it's a sham.

Buy This Album - Nathan East

For my first post of 2015, I would like to very deliberately direct your attention toward someone else.

Nathan East - the master bassist with more than 2,000 album credits to his name and superstar sideman who has performed alongside artists like Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Toto, Daft Punk, Quincy Jones, Lionel Richie, & Michael McDonald -  has finally released his very first solo project.

And it's amazing.

There is nothing quite like discovering a truly wonderful album you have no idea even existed, and, thanks to the algorithm driving my Facebook feed, soon after Christmas Nathan's record was brought onto my radar. It remained on my radar for only a few moments, however, as I could not open iTunes fast enough in order to purchase it.

It's worth every penny. Actually, it's worth a lot more than all the pennies you're going to pay for it.

What you're going to get when you buy this record is not only a Grammy-nominated masterwork, but a celebration of the music & career of one of the world's greatest living musicians. Nathan East has been one of popular music's most prolific bassist's for 40 years (he toured with Barry White while he was in high school, wrote & sang "Easy Lover" with Phil Collins, played the classic bass line to "Footloose", and, more recently, made the entire world dance on "Get Lucky"). He is one of the quintessential examples of a musician's musician, and when he announced that he was finally going to create his own record, a legion of the world's greatest players & singers came out of the woodwork to make it with him.

 

Nathan with Toto on their 35 Anniversary Tour in 2014. (Check the solo at 5:00)

 

What's more is that Yamaha - the company who's instruments Nathan has endorsed for decades - has produced a documentary film called For The Record chronicling the album making process as well as celebrating the life of one of music's favorite sons. They have released the documentary for free right here on Hulu.com, and I cannot recommend enough that you carve out 90 minutes for yourself and watch it.

(The film also contains a touching memorial to Ricky Lawson, the drumming giant who died last year from a brain aneurysm. Nathan's project was one of the last things Lawson recorded before he passed, and the entire film is dedicated to his memory. I wrote a post about Ricky last year, as well, and it was touching for me to see his musical brothers doing their best to honor him.)

So, if you would like to know what makes a guy like me really geek-out, buy this album and watch this film: wonderful music made by a bunch of true masters in a celebration of one of their own.

(...and the rest of us fangirl all the way home!)

Making The Most

So, a few weeks back my wife and I headed out on the road. She had a conference to attend in Phoenix just a couple of days before rehearsals were scheduled to start in LA for Alex G's CD release show at The Mint. So, as we are so often wont to do, Mrs. Burns and I concocted a fairly last-minute plan and did our best to make the most of what could have been separate trips, weeks apart, and, for me, the potential frustration of being stranded away from home with no transportation and nothing to do.

Instead of going alone, we went together. Instead of flying, we drove. We cobbled together an itinerary that consisted of six different room accommodations over the span of two weeks, threw everything we would need for both work & leisure in the back of our car, and headed out on a rather impromptu road trip
adventure.

And, after 3,200 miles and close to 48 full hours of drive time, I can confidently say - IT. WAS. AWESOME.

The Language

"Music is the language of the soul."

This is the phrase that drives the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, Arizona. More than mere marketing lingo, it is a statement the proprietors of the museum believe in and demonstrate with remarkable acuity.

Drums galore.

With more than 10,000 individual musical instruments of every conceivable (and inconceivable) shape, size, and fashion on display - organized geographically according to their lands of origin - the MIM is a genuinely eye-opening and overwhelming experience. It blends history along with ethnicity and community to demonstrate music's beautifully dualistic nature: music is simultaneously universal (all people groups across the world have their own) and culturally unique.

And it is this amazing amount of diversity amongst a shared passion for musical language that makes such a clear, powerful statement. The same basic elements of music are always present: percussion & rhythm, melody, harmony. But how those concepts are expressed end up as manifold & numerous as the different people expressing them. It is a rather quickening experience, to be sure, to stand in front of a display and, as a musician, recognize what is happening in front of you but find yourself so blown away by its astonishing otherness that you barely recognize it. And then, to realize a moment later that there are plenty of other people living on this planet who would find the voices & sounds of rock 'n' roll and jazz - so familiar to me - as bizarre as I find theirs.

Music is universal, but there is no universally relatable genre. No style has a monopoly on accessibility: all of the different variations of musical expression are as wildly diverse as the languages we literally speak, and the musicians themselves as diverse as those languages' individual speakers.

And so my mind took all of these wonderful concepts and ran with them. I arrived at a couple of conclusions you will learn about if you can find it within yourself to keep reading (hint, hint).