February 2012
2 posts
the hooker story pt. 1
my hangover is terrible. i broke my rule of no straight, hard booze and was drinking the powers after the gig last nite. it was fun. there were a couple of young girls interested in talking to me. i was flattered and let the good times roll. we drove over and closed small’s. they were from out of town. they were staying close by in the same hotel room. they were very young and it all...
the scarab speaks
jazz is dred america is dred low-fat is a lie you cover dead people with lye i don’t play the piano i play a box with a big metal board in it upon which a series of strings is stretched and made to resonate individually or collectively by means of a felt-tipped hammer strike piano is such a confining label nature is not nurture almond butter is very expensive the world will never stop...
October 2011
1 post
nyc dispatch 10.11.11
i’m standing on the f train heading into manhattan. i call it ‘chasing after that 50 bucks.’ one dance class. one hour, twenty minutes. and a 45 minute commute to the ailey school each way. i don’t know why i do it. i like the teacher. it’s easy. $50 can add up, especially when i can string them together. but that doesn’t always happen. i like having...
September 2010
1 post
ode to sofia's
there’s the down-trodden guy. he always has on a black t-shirt under a gray suit. he looks rumpled. he looks tired. his black hair is greasy. he doesn’t smile much or get involved in the discussions between the other regulars. he’s more of a watcher. i’ve run into him once or twice around times square. each time he was just standing there on the sidewalk not doing anything. he recognized...
May 2010
2 posts
cannes 2010
‘oh, my god. i am so out of my element. i don’t have a t.v., i don’t speak french and i don’t know who any of these people are…’
we are standing outside our dressing room, which is next to the stage, talking to a young, straight-haired, blonde, american girl from indiana who is guarding the door. she is confident in a way that only young girls are. she prattles on without pause or regard...
swimming in the coloosahatchee
i’ve passed this spot hundreds of times since my mom moved down here 20 years ago. at the north end of the bridge there is a small park. room for maybe 5 or 6 cars. and there is a tiny strip of sand leading into the river which at this point is more of a bay. i’ve wondered what it would be like to swim there. the water is so often like glass, the way it is tonite. i’m coming...
March 2010
2 posts
san fransicso dispatch 3-15-10
the jet blue terminal at jfk is insanely crowded and chaotic but i make my flight. i try to sleep but i am mesmerized by the television. it’s been 7 months since i got rid of my t.v. and anytime a t.v. is even on i can’t take my eyes of it. i watch two law and order episodes simultaneously, twice. i watch the in flight movie - a not so bad picture about a guy who flies ten million...
lawyers, guns and money
my friend tells me about this divorce lawyer. she’s good. she’s expensive, but she’s good. ‘cost me two grand and i was divorced in a few months,’ he tells me. that’s great, because new york is the only state where there is no such thing as no-fault divorce. meaning two adults can’t decide they want to part ways and commence doing so. they have to...
February 2010
2 posts
the best bass player in canada
it is a friday nite in the village. i don’t need to worry about parking because i rode in with the drummer who also lives in my brooklyn neighborhood. he’s a chatty fellow and on the way he told me all about the new bass player. how he’s the best bass player in canada and has won canadian national music awards and plays in this mahavishnu cover band. this doesn’t impress me because i also know...
cruise ship
it was the end of my third year of college and i needed some work for the summer. you couldn’t really call it my junior year because i was kind of making it up as i went along. the second i left high school in st. louis i moved to cleveland to play bass in my brother’s trio six nites a week at a holiday inn in eastlake. i went half a semester at john carroll that fall and might’ve continued but...
December 2009
2 posts
for your security
can anyone tell me whatever happened to ‘crazy’? dude tries to light his shoe on fire….crazy. dude burns himself up in his seat…..crazy. al qeada claiming responsibility for sending self-immolating crazy guy……crazy. c’mon. nine years since 9/11 and that’s all they’ve got? and the entire media picks it up and broadcasts it 24/7? well that’s a special...
ignorance is bliss
i got up from the kitchen table and opened the cupboards looking for something sweet. nothing much but cans of stuff from the old place that noone ever used but i that i couldn’t bear to throw away. or bother to take to a shelter or something. there was a can of mushrooms, a couple of tins of sardines (one with the label long gone), chicken broth, stewed tomotoes, a bag of farro and a bag...
November 2009
1 post
that's amore
‘…now i don’t know if you all knew this or not, but since silvio berlusconi took over italy there have been many cultural changes. he owns the television stations, the newspapers…all the radio. so he has been able to enact an agenda aimed at keeping rap music, which he deemed subversive and dangerous to the preservation of the classical italian language, off the airwaves...
October 2009
1 post
happy halloween
the subway doors open and a short woman bursts out and straight into my chest. i look down to see she is crying hysterically, grabbing a fistful of my overcoat in each hand and rubbing her head into my shirt, leaving smears of hair product as she shakes her head from side to side, muttering, ‘please…no..don’t get on.’ she turns and sees an old woman in full burka smiling...
September 2009
3 posts
was it something i said?
On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 6:56 PM, <SStevoxxx@aol.com> wrote:
Just a quick note, from a long-time jazz lover. The remark you made at the festival on Sunday, about how “No Charlie Parker Festival would be complete without some… heavy drug use!” -under the circumstances, was disgusting. If it was up to me, you would NEVER be invited back. It seems the point was lost on you that...
6 tags
potcats on a potcast achieve topcat status
in our never ending efforts to achieve jazz world domination, dred scott trio has begun a potcast. it’s just like a poDcast except the idea is you smoke some pot and then listen to it. it’s kind of like 3-d without the glasses or visual imagery. as if this is not enough, you can now follow the trio and it’s various important and meaningless exploits via twitter. i...
the piano movers
‘you gotta take out another stair.’
‘no man. we can pick it up and slide it.’
the small man and his partner are chinese and they are both shaking their heads. one of them takes a piece of strap and holds it up to measure the length of the keyboard then taking care to keep his hands in the same place on the strap puts the strap in the space between the next stair and the...
July 2009
2 posts
montreal dispatch
‘quel flop!!’ the headline read. three of us were gathered in my hotel room to try and translate the review of the john adams opera we were playing in montreal, the first city in a one city tour that followed the opening run in berkeley, ca. the headline needed no translation and the article was fairly merciless. and rightly so. while the music was mostly good, the libretto was...
saratoga dispatch
‘mr. roney, my name is dred scott.’ i extend my hand and he doesn’t even look over. i continue awkwardly, ‘um…. i just wanted to say that my trio was playing at the same time as your group so we didn’t get to catch your set. and uh, that my jacket noticed your jacket and wanted to be introduced.’ i put my arm next to his arm. i am standing. he is...
June 2009
1 post
roll out the barrel
i give my boarding pass to the agent and walk down the jetway and into the plane. the flight is full and it is with great effort that i finally reach my seat. a middle seat. oh well, i don’t care. just as long as we’re finally leaving. i put my backpack under the seat in front of me and put on my headphones. finally leaving. i close my eyes and listen to marty sammon’s new...
May 2009
2 posts
cote d'azur dispatch
there’s this guy with silver hair and horn-rimmed glasses sitting at the table with mike myers and he’s been staring at me. it begins to bug me so i return his stare and we have a staring contest. i look away first and lose. danny glover goes up to the stage to read a description of the next auction item, an alto saxophone owned and autographed by bill clinton. he gets through one sentence and...
dress for success
i’m reading ron carter’s biography by dan ouellette. it is a very thorough look at the career and personality of jazz’s greatest living bassist. one thing mr. carter always insists upon is that his bandmate’s be dressed well. very well. in fact, when he and mike stern were on a week long gig at the blue note, mr. carter told the guitarist after the first nite that if he was going to dress in a...
April 2009
4 posts
all that lives must die
i’ve just reread hamlet for the first time since high school. i was surprised to not be totally baffled by the language and pretty much had an idea what was going on the whole way through. man, what a soap opera. it’s like elizabethan jim thompson. my wife, sharon, is teaching hamlet in queens at a cuny school so i thought i would read it and take advantage of the opportunity to understand it...
waiting for mobot
it is midday. midtown. 54th st and the sun is beating down. it is the second hot day in a row. hilary is trying all the buttons on the outside of the rehearsal studio. she is wearing all black and it is hot. outside.
hilary: (giving up) nothing to be done.
dred: (advancing in a very relaxed manner) i told you it would probably be like this. no respect. no respect at all.
hilary: be...
waiting for gardot
(a phone conversation)
mcec: hello?
dred: dude, what’s up? how was your trip?
mcec: awesome. tillie sold some paintings.
dred: nice.
mcec: sorry i missed last week. maggie told me all about it. what the fuck is up with that chick, emily gardot?
dred: i don’t know, man. i’m guessing maggie told you the bitch stood in front of the bandstand for half an hour selling cd’s and signing...
nyc dispatch 4.2.09
i was thinking about the reasons i play music and i was reminded of the times i was in church as a boy fidgeting and being distracted during the parts where the people were allowed to think their own thoughts. there was one prayer the priest lead where he listed a series of transgressions as the people responded in tone after each one something like, ‘lord, hear our prayer.’ (i haven’t been to...
March 2009
2 posts
a gig haiku
when the time is nigh awesome jamming will begin later at rockwood
tony rocks the drums ben rubin swings on the bass shut up and play, dred
our album is out we will conquer the jazz world thank you hail satan
rockwood music hall every tuesday at midnight the dred scott trio
nyc dispatch 3.19.09
america’s got talent
i’m standing in line waiting to be checked in. we’ve gone through security – bag check and a metal detector (america’s got psycho’s) – and i turn around and right behind me is a squat and swarthy man with a very bad comb-over wearing a long black overcoat and an expensive looking white scarf. i overhear him saying to his equally squat female companion in an accent i can’t...
February 2009
4 posts
d.c. dispatch 2.22.09
feature this…
our new president, jazz lover, is listening tomorrow to his favorite d.c. jazz radio station. he’s in the oval office listening on his wave station that herbie hancock gave to him going over some figures on the overhaul of the national health care system.
it’s 2pm and he is feeling a little full from the yak kabobs he had with hamid kurzai over a late lunch about...
nyc dispatch 2.17.09
i’m on a health kick. so when i was in the japanese food store that had all kinds of exotic drinks, i chose kambucha - a vile tasting pro-biotic brew of enzymes and cultures that i guess what makes them so good for you is they are alive. i’m playing a merce cunningham class and it’s during this balancing adagio while i’m playing this variation based on major seconds that...
music at dredscott.com
dredscott.com
stream “live at the rockwood music hall” at last.fm
nyc dispatch 2.2.09
i never thought i had much in common with michael phelps. here’s a very disciplined and committed guy. zeroing in with pin-point accuracy on the goals he sets for himself. a perfect physical specimen with a wholesome personality. but when i found out dude likes to do a bong hit and go swimming i wasn’t that surprised. that is one of my favorite things to do. i really get into my...
January 2009
3 posts
nyc dispatch 1.19.09
man is life just occasionally random yet synchronistic. check this out. i play bass in a yoga video for kids that just came out (www.barikoral.com) called sundance. and the dred scott trio appears backing linda fiorentino during a dream sequence in a film called once more with feeling that’s screening four times this week at the (get this) sundance film festival. trippy, right? i wrote a...
nyc dispatch 1.12.09
‘young man do you have a chair?’ ‘what? i don’t know.’ the guy worked in the deli what did he know about a chair. ‘well you better go and find one or you’re going to be picking me up off the floor!’ my mother was collapsing in the publix and very quickly the manager was on the case taking care of her and summoning the emt’s. ‘i’m...
nyc dispatch 1.6.09
doldrums. blase. ho-hummery. don’t know whether to nap or go to the pool. watch t.v. in a mindless stupor or practice. must……do………something. i make some tea and sit down to write the folderol. nothing comes. i clean the kitchen, vacuum the living room and look through the garbage to see if the pack of cigarettes i ran under the tap and threw in there two days...
December 2008
1 post
xmas eve 2008
‘it’s like deja vu all over again.’ – berra.
’do you need to stop for anything? coffee? newspaper? orange juice?’ we had reached the intersection at the end of my block where there was an open bodega. ‘no thanks. i think i’m good to go.’ it was 5:30 in the morning. ‘ok, then. next stop, jfk.’
we go another couple of blocks and get stuck at a very...
November 2008
1 post
nyc dispatch 11.1.08
his name is roberto. that roberto. the guy from last week. turns out he is a great drummer. and an excellent cook. so far we have only had a very simple and perfect carbonara. there’s a lot to do in new york and he has been busy. it’s nice to have a roman around. roberto is very upbeat and pleasant. his manners are impeccable and he whistles the nicest tunes when he is showering. he...
October 2008
3 posts
nyc dispatch 10.28.08
it’s that time of year again. the only holy day of the year. devil time. satan’s holiday. all soul’s day. the night when the soul’s of the dead return to earth. whatever you want to call it, it’s the most fun holiday. now tonight is not exactly halloween. or the day before halloween. or even the day before the day before halloween. but i can’t change that so...
rome dispatch 10.26.08
hemingway
i was to travel to italy for two days and was looking for an appropriate book to read and on my way to barnard college from the 96th st express stop – sometimes i like to walk instead of taking the local the extra 20 blocks – when i happened upon an old edition of a moveable feast and thought, ‘well, i’m not going to paris, but…’ turning it over and reading, ‘…candor that...
nyc dispatch 10.15.08
newport
last weekend was kind of a blur. me and mc extra cheese drove up from nyc friday nite because our set was at 11am saturday morning. i remember hitting the pillow about midnight and waking what seemed like ten minutes later at 6am. time to pick up tony at the train station. he had a gig the night before in philly and took the midnight train up to kingston where at 7am i found him sleeping...
August 2008
1 post
jacksonville dispatch 8.8.08
i’m sitting in 4d. an aisle seat. i like to sit in the front of the aircraft and on the aisle so i can get up anytime i want. i am always one of the last people to board and today as i turn the corner to go up the aisle there is a two year old boy smearing his germs all over my seat. wiping his mouth and playing with my channel changer, waving a crumbling cookie in his hand that is being...
July 2008
2 posts
nyc dispatch 7.21.08
11am - arrive at screen test for reality show involving the kid’s band i play bass in. the idea is wife swap except it’s lead singer swap. our lead singer trades with some other band’s lead singer and reality show mayhem ensues. i tell the director an imaginary story about trying to get the lead singer from deicide to cover the upside down cross tatoo on his forehead with a...
nyc dispatch 7.3.08
hello citizens. trying to get into the election season mood and am having a hard time. i don’t know if it’s the long preseason that wears me out or i’m just flat from the lexapro. i’m sure i can get motivated enough to vote when the time comes but for now i’m just blase about it all. i mean, it was exciting to think of either a woman or a black man being in the white...
June 2008
3 posts
nyc dispatch 6.23.08
day 1-3. dick too sore to really think about it. day 4-6. feeling better but still not an issue. day 7. surf internet porn bookmarking for future reference. day 8. pressure building. practice piano for five hours. day 9. swim a mile. vacuum the house. clean out the gutters. scanning internet for other opinions on t.u.n.a. procedure post-op dos and don’ts. nothing confirming the month long...
nyc dispatch 6.16.08
new york dispatch 6.16.08 in an act of civil disobedience i have decided to stop paying my student loan. the balance is about $17,000, the payment is $180/month and that keeps me right at negative amortization, so at that rate i will never pay it off. so i’m thinking 17 grand vs. a $700 billion financial industry bailout and they can go fuck themselves. typical equation - privatize profit...
ft. myers dispatch 6.15.08
if it’s one thing i can’t stand it’s a story about some dysfunctional family gathering somewhere in new england usually surrounding some holiday and appearing way to often in the new yorker. maybe it’s because my idea of crazy family members includes my schizo-effective mother-in-law and my born-again, swinger, clothing-optional brother. he’s the one who got...
April 2008
2 posts
nyc dispatch 4.3.08
spin the deadhead’s head i had gone out to the house because the sound wasn’t so good backstage. i’m standing there trying not to get bumped by some aggressive twirler and not get hassled by the security who keep wanting to move me three feet in this direction or that. i start to focus in on what’s happening on stage and am pleased to see and hear garzone, yates and kb are...
4.1.08
it started off like any other day. i made love to my wife two times making her cum each time. i swam 3 miles in our stationary wave pool then dined on a breakfast of ostrich eggs and seedless kiwi. i had my bath of fresh rainwater drawn by our french maid servant and it was while my valet was dressing me that i began to get the sensation this day was going to be different. i practiced for a couple...
March 2008
2 posts
nyc dispatch 3/24/08
nyc dispatch 3/24/08 i’m sitting outside the gourmet garage in the village eating a vegetarian, macro, wheat-free, vegan, spelt, sushi snack before my gig at small’s when this cute girl with a mohawk plops down next to me. ‘whew,’ she sighs. i look over and notice two very nasty looking wounds just above her forehead. ‘damn, are you ok?’ the wounds have a...
pittsburgh dispatch 3.11.08
my father’s nursing home is a broad, sprawling, conjoined, single story la-la land. from his window i can see the sky outside is low and threatening. the hills are khaki colored and the trees are empty. i’ve come to visit him one last time before i leave town. he doesn’t know me anymore, but he and his wardmates love it when i play the piano. everyone, that is, except dorothy....