I was listening to The Best of Charlie (Bird) Parker in the car on the way home tonight, and it struck me what an amazing number of notes that man could cram into a bar of music. Don't get me wrong, Charlie is one of my musical idols, and that was the style back then, but if Charlie had been a guitarist rather than a sax player, I do believe he would have been Van Halen. While I enjoy listening to a rapid-fire virtuoso solo as much the next guy, as a mere mortal among players I'm resigned to the fact that 1/16th notes will probably always be my musical speed limit.  But maybe that's OK. Lacking the chops to play really fast and busy, maybe you have no choice but to try for the more expressive elements of musical technique, such as tone, dynamics and phrasing --- you know, smoothness.

I've had a lot of fun the last few months learning a sax instrumental that John Malcolm suggested while we were chatting between sets at one of the Killing Time gigs last year. It's a tune that was popular in the 50's called 'Harlem Nocturne.' Apparently they also used it as the theme song of a short-lived 70's TV detective series -- Mike Hammer starring Stacey Keach. I think I'll spend the time to record Harlem Nocturne and put it up on http://www.killingtimeinkingston.com so that people can check it out. It's a great melody with lots of those classic wailing tenor sax high notes.