Victimized Guitarist served up cold revenge to careless airline.

Guitarist Dave Carroll was distressed when United Airlines damaged his Taylor guitar, and wouldn't pay for the damage. Anyone who plays music seriously knows that this is an extremely serious matter. Musicians spend years getting comfortable with their instruments and they plan on using a good instruments for a lifetime. A good instrument becomes an extension of you. This story really hit a nerve, because I had a similar experience on American Airlines about 7 years ago. I was transporting a classical style Taylor guitar from Missouri to Maine to perform for a friend's wedding (BTW, Taylor makes great guitars, as Dave and I both know). Out of the airplane window I saw some moron slamming my guitar case onto the top of a luggage cart on the tarmac. It was totally needless and vicious. I was outraged. When I got the guitar back in Maine, the case was banged up, a latch had been ripped from the hard shell case and the internal microphone battery had been jolted out of the internal battery-holder. Why did I entrust my guitar to the airline? Because they had told me that checking it was the ONLY way to transport my guitar. On the way back to Missouri, I got my way and gate checked it. This episode left me with a bad feeling. Now I feel better, though, because Dave Carroll went to a lot of trouble to tell his story in detail. The song goes on for awhile (probably an indication of the intensity of his frustration), but you'll get the idea within a minute or two. Cute video to go with the music. Way to go, Dave!

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Round Midnight with Wes Montgomery

Have you ever heard music that you not only fully engages you at the moment, but which you carry with you wherever you go, even years later? Music that seeps into your bones and shapes who you become? Now that's quite an endorsement, right. I've already written about a couple musicians I greatly admired, including Oscar Peterson and Pat Metheny. Another one of my musical heroes was Wes Montgomery. He died an untimely death as a result of a heart attack in 1968, several years before I began to study jazz guitar. But I played his albums until I wore out the grooves (yes, I'm that old), especially Smokin' at the Half Note. I worked ever so hard to do what Montgomery did, but he made it look far too easy. This is especially amazing for a guy who didn't learn to play the guitar until he was 19, and who was self-taught at that. You can't possibly appreciate how difficult it is to be that melodic unless you try to do it yourself, for years. You can't understand the magic of his chordal technique and his octave solos unless you spend long hours urging your own fingers to try to emulate Wes Montgomery. There's a lot more too. Because I worked hard at it, I learned that you can get a beautiful tone out of an electric guitar if you give up the pick and use your thumb, but I still can't understand how he could rip off some of those quick riffs with his thumb. For decades, I've listened to Wes Montgomery's music, but I had never actually seen a video of him playing until tonight. I caught several youtubes, but most of them involved Montgomery later in his career, surrounded by (and suffocated by) too many other musicians, notably brass and string sections producers used to turn Montgomery's jazz into pop music that the masses would better appreciate. But this video is classic Wes Montgomery playing as part of a quartet. If you've never before known about Wes Montgomery, watch (but mostly listen) this video of "Round Midnight" and see whether Montgomery's music permeates all the way down into your bones too. Ask yourself whether music can be made more compellingly than this.

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