The Humanities
It wrote me-
I can’t make any claim to musical virtuosity, vocal prowess, or poetic genius, but I think I just made the best record of my career.
I have no idea how it happened, what I did, or how the pieces fit, but this thing just came out of me and I can almost pretend it’s not mine and I think it sounds pretty good.
I wrote my own parts quickly- I don’t really remember the “how’s” and “why’s” of these songs, but somehow, after a year of putting out work or 30 years of making home recordings, or 55 years on the planet, things fell into place.
And this thing is one slick beast. It’s called “The Humanities” and comes in two parts. Each part is a 25 or minute chunk of poetry and funk and jazz and dub about what I experience in my Bronx existence as a former middle-class gringo traipsing around a 21st century environment where people lurch from crises to crises, make love, work crushing jobs, raise children, scream in pain, narcotize themselves, dance, shit and never fall asleep.
I can hear pieces of my record collection. I can feel places I’ve never been. I can sense how somehow I’ve been able to triangulate a lot of stuff I process daily and make some reasonable guesses about others.
I send these paper airplane plans over to Kevin and he works up a frame on the drums and then drops a roof with his horns.
Leon comes over and does a lot of the drywall work on keys. Before you can say, “wtf???”, you’re bent over double laughing at his deadly accurate choices of sounds and parts.
Then comes Kenny bridging, reconciling, twisting and adding lights and plumbing on guitar.
Emilia does the finishing work, adding the vocal furniture and whatever metaphors follow, then
Martin inspects everything, tweaking here and there and gets it ready for your arrival on January 6th.
