Hung Truong: The Blog!

Kurt Elling and Ernie Watts at The Michigan Theater 04/16/09

I saw Kurt Elling w/ Ernie Watts at the Michigan Theater last Thursday. The program was billed as “Dedicated to You,” in which Kurt re-envisions songs from Coltrane/Hartman's ballad album. I really like this album, so I approached the concert with some enthusiasm and also some apprehension.

The instrumentation was kinda interesting. There was a combo as a base: Piano, Bass, Drums, Sax. Then there was a string quartet called ENRON or something (err, it was ETHEL) included in the instrumentation. This made the music seem a bit more fancy, but also more… orchestrated. I thought it took away from the jazziness of the performance. Like a real jazz performance will be a bit impromptu. The strings can't really improvise along with the rest of the band (at least not in 4 part harmony) so everything is a little more rigid.

Anyway, I think the set included all the songs on the aforementioned cd, but in different arrangements. Some were converted into non-ballads and I think one was played at ballad speed but in a double-time feel. Can't really remember everything because I wasn't taking notes. I do recall that I didn't really like the arrangement for “My One and Only Love.” I thought it should've been given a real ballad treatment instead of the uptempo version that wasn't very long.

I mean, the concert wasn't bad or anything. Not at all. Elling was a pretty good singer. Even though he kind of overdid the loungey moving away from the mic and then getting closer to it to change dynamics thing. You know what I mean? He also had some funny movements. He has a good voice, but he also seemed to mess around with the vocals a little too much. That's okay for people who are familiar with the subject matter but for people hearing a standard ballad for the first time it makes it harder to listen to.

I wonder if listening to the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (a definitely old-school group) is making me kind of snotty. LCJO gets criticized for not being more modern. But I like the old school sound! There were times when the Elling group really got in the groove (or as we jazz musicians like to call it, “in the pocket”), which was great. I really like the straightahead jazz sound. I guess I really shouldn't complain though. I was happy with the concert for the most part.

Towards the end Elling brought out some old jazz singer dude. I didn't know who he was at the time but I just looked it up and it was Jon Hendricks. He came on for the last two songs and scatted. The first was Bessie's Blues, a Coltrane tune that wasn't on the ballad cd. I think this was one of the times the group really jelled. Then they played Bye Bye Blackbird. Kurt sang the Miles Davis solo of it using some made up lyrics. It was kind of cool because I think a lot of people recognized that it was the Miles Davis solo and appreciated it. It's also kind of cool because it requires secret jazz knowledge to pick up on it!!! Oh, and after I looked it up I learned that Jon Hendricks actually did this in 1986. So I guess Kurt was doing a tribute to Jon, while Jon was standing there.

During Bye Bye Blackbird, Jon was taking a solo. It looked like he was taking a longer solo than everyone had anticipated, so I think Kurt was trying to figure out how to signal to him that the song needed to end. I mean, they were probably cool having him take the solo. But he most likely didn't do a rehearsal with the guys. So it was pretty entertaining watching the guys figuring out how to end the song while the guy was taking a long ass solo. That's how jazz people roll.

The closers were definitely the right choice because they had high crowd-pleasing potential (blues and a well known standard). I think everyone left happy, including me. While I think the source material for the concert is timeless, and perhaps shouldn't be messed with, they did an okay job and the concert as a standalone event was good. It's kind of hard to please and live up to standards when you leave yourself open to comparison with Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane…

ALSO: After doing even more research (lookin' on Youtube) it seems as though Kurt sang with Bob Mintzer, one of my favorite mustached modern composers. Though apparently he didn't sing “My Foolish Heart” on the album which I really, really like, he did sing it live with Bob. Neat-o.

Ann Arbor Duck Graffiti

It's been a while since I noticed this but I hadn't written a blog post about it yet. All around Ann Arbor, you can find a distinctly unique signature of “Duck” written on stuff. From mailboxes to walls to whatever. I think I first noticed it on a paper towel dispenser at BTB Cantina. I thought it was some kind of trap where once I read it, I had a second to actually “duck” or be hit on the head by a log or something… That obviously wasn't the case (I didn't duck).

Does anyone know what the deal is? Is Duck a gang? Can I join? Do I want to join? Is Duck involved in illegal activities? Does Duck fight crime? I wanna know.

On Customer Service and Giant Companies

For a long time, I've been a pretty cost-centered consumer. By that, I mean that I mostly cared about how much things cost. This makes sense if you're poor or really care about getting a good deal. Recently at SXSW, I considered the concept of customer service as explained by Tony Hsieh, the Zappos guy. Random thought: crap, I still need to finish my epic SXSW post!

Tony argued that by focusing on customer service and, a step above that, customer happiness, you could grow your business based on word of mouth and repeat business. This makes sense for a retailer. It's pretty wonderful how successful Zappos has become just by treating the customer like a king.

Microsoft Cutting Back on Live Labs!

I just read some bad news that Microsoft is cutting back on its Live Labs group due to the “economy.”

Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake McCredy said the economy had forced the company to rethink the group's mission. The death of Live Labs as it has existed, combined with Google's decision to cut some of its more experimental products, raises the question of whether these kind of futuristic initiatives are falling out of fashion among leading internet companies, or are just a victim of this recession.

This saddens me because I got really excited after reading an article in Fast Company about Gary Flake's Live Labs and how innovative it was going to be. It seemed like a step in the right direction for a company that has a reputation for being boring (see John Hodgman in the Apple commercials).

Microsoft has a ton of money. They should be spending it on research and development. The article mentions that Google is also cutting back on spending on 20% projects and killing off many of its labs projects. This is a situation where Microsoft shouldn't be following Google's lead. Instead of having a knee jerk reaction to try and save more money, they should be willing to take at least a few risks with some opportunity for a high return on investment. I'm really sick of seeing companies rationalize stupid behavior by invoking the “economy” as the reason.

Perhaps, as the actual Live Labs Blog indicates, this is a move to focus the projects rather than spread themselves too thin. I'm not quite sure I buy this explanation, even as I notice that many Microsoft Live products seem under-promoted and downright bad. Live Mesh stinks compared to Dropbox, a competing startup. Inexplicably, Live Mesh does not share its storage capacity with another Live product, Sky Drive. Why one of these services hasn't made the other obsolete is completely beyond me. Bad management? Bad communication? Something else? All of the above?

It's possible to focus on products and retain people to work on them. I was really excited about the potential for Live Labs. Now, it looks like they've been neutered and will be working on search. Yes, search needs work, but why sacrifice Live Labs for it? Hopefully there will still be a place in Microsoft where people can freely innovate and not worry about just the bottom line…

Andrew Bird at The Michigan Theater, 04/08/09

Last night I went to see Andrew Bird along with like 100 of my friends, lots from the School of Information. Is there something inherently Informational about Andrew Bird's music?

The opening act was a slightly avant garde group called “A Hawk and a Hacksaw.” They had a guy on accordion (who played bass drum and cymbals with his legs), a girl on violin (?) and later a weird string instrument with what looked like a trumpet bell, a trumpeter and a tuba player.

I noticed that they kept playing in weird time signatures (7, then 5, then 3, which is not totally weird but less common). The songs they played seemed a little too insane, like they were basically showing off. The lines were all really fast and it was hard to get a sense of any actual melody. They were pretty entertaining, nonetheless.

Andrew Bird then came on by himself. He kept manipulating foot pedals so he could put things he was playing on infinite repeat. It was pretty cool. I wonder how he times it perfectly like that. I didn't really know this before (I listened to his albums a few times previously) but he's pretty much an expert whistler. He's really good at whistling. He's also really good at playing violin and guitar and singing. Which makes him a quadruple threat (quintuple threat if you count the foot pedal hijinks).

He played a bunch of songs, many of which garnered lots of applause. I liked the “Nervous Tic Motion of the Head” song. I also like “Heretics” but he didn't play that one. Those are like the two Andy Bird songs I really like. “Fiery Crash” is also good, and I think he also didn't play that one. The other songs were all good too, but I just wasn't as familiar with them as I would have liked.

The mise-en-scene of the stage was pretty interesting. He had these giant horns in the back that looked like the old-school phonographs, but bigger. There was also a double horn thing that spun randomly, perhaps to indicate the climax of a song. I'm not even sure there was sound coming out of them, but they looked cool!

Overall, Andrew Bird was a great performer (seeing him switch between instruments and hitting pedals on the ground and singing is entertaining by itself). His songs are also delightfully pretentious, with interesting lyrics (he rhymes “philharmonics” with “hooked on phonics”). Oh, and also, he seems to really like pentatonic scales (shoutout to Mr. Blakey, my high school band director for making us learn about scales!). If this concert were an eBay transaction, I'd have to leave a positive, “GREAT PERFORMER FAST CONCERT AWESOME SINGING A+++++++++ WOULD SEE AGAIN!!!11!11”