MPS MIXTAPE PRESERVATION SOCIETY HOUR 20

Part Two of my interview with Gutbucket Records founder and notable Bay Area jazz bandleader Nicholas Culp continues on this podcast, available on iTunes and Soundcloud... and maybe even Podomatic but I haven't really been feeling it lately. I know there's other platforms out there, I've just have been lazy about searching.

Of course, I have to mention the death of Tom Petty. As I explain in the podcast, my appreciation of his music and persona grew over time. I had a weird feeling that Bob Dylan was the next major rock icon to pass away but as a friend said to me after Petty finally gave up the ghost, I was "only off by one Wilbury". I apologize if that's in bad taste, but it's a fine line with rockers whose presence is as pervasive as Petty's: my firmest memory of him in the Nineties, for example, is comedian David Spade's impersonation of him on SNL.

Rather than play a song by him, I decided to go with a cover I recorded a year ago of my favorite Tom Petty tune, "You Don't Know How It Feels" off the Wildflowers album. Speaking of SNL, my love for this song grew out of watching Petty reunite with The Heartbreakers on an episode hosted by John Turturro. It wasn't a full-on reunion, as drummer Stan Lynch was absent. But I hadn't noticed until near the end of the song that it was Dave Grohl from Nirvana (and budding Foo Fighters fame) keeping the beat. At the time, I was way more into Nirvana than Tom Petty, so seeing this made me reassess my attitude towards is music.

I love the song "You Don't Know How It Feels" because that's my life summed up in a pop tune: If you only knew the things I go through just to make it through the day. You get a hint of it in my passion for music, the way I bury myself in creative projects to take away the ever-present emptiness, the memory of loss and pain, the almost-unbearable angst I experience daily. Don't get me wrong, I'm much happier now than I ever was... but there's an ache that never goes away, and Petty really hit it on the head in this song. It's the ultimate "don't judge me" moment on record.

It's telling how much of an escape music is for me in that I don't mention the Las Vegas tragedy once during the podcast, and yet it probably is connected to the sentiment of a song like YDKHIF far deeper than one would suspect. I mean, right now the police are trying to figure out this guy's motive for committing the worst gun massacre in history. But no matter what they find, none of us will ever know what was going on in this gambler's head-- indeed, his poker face was impenetrable. We truly did not know how it felt to be him. We had no ideas, we went on our merry ways, never giving even a moment to think what lies behind all the masks...

I'm not being sympathetic to a monster who deliberately murdered dozens of innocent people and maimed hundreds more. I'm just saying, do we really know our neighbors as well as we'd like?

I can say that I know Nick Culp very well, even though I haven't seen him in the flesh in almost seven years. When I listen to his stellar album, I hear the very qualities that endeared him to me when we were younger: intelligence, vision, passion. So it's natural that, as our interview progressed, it became less about anecdotes and observations (his story of how he ended up studying music in France is a wonderful excursion into the possibilities of life) and more about our friendship, specifically the silly songs and sketches we made on my 4-Track back in the day. I also grill him on his favorite rapper as a counterpoint to all the talk of jazz and classical music, which leads me to end the hour with the opening tracks from Freestyle Fellowship's immortal debut, Inner City Griots. Nick mentions a solo album by Myka 9 but instead of playing a cut from that platter I opted for those tracks, because I needed the hour to end with some energy. The first time I ever heard FF, Nick played me those songs and they made an impression on me.

And that's the secret theme of these last two podcasts: memory. Our memories and recollections are vast storage banks of not only knowledge, but emotions. Music in particular makes us feel things that we put to bed long ago; it awakens us from dormant alcoves with invigorating sensations that open up our souls to everything around us. ("I woke up in between/ a memory and a dream") Whether it is reminiscing about our stoned explorations into sound and comedy, or having serious discussions about the journeys musicians take in order to find their calling, memory is at the root of everything Nick and I discuss.

I cap the hour with something weird I found at the end of a mixtape I was using to get material for this podcast. Decades ago I'd apparently taped over a cover I made of The Beatles' "Revolution", and when I heard what was left of it on the end of the tape I was in hysterics. The over-the-top vocals, the cheesy drum machine pattern, the distorted guitars... It was the perfect way to end this hour.