Mickey 2:18
cannabis is my plant of choice. Yeah, yeah. And so the psychoactive effect of cannabis and the visions that you get on cannabis go so far back, and also the healing power. You know, at 12,000 BC. shaman were using cannabis or opium, the most of the cannabis for vision quest, the Tigris. Classic 500 BC. How did you hear this inequities of the heavens he claimed they can hear this an artist of the heavens. And he gave numerical equation to all of the revolving orbs. And you know, I'm a real Tigers fan. Student all these years I could figure out, there's nobody can hear the sonorities and he guessed correctly, of course, using a moto moto cord and finding the octave the third the fifth to seventh and he gave those equations through the heavens and it worked. I mean, Einstein proved it every which a well known fact that the universe works in numerical equation just very much like music. He called it the music of the spheres, music a universe solace. But now I know that that was used cannabis. So
Ron 3:28
so that was part of that journey. You think that he actually translated some of the sonic myths power of the universe into octaves? Well, he was the father of the science of music. You should know that.
Mickey 3:41
Yeah, yeah. And so he gave meaning and understanding to the revolving orbs. I, you know, I thought it was a mystical flight, which it was. That's how he did it. It just until recently, I was bewildered by it. And I just thought it was one of those folk tales. The attackers didn't really, it was written mostly mostly his history was written by his disciples and studied in his writings when law supposedly, yeah, so that was really an interesting fact.
Unknown Speaker 4:08
Yeah. plants. Were looking over at the amazing view out there a Boston, we want to welcome you to Boston.
Mickey 4:14
Thank you very much. I love your child, or
Unknown Speaker 4:18
a lot of people say that, baby, I love your
Unknown Speaker 4:21
childhood. You've gotten up. You've gotten here at a kind of a sad time. We lost game seven. I don't actually watch the game at all. That's.
Mickey 4:28
I see the game differently. Yeah. Oh, do you? Yes. I'm on the other side. Are you
Unknown Speaker 4:33
now come on. Now. You are a good friend of Bill Walton.
Mickey 4:37
I know the man but I know the man. I would say he's one of my best friend.
Unknown Speaker 4:41
Oh, well, I mean, you're lucky man. Because he seems like a
Mickey 4:45
very classy guy. Oh, just a wonderful friend for I don't know how many years 3540 years. So
Unknown Speaker 4:51
I just watched a documentary about the 86 Celtics, where he talks about with the talking to Kevin McHale and Danny
Mickey 4:59
Kaye. I was with jail one night. Now those guys can drink beer.Yeah, I drink a lot. Yeah, I do. 61 Yeah. So big after a game,
Unknown Speaker 5:11
right? That's what they do. They open a beer. If there's
Unknown Speaker 5:13
lucky, we left at different times,
Chuck 5:15
but they tell the story in the documentary about how bill grabs all the Celtics, and he just walked up to the back door of the auditorium, knocks on the door. Some guy opens it up. It's like Tom bills here. And then just everyone went in and there was a it was their first dead concert. And it was a big part of the the documentary and I thought it was fascinating because it Yeah, it's really cool.
Mickey
And they were like, you know, Danny Ainge, you know, Danny is pretty straight laced guy seems like a great guy. He's warm, and I think so he doesn't drink at all. And he was like, you know, I I didn't get it, but I got that they got it. That never seen a dead concert or heard the music before. But yeah, there's a big there's a big
Mickey 5:53
Barry bird game bag a lot. You know, they were an old deadheads e six. I think they went old dead as but they were. Bill was turning up onto something. A great passion, a great love of his. So they just went along with it. But some of them came back. But bill, I've never I've never met anybody who loved the band more than bill. I mean, the music since he was 15.
Unknown Speaker 6:15
He said I think
Unknown Speaker 6:16
it was right after they will one Portland. What year was that? So that was right before.
Unknown Speaker 6:24
It was late 70s that when you were in Portland, remember
Unknown Speaker 6:27
probably and I say it was a funny thing, how I've spotted bill. He, you know, he just came from UCLA, UCLA was picked by Portland, Louisville, the worst team in the week, he was the first pick. And so he went to Portland. And he was in the audience. And I asked my equipment, man, I said, Why is everybody sitting down? Nobody sits down in a Grateful Dead concert. Right? And, and he looked up, he said, they're not sitting down.
Unknown Speaker 6:52
And I gotta
Unknown Speaker 6:54
look out there. And, and he said, Oh, no, no, that's the basketball player, Bill Walton. I said, Bill Walton. I have watched all those college games. Oh, yeah. He never lost a college game. He started really nice. It Bring him to me get him back here. And that's where it started. And
Unknown Speaker 7:13
not only is he seven feet tall, but he's got the red hair. And I think back then he had
Unknown Speaker 7:19
more. Yeah, he had
Unknown Speaker 7:20
a blink and going on to so he's a nice guy blinking going on. So
Unknown Speaker 7:26
I mean, that's fantastic. That's really healthy now. Yeah. And he gets up four o'clock every morning goes to the pool YMCA he works out which is great because he's got a bike. So once I went to his house funny, but Walt story with went to his house in San Diego. And he said on the phone, he said, Yeah, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go out riding biking. Just give me a call when we get there. And, you know, I said, Okay, cool. So I went to his house, call him. I said, Bill, I'm here. He said, Okay. I'm turning around. And then I stay there, like ours, you know, and Bill's always on time. And he walked in an hour too later. So whenever I said, we have you been, he said, I was like, 100 miles away when you call me. So this guy goes, you know, he's 1500 miles is no big thing to Bill Walton. his bike is you know, his pedals deep, you know? Yeah. And I built him a drum set a seven foot version of a real Jones. Does he play Oh, Bill plays in his living room? Yeah. Tell me about wick he has in his living room was set up just like mine with the drums and everything. And after dinner we play before dinner we play
Unknown Speaker 8:30
is his kit set up in sort of a regular person size like to sit?
Unknown Speaker 8:35
Or is it just know his? Everything is giant? Giant? They're all six, six. So the table is large. Everything? Is it chairs a large? I have to have a pillow. sit at the table. Yeah, well, you made a chair for me. So I can I could sit there and like a no but the chairs tables away. I'm right. Next door. I mean, the ceilings, everything is just like a group giants live here.
Unknown Speaker 9:02
We've, we've talked on this show on the podcast before about the connection of sports. It doesn't have to be professional, but with the team playing reading off each other with music and there's such I don't have to tell you. I mean, there's such a connection there.
Unknown Speaker 9:19
He sees the band, just as a team going down the down the court making decisions passing off the ball and all that stuff, is the communication of it is the same as in music. instantaneously. within milliseconds. We make decisions just like he does. And he eat when he puts the ball to the basket. That is music. Damn, he calls it string music.
Unknown Speaker 9:42
Really is Maria is getting a lot of shout.
Unknown Speaker 9:45
Yeah, we're gonna start calling you Berkeley. Berkeley. Okay. Yeah, it's it's so when you think about that communication aspect brings me to a lot of things about the dead and about what you know that your career and what you've been able to do with communication. Yeah, also, I think about two drummers as well. And what's that language like? Well, it's,
Unknown Speaker 10:04
you might call it a secret language, because only Bill and I speaking with we're the only two left that speak this language, right. But we pass it to other people who understand us, you know, we have a primary rhythm thing going kind of conversation that we have. And once we agree on the groove and, and everything about it, then we give it to the front line. And we pass it around with very, very giving in our right, but yeah, but we we have a kind of tied at the heart, you know, you have to do two drumming things you have to really, it's beyond expertise. It's more compassion and
Unknown Speaker 10:44
sharing and because that's the thing about rhythm is that it's not only the connection, like we said, with a team with going for the basket, and you have your musical line, you have your communication, but there's something about that inherent beat that I know and you know, a lot y know what it is, what is it?
Unknown Speaker 11:01
It's the rhythm stupid.
Unknown Speaker 11:06
That's what it's about. It's a rhythm stupid. It's really that's what I on a molecular level on an atomic level, micro level, macro level. anybody thinks about anything that's really important has to go through rhythm. And vibration is the essential ingredient of all life. So vibrations that rhythms are just formed, ordered vibrations, you know, in patterns. So it's all about the rhythm of things.
Unknown Speaker 11:32
It's Chuck from above the basement Boston music and conversation, how would you like to join us in creating great conversations that inspire and connect Patreon is a membership platform that provides a way for creators like us to build relationships and provide exclusive experiences to subscribers, or patrons. We have been self financed since we got off the ground in June of 2016. But in order to continue to fully invest all we can in each episode, we need your patronage. For more information, please go to patreon.com forward above the basement. Other than being a drummer, you you also you went to the Library of Congress and you pulled together all these old recordings of these indigenous people whose rhythms and their beats that that were recorded in the field could have been gone forever if if you hadn't pulled them yet. I think it was 80 hours of
Unknown Speaker 12:19
my brain light I bring them from the from the stack
Unknown Speaker 12:23
is that is that when this kind of journey began for you, other than you know, being a drummer of finding Well, no, no, no,
Unknown Speaker 12:29
it didn't happen because I was a drummer. It started when I was about five or six years old, and my mother, she had inherited a Count Basie and Duke Ellington collection of 33. And in the middle of those of the collection was some pygmy recordings from the rain forest in the Congo. And that's where my ear wet and all I could listen to with pygmies for years I just forged with them and became one of them. And that's where my taste for the music. The world's music started. That was the beginning of it. I love Count Basie love Ellington. I wanted to push the Count Basie band. That was my big thing. I wanted to be like, Gene Krupa was my, I mean, long way from Vancouver now of course, but I took a little different path and Gene but he was, he was my It was my idol. But no, it started with the indigenous musics of the rain forest in New York, and that time, there was a lot of Latin music music from the from Haiti and Rico and Cuba, by way of New Orleans up to the river. It reached us Mississippi had reached Chicago, New York, Quincy South Northwest. And so that new gumbo of Latin powerful transfer anthems were embodied in the new what they call salsa now, you know, it was where Latin music met the streets of New York, or the Cosmopolitan areas and it turned into it was about the club ACLAV which is the key to all Latin music. You know that? When So, the key, and that's the backbeat. That's where the backbeat came from. We inherited from the West African cultures of Nigeria and so forth. Slave Trade, bought it down to buy to buy ZT through Central America, Haiti, and the 1700s, free slave revolt. Everybody went to all the New Orleans and then Congo square and Lake Pontchartrain where they were allowed to practice their rituals on a Sunday but observed because they took their instruments away. Nice folks. And but they allowed them to be observed on one day a week, the upper class whites came and saw it as sort of a carnival thing. They looked at these these folks going into, into trance so forth. But these this is how we got our music, American bass music, that's New Orleans and through the powerful rhythms of Nigeria,
Unknown Speaker 15:03
isn't it? How the actual drum set came together to
Unknown Speaker 15:06
not really, jump set really was a contraption. And it came out of the silent movies, because they call them pit drummers. They had to make sound for the silent movies. You know, you see horse protected wood blocks, okay, wood blocks from Korea. Always they had a hit a shadow. Okay, we'll take a symbol from Turkey. Okay. We took different instruments from different cultures, and made it into a contraption, and we played it to silent movies. That's the origin of the traps. Yeah. It's a great American. It's one of our greatest inventions, by the way, one of our musical inventions, the trap set, America, even though we stole it from every other culture on the
Unknown Speaker 15:55
planet, it was, like you said,
Unknown Speaker 15:57
it gave the ability for one person to play all these different things.
Unknown Speaker 16:00
One on many. Exactly. And that's what was different. One on many, many on one, one on many.
Unknown Speaker 16:52
You mentioned music universe cells from Fabrice, but I saw somewhere that this is really interesting. Sunday, a visual experience that you got happening recently pre pre dead and company. No, I did it
Unknown Speaker 17:07
was that the Hayden Planetarium is I think that's what
Unknown Speaker 17:11
I traced the history of the grove, from the beginning of time and space from 13.8 billion years ago, to the present. That was beat one, the Big Bang, they call it, the singularity. That's where the group began. That's where the rhythm began. So as I was researching the origin of percussion, I went back to the Paleolithic and I should I that was the last icons, I could find the last historical records. Mother Goddess cultures, women, first drummers, yeah, old Europe, ancient Europe. And then, when did they get it? And I started thinking, of course, it had to start with the singularity. And that was the program 30 minutes I took you 13.8 billion years and I brought you back safely.
Unknown Speaker 17:58
So that was a Hayden. Yeah. Screw your Disney. No, no, this is the real story.
Unknown Speaker 18:04
No, it was a blast, especially doing it the dome. You know what the Hayden Planetarium when I was a kid. My grandmother took me there. And that's where that was like a Taj Mahal. That's a
Unknown Speaker 18:14
full circle trip for you, I would imagine.
Unknown Speaker 18:16
And I had subwoofer is going down to 15 cycles. I was driving that kind of Chairman 15 sites. So people were feeling it in their chest. They were feeling and not only in the chest, their eyeballs in their ear balls.
Unknown Speaker 18:30
And not only that, but there was your brain floating above them.
Unknown Speaker 18:33
And my brain was there. Yeah, that's right. We call the glass brain doctor is Adam dissolving, Mr. Hyde, my brain and you were able, you know, and you were able to fly through and I was using my brain, my brain wave signals to play the score of my brain, even though it wasn't in real time. It was more entertainment, but it was still, the symbolism of it was powerful.
Unknown Speaker 18:57
What Adam ghazaliya is doing is pretty remarkable. We actually so we met briefly, and you notice Yeah, I'm in the I'm in the field. I'm in rehabilitation, medicine and brain injury and recovery. And Alzheimers. Yes. Parkinson. We met briefly with Dan Levitan. Oh, I think so.
Unknown Speaker 19:18
I was supposed to give them that achievement award or something but I couldn't stay and I had to leave or something. I was supposed to give them the award. I don't
Unknown Speaker 19:25
think I stayed at the end. I didn't stay. I
Unknown Speaker 19:29
don't give them the never got the award.
Unknown Speaker 19:32
And Connie's lovely you've met caught up. Actually she's Institute of Neurological functions
Unknown Speaker 19:36
intuitive neurologic social money in the box. Facts. That's what Oliver Oliver salaries good friend. So I'm sorry.
Unknown Speaker 19:43
Yeah, very sorry. It's two years now. Right.
Unknown Speaker 19:46
I think it's gotta be at least two years. So Oliver Sacks
Unknown Speaker 19:49
swore maybe I think, one of the fathers of you know, the new fathers of music and medicine. Yeah. prolific guy. And Connie is a music therapist that work with all of her back in the day in the 80s. You're on the board of the the Institute for neurological function.
Unknown Speaker 20:03
Correct. I work there quite a bit with Oliver and with Connie, and had a lot of adventures with Oliver. And Connie, too. It's fascinating. I was really where I started working with the Alzheimer's folks was through Connie and through Oliver Oliver. He wrote about in one of his books, he brought this he had this patient whose clock stopped in about 1969. I think I asked all over the company's concert. So he brought one of his patients with him. And he was in a wheelchair, I think. And he heard the band. And he hadn't spoken for years. 15 years, 20 years. This is music never stopped. That's right. Yeah. And he said, it's the Grateful Dead. But where's pig pen, and pig pen had died in the 70s. And so he wrecked he recognizes and he didn't recognize the songs that we wrote after after his clock stop. And he wondered where paid pan was. It was fascinating. It was really an amazing thing. And he was speaking and everything and and that's exactly note of that.
Unknown Speaker 21:07
No, it's true. And like he was stopped in 1969. And his new memories with his brain injury were very altered and very impaired. But I believe when touch a great played this was the modern dead at that time. What was that? 8787. So touch gray played and at least in the movie, he comes alive. But he does it in a different way he was alive. But I think he didn't he wasn't transmitted back to 70s. But there's something about the music that's still stayed almost. Okay, as medicine, music is managed for him for us well, right.
Unknown Speaker 21:40
It's not just for the for the people who have impaired functions. It's the people who have who are healthy as well. I mean, music is all about rhythm. And that's what connects the broken pathways
Unknown Speaker 21:52
and even at a microscopic level, which is something you and is it Adam or who have you worked with on a microscopic level, some of the work with stem cells,
Unknown Speaker 21:59
deep pocket the Institute, San Francisco, UCLA, I can't remember. Yeah, I work with stem cells got, I took some readings from the stem cells. And yeah, I played them and DNA and so forth.
Unknown Speaker 22:14
When we started talk about plants. That was one of the things that I thought of, it's pretty fascinating that at a micro microscopic level, there are rhythms of things I just don't understand, I need to understand what
Unknown Speaker 22:24
they're not to understand. Really, I mean, they're alive, Professor heart, they're alive. photosynthesis is very active process, just like any other process that gives life and that is a rhythmic stimuli. So there are healthy rhythms. And when the plant is healthy or human is healthy, they have good rhythms. They have heart functioning, the lungs are pumping. They eat well, they sleep well. They don't do a lot of drugs, they don't party late, and they're healthy, you know. And that is all about the rhythm of things. So it stands to reason that it would regenerate cells, and it would also reconnect, you know, allow the synapses to do their thing.
Unknown Speaker 23:08
It's so fascinating, because now we're in this 2018 we can look at this stuff, we could study it. Yeah, it's amazing. And then but just in the infancy anyway,
Unknown Speaker 23:17
so actually study your, your brain, you seeing the I mean, it's seeing those colors going through and you see the synapses
Unknown Speaker 23:25
hanging in space in color. I looked at I said, Sir, it's me. It's me, you know. And I was like, the first one we did was at the we did a keynote for a RP I think, and the screen was like 60 feet, both sides of us. I looked over. That's my brain hanging in space, like so. It's full of Adam, I said, I said it's grotesque, but handsome somehow. You know, I mean, Picasso or Renoir Monet, you know, so, yeah, that's how I saw the brand. There you go. It's a beautiful thing. And it's amazing. It's a super organism right up there with the ends. I might add that quite but of course the answer was sophisticated complex creatures we know we do Wilson us he wrote two books one on answer one on Super organism he will tell you everything about the hierarchy of rhythm and so forth. Didn't
Unknown Speaker 24:20
he speak at the throw Institute? who think eo Wilson
Unknown Speaker 24:25
with Don Henley about that guy because they
Unknown Speaker 24:27
met him? Yeah, we got it nice to have a session we talked about the House Of course, it's just a favorite subject of his and mine. You know, we talked about to the amps live, they live in the now they live in the North Stars. They live in the moment. So we were talking about that now the pants. They do everything except for one thing they don't jam but they dance and styles. They do everything but they don't have any fun. That's one of the things we were talking about no fun ransomware of all time.
Unknown Speaker 25:31
Ramey Did I pronounce it right
Unknown Speaker 25:34
Ramu random access musical universe it says sounds right my sound joy my my robot my bot and where I have all of my pet sounds and all the sounds that I've collected over the years of the natural world and anything I my imagination can conjure and I put it there and I can make any combination I could be I could be a storm out at sea I could be in Bali you know I could be any place
Unknown Speaker 26:01
include the beam does.
Unknown Speaker 26:02
The beam is the mana Corps. But that Korean motto cord that's part of the that's part of where I moved that's that's because that's the string, the string part of rumble the Laboratory of history, because it's how many strings are there 12 this 12 but they're all the same model court. But I can change the pitch of the mall by a touch of a button. I can be in D which is my favorite game. I bet you that the daggers that was his favorite key to for somebody. It's very heroic and everything. But I have I have a way of moving it around the scales the whole chromatic scale.
Unknown Speaker 26:38
So remove his Connect remove Rambo Rambo Rambo around is connected to the mana cord.
Unknown Speaker 26:45
Correct. It is part of it. But
Unknown Speaker 26:46
the Ramu can be as a digital,
Unknown Speaker 26:51
the digital version of is mostly the digital data. The beam is analog. Right, right.
Unknown Speaker 26:59
Little process assessing,
Unknown Speaker 27:00
can you take the model cord and process you can do the reverse, right? Oh, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 27:05
that's the fun part of it. That's, you know, I mean, the model card is only so interesting. But when you take it and you put it through, you know, sophisticated circuitry. You got music on born, you've got anything your imagination and beyond, can conjure
Unknown Speaker 27:23
you say it's not interesting, but I'm fascinated by it. Because the first it's a very low tone you say I think
Unknown Speaker 27:29
of it as well. I of course made very sophisticated pickup so I can go very high with it. Yeah. But yes, it's basically a base operation of the lower regions, the lower chakras, I think
Unknown Speaker 27:41
you also say it's almost like a drone introduced john.
Unknown Speaker 27:44
Yeah. Monaco is a drone instrument. It's the arm it signifies the cosmic low end of the universe. Right. They say it's not I leave the science on it. It says that that cosmic low end is 52 octaves below middle C brought into our hearing, it's a B flat. Yeah, that you know, the hum. You know, the the earth is a bell rings. You know, there's a there's a cosmic low end to the whole universe, when you worked with smooth.
Unknown Speaker 28:11
So George smooth, is that something? I can't imagine the the cross pollination of what you can learn from each other. Did a lot. Is that part of this?
Unknown Speaker 28:19
Yes. Smooth. George was really a helpful because when I met George, he was a fan and man of backstage and I didn't, you know, I didn't know he won the Nobel for finding the, you know, the cosmic background radiation that was the kind of the afterglow of the Big Bang, but 400,000 years, this side of 13.8 billion light years. And so George found it, the afterglow, he said, We'd like to hear what it sounded like a million years ago. billion years ago, I can't remember what it was. But they played me a sound, the vibratory impulses of the birth, Christ of the universe. And he had it on his computer. And I go, Wow, that's cool. George, I want to tell me more. And so George, and I got to be friends. But it was about the rhythm. And I spoke, you know, in vibratory terms with George about that, and, and we worked on a documentary and I dressed is super scientist, as Joe's down in someplace in Mexico, I spoke down there at one of his conferences, and it was a great relationship. And now he's over at CERN, I understand
Unknown Speaker 29:30
some of those sounds from let's say, the moon, the sun, that stuff that we can sort of identify with in this, the area of the universal yes, those types of things that you can replicate on the record, you can
Unknown Speaker 29:42
but and that's not the point, the point is to be able to find the most cogent signals from the different radio telescopes from around the world. So that comes to us as radiation is light. So I take that radiation, and I put it through the powerful algorithms, and I turn I changes form into sound. And then I perform use them as samples, and I can play the sun, or the moon, or the earth, or any kind of physical objects in the universe, including, right back to the cosmic background radiation. That's as far as we have seen. As far back as we've seen, we can't go beyond that
Unknown Speaker 30:22
yet. It's like a, like a
Unknown Speaker 30:27
hiss. And George found 1,000,000th of 1%. variation in that. Yes. And that's, that was where we found the put the pin the tail on the donkey is a brilliant, brilliant scientist,
Unknown Speaker 30:42
you know, you but you see that kind of rhythm and music. I saw this little GIF on the internet the other day, someone had taken a map of the world and put little pinpoints on it, and kind of played it with like, what are those little those machines that have little metal prongs
Unknown Speaker 30:59
that are like an old piano and it played
Unknown Speaker 31:01
the entire map of the world? Yeah. And it made sense. It was musical it made sense. If you've ever seen like someone have taken like birds on telephone wires, and they take a picture of it. And they play it on the piano with the lines of it and actually makes sense. It's almost like built into
Unknown Speaker 31:17
a region and make sense is that music is just a miniature, an example of what's happening out there. I mean, that's why every culture on the planet has a music. It's not a pleasure, it's a necessity, because we're coded for the for the vibratory well. That's how we speak and that's what we can communicate. And this seems to be a basic need in humans to make sound, organized sound with organized, organized sound, which we could call music, it's species specific, and species defining. No other as, as complex birds are limits. This language is different.
Unknown Speaker 31:59
It's strictly human.
Unknown Speaker 32:02
Unknown Speaker 0:32
If my words
Unknown Speaker 0:43
were played
Unknown Speaker 0:47
strong
Unknown Speaker 0:51
come through the sea
Unknown Speaker 0:59
Hello everyone this is Chuck Clough from above the basement Boston music and conversation. Meet Mickey Hart, part philosopher scientist shaman and passionate drummer Mickey and the Grateful Dead have offered up the groove and the melody for some of the most iconic themes of our generation. Mickey is a musicologist, a student of poly rhythms and a believer and the connections we all have to rhythm. He has two Grammys and has collaborated with a Nobel Prize in Physics winner stem cell researchers and neuroscientists including the late great Oliver Sacks. Mickey is a true supporter of music therapy and the mechanisms behind the healing power of music for not only the injured or neurologically changed, but for the well being of people from all cultures. In 1967, he was introduced to the newly formed Grateful Dead by drummer Bill kreitzman and the Big Bang of the jam band was formed with Mr. Jerry Garcia at the helm. His telepathic relationship on and off the stage with band members old and new, has transcended decades leading Mickey to the latest chapter, bringing three generations of fans together for this year's tour with dead and company. This part two of our conversation with Mickey Hart recorded at his hotel in Boston, Massachusetts.
Unknown Speaker 2:13
For years, you recorded some sounds in the 60s and 70s.
Unknown Speaker 2:17
Now the first recording, I failed, it was me and Bob where Bob thought it would be a great idea was a 67. I think they go out to the, to the this is how my career start. I don't think I ever really talked about it. He said let's go record the animals of the full moon at the zoo. I thought
Unknown Speaker 2:36
I'm in
Unknown Speaker 2:37
so I grabbed a sound guy was a man was named Al's Lee and he was a recordist. He was fantastic recordist. Danny also made incredible LSD. And I grabbed his machine. And we went out to the zoo. And he gave me 40 feet of Mike line for two foot job. So I got the mic line caught on the on the gate. And of course, the guards came. We were on the inside, and we were laughing so hard. They always, of course, we have an altered consciousness at that particular moment. I believe
Unknown Speaker 3:11
what yours is 57.
Unknown Speaker 3:13
And they escorted us nicely out. And that was my first out of hundreds of remote recordings. It was the only recording that I failed to bring back any sound. The first one, but that was the first and the animals What? absolutely silent. They was known on the full moon. They don't know like Bob says so there wasn't right. They can we live together? You know, we did a lot of things. Yeah. That'd be one of them. I'll never forgive them for that.
Unknown Speaker 3:44
So it actually was never recorded. It's a recording, it was never recorded. I didn't I didn't roll tape that day. It was the only day all my life and all my career of remote recording so that I didn't roll tape. You've always
Unknown Speaker 3:54
had an interest in this, obviously. But it's in recent years that it's been more of a science epic. Passion, right? How do you do you think about that, while you're playing? Do you have a different way about you with these tours, if you compare to when you you weren't working on it as a scientific construct,
Unknown Speaker 4:15
you know, I could put it all more in context. Now, when I don't think of anything when I'm playing. I try to empty my my vessel. When I go on stage on blank. I don't think of anything. That's the art form. To be able to go out there without prejudice. Without no really knowledge, you have to go on another kind of sense, spider sense. And also all the knowledge that you practice your instrument, you have your skill. And then you have to breathe deep and you let it relax, relax and find the moment. It's the moment that you're after. And science, it science really doesn't really play into that. You know, I mean, you know, you look at your stick, you think of your breathing, yes, you know that breathing has to be, you know, under certain regular pattern in order for you to be relaxed and you know, stick has to come back with certain velocity and speed. And but I think that when the music stops, and I can see it all in perspective, that's where the science comes in. For me, I go, Wow. Okay, that's what it was. So that's why I did that. But I don't think about it when I'm when I'm doing it. That would put me out of the now. Yeah, put me out of the moment. Yeah, can't think thinking it gives you too much of a call a latency. You're behind a few milliseconds. If you're behind eight milliseconds, you're gone your your history, anything more than eight, nine milliseconds, you're in trouble.
Unknown Speaker 5:40
Do you find that there's a different vibe with the original lineup and then maybe corresponding lineups to the lineup? You have two doors? Like what's the is it? Can you put
Unknown Speaker 5:53
the telepathy? Yeah, that's the one word that comes to mind. Because we would telepathic. Remember, we went out and without a setlist or anything. We never talked about it right. You just went out there and started playing wound up hours later. Can't do that with this band. This band isn't telepathic. I mean, we went to groove for so many years, so many hours, we practice thousands of hours before we hit the stage. Just to forget everything and be able to come up with something hopefully, creatively new. I mean, OTL and Jeff to mentee. And john mayer as good as they are, can only be so much so just so telepathic, you know, it's they can't be is as immersed in dead music is, as three of us are now.
Unknown Speaker 6:39
Are there moments when you're on stage. And you're about to start a big tour tomorrow, right? For the 2018 dead and company tour. Are there moments that you've played with these other guys on stage? Where you do have that? Oh, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 6:52
Oh, very much. A lot of them
Unknown Speaker 6:55
will tell tell you describe that a little bit.
Unknown Speaker 6:57
Well, that means when you're all moving together, you're in sync, the big word sync and or entrainment is a better word, rhythmic entrainment, if you're in training with someone, you're in the groove, as they say, or in rhythm or together in the moment. That's what happens to us all the time. In the beginning, it was deeper. Remember, we were taking psychoactive drugs at the time of a very incredible connection. I was young,
Unknown Speaker 7:28
you guys grew up together. That's right. We live together when you're with Jerry on stage,
Unknown Speaker 7:32
and we could follow me I can follow him. We could play we could go together and we can split up we could play games. We play rhythm games all the time. It was totally amusing, profound, and amusing. So and it was entertaining as well. And it was a physical journey and mental journey that just takes thousands and thousands of hours to get to that place. You know it, there's no other way to do it to be able to conjure that kind of a magical connection. And that's what we have. But is
Unknown Speaker 8:01
that the goal now? Or is it you have another goal now with these with these new players,
Unknown Speaker 8:05
it's always the goal. It's always the goal. Always the goal is that that's the ground. That's what you're after. That's the ego and you ring the bell, magic. MM word. If you get have magic, you have it all. You have everything. So you don't know how it happens. But you know what? When did
Unknown Speaker 8:23
you get magic at every show? Now
Unknown Speaker 8:24
we can happen every show bit of it? Yes. That's how you tell a show you have more or less of it. Sometimes there's more magic. Sometimes it goes the whole show. Sometimes it's fleeting. Sometimes you're there and you lose it, and then you get it back again. And you lose it again and then get it back.
Unknown Speaker 8:41
Do you sense magic with other people? When you're not in the magic?
Unknown Speaker 8:45
Yes, very good question. You can hear the interplay. See, it's a conversation. Everybody's conversing. Bob was talking to john, I'm talking to Jeff, and I'm talking to Bill, I'm talking and they're talking to that guy. And then, but we all hear each other's conversation. We can chime in at any time. If you have freedom in the music. That's the other thing, freedom, big part of music. If you have freedom, then you can really explore the inner space. It's a musical freedom. It's about how much you allow yourself or other people allow you or you allow other people to go in and out of the code, the musical code of the moment, which is always code, but
Unknown Speaker 9:27
you can have issues
Unknown Speaker 9:29
all the time. There's that we have arguments with disagreements, sometimes they go into arguments, but mostly they just minor disagreements. And then we correct them.
Unknown Speaker 9:39
And then you agree,
Unknown Speaker 9:40
or again, we agree again, and then you agree to disagree.
Unknown Speaker 9:44
Yes, sometimes, but normally would trying to find some resonance, which is another big word resonance in entrainment and resonance, big words, and music
Unknown Speaker 9:56
and life, how much of it is is seeing each other compared to listening to each other.
Unknown Speaker 10:01
It's a combination of seeing and seeing and hearing, you put two of those senses together and you got some power. I mean, if you don't see somebody, you can play with them. But the connection isn't as strong. Once you get in the groove. The groove is kind of like a vessel. And it takes you to different places. You could travel together Think of it as a travelogue, kind of that's the way I think of music. I get up there, and I wind up someplace else. And along the way, I see the sights and hear this, see the sights and I hear the sounds, if we can all enjoy them together for most of the night, we walk off with a smile. If not, we don't. And the old days when we couldn't do that it was suicidal. That's how serious it becomes. What do you mean by that? Well, if you can't accomplish music, which is such an important and immediate thing, it's it's so integral to everything your happiness, your well being other people's well being. Audiences well being mental health, if you fail, that, that you fail that everything you're missing alive, you know, and so we never talked about it. We never talked about it. It's always silent. We don't say much about the performances at all. Nobody blames See, that's the always the thing about the Grateful Dead we never blamed one day. We said, Bob, okay, we were rehearsing and Bob did dislike and say, okay, pop, you do that lick. And then we'll do this lick. And everything will happen after that, but gotta remember do that. Of course, Bob forgot. And, and that's afterwards got on Bob. I think Bob would you should have done that. And then we realized, right, then somebody said, you know, if we want to play forever, we can't do this. We can't blame anybody for anything. It's not a blame sport. It's not like that. There's no blame here. We're all in it together. And we'll work it out. So we never blame. And that's how we were able to last that was one of the big secrets of not throwing shade, as they say.
Unknown Speaker 12:42
Was there a big learning curve for you playing with these new fellows, when you first started playing with them with with the den company? Like what was it?
Unknown Speaker 12:52
Yes and No, there was a certain kind of the synchrony that was automatic from the moment. I didn't know the music. But that was secondary to the feeling. It's kind of like a slipstream. Think of it in those terms. It's kind of like a tractor beam. You know, once the beam is farm, it's very hard to break out. I mean, as long as you stay within the proximity of everybody can see and hear everybody and you are active in that you're there. You just got to stay there long enough to enjoy it. You can't go over the line into trance too much because then you lose your facility, but we're trance dancers. That's what we do. We sell trance. It's basically the bottom line. And trance is a tricky thing. First of all, you got to find the trance and then you got to hold the trance. And if you go over the line, you become in trance and therefore you're not to transfer your the trance. See, there are a lot of things to learn about trance, and Grateful Dead is trance band,
Unknown Speaker 13:55
you sell trance by the pound.
Unknown Speaker 14:00
You really have been trans shaming in a while
Unknown Speaker 14:02
for a while we started seat of the pants kind of shame. Is it a shame? I'd say for sure. Yeah. But you know, so with all shaming isms, you know, fight back, you know, to the first shame and whoever he may have been. It's music magic. And it's also medicinal, in many ways. Because as you feel the get that feeling of well being you go more and more and more and more and more. Its insatiable.
Unknown Speaker 14:25
You get drunk on it? Well, it's dope. I mean, it's the same stuff for me.
Unknown Speaker 14:29
course you're firing. I don't
Unknown Speaker 14:30
care if it's music or LSD or anything in between, correct. Sometimes it's running, which I don't do enough of,
Unknown Speaker 14:37
even as a musician who practices it. You don't do it enough, right? I just because music makes me whole. without music. I'm not me. If I don't play music, I can't be the best version of me. It came to me last night because I hadn't played in the band for a while. We've been off the road for a while. But it's all go 23456 910 hours is Sunday is not the same as that transfer of energy when you play live in the moment.
Unknown Speaker 15:08
It's Chuck from above the basement Boston music and conversation. How would you like to join us in creating great conversations that inspire and connect Patreon is a membership platform that provides a way for creators like us to build relationships and provide exclusive experiences to subscribers. For patrons. We have been self financed since we got off the ground in June of 2016. But in order to continue to fully invest all we can in each episode, we need your patronage. For more information, please go to patreon. com forward slash above the basement.
Unknown Speaker 15:39
You have any more questions? I'm okay with it. I feel very enthused and energetic now about this conversation. If there were any places you want to go go there. We wanted to talk about Alzheimer's in that way we were going
Unknown Speaker 15:51
I did want to talk about that as treatment because you mentioned the tonic of music that can really change people as medicine and they don't have to be unhealthy. They can be anybody in this room? And how do we channel that like mindfulness? So how is music for our health? It's a big question. I know I know. But my
Unknown Speaker 16:12
music is a tuning system, you have to look at it as a tool. As a tuning system. I said we tuned the body, because the body is made up of rhythms. We are multi dimensional rhythm machines embedded in a universe of rhythm. And once you get that vibration and that impulse, you are tuning your your body and your mind their their mind and your body are now connected. And once that connection is made, you're healthy, you know you're healthier. You keep those health rhythms going, and good life, good rhythm, bad rhythm, bad life, war, bad rhythm, health, rhythm, peace, good rhythm. So you feel you see the world and rhythmic terms, it's pretty easy. But it's really wild, though, is the what you call in medicine is different in Africa, right? So it's the African that comes to somebody the event that comes away. So your blood comes up your aspirin or your nervous system, your friend goes out romance with science helps because now you understand where your where the impetus is coming from what you what you're really doing is connecting to the world around you all of the other rhythms in the universe, the
Unknown Speaker 17:17
treatment is he for it. So the treatment is what you've been doing for your whole career, like with trance. And I think one of the amazing things about this day and age is how we all have to prove stuff. So how do we, as you know, scientists, a lot of people much smarter than me, how do we actually show that you're making outcomes change by certain types of rhythm and melodies? On Off, like a drug? How do you give it like a pill,
Unknown Speaker 17:44
we're not there yet a couple of ways. First of all, you have to think of the ease of it all the you know, working to make it happen, then you have to look at the people around you that are being affected by it. Once you see this go, once you see this happen in the audience, then you know you're getting closer, and then you keep going in then all of a sudden, this whole corpus, this whole body is one. So the idea is to form a loop between them and you where you give it to them. And then they give it back to you. And then you give it back to them to you all night. This worse. And once you once you have that loop, then you know you got it had a dear friend, and I'm sure you know who he is. His name is Walter Cronkite and Walter. We've been friends for 25 years really good friends. And Walter turned out to be a drummer. He loved playing hand drums. At the beginning he would say, Mickey, how do I know when I have as I told him about the groove is how do we know when I get the groove? You know when I have that? I said Walter Walter, you'll you'll know when you get the groove. So when Walter who was superb were the most I mean, sick listens, the way he spoke, the way he moved. He was a voice shaman. And that was music. So we were playing. I had him up on stage was in New York City and behind me, he was playing a drum sometimes. And, and all of a sudden, he said, I hear Mickey look around, he says, I got it. I've got it. I've got the groove. And I said,
Unknown Speaker 19:17
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 19:19
you got it. I know it's gonna have to grow. But yeah, Hold it. Hold on to it. And while we were all playing, this was going down. And Walter played almost to the day died. I was with him and he was playing a scoundrel. Almost. I would love to seen video of him
Unknown Speaker 19:39
behind a plane.
Unknown Speaker 19:41
Yeah, some of us in private you know, we have you know, private video there is shots of us playing together but
Unknown Speaker 19:47
was was Walter Cronkite a big deadpan
Unknown Speaker 19:51
you know about the Grateful Dead. He didn't have any idea about popular music. He never was to a concert a popular music concert. He never used a Madison Square Garden. You know when any of that he was a classical guy. He loved Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He loved Dixieland, but rock and roll was off his off the charts, like big band and so forth. But I met Walter while I did the America's Cup 1987 America's Cup, which he was the voice of America's Cup. And that's how we met. I did the score for that. And we became friends that day. And then it went on from there. Then I brought him to Madison Square Garden. I said, Walter, I'd like you to hear what I do. I mean, I just don't do movie scores. I play rock and roll. And he met you with Apocalypse Now. That was later that was popular in 79. I don't know when it was 87
Unknown Speaker 20:39
when you said movie score. I didn't
Unknown Speaker 20:40
know I didn't movies. I did apocalypse. But this was a TV thing. And so I bought them to Madison Square Garden. I had a software out there for a couple of guards by the by the sound booth. And he came back halftime. And he and his wife Betsy, beautiful 65 years married. And he said, You know, I was thinking of all the different reasons. excuses to leave, you know, here at halftime and he said, You know now I can't think of one. And it said this music really gets to you doesn't it said it really does get to you. And so we went backstage and they had a drink a glass of wine with Jerry. Jerry and Walter toasty. We're all Walter big Walter friends. You know, I mean, well, everybody's a Walter Walter.
Unknown Speaker 21:27
We heard what he did for years. And finally he went to your workplace.
Unknown Speaker 21:31
What's my workplace, he had a blast. And then we played together came on stage few times. I had to keep you know, I keep mine to cover so but I gave him the always give them the option. And Walter, I used to talk to Linda Walton older, you could sit in the audience or, and I'll put a little space over there and you could have your drum play or you can come on stage. He said, Oh, I'm with you. with you. Okay, Walter, come on up. And that's it that way, how we that's how we were all it was walking down the street with Walters like button, Jeff, you know, come to the Grateful Dead.
Unknown Speaker 22:09
It's like, it's like some dream
Unknown Speaker 22:12
is like, we just clicked you asked me out to dinner you see hungry? Yeah. That's where it started.
Unknown Speaker 22:20
That's fascinating. I can't believe that he's playing with you. That's amazing.
Unknown Speaker 22:23
What do you have for dinner with Walter Cronkite?
Unknown Speaker 22:26
Well, we like like Tongan food. We like steaks. It's hard to do in a restaurant with Walter. Because, you know, walk a walk in the restaurant with Walter the whole restaurant goes silent. You know, they listened to our conversation because we're both hard of hearing. We always speak loud. And we don't give a shit. You know, we just spoke we didn't care who was around. We were just and we always yelling at each other. You know? Because before us before I got Walters earpiece in, he's finally was able to hear well, you know, he was getting up there. And yeah, but that's the way it was with Walter in a restaurant. But all kinds of crazy people come up. Just give him pay homage to radio and thanks, right? All kinds. He said, Who was that? That is it. That's one of the most beautiful women in the world. Walter, you know what the Miss America came up? In all these different people would come up. He wasn't into pop culture. He didn't really know about that. That was not one of his thing.
Unknown Speaker 23:21
Neither were you in a sense,
Unknown Speaker 23:23
not really. I know about rock and roll. I mean, I didn't know anything about classical music. I mean, I played Copeland in high school, you know, I played all of that stuff. As far as I got. I went to, you know, few symphonies heal the ring and so forth. But it never rang my bell as a
Unknown Speaker 23:41
after this tour. what's what's next for you?
Unknown Speaker 23:43
What's next? Well, they'll be with Renee Fleming, they'll be music in the mind in Washington, DC, two days at the Kennedy Center, seventh and eighth. That's one thing that's happening. And then I have a personal explorations that I and research that I'm doing doing, and the life of plants and trees and certifications of the natural world, your book, there'll be a book Probably, yeah, probably down the road. Yeah, once I, once I immerse myself in all this enough that I think I could see my, my spin his rhythm. You know, there's been a lot of books written on plants and all of that stuff. But it's the rhythm that I'm interested in rhythm of the natural world. So that's where my, my study is, from the micro, you know, down to the Michael from the macro to the micro is rhythm. Without it, there is no life. So you have to have rhythm. Now how you nurture and cultivate that rhythm is how will you go through life. And that's the bottom line, the rhythm stop, you die, you know, and that's what happens. My grandmother was advanced Alzheimer's. And she didn't speak for years. And then I played a drum, four of them to car to meet her. I had always had a drum in the car those days, because so I had a little hand room when I played it for about 10 minutes. And we were sitting someplace by a cliff overlooking the ocean or something. And I took a Steadicam for eyes and, and she spoke my name. And that is when I realized music and medicine. That was the moment that I said, Oh my goodness, this unlocked her speech. She was able to reconnect just for a moment, said my my name a few times, never spoke again. But he did speak. And that was the catalyst that was for all of my work as far as in the medicinal so music is medicine, and music is therapy. And then I went in front of Harry Reid's subcommittee, I testified in front of the senate 1991 on his Commission on Aging Subcommittee on aging, Oliver mean, Oliver
Unknown Speaker 25:51
Sacks,
Unknown Speaker 25:52
Oliver Sacks, and Harry Reid gave us over a million dollars for music therapy, it was very visionary for him to do that. We distributed it to the music therapists and kind of kick started it here in the West. So that was the trail, the beginning of the trail of music medicine was with Harry and with Oliver,
Unknown Speaker 26:13
I work with a lot of music therapists actually at an organization called the American Congress of rehabilitation medicine, that was sort of the Big Bang for music therapy. Yeah. So thank you for triggering some of that, not only
Unknown Speaker 26:25
Well, now, what's happening is now on here, we now are giving all of them the science of it. So you think the music therapist is an army, you know, you gotta think of them as an army out there who a well meaning, and but they can't repeat. When you're a music therapist, if you don't have the science behind, you know, music is like that you can't necessarily repeat, if you can't repeat, it's not science. Okay? Its philosophy. And it's only a lot of other things. You know, if you can't do it laboratory, it works sometimes. So by giving these music therapists, their marching orders, by giving him the science, now you have an army of music therapists that really know what they're doing. And that's what's happening now,
Unknown Speaker 27:04
and they have an artistic side to them that can actually with marching orders can bring out different things to different people correct.
Unknown Speaker 27:09
Because before I was seated the pants, you know, when I did something and something happened when I was at with Oliver at the institute music, neurologic function and drum circles with a mudroom experiences, you'd see amazing things people playing, you know, who haven't even moved, and they are able to shake their hands or the feed or come alive, at least for the time during the experience auditory driving experience, then you'd follow them back into the wards and slowly they would drift back and watching you know, looking at the fish tanks and looking out the windows and they would go back into loneliness. And then I began working started working with the autistic and that was the biggest challenge because you know, the autistic, they don't like loud sounds, you know, like tangents. They don't like shop sounds and like loud sounds, and they're there for the furthest out the hardest to reach. And so I designed drums that had only low end frequency response. And the were attracted to that. They thought of it is the first friendly ever had a heartbeat and so they started connecting. So you have to find instruments that appeal to the certain kind of dysfunction.
Unknown Speaker 28:20
zillion symbols now zillion which is right here in town,
Unknown Speaker 28:24
right? I'm 67 I knew the grandfather, the old man. I know. I knew a Venus though I went back to their father opens the OBD VDC sign my symbol. I still have that so
Unknown Speaker 28:37
I didn't actually I did some. They don't even know Johnny Mickey, but I didn't know that you're resilient.
Unknown Speaker 28:43
Oh, they have it went to garage. It was just like a two car garage and Quincy mass I believe it was
Unknown Speaker 28:47
so they're the oldest company in the United States and the worst team in the world, the world. But anyway, they have some amazing symbols that are as you know, their low horse frequency
Unknown Speaker 28:56
were beautiful. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 28:58
I gotta tell craggy that we great.
Unknown Speaker 29:00
Say hello to her for me. A big Hello. I haven't seen her in years.
Unknown Speaker 29:05
Craig is the president of children. Craig is Elgin.
Unknown Speaker 29:07
That's a granddaughter. Oh, yeah. I don't even know she knew a grandfather. Great Grandfather.
Unknown Speaker 29:12
What was his name again? I got a fetus OV this okay? Of course a zillion.
Unknown Speaker 29:17
He had two sons. One of them went up to Bob went up to Canada made ZCBNO came down. gone on came down here as a Sultan's the same formula. They had a falling out in the family. They don't make on so they make symbols. We need a gong for the pot. I don't know if it's in the budget. Remember the Gong Show? Of course. Chuck Barris Chuck. I mean, he was he's like gone. Yeah, gone close. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 29:42
dude.
Unknown Speaker 29:44
Right.
Unknown Speaker 29:45
So you got to rehearsal.
Unknown Speaker 29:46
Yeah, I guess. I guess he call it a rehearsal. I'm already rehearsed. But yeah, I warm up warm up it. Let's say it's a musical get together. Get together. Yeah. Rehearse is a funny word. where that came from? Where'd that come from? rehearsal. Okay, find out for me. Give me 25 words. 2500 words? Yeah, no, rehearse on it. It's a playing. It's a playing with you in real time. You're not supposed to be doing things you've done before. Except you have to honor the farm. When you play, you have to be consciously. Creative rehearsal seems to be like more like a recreational word, a recreational word, as opposed to recreational word, which is playing. That's the way I like to look at it, you know, because the rehearsal sounds boring. And they sound like skip it.
Unknown Speaker 30:38
I never want to rehearse. I just want to play I have
Unknown Speaker 30:40
a the online etymology dictionary from 1300. To give account of from anglo-french rehearsal to go over again, repeat literally to rake over to turn over soil or ground. Really? Yeah, that sounds pretty boring to me.
Unknown Speaker 30:53
Well, they're talking about musical logical terms in rehearsal, they should be a creative spark, you know, I think there should be a creationism mode as a recreational mode. I can't imagine you in any other kind of mode, do not take it for granted. It's not always like that. It just like in anything in life, sometimes you just don't feel like doing it. Or your mind is somewhere else. And you can't get it off of where it is. And you go on to the stage and then you just you're just operating on fumes. It's the worst feeling. But you have to go through the motions, because you're practicing, always practicing everybody practice till they die. So you gotta practice you always. I'd rather play and practice but I have to practice. Practice seems just playing over the same thing. What's the Islam ology a practice? Yeah, right. Okay. Okay, what is it?
Unknown Speaker 31:43
Danny's on it, man. I want to know,
Unknown Speaker 31:45
sense of practice a play part. So it comes from to say over again, repeat as an already said or written, see
Unknown Speaker 31:52
facet, practice the fear to repeat it. And you have to repeat in order to learn, you have to come to grips with the rhythmic patterns and so forth. Have them instilled in you where you don't have to think Exactly, yeah, so it's really important practice, I practice that. So they
Unknown Speaker 32:06
say in acting, you say you learn your lines, and then you forget them. Once you learn once you practice them, then you can forget them
Unknown Speaker 32:12
ready. So you know, and then if you've practiced enough, and you've done the correct amount of assimilation of that data, you shouldn't have to think about exactly, that's when he should be in in in Nate I can you can
Unknown Speaker 32:23
be the empty vessel you want to be on you,
Unknown Speaker 32:24
that's what I go after. It's always been, it's always been that way empty vessels,
Unknown Speaker 32:29
it has always been that way,
Unknown Speaker 32:30
it's always been that way, there's a certain kind of joy that you have to bring to music to the stage in order to get it back. You can't go up there just blank. As I said, that was a misnomer. You can't do a blank, you have to bring a certain kind of emotion with you, you know, have to think. But you have to have an emotional content in order to play music or else, you know, he'd be a stick, you know, an inanimate thing or something, we have to be alive in order to be able to make the music alive, or else, it just notes on a sheet of paper. If you don't bring those notes to life, then you're in a recreational mode, like a lot of classical musicians, some very well known classical musicians, really some of the best can't play a lick without it being written and won't not mention names. But it's a thing. I couldn't believe it when there's one person different skill is the best at what he does a classical musician, he asked me to teach him how to jam when you have both It is unbelievable. Unbelievable. In jazz, in some forms of classical, it's crazy. The mind is jazz. You know, the mind is an improvisational unit. And it's jazz, you know, that's what it does. It makes up its mind spot and it's spontaneous. And it reacts really quickly, and improvise us. And that's what jazz is all about. So if you look at the mind, and those kind of terms is in rhythmic terms, you're playing jazz your jazz, if you work and write your jazz one thing leads to another and the more you know, the easier it is to go to next place and improvisation right.
Unknown Speaker 34:02
I like that the mind is jazz
Unknown Speaker 34:04
through read the book physics of jazz.
Unknown Speaker 34:08
We know you gotta get going soon making we really appreciate your time. My pleasure. Thanks a lot for waking me up.
Unknown Speaker 34:29
Mosquitoes on the river.
Unknown Speaker 35:30
If you do not hear part one, go to above the basement calm where you can also join us on Patreon. Sign up for a newsletter. Listen and subscribe to our podcast like our Facebook page. Follow us on Twitter, and look at all the nice pictures we post on Instagram. We are everywhere. On behalf of Ronnie and myself. Thanks for listening. Tell your friends and remember Boston music like its history is unique.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
