Welcome

Hello readers!
I'm going to use this as a space to think in public about music. My main instrument is the string bass, so there will be some bass geekery, but I'm more interested in issues, both practical and theoretical, around the weird edges of rock, jazz, and classical music.
My title comes from Tom Johnson's "Failing: A Very Difficult Piece for String Bass." Besides offering some preliminary humility/self-deprecation, this piece incorporates improvisation and unconventional notation, two of my central interests.
"Failing" is also an example of impossible music, which may be the topic of my second book. In "Failing," the player is required to speak and play at the same time. The text is about the impossibility of an accurate performance. It would be inappropriate to conspicuously struggle with the piece, blowing notes and speaking uncomfortably, but an overly slick performance would also miss the point. I'm intrigued by music which incorporates the impossibility of a definitive performance: graphic scores, text pieces like Stockhausen's "From the Seven Days," Oliveros' "Software for People," Ono's "Grapefruit," and works from the Scratch Orchestra and Fluxus, but also pieces that incorporate improvisation, whether "Giant Steps" or "In C," and arguably also pieces whose notation is so demanding as to be unrealizable, i.e. Ferneyhough. This last one is a moving target though. I know folks used to think Paganini's Caprices were impossible and now folks play them all over the place. Feldman's second quartet and Cage's "Freeman Etudes" aren't far behind. Scodanibbio even plays some "Freeman Etudes" on the bass now.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Not only should I develop my impossible music thesis in its own post, I shouldn't be thinking about it at all until I've finished the revision of what I am hoping will be my first book, based on my dissertation: "New Black Music: Amiri Baraka and Jazz, 1959-1965." I'm chipping away at that. I've resolved that 2010 will be the year that this project moves off my desk, either to a publisher or into a bottom drawer. It has been hanging around much too long. I am hoping that blogging will help me maintain momentum as a writer. I had a personal blog while writing the dissertation and it definitely made writing feel like a much more natural activity.
So, that's a start.