It all started for me on January 4, 1964, at Sacred Heart hospital in Eugene, Oregon. My mother, Jackie Jean Jones (b. 1936) met my father, Lt. Malcolm Howard Scott (b. 1935) at a military hospital in Arkansas in the late 1950s. Dad was from Cottage Grove, Oregon, and mom grew up just south of Memphis in Holly Springs, Mississippi. The Air Force base in Blytheville was in a dry county, so dancing for them meant driving across the border.
By 1970 a big deal for me was a new comic book like Archie, Richie Rich, or Casper the Friendly Ghost, and looking in the back to see what new cartoons were coming out in September on ABC, NBC, and CBS. Like no other composer of any significance whatsoever - ever - television music had a huge impact on me. Between age 6 and about 12, I watched enough episodes of The Brady Bunch and Merry Melodies cartoons to permanently wire music constantly swimming with music. Having successfully made it through the 1960s, and at age 6 completely unaware of any war in Vietnam, I learned how to operate the television and lie on my stomach for hours on my parents' bed dozing in and out. I continued to do this until my early teens, usually after I had eaten several spoonfuls of peanut butter dipped in sugar. Mom was away, and dad was at work.
Continue reading "Television and piano lessons (1970-1976)" »
When I started seventh grade at Cal Young Junior High School I was 13. We lived in an old farmhouse one mile North of Eugene that sat in the middle of several square miles of farm land. Our old farmhouse had a 100-year-old barn out back complete with white barn owls, woodpeckers, an old wooden work shed that was about 40-yards long with several easy places to break in.
Continue reading "Atlantis, Lucy Crank, and Nick Drapela (1977-1979)" »
I don't remember much about my junior and senior years at Sheldon High School in Eugene, Oregon. My parents had somehow managed to enroll me in a program beginning in 10th grade where on average, all but 1 or 2 of my classes were music, where I could sing or play the piano or whatever instrument was needed. I played an 88 Rhodes electric piano for the stage band, and we managed to travel to the other high schools and rally our teams. We had four drummers and two electric guitar players who all alternated, which meant a different four guys had to sit still and do nothing behind the rhythm section for every tune and try to be "good." They, including me I admit, chewed tobacco in secret...
After graduating from high school, I moved into an apartment with a good friend, Terry O'Neal. He was a super funny guy, intelligent, and a gifted athlete, especially on golf and shooting hoops. We planned loosely to move to Arizona together in the fall. I wanted to go to music school, and he wanted to walk on the ASU golf team. He could have. He was hit by a car and died after a few days in the hospital in a coma in May 1983.
Continue reading "Music school & exile from pop culture (1983-1985)" »
By 1986, into my third year at ASU's music theory and composition program, several important things had developed that would guide me along into the 1990s and beyond. I literally had not bought a record or tape or even paid attention to a pop song on the radio since 1983 or 1984. Other than hearing U2's Boy, I only listened to Beethoven, Bach, Haydn, Bruckner, Mahler, lots of music from the Renassaince (which reminds me of those funny songs on Monty Python's holy grail), plus Debussy, Chopin, Brahms, and Handel.
Shortly before graduation from ASU, I had the opportunity to play a rendition of Liszt on a Hamburg Steinway Model D before an audience of about 5,000 at Gammage Auditorium. Oh, what fun! Within a day or two, pop singer Steve Stuart and a guitarist named Stevie J. Larson showed up at my door asking me to play keyboards in their rock band.
Looking back, I think the transition from music school to law school was really more about immaturity and less about law. In music school I was a very young 19-year-old just not capable of understanding the nuances of serious music. The difference between learning and then racing through a Bach Prelude and Fugue on some crappy out-of-tune spinet, versus playing a more relaxed, musical version of the same piece on a Steinway, completely escaped me at that age. It was enough just being in an environment with those that knew the difference, and I suppose just spending the years absorbing Brahms and Schoenberg for later. But I never really "got it" musically until I hit my 30s.
When I graduated from law school in 1993, I already had a job lined up as an attorney in downtown Portland and felt pretty lucky for that. Jenny and I rented a little row house at the bottom of the SW hills on SW 6th and Grant Street overlooking downtown, and we lived literally within the pulse of the city just two blocks from Portland State University. A giant neon sign was outside our kitchen window, and it made the inside of our house glow flickering pink neon at night. I set up a little recording studio in the smallest room of the house. It was 6 feet by 5 feet with built in shelves - no bigger than a closet, and I called it the Antfarm.
Continue reading "The Antfarm, Endora, and Friends of the Friendless (1994-2001)" »
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