The April issue of JazzTimes magazine features a lively discussion on how jazz artists ought to dress when they’re up on stage.  It got me thinking, and then it occurred to me:  over the past 23 years that Smooth Jazz has been around, a transformation has taken place in the way performers in our genre dress.

When it comes to earning style points, Smooth Jazz artists have taken a quantum leap in two decades.  I don’t know how many of you remember this, but in the early days nearly everyone had the same look:  garage-band-but-sadly-lacking-the-hipness-of-grunge.  Worn-out denims and a jazz festival t-shirt were a common ensemble.  At the time it didn’t seem particularly inappropriate because artists were being booked into places such as the Cubby Bear, Jazz Bulls and China Club in those days—venues that were bars or converted industrial space.

As Smooth Jazz began to blossom in the middle ‘90s and concerts moved into larger, more elegant venues, artists instinctively reacted to this move up in class by becoming more style conscious.  Led by African-American artists who seemed to be the first to recognize there should be a certain visual vibe to the whole Smooth Jazz concert experience, the fashion bar was raised significantly.

These days, it’s rare to witness a performer who hasn’t dressed for the occasion.  From the sartorially resplendent Nick Colionne to the dapper Dave Koz & Friends Christmas group (including Brenda Russell, who always looks as though she’s ready to walk the red carpet at the Oscars), Smooth Jazz artists get it—there is value to looking good.  But they’re only continuing a tradition.  If you go back far enough to remember that the likes of Miles Davis and Billie Holiday were as influential with their fashion as with their music, you’ll realize live performance in jazz music has never been about just the music.

I’m always curious about how an instrumental tune gets its name, so I’m never shy about asking musicians that question.  Quite often, the answer I get makes for an interesting tidbit I can share with listeners.  Take my vintage-track-of-the-day for today, “Saul Steps Out,” for example, by J. Michael Verta.

I’ll let Mr. Verta pick it up from here:  “Saul was this little old Jewish man who lived in an apartment down the hall from me, back in the days when I was struggling to get by as a musician, looking for my first break.  [Those] were lean times; things were tough and I was living in this tiny little apartment, and yet whenever I would see Saul—through the open door to his apartment or on his way to get the mail, laundry, etc.—he’d be doing this little half dance, half shuffle as he walked, with the most content, knowing smile on his face.  Saul had a groove, and nothing in life could faze him.  I admired that and drew a lot of strength from it.  And he always made me laugh.  So when I finally got my first record deal, I decided Saul’s groove needed its own track on the record—a sort of ‘thank you’ for giving me peace and perspective.  That it was the most popular track on the record is fitting, I think.”

What a wonderful story!  Something that gives us a glimpse into not only the creative process but also the lifestyle of the aspiring musician.

J. Michael Verta is an interesting story in himself.  A Chicagoland native and 1990 graduate of New Trier High School, he released his first CD, The Phoenix, as a 23-year-old in 1995.  “Saul Steps Out” came from that CD and became a hit on WNUA.  In 1995 he recorded his second and final CD, Time Line.  Since then, he’s been active in Hollywood as Mike Verta, composing numerous scores and themes as well as working in mixing, engineering and sound design for film and TV.  Maybe the coolest nugget I discovered about him is that last March he married his longtime girlfriend, actress Danica McKellar, who played Winnie Cooper on the show “The Wonder Years.”

You can find out more about J. Michael Verta at his site, www.MikeVerta.com.

According to today’s Tribune, the Arie Crown Theater will be going dark starting in September.  I won’t miss it.

There was a time when the place was the hottest concert venue in town.  Back in high school seeing a group such as Chicago playing the Arie Crown was the ultimate downtown adventure for a group of teenagers from the western suburbs. The Arie Crown still had the sheen of newness back then, having reopened in 1972.  For my friends and me, it was exciting seeing performers we loved at a classy, adult venue frequented by our parents.

As a grown-up, however, I came to see the Arie Crown in a much different light.  For openers, I never felt the sound was very good there.  Seated in the center of the theater halfway back, I thought it was acceptable.  Anywhere else—especially in the wings—and it was terrible.

The smooth jazz shows we did at the Arie Crown never seemed to have the spark of shows we did at other venues, either.  Boney James at the Arie Crown on March 22, 2002, was a typical example.  I introduced Boney from the stage that night, but what I remember most about the night was what went on an hour before the show.  As I was walking through the lobby I spotted Boney standing by himself in a hallway near a side entrance to the stage.  I remember thinking how cold and sterile the place felt—quiet as a morgue, too.  There might have been a dozen people around but, in that wide, expansive lobby, Boney and I felt like we were alone.  We stood around and talked for about 15 minutes, and not a single soul came up to either of us the entire time.  Contrast that with the typical scene at the Chicago Theatre before a show—the crowded lobby, buzzing with excitement and anticipation.

Being out at McCormick Place didn’t help the Arie Crown, either.  There were no restaurants nearby.  If you wanted to dine before or after a show, you had to park your car twice—at the Arie Crown and at wherever you decided to eat.  It was both an inconvenient and expensive proposition.

Over the years we’ve hosted concerts at just about all the downtown venues.  None of them is perfect.  But the Arie Crown was the most imperfect of all.  I’m glad we did only a handful of shows there.  And, after each one, listeners told me in no uncertain terms I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

I imagine over the next few days you’ll be hearing a few snippets of the Mission: Impossible theme at various times.  Peter Graves, the actor who played the leader of the Impossible Missions Force, Jim Phelps, died yesterday at the age of 83.

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of another TV series that received a bigger boost from a change in its lead actor than Mission did in the late 1960s.  Steven Hill brought considerable chops along with distinguished acting credentials to the role of Dan Briggs, leader of the IMF when the show debuted in 1966.  But Mission truly blossomed when producer Bruce Geller added Peter Graves to the ensemble at the start of season two after a falling out with Hill.  Graves embodied all the qualities of a leading man in an action series.  He was strong and athletic—and quite camera-friendly.  To this day, whenever I watch my DVDs of the original series, my wife always comments on how good looking he was, especially in the apartment scenes where he was always seen in suits that perfectly complimented his silver hair.

Graves’ Jim Phelps also had a cerebral side and preferred plotting missions around psychological manipulation of the target as opposed to using brute force and violence on them.  He was the opposite of 24’s Jack Bauer.

Growing up, I watched every episode of Mission: Impossible.  I loved everything about the show:  the staccato theme—perhaps the best TV theme song ever–composed by Lalo Schifrin;  the intricate plotting;  the no-nonsense, unsentimental endings of most of the episodes.  It was a brilliant concept, masterfully executed.  And Peter Graves was the essential ingredient.

In the end, he wasn’t “caught or killed.”  The Secretary didn’t have to “disavow any knowledge” of his actions.  Peter Graves went off into the sunset the way he preferred—and with his wife of nearly 60 years, Joan, and his three daughters, Kelly, Claudia and Amanda nearby.  I’ll miss him.

Among people I know, it seems everybody settled in with their favorite event (figure skating, ice dancing or snowboarding, generally, and in my case, ice hockey) and made the coverage on NBC or MSNBC part of their evening routine the past couple weeks.  Then again, I realize there is a dissenting viewpoint out there that couldn’t care less  (e.g., my father-in-law called my wife after the first weekend to say, “Tired of the Olympics yet?”).

Ryan Miller was a deserving MVP in men’s hockey.  And dream, Blackhawk fans, of how easily he could have been OUR #1 goalie right now.  In the 1999 NHL draft, he was available until the 5^th round, when he was taken by Buffalo.  With Miller still on the board, the Hawks chose the eminently forgettable Steve McCarthy, Dmitri Levinski, Stepan Mokhov, and Michael Jacobsen instead of Miller for four rounds.  True, the Hawks weren’t the only ones who whiffed on Miller, but wouldn’t your feelings going into the playoffs be a lot different with him between the pipes?

Televising the action during the three periods commercial-free—thanks to a deal with DirecTV—was fantastic.  Unless you actually attend a game, you never get to see what the players do during extended TV timeouts. Luongo, for instance, never hesitated to skate over to his bench, lift up his mask and grab some refreshment.  You could see the strain on his face the whole game during the extended breaks.

I’ve become captivated by curling.  It’s an odd activity and questionable as a real “sport” in the same way archery, golf and bowling are—to me, they seem much more a skill than a sport.  No matter, I surprised myself by not being bored watching either the men’s or women’s competition  in curling.

I don’t like the idea of the televising network’s exclusivity on the rights to action footage from the games.  Still photos are fine for ESPN The Magazine, but in the television world of technical bells and whistles, they fall very flat.  And that’s all the other networks can use.

I have trouble with the idea that, in keeping the medals count for the individual nations, gold, silver and bronze medals are considered equal in scoring.  For instance, this was the final count we saw in the paper this morning:

USA – 37 (9 Gold, 15 Silver, 13 Bronze)

Germany – 30 (10 Gold, 13 Silver, 7 Bronze)

Canada – 26 (14 Gold, 7 Silver, 5 Bronze)

Gold medals should be worth more than silver, which should be worth more than bronze in the medal standings–something like gold medals 3 points, silver medals 2 and bronze medals 1. That would give us this revised scoreboard:

USA – 70 points

Germany – 63 points

Canada – 61 points

The rankings haven’t changed, but the extra Golds push Canada closer to second place.  And, if you think all medals should be considered equal in merit, ask Duncan Keith if he wouldn’t mind trading his for Patrick Kane’s.

The gold medal game had all the drama you’d want in a finale–it was outstanding.  The fact that it got a 23.4 rating in Chicago–which put it in Bears territory–didn’t surprise me in the least.

Watching the Caribbean World Series in Venezuela this weekend gave me an appreciation for Major League Baseball’s regulations on what’s permissible on big league uniforms, caps and helmets.  The players down there are all walking eyesores, covered from head to toe with a jumble of advertising logos.  Worst of all, it looks like every player seems to have the same name.  On the backs of all their jersey tops, above the number, it said “Coca-Cola” on Saturday, “Orange” on Sunday.

Sure, the Blackhawks won Saturday night.  But they should’ve had a shutout.  Campbell’s stupid penalty, taken behind the play, combined with Sopel’s bonehead unsportsmanlike conduct call 26 seconds later, gave the Blues a two-man advantage, which led to the goal which ended Niemi’s bid for his fifth shutout.

Richard Dent didn’t make it this time around.  But, unlike MLB, at least the NFL’s Board of Selectors aren’t shy about putting people into their Hall.

My brother-in-law’s constantly on the prowl for Blackhawks tickets.  He tells me he’s being priced out of the market now, even when it comes to regular season “cheap” seats in the 300 level.  I’ll tell you:  the closer the tickets get to the $200 mark, the more attractive my own private box becomes.  Washroom and refreshments just a few steps away with never any waiting, free parking and climate-controlled perfection—my living room.

With Ryne Sandberg’s being the most likely candidate to succeed Lou Piniella when Lou’s deal expires, it sets up the possibility of a grand ’84 Cubs reunion on the field in ’11.  Ryno could tap Sarge Matthews, Zonk Moreland and Bob Dernier as coaches.  By the way, Ryno deserves a shot at the top job.

On the one hand, seeing how quickly the Blackhawks turned around their fortunes gives me some hope for the Bears.  On the other, what did it take for the Hawks to make the big leap forward?  A change at the very top of the organization.  Somehow, I don’t think that’s a scenario we can count on at Halas Hall anytime soon.

What did I like most about the Super Bowl?  Two things.  First, that we can refer to it by its true name here (not “The Big Game,” which is just plain silly, if you ask me).  Second, how could I ever quarrel about a sporting event that starts at 5:30 and is completely over with by 9:00?  (This is a point I wouldn’t have made—say—twenty years ago when I was a wee bit more youthful, by the way.)

On my list of life’s daily annoyances, spam should rank very low.  Thanks to the delete key, it should be nothing more than an inconsequential blip in my day.  Yet, annoy is what it does, because in some strange way it gets into my head and forces me to expend more energy thinking about it than it I should.  I’ll explain.

One of the emailboxes I check each day is connected to an old AOL email address from my years at WNUA.  I haven’t found a personal message there for awhile now, but since it’s still an active address, I check it compulsively every day.  One hundred percent of the messages I find there is junk email—it’s all spam, in other words.  Yet, less than half of it gets automatically sent to the spam folder, and that bothers me.  It’s obvious that the spam filter at AOL needs to be improved.  A spam filter that’s less than 50% effective is worthless, if you ask me, since you still have to do the work of deleting everything it lets slip past.

Then there are the experts always telling you how to minimize the amount of spam you get.  Somehow, though, they never seem to warn you about what can really cause spam to pile up in your mailbox:  things that require you to create an online paper trail, such as being a college student in the internet age.  My wife used to get very little spam.  That is, until she started taking classes at UIC.  After she registered for her classes, bought the necessary textbooks and opened various accounts on Blackboard and the like, she started getting a ton of spam—40-50 unsolicited messages on most days.

There is one thing I find amusing about spam, and it’s something that really hasn’t changed since the beginning:  the poor spelling and generally atrocious grammar.  I suspect companies that spam aren’t recruiting from the top of any graduating class.

Whenever a radio format is around for a long time, there’s a lot of good music that doesn’t get played.  It boils down to a numbers game:   too many titles, not enough time to play them all.  In the case of Smooth Jazz, it’s 24 years’ worth (!) of new releases, over a thousand titles in just the new releases pile alone—not including all the  standards such as “Breezin’” and “Winelight” that were around even before the format was born in 1987.  No radio station could ever sustain itself with a playlist that lengthy, because the best tunes, the ones listeners want to hear over and over, couldn’t possibly rotate around fast enough.

So, what’s a radio station to do with all those extra titles that would still sound good on the air but for which it has no more room?  Sadly, no matter what the format, these titles usually get relegated to what we call an “icebox” category, never to see the light of day again.

That’s always bothered me, because the Smooth Jazz genre is filled with some wonderfully distinctive music that we never put on the air anymore.  By folks such as Dan Siegel,  Shakatak,  Dancing Fantasy and  Rodney Franklin, for instance.  Songs and artists that would make you go, “Wow—I haven’t heard that in ages.”

For a long time I’ve been wrestling with the idea of finding a way to resurrect these gems and give them some airplay in the proper context, and here’s what I’ve come up with:  a new feature on my show, called “Rick O’Dell Remembers.”   Starting next Monday, February 1, I’ll be going deep into the Smooth Jazz vault and selecting one vintage track to play every day at 11:00 a.m.

I know we can have some fun with this feature, jogging your memory a bit each day.  And, along the way, I’ll be open to requests.  Feel free to suggest a favorite ol’ tune or two you haven’t heard in a long time, and I’ll see what I can do.  Email me at:  Rick@WLFM877.com or post your requests in the In Box at the station website.

(Ask me sometime to go into more detail about character actors.  I’ve always been fascinated by them on several levels.)

Character actors have always fascinated me.  The best ones seem to turn up again and again in movies and TV shows.  But they all share a common trait:  they’re able to completely transform themselves into the different roles and characters they’re asked to play, infusing each with a unique personality and, quite often, a completely different look.

In our time, Stephen Tobolowsky has been my definition of character actor.  From his hilarious portrayal of Tor Eckman, Kramer’s half-bubble-off-plumb holistic healer in Seinfeld to the eccentric Dr. Alvin Azinabinacroft in Boston Legal to the creepy, Josh Groban-obsessed Sandy Ryerson on Glee, he’s made the rounds of a typical character actor and created several unforgettable personas out of supporting characters, not always a simple task

I’ve come to learn that there’s another dimension to Mr. Tobolowsky’s uncommon performing talent.  He is also an incredible storyteller.  The other day, doing some pleasure-surfing of the web, I came across this site:  www.TobolowskyFiles.com.  On it you’ll find the actor musing across a wide range of subjects: the politics he encountered while a student in drama at the University of Illinois, for example; working with director Paul Verhoeven; and the vicissitudes of life’s ups and downs.

His stories are captivating and often hilarious and profound.  They’re not short, either.  Some go on for 40-45 minutes.  But don’t let me scare you off.  Steven Tobolowsky, the storyteller, is worth every minute you can spend with him.  In fact, as soon as my shift is over today, I’m going to click on and listen some more.

Yesterday I began sharing a few glimpses into my life during the past twelve months after leaving WNUA.  Today we continue with a few more.

I enjoyed the experience of . . .

Taking the Brown Line into work at AccuRadio each day.  Getting reacquainted with the heart of the northwest side neighborhoods through which the L rumbled each day was some happy sightseeing for me.  And now I know exactly where the famous Dinkel’s Bakery is.

Watching Jeopardy. My wife, our dog and I quickly got into a 3:30 TV routine.

Getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the new Busch Stadium, courtesy of my friend, John Rooney of the St. Cardinals. It’s a fantastic park with state-of-the-art amenities benefiting both fans and players.  This is how good we could have it here, and it reinforced the notion that the Cubs are being stifled by tradition, sentimentality and an aging, long outmoded structure as far as Wrigley Field is concerned.  In the long run, they’re much better off tearing down Wrigley Field and building a brand new ballpark on the same site.  It’ll be better for the team; it’ll be better for the fans.  And, if they do it right, no one will miss the old Wrigley.  By the way, this is coming from a lifelong fan of the Cubs.

Going to Disney for the first time ever. I’d never been to any Disney park in my life; I found it a trip into unreality (in a good way), much like a trip to Las Vegas.

Getting out and riding a bicycle on a sunny summer day.

Meeting for lunch on a regular basis lots of radio friends, most of whom (sadly) were also looking for work. Host the midday show, and you never get to do lunch.  That was the case for me for more than twenty years. I made up for lost time in a hurry, taking advantage of the $6.99 Angus burger lunch special on Tuesdays at Emerald Loop more often than I care to admit.

I learned . . .

With Facebook, you’re never alone.  The last time I was in between jobs, in 1989, it was just me and Rolly, the cat, all day long.  Facebook and email have totally changed our world.

Never has part-time work felt so good.  I was one of the lucky ones, getting even a few scattered hours here and there in radio, because the market had completely dried up.  And, when the opportunity at 87.7 presented itself in December, it was truly a blessing.

Both Internet radio and over-the-air radio can grow market share more quickly if they’d become partners, not competitors. Internet radio needs the experience and leadership of veterans of over-the-air radio.  Conversely, over-the-air radio needs to pry into the minds of the out-of-the-box thinkers who are creatively driving internet radio.

My wife is truly the Chairwoman and CEO of the household. Between housekeeping, home maintenance, trips to the vet and appliance repairs, a HECK of a lot happens each day that I don’t know of while I’m away at work.  I still don’t know how she gets it all done, especially with her own work and school responsibilities.

I’m not sure if I’d like to go through another year like 2009 again, but it sure did seem to have its moments.