Welcome to Stake Five, my new home on the web, my virtual stake in the ground! I’ll be updating it as frequently as I can, with musings on technology, music, politics, and whatever else might catch my fancy.
In case you’re wondering where the name came from, my lovely wife is to blame - she suggested munging something to do with music, and this is what popped out…
While the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Take Five may indeed be one of the most overplayed jazz tunes ever (a saxophonist friend of mine claims that a little bit of him dies every time he hears it!), there is an undeniable magic to the original, which I revisited after reading Tim Bray’s post on it a few weeks ago. If you’re reading this, Tim, thanks for the reminder! When I was getting into playing jazz, it was definitely one of those formative tunes that helped guide the way I thought about music - apart from the wonderful original, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh’s magnificent cover in particular got me thinking about how original forms can be stretched to accommodate the new.
And so I hope to do here as well - we stand on the shoulders of giants, after all!
My brother Alex’s first band, Soul Burn, just played their first gig at a competition in Thiruvananthapuram and won!