From The Desk Of Oneida’s Kid Millions: David Amram

In 2008, Oneida began the Thank Your Parents triptych with Preteen Weaponry. Since, the Brooklyn band—Kid Millions, Bobby Matador, Baby Hanoi Jane, Showtime and Barry London—has completed it with 2009’s Rated O and the new Absolute II (Jagjaguwar). The quintet is touring Europe in August and is also playing the Asbury Park, N.J.-based All Tomorrow’s Parties in October. In addition, Millions will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Millions: David Amram is a composer who plays jazz French horn and wrote a few books about his life in music. I’ve read the one called Vibrations, which was reissued in 2001 (which was subsequently remaindered) by Thunder Mouth Press. So you can find it around for cheap. It’s worth it. He is kind of the original polymath musical dude. He has toured with Lionel Hampton in the ’40s, Willie Nelson in the oughts and has also been the composer in residence with Leonard Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic.

He tells the story of his first 40 years: of meeting and jamming with Charlie Parker (who was dressed in purple striped pants, a bright blue shirt and an orange tie), of writing the music for The Manchurian Candidate, of hanging out with Joe Papp, Arthur Miller, Allen Ginsberg and generally whooping it up and scraping by in Manhattan during one of the many blazing periods of invention for which this city is known.

I’m currently seeking musical and artistic mentors right now, so last Monday I went to see him perform at the Cornelia Street Café in Manhattan. Brother is 80 years old and seems like he’s 60. He was actually rapping, not like corny-ass fake stuff, but more in the classic sense of the term, ad-libbing some vocals. It was to the song he wrote, “Pull My Daisy” from the film of the same name. He sang something like, “The only thing that matters is what you feel/The only thing that matters is glockenspiel,” and then the drummer played a glock solo.

I gave him a copy of Absolute II, and he told me to “keep pickin’.”

Video after the jump.