Category: music

Last night I went to see Col. Bruce Hampton and the Codetalkers, with special guest Jimmy Herring. Hampton of course was the brainchild behind the unit who rescued the aquarium, where Jimmy first came to acclaim by literally dozens of fans. The crowd at historic State Theater last night was also pretty sparse, around 150 at the most, but those of us who made it caught a real treat. The State bills Codetalkers as “eclectic,” which was right on: selections ranged from bluegrass to standard jazz progressions, all mixed in with the band’s great stage antics. (At one point, on cue from the colonel, everyone began playing with their instrument behind their head. Including the bass player. Who was playing an upright string bass.)

I’ve raved about him before but I have to say that Herring once again reinforced my conviction that he is today’s best unknown guitarist. He effortlessly plays in, around, and outside the changes, at times with a Allman-esque pentatonic simplicity, at others with blistering arpeggios and bebop riffs. Also contributing was local Ron Holloway on the sax. I thought I had seen him play before, and after poking around on his website, I’m pretty sure he sat in on a DTB show at the Birchmere once.

Codetalkers aren’t what I would consider “serious” music, but they are all serious musicians, just having fun on stage. And if you don’t have a good time watching them, you suck.

Last night I went to Baltimore with Wizz and Newman to watch Steve Vai in all of his completely over-the-top vainglory. That’s not me being harsh, that’s just his shtick: the guy even has a fan on stage to blow his long flowing tresses about. As Brandon put it, “wardrobe changes, interpretive dance, homo-erotic guitar sharing, what more could you want?” Well, for all that, the guy definitely has skills. Pictured above-left is one of the highlights of the evening: Vai and other masterful guitarist / keyboard player Tony MacAlpine trading licks behind someone’s gargantuan head. TMAC’s shirt said “I trip over my wiener” and there’s a picture of a dachshund. The show closed with a jam number including special guest Mike Keneally aka Hat Guy, bringing the total number of guitarists on stage to five.

One thing is clear: I need a guitar with LEDs in the fretboard.

I left my wallet in Brandon’s car, and didn’t feel like going back over to retrieve it at 1:30 AM last night. This brought up an interesting problem: how do you get to work the next day if Metro costs $5 and you have no money or no obvious way to get money? The answer: Coinstar! Though, it just might be a good idea to keep a couple twenties in the house in case that ever happens again.

In addition to giving me something to bang on, my piano has also served to complete an art project I started a while back. Probably a year ago I found myself with a picture frame and decided to make something to go in it. I took a picture of my guitar neck and printed it in grayscale on satin gloss paper. The results were pretty good but my cheap color printer tinged the print with a slight purplish hue. Later I decided to make three more of these for the studio downstairs, following in a slightly-tinted music instrument theme. In these later attempts, I’ve made sure to adjust the color to be a little on the green side to compensate for my printer’s output. The piano has finally filled out the quartet of instruments to which I have access, so here’s what the full set looks like:

My Christmas gift to myself finally arrived yesterday after several days of neurotic polling of the FedEx package tracking site. In a box as tall as myself came the shiny new object: a Yamaha digital piano. The action on the keyboard is very nice; it is in my untrained opinion very close to that of a real piano. Like an acoustic piano, the weightedness of the keys varies — you have to push harder on the lower keys than the higher ones. The piano sounds are also very realistic. I don’t see myself using any of the other non-acoustic-piano voices (the electric piano sound particularly could be a lot more Rhodes-like) but anyway an external MIDI tone generator could always be used if I were into that kind of thing.

Now, I don’t (yet) know how to play one of these things, apart from being able to read music and knowing which keys match up with which notes. But I am planning on working up that little skill as I also use the MIDI features of the piano for composition. If any players out there can recommend aids for self-study, let me know.

Okay people, it is time for me to come clean. Here it is: I don’t like the Beatles. Yes, I have some of their music in my collection. Yes, I understand that they were prolific writers whose music impacted everything that came afterwards. However, I can’t help but switch the channel every time one of their songs comes on the classic rock radio station. There it is.

You know Zep is better, so don’t front.

Last weekend I picked up a CD at Tower by sometime Allman Brothers’ bassist and all-the-time brother of Kofi, Oteil Burbridge, and his band the Peacemakers. The CD is pretty good — a little rock, a little jazz. Don’t much care for the violin, but that’s just a personal preference. However, what’s most amazing about this CD is the record company that produced it: Artists House, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that actually gets it. Instead of suing 14-year-olds on Kazaa, Artists House encourages you to email the MP3s of the music to your friends. They even give them to you, encoded at 160kbps, on a data track of the CD. And that’s not all. Along with the CD comes a DVD containing a 24 bit/96 kHz mix, a 5.1 mix, artist commentary, a video of the recording session, sheet music (pdf), and a bass lesson by Oteil. The tray insert declares their motto: “Information wants to be free.” Well done, guys.

Update: I cross-posted this to boingboing.