Author: Zingblog 2

Fotoz 2024, Part I

Yikes!  We’re in that in-between season when winter is over but spring is not yet quite here.  I usually try and get my yearly photo album updates done before the end of the winter, but this year it’s been taking a little longer.  On the downside, next year I’ll probably have to reinvent my system since the software I use is old and no longer reliable.  On the plus side, we did go skiing four times this winter.

So here’s the first set of albums, thru end of the summer.  Hopefully the rest will follow soon. And as always, ping me if you need access credentials.  Enjoy!

https://zingman.com/fotooz/
https://zingman.com/fotooz/2024/2024-01/
https://zingman.com/fotooz/2024/2024-02/
https://zingman.com/fotooz/2024/2024-03/
https://zingman.com/fotooz/2024/2024-04/

Spacecats Gigs

Here’s announcing two upcoming shows for my jazz group Spacecats.

First is a return engagement to the Green Growler in Croton, NY, on Saturday, March 22 at 7pm. The group features John Szinger on saxophone, Josh Deutchman on piano and synthesizer, Ken Matthews on Bass and Rick Arecco on drums. We play a blend jazz and funk, originals, standards, and pop songs with our own unique twist.

The second is at Jazz on Main in Mt. Kisco, NY, on Wednesday, April 2 at 7pm. This one features special guest Robyn Ferracane on vocals. We’ve been working up a bunch of exciting new tunes for both shows. Come out and enjoy!

Spellbound

Winter continues with hopes of spring around the corner.  Jeannie and I went skiing two weekends in a row up at Catamount, and the last time our friend Seth came out the ski with us, which was alot of fun.  Conditions have been good, although the steep parts near the top of the hill tend to get icy.  We skied Sidewinder a few times both trips, but they close it at night.  Our favorite run these days is Mountain View, which is partially sheltered by trees, so the snow tends to stay good on it.  Jeannie had her fitness app running last time we went, and we learned that the Sidewinder trail is two miles long, and Mountain View is just over a mile. I hope we can get one more ski trip in this season, but this week the weather is turning warm, up to 45 every day the next few days.  On the plus side, I can start biking again.

But the main topic for this post is music.  I’ve been working on a new record since I finished Plutonium Dirigible late last year.  It’s called Spellbound: In the Dead of Winter.  But where to begin explaining?  Let’s rewind a bit.

Martin left behind six or eight albums worth of songs, many of them unrecorded or recorded only as demos.  I decided to make my next album a tribute to Martin and celebrate his music by recoding new versions of a bunch of his songs.  I wanted to be faithful to his versions, or at least understand them in detail.  It turns out he never wrote much down, so the main thing I have to go on is his recordings. 

I was drawn to his early material because that resonated with me the most.  I learned a bunch of songs he wrote for Shade as he was writing them and we used to jam them, back when we were in college and still lived in my parent’s house.  Usually he’d play guitar and I’d play piano.  I had a Wurlitzer electric piano and Casio CZ-1000 synthesizer which I later upgraded to a Fender Rhodes and a Roland Alpha-Juno.  We used to jam songs like Let It Roll by BTO, Cinnamon Girl, Ziggy Stardust, things like that.  We even wrote a bunch of songs together before Shade came into being.

So I started learning the Shade songbook.  First thing I did was go out and buy a new guitar.  Most recently I’d been using a semihollowbody jazz guitar, which I like alot, and in fact used it for all the guitar parts on Plutonium Dirigible, but wasn’t right for his kind of music.  I needed something solid.  Martin had maybe a ten or so guitars, including several twelve-string electrics, which became his main instrument by the end. Also a very nice Fender Stratocaster, which was his axe for a long time before he switched to 12-string, and then was at my house for many years.  I played a bunch of times but never was happy with the sound or the feel; it just didn’t work for me. 

The guitar I ended up getting is a PRS with dual humbuckers, and a rich brown sunburst finish, very beautiful, something like a Les Paul setup but with a lighter, sleeker, better looking body.  Excellent tone and feel and control over the sound.  Finally the right electric guitar for me! I began practicing with an amplifier pretty much all the time, to get better at that aspect of it too.  (With the hollowbody I could practice without and amp no problem and get just the sound of the guitar.)  My amp is a Roland Jazz Chorus, one of the all-time classic sounds. I originally bought it to use as a keyboard amp on the stage for gigs.

Later, Kathleen asked me if I wanted any of Martin’s musical instruments, and I did bring home a couple of his guitars.  One was the first guitar he ever bought, a used black Ibanez customized with the red and white racing stripes. I had no idea he’d kept it all these years. I remember I drove him down to buy it and got a speeding ticket on the way home.  This must have been in the summer of 1988.  I think the first song he ever learned on guitar was Your Love by The Outfield.  The other guitar I took was his first electric twelve-string, a Carvin.  That was also his main axe for a good long spell, when he lived in Pembroke.  I’ve played it a few time and it’s very nice.  I’m going to use it on the new recording before the end.

Anyway, I dove into the Shade songs.  I remember Martin writing alot of those early songs.  Some of them he and I used to jam together. I helped workshop a few, and some he just played my when he first came up with them to get my reaction.  He always seemed to have a good idea of what he was after.  In the end he recorded eighteen songs from that period.  So far I’ve figured out twelve or so.  I’ve really gotten a feel for his songwriting style and use of chords and voicings. 

Martin had a way of doing patterns on the fretboard, coming up with variations on chords that used subtle movements and sound very cool.  He’d lift a finger to create an open string as part of the voicing, and sometimes put it down on a different string on the same fret, or shift the whole shape a fret or two or up or down a string.  He did this on a few songs including Making Miles on an A major, Frozen Ocean on an E minor, and The Story Lies using a slightly more complicated pattern.  He showed me all these songs a long long time ago when I wasn’t very good at guitar.  Now I’m trying to reconstruct these patterns.

All of the Shade songs were recorded with a rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums, lead vocals and sometimes a second vocal track doing harmony.  I focused mainly on the rhythm guitar parts and started planing how I would do a record.

But then something unexpected happened. I found a recording of a project we did together, even before Shade, that I’d forgotten all about.  In January 1990 over winter break from college Martin and I made a little concept album.  At this time I was mainly doing my jazz fusion group Event Horizon (and had just written Son of the Sun around the same time), but hadn’t written very many rock or pop songs with lyrics.  Neither had Martin, but he wanted to try, and we dove right in.  We called the project Spellbound: In the Dead of Winter.  As with The Brothers Zing / Buzzy Tonic, we each contributed one name and never sorted out which was the name of the group and which was the name of the record.

The project had a definite wintertime vibe with lots of imagery of cold and darkness combined with youthful yearning for escape and adventure. The sound was very much influenced by bands like Pink Floyd, Camel, Supertramp, Styx, old Rush, Genesis and Yes, that kind of thing.  I’m not sure why, we were listening to alot of different stuff, and both of our songwriting went in other directions after that, but I guess the prog thing struck a chord at the time, so to speak.

The recording is pretty rough because we wrote and performed the songs very quickly.  I think we started planning and writing around Thanksgiving, and started rolling tape right after New Year.  We were done just a few weeks later.  We used using a borrowed cassette 4-track recorder. There’s no bass; I’m playing the bass lines with my left hand like The Doors.  The drums were added last, using a single microphone.  The mix is primitive, the sound quality isn’t great, and there are definitely a few clams cuz we had to do everything in whole takes with no punch-ins.  Still there are some great moments and I think the song themselves hold up quite well. 

So I’m making a new version of Spellbound: In the Dead of Winter, to record these songs properly.  It’s another situation where I have no reference to original material and I have to figure out the chords and lyrics by ear.  I don’t even know the names of all the songs!

Nevertheless, it’s coming along nicely.  The original record was a bit short of a regular LP.  We we had five songs, with the first being a two-part suite and the last a seventeen-minute multi-part prog epic, totaling about thirty-three minutes in all. I decided to add a couple more songs from around that time to round it out.  One is an early Shade song that fits the theme, and the other is an unfinished piece I originally wrote for my prog rock band Infinigon, which had broken up shortly before.

Since I don’t have to do much writing for this record, things are coming along pretty quickly.  I decided to the four shortest songs together in a batch.  Then I’ll do the two longer songs, and finally the big epic.  For the first batch I have the (midi) drums, bass guitar, keyboards and rhythm guitar parts done.  For the synth parts I dusted off some of my old gear including my Roland Juno, which has such great and distinctive sounds, and my rarely used Moog.  I have the vocals, lead guitar parts, and and a sax solo to go, plus mixing.  Oh, and I’m going to use real drums too. 

More on all of this as it progresses.  Stay tuned to hear the first batch of songs in the weeks ahead.

Sailing Away to Key Largo

We’re into the second half of winter now.  The days are starting to get a little bit longer and the sun is inching higher in the sky around midday.  Still, we’ve just had another good wallop of snow and we’re starting to think about our next ski trip and whether to combine it with visiting friends upstate. 

But that’s getting ahead of the story.  Jeannie and I took a nice break from the winter weather.  Took in some warmth and sunshine and got to rest and recharge.  Every year this feels like more of a necessity.  After maintaining complete focus on work and all my other tasks the entire month of January, I was ready for a break.

This year the destination was south Florida.  We flew out early on Saturday morning and got into Fort Lauderdale mid-morning.  Our first stop was Key Largo, and we were there on the seaside by lunchtime.  They upgraded our rental car to a BMW convertible roadster.  It was  a very powerful car and alot of fun, although we could only fit one carryon-sized suitcase in the trunk.  The rest went in the back seat, which was just as well because it was too small for passengers.

Anyway, we were at our hotel by lunchtime.  It was a charming, sleepy kind of place right on the ocean, with a garden and pool, and surrounded my mangrove forests.  Our room wasn’t ready yet when we arrived, but right next door was a beach bar and restaurant.  So we got a table outside and enjoyed some frozen drinks and yummy seafood dishes.  My favorite drink was made of bourbon and peaches and crushed ice, with jalapeño salt crusting the rim of the glass.  Ah, perfect.  Jeannie was enjoying Key Lime Coladas.  They had a guy singing and playing guitar, and it was only two or three songs before he played Margaritaville.

That afternoon we went on a boat cruise around the Florida Bay, out among the mangrove groves and sandy shallows covered with seagrass.  Saw some dolphins and lots of different kinds of birds, and an amazing sunset. Afterwards we went back to the restaurant next to our hotel for dinner.  One of the specials on the menu was a whole fresh caught snapper, complete with corn on the cob and taters and veggies.  It was yummy, but they should have warned us that it was sized for two people!  No matter, I ate half of it and we had the rest for lunch the next day.  That evening they had a full rock band, who were excellent, with strong vocal harmonies and great guitar player, and songs from bands like Santana and Sublime.  I had a dream about Martin that night, waiting for him to come home but he never showed up.  Very sad.

Sunday we went on a kayak trip out among the mangroves, up a channel into progressively smaller bays and inlets until we ended up in a swimming hole, which was lots of fun too.  Saw some sharks and more different kinds of birds.  That afternoon we put the top up on the car and drove all the way out to Key West on the water highway.  Got the car up to 100 mph on the seven mile bridge.  It was a long trip, almost two hours; Key West is closer to Havana than Miami. Key West is a cute little boating and tourist town, good for walking around in.  We went to the southernmost point in the continental U.S., visited the aquarium – sharks and sea turtles were the top attractions, watch the sun go down over the Gulf of Mexico, and had dinner in a place that used to be the original headquarters of Pan Am Airlines, which got its start in the 1920’s flying to Cuba and back.

Monday we visited the Everglades.  Took a boat tour around the swampy backwaters, saw lots of crocodiles and yet more birds, as well as lots of different kinds of mangrove trees and other plants.  We went on a couple hikes in different parts of the park with different ecosystems, including a knot of forest in a sea of marsh grass.  All in all a fascinating place, I dubbed it America’s ultimate swamp walk.

From there we drove back to Fort Lauderdale to spend some time at the beach.  We got to the hotel well after dark, but they had a tiki bar right out on the beach that was perfect for dinner and drinks.  Next day we spent the whole time lounging about, going back and forth between the ocean and the tiki bar, with a side trip to the pool.  Aaah, vacation!  That evening we went out the Benihana, which was just up the road, for Jeannie’s birthday.

Wednesday was our last day, and we had to check out of the hotel in the morning but our flight wasn’t until the evening.  So we decided to go check out Miami Beach.  Miami is a big city with lots of freeways, and the vibe is alot like the New Jersey turnpike.  But once we got there it was great for walking around, another beautiful sunny day.  South Beach, Ocean Boulevard, all the old fancy art deco hotels, even a little art gallery.  There’s the beach with a park and bike path, and a beautiful botanical gardens a little ways uptown. 

The flight home was smooth and uneventful. I feel like we’ve had a run of good luck flying the last few years.  No major mishaps in the last dozen flights.  Of course we came home into freezing rain turning to ice, and woke up the next morning with snow on the ground.

And I Will Draw the Chart

Ok, lots to talk about here with music.  Before I dive in, I’ll mention that the weather has gotten a bit warmer.  It’s still down in the 20’s at night, but it’s creeping up above freezing for a couple hours in the daytime and last week’s snow is beginning to disappear.  Still, I’m not going start biking again until the roads are clear and clean.

First off, my jazz group Spacecats has a show coming up on April 2nd at a place called Jazz on Main in Mount Kisco.  We’re hoping to build on the momentum of our last gig, add a bunch of new material and sharpen up the songs already in our repertoire.  More on this as the date draws closer.

One of the songs we’re working up these days is Son of the Sun.  This is a fairly long and complicated song with lots of changes in meter and open jamming sections linked up with thru-composed parts.  I feel really lucky and grateful that the Spacecats want to tackle such a challenging song, and in fact we’re gonna knock it out of the park.  But I needed a better chart than my old hand-written one to get the music across to the group.  My drummer Rick suggested I try an app called MuseScore, a notation package from the sam people who make Audible.  In the past I’ve used Finale, which I found hugely slow and cumbersome although hugely feature-rich, as well as things like the built-in notation for midi in ProTools, which I found quick but not very good.  MuseScore hits the sweet spot in the middle, rich and full featured enough for jazz charts, but pretty fast too.  It’s not tied to a midi sequence or performance (although you can import a midi file); the focus is a hundred percent on the notation, and you can do things like add repeats, fermatas, a D.S, or coda, hash marks for soloing over, and chord symbols.  This is a big step up from writing out charts by hand.  Hopefully now I can write out and teach my band a bunch more songs that I’d been afraid might be too much to try and notate.  So here I present to you my very first lead sheet made in MuseScore. Enjoy!

In the Dead of Winter

We finally got some snow over the weekend, and then it turned really cold the last few days: in the teens in the daytime and single digits at night.  Looks like the snow will stick around a while.  Of course this meant we got to go skiing for the first time this season.  We went Monday, which was a day for for me and Jeannie, and Michelle’s last day at home before going back to school.  We got up early before sunrise, went up for day and got home again sometime after sunset. It was a good time, and we all had a good days skiing after getting used to it the first runs.   The snow was mainly good, even great for the northeast, with just a little bit of icy patches here and there, easy enough to avoid.  Only trouble it was pretty crowded, and by mid afternoon there were alot of kids taking lessons zigzagging all over the place, so we decided to call it day.  All in all we skied ten runs, over four hours.  Next time Jeannie and I are gonna play hooky from work and go up when the kids are all in school.

All our wintertime projects are coming along.  Maintaining good health and good focus.  I finished a major chunk of cleaning out my studio over the weekend, clearing the way for new origami and other projects (more on that later). Only downside is Michelle went back to school before we had a chance to watch Return of the King.  The Bills are in the playoffs and have advanced to the ACF Championship (once again against the Chiefs, after beating the Ravens in an intense, high-drama matchup), so that’s cutting into our TV time.  Ah well, I guess there’s spring break.

Aside: my friend Robert Lang, one of the most accomplished and creative origami artists of all time, lost both his house and his studio in the recent fires in L.A., including a lifetime of literally priceless artwork (much of it has been exhibited at galleries all over the world), all of his tools and his supply of high-end origami paper (I read that Michael LaFosse is coming out of retirement to make a new batch of origamido paper just for him.) and literally everything else except his pets and one origami cuckoo clock.  My heart goes out to him and his wife.  Amazingly, Robert seems pretty upbeat for the situation, or at least resilient and determined to get thru the current tragedy and rebuild.

Back here where things are more stable, our D&D campaign continues. True to their chaotic neutral alignments, the party decided to open a half-dozen doors at once at the end of the last session, revealing a captive dragon and whole host of goblins.  Next session should be fun.  I hope they figure out a way to get the dragon to attack the goblins, or that they can run fast.  Also they’re on the verge of having enough XP for second level.

I’m also helping Charlie set up a Minecraft server on Martin’s linux box in the cloud.  It turns out this is not exactly straightforward, since he wants a modded version, but we’ve made some good progress, and we’ll probably get there soon.

Most of the rest of the stuff I want to talk about has to do with music, and I think I’ll cover that in a separate post.

In the Year Twenty-Five Twenty-Five

The new year has arrived and we’re settling into the winter routine. I’m feeling pretty good for this time of year, I guess I finally found the right combination of vitamin D, activity and rest. I’m working out at full weight, and actually went out biking five days in a row last week in a spell of mild weather. I used to think fifty degrees was about as cold as I’d feel comfortable riding, but I got some gloves and a warmer base layer and now I’m good down into the forties. Today it was thirty-five when I got up and I thought I’d try that, but by mid-morning it started snowing and the temperature dropped. Ah well, maybe that means we can go skiing soon!

We also got out ice skating this weekend, which was fun except for the rink was rather crowded and people were skating in all directions, making collision avoidance a nonstop concern, with very few chances to get up to a good speed. We’re gonna check out the other rinks around here to see what they’re like. In other fitness news, Jeannie has decided she wants to run a 7k race in April and asked me if I wanted to join her. So we’re gonna figure out how to start training for that.

I’m back to work and off to a good start. Meanwhile at home I’m trying to beat back a long list of random tasks and new project, after slacking off for the holidays. Making steady progress and checking things off one by one. A big one we need to do a big round of organizing the house and throwing things away. This was set into motion when Jeannie asked me to into my closet and pull out some old legos for her to used in the toyland town she set up neat the Christmas tree. Things got jumbled up and there was no way to put everything back and make it fit, so there you go. One thing leads to another since we only have so much closet space.

As is tradition, we’re watching The Lord of the Rings movies again. I’m also re-reading the books, which I haven’t done since the aughts (I used to read it once per decade, but skipped the teens cuz I was busy). This time around I’m appreciating how much the filmmakers actually drew from the book in terms of dialogue and plot details, even if things were generally sharpened up and condensed for the movie. Also remembering how much lore and backstory there is, and how many songs in the book that got cut. So far my favorite was the one Frodo sings at the inn in Bree, an epic retelling of the classic Hey Diddle Diddle.

Also deep into some new music projects. More on that soon, I swear, but it will take more than one post to explain it all.

Oh What Fun to Ride and Sing a Slaying Song Tonight

We’re in the midst of a long and languid holiday break.  I’ve been off work for a whole week and a day, and don’t go back until Thursday.  I finished off work on a high note, having successfully merged my R&D branch of the codebase back into the main branch, deployed it and all.  The project is turning the corner from R&D into productization, always a fun part of the curve.  Also lots of planning meetings for big ambitious new features and new R&D threads in the coming year.  After a long uphill slog into strong headwinds I now feel that the tide has turned, the wind is at our backs and filling our sail, and we’re gaining momentum as we cruise downhill.

Michelle came home from school a week before Christmas, and Lizzy a few days later along with Josh.  We even got snow a couple times and it remained cold enough for the snow to stick around for a white Christmas.  We did Jeannie’s family party the Saturday before Christmas, and went to Mary’s on Christmas day.  In between was lots of food and drink, movies and games, music, wrapping presents, opening presents, hanging out and getting things done at a relaxed pace.

We’re shaping up for a new release of the Global Jukebox in the new year.  Nick has come up to speed as my new second software engineer, which is great.  I still miss Martin whenever I work on the jukebox.  He wrote so much amazing code and did so much of the devops stuff too.  I’m always inside his thoughts and mind when I read thru the code.  Anyway, Nick is now filling that role and bringing his own approach and perspective.  The major new feature we’ve been working on converting the existing Cantometric codings for all the songs to a new simplified schema, to make it easier to train new coders and to eliminate some ambiguities in the original system.  Nick wrote the script to do the conversion, which required understanding alot of domain knowledge as well as the architecture of the web application.  Meanwhile I created the spec for the new schema and did all the UI and UX work on the client side.  Now it’s all on the staging server and we’re looking at finishing off some P2 features to get into the next release.

I bought a drum mic kit as a present to myself.  It’s bundle of eight microphones for all the different drums plus overheads, along with stands and cables.  I’ve decided I want to use more real drums on my next record (more on that soon) and so it’s essential to be able to mic it up.  Next step is to get it all set up and learn how to use it.  Oh, and I’m going to upgrade to a 16-input preamp/DAC unit as well.

Oh, and Jeannie got a Nintendo Switch, so I’m gonna get some games for that too!

We went up to Buffalo for a few days after Christmas.  They had a ton of snow when we arrived, but while we were up there it got warm and started to melt. Kathleen and the kids came up too.  It was a little sad because we all felt Martin’s absence, but we also felt his presence. There was coming together and healing energy, and it was good to see everyone.  I’ve been trying to bond with the kids and get closer to them.  I took them out for a long walk around the neighborhood one morning to the park and the lake and all the local playgrounds.  Played some chess with Match and Abbie. We also had dinner with Larry and Jackie and place in Allentown called Mother’s which was really good.  To top it all off, the Bills demolished the Jets on Sunday.  Looking good for the playoffs.

I’ve started a D&D campaign with Martin’s kids as a fun way to try and be a presence in their lives.  We’ve had three sessions so far over the last three weeks.  The first week we rolled up characters, the second we did a warm-up wilderness encounter en route the the start of the main adventure, and this last weekend the party got the the base town, met some of the locals, stocked up on provisions and all that, and set out for the ruins of the Sunless Citadel, where the adventure begins in earnest.  They climbed down into a ravine and are now at the front door of the main dungeon (where a trap awaits, unbeknownst to them).  The party consists of the three oldest kids, Charlie, Matthew and Abbie, as well as their cousin Rylee, all aged 12 to 16.  Also joining in are Michelle and Jeannie.  It’s a good mix of races, classes and alignments.  Rylee is and Elfin Fighter, and Charlie and Elfin Ranger.  Match is a Dwarven Barbarian, and Abbie a Gnomish Bard who rides around on a giant rabbit.  Michelle is playing a Halfling Cleric and Jeannie a human Sorceress.  I’m DM’ing, which is something I really enjoy.  Everyone is first level, and their alignments are centered on chaotic neutral, which fits with their general attitude. 

We’re using a combination of software.  It’s amazing how all this stuff has advanced since I first started playing D&D online twenty years ago with Nick.  We’re using google meet for the video conference.  This mostly works great by the call only lasts and hour, so I have to start a new meeting halfway thru.  We’re using DND Beyond for the character sheets, stats, and related stuff like spells, weapons, bonuses, modifiers, and hit points.  And we’re using Owlbear Rodeo for maps and combat.  All free apps that run in the browser, very convenient. 

So far it’s lots of fun, and good to be able to spend time with everyone in a casual, semi-structured way.  They’re all definitely enjoying it.  My plan is to keep it going thru the winter at least, and maybe longer if everyone remains into it. 

Be of Good Cheer

Well this is my last week of work before a well-deserved break for the holidays.  I’m trying to lean in to the spirit of the season this year, even though we haven’t gotten any snow down here.  The most snow I’ve seen was at the Bills game a couple weeks back.  Tons of fun.

We put up our tree a week ago, and started listening to lots of Christmas music.  I’ve discovered all the great jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald have Christmas music that’s much better than your typical pop radio fare.  I guess the big problem with Christmas music is there’s only 50 or maybe 100 songs, so it gets repetitive fast.  We watched the movie Elf, as well as The Hogfather, neither of which I’d seen before, but were recommend by Kathleen and her kids.  Both fun and charming in completely opposite ways.

I should mention the Origami USA holiday tree at the American Museum of Natural History, since I contributed some Flying Fish models to it this year. Go check it out if you haven’t yet! https://origamiusa.org/holidaytree/2024

I also saw not one but two rock shows in Brooklyn over the last week, at a venue call the Kings Theatre, which I’d never been to before.  It’s a big, beautiful, ornate, overwrought art-deco kind of place, similar to the Beacon in Manhattan.  I guess it’s been completely restored recently and now they’re having cool acts play there.  Predictably, drinks are way overpriced.

The first show was Beat, a King Crimson isotope featuring Adrian Belew and Tony Levin from the original lineup, along with Danny Carey from Tool on drums, and Steve Vai on guitar.  They did 80’s Discipline-era Crimso, and in fact played most of the three classic albums that Belew and Levin made with Bill Bruford and Robert Fripp.  The show was most excellent.  The band was tight and energetic and really delivered new interpretations of the material.  Probably the most interesting thing was how Steve Vai, legendary guitar shredder that he is, sort of pointed up the amazing complexity and difficulty of Fripp’s original parts.  Vai covered some parts exactly, and interpreted others; he did alot of stuff tapping that Fripp originally did picking, and skipped some of Fripp’s parts entirely, such as the intro/bridge to Frame by Frame.  On the other hand, Vai was able to impart a bit of a slinky greazy bluesy feel to Fripp’s very mechanical-sounding parts, and that lifted everything.  His solo on Sheltering Sky was one of the high points of the night.

Less than a week later we were back to see Brooklyn’s own They Might Be Giants.  Their music is also pretty complicated, but the vibe is complete opposite, being wacky humor rather than wacky seriousness.  Needless to say the show was alot fun, with a horn section and lots of moments showcasing all the players.  I realized the song Particle Man perfectly describes the graphic novel Watchmen, whether by coincidence or by design.  Dr. Manhattan is Particle Man, Ozymandias is Triangle Man, and Rorschach is Person Man.  Small world, go figure.

Next up: D&D