Category: Music

Net Gain

Last night the Left Hook played a return engagement at Fisherman’s Net in Pelham. It was a really excellent show, good crowd, and the sound keeps getting better and better. This was also Gus’s return to gigging out after he broke his arm. He’s been getting stronger every week at rehearsal, but the show is three full hour long sets. And to make matters worse he missed the last practice before the show cuz he was sick with food poisoning. Bad gyro, poor guy. Ah well he rose to the occasion.

We added six new songs to the set: Fire by Jimi Hendrix with Gary on lead vocal, Right Place Wrong Time by Doctor John (whose lyric is the origin of the phrase Brain Salad Surgery, BTW), Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson, Drive My Car from The Beatles, Rock’n’Roll Stew by Traffic, and Kid Charlemagne by Steely Dan with me singing lead vocals. All of them are winners and keepers. We got a few compliments specifically on the Dan number, which is good because we had been doing Pretzel Logic earlier, but decided to drop it cuz we thought it wasn’t going over well. Now we know for sure we can really kick a Steely Dan song. Bodhisattva here we come!

The second set in particular seemed on fire from start to finish. A good roster of songs, well performed, good energy flow, crowd engaged singing and clapping along, even getting up to dance. I think my singing was really on last night too. The first set was good overall too, but had a few minor clams as were still getting warmed up. The third set is better than it’s been, mostly strong, but that’s where we put the tunes that aren’t as well rehearsed or we’re considering dropping. Last night we made it most of the way thru okay. In the Midnight Hour and Mustang Sally were a bit rough; we hadn’t rehearsed them since the last show. Guess they’re first on the list this week.

Audio and video coming soon. Meanwhile be sure to come out and see us at the River Roadhouse in Hastings next Saturday. Sure to be better still!

Back in the Saddle Again

For the last few weeks Left Hook has been rehearsing with Gus on electronic drums while his arm heals. And while individually the drum sounds sound, well, electronic, when he’s playing and the band is goovin’ it sounds just fine. This last week Gus went back to playing a real kit, and man it just sounds so much better. All the time we spent during the hiatus working on parts and dynamics seems to have really paid off.

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to book us more gigs. I’ve visited a half dozen or so local bars and dropped off a CD and got the name of the guy who books bands. Unfortunately these guys tend to be hard to get a hold of, so I’m running down the list calling ‘em back every few days. So far no luck, I figure sooner or later one has to pan out.

Also been getting back to the studio in recent weeks. I have two current work-in-progress originals, Soul on Fire and To Be a Rock. I spent the last couple sessions cleaning up the rhythm section and editing up the vocals to make a complete basic track. Fro SoF I was happy to hear the vocal performance I laid down back in the spring was really killer. For TBaR not so much, so I laid down a new lead vocal over the weekend. This song has some vocal harmonies, layers and counterpoint, with a big build toward the end. I don’t know if I have everything I need for that, cuz toward the end I just sketched in the parts, but I might.

Endless Summer Slacking

I just got back from a fun and relaxing camping trip. Perfect weather, lots of jamming on guitars, canoeing, swimming in the lake, cooking of fire, just great. Back home again now, doing all kinds of stuff. Since Labor Day is late this year it feels like we get an extra week of summer. Still one more week until the kids go back to school.

Some happy news! Gus back playing the drums again and the Left Hook is back in full swing. We’ve had a couple rehearsals at my house now, with him on his electronic kit. Good to have the group jamming once more. Going back to the studio and real drums next week. In our hiatus the rest of band spent our time working on arrangements and vocal harmonies, so the level of playing is increasing. We also added five or six new songs to the set. We’re actively working on bookings gigs now. We have a bunch of irons in the fire, and one confirmed date – our triumphant return to the Fisherman’s Net in October. More on that as the time grows near.

I’ve integrated the bench press into my workout. This enabled me to drop some other exercises so the total length of the workout remains the same. I’ve been going up in weight rather conservatively, but I’m up to 200 pounds now, in two sets of eight reps each. I can feel it more in my elbows and my ribs than anywhere else. I’m also up to 8 pullups.

Meanwhile, a couple weeks ago I got a call from Google, trying to recruit me as a software engineer. I passed level one with the recruiter, and it was onto level two, a tech interview over the phone. They sent me a packet with stuff to prepare. Man that company has alot of attitude, alot of hubris, but not very, um, mature. Seem to take it for granted you’ll be absolutely gobsmacked knocked out that they want to talk to you. Selling points include “we have an ice cream truck on the 8th floor of our office!” Then on the topic of how to dress they say “dress however you feel comfortable, but remember hygiene is important.”

They had some advice on what you’d need to know, so I spent a week studying up on all kinds of stuff I haven’t really used much since college: directed and undirected graphs, binary search trees, heaps and stacks and hashes, matrix math, sorting algorithms, big-O notation, and a bunch of more general stuff on Java language and systems architecture. Google must be hiring alot right now because twice that week I came across someone’s post for a Google tech interview cheat sheet. I made my own notes, but they’re so dense it wouldn’t make sense to anyone but me. In the process I came across a good approach for representing the state of a piece of folded paper if ever get back to working on Foldinator.

The day before the camping trip the interview came, and they didn’t ask me about any of that stuff. Instead the topic was serialization/deserialization. The format is they ask you to write a program off the top of your head, and as you go they put in more requirements. I did well, solved the problem and had a good discussion and all. But was I knock-your-socks-off awesome enough for Google? I guess we’ll see; they’re supposed to let me know in a week or so if I advance to round three. It sounds like that’s more of the same, but on site and with five back-to-back sessions in a row.

RUSH in the Garden

I saw Rush at Madison Square Garden last night. I swear they just keep better and better. This is the first time I’ve seen them in the Garden and it might’ve been the best Rush show yet. And that’s saying a lot. First time I saw them was back in the Moving Pictures era, and they’re the only band I’ve seen more than the Dead (and its isotopes).

Rush played for over three hours in two sets. The opener was a 10-minute-plus suite of songs from Clockwork Angels. From there it was into some more of their recent songs. The first 45 minutes was all 21st century schizoid heavy metal. After a while it became clear that they were working their way backward thru their discography. By an hour they were up to Roll the Bones. They skipped a good deal of their late 80’s and early 90’s synth era stuff, but that’s okay cuz they covered a lot of it last tour with a string section, to great effect. They did a few songs off Grace Under Pressure and Signals, including Losing It, with a guest violinist (an alumni of the Clockwork Angels String ensemble). Closed the first set with Subdivisions.

That left the second set to focus on their Moving Pictures and earlier stuff. They played quite a few songs I’d never heard them do live before (in addition to One Little Victory and Losing It in the first set.) The first big surprise was Jacob’s Ladder off Permanent Waves. Then they did a good chunk of the 20-minute epic Hemispheres, segueing into Cygnus X-1 from A Farewell to Kings. (They skipped La Villa Strangiato but I guess that’s okay cuz they did that 2 tours ago.) Then came a complete version Xanadu, with Alex on the doubleneck Gibson 6- and 12-string, and Geddy on the doubleneck Rik combo bass and guitar. This was followed up by condensed version of 2112, beyond just the overture and Temples of Syrinx, but skipping some of the slow bits in the middle. Like the Hemispheres/Cygnus medley and the opener, it was more than just a highlight and it held together compositionally as a complete extended work.

Going back even further, the first encore was Lakeside Park, and then into Anthem. From there it was What You’re Doing of course and closing with Working Man. My only disappointment was they skipped By-Tor and the Snow Dog, which is perhaps my all-time fave.

Needless to say, the playing was first rate. All of them were on. Lots of amazing basswork by Geddy, and Alex just shined on guitar. I think Neil Peart has made up new parts, or at least or new interpretations of a lot of the old stuff. Or maybe he was just improvising and still that tight. Either way, he had a whole different kit for the second set, apparently a replica of his (or the original) kit from back in the day. Meanwhile Geddy has updated and streamlined his synth rig considerably over the years, and Alex is singing backup these days. Both Geddy and Alex changed their axes so often I doubt either of them used the same instrument for more than two songs the whole show. Seeing them trot out the ‘ol doublenecks, and Neil’s tubular bells, for Xanadu was particularly fun. (I guess Alex’s must be new; the story was his old one was stepped on by a circus elephant baskstage at Maple Leaf Gardens in the 80’s and they haven’t performed that number live since.)

Anyway, I was blown away by the whole thing, and Neil’s playing in particular. The light, laser, video and pyrotechnic show was amazing too. One number the whole stage was in flames. It was actually scary. My only criticism is the acoustics in the Garden smeared the upper treble so you couldn’t always here the guitar clearly.

The rumor is that this their last tour. I sure hope that turns out not to be the case.

Left Hook Videos, Part II

I created a bunch of videos for the Dudley’s gig, including some new medleys and some whole songs: Domino, Hold On I’m Coming/Soul Man, Knock on Wood/Get Ready, In the Midnight Hour/Mustang Sally, and Them Changes/I Got You. Looks like a heavy concentration on the soul side of the set. Have to balance it out with more rockers next time. Meanwhile here’s the link:

http://zingman.com/music/lefthook/vids/dudleys1505/

There’s a pretty good amount of overlap between these and the FN set, so the next step is decide which ones we want to link on the web site. Coming soon. Also I’ve started making a CD from the show so we can use it as a tool to book more gigs. Onwards and upwards!

Left Hook Videos, Part I

I put a whole bunch of videos from the Left Hook show at Fisherman’s Net back in April. I was using a new camera and new editing software so it took a little while, but now you can go and check it out:

http://zingman.com/music/lefthook/vids/fnet1504

I made six medleys of some high points of the show. Each one is about two minutes long, with about four songs. I also put up four whole songs: I Got You (I Feel Good), Them Changes, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, and Drift Away. For each there’s three renditions: BBH is broadband high, BBL is broadband low, and Cel is for cel phones and mobile devices. Down the line I’m gonna set up a page to serve the right one automatically.

Next up I’m gonna go thru the video for the Dudley’s show and post some footage from that. Meanwhile, here’s some pictures from the Dudley’s gig:

http://zingman.com/music/lefthook/pics/dudleys1505/

This time we even got some shots of our drummer Gus!