Music – Page 6 – Zing Blog 2

77 from the 70’s

We finally had a weekend at home after all that travel. The weather is hot and sunny. Back to yardwork, backyard barbecues and making fires in the fire pit. Running the sprinkler most every day. Last Sunday Jeannie and I did a long bike ride on the South County Trailway, from Yonkers up to Ardsley and back. Very nice, wooded, flat and smooth.

Around this time last year I created a playlist of 80 Favorite Songs from the 80’s to enjoy while hanging out in the yard. Last weekend two of my neighbors were playing competing classic rock playlists, which inspired me to create a playlist of 77 Favorite Songs from the 70’s. It turned out the be pretty interesting. It’s organized more or less chronologically, which helps to see how trends come and go, and some juxtapositions of different things around the same time. I limited it to one song per artist, and since it was the era of long songs, I excluded full-album-side multi-song suites, or parts thereof.

The early part is dominated by album rock, including early prog, with lots to 7- or even 10-minutes songs. The middle part is thinner, and a bit of a transitional period, with a pretty deep foray into jazz fusion. Toward the end there’s a lot going on again, as funk and disco emerge, as well as new wave and a variety of other styles. Even though this playlist has fewer songs than my 80’s one, its about an hour and a half longer. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1StgmZvDHuG35B2FeOAepZ?si=f56fa40375f04cff

1. Woodstock – Crosby Stills Nash and Young (1970)
2. Wah-Wah – George Harrison
3. American Pie – Don McClean
4. War Pigs – Black Sabbath
5. Child In Time – Deep Purple
6. Take a Pebble – Emerson Lake and Palmer
7. Miles Runs the Voodoo Down – Mile Davis
8. Fire and Rain – Blood Sweat and Tears
9. Box of Rain – The Grateful Dead
10. I’m Your Captain / Closer to Home – Grand Funk Railroad
11. Layla – Derek and the Dominos

12. Superstar – The Carpenters (1971)
13. L.A. Woman – The Doors
14. The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys – Traffic
15. Can’t You Hear Me Knocking? – The Rolling Stones
16. When the Levee Breaks – Led Zeppelin
17. Heart of the Sunrise – Yes
18. Wind-Up – Jethro Tull

19. Watcher of the Skies – Genesis (1972)
20. A Hit by Varèse – Chicago
21. School’s Out – Alice Cooper
22. Summer Breeze – Seals and Croft
23. Ziggy Stardust – David Bowie

24. Undun – The Guess Who (1973)
25. Jessica – The Allman Brothers Band
26. Rosalita – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
27. The Great Gig in the Sky – Pink Floyd
28. The Real Me – The Who
29. What is Hip? – Tower of Power
30. Watermelon Man – The Head Hunters
31. Spain – Return to Forever
32. Birds of Fire – Mahavishnu Orchestra
33. Frankenstein – Edgar Winter
34. Right Place Wrong Time – Dr. John

35. Back Home Again – John Denver (1974)
36. Crime of the Century – Supertramp
37. Apostrophe (‘) – Frank Zappa
38. Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Pt 1. – King Crimson
39. Whatever Gets You Through the Night – John Lennon

40. Band on the Run – Paul McCartney (1975)
41. I’m In Love With My Car – Queen
42. Never Been Any Reason – Head East
43. By-Tor and the Snow Dog – Rush
44. Some Skunk Funk – The Brecker Bros.

45. Give Up the Funk – Parliament (1976)
46. The Boys are Back in Town – Thin Lizzy
47. (Don’t Fear) The Reaper – Blue Öyster Cult
48. Peace of Mind – Boston
49. Carry On Wayward Son – Kansas
50. Song Within a Song – Camel
51. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald – Gordon Lightfoot
52. Miami 2017 – Billy Joel
53. Magic Man – Heart
54. Dancing Queen – ABBA

55. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap – AC/DC (1977)
56. Threshold / Jet Airliner – Steve Miller Band
57. Aja – Steely Dan
58. Contusion – Stevie Wonder
59. Solsbury Hill – Peter Gabriel
60. Slip Slidin’ Away – Paul Simon
61. Watching the Detectives – Elvis Costello
62. Three Little Birds – Bob Marley
63. Paradise by the Dashboard Light – Meat Loaf
64. You Make Loving Fun – Fleetwood Mac
65. Feels So Good – Chuck Mangione

66. Boogie Oogie Oogie – A Taste of Honey (1978)
67. Shadow Dancing – Andy Gibb
68. Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? – Rod Stewart
69. Mister Blue Sky – Electric Light Orchestra
70. Life’s Been Good – Joe Walsh
71. In the Dead of Night – U.K.
72. Runnin’ with the Devil – Van Halen
73. Walking on the Moon – The Police

74. Can You Picture That? – Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem (1979)
75. The Devil Went Down to Georgia – Charlie Daniels Band
76. Funkytown – Lipps, Inc.
77. Rapper’s Delight – Sugar Hill Gang

The Analog Kid

More summer, more busy these days. The weather has been beautiful. One night last weekend we built a fire in our fire pit and hung out on the patio and considered what song we might use to break Vecna’s curse. Last summer I made a playlist of 80 favorite 80’s songs, and now I’m thinking of making a new playlist of 77 favorite 70’s songs for this summer.

I edited up some highlight form the the Spacecats gig. I’m going to update my web site soon to feature of few of the best ones, but for now, you can see the whole set here:

zingman.com/music/spacecats/video/spacecats_altmed2206/

I got out for a bike ride five days last week. I mostly go around our neighborhood, which is kinda hilly and some streets have alot of cars. Sometimes to a local place called Nature Study Woods, which is mountain biking trails, and not particularly well maintained. The steep parts tend to be washed out and stony, and the low spots muddy. Also I tend to go on fairly short rides – a half hour to an hour, and usually go as fast as possible.

All in all Jeannie doesn’t enjoy this style of riding, but we wanted to start doing some biking together.

So on Sunday Jeannie took our bikes out to Jones Beach and biked along the scenic Ocean Parkway Coastal Greenway. It’s a great bike path, smooth and flat, that runs the length of the island, out from the main beach, through as series of smaller beaches, saltwater wildlife refuges, and the occasional marina, restaurant or bar. We went out a little over seven miles then turned around, for a total of fifteen miles or so. On the way back there was a pretty consistent headwind, but it was a very doable and fun ride. We had a lunch of ice cream and clam strips, then went out to the beach, but it was too cold for swimming. The water was unusually calm and there were lots of seashells. Also tons of giant container ships out at see, queued up to get into New York harbor, like I’ve never seen before. There’s usually maybe two or three, but this time there was over a dozen.

I also got the mustang on the road over the weekend, and continued with the yardwork. This time is was doing the edging on the driveway and front walk. Still to go is the walk around the back of the house, and the patio. It seems everything has grown in quite alot this spring, and needs an extra level of cutting back. Also I’ve never seen so many bunny rabbits and chipmunks in our neighborhood, nor heard so many songbirds.

Lastly, I’m continuing with doing origami and preparing for the convention, which starts this Friday. My two dodecahedron star balls are nearly complete, but it’s taking some work to finish them. They’re single-sheet polyhedra, a very advance form of origami, and closing off and locking the bottom where the edges come together is a nontrivial design challenge. I’ve also been experimenting with a new design called the Space Cat, a variation on my Sophie the Cat, with a midcentury modern look and proportions. Hopefully will get there and have a few new pieces for my exhibit.

Meanwhile, I’m teaching a couple classes, and agreed to pre-record them for people who are attending the convention remotely. This process grew out of last year’s online-only convention, in which all classes were taught live as Zoom calls. This year we’re recording Zoom sessions, with a camera pointing down at the work as it’s being folded. I kind of view this a run-thru, a rehearsal for the real class, and good opportunity to make sure I know the model and can teach it. My first class, Sophie the Cat, went off without a hitch, totally great. For my second class my Five-Banded Armadillo, I somehow skipped a stepped and messed of the proportions of the bands, which are created by pleating. I realized my mistake after I did the collapse and it was too late to undo, so I had to just roll with it and adjust the proportions as I finished the model. All in all it still turned out in the end, and I’m sure to get it right in the actual class.

I Hear a Rhapsody

Well, Spacecats had our first gig Saturday night, at the Alternative Medicine Brewing Company in Mount Vernon. It went really well. The band sounded great. The crowd dug us, and the owner wants to have us back, and is talking about putting together a regular jazz night.

The room itself is pretty big, although half of it, behind the band, is where they brew the beer, and the other half, out in front is the bar. So the acoustics were good, with a large, boomy reverb. The bar provided a PA, which was very nice and saved us alot of trouble hauling and setting up our own.

We did a combination of jazz and funk, standards, originals, and interpretations of rock and pop songs. I was definitely happy with my playing, and the sound of the group, and everything musically. We really came together as a band, focused and leveled up the last few weeks.

We played two sets of just about an hour each. Here’s the set list.

Buzzy Blue (Szinger)
All the Things You Are
Mister Magic
Heavy Skies (Szinger)
I Hear a Rhapsody
Walking on the Moon
Pour Me a Fifth (Duetchman)
Some Skunk Funk
Peg

Dr. Pluto (Szinger)
Sunny
Minority
Atonement Blues (Szinger)
Havona
Dolphin Dance
Lift Off (Szinger)
Cape Verdean Blues
You Can’t Get What You Want (‘Till You Know What You Want)

Some of these originals I played in previous bands, altough the arrangement and sound have been updated. Dr. Pluto is all-new, a funk jam written for this group based around a bluesy bass line, which Ken plays with a wah-wah effect. Pour Me a Fifth is also new, a jazz waltz by our piano player Josh.

Watch this space for audio and video clips from the show, coming soon.

…

In other news, I finally finished trimming the hedges over the weekend. All in all it took five sessions over three weekends. This last one was all up on the ladder, including getting low-hanging boughs from the neighbor’s willow tree. Now we’re done for a while, but next it’s on to weeding and edging.

And, it’s origami crunch time. I’m trying to finish a few original models before the convention. This week it’s dodecahedron star balls. Watch this space for pics, coming soon.

Spacecats II

Life continues to be busy on a bunch of fronts. First, check the new poster and web page for my band Spacecats.

https://zingman.com/music/spacecats.php

So let’s see. I guess project dirt was completed a while ago and the new grass is well on its way to being grown in at this point. I’ve been mowing the lawn for several weeks now. We even did the first round of weeding, planting in the garden, and putting down mulch under the hedges. Next job will be trimming.

A couple weeks back I got up on a ladder to unclog the downspout of my gutter in one corner of my job. I used to have to get up there and clean out my gutters every year or so, when there were hundred-foot-tall trees all around my house. But one by one the trees got cut down and I didn’t have to do it for several years. This time instead of leaves and sticks, it was beads of whatever our roof shingles are made of. We got a new roof put on a couple years back, same time we installed our solar panels, and some of the material has worn off with the weather. Of all the jobs I do, this is the one I dislike the most, because of the potential danger of falling off the ladder twenty feet up. So far I’ve been careful and never met with any harm but you never know. Next time I’ll probably hire someone.

Now that the yardwork situation is under control, I’ve been trying to move forward with project furniture. I want to get a good armchair for the living room to replace the awful recliner we have, and a new coffee table and end tables, plus a new sectional sofa for the family room, and maybe and entertainment center too. By the end of the year, if possible. We started thinking about this at the beginning of the pandemic, but it turns out to be a kinda complicated research project, and there’s always something else to do, and every time we find something we think we like, it turns our to backordered for months. Nevertheless, it’s getting to the point where our kids have nicer furniture than us. So it’s time to get moving.

As the weather has been getting nicer, Jeannie and I have been spending more time outdoors. We’ve gone for a couple hikes, mostly at local places like Saxon Woods. I’ve also been getting on my bike alot more, averaging about three times a week this spring, and my strength, speed and endurance are increasing. My typical ride is pretty short, less than an hour, but the neighborhood is kinda hilly. My main ride these days is a loop into downtown Bronxville, then thru Chester Heights and back home. Also went to the Nature Study Woods once, but mostly it’s been too muddy cuz of the rain.

I’ve gotten the Mustang out on the road a few times. Even had to put a tankful of gas in it yesterday. So far it’s been running great. I want to get new tires put on it this spring. The tires I have are the ones from when I bought the car in 1997!

In the software realm, I’ve been working on several thing. One of which is the Origami USA convention scheduling tool. If you recall, I’m on the OUSA convention and web committees, as the person who creates the schedule of classes and events, and the one who writes the software to make that task easier. The last few years we haven’t had any in-person conventions. Last year we had a zoom convention, and I did the schedule for that. Along the way, I discarded the existing scheduling tool, basically a bunch of macros for MS Access, and wrote a web application in Drupal/PHP that integrates with the main web site and other tools. This year I enhanced the functionality in a few ways. First, I created a workflow to reschedule a class without having to first unschedule it then schedule it again. Second I added the capacity to sort the classes by name, to make it easier to find them. On the roadmap is the ability to sort and filter by a number of parameters including the class name, the teacher name, the class type, level of complexity, number of periods, etc. But Drupal and PHP are a serious pain to work with, so I’ll save these enhancements for a future convention.

Meanwhile I have a little over a month to get some new models completed, get and exhibit together and decide what to teach. I have a big pile of half-finished models and an even bigger backlog of ideas. But for the zoom conventions don’t really inspire me and I haven’t been doing that much folding lately. Luckily, this year’s convention is live and in person, at the Sheraton Hotel in NYC, the third weekend in June (I think). Should be alot of fun to reconnect with my origami friends, and hopefully I’ll have a bunch of cool new models.

Been working hard at my new consulting gig at Consumer Reports R&D Lab. Hard to believe I’ve been there three months already. They’ve just extended my contract to the end of the year, which is good news. My group is involved in this thing called the Digital Rights Protocol, which is designed to make it easier for consumers to exercise their rights to opt out of online data collection, tracking, etc., and easier for companies to comply with requests around these rights. We lead a consortium of startups involved in the internet privacy business, and last week we had the first end-to-end test of the Protocol with partners in various roles. Meanwhile Consumer reports is involved in several business-oriented capacities as well, so I am building a reference implementation of the DRP to live in our application ecosystem and provide a touchstone to our partners. Anyway, the end-to-end test was a big success, and now we’re planning out the next phase of development.

Meanwhile at my other big client, The Global Jukebox, we’re getting ready to roll out a new release to Live. This one has a new backend and a cutover to a new server, to get rid of a bunch of old headaches. Everything is all tested and ready to roll. All that remains now is to switch over the DNS server.

Lastly, my music projects proceed apace. Mary came over and laid down the vocal track for My Ol’ Breakdown Truck a week or so ago, and it came out great. Afterwards we went out for Mexican food. Now I have three songs mostly done, with the vocals, bass and guitar tracked and mixed. All that remains is the fine-tune the drum parts, and add a little keyboards and sax to fill things out. Also, Elixr – 2022 Remaster is vary much almost done; all that remains is one final listening back.

Now that my Thursday band has a name and a gig, the music has been rising to the occasion and getting more intense. Today we had a rehearsal where we really drilled down on some of the finer points of some of our songs, to really master the arrangements and make them our own.

Meanwhile, I’ve noticed my Selmer Reference ’54 tenor sax, which I was so in love with, seems to have developed a leak somewhere, so the notes below low D don’t sound clearly and require alot of force to sound at all. Plus one of the mounting posts on the low C keyguard has come loose. So I need to find a new sax repair guy. The guy I’d been using for year – Virgil Scott – was up on Yonkers, only 10 minutes from my house. Sadly, he died of covid during the pandemic. My new guy is great, he’s out in Connecticut up new Massachusetts, almost two hour from here. So I need to find someone local.

For the time being I’ve switched back to playing my Selmer Mark VII, which I had worked on last summer. The low notes are clear and effortless, but best of all, I had the action set up, which it turns out makes a huge difference on tunes like Some Skunk Funk. I’d been struggling with playing that fast and cleanly on my other horn, and now the notes just roll right off. On the downside, I have to get used to this horn’s intonation again. And even worse, I’d been busting my ass to get good on the altissimo range on the tenor, and could get all the way up to the second high D, and play riffs up there. I was developing some real chops. On this horn, the embouchure required is completely different, so I’m back to square one.

Spacecats

My jazz and funk group has a name now. It’s Spacecats.

We’ll be playing Saturday June 11, and Alternative Medicine Brewing Company in Mount Vernon, at 7pm. More info as the date draws nearer, plus a poster and stuff. Meanwhile, here’s our blurb:

Spacecats

Spacecats is a jazz and funk quartet featuring sax, piano/synth, bass and drums. The group imparts their own imprint to a spectrum of styles from cool hard bop to high-energy fusion, r&b, rock and pop.

John Szinger – saxophones
John Deutchman – piano and keyboards
Ken Matthews – bass
Steve Russo – drums

In Walked Bud

I’m now in the middle of three studio recording projects. First on the stack is the next Buzzy Tonic album and the follow-up to Bluezebub. It’s working title is BZVR, and is more of a rock album, with all the songs so far including and electric guitar part. I had three songs mostly complete before I decided to make Bluezebub as an instrumental jazz record, so now I’ve dusted them off.

One is The Story Lies, written by my brother Martin, a cool uptempo funky number. Second is Who Speaks on Your Behalf, a prog-pop anthem by The Cheshire Cat from Buffalo back in the day, reinterpreted with a horn section. I had this one in the can, but when I listened back I decided it needed a heavier sound. So I added a guitar part, mostly big sustained power chords to give it some fill, or syncopated rhythm accents behind the riffs, which are handled by saxes and synths. Third was Why Not Zed? which already had a pretty heavy guitar, and a sort of metal-industrial vibe, but the sax sounded a bit thin. So I doubled the tenor part on bari and octave down and replaced the tenor solo with a bari solo. Just the thing!

That was back in late winter. Then I began work on the three new songs, all short, singer-songwriter style songs written on guitar. The first of these was Slope. It began life as a jazz song with my pre-pandemic group Haven Street, written by our bass player Jay, and appeared on our record. I wrote a lyric for it, but I’ve never been much of a fan of vocalese, unless it’s Ella Fitzgerald. So I changed it from a jazz style into a blues. The arrangement is fairly sparse, with just a single vocal, guitar, bass and drum. I’ll probably add a bit of fender rhodes and organ, and a bit of sax. Possibly also some real drums doing brushes on the snare, since I don’t have a good sample for that.

Second is My Ol’ Brokedown Truck. This is pretty much a traditional country song, although with different lyrics and chord voicings it might be something like a jazz standard from the great American songbook. I wrote it around Christmastime, when I was visiting my parents and my Mum asked me to explain Nashville notation. I did by way of demonstration and came up with the beginnings of this song. I like the chords and lyrics enough to finish it, and it came out quite good. I now have the basic track recorded, with guitar, bass drums and vocal. The vocal has a low and high harmony part, and decided it’d sound better with a female voice doing the high harmony. I asked my sister-in-law Mary, who has been in a number of singing groups over the years, if she’d like to the part. Now we’re trying to set up a time.

Third is All of the Above, which is a rock song with a uptempo fell, and lots of little changes in time signature, basically going from 4/4 to 6/4, but more easily expressed as 2/4 throughout. I have the guitar and bass tracked, and a basic drum part, and have been trying to find the time to lay down the vocals. But things have gotten busy …

I was listening back to my earlier Buzzy Tonic record Elixr for comparison. This was the last one before Bluezebub, and again more of a rock record with lyrics. It took me about eight years to write and record it. My friend Jay helped me mix and master it, and at the time it was a big step forward for me in terms of musical production. But my mixing chops have improved substantially over the last few years and there are a few things I don’t like about the sound of that record. So decided to remix and remaster it. And I must say I’m quite happy with the result. I don’t think I’ll get new CD’s printed up but I’ll probably replace the existing record on Spotify. I’m almost done; just tweaking the time between songs and a final listening back on different stereos.

But then along came an opportunity for a gig with my Thursday Jazz and Funk Group. The group has been getting more and more solid, and none of us has played out since before the pandemic, so we’re all pretty excited. A few weeks ago I bought a portable digital recorder and started recording our rehearsals. To give bar owners an idea of our sound, I put together a few some clips of songs from our last rehearsal. You can hear it at:

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/jazzfunkgroup/jazzfunkjam220421.mp3

Enjoy!

Up Jumped Spring

Well the weather has finally turned nice, and everything is going great these days. Only problem is I’ve been super busy, and the pace is accelerating.

I’ve been seeing lots of live music lately, making up for over two years of not being able to go out and see bands. Since my last blog post I’ve seen four live acts.

First, jazz pianist Brad Mehldau at Caramoor. Brad has a unique and compelling style that combines a melodic approach with a deep, abstract imagination and great technique. His album Nearness with Joshua Redman a few years ago really drew me in and remains one of my all-time favorites. This was a solo show and the program was about half originals and half interpretations of pop and rock songs by artists like The Beatles, Radiohead, Stevie Wonder and David Bowie. It was not exactly jazz, because his left hand doesn’t follow typical patterns for modern jazz, but is much more rhythmically active, but pretty different from the stride style. Probably the closet thing I’d compare him to is actually Duke Ellington, not that he sounds much like Duke, but has a similar approach in using all the different tones, dynamics and registers of the piano like an orchestra.

Caramoor is a great place to see a show. It’s this former mansion and grounds of some long-dead rich guy (presumably Mr. Caramoor) that’s been turned into a sort of park and art center. I’ve only ever been there in the summer, for that jazz festival that’s outdoors. The main house is this rococo Spanish monstrosity, at once garish and exquisitely tasteful in a hundred-year old way, with the main ballroom transformed into an 200 seat theatre. I’m guessing the Steinway grand piano was close to a hundred years old too. Great sound, but didn’t quite have the low end power of a modern instrument.

Surprisingly, Brad didn’t play any Rush. Just a few weeks earlier he dropped a new record called Jacob’s Ladder, that includes several interpretations of Rush songs, plus some originals with titles like Maybe as His Skies are Wide. It combined his piano stuff with synthesizers, some vocals, and protools loops and electronic effects. Overall pretty mind blowing. I was hoping he’d recreate some of that stuff live.

Just a few days later we saw Brad Mehldau again, this time backing tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, along with Christian McBride and Brian Blade, reuniting the quartet that made them all famous much earlier in their careers. Seriously, it’s like one of the great Miles quintets or Coltrane’s great quartet. The show was at the Blue Note down in Greenwich Village, and it was a great night for walking around New York City. The music was quite inspired, everything you’d hope for. Christian McBride and Brian Blade in particular played lots of great stuff, both in solos and as part of ensemble. Mehldau in a group setting took a much less radical approach, but still was great. And Redman remains on of my top three tenor players on the scene today. His altissimo is out of this world, and tone and melodic inventiveness.

We thought we’d finally have relaxing weekend at home, but then Friday morning Jeannie won tickets to see the jazz-adjacent jam band Lettuce at Capitol Theater in Port Chester. The bass player in my Wednesday band told me was going and that I ought to check them out. It was alot of fun. Lettuce are in the same general zone as bands like Galactic and Snarky Puppy, as sort of psychedelic jazz-funk. The sax player ran his horn thru a synthesizer, which was pretty cool. They seemed to have alot of fans, it was was pretty different from the modern jazz crowd. Best of all John Patatucci sat in on the encore.

Then Saturday, on a whim, I went to check out a place Alternative Medicine Brewing Company. They’re a local microbrewery that recently opened near my house, and I got the impression form their web site that they have live music from time to time. I thought it might be an opportunity to get my Thursday band a gig. As luck would have it, there was a blues band playing there that night. The drummer was a I guy I knew from when our kids were in middle school together, and I was in a band with him for maybe a couple months about five years ago. He was just getting back into playing after a long haitus, and his time and endurance weren’t so good. But now he’s playing with power and taste and groove. The band was excellent, particularly their singer and their lead guitarist.

It turns out the guitarist is the co-owner of the bar, and my friend introduced me. And, yes they’re looking to bring in more live music, and are open to different styles and genres. A jazz and funk band sounds good to them. I few weeks ago I bought a digital recorder with idea of recording the band rehearsals. I was able to edit up a highlight reel of a few tracks to give an idea of our sound. Now the question of availability for the guys in my group.

I Know What I Like

There’s been lots and lots of rain the last couple weeks. I finished part two of project dirt on Saturday. Too wet to do much else. I’m up to 12 wheelbarrow loads. Looks like maybe three or four to finish off.

Jeannie and went upstate on Sunday to visit Martin and the family. Once we got there the weather turned unusually cold and there was even a snow flurry.

Martin’s boys Charlie and Matthew are now playing sax, mainly an alto which they share. It turns out they’re pretty good, particularly Charlie, who is a couple years older and has been playing longer. Martin has been giving them lesson and plays a (very nice Selmer Mark VI) tenor. There’s alot of duets with a Bb and Eb horn. So I gave them my old (cheap Chinese, but still decent and playable) soprano sax so the boys could play together. I brought up my (ancient classic Conn) bari sax, which used to belong to Martin, so we could play as a quartet and have some fun. I wrote out a couple John Coltrane blues charts, Blue Trane and Equinox, as double duets so we could all jam together.

That night Martin, Jeannie and I went to see a concert in The Egg, a strange theater in the downtown Albany capital complex. It was Steve Hackett, the guitarist from the classic lineup of Genesis in the 1970’s. I had heard that Genesis was touring this year and was thinking of going to see them. Genesis of course was one of the great prog rock bands of all time, and I was a big fan as a teenager. But their last really good album was Abacab in 1981 or so. So I didn’t really want to see them play songs like Invisible Touch, and figured there’s no way they’d do something like Supper’s Ready, so I passed on it.

Then Martin told me Steve Hackett is touring this year and the tour is called Genesis Revisited. I think Genesis was Martin’s favorite prog band of that era and he got particularly into the 12-string guitar and Hackett’s whole bag, just as mine was Emerson Lake and Palmer and I got heavy into synthesizers and Keith Emerson’s thing.

And it turned out the be a great show. The Egg is a unique venue, all modernist curved concrete and vertical hardwoods, very sci-fi, with outstanding acoustics. The fist set was drawn from Hacket’s solo work, and reminded me of guys like Alan Holdsworth and Jeff Beck. His sound is actually very diverse and often quite subtle. The second set he basically recreated the classic Genesis live album Seconds Out, which was all their best stuff from that era. The musicianship was outstanding and the band knew every part. They augmented the usual five-piece lineup with a sax player, who was excellent.

I’d always wondered how they got their sound live, so some things were a revelation. One is the bass player had a doubleneck combo bass and 12-string guitar. I’d seen Geddy play one on Xanadu, but the Genesis sound leaned on it pretty heavily. The other was Taurus pedals. This was a funny little foot-operated analog bass synthesizer by Moog in the 1970’s, played like the pedals of an organ. They appeared to be the genuine article (the Mellotrons were all recreated using samplers) and it must have been hooked up some very powerful subwoofers. The tone was huge and so low as to be on the edge of subsonic. Sometimes it didn’t even sound like tones in the chord, just massive low frequency energy. Definitely something you can’t get from listening to a record.

Today it finally got of to seventy degrees in the afternoon, once the rain stopped.

Dig a Pony

Spring continues to tease us with alternating spells of warm and sunny then cold and stormy weather. We got out in the yard again last weekend to turn over the flowerbeds and plant some seeds. Also, I initiated project dirt 2022. If you recall, my neighbor across the street had a big pile of dirt that was dug out from having a swimming pool put int. A year ago he encouraged me to take as much as I wanted. I ended up taking fifty or sixty wheelbarrows to fill in low spots in my yard, and grade the area around my newly expanded patio. This year he moved what’s left of the pile closer to the street and again asked me to help get rid of it. Now I’m just filling in a few remaining low spots, mainly in the front where there were once giant trees and the ground continues to settle years later as the stumps underground continue to decay. Also I did the front yard last last year, and was getting tired of the job toward the end. So far this time I’ve put down six wheelbarrows worth, and am maybe about half done. In the end It’ll probably be twelve to twenty loads total. Anyway, it’s good to spend some time out in the sunshine.

Clubs and concert venues are finally opening again after more than two years. We saw the first of a run of spring concerts last week. The Ed Palermo Big Band played the Iridium in NYC. They’re famous for doing big band arrangements of prog rock songs, particularly the music of Frank Zappa. Usually each show has a different theme, and that night they did a tribute to Gary Brooker featuring the music Procol Harum mingled with a bunch Beatles, Yes and of other prog psychedelia. The highlight was toward the end of the show, when the band did A Whiter Shade of Pale, and the horn section joined in on the organ solo toward the end, and just went round with it and built it up to be absolutely huge and soaring. I’m hoping they’ll do Thick as a Brick Sometime.

Global Mobile

Spring is finally here, woo-hoo! The weather was really nice last Friday and Saturday, and I began the spring cycle of yardwork by raking off all the leaves and sticks and debris from the lawn and flowerbeds and under the hedges and on the edge of the patio. Things look much nicer now, and it good to be spending time outside doing sutf again.

I attended a really fascinating meeting last week for the Global Jukebox. Anna wants to create a Global Jukebox mobile app based around some new Journeys. Journeys are guided multimedia experiences in the Jukebox to tell a story, and feature music, text and graphics, sometimes video, plus a responsive map showing the origins of the songs in journey, linked up into a path. She assembled a team of world-class musicologists and cultural scholars to develop the content, and this was the kick-off. My role on the project is as software engineer, so I mainly sat back and listened. The theme for new journeys is the roots of American pop music, tracing its origins back to various kinds of folk music being sung at the beginning of the era of recorded music, and further back to various diaspora from Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and other places, and how the various cultural threads and musical forms came together and influenced each other over time. It was a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion, and I can hardly wait to see what emerges from it.

Meanwhile in my other consulting gig, the Digital Lab at Consumer Reports is picking up momentum. I’ve become immersed in discussions around internet privacy and consumer’s digital rights, both from and issues and policy point of view, and also at technical level. I’m taking over a demo/prototype app, built by a third party vendor, to help people manage their internet privacy. I’ve gotten over the hump WRT setting up tools and all, and have already fixed a few bugs and deployed the front end app to production. Today we had an onsite meeting to discuss strategy as the project, and larger R&D group, move into a new phase. Consumer Reports is a unique place with their own corporate culture. It’s funny how the place is so close to my house, even though the team is all remote. The campus in Yonkers is pretty cool, with lots of testing facilities for household appliances, electronics, and all sorts of other consumer goods one might buy. They have an amazing audio listening room and a completely silent, soundproof room next door. I must say it was weird being back in an office after all this time. There was a handful of people there, some for the first time like me, and others who hadn’t seen their colleagues in a long time.

I’ve been listening to alot of music lately. I did a deep dive into Frank Zappa, after seeing a documentary about him. Zappa has a ton of albums, many of which I’ve never listened to. Live in New York, from 1978, features the Brecker Brother and David Sanborn as the horn section. Mostly I was surprised in particular about the depth and extent of his orchestral works, which existed as a parallel thread to his rock stuff for his entire career. His last album, The Yellow Shark, a recording of his final concert, is a live orchestral performance of his work, and most excellent, fun and interesting. Fun fact: Jazz from Hell was the only instrumental to receive a parental advisory sticker for inappropriate lyrical content from Tipper Gore’s Parents Against Music group of the 1980’s.

The next deep dive was into Joe Jackson. I’ve been assembling and maintaining a songbook of lead sheets to practice on piano, and I got up the letter J in my practice rotation. I was trying to get the bass line together for Stepping Out, which is not so easy when also singing and playing the right hand. I found a demo version on Spotify, on the deluxe edition of Night and Day, and the bass line is alot clearer and more prominent than the actual record. Way cool. Then I listened to bunch of his early records, which I don’t know too well. His start off very guitar-driven and new wave, sort of halfway between Elvis Costello and The Police.

I’ve been listening to alot of Joe Henderson, Horace Silver and Pharaoh Sanders, as we’ve been exploring new material for the jazz group. We’re also doing African Skies by Michael Brecker, and I found several versions of that. The original by the Brecker Brothers and the classic one from Michael’s solo record Tales from the Hudson. There are also a couple cover versions, which leads me to some new bands I want to check out.