Ottmar Liebert at the Lewis Family Playhouse

I first heard him at the Music Plus store in West LA just off National Blvd in the early 90s.  The crisp nylon string melodies were catchy.  Barcelona Nights.  Nouveau Flamenco. Ottmar Liebert.  I bought the first 6 or so of his CD releases primarily because the music was easy to ingest.  It was good driving music that we played on countless road trips to bike races in the Southwest.  Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada.  At some point in the early 2000s, I just stopped listening to him altogether.  Boredom?  So when I found out that he was playing at the Lewis Family Playhouse in Rancho Cucamonga, I still wasn't sure I wanted to see him.  Do I go with the kids?  They've been to a lot of concerts but nothing that remotely resembles Liebert's genre.  But hey, I wanted to take them to the Playboy Jazz Festival this summer so this might be a good warmup.  No screaming vocal or loud distorted guitars.  Just very accomplished instrumentalists. As it turned out, the $28 ticket was a very good value since Liebert (and his backup band) played over 2 hours --which included a 20 minute intermission in the middle.  The kids have heard most of Liebert's material from the early releases since Maura and I would play them on road trips as well -- a continuation of a pre-kid tradition.  Besides enjoying the music, the other interesting discovery is the intimacy of the Lewis Family Playhouse as a venue.  No bad seats at all in the 560 they accommodate.  And the best part of all, I didn't have to pay the Ticketmaster ransom per ticket since all I had to do was pick them up at the box office.  Did I like Liebert's new stuff well enough to buy the newer releases?  Not likely.  But with good live music so hard to find in the 909, I had a good time and so did the kids.

Sound City (2013)

I knew I had to see it in the big screen.  I knew it was going to be a limited release in the Los Angeles area.  I expected to drive to LA or Pasadena -- which I did.  I also knew the kids, being Nirvana and Foo Fighters fans would want to come along.  So a week ago today, we set out to the Sunset Sundance Cinema off Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood.  Fandango said 1130am showing, we were there right at 1120.  Until we got in the box office and got turned back.  Turns out Sunset Sundance is a 21+ movie theather because they serve alcohol.  But at fucking 1130am?  Pissed off as hell, we ended up going to Guitar Center and Amoeba Records so at least the 60 mile drive from the 909 wasn't wasted.  But today, we went to Laemmle 7 in Pasadena and this was more friendly to kids.  Sound City?  Excellent movie based on a great story.  It's just a throwback to the days of analog and the historic albums made at this recording studio in Van Nuys.  Again, I knew I had to see it in the big screen with the nice sound system -- and I wasn't disappointed.  Dave Grohl had proven yet again that he is an artist with a vision that produces just great work.  Equal parts funny and great storytelling, this is all about music and the artists who make them, Tom Petty, Rick Springfield, Nirvana, Paul McCartney, Rick Rubin and others.  This is about family.  The group of individuals who owned, operated and maintained Sound City for countless bands and us, the listening public get to enjoy music thanks to their passion.  This is about rock and roll.

A Day For Music

I needed a day like today.  I woke up and was getting ready for a short bike ride but the streets were still wet from the overnight rain.  So I picked up my acoustic guitar and played for an hour, followed by some piano exercises for another hour before I ever started thinking about breakfast.  I did sneak in some laundry and dishes to make myself somewhat feel responsible.  They I played electric guitar for another hour just in time for lunch.  Early afternoon, the kids and I recorded our own version of Herbie Hancock's 1973 funk classic "Chameleon" which is one of several songs we played over a span of 2 hours.  Since I missed my bike ride, I elected to take a 2.5 mile run on the equestrian trail down the hill. And while waiting for the kids to bug me for dinner, I played electric again downstairs for at least 1 1/2 hours, trying to perfect a punk version of The Beach Boys' "Surfer Girl" and re-learn a Foo Fighters song.  And finally, after dinner, I did another hour of piano which brings my total to almost 8 hours of playing music.  Fun times.

Going Old School

Sam had a school project that he needed some non-internet references for and while we normally hit the bookstores, I decided to go to the city library instead.  Besides, the City of RC public library is funded by my property taxes anyway, right?  So I signed up the kid for a library but what I had not anticipated is me getting one as well -- until I saw these CDs in the music library section.  Pastorius, Mingus, Peterson -- heavyweights of jazz.

There's also the factor of convenience.  The city library branch we went to was at the Victoria Gardens Cultural Center which is close to all the place we eat at (CPK, King's, Corner Bakery, etc) so returning items is not a hassle.  Besides, I grew up with a library card and most kids these days haven't even been to a public library, so I thought my kids might benefit from the same experience.  The only rub is these CDs cost 50 cents to check out -- which is not a bad price considering.  Sam's books?  They're still free.

The Story Behind The Groove Machines

New site dedicated to my stringed instruments and the story behind each one.

http://freedaudioslave.blogspot.com/

The 1000-Hour Proficiency Model and The Finite Number of Hours In A Day

I have this long-standing belief that anyone who spends about 1000 hours on any endeavor has a good chance of being proficient in the activity of choice.  I subscribe to this belief in learning & education, motor skills activities like sports and most certainly, art & music.  Specifically, learning an instrument from square one.  I also subscribe to the principle that it's never too late to learn a skill -- no matter how difficult the subject matter, no matter your age.  And there's also serendipity, of course, as the opportunity presents itself.

A loaner electric piano became available to me last week and after about 4 hours, I can play simple boogie tunes and a minor ballad -- thanks to the internet, of course.  Well, there's that 2-handed method as well which had been a struggle so far.  Being a leftie, I can do arpeggiated chords in one direction smoothly depending on the hand.  Which means, I will need at least an hour a day for the next year to just get my motor skills in sync with what I intend to play.  So that leaves me with about 600 hrs of learning the theory which puts me at mid-2014 for my proficiency target of a thousand hours.  Althoug, something has got to give in order for me to get this hour a day dedicated for learning the piano.  Art? Cycling?  Guitar playing? Nope. Work? Can't afford to.  Sleep? Maybe.

I Miss Playing Acoustic

I'm very happy to be making music with my kids over the past 8 months but I do miss one thing -- playing my nylon string guitar.  The bonding time I have with them with a full electric band setup is the complete opposite of the solo playing I've done in the past 10 years.  Something about the feel of the nylon against my bare hands, the natural resonance of the guitar body and the total awareness when playing it -- it's just right.  A totally different experience.  So this weekend, I decided to work on this simple melody from Cinema Paradiso, one of my all-time favorite movie themes.  It's a short piece and is a nice escape from all the Rage, Audioslave and Hendrix my kids and I play all the time.  The fact that all my acoustic guitars are always inside cases (to protect them from environmental extremes) makes them somewhat transparent from everyday life.  Out of sight, out of mind.   But as I found out last week, I do miss it for sure.

Mixtape Evolution

I was going through some old boxes and found a stash of these old cassette tapes that I had put together at some distant past.  Judging from the songs I had selected, this was made sometime in the early 90s with Guns N Roses' "November Rain" kicking off Side A and The Cure's "Pictures of You" on Side B.  I, for one, do not miss the analog days when I had to copy each track carefully from CD to a cassette deck.  The time it took to make this mixtape was probably on the order of 3 or 4 hours, including typing up and printing a case cover.  The tape hiss, inherent in the medium was annoying at the time as it is today, when I played this tape.  At some point, I just expect the iron deposited on the tape itself to fall off and this tape will be lost for eternity.  Hey, everybody's got some aspect of their past that they're ashamed of, right?  Tracy Chapman, Ultravox and Echo and the Bunnymen in my mixtape are skeletons in my musical closet.

Fast forward to 2000 and making audio CD compilations was the norm.  I made a bunch of these discs and just stashed them in the car for road trips.  I played this one and it sounds just as good as the first time I made it.  Digital is perfect and repeatable, in the event I want to make another CD with the exact same songs in the same order.  I still make some comp CDs today just because I like the convenience of not having to think about what to play in the car.  Each CD took about 30 minutes to make and the hard part is actually marking up the CD with the artist/song selection.  (No Doubt, 2Pac and Ice Cube made my playlist back then but most definitely won't make it in today.  )

And the last evolution (at least the one I've embraced) is the Ipod playlist.  As "must have" for the daily commuter like me each playlist can be created and edited in seconds and adding to the list is as simple as holding down a button for a few seconds.  At work today, as I was listening to songs, I would do just that -- add it to the On-The-Go playlist with the push of a button.  What I added today?  Rage, Audioslave, Rise Against, Foo Fighters.  Ten years from now?  I'll probably still be listening to Rage consider I was listening to it 13 years ago.

Surf Guitar

I love rescuing old guitars from their previous, unappreciative owners.  This is a mid-80s Yamaha electric guitar Model SC300T (yeah just like that Lexus coupe model name) in candy apple red.  I will probably swap out the old pickups with a Fender single coils to give it that true surf guitar sound.  I spent most of this evening adjusting the intonation but not the action -- which seems just about right.  Speaking of surf guitar, I wish I still own the DMV plates I had with my '69 Mustang.  When I sold the car in 2009, I didn't even bother transferring the personalized plate back to me.  Not sure why but now I realize it was a mistake.

Above is the only picture of my SURF GTR license plate taken in 2001 with my future drummer, Sam (left, standing) and bass player, JJ (sitting).  Ironic thing is I was playing mostly acoustic guitar at the time but I just like the music of the Ventures, Surfaris, Dick Dale, etc. enough to get the plate.  I suppose the car also came out when instrumental music was really big.

It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

No, Sgt. Pepper didn't teach the band to play.  But 20 years ago, the album that declared to the world that rock and roll isn't dead was released out of Los Angeles. Ten tracks, 52 minutes, 52 seconds.    And one angry, political band was launched to the rest of the world.  And twenty years from now, every male adolescent will be singing Killing In The Name in defiance of authority while their parents and grandparents can only shake their heads in approval.  Approval because they will share the common bond of growing up listening to Zach, Tom, Brad and Tim.  Approval because the lyrics of Rage will forever change the way the next generation will view the world.  Continuity of the species is guaranteed.

Worth The Wait

In 1997, I could only afford to buy one electric guitar and I (wisely) chose an American Standard Fender Strat.  My other choice at the time was an Ibanez Talman because it was relatively cheap and I like the shape, finish and just about everything about it.  In 1998, Ibanez stopped making the Talman altogether and I've been on the hunt for one in the last few years, now that I can afford it.  Enter Craigslist Los Angeles.  This morning, I couldn't get myself to get out of bed so I grabbed the Ipad and put Talman in the Musical Instruments category and lo and behold.  Need to sell fast.  Moving.  Studio City.  I sent the guy an email before I even took off my pajamas.  By afternoon, I am the proud owner of a 15-year old Japanese-made Talman (I believe it's a TC825 model) with a Bigsby tremolo.  After spending an hour tonight re-stringing and adjusting the action, it's good enough.  First tune I played on it.  Hendrix's Voodoo Chile.

So I don't even track or count how many instruments I have.  I know this is an affliction that several of my friends suffer from.  G.A.S.  Article is below.  Guilty as charged.  At least with the kids playing too, every instrument acquisition gets obfuscated behind the "we-need-it-to-get-this-sound" rationale.

http://theguitarbuzz.com/guitars/guitar-acquisition-syndrome/

I Remember Clifford Brown

He only lived 25 years.  Car crash on the way to Chicago from Philadelphia.  In some parallel universe, Clifford Brown lived another 50 years to make music and Miles Davis will always be compared to the man known as Brownie.  What's really eerie about this is when Clifford died in 1956, another great American artist, Jackson Pollock also died in a car crash that same year.  And when my 12 year old son, who had never heard any of Clifford's music says he likes this kind of jazz, you know the music is something special.  It had been a good music week when I found these two Clifford Brown CDs at Boo Boo Records in San Luis Obispo.  His first release Memorial Album (1953, Blue Note) and his last one, At Basin Street (1956, Verve) both kept me company during the drive back to Rancho Cucamonga yesterday afternoon.  Music this good is like a drug that opens up your mind.  Unfortunately, it is in limited supply as Clifford only released 4 years worth of music.

Speaking of Boo Boo Records, no visit to SLO is complete without a stopover.  Here's a nice article in Record Collector News.

http://recordcollectornews.com/2012/11/boo-boo-records/

Geeked Out

I'm actually surprised I avoided it for so long.  I've been playing guitar, both acoustic and electric for as long as I can remember and not once did it occur to me to put together my own custom effects pedal board -- until last week.  Ever since the kids and I started playing, it was a struggle to get particular sounds like Tom Morello's guitar in Audioslave and Rage, and some surf guitar music as well.  When I found the GIG-FX Chopper last week, I knew it would be the central to getting most sounds I cared about.  However, there's also the 3 other pedals I used regularly and it became just a major pain to lug all 4 effects from room to room and having to plug in 4 separate 9-volt adapters.  A Saturday trip to Guitar Center and I'm officially all geeked out with my custom gear.  Ready to groove!

Peterson and Sundays

I can't even being to tell you when this tradition started.  It couldn't have been more than 3 years ago (which is when I bought that tea cup by Colorado ceramicist, Cristine Boyd.)  Jazz had always been the most freeing form of music I've ever heard in my lifetime.  But the late great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, holds a special place in the way his music fills my house every Sunday morning.  Can't play a piano to save my life but I know timeless jazz piano when I hear it.  Oscar Peterson on vinyl, in particular.  Something about being mindful of when the music stops and taking the time to flip the record on the turntable every 20 minutes -- is what Sunday morning should be like, a time to slow down and reflect.  Being secular as I am, listening to Peterson while drinking a cup of green tea with roasted brown rice is as religious of an experience as it ever gets.

A Mullet Christmas

1984 was the year.  The 80s was the decade.  The decade where the most popular music artists would get together, record a song or two or an entire album for a good cause.  In this particular case, proceeds of this Christmas EP went to assist famine relief in Ethiopia.  It was also the height of the popularity of bands like Duran Duran, which has several members pictures in this cover photo.  I was at Dr. Strange Records looking for some punk vinyl but instead found this while scouring the 25c pile.

Check out John Taylor's (Duran Duran bassist) mullet right next to Paul Young's competing mop.  Just to the right is the mullet-in-growth of Tony Hadley (of Spandau Ballet).

Good thing about losing your hair in the 80s like Phil Collins is that you can honestly say you never had a mullet -- ever.  Next to Phil, however, is Irish musician and political activist, Bob Geldof, who had a mullet/grunge hybrid and is the brain-child behind 80s gigs like Live Aid and Band Aid.  Geldof also produced this record.

Rick Parfitt of Status Quo also didn't do the mullet but keyboardist Nick Rhodes (who is 20% of Duran Duran circa 1984) sported not just a mullet but also the whole eyeliner thing.

"The Scientist" by Coldplay

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorryYou don't know how lovely you areI had to find you, tell you I need youTell you I set you apart

Tell me your secrets and ask me your questionsOh, let's go back to the startRunning in circles, coming up tailsHeads on a science apart

Nobody said it was easyIt's such a shame for us to partNobody said it was easyNo one ever said it would be this hardOh, take me back to the start

I was just guessing at numbers and figuresPulling the puzzles apartQuestions of science, science and progressDo not speak as loud as my heart

But tell me you love me, come back and haunt meOh and I rush to the startRunning in circles, chasing our tailsComing back as we are

Nobody said it was easyOh, it's such a shame for us to partNobody said it was easyNo one ever said it would be so hardI'm going back to the start
(I absolutely dislike Coldplay.  They try to sound too much like that famous band from Ireland.  I used to tell Maura how much I absolutely hate Coldplay.  She would play this the "Rush of Blood to the Head" CD and I would just cringe and mock Chris Martin's Bono sound-alike.  However, I just figured out how to play this song tonight and it is absolutely one of the most beautiful song I ever learned to play. The original has a piano backing the vocals but I figured it out on acoustic guitar and I guess some things take time to fully appreciate.)

What Takes Up (My) Time

As I noticed the other books I had on the counter, I realized that these four things drive life as I know it today -- science, cycling, art and music.  The key is to not let one thing drive the others out of the picture -- it's all about balance.  Just about the only thing that will preempt any or all of these four is my kids.  But the real trick is getting both kids to appreciate all those that I do -- on their own cognizance, of course.  I don't know if they'll ever get a full understanding of art  nor whether they will take up the sciences but so far, I got them both into music and cycling.

The Story Behind These Vinyl Finds

Been going back to Dr. Strange Records every week since I found it.  Here's the disclosure.  They cater mostly to punk music.  Some thrash, some DIY, some metal but for the the most part punk.  So after I found another one of these 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett LP for 50c, I asked the guy behind that counter what's the deal because the story obviously doesn't make any profit off these.  Not only can I score them for less than a buck, I also have to pay into a jar -- which turned out to be a donation box for the local humane society.  I was told that people come into this (punk) record store wanting to sell their old vinyl collections for whatever they can get.  A store employee would tell them that it's really a specialty store catering to a very specific genre of youth-oriented music, i.e. punk.  These would-be sellers would be frustrated and really just want to get rid of their old "stuff" so they would ask if they can just leave them there.  And on my last visit, there were about 4 crates of discards that I sorted through to find this vinyl.  I also found 3 more George Benson LPs.  I like it.

Virgin Vinyl

I compare it to the nostalgic sensation when Will Smith put on a fresh pair of Chuck Taylor Converse in the futuristic movie "I Robot".  Something about the analog past just appeals to those who were fortunate enough to live it.  The sensation I'm talking about is cutting through the plastic shrink wrap of a vinyl LP, taking out the inner sleeve and handling the disc for the first time, putting is on the turntable as carefully as I can.  I must have done the routine hundreds of times since I was a little kid all the way to the early 90s when I last bought new vinyl.  Sure, I've been buying used LPs for years but last week, I found this unopened JFA album.  (JFA is Jody Foster's Army, punk/skate band whose guitar player is a good friend of mine.) Virgin vinyl.  What makes this JFA even more pleasurable is the unexpected surprise of blue vinyl.

The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett

The name of the artist alone caught my attention.  The second time in as many weeks I went to Dr. Strange Records in Rancho Cucamonga and at the first bin I found has these old vinyl for 50c each and 2 for 75c.  How can I resist?  I browsed through all the junk, Streisand, Croce, America, etc. until I found these 3 albums by "The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett".  Anyone who has 50 guitars is my hero (for the record, I have less than 20) but this is vintage instrumental music that is the basis for a lot of covers by classic surf bands.  The days of instrumental music is over and these vinyls belong to a very specialized genre amongst record collectors.  After listening to these 3 albums, I'm now on the hunt for more 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett (I've seen a list of at least 18 releases doing a quick online search).  Although it's doubtful I can get them for 50c each again).

From the website www.spaceagepop.com...
Tommy Garrett was "Snuff" Garrett, A&R director for Liberty from 1958-1966, producer of numerous early 60s hits by white rock-n-roll artists such as Bobby Vee, Johnny Burnette, and Gary Lewis. Garrett also gave Phil Spector his first job in the business, as A&R man in New York for Liberty. He produced a series of LPs for Liberty under the name of "The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett," one of the least adventurous and most easy-listening guitar groups, usually arranged by Ernie Wilkins and with Tommy Tedesco as lead guitar. Garrett also produced a number of exotica recordings by "The Midnight String Quartet" and Jonathan Knight on the Viva! label.