The Amazing Allan Holdsworth

To me, there's no such thing as "background music".  If I'm in a restaurant or bar with my wife or with other friends, and there happens to be music playing, it's really difficult for me to keep 100% focused on the discussion with the people I'm with.  It's a source of frustration for my wife, but being able to concentrate on both music and, really, anything else is tough for me.  If I can hear the music playing enough, even if it's something I've heard hundreds of times, my ear will naturally focus more on the music than pretty much anything else going on.

I've been trying to work on this aspect of my nature, if for no other reason than to not appear rude or removed from whatever social situation I find myself in.  But there are a few artists whose music, to me, can never be relegated to the background and one of them is Allan Holdsworth.  In fact, as I am typing this blog post I'm listening to his "IOU" album on Spotify and I have to pause after typing every other word.  His music is so complex, interesting, outside, and so unique that it demands my full attention (okay, I've paused it now so that I can get through this blog post).

I first got turned on to Holdsworth through Guitar Player magazine.  Back in the mid-80's each issue of Guitar Player would include a plastic insert that you could remove and play on a turntable.  This is where I first heard "Devil Take the Hindmost" from Holdsworth's "Metal Fatigue" album (or at least the first few minutes of it - those plastic inserts didn't have enough room to store an entire track).  I couldn't believe that what I was hearing was coming from a guitar player.  The melody of the tune was made from chords that I had never heard before, strung together in a way that made his playing sound as unlike a guitar as one could get.  I distinctly remember listening to it for the first time, waiting for the guitar player to start playing...only to realize that it's been playing all along!

Holdsworth has a style completely all his own.  Nobody else plays like him, and he doesn't sound like anyone else.  You can't say that about too many guitar players; anyone can pick up a guitar, run it through some distortion pedals and come out sounding like a lot of other guitar players.  But I have yet to hear anyone even come close to duplicating what Holdsworth does with a guitar.  I would go so far to say he's reinvented the instrument - and not many guitarists have done that (we're getting into Les Paul/Jimi Hendrix/John McLaughlin territory here).

The most distinctive aspect of his playing style is his "legato" technique when he solos.  Unlike so many other guitarists who play through a distorted signal, you hardly ever hear Holdsworth strike the notes with a pick; in fact, he doesn't pick a lot of his notes but he lets his left (fretted) hand simulate the striking of most of the notes he plays.  The result is an almost violin effect; a truly legato sound that to me always reminds me of a waterfall - with notes just falling all over the place without any of the percussive sound that a pick normally makes on a distorted guitar.  This is completely unique to Holdsworth.  I've heard other players approximate a legato effect (most notably the late, great, Shawn Lane) but nobody comes close to sounding as clean as Holdsworth in this area.

When he's not soloing, he's equally as amazing to watch/hear the chords he plays.  I've never once seen him play any "standard" chords that I and most other guitar players use.  He comes up with the most incredible inversions and voicings that I've ever heard.  Sometimes they sound so outside that I feel like I missed a whole bunch of music theory lessons because I don't understand how he can get THAT chord to sound so good against THIS bass note.  When you watch him play, his fingers have an incredible reach, so he has a natural advantage that he can physically play chords that most other guitarists couldn't even dream of playing.

His arrangements are equally as complex.  You won't hear any standard II-V-I changes in his music (or if you do, they are so inverted as to make it sound completely alien anyway).  In my experience, you either "get" his music or you don't.  His stuff is not for everyone.  To be honest, some of his stuff is so outside that even a fan like me can get a little bogged down by the complexity.  I tend to be an active listener when it comes to jazz music - I like to figure out the time signatures, analyze the chord changes, pay attention to the solos played over those changes, etc.  I've basically given up trying to do any of this when it comes to Holdsworth's stuff.  I just listen closely and let the sounds wash over me like that waterfall I mentioned earlier.

If you've never heard any of his stuff, here are a couple of clips from YouTube.  This first one is from his "Live at Yoshi's" DVD from a few years ago (I was fortunate enough to be at this show).  Good example of his legato soloing technique:

And here's an older video where he displays some of his unique chord voicings:

Playing in the Pits - Part 2

Over the years I've learned a few things about playing in pit orchestras for musical theater and I wanted to pass these along...these apply mostly to electric guitar players (obviously) but I suppose they can also be applied to electric bass as well.  Remember that playing in a pit band is just that: a "band" - it's not a solo project - so be respectful of those around you who are also there for the job. 

Some of the most important things I've learned should sound rather basic but you'd be surprised at how many people don't even learn the basics.  Pretty much all of these points can be boiled down to one general rule: have some respect for each other in the pit.  Master that, and all of these points should be a natural consequence.

1) Show up on time.  Whether it's an orchestra run-through, a sing-through with the cast, or (especially) a performance call - be there on time or preferably early.  Depending on where you are sitting physically in the pit, it may be difficult to get in and out if you're late and you have to step over everyone else to get to your spot.  But it's really frustrating (and stressful) for the Musical Director if they are unsure if you're going to be there or not. Save yourself and others the grief and just prepare to leave a little sooner when possible, so that you can arrive early, set up, tune, and be ready to play.

2) Line up your subs.  Life happens, and you never know what might keep you from being able to show up at a gig (sickness, accidents, prior plans).  It's a good idea to have at least one or two names of other players you can trust to show up in case you need to miss a service.  And don't think "well, it's just a rehearsal; they won't need a sub for that" - wrong - any one part that's missing will make the rest of the orchestra sound incomplete.  In fact, part of the rehearsal process is not only for the cast to get comfortable learning to run the show with the musicians, but it's also for the sound people to get the levels correct, for the MD to hear how everything sounds together, and for the rest of the orchestra to hear how the pit will sound.  So if you know in advance you will miss one or more service, be sure to have a sub lined up.

3) If you get the music ahead of time, know your parts!  Don't show up to the first rehearsal having never cracked open your book.  Unless you're a killer sight-reader and nothing fazes you, or if you've played the show a dozen times before and know the book by heart, put in enough time ahead of your first rehearsal to learn your part.  If you have access to a recording of the show, mark up your music to know when to switch patches or effects pedals.  I like to use my Boss GT-8 and program the whole show as much as possible based on what I hear on the CD, and then I'll just make patch change notes in the music when I need to switch to a different sound...but I'll do all of that ahead of time whenever possible.  It's not just a matter of learning the notes but also knowing when the patch changes are coming.

4) Practice quietly in the pit.  I've been in a few pits that sound like you're walking into your local Guitar Center - the guitar player has his amp at full volume and is trying to impress with his Yngwie Malmsteen shred techniques, or the bass player is trying to show off his hot funk grooves so that you can hear every slap and pop (or the drummer is trying to do his best John Bonham impersonation).  Trust me: you're impressing nobody.  Worse yet, you're coming off as arrogant and rude to the other musicians around you who are just there to play the gig.  I understand sometimes you do need to test your levels - fine, turn up and test your levels for a few chords but then turn right back down again. Practice at very low amp levels; others around you should still be able to carry on a conversation while they're waiting for the show to start.  I've even seen some guys wear headphones while they are practicing; I'm sure that helps them concentrate better anyway.  Just be mindful of the others in the pit when you need to warm up or practice a particularly difficult part of your music.

5) Don't clutter your area.  This might be difficult if you have lots of floor pedals that you need to rig up or if you need lots of axes to switch throughout the show.  But whenever possible, don't try and claim a huge space for yourself.  Chances are the pit you will be playing in will be small and you'll be pretty cramped with other musicians who need their own space as well.  Use as little room as possible while still making sure you have all of your gear accounted for.  Sometimes you might need to apologize up front to your neighbors: "Sorry, I have a lot of gear here but I'm trying to not get in your way" is usually a good sign of a conscientious player.  Also, when you bring in your gear to each performance, get rid of the cases as soon as possible.  Others will be trying to set up as well and they don't want to have to climb over or work around your instrument cases to do so.  I like to bring my guitars in one by one, put the guitar on a stand and then take the case out to store outside the pit...then repeat for each instrument I am using.  Keep your area tidy.  For stomp boxes or pedals, try and keep your setup compact as much as you can while still making them usable (nothing is worse than hitting the wrong effect or stepping on multiple boxes at a time because they're too close together).  Invest in an all-in-one board (like the units made by Line6 or Boss), if you can afford it.

6) After the gig, don't try and be the first one out of the pit.  If you know ahead of time that you need to run as soon as the last note is played, tell those around you that you have a special circumstance and will need to bail quickly - they'll be understanding and will have appreciated the heads-up.  What they won't appreciate is you jumping out of your seat and climbing over everyone to be the first person out without any warning.

7) Don't call any other player out regarding their part.  This should be obvious, but surprisingly that's not always the case.  Unless you are a section leader and you might have some helpful suggestions to the other players in your section, it's best to leave that stuff to the MD.  I played in one pit where a brass player kept pointing out the mistakes made by a violinist. He was really being an asshole about this.  After a few instances of this, the string player turned around and yelled at the brass player to mind his own parts...and things just got a little tense after that.  If you're not the MD, it's not your place to say anything about anyone else's playing.  If the MD doesn't like what that player is doing, they will let them know.  Just stick to your own part.

8) Be mindful of other people's instruments.  You might be playing a cheap acoustic guitar for this show, or you might be using a road warrior bass (you know, the cheap one that you don't mind if it gets dinged-up a little).  But keep in mind that some of the other players in your pit might have paid a whole lot more for their instruments.  Some of them might cost the same as the car you drove to get to the gig.  So be careful of other people's property!  If you carelessly walk through the pit and knock over someone's beautiful bassoon or trombone...well, I wouldn't want to be you in that situation.

9) Watch for cues!  It's happened to a lot of us - you are vamping the same chords for a few minutes while the action is developing on stage and your mind wanders and you don't watch for the cut-off cue - and you end up playing a solo when everyone else has already stopped.   Embarrassing.  Awkward.  Don't do this; if necessary, put a big symbol on your music to watch for the cues so you'll know to pay attention.  And don't automatically assume "each night this vamp usually plays for about 10 measures" - it's live theater.  You never know when you might need to cut off from one night to the next.  Save yourself the embarrassment - just pay attention to the person with the baton.  It's not hard.

10) Watch your volume.  This not only applies to while you're playing, but just as importantly this applies to watching it in between songs.  When the song ends and the applause dies down, be sure your volume pedal is silent or your volume control is all the way down BEFORE you take the guitar off and put it back on its stand.  Nobody in the audience (or in the pit) wants to hear your open strings resonating at full volume because you forgot to turn down.  They don't even want to hear your hands brush the strings.  Once the music stops, the audience shouldn't even know you're down there, so keep silent and pay attention to your volume or pedal settings in between songs.

Again, most of these things should be self-evident to any mindful musician but these are the things I've seen in pits that can make things difficult for you and others. 

If anyone has any other tips they'd like to pass along, I would love to hear them - leave them in the comments so others can see them too.

Playing in the Pits - Part 1

For about ten years now, I've been playing guitar in various orchestra pits for musical theater.  This is a great way for a guitar player to really hone your chops - sight-reading-wise especially - but it's definitely different from any other venue you may be used to playing.

You really have to learn how to be able to follow your written music while at the same time following the conductor, who will be establishing the tempo, managing dynamics, and bringing the orchestra in or cutting you off depending on what's happening on-stage.  For people who have been used to playing in orchestras or marching bands since school, that may all be second-nature...but it was a totally new world for me as a guitarist who would either lead my own bands or play with others in a more relaxed atmosphere.

I know a lot of guitar players may not read standard music notation, but this is a must for musical theater gigs.  Too many young players these days rely on chord charts or (worse) tablature to navigate through a written piece of music.  This won't cut it in the orchestra pit - there's no two ways about it.  You have to learn how to sight-read, and learn it well.  Sometimes you'll get the written part in advance so you can practice and learn the show you're going to play; but you need to be ready for anything.  I've taught guitar to students (usually younger kids) who tended to nod off when we got around to the sight-reading part of the lesson - they just wanted to "rawk" - but I always tried to impress upon them how useful this ability can be.

You also have to be very comfortable - if not fluent - with all styles of music.  During any one show, you may have to play songs in various styles: rock, country, latin, funk, jazz, and anything in-between.  You need to be able to pull this off, regardless of how well you can read the notes; you can't fake good funk comping or jazz phrasing.  It really helps if you are familiar with all of these styles so that when the score calls for it you can pull it off.  I've heard players who think they can fake their way through these styles and it doesn't sound right.  Start listening to some classic jazz players (Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, George Benson, Charlie Christian, Freddie Green), funk masters (Prince, any of the Tower of Power players, Jesse Johnson, etc), as well as the rock gods...but more importantly than listening to just the guitarists, listen to the bands they play in and how the players interact with each other.  You'll start to pick up on specific phrasing or grooves that may come in handy when you need to start swinging through a jazz chart in a pit, for example.

I'm not the best at playing country music; can't stand listening to it, actually, but lots of scores call for some country-western tunes at some point.  This is one area where I can use a little more work, admittedly...thankfully, only a couple of shows that I've played so far really call for that style of playing (and one show had everything written out so as long as I could dial-up a decent country patch on my effects board, I was able to slog through it - but I knew even as I was playing it that this was not my preferred style and I could tell it showed in my playing).

The gear you may use in a pit is going to be different than what you normally play through.  No need to haul your cabinets and stacks around for this type of gig.  A small amp is usually sufficient, as you will most likely be miked from the pit - and you shouldn't play too loud in the pit anyway (I'll write another time about some basic pit etiquette that I've picked up over the years).  I usually bring a Strat, an effects board and my JC-120 amp, though I may downsize the amp soon (that sucker is heavy to haul around).  Depending on the requirements of the show you might have to also play an acoustic, a banjo, a mandolin, etc., and switch between them a lot during the show...sometimes during the same song!

It helps also to generally have an understanding of how the orchestra adds to and supports the show you are playing and the best way to learn this is to just listen to (or go see!) some musicals.  I've always loved musical theater ever since I was a kid and was able to play my parent's records of shows they loved (Sound of Music, Gigi, Camelot, My Fair Lady) - of course, none of these shows have a guitar part, but this is my point - I was exposed to lots of different musicals when I was younger and I could hear how the orchestra supported the singing on-stage and how the music set the mood or followed the action of a show in general.  If you don't have a lot of experience with this, it helps to check out some musicals to hear this for yourself.  Check out shows like West Side Story, Ragtime, Seussical or even Rent to hear how the music supports the action on stage or can set certain moods - a lot like the score of a movie can set the mood for certain scenes.  Believe it or not, this will affect the way you play so that you're playing less as a soloist and more as a part of an ensemble.

Like I said earlier, playing in this environment is a different world than what you may be used to - but it's rewarding and will really make you a better overall player. Plus, it's a blast! It's fun to be able to contribute to the production of a live show.  It's not always easy to get into these types of gigs - a lot of it depends on who you know - but if you're lucky enough to be a good, well-rounded player with some connections, I'd definitely suggest getting into the pits.

Fishbone is Red Hot!

I just finished watching the new documentary about Fishbone ("Everyday Sunshine"). If you're a fan, I recommend it. The film chronicles the history of the band and does a pretty good job hypothesizing why they never hit the big time. This was a band that influenced the Red Hot Chili Peppers, No Doubt, and tons of other acts - some of which went on to become multi-millionaires - but Fishbone still struggles to fill small clubs to this day.

That's something I just can't wrap my head around, because Fishbone was probably the most amazing live act I've ever seen - and I've seen a few. The first time I saw them was around 1987 when they opened for the Beastie Boys. I was there to see the Beasties and didn't even know who Fishbone was. But I left that show a fan and have remained so to this day. I saw them several times over the next few years and was more blown away by their live act than each time before.

First, visually they were high-energy - before the first song in their set was done they probably did 3 stage dives, joined the mosh pit, and worked up a major sweat. They never stopped moving, jumping, climbing the lighting rigs, bouncing off each other on stage...all while singing, playing and keeping the groove going. To this day I've never seen a live act with as much energy as those guys put out.

And then their music was something I hadn't heard before: a mixture of ska, funk, rock, punk, and just about any other style you could think of adding. Their songs ranged from all-out party anthems ("Party at Ground Zero") to the more serious ("Ma and Pa", "Change")...and everything in between.

Maybe this is one reason they never caught on as much as their contemporaries: they were impossible to pigeon-hole or label. In the documentary, George Clinton put it best, saying effectively that they were too black for white audiences and too white for black audiences. Today I don't know if that would have been as much of an issue but 20+ years ago I think that mattered more.

But even more than that I think that after a certain point their music lost direction and it was even harder to nail them down. I really liked their first 4 albums but then they started getting more experimental and they sounded less like they were writing complete songs at a certain point...and that's kind of when they lost me, even as much as I loved their earlier stuff.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers lost me, too, when they went much more mainstream and commercial - I enjoyed the Chilis' earlier albums much more. Even though the Chilis ripped Fishbone off, what I liked about both bands was the way they fused multiple styles together on their earlier albums - but at some point their styles really diverged: Fishbone got more unpredictable and lost some of their audience while the Chilis got mroe radio-friendly and became millionaires.

But even as fans we can't expect these guys to remain the same for such a long career and I totally understand their desire to branch off and try new directions. Art has to grow and change to survive. And artists have to be true to themselves while somehow keeping the business of music in mind as well - and this is where I think Fishbone lost their direction. They were dropped by the major label that supported them for their early albums and the film makes it look like they struggled to find their footing after that. And they're still struggling with that to this day. They just recently put out a new album that I haven't yet heard, though after watching the film I'm more interested to check it out.

The film kind of leaves their future up in the air but in a way that's appropriate, since that's how their career has been for some time. I hope this movie gives Fishbone a little more of the attention they deserve and increases their fan base, kind of like how the "Anvil" movie did for that band. I'm glad I was around to see them as much as I did years ago - they were something else entirely.

Here's a link to the movie trailer.

We're Going Digital, Folks

An article I recently read online noted that digital music sales surpassed physical CD sales for the first time in 2011. Probably the only thing that surprises me about that is that it didn't happen sooner. According to the article, digital purchases accounted for 50.3% of music purchases - just slightly edging out physical CD sales.

Is this a good development? I have mixed feelings about the trend towards an all-digital music world, and I have no doubt that this is where we're headed - there are fewer and fewer places where you can go and shop for CDs these days. Some people will say that digital tracks don't sound as good as their CD counterparts (and some real die-hards still claim that CDs never sounded as good as vinyl)...but I'm not in that camp. Maybe it's because I've been to too many rock concerts in my day and my hearing isn't what it used to be any more, but I can't really tell the difference sound-wise.

For me, I still like the experience of buying a CD and having something to unwrap, open up and explore. I like reading the liner notes and seeing where it was recorded, who produced and mixed the tracks, who played on which tracks, who they were written by, and if there are lyrics and photos included, all the better. In the digital world, I have seen and purchased a few online albums that did include a digital booklet download - but I'd like to see more of that...in fact, I think a digitial booklet should be an option to download with every digital album. I hope that trend continues. This would be especially welcome for digital classical/opera albums where the translation (libretto) is important to have available.

That's another thing: "albums"...do we still call them albums in the digital world? The iTunes store calls them albums, as does the Amazon MP3 store...but that doesn't ring right to me somehow. When I think of an "album", I always think of a large vinyl disc with a little hole in the middle, stuffed into a slightly larger cardboard sleeve. Even CDs, which are at least another tangible medium, to me were never really "albums" - they were always called "CDs" to me. But in an all-digital world, the idea of calling a collection of binary files on a hard drive an "album" seems a little silly. But I don't want to run the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man so I'll get with the program and will agree to call them "albums" still - even though they're not.

My biggest gripe about an all-digital music world is that the concept of an album loses its meaning when tracks can be purchased individually and listened to in any order you choose. Musicians devote a lot of time and energy deciding on the ordering of tracks on an album. When tracks are downloaded individually or listened to out of their intended order, you lose a lot of the intended effect of the album.

As an example, the other day I was working in the kitchen and I had my iPod (on random mode) playing through some speakers. The first track of "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" came on, and just after "So let me introduce to you/the one and only Billy Shears/Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the iPod switched right away to another random song, because that's how the Sgt Pepper CD had the tracks divided. It just didn't sound right to not hear "With a Little Help From my Friends" right after...just like it wouldn't sound right to not hear "Living Loving Maid" right after "Heartbreaker" from the Led Zeppelin II album. The tracks were ordered that way for a reason but we lose that with the randomness of the digital music experience.

Nowhere is the ordering of tracks more important than on a "concept album". These are albums that might tell a story across all of their songs, or develop an idea throughout the duration of the album. To me, the best examples of concept albums could be found in Pink Floyd's discography: "The Wall". "Animals", "Dark Side of the Moon" - all of these albums explored themes and concepts that could only be fully realized by listening through the entire albums in the order they were intended. Other examples of good concept albums were "2112" (side A) by Rush, "Scenes From a Memory" by Dream Theater, and even the Beatles' "Sgt Pepper". There was no randomness in the way the songs for these albums were meant to be laid out - but if you were to only download one track off the digital versions of these albums, you would lose the whole concept of the album - or if you chose to listen to all the tracks in some random order, it would be like skipping through a book and reading random chapters out of order. Not the same experience. Not 100% bad, but not the same.

The only exception to this that I've seen in the digital world is the "Lovesexy" album by Prince. If you try to buy that album in iTunes or Amazon MP3, you can't buy individual tracks - you can only purchase the full album. There are no separate tracks - it's just one large file containing all of the songs in their original album order. That's a gutsy move in the digital world; not making each track available separately might cost Prince some album sales (not that he'd be too hurt financially), but at least it's an attempt to keep the songs in the order he intended. Odd choice, in my opinion...I don't remember the songs on "Lovesexy" having a lot to do with each other like a real "concept" album (I owned the cassette back when it came out) but I admire the effort.

On the other hand, there's a lot about the digital world that I like. I love the convenience of owning digital albums and not having to find extra shelf space in my house to store them. I live in a small house, so space is a premium. Even if I buy some new books to read I feel guilty if I don't give some older ones away to make room. I have piles of CDs all over my computer room as well as on shelves and there's just not a lot of room for new ones...having them all on my hard drive (and synced to my iPod as well as backed up to the cloud) is a nice convenience. I like to be able to sample tracks before I buy them, and having an entire store at my fingertips is great.

So I guess that I can live with the minor complaints I have about digital music (hopefully we'll see digital liner notes or lyric booklets become more available in the future), in exchange for the conveniences that the new world offers. As digital music sales continue to beat physical CD sales, it's not like I have much of a choice.

Grunge: when I started "getting old"

Full disclosure up front...I have never been a fan of the Seattle music scene that blossomed in the early 90's, and to which the marketing gurus of the record companies have since applied the label "grunge". I found that music in general to be boring, directionless and sloppy, and the lyrics too whiny for my taste. The only bands from that era that I could stand to listen to at all were Stone Temple Pilots and a little bit of early Pearl Jam.

So when I saw that Netflix had the documentary "Pearl Jam 20" available for viewing, I checked it out last night. Watching it just reaffirmed why I never fully got into them or that entire scene in the first place. In fact, I think I like Pearl Jam even less now than I thought I did before I watched the film.

They were a band that became extremely successful but always appeared to be uncomfortable with their success. Whether this unease with success was geniune or something just put on for the benefit of their fans, I don't know. I do know that they shunned whatever accolades were bestowed on them and were proud to do so. I guess my gut reaction to all that is: so why are you continuing doing something that is bringing you all of this success when you're clearly uncomfortable or unhappy with that success? This makes me think they were being a little disingenuous with their shtick, or that it was just to show their fan base that they don't really care about the trappings of fame and success. To me, it comes across as a little too self-centered and petulant.

I don't like to speak ill of the deceased but Curt Kobain was probably the worst case of this. If you can't deal with success...then quit your band and go into some other profession, and please - stop whining so much! If you can't deal with being an overnight millionaire, then I suggest you give your money away to charity (somehow I guess they were never that uncomfortable with success). Pearl Jam's singer, Eddie Vedder, also strikes me as being more than a little whiny about his success. In fact, he comes across in this documentary as being whiny about almost everything, which to some, I guess, comes across as uber-cool and above it all. It made me just want to reach out and slap him.

On the other hand, I have to give them some credit when Pearl Jam went up against Ticketmaster and that company's policy of gouging ticket-buyers in the form of their "convenience fees", and even went so far as to tour in venues where Ticketmaster couldn't do their business. I think that was admirable, as it most likely cost them some income...of course, by that time Pearl Jam had already made their millions and built a huge fan base. So it was easy for them to lose a few large bookings at that point. Would they have been brave enough to buck Ticketmaster early on their career when they were struggling? I wonder about that.

As far as their music - I liked a few of their early songs but thought they were repetetive and bland as their career went on (at least, what I heard on the radio). I thought their playing was sloppy and lifeless, and that applied to just about all of the bands that were getting airplay in the early 90's. Frankly, I couldn't tell one grunge band from the other. It seemed as if they were all trying to sound like Nirvana or Pearl Jam, even down to the mumbling style of singing.

I don't know, but maybe I can point to the early 90's when all of this was happening and could say that this is when I started "getting old", since this was the first movement in popular music that I could point to and say "I don't get it". There have been plenty others since then, too (each year I try to watch the grammy awards show and more and more I find myself saying "who the hell is that"?). I say this because obviously I'm in the minority with these opinions - Pearl Jam has a huge fan base after all these years and the documentary gives camera time to many of those fans saying how much Pearl Jam has changed their lives. Still, I have to say congratulations to any band that has been popular for 20+ years. They're touching some nerve out there, even if it's not one I was born with.

Songs in the Key of Life

My friend Larry recently posted to his Facebook wall: "Dusted off the ol' Songs in the Key of Life album today...how can an album be any better?" My answer is that it can't get much better than that.

I think it was Christmas of 1976 when I was given Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" album as a gift. I was eight years old and was laid up in a body cast after having been hit by a car while playing ball in the street with my friends. An eight-year old boy in a body cast tends to receive a lot of gifts but this was my most memorable. Songs in the Key of Life is now considered to be the pinnacle of Stevie's recorded output, but even as an eight-year old kid hearing it for the first time, I knew this album was something special.

Even the packaging was something I'd never seen before: it was a double-album, but when you opened the gatefold you saw an extra 45 inside a pocket that was cut into the inside of the packaging. The album artwork, as I recall, was such that it appeared you were staring down into caverns and the 45 was at the center of it (man, I miss album artwork). There was a lyric booklet included which contained at least one full page (in a tiny font) of names that Stevie listed as influences and people to thank. The lyric booklet was done very artfully using a beautiful font throughout and was a pleasure to read through while listening to the music.

Oh, and the music...the album opened with a choir of voices (which upon closer listening is just Stevie singing all of the voice parts) leading into "Love's in Need of Love Today", a soulful, almost gospel-like plea for peace in the world that set the tone for the rest of the album - I remember being hooked as soon as I heard that song.

"Have a Talk With God" is somewhat preachy but set against a 12-bar blues/funk groove that still makes it cool.

"Village Ghetto Land" - another serious message song about the plight of the ghettos. No instrumentation to speak of except for Stevie's synthesized strings. To this point, the album sounds like it's going to be 4+ sides of "Serious news to pass on to everybody", until...

"Contusion" - Bam! This one hits you right between the eyes. Especially coming off the quiet strings of the previous track, Stevie lets his band throw down in an instrumental fusion masterpiece. Excellent guitar work on this track by Michael Sembello. This leads right into...

"Sir Duke" - probably the most popular track off the album. While this has been overplayed to death it still remains a hook-filled tribute to some of the early heroes of jazz. This track was my personal introduction to the greats mentioned in this song: Basie, Miller, Satchmo, Ella and Duke - and most likely led to my own exploration of jazz over the years.

...and that was all just Side 1!

The rest of the album remains just as strong - there's really not a weak track on the entire collection. Even the extra 45 (included in the package as "A Something's Extra") contains 4 very strong tracks. To say that Stevie was prolific is an understatement - everything about this album, including the lyric booklet, is epic. This album capped a very successfull period in Stevie's musical career - many agree that the 70's was his most creative decade - he just couldn't do wrong with the albums he released during this time. But with Songs in the Key of Life, he hit it out of the park and reached musical heights that few can only dream about.

I don't remember who it was that gave me that album 35 years ago, but it still sticks with me to this day and hasn't lost a bit of its vitality. If you're unfamiliar with this one, I can't recommend it enough.

So long, "Guitar Hero"

Activision announced recently that they are pulling the plug on their popular "Guitar Hero" game franchise. After several versions of the original GH game and many copycat followups, the games have oversaturated the market and run their course.

The passing of the GH franchise made me think about the impact the game has had on music and on potential musicians (i.e., the kids who grew up playing the game in any of its incarnations). I've talked with other musicians who instantly dismiss the entire franchise ("it doesn't teach real music"), to others who embraced it for what it was: a clever and fun exercise in hand-eye coordination. I think that folks who sound off against GH because it "doesn't teach real music" miss the point (it was never meant to be a music education game in the first place), but I also think there are some elements of music that you can pick up while playing the game: specifically rhythm and pitch relativity.

Learning rhythm is a skill that I've seen young musicians struggle with, no matter how well they can read music and play it on their chosen instrument. It's one thing to be able to read and differentiate between 8th and 16th note patterns, but it's something else entirely to be able to count and keep good time while playing those notes. One of the features of the GH games was that the "notes" you played always came at you in rhythmic patterns that matched the tempo of the song you were playing and which directly related to the actual rhythms that sounded from the music. Put another way, the game emphasized the rhythm of the notes rather than the actual notes themselves - in many ways I thought the game would actually be a good introduction to percussion, even though I'm not a percussionist...any drummers reading this post, feel free to sound off on that idea.

The second musical element that I believe you could learn from the GH games was the relativity of pitches. While the game never dealt with actual musical notes, it did present the concept of pitches and their relationship to one another (intervals, scales, chords) in an interesting graphical manner. Low notes were always played on the "low buttons" of the guitar controller and the high notes were always played on the "higher buttons". I suppose that the game did emulate the concept of a guitar neck in that respect. But more than that, the game actually attempted to space the "notes" you would play in a manner that almost made sense, musically; notes that came at you at specific intervals (thirds, fifths, etc) were translated to the controller's buttons in a way that conveyed the actual musical distance between those notes. As you played a guitar solo that featured an ascending scale run, the "notes" were presented in an ascending pattern that you followed on the controller. Granted, the controller only had 6 buttons so the range of notes that could be mapped to the controller was limited...but the idea was musically correct. Even chords were played by holding down more than one button at a time, conveying the concept that a chord is made up of two or more notes played simultaneously.

I think that young kids who grew up playing these games will at least be a little more prepared for the real thing when they put down the plastic controllers, pick up an actual guitar and sign up for lessons. To that end, I think the GH games were a good introduction to some of the mechanics of music. And if by playing those games, a kid's interest in learning real music has been sparked, then I think it's been a positive influence.

John McLaughlin

I was a teenager when I first saw John McLaughlin play live. It was at The Stone on Broadway in San Francisco. The venue is no longer there - I think it's a strip club now, but as a concert venue it was a great place to see a live show. I went with some high school buddies and we got in early, so we sat directly in front of the stage - we so happened to position ourselves to be directly in front of McLaughlin when he and his band came out.

It was in 1985 or '86 and McLaughlin was touring with his 80's incarnation of Mahavishnu (he had dropped the "Orchestra" from the band name by this time). It was also the period where he was playing mostly guitar synthesizer - the Synclavier II - but on that evening he stuck with his Les Paul for the entire show. No complaints about that from me...I even remember at one point, in between songs, someone in the crowd yelled out "Where's your Synclavier???" and someone else responded "He doesn't need it!". McLaughlin just smiled and launched his band into the next tune.

Until this show, I had only heard McLaughlin on vinyl recordings of the original Mahavishnu Orchestra as well as some of his other acoustic albums such as "My Goal's Beyond" and "Friday Night in San Francisco", recorded with Al Di Meola and Paco De Lucia. My guitar teacher turned me on to McLaughlin a few years before this show. I knew that McLaughlin was a respected player and technically very impressive, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw that night at The Stone.

What blew me away was not only the technical precision and speed at which McLaughlin could play, but the overall mastery he seemed to have over the instrument. Since we were sitting literally a few feet in front of him for the entire show I was able to focus on this. The way he positioned his left hand - almost at a right angle to the actual fretboard - made it appear that he was "controlling" the guitar rather than merely playing it. He almost never looked at what he was doing; he played with his head tilted sideways and his eyes closed most of the time while playing the most instricate, technical - and musical - solos that really complemented what the rest of the band were playing. It appeared effortless to him even though what he was playing was beyond description. I felt that evening as though I was watching a real master.

And he had a killing band too - a young Jonas Hellborg on bass, Danny Gottlieb playing drums and Bill Evans on sax. I think the keyboardist was Mitch Foreman but I can't quite remember. It was essentially the lineup he used on his mid-80's Mahavishnu albums ("Mahavishnu" and "Adventures in Radioland").

Since then, I've seen McLaughlin play in various formats: solo acoustic, with a group of Indian musicians, and in a few other electric bands - most recently with Chick Corea and Christan McBride in the Five Peace Band. I have enjoyed everything he's done, no matter the format, and he still impresses beyond belief but more than that - he seems to reinvent himself with each new band he plays in. His style, while unmistakenly "McLaughlin", adapts to the situation and the players around him. To me, this says something about a guitarist that many today consider THE elder statesman of the instrument...he doesn't have to adapt for anyone, but he does so for the sake of the music he's creating.

The original Mahavishnu Orchestra records still blow me away every time I hear them. This was a band I would have loved to see play live, and those I know who have seen them tell me that it was something like a religious experience. I've also enjoyed his other offerings since the Mahavishnu years - during the early 80s he recorded a couple of albums that I enjoyed very much: "Music Spoken Here" and "Belo Horizonte", and he composed and recorded his "Guitar Concerto" with the London Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas). In the 90s he did some amazing work with his "Heart of Things" band. These are just some of my favorites, but they all feature John in various musical formats and he breezes through each effortlessly.

My favorite CD came out in 1996 and is called "The Promise". John plays with a variety of musicians on this one - a different group of players on each track - and the results are amazing. Some standouts are a version of "Django" that he plays with Jeff Beck, "Jazz Jungle" - a 15-minute jam featuring Mike Brecker (worth the cost of the CD all on its own), and a tune called "Thelonius Melodius" with Joey DeFrancesco playing the B3. This CD sort of sums up all of McLaughlin's career, to me. Each group of players playing at the top of their game, and John content not to be the focus but happy to support the others and let them shine through.

I guess he may have learned this from playing with Miles Davis all those years ago; Miles had a way of nurturing new talent and "discovering" many musicians who, today, are considered Jazz greats: Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, John Scofield, McLaughlin...the list goes on. Many of these players went on to nurture and introduce new talent to the jazz world, and we can see that continuing today. Many of the musicians that played with McLaughlin have gone on to respected (if not entirely successful) careers of their own.

And even though John is pushing 70 as of the time of this post, he shows no signs of slowing down. His current band - The 4th Dimension - just released a new CD ("To The One") and the music is inspired as always. While I wish I could have been around for the original Mahavishnu Orchestra tours, I am glad I got turned on to him when I did and was able to catch that show at The Stone. I've seen hundreds of live shows in my lifetime but very few made any lasting impression as this one. Come to think of it, few guitarists have made as much an impression on me as John McLauhglin.

Here's an old clip of John playing "Spain" with Paco de Lucia:


...and here's a short clip of Mahavishnu in the mid-80's. This is around the time I first saw McLaughlin play live:

A Little Shameless Self-Promotion

What better time than the holidays for a little shameless self-promotion? :)


A few years back my jazz quartet recorded a CD of Christmas tunes. The CD is called "Yuletide Jazz" and is available on cdbaby.com, iTunes, and amazon.com. We're quite proud of this recording, and I hope you get the chance to hear and enjoy it! We took some well-known Christmas carols (and a few not-so-well-known ones) and rearranged them in various jazz settings from bop to swing to latin, etc.

The musicians on the recording are:

Alex Bootzin - piano
Steve Cassinelli - bass
Ruben Salcido - sax/flute
Kevin McAuliffe - drums

...as well as some appearances by friends and fellow players.

It also makes a great Christmas present for the jazz fanatic in your life (we all have one, right?)

So take a look for "Yuletide Jazz" by Nucleus. Thus ends the self-promotion for the year. Happy Holidays!

iTunes "Holdouts"?

Because of the long-awaited release of the Beatles' catalog on iTunes last week, I've been reading a lot of articles bemoaning the rest of the iTunes "Holdouts" (artists whose recordings are either not available on iTunes, or who only have a limited selection of their music available through the channel). Among the various artists mentioned are AC/DC, Garth Brooks, Kid Rock, Bob Seger, Tool, Def Leppard, as well as some of the early recordings by Black Sabbath and Aerosmith. Now I will admit to not knowing much (okay, pretty much nothing) about how the music business operates, so most of this is coming from a vantage point of complete ignorance, but I'm finding the discussion mostly focusing on the artists themselves and I wonder if that's misdirected.

The most-cited example I've been reading about lately is AC/DC's Angus Young declaring that their music was never meant to be purchased as individual tracks...that they meant for the entire album to be enjoyed, and that you don't break up an artist's work to sell piecemeal. OK - I can get with some of that statement, if it weren't just a little disingenuous (I remember being able to buy 45's of AC/DC's hits back in the day...isn't that akin to "breaking up an album" and "selling the tracks piecemeal"?) But other artists (prog-rockers Tool, for example) stress that their albums are meant to be listened all the way through, and not as individual tracks. Again, I can get with this statement as well - but iTunes does let you sell albums in their entirety instead of offering single-track downloads...so that argument doesn't really hold water either. But my point is that most of the articles I've read put the focus squarely on the shoulders of the artists themselves, and ask "why are you still holding out"?

But I'm not sure how much of this is up to the artists themselves. For example, the Black Sabbath early catalog (the first eight albums with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals) is not available on iTunes, but the rest of their catalog is. Ditto with Aerosmith - last time I checked, their early output is unavailable in digital format. So, is this selective availability really the artists' own choice? Or does this have to do with the record companies not wanting to sell the (more popular) parts of those catalogs on the (less expensive) iTunes store? Why sell an album online for $9.99 if you can still charge $15 through more traditional outlets? I haven't researched this, but is the iTunes distribution agreement that prohibitive that the record companies don't want to pay Apple's fees? And, does the artist have any say whatsoever about which portions of their discography can be sold digitally? I mean these as actual questions, by the way, and if anyone has any insight, please feel free to leave a comment.

And then we have the strange case of the "here today gone tomorrow" selections like the Frank Zappa catalog. Frank released his albums through his own record label. His catalog was available on iTunes for a short time, and then all of a sudden it was gone. I've subsequently read that Gail Zappa (Frank's widow) pulled the albums off the service because of the poor audio quality afforded by the iTunes compression scheme. OK, fair enough, but really - if that was the case, then why did they ever make it to iTunes in the first place? Did Gail all of a sudden realize after the fact that the sound quality of compressed audio is not 100% on par with a CD? Or did the catalog just not sell very well in the digital world and she realized that the CDs would sell better if left whole? One hates to be cynical...but I really think that, if Frank were alive today, he'd have no qualms about saying "I can make more money by selling CDs through my own label".

So I suspect that we still have iTunes holdouts not necessarily because Angus Young thinks his art should be left completely whole. Unless I'm informed otherwise, I would suggest lobbying the record companies if you want to be able to download your favorite holdout's catalog through iTunes.

The Travesty of "Smooth Jazz"

Back in 1990 I had the pleasure of taking a class at San Francisco State on the history of Jazz. It was taught by Grover Sales who had a unique and personal history with the music, and who taught the subject with more passion than I've seen from a teacher in many years. Mr Sales has since passed away but here's an obit from the San Francisco Chronicle; he was one of a kind and I'll never forget how much I learned in that class. And I still recall the first statement he made on day one of class: "Jazz is NOT popular music". I've come to regard this as the Grover Sales Axiom.


Jazz has never really reached the mass market in the same way as popular music has, so it was probably only natural that some day someone would try to combine the two worlds of popular music and jazz to create a more marketable sub genre of Jazz.


When Miles Davis recorded his landmark "Bitches Brew" album in 1970, he was regarded as the first to meld (or "fuse") the improvisational aspects of Jazz with modern instrumentation and styles that were popular at the time (yes, I know this point is debatable...the CTI label was churning out pop/jazz music around the same time, but Miles took it to another level). Many critics complained that Davis sold out with this new direction he was taking, but that was Miles: he never stuck with the same style of music for very long. He was always pushing, always changing styles. However, when I listen to the "Bitches Brew"-era Miles, I still hear an honesty of a musician unafraid to push boundaries and challenge a listener's expectations. And I can still hear the improvisation, freedom, and interplay with his band that (to me) are the hallmarks of what Jazz is really all about. Miles never sold out; he was always charting new directions until the day he died.

The trend that Miles started was continued by other popular "fusion" bands in the early 1970s, most notably by supergroups like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever. The essentials of Jazz remained firmly in place on these recordings and these groups did much to expand on the groundwork that Miles had laid. However, like anything good that sticks around for a while, someone will come along and try to exploit it even further and end up creating a monster. It's arguable as to when exactly the genre of "smooth jazz" was created, but some of the earliest groups to capitalize on the sound (such as Spyro Gyra and The Jeff Lorber Fusion) started around the mid-1970s.

The difference to me between these bands and the other Fusion giants of the previous years was several-fold: the improvising was toned down, the music was unadventurous and not challenging to the listener, and the commercialism was turned way, way up. Probably the most egregious examples of the "new fusion" were guys like Chuck Mangione, Earl Klugh, and even (as much as I hate to say it) George Benson - a brilliant jazz guitarist who ventured into the "crossover" territory for years before making his money and then finally returning to his jazz roots.

The smooth jazz trend continued into the early 1980s with the formation of GRP Records, a label started by Dave Grusin and which featured primarily (though not exclusively) smooth jazz artists such as Lee Ritenour and Larry Carlton, turning smooth jazz into a multi-million dollar enterprise. But nobody is entitled to wear the crown of smooth jazz as much as one Kenny Gorelick, formerly a member of the Jeff Lorber Fusion band - later to be known as Kenny G.

Kenny G is every musician's favorite target to criticize - not because of his success (I wouldn't begrudge anyone who has "made it" in the music field...more power to them), but because he continuously promotes the same banal, mind-numbing, dumbed-down and most sterile music since I once heard a muzak version of "Play That Funky Music" in a supermarket. And Kenny G has indeed made millions off this genre. His albums have sold many millions, many times over. Compare this with the pioneers of jazz who came decades before him: Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk...even going back further to Bix Beiderbecke, Jelly Roll Morton, James P Johnson, Louis Armstrong...I am willing to bet that all of these masters combined could not outsell the tripe that Kenny G puts out year after year. Pat Metheny (one of my top 10 favorite guitarists) posted a now-famous diatribe about Kenny G, after KG cut a track of himself playing over a Louis Armstrong record...which Metheny basically considered a sacrilege.

Nobody understands this market better than Kenny himself. There is definitely an audience for background instrumental pop that doesn't challenge or offend, doesn't force the listener to really listen, and I don't have a problem with anyone who purchases this dreck - only don't call it Jazz because it's not Jazz. Smooth jazz, as a genre, to me means: boring chord changes (usually a variant of a II-V-I sequence repeated ad nauseum), boring and repetitive solos that don't tell a story or go anywhere, and no interplay among the musicians. In fact, a lot of the examples of this genre sound like sampled rhythms; I wonder if some of them even use real players. The biggest issue for me is that this is what passes today as "jazz". It's not Jazz...just apply the Grover Sales Axiom: Kenny G is popular and he plays "smooth jazz". The Axiom says "Jazz is NOT popular music". I have therefore proven that smooth jazz is not really "jazz" :)

Having said all of the above, I will admit that there are some seriously good players in the smooth jazz arena. I've seen a few of them live, playing in mostly non-"smooth" situations, and some of them can hold their own with any type of music. Lee Ritenour is one of them. Pianist David Benoit is another. I just think it's unfortunate that the music-buying public probably wouldn't buy their stuff if they played more challenging music, so they continue to record the stuff that will sell. Occasionally, however, they will venture into some real Jazz territory; these albums may not sell as much but it's nice for a change.

So call it what it is: instrumental pop, improvisational R&B, instrumental-lite...please just don't call it Jazz. Go back and listen to some of the old masters mentioned above and you'll be able to hear the difference. And again, if you're really into Kenny G and I've offended, my apologies. This blog entry was just meant to inform and I hope I've done that.

A friend and fellow musician, Tony Frye, recently posted on his Facebook wall that 80% of the "Jazz" section of his local used record store was taken up by Kenny G and the Manhattan Transfer. That's a sad commentary, and his post is what inspired me to write this blog entry (thanks, Tony!). By the way, Tony keeps an excellent music blog here - check it out!

A Morning at the Opera

The fifth season of the Metropolitan Opera's HD transmissions started today, with Richard Wagner's "Das Rheingold" broadcast live to 1500 movie theaters in 46 participating countries. If you have never been to an opera but are interested in trying it out, I absolutely recommend this as a way to experience it for the first time. Depending on where you live, there's a good chance that your local theater multiplex is a participant in the program. And for about $24, the price can't be beat. Here's a link to the Metropolitan Opera HD website which lists all the upcoming performances and more information.

Because of the live simulcast, the start time for these broadcasts here on the West Coast is usually 10am - earlier if the opera is especially long (an upcoming simulcast of "Die Walkure", scheduled to last 5 1/2 hours, will start at 9am). This season, the Met is simulcasting 12 of their operas during this season; up from 9 last year. The numbers speak to the success of this venture: 2.4 million tickets were purchased during last years' simulcasts of 9 operas while a typical attendance figure for a season at the Met is around 800,000.

The technology is amazing when you consider this is a live simulcast going out all over the world. The picture and sound quality is incredible, and yes there are subtitles so you can follow the stories. Instead of just fixing a camera on the stage, you are brought up close to each singer; this lets you see things you can't normally catch in a live performance. It's really the best seat in the house as far as I'm concerned.

I wonder how (or if) the advent of these simulcasts has affected actual attendance at the Met, or at any other opera house in the States. For myself (and I've written before about my increasing dislike of attending live performances these days), I know that I'm more apt to attend a Met simulcast (and spend $24 per ticket) than to trudge up to the War Memorial and pay upwards of $100 for a decent seat, not including parking, etc. I know that this is not helpful financially for my local Opera Company but they receive some support from me in other ways. (By the way, the SF Opera has done a few "opera in the movie theater" functions as well, but they are not live and they don't have the reach of the Met in terms of making their offerings available at your local multiplex).

Do I really want to drop $1000 on one ticket to see the Ring Cycle next summer at the War Memorial, or wait for the Met to show them at my local theater for a tenth of the price? Or wil the SF Opera film their Ring cycle and make them available on blu-ray so we can enjoy them at home, at our leisure? I'm willing to bet that the Met will do this after the season is up; the production today was one worth seeing again for sure.

I remember reading about a time over 20 years ago now when supertitles were first introduced to the Met as well as to SF Opera and other regional houses; patrons threatened to pull their subscriptions, conductors refused to conduct, and this was perceived to be the end of opera as they knew it. Instead, it opened up the art form for a whole new audience who couldn't follow opera before this. I suspect the same will happen as a result of these live simulcasts, and hopefully in-house attendance will increase not only for the Met but for many local theater companies. I think this is probably the best thing to come along for opera since the introduction of supertitles...it's certainly a game-changer.



Again, if opera seems totally alien to you, give the Met simulcasts a try - you might be surprised at how much you like opera after all!

Brazilian Guitarist Chico Pinheiro

Every so often when I'm listening to the radio while driving, something catches my ear to such an extent that I have to literally pull the car over and concentrate on what I'm hearing. Then I usually will jot down the information that satellite radio provides so that I can search it out more on my own.

This happened to me again just the other night. I was driving home from a long day at work, and I was listening to the jazz station on XM/Sirius. I heard an arrangement of Steve Wonder's "As", from his seminal Songs in the Key of Life album, and it was played in a brilliant latin arrangement by a guitarist I had never heard of before: Chico Pinheiro from Brazil. I went home that evening and looked him up on YouTube, iTunes, etc...and have been digging his stuff all weekend long (in between rooting for the SF Giants winning the NL West, and bemoaning the state of the SF 49ers...but that's for another type of blog...).

While I couldn't find any videos of Pinheiro's arrangement of "As", I did find a video of him playing another of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs: "Send One Your Love" from the "Secret Life of Plants" LP (come to think of it, I don't think I have a non-favorite Stevie Wonder song). Turn down the lights, put on some headphones and turn up the volume (the sound is a little low on this one). I especially like the soloing he does about 2 minutes in, as he weaves his lines around what the singer is doing...enjoy:




I just really dig this guy's style of playing. I found a few more videos that showcased his band playing live. Here's one more for your enjoyment - he's playing electric on this one (looks like some kind of Gibson ES jazz guitar series...I didn't look too closely). He can certainly hold his own on electric as well. I don't really know what the song is about - and I think I'm probably wrong in thinking she is really singing about "Cassius Clay" the boxer, but I'll just claim ignorance of the language and instead enjoy the groove and the playing on this one:





What really bums me out is that this band just played at Yoshi's in Oakland about a month ago - I would have loved to see that show.

Carlos Santana - The Man, The Formula

"Wow, he has lots of other records besides Supernatural". (I actually overheard this at Tower Records about 10 years ago when I was standing across from some young ladies who were leafing through Santana CDs).

Carlos Santana is a musician I have always admired.

I first got turned on to his thing when I was about 12. A friend's older sister had the "Moonflower" album and we listened to it over and over. I had never heard anything like it and I was immediately hooked. There are some guitar players that you can recognize after hearing just a few notes, and Santana is one of them for me. Since then, I've seen him live numerous times and have enjoyed his vast catalogue dating back to the late 60s, through some of his more experimental phases in the 70s ("Love, Devotion, Surrender", anyone?) and even through his (sometimes) sub-par 80s output.

What I think I admire the most about him is not only as a guitarist (though he still ranks as one of the best in my book, despite his having lost a little of his technique over the past few years). More than that, I admire his entire approach to music in general. He's always put together the most amazing bands with incredible players and he was always able to inject a little something extra into his playing. Call it spirituality, call it other-worldliness...just don't ask me to try and describe what I mean beyond this, because it will come off sounding stupid. Suffice it to say that there's always been an indescribable quality about Carlos the musician/guitarist that, to me, has placed him above most of the other professional musicians out there. I never once got the feeling that Carlos ever played a single note without really meaning it.

Most younger kids these days probably know Santana from his recent string of hit albums that he's recorded under the aegis of legendary music producer Clive Davis. Mr. Davis has certainly hit on a formula that has clicked: team Carlos with a lineup of modern-day pop singers and reach that elusive crossover market. Santana's recordings over the past 10 years have been his best selling of his career. "Supernatural", released in 1999, has sold over 15 million copies. I haven't seen the actual statistics but I think this has to be his best-selling release to date.

I can't honestly say I was a huge fan of the Supernatural-era Santana, or of the several albums that have followed over the past 10 years (all of which followed the same Clive Davis formula). To me, these albums sound over-produced and over-sterilized. It's as if the Santana band - still firing on all cylinders - got together with a bunch of top-40 singers to record some new tunes, and then Carlos would come in after the fact and lay down some random guitar tracks over what was already recorded. Still, I have to say that his playing never really lost that indescribable something on these albums. He still played everything as if he meant it. And...good for him for reaching what's probably the financial pinnacle of his recording career - if anyone deserves such success, it's Carlos.

All of which brings me to his latest release, "Guitar Heaven". Again, this one follows the same Clive Davis formula but on this release Carlos and his band cover classic guitar tunes from Led Zeppelin, Cream, the Rolling Stones, etc. Some of these covers are done pretty well ("Sunshine of Your Love" stands out for me so far), while some of them are what-were-you-thinking awful (AC/DC's "Back in Black", which is recorded with someone named NAS who raps the lyrics with what I swear sounds like the auto-tuned cast of Glee singing the choruses...just terrible). At this point, I think the Clive Davis formula has grown stale.

As a guitarist, Carlos' chops are not what they used to be...that's been apparent over the past few albums - but they seem even more sloppy on this new release. What's worse, though, is that I don't get that feeling that Carlos means what he's playing any more. Even more so than the past few albums, this one really sounds like Carlos is simply phoning it in. It doesn't really have the identity of the Santana band. Maybe this is what naturally happens after you've been through the Clive Davis machine for 10+ years; gotta appeal to the American Idol-buying public or your career is kaput-ski. I think that's a sad place to see someone like Carlos end up.

I like to think that maybe there's still enough creativity in the man to break out of this rut and record a new album of his own music, with only his own band again (please, no more "guest artists" on every track), and produced by someone else other than Clive Davis. One can only hope. In the meantime, I think I'll listen to Moonflower again.

Live Shows - Worth the Cost?

I recently sat down to watch a performance of Don Giovanni by the San Francisco Opera on my local PBS station. I thoroughly enjoyed the opera, but more than that it was the experience of watching it on a 52" HD screen with digital sound and in the comfort of my own living room. I didn't have to negotiate my way through downtown traffic, pay for parking, get hit up for spare change on the street, or pay $100 for a seat. And I could see the singers up close, noticing those nuances I would have missed in the opera house (sitting hundreds of feet from the stage), watching their facial expressions conveying what the words alone can't.

In this era of high-definition, big screen TVs, Blu-Ray discs and digital sound, is a live performance really worth the cost any more? I've read elsewhere how affordable, high-quality home theater systems may be responsible in part for declining movie theater ticket receipts, and I think live music performances may suffer from this as well.

There is something to be said about being with a group of like-minded people, gathered together to experience a performance of live music of any style. And I know that many musicians rely on live performances as part of their incomes, and that ticket prices for the opera only cover a portion of their production costs. I know and appreciate all of this, and there are still instances when I will pay to see a live show no matter the cost. But increasingly I find myself distracted by the more unpleasant elements of taking in a live show and am more and more inclined these days to stay home and pop in a DVD.

In the case of rock shows (and maybe it's just my bad luck), I always find myself seated either in front of or directly behind the most inebriated idiot in the house, and who makes it his responsibility (yes, it's always a "he") to let everyone in a 20-seat radius know exactly what he thinks of everything. As I get older that sort of thing just annoys me more and more and it distracts from my enjoyment of the music. Then there's the outrageous food/drink prices, parking hassles, and those "convenience fees" of at least $10 added to the cost of each ticket. Maybe I'm getting cranky but these things are making me become more choosy about which rock shows I will pay for these days.

I even recently decided against going to see Rush on their most recent tour. Now Rush is one band that I almost never miss; their live shows are incredible and I've seen them at least a dozen times. But I consciously skipped this tour because I can guarantee that there will be a Blu-Ray disc of this show released soon after their tour ends. Also, for probably 90% of the concert I find myself staring at the large video screens as I'm usually too far from the stage to see anything...so why not just do this at home?

Speaking of video screens, I find it interesting how the SF Opera has installed video screens in their balcony section so that you can see the singers and the translations up close as if you were watching the same thing at home on your HD screen. This serves a dual purpose, I suspect: I'm sure they film these performances as they appear on the video screens, so that they will have a DVD-ready performance to sell (or lease to PBS) long after the live performance. I'm sure the Don Giovanni that I watched the other evening was exactly what the folks in the balcony section were seeing at the Opera House.

Live musical performances can still be thrilling, and as I mentioned I will still pay to support my favorite artists or local musical organizations ... just not as often any more.

I Miss Tower Records

I love iTunes and I can't stand iTunes.

I buy a lot of music from iTunes. Since I got my first iPod in 2003 (I'm on my third now), I've been steadily building up my iTunes library with CDs from my collection and augmenting same with tons of albums purchased from Apple's online store. Even though I've been working in I.T. for the past 17 years, I'm still amazed at the fact that all of this content is available at the click of a mouse. Something about purchasing goods online is so tempting when you don't have to reach for your wallet and pull out your credit card each time you make a purchase (it's easy to forget that your card is getting dinged with each track you download). And for me, buying music has been an obsession since I could afford my first LP from paper route money (Led Zeppelin's "Song Remains the Same" double-album purchased at Musicland). This obsession continues in the digital age.

Still, I have to say I do miss the experience of shopping in a record store. For my money, nothing beats the experience of walking into a shop and seeing miles of rows of CDs of every genre, right there for the browsing - and it's specifically the browsing that I miss.

I used to make my way through Tower Records first to the "Rock/Pop" CD section. Starting alphabetically I could wander through the offerings...AC/DC (anything I don't already have?)...Black Sabbath (why don't they ever carry "Master of Reality" when you really want it?)...Depeche Mode (meh, walk on by)...etc...

It was the browsing experience that would get me feeling all adventurous and willing to try new things. It was how I discovered the discography of artists that I was just learning to get into. Most of all, I was in control and could easily wander back if something on a "Santana" album cover jogged something in my memory and made me want to wander back to the "L" section for some reason. The visuals of all the available CDs let me scan everything within eyeshot and take notice of what jogged my memory up there in the "S" section...(oh, yeah, I always wondered what this Living Colour album was like).

You just can't do the same in the iTunes store. For the most part, you have to know what you are looking for. You can't just look through everything and then decide. Sure, they will push whatever top-10 garbage is currently on their best-seller charts but if you really want to dig deeper than Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus you really have to search. And searching the iTunes store is a less-than-perfect experience.

Still - for all its faults, I love the iTunes store and will most likely continue to buy most of my music there. Yes, it pisses me off that some of my favorites are still unavailable (the Frank Zappa catalogue was there for a brief time but all too brief for me to really dig in), but for the most part I find it very satisfactory.

I still miss Tower Records, though.