LIVE DEAD

…so there are life-changing albums…disks so powerful and meaningful that the entire course of one’s hurtlingforwardpath gets knocked onto a sidetrack that starts as a slight diversion, but then becomes The Main Line.

Witness “Live/Dead”. forget Jerry Garcia…this is Phil Lesh’s record…he of the ‘liquid center bass’/’the 1 is more often played as a rest vs. an accented beat’/noodlenoodlenoodle. When Tom Kris (the original bass player for The James Gang) couldn’t make his Rock City rent one month, I got his Gibson Thunderbird bass in lieu of same, and learned the instrument (and more importantly – Lesh’s approach to the place of bass in a band) by playing along with this album.

The regimen:

1) learn all scales and modes in all keys

2) learn chord structure and chord notes

3) play with your fingers, switching to a pick only when a tone change is needed/required.

4) armed with this musical knowledge, FORGET IT ALL and go to a mental place where you reflect and reinterpret the music that’s swirling all around you in real time vs. sticking to a repetitive part a la the soul/funk bass tradition.

…which makes you an improviser and all but guarantees that you will butt heads with every drummer you will ever play with…since they will not ‘get’ this ramblingloosefloaty playing style unless they ‘got’ this record, too.

The Grateful Dead in ’69 were where rock, folk & open-ended liveinstant composition all came together. It ain’t jazz, but the aesthetic is the same…listen, react, lead/follow and see where it goes. It is simultaneously total freedom & total responsibility. It is totally exhilarating and liberating and…

…it was all over when The Dead decided to write songs and try to sing in harmony and betrayed this aesthetic and became old-farts. the aesthetic lay dormant until Television (and to a great degree - Tin Huey) reinvented it in the ‘70’s. note that phaux jam bands like Phish are NOT cited here...they are wrongwrongwrong.

the rock music world is split between the singer-songwriters who just want you to play a part and get out of the way of their compositions, and the player/improvisers/thrill-seeking daredevils who get off by making it up as it goes along.

And I think this album was the fork in the road.

to wit...dig pal Lane Steinberg solo recording of Dark Star.

Q. E. D.

PART 1



PART 2



PART 3


NP: Side 2

PEEVE DE JOUR: lost my wallet. for weeks i have been tempting fate by keeping my wallet in a pocket with a hole in it. well-meaning friends pointed out the obvious - that the damn thing was gonna fall out one of these days...so i switched to a pocket with no hole. but somehow, it still fell out somewhere between Neumann Leather and Legal Beans on Newark St. in Hoboken. moral - duh...

JOIE DE JOUR: my closest Rosatti's frozen custard stand opens for the season on April 15th. watch this blog for the Special Flavor Of The Day!

http://www.rosatisfrozencustard.com/

N.B.A.T.W.P.:

PSK writes -

'Allo folks...Usually I try to write something semi-witty here, but brother Shlomo was so eloquent I'll give him the , ehh...floor?

The Original Gray Sky Boys

Old-Time Country Heart Songs & Gospel
from the 1930s and up...

Saturday, March 31st, 10-12 pm at:

Two Boots Brooklyn
514 2nd Street
(between 7th & 8th Avenues)
Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Admission: No Cover / No Minimum
Great food + great tunes = A BIG OL' TIME!
Come on down!
For more info: Two Boots Brooklyn

Featuring:

PETER STUART KOHMAN
(vocals, mandolin, guitar)

WILL DIAL
(vocals, guitar, banjo-guitar)

with
SPECIAL GUEST PERFORMER
SHLOMO PESTCOE
(vocals, fiddle, 5-string banjo, mandolin, guitar)

In the 1930s, a new sound was sweeping early country music, the Brother Duets. These were male duos-- typically actual brothers-- that were noted for close harmony singing to their own instrumental accompaniment, usually on mandolin and guitar. Examples included The Monroe Brothers (Charlie & Bill Monroe), The Blue Sky Boys (Bill & Earl Bolick), and The Delmore Brothers (Alton & Rabon Delmore. Rabon played a 4-string tenor guitar to his brother Alton's regular guitar instead of the more typical mandolin.) Following in this great tradition, Peter Stuart Kohman and Will Dial formed The Original Gray Sky Boys in the 1990s to recapture this unique sound from the 1930s. This special reunion concert will mark the first performance of The Original Gray Sky Boys in ten years. Joining for them for this performance will be fiddler/multi-instrumentalist Shlomo Pestcoe, Peter's bandmate in Sufferin' Succotash, which will be back at Two Boots Brooklyn on Saturday, April 21st.

Hope to see y'all there!


cb...where are you?






NEW JERSEY

HALF CLEVELAND VIDEO CLIP!

THANKS TO MAX & BILL FOR THIS:

http://hometown.aol.com/maxphotoes/HalfCleveland/HC_ShakeSomeAction.mov

pix coming.

thanks to everyone who came to the shows!

best...

cb

HALF CLEVELAND IN NYC THIS WEEKEND!

REMINDER!!! THIS COMING WEEKEND!!!

HALF CLEVELAND (Harvey Gold, Chris Butler, Debbie Smith, and Bob Ethington), will be appearing at two NYC area clubs this weekend!!!

This Friday, March 23rd at
THE MURRAY STREET GRILL at 10PM
(with The Shirts starting at 8:30P!!)
6 Murray Street, NYC, NY
... with special guest, ex- Huey, Ralph E-Boy sitting for a few songs!!!

This Saturday, Saturday 3/24 at
THE LUNA LOUNGE at 8:30PM
361 Metropolitan Avenue (at Havemeyer St.)
Williamsberg, Brooklyn

-Crescent Moon 7:30-8:30
-HALF CLEVELAND 8:30-9:30
-Sounds of Greg D 9:30-10:30
-Kapow!! 10:30-11:30
-TK Webb 11:30- whenever

PLEASE COME!
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU ALL!

ALSO : If you haven't dropped in, already, Updates and a report and pics on the interesting gig played by HALF PIG ...or perhaps it was CHI-CLEVELAND... in Florida a few weeks ago, can be seen at www.tinhuey.com in the 'Latest News' section.

Directions:

To The Downstage Performance Space at The Murray Street Grill 212-566-8200
Two Blocks South of Chambers Street,
Three Blocks North of the World Trade Center Site.
A,C,E,Trains to Chambers Street,2 and 3 to Park Place, 4,5, and 6 trains to Brooklyn Bridge and RR and W to City Hall stops

To The Luna Lounge
http://www.lunalounge.com/directions

TELL AND BRING A FRIEND !!!!

WE"LL BE NICE!! And as always, remember to tip your Waitresses...xo

Apologies to those of you (on the North or West Coasts) that would consider these geographically undesireable (GU) gigs. Still... it's not too late to book a flight, rent a car... time's moving along, life's short!!!

NP: Scrubs re-runs.

PEEVE DE JOUR: didn't get everything done in Ohio this trip.

JOIE DE JOUR: figured out how to hang a guitar off The Loudmann Suit without using a traditional guitar strap. more on this project anon...

cb...where are you?






PENNSYLVANIA (TRAVEL DAY)

PRACTICE "SAFE TAPE"

from time to time, i get audio archiving work. i have a bunch of old audio machines - antique tape recorders, wire recorders, etc...and folks may want to transfer something from these old media to a more modern/CDR format.

it's always interesting what i get to hear. for example, my current project is transferring a series of radio lectures on the blues by Walter Lehrman from '55 & '56. these were broadcast on KPFA in Berkeley, CA, and when considered in their original time-frame (pre-Civil Rights movement/Eisenhower era), they must have caused quite a stir.

and one time a wire spool showed up from a family in Texas. the program was all office letter dictation (their late father sold oil industry equipment like drill bits, etc.) which ordinarily might make the eyes glaze over...except for the following bittersweetness: the father had filled up the 1/2 hour spool when he was forcefulconfidenthealthy, then rewound it to the beginning and added about 10 minutes of dictation in a frail, obviously aged and shaky voice.

then there is the issue of 'sticky-shed syndrome'. audio tape is made of three parts - an oxide powder that holds the magnetically-encoded sound, a paper/mylar/acetate backing and a binder/glue that sticks the two together. in some brands of tape, the binder breaks down over the years and starts leeching thru the oxide, which causes the tape to drag on a tape machine's mechanical components at best, or turns a reel into an unusable solid glued-together round brick at worst. there is a 'cure' sortakinda...bake the tape in a convection oven for 8 hours at 135 degrees (which re-binds the oxide). you only get a limited number of plays with this, but that's usually enough to transfer the audio to a more stable medium.

this condition varies from manufacturer to manufacture, with the biggest offender being Ampex tape from the '80's. their Grandmaster 456 became the standard during that era...consequently, lots of recordings are lostgoneforever. this has effected me personally - when King Biscuit Hour wanted to release a live radio broadcast of a Waitresses show, the multi-track master tapes were in such bad shape that all they could use was a two-track back-up recording made off the air by the radio station. hundreds of other bands have found themselves in a similar predicament...so many that lawsuits forced Ampex to change its name to avoid litigation. tape made by 3M, however, doesn't seem to have this problem, which was the 'house tape' at Columbia Records...one reason why we have so much Dylan available for release.

and finally, there's the possibility of improperly-stored tapes being covered in a toxic mold. latex gloves and respirators highly recommended:

"The following [long - 63 p.] paper may be of interest:

"Research on Methods to Remove Mold from Cellulose Acetate Audiotape"
by Jim Thurn (Kilgarlin Center, U. Texas Austin)

http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~anagpic/2006pdf/2006ANAGPIC_Thurn.pdf

- Walter Cybulski
Preservation & Collection Mgmt.
National Library of Medicine"
.........
NP: Ken Field's Revolutionary Snake Ensemble/"Year of the Snake". met Ken at the Under The Skin dance performance - this is his New Orleans improvisedsecondline project. good stuff!

PEEVE DE JOUR: Pennsylvania has come up with a new, potentially deadly road hazard: huge chunks of ice&snow flying off the roofs of trucks.

JOIE DE JOUR: Spring!!!

and this on eBay -









N.B.A.T.W.P.:

NYCers...come see Half Cleveland this coming weekend:



After what has felt like an unreasonably long hiatus, HALF CLEVELAND (Harvey Gold, Chris Butler, Debbie Smith, and Bob Ethington), is turning the ignition key and doing a couple gigs in the NY area this month!!!

Friday March 23rd at
THE MURRAY STREET GRILL at 10PM (with The Shirts starting at 8:30P!!)
6 Murray Street, NYC, NY

Saturday 3/24 at
THE LUNA LOUNGE at 8:30PM
361 Metropolitan Avenue (at Havemeyer St.)
Williamsberg, Brooklyn

-Crescent Moon 7:30-8:30
-HALF CLEVELAND 8:30-9:30
-Sounds of Greg D 9:30-10:30
-Kapow!! 10:30-11:30
-TK Webb 11:30- whenever

PLEASE COME!
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU ALL!

ALSO : Updates and a report and pics on the interesting gig played by HALF PIG ...or perhaps it was CHI-CLEVELAND... in Florida a few weeks ago, can be seen at www.tinhuey.com in the 'Latest News' section.

Directions:

To The Downstage Performance Space at The Murray Street Grill 212-566-8200
Two Blocks South of Chambers Street,
Three Blocks North of the World Trade Center Site.
A,C,E,Trains to Chambers Street,2 and 3 to Park Place, 4,5, and 6 trains to Brooklyn Bridge and RR and W to City Hall stops

To The Luna Lounge
http://www.lunalounge.com/directions

TELL AND BRING A FRIEND !!!! WE"LL BE NICE!!

And as always, remember to tip your Waitresses...xo
......
cb...where are you?






OHIO

HAPPY BIRTHDAY...

...TO THIS BLOG: one year old and still feisty.

more to come...

cb

AND THIS JUST IN!

- DD in NJ gives us - James Brown & Pavarotti! i find most of these oldschoololderschool duets suck, but this one is pretty great:

bLiTzScReEd FrIdAy!!

- a smattering of some of the funcool stuff i've received recently:




- BB from NYC reminds you to pledge some dough to keep the world's best radio station on the air:



















Yo La Tengo + me + you = ?

Comrades - Jet Blue willing, for the umpteenth year in a row I will join Hoboken's beloved purveyors of melody, mirth, and 10 minute guitar solos as together we improvise your requests on WFMU in Jersey City next Friday, March 16th at 8 PM EST. Join us (either by broadcast signal at 91.1 or streaming live for your listening pleasure anywhere there's internet from www.wfmu.org. You can pledge from there, too.) as we attempt to play anything your generous pledge-making and music loving hearts desire for three incredibly stressful, exhausting, flop-sweat inducing/life-affirming, kitten hugging, madcap hours. Here's the official word from FMU's site:

Yo La Tengo return to WFMU for their annual requests-for-marathon-pledges fest on March 16th at 8 PM! Join hosts Pseu Braun and Gaylord Fields for an evening of off-the-cuff covers done up in the style of Hoboken's finest. Ira, Georgia and James will be joined by Bruce Bennett as they try to play pledger's requests. The whole thing will be viewable live in Windows format, via the WFMU webcam.

- AB in MI gives us a brand new & beautiful art form = frost catchers: http://frostcatcher.com/

































- KA in the UK gives us a Buddy Rich drum solo...check out that guy's left hand...just amazing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYpR5iw9F1M



- RSM from NJ suggests you turn the volume off and just watch the 'eye candy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VskbxuehP3I


NP: archiving Ghost Hunt interviews & investigation tapes from 3/3's Spook-O-Rama at Dun Giggen.

PEEVE DE JOUR: what's up with Blogger rejecting my posts 'cause of HTML screw-ups? it used to allow broken tags, etc....but now refuses to even save as a draft, let alone post.

JOIE DE JOUR: too early...nothing yet.

N.B.A.T.W.P.: there's a great show at The Living Room, 154 Ludlow (between Stanton & Rivington) on Saturday, 3/17. forget about the traditional St. Pat drinkdrankdrunk - do this instead:

7 Uncle Moon
8 Bob Parins
9 Chris Brown and Kate Fenner
10 Life In A Blender
11 Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse
12:30 Rawles Balls


cb...where are you?






NEW JERSEY

SORRY...

...been jammed with work & life stuff...will update this blog anon.

- cb

15-60-75: THE NUMBERS BAND

...so from about '75 - '78-ish, i played in Kent's fabulous 15-60-75, a/k/a The Numbers Band. out of the blue, i got a call from Bob Kidney saying that their regular bass player could not make a gig on March 3rd...and was i free? now, i played bass back then with them, and it was a phenonmenal musical education...so The Man Who Can't Say No did not say no.

been cramming all week and been trying to catch up on thirty-some years of their musical evolution. very interesting life-wise to be looping back...here's some of the tricksticksquirks bass players need to rememberforget inorder to make BK's songs work:

1) DON'T PLAY WITH THE DRUMS

2) ON A BLUES, DON'T PLAY/FEEL/ACCENT THE "1"/TONIC

3) NO TAGS AT THE END OF A I-IV-V BLUES CHANGE

4) ALL FILLS SHOULD BE QUARTER NOTE TRIPLETS

5) BARS/VERSES/CHORUSES CAN BE CHANGED/EXTENDED ON THE SPOT...SO BE ON YOUR TOES

6) YOU WILL PLAY 6/8 AGAINST 4/4...AND YOU WILL NEED TO MAKE IT SWING

7) CHORD CHANGES SHIFT AGAINST YOUR PART MORE OFTEN THAN NOT/FOLLOW THE VOCALS VS. 'THE SONG'

8) ALL CHORD CHANGE DOWNBEATS ARE ANTICIPATED...OR NOT

whew...

come see us if you are free. i'll be the guy smiling as he hangs on by his fingernails...and trys to find the "1"!

THE NORTHSIDE

111 North Main Street (Next to Luigi’s)
Akron, Oh 44308-1921
330-434-7625

SHOWTIME: 9:30PM

NP: "Hot Wire" = their live recordings from '91-92...fabulous stuff.

PEEVE DE JOUR: thirty-plus years of rust.

JOIE DE JOUR: WD-40.

N.B.A.T.W.P.:

P. G. SIX
Record release party at Tonic (107 Norfolk St, NYC)
this coming Sunday March 4th at 8pm

P.G. Six (aka Pat Gubler) with Bob Bannister, Debby Schwartz,
and Robert Dennis and others!!!

with special guest Jack Rose opening

8pm $10

"Slightly Sorry" out now on Drag City LP and CD: http://dragcity.com/dragcity.html

cb...where are you?






OHIO