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Boycats: Music Archives

August 21, 2005

Sac Lunch CD is done!

On Friday, I picked up the final audio masters for the upcoming Sac Lunch CD. I think it sounds awesome, and I hope y’all do, too. The CD isn’t ready for sale yet—we still have to create the artwork (hurry up, A-bex) and then send it off for duplication. But what you hear below is how it’ll actually sound. :)

N.B. For optimum sound quality, these are .WAV files, so they’re pretty large; about 40-50 MB each.

  1. Bringin’ It Raw
  2. Brown Paper Bags
  3. MC Story
  4. Concrete Jungle
  5. Moanin’
  6. Ride To The Music
  7. Booty Music
  8. Fast Horns
  9. Lesson Learned
  10. New Kid
  11. Contract
  12. One More Time
  13. Three Part

Posted by alex at 12:35 PM | Comments (3)

August 10, 2005

Forget Seven Steps — he uses all twelve

I started to learn Miles Davis’ solo on “Seven Steps To Heaven” last night. It’s friggin’ hard for me to transcibe, not just because it’s fast, but because it’s hella chromatic. Take a listen:

I hear solos like this and I wonder how on earth he thought of doing something like that. It reminds me a bit of a pointilist painting, in the sense that Miles uses all sorts of chromatic notes and colors that, when examined closely, sound strange or maybe out of place. But when you step back to listen not just to the notes but to the phrases and the whole of the solo, a coherent picture emerges. The effect is tremendously exciting, like a roller coaster that feels about to vear out of control but comes back onto the track just often enough so that you know it knows what it’s doing.

I don’t know what the Seven Steps refer to: can anyone enlighten me?

Posted by alex at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2005

Sac Lunch is the greatest musical endeavor in the history of civilization

I can’t even describe how amped I get listening to this stuff. These are mostly just raw mixes, so take them in that vein. But do listen and enjoy. And feel free to make comments, including on such questions as: what you like and don’t like, how we should order the tracks on the CD, and what we should title the CD.

Dig.

[Ed. With the completion of the audio masters, these files have been removed.]

Posted by alex at 01:03 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2005

Tuesday at the Village Vanguard

I’ve been in New York City since Sunday afternoon, and it’s been wonderful, even more so than I had expected. Here’s what I’ve been up to in a nutshell:

So it’s just been a whilewind. Right now I’m taking it easy, resting and relaxing before the shopping later. It’s hard to believe I’ve only been here two full days so far; what a great vacation.

Posted by alex at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2005

My Music: A Meme

I’m pretty late coming to this party, but I received the baton from davidissimo, so here goes:

TOTAL VOLUME OF MUSIC ON MY COMPUTER:
I have 41.27 GB worth of music, for a total of 7864 songs. That averages out to 5.2 MB per song, but I think that’s misleadingly high, since I have some audiobooks and podcasts on there that probably push the average higher, not to mention Glen Gould’s 1981 recording of The Goldberg Variations, which is all one 51-minute track.

THE LAST CD I BOUGHT:
I went CD shopping Friday for the first time in months. I went to Vintage Vinyl first and naturally, they didn’t have anything I was looking for. So I went to Borders and got the following badass CDs:

I don’t want to hear any crap about the John Mayer—he gets a bad rap for his Top 40 pop, but the truth is he’s really an excellent guitarist and musician, and he just happens to be cursed (although I’m sure both he and his accountant would say “blessed”) with that silly breathy voice.

SONG PLAYING RIGHT NOW:
Belle & Sebastion, “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying”, from If You’re Feeling Sinister. This is one of those records which I’m not sure how it came to be in my collection, but now that it’s here, I feel like I ought to give it a listen, at least.

FIVE SONGS I LISTEN TO A LOT, OR THAT MEAN A LOT TO ME:
*sigh* This is pretty hard to do. But here’s some old standbys I always come back to and never seem to get tired of:

FIVE PEOPLE TO WHOM I’M PASSING THE BATON:
Sandeep, Alli, Jacob, Mari, Brody. I know some (most?) of you don’t already have a public forum in which to answer this, so write yours in the comments.

BTW, a shoutout to iTunes. My CDs are in such a state of disarray right now, it’s almost unmanageable—except that iTunes manages them just fine. Thank god.

Posted by alex at 09:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 28, 2005

I dig Bill Evans

I just love this music. The song is “Some Other Time” by Leonard Bernstein, and comes from The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (1975), a simply fantastic record of duets (and which, of course, gets filed in my collection under Evans and not Bennett). I included this recording rather than the one which appears on Everybody Digs Bill Evans (1958) because, as with many versions of songs by vocalists, the melody line is clean and unadulterated by excessive fills, trills, and frills. It’s beautiful, of course, but also easier to hear the substantive content when it’s not muddled by a horn player showing off.

This second recording, “Peace Piece” also comes from Everybody Digs Bill Evans, and here Bill has reworked the initial vamp from “Some Other Time” into a six and a half minute improvisation that takes him into some really impressionistic melodic ideas overlaid on the simple harmonic structure. I don’t consider this a deconstruction of “Some Other Time”, although certainly one could argue differently. But listening to it now after 25 years of the development of hip-hop, I hear this more as Bill having “sampled” the vamp and performed a freestlye flow over it.

The links from the album titles above take you to the Amazon music store; if you want to buy either of these records, do me a small favor and do it via these links—if you do, I’ll get a little love from Amazon. :)

Posted by alex at 05:54 PM | Comments (1)

Lunchtime is over

Sac Lunch at The Gargolye

I don’t know why I’ve been putting off posting about the demise of Sac Lunch; maybe it’s simply that I still haven’t truly accepted it. But we played what may be our last show in a long while last Friday at Velvet, and while there’s some talk about playing Velvet again on July 8th, that’s not definite yet.

Why are we breaking up? Because we’re moving on with our lives and scattering to the four corners of the country. So dramatic. :) A-Bex has already moved to LA, and he’s ridiculously busy—I just got an email from him last night, the first I’ve heard from him since he left St. Louis a month ago. Law school in Tennessee beckons Ill Will in a month, and Danimal will be leaving shortly after that for Miami.

I’m feeling pretty nostalgic about the band. Without a doubt, this has been the best, most fun, most rewarding musical experience I’ve yet had. We’ve been together for two and a half years—longer than most of my relationships—and I’m so close to the other guys. We’re friends, we’re colleagues, and we’re partners, and while I think we’ll probably always be friends, I’m going to miss the rich nature of our multi-faceted relationship.

Dan insists that we aren’t really breaking up, that we’re only going on hiatus. He envisions playing a show once or twice a semester with everyone coming back into town. I think that’d be wonderful, and I hope it works out that way, but I’m not optimistic. When he gets into the swing of school again, and Will as well with law school, I think they’ll both find it difficult to get away. And A-Bex, again, is so busy that he can’t email for a month. He’s working twelve hour days, seven days a week, apparently—but I’m sure he’s absolutely loving it, and I couldn’t be happier for him.

Posted by alex at 07:58 AM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2005

Very Important Jazz Fest

Jon writes for Playback magazine, a free local weekly about the music scene. Once in a while they offer free tickets to their writers as an incentive for generating reviews and articles, and so when they asked if anyone would be interested in VIP passes to the St. Louis Jazz Fest, he jumped at the chance. These are, after all, $75 passes, including free food and drink in an air-conditioned tent. They gave him two, and he offered one to me. Thank god he’s not dating anyone right now… :)

We went around 6:30, in time to catch Jane Monheit and then Roy Hargrove and the RH Factor closing out the whole event. I’ve seen Monheit before, about four years ago, at Jazz At The Bistro—I went with Jeff Louis—and my impressions now are not much different than they were then.

To be blunt, she’s a lightweight. She has a pretty voice and a very pretty face, and she puts on a cute show. Complete with facial expressions, hair tossing, gesticulations, and coy posturing, her act is designed to make her come across as the sexy-but-wholesome girl-next-door. She giggled after almost every song, and delivered a well-rehearsed and totally contrived patter. Sure, it’s tired, but of course you can always get men to watch a pretty girl strut her stuff.

Without the act, though, her set would have been completely uninteresting. Samba and songbook tunes dominated her set, as did material from her most recent album (I know this only because she said so, plug plug). She doesn’t reach for anything challenging or new; she’s not aiming high. The arrangements failed to show much originality, and the band—while certainly competent—also failed along similar lines. Your generic, standard-issue instrumentation: piano, guitar, bass, drums. Short, uninteresting solos, bland comping. I could have played in this band and done as well, and the thing is, with a little practice I really could have. The crowd seemed to share my ambivalence with scattered and unenthusiastic applause.

The RH Factor, on the other hand, offered an almost completely opposite experience. It’s a large band, complete with bass, guitar, two (2) drummers, two (2) keyboardists, baritone sax, alto sax, and of course Mr. Hargrove on trumpet. These guys are definitely reaching for something (for clarity’s sake: one of the keyboardists is a woman, but I’m using guys in the gender-neutral sense), although I’m not sure they got there. They seemed to be attempting to resurrect the ’80s era Miles Davis band with it’s funk/soul/r&b/jazz hybrid, and they aped it pretty well (according to Jon. I’m not really familiar with late Miles), including such touches as wah-wah on the trumpet. Overall, they established a solid, interesting groove that would have done really well behind an MC, and occasionally the solos managed to touch something intense. The crowd responded well and enthusiastically.

I ran into Laura there, or more accurately she found me. She was working at the show and together with another waitress (a beautiful asian woman named Kelly who’s waited on me at the Bistro several times) and Jazz Bob, they took a break and wandered over to the VIP area. She’s such a sweetheart; apparently she stopped by my place earlier to see if I was going to the Fest. I had a great time hanging out and chatting, shooting the breeze.

Much fun. Thanks to Jon for inviting me along.

Posted by alex at 08:54 AM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2005

*whew* Two new gigs!

I’m actually a bit surprised I’m not more tired. It’s been quite a day of music. Not the most busy day of music I’ve had, perhaps, but still unique for its first-times.

The short version is that I had two gigs, one with Phil Valko, with whom I haven’t played music in at least three and a half years, and one with Steve Bequette, with whom I’ve never played a gig.

The gig with Phil involved the kind of situation I don’t really enjoy, i.e. totally unprepared improvisations with just a drummer. Now, I enjoy Phil’s drumming, even if he’s a bit rusty (as am I, but I’ll go into that in a bit); he’s a very organic drummer, not afraid to try some new directions, but he always feels the moment well and responds with interesting and appropriate ideas. He’s not a heavy hitter but he’s not timid either, which I think is perfect for the kind of jazz I’d really like to play with him. I hope we can find some other musicians to play with and really try to get together and do some cool stuff.

And that’s really the crux of what was frustrating about this gig. I hate being the only pitched instrument. It’s really more of a responsibility than I’m able to handle. The truth is that few players are both technically proficient enough while at the same time mature enough to be able to play the complex combination of harmony and melody simultaneously. I have some chops (although again, I’m really rusty—I seriously need to resume lessons) although I’m not really up to the technical demands of solo work even yet. But way more glaringly, I’m not mature enough by far. I approach this kind of situation as if I played the sax—lots of fast single note lines that try to outline the harmony while still being melodic. And this fails on two levels: one, I’m just not good enough to pull it off, and two, I’m not a sax player. The guitar’s biggest advantage over horns is it’s multi-timbral ability, and I completely waste it. I should be playing chord-melodies. But that’s really hard to do, both physically and mentally.

So clearly I need to work on it. I emailed Rick Haydon on Monday, but he hasn’t gotten back to me. I’ll email him again this week—I’m going to be persistant about this. I need lessons, and I have confidence he’ll be able to help me.

I came home around 3:30 after playing with Phil and crashed for a bit in preparation for the Steve Bequette gig, for which I needed to leave around 6:30.

We played the high-school graduation party being held for a cousin of Steve’s wife. There’s not much to say, really, about the music—we played our set, which went off without a hitch, and then the grad’s father sat in on the drums and we jammed a little while longer. But what really got me was the party itself. First off all, I guess I should say that I shouldn’t actually be as surprised as I was. I gather that this kind of party is the standard thing for lots of people. But they’re definitely not my kind of people.

Everyone was already drunk, getting drunk, or wishing they could get drunk (Steve’s wife Cory is pregnant and can’t drink for another six months). And again, this was a high-school graduation party, so lots of the people there were seventeen and eighteen. And also again, I gather this is pretty typical for many people. But c’mon. What a terrible example the adults set for their kids. All the smoke, all the alcohol—these kids are going to grow up thinking that this is how adults behave. And I guess for these adults, it is how they behave, but it’s just so gross. All the women looked terrible from a lifetime of smoking cigarettes. Leathery, drawn faces that look so much older than I’d guess their owners really are. And the men didn’t look any better.

The general behavior called for course vulgarities and lewd comments. One of the women there, who’d I guess was about forty-two, works as a stripper at all the main clubs in town: Penthouse, Hustler, etc. She’s done movies, too—great! What a scary person. She was clearly high on coke, and she was equally clearly available to go home with the nearest man who offered her some pot. So sad and pathetic.

On the plus side, Erik and I hung out and bonded over our mutual distaste for the general tenor of the evening. He’s really cool, and I had a good time talking with him. I don’t imagine we’ll hang out much outside of the band, but Steve can be a bit overbearing, so it’ll be nice to have someone I can relax with during the tedious parts of gigging. He helped me bring my amplifier in, so I made sure to help him pack up and load out his drums at the end of the night. He was very appreciative, and I think we’ve established the beginnings of a good working repore.

We’re going to practice again on Monday. Either there are more tunes for me to learn of which I’m still unaware, or we’ll be forced to start writing some new stuff. Which is fine by me. Our current set is really only about forty-five minutes, so it could stand some development and expansion. In the meantime, I’m going to go to bed and rest my ears for tomorrow, when Jeff is perhaps coming into town and going to see this one bluegrass band he’s considering hiring for his wedding.

Posted by alex at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2005

Audition for Steve Bequette

Last night I played with Steve Bequette and his drummer Eric for the first time, my audition of sorts.

The background: Steve called me three weeks ago to say he was looking for a bassist. He had gotten my number from Jess when he was posting fliers at Vintage Vinyl and mentioned to her that he was looking for a “hip-hop bassist”. Nice coincidence, and considering the difficult times Jess and I were going through, a nice gesture on her part to recommend me.

So I said sure I’d be interested, and he dropped by that afternoon with a CD. We talked a little bit, and he mentioned that he’d been out on tour with matchbox twenty (apparently he’s friends with their lead guitarist). I suppose this impressed me more than it should, not in any star-struck way but in the sense that it led me to assume his career was fairly well advanced compared to mine. He talked about recording, gigging, and touring, and said he was looking to make some money through music. This all sounded good to me—even if the music didn’t turn me on (and it doesn’t, really, it’s pretty bland alt-rock) I figured the experience would at least be new.

We rehearsed in his basement, which makes sense in retrospect, but I was surprised to learn he wasn’t using a rehearsal space. I guess I assumed that anyone as successful as I took him to be would have graduated out of the basement rehearsal space stereotype. But of course, the basement is free, and a formal rehearsal space isn’t. Sac Lunch would be rehearsing in basements, too, if we had access to any. Steve, I found out, is pretty deep in debt due to his musical ambitions, and I can bet he’s pinching every penny.

Anyway, I was set up and ready to go long before Eric and Steve were, partly because as the first-timer, I wanted to make a good, professional impression, and partly because they didn’t feel any such pressure. I told Steve I could play all the songs on the CD he gave me, and so he suggested we run them through in order. Which we proceeded to do.

I blew them away. To be quite honest, despite the fact that it makes me seem cocky, I completely blew them away. I think they’ve really never met a musician like me, someone who actually has ears, knows harmony, and has some idea about how music is put together. They simply couldn’t believe that I knew the songs as well as I did. We never needed to run through any of them more than three times, and often once did the trick. Then after a break, they taught me some new songs, and again they couldn’t believe that I picked them up so fast.

The truth is that the music is really easy. The changes are almost all diatonic and/or blues-based, and when there are riffs, they’re easy and obvious. As I write this, I realize I sound condescending, but let me clarify: I understand that Steve is writing pop music. He’s not trying to advance the avant garde, he wants to get on radio. His music is just that—uncomplicated and accessible, easily consumed pop blather. So that’s fine; I knew that going into this, and I’m clear about what I want to get out of it.

I’m actually encouraged by his financial investment in his musical career. He’s got a wife and a baby on the way, so I’m hoping his family obligations combined with his steep debt will contribute towards his working hard to get us good gigs. I also don’t feel any responsibility on my part to help out on the business end of things any more than I care to do, which is nice. This is his venture, I’m happy to be a part of it for now, I’ll be very happy if it puts money in my pocket, and that’s all I’m concerned about for the time being.

I’m curious about how I’ll view this post a few months from now. Will I laugh at the pre-conceived notions I had about where Steve’s career was taking him and where it would take me? We’ll see.

Posted by alex at 07:53 AM | Comments (0)