Music
I love live music.
There, I said it.
Nothing makes me happier, makes me feel more alive, than that. Whether its performing it or listening to it. There's a spirituality to music, and inate humanness, that isn't conveyed by anything else.
I'd really gotten out of the live music habit for a quite awhile, but lately I've had some really great experiences that have relit my fire, so to speak.
One was doing the Strobelight gig at Gaylaxicon. Its very hard to describe what that show meant to me. It was, without exhaggeration, one of the most fun gigs I've ever played. Yeah, okay, it wasn't a perfect performance. But it was FUN. The music we played was so engaging, so strong, so energetic (each in different ways) that playing it felt like being involved in something bigger, more important (in a way). While I've enjoyed all of our Hyperdrive shows, and thought that we've done some killer shows (the last one we did at Sci-Fi Summer in June was, I thought, the best show we ever played). But as fun as they are, none of them have given me the feeling that the Strobelight show gave me. That last SFS one was really really close. I want to keep the Strobelight project going and develop it into something really great.
JD and I went to a gallery opening a couple weekends ago. I can't remember the name of the gallery (shame on me). Its in Decatur, next door to the James Joyce Tavern. It was a really great experience. Visual art is another thing that I've not done much of lately, because being forced to leave my employment at the High Music 5 years ago was an extremely difficult thing for me to deal with (I know; "its been 5 years, get over it!"). So it was really nice to get back into a gallery again. There was some really great stuff on view by a number of different local artists. But there was also a band playing there called Cinetrope (funny...I can remember the name of the band but not the name of the gallery). They were really neat. Did all originals, and they were sort of Mazzy Starr / Cocteau Twins kind of stuff, with some great grooves and very atmospheric arrangements and guitar work. They had a chick singer who was really good, one of the those mellow, understated, sort of "slow burn" type of voices that added perfectly to the atmosphere of the music. I really enjoyed them and wouldn't mind seeing them again.
A couple weeks prior to that, JD and I went to the Inman Park Festival and there was a whole series of bands playing that day. When I arrived, I caught the tail-end of a rather decent cover band (they were playing Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open the Door" when I was walking up). The rest of the day was a bunch of bands that I just coulnd't get into. But the last band I saw was a really great jam band that wrote great music, really well-arranged songs, extremely good musicianship, and great stage presence. Very much in the vein of Phish and DMB. They had a smokin' drummer (meaning he was good, not that he enjoyed intake of nicotine) who soloed in their final song. It was the type of music that you could either get up and dance your ass off to, or lay in the grass and just melt into. I did the latter. I definitely want to see them again.
One of the most rewarding experiences I've had lately, though, was going to Louis Robinson's 60th birthday party a couple weeks ago. I've been extremely fortunate to befriend Louis over the past year and a half. I met him initially via his wife, one of my co-workers, because he worked for the BBC for many many years, and was a film editor on Doctor Who back in the '70s. From that, I worked with him on developing his website. He focuses exclusively now on his first love, music. He's a singer/songwriter who has written some amazing music. I got to know quite a bit of it, and quite a bit of him, while working on his site. I also became familiar with most of his friends, mucians in the local folk / bluegrass / acoustic scene. They were all at his party, and it was my first time meeting all of them. The party became a big living room concert in which all these folks got to play their music and play on each others' music. My favourite part of the evening was asking Louis and Brent Reece (oh my gosh, completely gorgeous) to sing "Follow the Drum" together. That's a song that Louis wrote, and the first time Brent met him at one of Louis' performances, he loved that song and asked if he could record it on his next CD (which he did, along with another of Louis' songs). But they'd never performed it together before. The whole night was one of the most extraordinarily powerful and spiritual nights I've had in a long time. It was a little overwhelming to be around so much talent and to feel dwarfed by it.
In addition to live stuff, I've been watching a lot more music on the tellie. There's a brand new documentary on the Who which was just excellent. I've been watching a lot of the Classic Album docus on VH1 Classic lately, like the one on Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, The Who's Who's Next, and some others. I was obsessed for a few weeks with the second volume of KISS' "KISSology" series, which covered the Eric Carr years (one of my heroes). And VH1 Classic also showed one of the concerts from the recent Heaven and Hell tour. That's the new name for the line-up of Black Sabbath that featured Ronnie James Dio. Basically, they wanted to do a tour that focused solely on the music that that line-up produced, so they chose to tour under a different name (rather than Black Sabbath) so they wouldn't be expected to play "Iron Man", "Paranoid" and "War Pigs". It was really awesome. He's right around 60 years old and Ronnie has still got the goods. And Tony Iommi is a guitar god.
Anyway, I feel like a part of me has reawakened. I want to do nothing in my spare time but go to see bands play.
There, I said it.
Nothing makes me happier, makes me feel more alive, than that. Whether its performing it or listening to it. There's a spirituality to music, and inate humanness, that isn't conveyed by anything else.
I'd really gotten out of the live music habit for a quite awhile, but lately I've had some really great experiences that have relit my fire, so to speak.
One was doing the Strobelight gig at Gaylaxicon. Its very hard to describe what that show meant to me. It was, without exhaggeration, one of the most fun gigs I've ever played. Yeah, okay, it wasn't a perfect performance. But it was FUN. The music we played was so engaging, so strong, so energetic (each in different ways) that playing it felt like being involved in something bigger, more important (in a way). While I've enjoyed all of our Hyperdrive shows, and thought that we've done some killer shows (the last one we did at Sci-Fi Summer in June was, I thought, the best show we ever played). But as fun as they are, none of them have given me the feeling that the Strobelight show gave me. That last SFS one was really really close. I want to keep the Strobelight project going and develop it into something really great.
JD and I went to a gallery opening a couple weekends ago. I can't remember the name of the gallery (shame on me). Its in Decatur, next door to the James Joyce Tavern. It was a really great experience. Visual art is another thing that I've not done much of lately, because being forced to leave my employment at the High Music 5 years ago was an extremely difficult thing for me to deal with (I know; "its been 5 years, get over it!"). So it was really nice to get back into a gallery again. There was some really great stuff on view by a number of different local artists. But there was also a band playing there called Cinetrope (funny...I can remember the name of the band but not the name of the gallery). They were really neat. Did all originals, and they were sort of Mazzy Starr / Cocteau Twins kind of stuff, with some great grooves and very atmospheric arrangements and guitar work. They had a chick singer who was really good, one of the those mellow, understated, sort of "slow burn" type of voices that added perfectly to the atmosphere of the music. I really enjoyed them and wouldn't mind seeing them again.
A couple weeks prior to that, JD and I went to the Inman Park Festival and there was a whole series of bands playing that day. When I arrived, I caught the tail-end of a rather decent cover band (they were playing Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open the Door" when I was walking up). The rest of the day was a bunch of bands that I just coulnd't get into. But the last band I saw was a really great jam band that wrote great music, really well-arranged songs, extremely good musicianship, and great stage presence. Very much in the vein of Phish and DMB. They had a smokin' drummer (meaning he was good, not that he enjoyed intake of nicotine) who soloed in their final song. It was the type of music that you could either get up and dance your ass off to, or lay in the grass and just melt into. I did the latter. I definitely want to see them again.
One of the most rewarding experiences I've had lately, though, was going to Louis Robinson's 60th birthday party a couple weeks ago. I've been extremely fortunate to befriend Louis over the past year and a half. I met him initially via his wife, one of my co-workers, because he worked for the BBC for many many years, and was a film editor on Doctor Who back in the '70s. From that, I worked with him on developing his website. He focuses exclusively now on his first love, music. He's a singer/songwriter who has written some amazing music. I got to know quite a bit of it, and quite a bit of him, while working on his site. I also became familiar with most of his friends, mucians in the local folk / bluegrass / acoustic scene. They were all at his party, and it was my first time meeting all of them. The party became a big living room concert in which all these folks got to play their music and play on each others' music. My favourite part of the evening was asking Louis and Brent Reece (oh my gosh, completely gorgeous) to sing "Follow the Drum" together. That's a song that Louis wrote, and the first time Brent met him at one of Louis' performances, he loved that song and asked if he could record it on his next CD (which he did, along with another of Louis' songs). But they'd never performed it together before. The whole night was one of the most extraordinarily powerful and spiritual nights I've had in a long time. It was a little overwhelming to be around so much talent and to feel dwarfed by it.
In addition to live stuff, I've been watching a lot more music on the tellie. There's a brand new documentary on the Who which was just excellent. I've been watching a lot of the Classic Album docus on VH1 Classic lately, like the one on Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, The Who's Who's Next, and some others. I was obsessed for a few weeks with the second volume of KISS' "KISSology" series, which covered the Eric Carr years (one of my heroes). And VH1 Classic also showed one of the concerts from the recent Heaven and Hell tour. That's the new name for the line-up of Black Sabbath that featured Ronnie James Dio. Basically, they wanted to do a tour that focused solely on the music that that line-up produced, so they chose to tour under a different name (rather than Black Sabbath) so they wouldn't be expected to play "Iron Man", "Paranoid" and "War Pigs". It was really awesome. He's right around 60 years old and Ronnie has still got the goods. And Tony Iommi is a guitar god.
Anyway, I feel like a part of me has reawakened. I want to do nothing in my spare time but go to see bands play.