String Cheese Incident

If you have never heard of these guys, The String Cheese Incident gets your attention as a very funny name for a band. But they are in fact excellent musicians who play an eclectic variety of music influenced by all sorts of world and traditional styles that they make their own and improvise upon. From what I understand they are going through a lineup change and the future for them is unclear. But isn't it that way for all of us?

Sound Tribe Sector 9

I was fortunate enough to hear about the band called Sound Tribe Sector 9 when they first got together back in the mid-late nineties and they really have gotten quite popular and done well for themselves. They play instrumental music that is largely drum 'n bass and techno oriented, but they use live instruments coupled with samples and synth sounds, and they are quite unique.

Richie Cole

Another musician that I used to see advertised as playing around my hometown of Trenton is Richie Cole. He is a jazz saxophone player, and years later I was walking around San Francisco and I went into a used record store and saw a live album by Richie and Alto Madness. Then was when I knew that he was a player on the world stage, and he is that even today.

Ernie White

While I am on the subject of local Trenton, New Jersey musicians, I must mention the venerable Ernie White. When I was a little kid I would see his name in the paper as well Frank Pinto and Joe Zook, and I used to walk past his rehearsal space and hear the band blaring out of there with the big truck in front with the band's name emblazoned across it. Ernie is another great influence and inspiration to me. I believe that Bon Jovi has actually recorded material that Ernie wrote.

Inspiration

There is something about a local music scene that is very important to the community and my previous post about Frank Pinto illustrates this well. Kids growing up in anonymous towns really don't have examples to follow of how you go about getting started playing music and then doing it in front of an audience, and our local music scenes provide us with this inspiration. It's like "If Frank can do it, why can't I?" and I am grateful to Frank for that.

Frank Pinto

When I was growing up in Trenton, New Jersey, I always noticed who was playing around town from the local music scene, even before I started playing myself. Frankly, there wasn't a whole lot going on, but one name that I noticed was Frank Pinto, who played solo acoustic guitar and piano. When I got old enough I went to see him, and I actually sat in with him a few times and those were the first times that I ever played in public. Frank was influenced by Springsteen and Dylan, and he wrote some good songs and he had a cool gravelly voice and he played over a hundred covers.

Festivals

I have attended a lot of music festivals in my day, and they are really great events that are a lot of fun. Attending a festival provides the consciousness with a sense of ritual and renewal, and it's great to get outside and mingle with the people under the sun and clouds and breathe some fresh air while enjoying a variety of good music. I have camped out over the weekend at a few festivals, like the Black Mountain Music Festival in North Carolina, and I made some good friends and had some memorable experiences.

JGB

I saw the Grateful Dead live many times, probably around 80 or more, and it was a lot of fun, but the crowds got very big, and the tickets harder and harder to get, so the consummate experience of enjoying the show was diminished by the size and scope of the crowd. I always tried to go to see the Jerry Garcia Band when they toured so that I could enjoy Garcia without the huge crowds. I saw them play at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco quite a few times and they were some of the best concerts that I have seen. The last time I saw Jerry alive was at the Warfield, and the band played the best material, like Mission in the Rain and Ruben and Cherise. I value that experience a great deal.

Billerica

I went to college at Northeastern in Boston, and I got to see the Grateful Dead a couple of
times during my freshman year up there in very small venues and those were memorable
experiences. I had a friend named randy Loiacono, and he had one of his buddies from back
home cancel so he had an extra second row seat to see the Dead at the Boston Music Hall and
he offered it to me. That was awesome, and later in the year, in the spring, a group of us
went to Billerica, Mass to see them play at a high school hockey rink. There was probably
about 1500 people there.

Ron McKernan

The Grateful Dead went through several keyboard players during their time together. The original Grateful Dead keyboardist dating back from back when they were known as the Warlocks was a fellow named Ron McKernan, or "Pigpen." His dad was a well know blues D.J. and he grew up steeped in the blues, so he brought that knowledge and aura to the band. He sang and played harmonica in addition to playing the keys. He died young, ostensibly from drinking too much. My favorite tunes that featured Pigpen are Mr. Charlie and It Hurts Me Too.

David Gans' Dead Hour

I have blogged previously about the fact that I was a big fan of the Grateful Dead when Jerry Garcia was alive. I saw my first Dead Show at the Meadowlands back in 1978 and I saw my last Dead show I guess in 1993, but I saw a Jerry Garcia Band show after that. KUNV where in Vegas broadcasts David Gans' syndicated show The Grateful Dead Hour and I heard a show last Saturday night that was exemplary of the reasons that I liked the Grateful Dead. They played nothing but really good songs and everything was right on, including the harmonies and inspired improvisations. Check out The Grateful Dead hour if you get it in your area.

Differences

Something that is difficult to deal with is when you have someone who is close to you that really enjoys a particular band, but no matter how hard you try, you really don't like them. My son likes some bands that I really don't care for, and it's hard for him to understand how I can possibly not like them, and I find it hard to understand why he would like them so much. It's not that they are too hard for me, they are too soft, and "white sounding," if I must use the term. I don't think I'm "right" about not liking the bands too much, it's just a matter of taste.

Bass Excellence

Of course there are many bassists that come to mind when I think about putting out some examples of people who have made music great through their contributions. The first person who comes to mind for me is Charles Mingus. He is one of the greatest jazz composers of all time, and he was a great bass player who conceived of his music from the perspective of a bass player. His ideas on the bass help to define the unique feel of his tunes, and though the bass is subtle in a lot of jazz due to it's volume, it is key.

Bass

The bass is an integral instrument in music that is very often overlooked. A truly gifted and creative bass player can transform a band from mediocrity to greatness, and ironically, few people may even notice. When you have a musician's ear, and you have played bass, you really notice how important it is and you gain an appreciation for the subtleties of the instrument and it's effective utilization.

My Own Music

After listening to a lot of hip-hop I made some beats, and I also tried my hand at rapping as a 42 year old white guy. I am good with words, but my flow was somewhat whack and I didn't use a lot of hip-hop slang, at least not any more of it than I use when I am really talking. I actually like what I did, but I refined it over time and I see my efforts as spoken word with a hip-hop influence. I adapted some of the stuff that I wrote to be performed with an acoustic guitar so I could do it live by myself. There is some of it up at www.myspace.com/g2patrickgarry.

Modes

As a listener, it was easy to sit back and listen to musicians improvising and simply enjoy it. But as a guitar player, you come to realize that improvising isn't just a free-for-all of whatever, it takes an understanding of music theory, and the modes, to do it properly. Understanding modal relationships is the key to improvisation, and then eventually, The guitar neck all kind of becomes one big scale, as Jerry Garcia was quoted as saying.

Improvising

I really liked the Grateful Dead a lot when Jerry Garcia was alive and I saw my first Dead show back in 1978. I loved the songs, and the music as a whole, but I really enjoyed the improvising, and that is why I like jazz as well. When musicians improvise, they can play the same song many times, but still interpret the present on this template of familiarity that jogs the memory and it is an ineffable experience for the listener.

Flaming Lips

I am a big fan of the Flaming Lips, who are from Oklahoma City. They have been around for a long time and though their last few albums seem to have been of steadily decreasing quality I still believe in them and expect them to put out some more high quality music as time goes on. Wayne Coyne has such a signature voice, it wraps around anything that they do with some degree of integrity. To me the album Soft Bulletin is a masterpiece and I look for them to match that kind of inspiration.

Coldplay

Coldplay is a band that really makes a lot of excellent music. I like every song that I have ever heard by them, and I think that they are a good example of a band that has a singer, Chris Martin, who can actually sing well, and a lot of bands just don't have that. They are good writers and the music that they make has a lot of staying power.

Pharoah Sanders

Pharoah Sanders is known by many for the work that he did with John Coltrane, but he is a monster player in his own right. I heard some of his more recent work on the radio earlier today and he is out there, but right in there as well, if that makes any sense. He is a sensitive player and you can feel what he is saying on the sax.

Peter Gabriel

I was a huge fan of Genesis when I was younger and I had all of their albums, but they began to go bad as soon as Peter Gabriel left, and it's a shame because they were truly a super band with extraordinary chemistry. Gabriel has done a lot of good solo work and he in influenced by world music so his ideas are very cool and fresh. He is brilliant guy and he has a great voice and he writes really cool lyrics.

More Tubes

When you hear good guitar tone it too is usually the product of having a tube amp. A lot of people think that they need a bunch of effects, and effects are fine, but the amp is the key When you see that one amp is 100 watts, but it's solid state, and another amp is 40 watts, but it's a tube amp, assuming that the speakers that you are using are similar, the tube amp will sound thicker, richer, creamier and more powerful. If you fiend for tone you have to have tubes.

Tubes

When I first started playing the bass, I realized that I needed a good amp and I started researching them. I wanted to get a tube amp, but they are very expensive with the Ampeg SVT being the industry standard, along with the Mesa Boogie. I finally saw a good deal on E-bay on a 1000 watt tube head Sunn head and it was thick and loud, exactly the sound I was looking for, so I bought the amp and I have never regretted it.

Jimi

Speaking of Jimi Hendrix, has there ever been a greater rock guitar player before him, or since? His style is so unique and passionate that it is impossible to duplicate. It's not that other guitarists can't conceive of the note combinations he was playing, it's just the raw and indescribable energy and charisma that came across in his playing. And his singing is too cool for words.

Woodstock

When I was a little kid I remember visiting my older cousins in upstate New York, and my oldest cousin played the album that is the soundtrack to the Woodstock movie. I can remember quite specifically hearing Jimi Hendrix play the Star Spangled Banner and I was blown away by that. In fact I heard it on the radio on the 4th of July and it sounds as good today as it ever did.

Ben Kenney

There is a pretty cool story that I heard about through the Okay Player boards. A guy named Ben Kenney was The Roots guitar player when I first started listening to them. I don't know if it's a put-on or not, they say that he kept skating past their rehearsal space asking for a chance to play and they finally let him. I don't know if that part is true, like I say, but he went on to play bass for Incubus. I guess he felt like it was a good career move, but his Roots experience fed him into that big time pipeline.

Programming Drums

Before getting into hip-hop I had been playing guitar for about 25 years or so, but I never played drums, so I didn't really understand the role that drumming plays in music. I learned to program drums so that I could make some hip-hop beats, and that was a lot fun and of course it was educational in its own right, but it also taught me a lot about timing in music and it made me a much better guitar player because it improved my sense of syncopation.

Ghostface

I have posted about several of the members of the Wu-Tang Clan, and I sincerely love them all, but my favorite rapper among them is Ghostface. To me, he is the greatest rapper of all-time along with Big Daddy Kane. His creative lyricism along with his flow, voice, and delivery are without peer. But the one thing that Ghostface does better than any other rapper in my opinion is conjure emotion. If you have never cried while listening to a hip-hop song you should explore the Ghostface catalog. Of course, you will laugh too.

ODB

The Wu-Tang Clan is symbolic of many things that are archetypal in nature while simultaneously being just a bunch of family and friends having fun making music together. For nine guys to come together and stay focused and make great music it takes a lot of discipline, and a lot of give and take. One of the original members is the Old Dirty Bastard, and he died not too long ago. He was a great artist who had a rocky road through life. He left us too soon, and he experienced a lot of hardships, but he also got to experience some fantastic things that few of us will ever enjoy. He is missed.

Method Man

When you listen to hip-hop music there are certain voices that you will never forget for one reason or another. I have listened to the artists that I like often enough to where I have a pretty good ability to recognize people's voices by now, but even the casual fan of hip-hop will tell you that the voice of Method Man from the Wu-Tang Clan is one of the most recognizable in rap music. His voice is strong and his flow is playful but pointed. Method Man is a legend in his own time and he has been involved in countless projects.

GZA

The GZA is another of the original nine founding members of the seminal hip-hop legends the Wu-Tang Clan. They call GZA "The Genius," and among hip-hop emcees such superlatives are not bestowed upon a man lightly. He is a brilliant and innovative lyricist who incorporates martial arts allusions and storytelling articulated in a trademark deep and powerful voice that is clear, intelligent, and concise.

RZA

The driving musical force behind the greatness that we know as the Wu-Tang Clan is Bobby Digital, the RZA. RZA is the man who makes the beats for the Wu-Tang Clan, but he is also a fantastic rapper with a signature voice and innovative delivery. There are those who say he is not a good rapper, but I would heartily disagree, and I love his solo work and stuff with the Gravediggers as much as I like the Wu-Tang Clan as a whole.

Raekwon

Raekwon the Chef is one of the nine original members of the Wu-Tang Clan. Many if not all of the members have put out their own albums, and Raekwon's joint Only Built For Cuban Links is one of the all-time classics in the genre of hip-hop, and it is absolutely fantastic. Cuban Links is one of my personal favorite albums of all time and I have listened to it a million times, but I could listen to it a million more.

Wu Tang Clan

After exploring the various Okay Player artists' music I got involved with some of the forums that the OkayPlayer.com site offers to the peeps and I learned a lot about the hip-hop culture and about other groups, and I got interested in the Wu-Tang Clan and I listened to their music quite a bit. I subsequently got really into it a few years after first hearing it first and at this point Wu-Tang is in my "stranded on a desert island" top ten.

Personal Sharing

When I think about Lonnie Lynn, or Common, I realize that because I have listened to his music going back to the time he was actually a teenager, and because he has always been honest in writing about his life and his experiences, thoughts, and feelings, that I have actually seen a snapshot of the man as he has grown and lived and come of age. That is a powerful artistic statement, and it is moving to the listener. It's something real, and something of great value.

Common

One of the very best artists today in the genre of hip-hop or any genre really is the man that they call Common, or Common Sense. Common is from Chicago and his given name is Lonnie Lynn. He is a fantastic wordsmith and a very positive force in the hip-hop community. He is an innovator and he's always evolving. I love his old stuff as well as the new and everybody should give this man a listen.

Conscious hip-hop

One of the things that I learned after getting into conscious hip-hop through the Roots and the Okay Player community is that there is a lot of positive spiritual information circulating throughout this community. It is relatively easy to make hip-hop beats and rap over them from a technological standpoint, so it is a great way for people to be musical and creative and do something positive with their time, and a lot of good information gets circulated if you have "ears to hear."

D'Angelo

I have a great respect for people who can play a variety of instruments, and play those instruments well. There has always been a lot of soul coming out of the City of Brotherly Love, and nobody delivers more sultry soul than D'Angelo. He actually plays many instruments, and he could make a living at any one of them but he is a fantastic singer on top of that. D'Angelo is another Okay Player cat who makes incredible music.

Dilated Peoples

As I've been writing, the Okay Player community has led me in the direction of many artists that I have really enjoyed, and it has enhanced my life significantly over the last few years. One of the Okay Player artists that I enjoy is a group called Dilated Peoples. They are out of SoCal and they are comprised of D.J. Babu, Rocka, and Evidence. Check out their laid back, conscious west coast style, you won't be disappointed.

Talib Kweli

One of the artists that I heard about through the Okay Player site was Talib Kweli, who first came to prominence as half of the seminal hip hop act Black Star along with Mos Def, who everyone has heard of from Def Poetry Jam and all of his film appearances and his own solo work. Kweli is very clear and intelligent lyrically, and he doesn't shy away from political subjects. I got to see him live at the House of Blues here in Las Vegas and he put on a very good show.

Okay Player

The Roots have a web site that is called OkayPlayer.com, and by getting into the band I was led to the site. Once I got into looking around on there I realized that it was a collective of sorts and that quite a few hip hop artists were considered to be "Okay Player" artists and they all had a common meeting ground on this site. All of this is the brainchild of ?uestlove who is the Roots drummer as I mentioned in a previous post. Through the site I learned a lot about hip hop and I was turned on to many good artists.

Jurassic 5

Right around the time that I first started listening to The Roots there was a group called Jurassic Five that had just released a very popular album and I like their sound and the vibe that they were putting out. The album that I listened to a lot then was called Power In Numbers and I subsequently found out that they are an L.A. based band that had been around since back in 1993. Jurassic 5 is comprised of rappers Chali 2na, Akil, Zaakir, and Mark 7even, along with DJ Nu-Mark and DJ Cut Chemist.

Roots Lineup

The Roots' emcee is known as Black Thought, but his real name is Tariq Trotter. The original lineup included another emcee named Malik B, and he actually reappeared on the most recent Roots album after a prolonged absence. The bass player lays down fat grooves and his name is Leonard Hubbard. The Roots keyboardist is Kamal Gray, and they have had a few different guitarists but their present guy is Captain Kirk. They used to have a human turntablist named Scratch who would make turntable sounds with his voice. The Roots drummer is the inimitable ?uestlove, whose government name is Ahmir Thompson.

The Roots

About six years ago I had this intuition that there was a lot of good hip-hop music out there, although much of what little I had heard didn't interest me. I met a guy working in a natural food store in Sedona, AZ, who was actually from Philadelphia. Of course I am from the the Philly area, so I felt a connection to the guy. He recommended that I listen to The Roots. I took his recommendation and I bought a Roots CD, and I then went on to get everything they ever released, and I saw them live a couple of times. They are different from most hip-hop because they have are a live band rather than a Emcee and and deejay. The Roots are fun to see live and they are really good musicians.

Lyons Den

Here in Las Vegas we have a radio program that goes down on Sunday nights that is called the Lyons Den, hosted by George Lyons. They play a lot of progressive music with an emphasis on live performances, and I am listening to it right now. They are broadcasting a live Who show that was played here in Vegas a couple of years ago. Lyons has been dedicating himself to the networking of good live rock and progressive jazz music for a lot of years (though he is of course a very young man), and he should be lauded for his efforts. All lauding aside, though, the Who wailed out that night.

Vegoose

There was a huge concert event that features largely jam bands that takes place every June in Manchester, Tennessee called Bonnaroo. It is a big success, and the organizers of Bonnaroo have created an annual concert event with a similar theme called Vegoose that takes place here in Las Vegas. This year it had less of a jam band emphasis, but it is quite an extravaganza and it brings a lot of people to town to throw down, listen to dozens of great bands, and have an all around good time.

Trey Anastasio

I am a guitar player so I have usually focused on the guitar player in bands, but as I have learned more and more about music and learned to play the bass and program drums, I have more appreciation for all of the components that you need to blend together in order to make good music. That having been said, Phish's Trey Anastasio is an amazing guitar player, singer, and songwriter. He is really more of a jazz player than a rock player in many ways, but he incorporates his deep knowledge of music into a rockin' style that really transcends definition. I would love to see Phish again, and like a lot of people I hope they reunite, they are all relatively young guys.

Jon Fishman

As I wrote previously concerning the Stones' Charlie Watts, the drummer is the driving force behind any band and the most difficult piece to find. Non-musicians often times don't realize that drumming is not just about the impressive sounding fills and the booming bass drum, but drummers have to keep perfect timing while doing three or four totally separate things at once. So they need to have a lot of independence of mind as it is attached to limbs, and they have to have a metronome in their heads. Bands that improvise a lot like Phish would sound static and repetitive if the drummer wasn't being constantly creative and mixing things up while keeping perfect time. Jon Fishman is amazing, high energy, fun, and penultimately creative.

Page McConnell

The keyboard player in Phish is Page McConnell. He plays an actual piano as well as the Hammond and it really is a sound that I love. I like the more organic keyboard sounds and I think that a band can lose its identity if it isn't rooted in organic tones. Page also sings harmonies very well, and he sings lead vocals on some songs as well. It takes a group of special musicians to synergize a legendary band, and Page McConnell is one of them.

Mike Gordon

The bass player in Phis is a guy named Mike Gordon. He is really a monster on the instrument. His ability to improvise while still staying in the groove is extraordinary. I remember that at that first show that I saw at the Crest Theater I was sitting about 15 rows from the stage because the crowd was so small and the bass was just rocking the floor and pulsing through me and it literally made you have to get up and move and dance along with the music. Some years later I was tailgating in the parking lot before a Phish show and Mike was driving around on a golf cart, and he stopped and got out and hung around with people, and I went up to him and shook his hand. What a nice guy Mike Gordon is, not many rock stars are that down to earth.

Phish

I was once at a Grateful Dead concert back around 1992, and the show was dragging and the band really wasn't playing that well. I was talking to some people sitting next to me that felt the same way, and they recommended that I go see a band called Phish. I had seen the name Phish out there, and I remembered what these folks said when I got home and I thought that I would go to see this band when I had the chance. A couple of months later I noticed that they were playing at the Crest Theater in Sacramento. I went to the show, and there was a sparse crowd, maybe 1500 people, and they played all of this group of songs that they have that take place in an imaginary place called Gamehendge. As the lore has it, they only played these songs I think three times in their careers, and this show is well known among Phish fans even today as a classic, so I had some beginners luck. I was blown away by Phish and I went on to enjoy their music until their retirement.

Ron Wood

I was writing about the Rolling Stones a little while ago and I hadn't yet mentioned the other guitarist in the band besides Keith Richard. Ron Wood is a great guitar player in his own right who helps the Stones get the full sound that is their trademark. Wood is also a fine painter and I have seen his paintings for sale in a gallery in San Francisco on one of my visits there. We is quite a talented individual and I respect him a great deal. It's hard to imagine being a good enough musician to play in one of the greatest rock bands of all time while being a good enough artist to make a comfortable living as a painter. The man has an embarrassment of creative riches.

Flute

The flute is a really cool instrument that isn't used all that much in popular music, but every time you hear it, you like it. I am listening to a jazz song right now and there was a flute solo and it was really nice. When I think of jazz flute I think Hubert Laws. Of course in rock Jethro Tull used flute a lot, but Peter Gabriel played some flute on early Genesis stuff, and there is a band that a lot of people have never heard of called Renaissance that used flute well. More people need to use the flute!

Bill Wyman

I learned to play the bass many years after learning to play the guitar, but I have come to love the instrument and I really understand its importance in holding the music together. Bill Wyman was the original bassist in the Stones and he now plays with his own band The Rhythm Kings and they are active and performing.

Charlie Watts

When people think about the Rolling Stones, they automatically bring up mental pictures of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, but as a musician I can tell you that finding the right drummer is the most difficult task that you have when you are trying to assemble a good band. Stones' drummer Charlie Watts is actually an accomplished jazz drummer, so he is really a monster behind the kit and the driving force behind the music.

Mick Jagger

Well, if you are going to mention Keith, you have to give props to his songwriting cohort and longtime love/hate relationship partner Mick Jagger. When I saw the Stones live for the first time in the early eighties I was blown away by Mick's swaggering stage presence. It is tough to pull off all of that preening and do it with grace, but he does, and that is the magic of Mick Jagger.

Keith Richards

The Rolling Stones are truly one of the most unique acts in the history of the entertainment business in that they continue to remain viable even after being at the top of the game for so many years. Guitarist Keith Richards continues to take to the stage and the studio and his legend keeps growing day by day. He is the consummate rock star.

Elton John

The persona of Elton John has become larger than life as he has grown older, but his genius cannot be overstated. Elton John and Bernie Taupin have written so many good songs that it is absolutely amazing. He is truly a treasure and he is still performing often in Las Vegas and elsewhere.

ELP

I have written about the fabulous drummer Carl Palmer, and I have lauded keyboard master Keith Emerson, so it is now my pleasure to pay my respects to the bass player and singer in Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Greg Lake. Lake was also in King Crimson, and in my opinion he has one of the greatest voices in rock music history.

Keith Emerson

One of the greatest rock bands of all time is of course the venerable progressive rock trio Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. I have mentioned drummer Carl Palmer previously, but the multi-keyboardist Keith Emerson is also an amazing musician that helped to create their trademark orchestral sound.