New Year's Eve, 2001
We were playing a packed packed packed bar - to the point that the conga player had a girl between him and the congas. Oh - wait a minute, maybe that was on purpose. Anyhow - the place was packed and we were just grooving on whatever came to mind and the place was eating it up... and from a reggae kind of groove, we went into my favorite song (my favorite song that I wrote), Superhot Lady Cop... and the place dug it... to the point that at the end of the song, I had the whole place screaming it out. Oh, it was just too fun.

And SHOCK! I recorded it! I just came across the recording and wanted to post it for y'all.

Streaming so you don't have to download the whole thing.

www.funkmusician.com/shlc.m3u

[This message was edited Fri Feb 27 7:02:05 2004 by otan]

When I performed "Xenophobia" and then "Lets Go Crazy" followed it.

It was amazing, a strange jazzy type of song that everyone was feeling, especially my boy's sax solo, it was the shit.
Then that drum kicks in to "lets go crazy" and everyone was like, wow, a Prince song.
And my sax player dubbed my guitar on the solo, so the solo was tight.

Generally just about every gig i play these days is fun, but there was this 1 at this bigger club that I thought was going to be a disaster because we were a pop rock band playing on the bill with a bunch of metal bands. Come our time, there wound up being a bunch of kids hanging on the front of the stage totally digging what we were throwing down! We got a bunch of names on the mailing list and stayed 2 hang out afterwards and had people coming up 2 us all night saying how much they loved out set!

the link does not work for me.

all gigs are fun, I live for the live performance

talmuzic said:

AUGH.

I'll get it working tomorrow... sigh... it's always sumpm...

All of my performances in Europe last Spring with my choir. Most spiritual thing ever...singing Agnus Dei by Barber in the Cathedral of San Marco...I don't think anything could ever rival that experience to me.

Sorry - all that bragging and the link was screwed up. I fixed it. here it is again.

www.funkmusician.com/shlc.m3u

I don't know, maybe when i was 17 and was into my first band, a punk rock band, it was really funny the performances. Blue hair, wine, make up, and all this shit. :p

otan said:

I'm gonna check that out over the weekend.



Most fun performing was probably in college with the African Drumming ensemble. There were about 4 girls in the class and we were always given the bell and shaker parts. The instructor noticed that I picked up on the rhythms quickly and soon I had mastered all the bell and shaker parts. After I got the master bell, he moved me to the drums. I remember one show, we really got into a groove. One of the guys that had been taking drumming for a while commented that he and I really synched up. We were playing different parts, so it was really neat to feel the rhythm internally and see it happen in our drumming.

I don't know how many of you guys have listened to or seen African Drumming groups, so I'll explain a little about the arrangement. Everyone has a part and we just repeat until the master drummer plays a beat that signals a change or the end. There would be about 3 drum parts, a master drummer, 2 bell parts, a master bell and maybe some shakers. The drum parts were either on hand drums from Ghana, sometimes frame drums or talking drums.

Anyway, on one particular piece I learned all the parts and eventually got to the master drum part. At the end of the year we performed it in the theater for a Spring Festival. We came out from behind the audience, walking & drumming in the aisles. I think 3 of us were playing the master drum part on d'jembes. That was great fun. Our school also had an African Dance class of course, so we were all on stage. It was a party!

Gotta love live hand drumming! I've never done anything so formal but I have had some great nights just winging it! Not bad for a guitar player. At least that's what they tell me.

For me the best gigs are about feeling. That feeling can come from a packed house, the guitar tone being just right, or even that one person who's support makes all the difference.

I too live to play out, and there are definitely times when you touch the sky. Funny how when they're over I can't really remember them, though. Like orgasms!!

In fact, this is what I always tell musicians in my bands: A good gig is like a waterslide. Fun, wet, slippery, and over in a flash!! The faster the time goes by, the better things are going.

And the inverse is also true. Every had a gig where you hit the chorus of the second song and it seems like you've been there FOREVER and you're thinking "OMG, this is only the first chorus?". That is AWFULL!!

July 4, 2002, I was playing on the Mall in DC as part of an Independence Day music festival, in the band of a gospel artist-friend of mine. He asked me to solo on guitar, and I did a few standard blues scales for a while. Then, I launched into a rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner," a la Jimi. With the exception of one tiny wrong note , it was cool. And, folks were like: "I can't believe it!!!"

It was a blast.

I think the most fun I had performing was in high school for stage band. I played bass guitar and had this solo for approximately 30 seconds. But at this particular Jazz competition my director came up to me and said take all the time you want on your solo tonight. LOL! Needless to say I had a DOD distortion pedal along with a cheap compressor back in the day. I started out playing a line from Havana by Jaco and then stepped on the old distortion pedal!!! LOL!!! At a Jazz Fest!! I did a lot of fast runs with some harmonic flick's and finally started pluckin' after a 2 minute solo!! What fun! I must say that it was hard for the band to come back to "Valdez in the country" after the solo! I did however walk away with a scholorship to Berklee that night though. I felt great because noone originally thought that I would be good on the bass since I usally played drums and trumpet. But I practiced every single night for a year straight to get that spot in the band.

Favorite moment #2:

I was in Nashville this week -- thinking about moving there -- when I bumped into bluesman Percy Strothers, who was passing out flyers for his gig at a downtown bar that night. I -- being totally ignorant of who he was and how big a following he has -- asked him nonchalantly if he'd let a guitarist sit in with him, and he said yes.

Apparently, that's a rare answer to the many requests he gets for that, and his bandmates were kind of worried about whether I'd be able to hang with them. "Son... have you played the blues before?" his drummer asked me. "Do you have a license? Can you drive?" (I suddenly felt like Ralph Macchio in Crossroads.) I tried to assure him that, yes, I could drive and have been playing the blues for about 19 years. They seemed a bit uneasy, until I played the first song with them, and took the solo they gave me. It was hilarious.

For people who've never heard of him (and, again, maybe I'm the only student in Ignorance 101), Percy Strothers is not only a KILLER guitarist and bluesman from the old school, but he's also a generous and gracious soul who gave an unknown like me a little bit of his Nashvillian spotlight this week. I'll be forever grateful.

super hot, lady cop...
had me singing along!

As always,
great thread beau.


Me?
Playing with Frank. ( http://frankaxtell.com ) Everytime.
Guy just knows how to work around your inperfections, I guess.
Every jam with him makes me feel like I know what I'm doing. (with some awesome constructive critisism afterwards, I might add...)

If I'm jamming with a student of his, or with a hard-core virtuoso that comes by to visit with Frank, every note is a learning experience for me. And always... Bliss.

There were several times, in my own band, where we made instant groupies, and afterward...
But that has nothing to do with music.