Respond, Vibrate, Feedback, Resonate

My son and I had a blast at the Rush concert. And so did a whole lot of other people who packed the Shoreline Amphitheater on a weeknight. I actually knew a number of people in attendance; great minds think alike. I bumped into some friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, including one from high school who was not far from me in the vast lawn area (I much prefer the lawn at the Concord Pavilion, which is closer to the stage and sloped much better for visibility).

The music was great, as to be expected. It’s so inspiring to see the band in such great shape and still rockin’ out after more than 30 years of performing. It looked like they were having a great time and still loving what they are doing. I think it’s because they always stayed true to themselves, even when things were not going well in the earlier years. They faced a lot of pressure to become more commercial in order to survive as musicians after Caress of Steel’s disappointing tour and album sales. Instead, they took a big gamble by following their hearts and ended up producing the masterpiece that is 2112. And it still sounds great in 2010!

There was a distinctive “Passage to Bangkok” scent in the air that night. The weed smell was so obvious that I felt compelled to give my son a fatherly “don’t do drugs” speech. He replied that he had no idea what it was other than "those were the best smelling cigarettes he’s been around." Oh, boy.

My son was a trooper as we made it an extra late night by going out to eat with some friends after the show. These friends sat really close to the stage and got some fantastic concert photos. Some people have a real knack for taking good photos (a “Camera Eye”?), no matter how cheap or little their camera is. That picture in this blog of Geddy and Alex is one such photo.

Lastly, if you’re a fan of I Love You Man, then you would have gotten a real kick out of the video that played at the end of the concert. That' the first time I've ever seen a video at the end of a show. Too funny!

Chain Lightening

Hello Blog,
It's been a while. I've been busy. I'm working extra hard so I can take a vacation day on Tues. My lovely wife got me tickets for the Rush Time Machine concert for Monday night as a surprise gift. I will be taking my son, and it will be his first concert ever. And he'll be hearing all of Moving Pictures! I'm so excited for him. I've been to more Rush concerts than I can remember, but this will be extra fun being able to share it with him. I just hope I don't get stuck in traffic, because there's no opening band for this show. This moment may be brief, but it can be so bright...

DVD Concert Summary

Well, the free NetFlix subscription expired. In an interesting coincidence, our last remaining local video rental place unexpectedly closed. So we’re going to continue with NetFlix, but the whole family will be using it, not just me. I’ll watch a concert from time to time, and maybe write about it. I’m going to rent some instructional DVDs, and not just guitar DVDs. You can learn things from people who play other instruments, as well.

Video #10: Marillion – Live from Lorely ‘87

This was a great show even though Fish gets the award for the worst dressed singer in any concert I’ve ever seen. Man, he wore hideous suit after hideous suit, starting with the jester outfit and going downhill from there. My lovely wife walked by and mentioned something about him looking like Cirque du Soleil. But he sang with real conviction and passion, and has such a distinctive voice. At times, his voice sounds like a more rockin’ version of Phil Collins.

This band never got that big in the US, but this German crowed was really into them with such a passion, singing along (in English).

I like the guitarist’s melodic style and nice clean tones. He had some unusual guitars. They were Fenderish. He even had a double neck with 2 six-strings, one with a capo.

The songs were great and sounded like the studio albums. Here’s one of my favorites – Lavender:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc0siPZDsSY

Video #9: Tesla – Comin’ Atcha Live ‘08

Yea, baby! This is how you do it. I’m going to buy this one along with that Journey DVD I wrote about earlier.

Killer guitar tone, nice guitar stereo separation, great editing. And of course, their songs are great and sound great live. My only small quibble is that Tommy Skeoch is not there playing guitar. But at least they replaced him with a very capable local guy, Dave Rude from Oakland (http://www.teslatheband.com/band/ts_band_dave.php).

When Frank Hannon was noodling around on an acoustic guitar before launching into one of the songs, my wonderful wife in the other room thought it was me playing. What a compliment! But he does actually noodle around like I do. Great minds think alike? I wish.

But anyway, the bonus material in this DVD is the best guitar geek bonus material I’ve ever seen. They showed you their amps, guitars, pedals. I couldn’t ask for more. I wish more music DVDs did that.

Here they are, comin atcha live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTuJYebKLQE

Tesla trivia – Song and Emotion was written about Steve Clark.

Video #8: Scorpions – Unbreakable Tour ’04 in Vienna

The Scorps are one of my favorite bands, but I couldn’t get into this DVD, because I kept getting distracted by bad, choppy editing. If someone is playing a guitar solo, show it. Don’t flash to a hundred other things in quick succession. They must have recorded this over a couple nights, because the drummer’s shirt miraculously changes from one cut to another while he’s playing a song.

I actually didn’t recognize the drummer, but from the bonus material, I found out that he’s an American. I think he’s the first American in the band.

The bonus material was a little boring in the beginning, but I eventually got into it, and it was pretty informative. It seems like Rudolph was the driving force behind the band. In the beginning, he was their manager and also had a strong, ambitions vision of making the band world famous. I liked his positive attitude, too. He said things like “everything is possible” and “don’t stop at the top.”

Also, the band’s friendship is really impressive. When they were in the process of making Blackout, Klaus lost his voice and the doctor told him to quit singing and pursue a different career. What a blow that must have been. But the band stood by him, and were supportive. And, of course Klaus was able to work his way back to singing with the help of some top doctors.

Interesting bit of trivia – they wrote Winds of Change before the Wall came down.

Video #7: Journey 2001

Yea! This concert from Vegas rocked, even without Steve Perry. Their singer actually looked a little like Kenny G, but he did a good job. I’ve never seen Deen Castronovo before either, but he was awesome on drums. Of course the other players were great – Ross Valory, Neal Schon, Jonathan Cain.

This DVD was skimpy with the bonus material, and I didn’t care to see the audience close-ups, but I’m buying this one. Those are small quibbles. The editing, the songs, the playing, Neal’s guitar tone - it was all good.

Here’s a sample. It looked like Neal was playing some nice, customized PRSs. And check out how Deen attacks those drums.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO8vKjrdnxk

Early Journey

The very next concert DVD in my NetFlix cue is a Journey concert from 2001, but I got an early taste last night when I had the privilege to see Neal Schon jam with the Miles Schon band at a music store.

It was at a promotional event at Bananas at Large in San Rafael for an innovative, new amplifier company based in nearby Vallejo called Grid1. Neal’s son, Miles, gave an in-store performance with his band at the event. Miles is also a great player. The amp, which was running the whole time on battery power, sounded awesome. It also helped that Miles was playing a killer gold top Les Paul that I believe was a Neal Schon model with a Floyd Rose and some extra switches.

It looks exactly like the guitar Neal is playing in this little clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDg1pFIytS0

Unfortunately, my BlackBerry doesn’t have a camera, so I don’t have anything to show from the actual event. But there were a lot of video cameras there. If I find any video online, I’ll link to it.

This made me hearken back to the jam I had the honor to be part of a couple years ago with Ross Valory, the bass player in Journey. It’s good to see those guys hanging out and jamming when they’re not on tour. Good stuff.

And Bananas at Large is a fun store. They have a zillion pedals and some cool Zemeitis guitars, including a real beauty that looks like this:

And they also had a wacky Yamaha pseudo guitar with buttons on the fretboard. I've only seen this "guitar" once before, and that was at the Yamaha Music Center in Tokyo. It's a fun little toy. This is a picture of it in Tokyo along with a handsome and talented guitarist:

Video #6: Dio – Holy Diver live ‘05

I couldn’t call this blog “We Rock” without watching a Dio DVD!

This one had pretty good editing and sound. Rudy Sarzo played bass (which reminds me to get his biography from the Ozzy days someday soon). I didn’t recognize the guitar player. He looked like Sebastian Bach, but he played and acted somewhat like Zakk Wylde. I think he did a good job, and I found out in the bonus material that he got the gig at the last minute. It was so last minute that he was actually using the replaced guitarist’s amps. One odd thing I noticed, though, was that he had a big country-western size belt buckle that looked to have scratched the heck out of the back of his guitars. Leave it to me to notice something like that, but what is he thinking! Guitar abuse! Somebody call Social Services.

I always like hearing Rainbow in the Dark, which is a long-time favorite song of mine (they played it tuned down to “D,” I believe). Actually, in this particular concert, I think Heaven & Hell sounded really good, and course – WE ROCK!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmbTBvRl_mE

Video #5: Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii

David Gilmour is one of my all-time favorite guitar players, right up there with Alex Lifeson. For some reason, I’ve never gotten around to watching this video until now.

Overall, this DVD was a little too artsy for me, but it had good moments. It was made in the early 70’s, before they wrote a lot of my favorite songs. However, the DVD did have some added studio footage from the making of Dark Side of the Moon, which was great.

It was strange to see them playing live to nobody in the middle of the outdoor arena. Typically, a band would feed on the audience’s energy to elevate their performance. I don’t know what Nick Mason was feeding on, but I was the most impressed with him. He was rockin'. And because there was no audience to consider when they were filming, they were able to get great camera shots of Nick. Check it out One of These Days:

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

Video #4: Paul Gilbert - Silence Followed by a Deafening Roar

This was an instructional guitar DVD with some concert footage at the end. Paul is quite a player, and I love his sense of humor, too. In the introduction to the DVD, he was a wandering samurai in full costume.

There is lots of shredding in this DVD (surprise, surprise) but to get the most out of it, you’d want to have the accompanying tablature booklet, which NetFlix doesn’t send along.

I think his pinky is as long as my index finger. I can’t spread my hand across the fretboard like he does, but it was comforting to know that I can still keep up pretty well with his speed picking exercise. So even though I’m not practicing all the time, at least I have that going for me. Which is nice.

The bonus concert footage of Paul playing in South Korea was fun. In it, he delivered a hilarious song introduction. He read it aloud to the audience in broken Korean from a notebook, where it was probably written down phonetically. The audience roared its approval. Luckily, there was an English translation added at the bottom of the screen. And it went something like this…

“This next song is by Racer X.
It originally had 64,250 notes in it.
Tonight, however, I will play a lot more than that!”

Video #3: U2 - Vertigo in Chicago ‘05

I read somewhere that this was a fantastic concert DVD. And I felt like seeing a U2 concert after recently watching the Edge in It Might Get Loud. I liked it, but I did fast forward through a bunch of slower songs that I wasn’t crazy about. Bono talks too much, too. But I admit that Bono is definitely a charismatic guy. I give him credit for trying to use his influence to make the world a better place. I’ll bet he could start his own religion and could give L. Ron Hubbard a run for his money.

The Edge sounded great. I put the laptop down, and played along with some of it, and was surprised that they tuned down for some of the songs – like Pride in the Name of Love. Usually, I can just tell by listening when a band does this, but for their songs, I couldn’t until I tried to play along.

The highlight for me was One. It’s not exactly the same as Metallica’s One, but this One was powerful in its own subtle way, and I love the Edge’s playing in it. Check it out - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY0UueqC07E

Video #2: Phish: Live in Walnut Creek

No, not the Walnut Creek in the Bay Area, but in North Carolina.

This concert had some of the best editing I’ve seen, and my biggest pet peeve with concert videos is the editing. There are so many tragic concert videos I can’t watch because of choppy editing going from one quick cut to another. But like I said, this one was good, and you could really see Trey’s fingers zipping around on the guitar.

Although I don’t listen to jam bands too much, I think Trey Anastasio is a terrific guitar player with a distinctive rock tone and great chops. When I was taking guitar lessons years ago, Alex and I would figure out his licks. I still remember some.

Phish was jamming around so much in this concert that the show had to be put on two DVDs. This was a really good one to watch while working on my laptop. However, I usually prefer songs that are more succinct or at least have more structure. Or maybe I’m just too impatient in this fast paced modern life where my Blackberry is always flashing at me, and I can never stay on top of my incoming emails.

But one song that returns me to serenity is Bouncing Around the Room, which they play here. I just love everything about this short song - the timing between the drums and the bass, the perfect little piano fills, the harmony guitar/piano at the end. Check it out.

Supplemental Entry: The Wall

I’m sitting in front of the TV working away on the laptop again. No new NetFlix DVDs today. The Wall is on VH1 Classic (my favorite TV channel, even if they do edit the movie). It’s hard to feel sorry for myself with whatever problems I have when I see the sad life of our poor protagonist Pink - dad died in the war when he was so young, no father figure, smothering mom, abused by the schoolmaster, wife cheating on him, severe mental illness, smashing up his guitars, filled with hate, isolated, alienated.

We all have our issues. I once heard that people seems normal until you get to know them. That sounds about right. I’m a little afraid to get to know people who I really look up to for fear that I’ll be disappointed in some way. That groupie thought Pink was really cool until he freaked out and smashed everything in sight when she came on to him.

I like to think that the message with the children in the epilogue “outside the wall” is that we can all reboot and start again with our lost childhood innocence. For me that comes from being a parent, and cleaning up my act in so many ways because of my kids being around.
I thank God for my blessings.

After all it's not easy,
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's
wall.

Video #1: It Might Get Loud

Jack White has to be one of the luckiest guitarists in the world. He got to hang out with Jimmy Page and the Edge, trading licks and sharing stories for this movie. Actually, when Jimmy launched into Whole Lotta Love, both the Edge and Jack White looked like they were in awe. Can you blame them?

I loved seeing the huge rig that the Edge uses. He can play a riff that seems boring and repetitive, but with the right effects and attitude it sounds so great. When I was learning to play back in the ‘80s I was more into flashier playing, but I’ve really grown to appreciate what the Edge does. (Mental note...rent a U2 concert sometime soon.)

And I couldn’t believe the historical footage and places they showed for U2. The Edge took the camera crew to the school where the band used to practice, and pointed out the spot on the school wall where he saw the “guitarist wanted” add to join the band. He was wondering what would have happened if he didn’t see the ad. He joked that he would have been working in a bank today! I hope he still would have been into guitar, even if it was just in the bedroom.

It just goes to show that a tiny little thing can have a huge impact on your life. I hope I haven’t missed out on a life changing opportunity because I wasn’t paying attention or take a chance. If the Edge didn’t see that ad, would U2 become one of the biggest bands in the world? I doubt it. His playing is so distinctive, and he did a lot of the writing. As a matter of fact, it was really cool to hear him play old demo songs from his 4-track recorder - songs that would become such big hits.

It was fun seeing Jimmy Page, too. I like how he doesn’t try to look young and dye his hair like so many other aging rockers. Although the Edge was the one who said, “It might get loud,” it was something that Jimmy said that really resonated with me. He said that every show he played with Led Zeppelin, he felt fully alive. He felt like he was totally living. In the different bands I’ve played in, I never quite had that feeling. I’m not sure why. I was mostly performing overs and songs for people to dance to. But I really liked some of the songs I played. Was Jimmy playing more from the heart? Whatever the reason, Jimmy and the boys certainly took their performances to quite a high level. God willing, I hope to someday have the same feelings when I’m performing, whenever and wherever that may be. To be in pure rock bliss.

Supplemental Entry: Grammys

I almost forgot about the Grammys. I usually tape it and watch it later with the fast forward button. I don’t care who won, I like to see the performances.

Was it me, or did Beyonce rock harder than Geen Day? I like Green Day, and have played (and even sung!) their songs. And of course they’re East Bay and all, but I think they may have finally jumped the shark with that big Broadway production of 21 Guns from American Idiot.

The Les Paul tribute with Jeff Beck was my favorite performance. I don’t know how he does it without using a pick! I just wish he could have played for as long as they let the rappers play toward the end of the show.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I love to write, and I love to play music. So why not write about music? I’m actually inspired to do this by the person who taught me to play guitar, my teacher and friend Alex Skolnick, who is also a good writer and I urge you to check out his SkolNotes blog, as well. I don’t have stories from the road like he does, and I’m actually working so much that I had to quit the band I was in. But I do my best to rock out when I can. And since you’re reading this, I’m sure you rock, too. I’m happy you’re here.

So besides working day and night, I’m currently on a mission to watch as many music DVDs as I can in the next month and a half. That’s because my family and I received a 2-month NetFlix gift certificate. It took me a couple weeks to realize all the concert and guitar videos at NetFlix. It’s a pretty good selection, and I filled up NetFlix’s queue of movies to send to me. So when I’m slaving away on my laptop in the evenings, and the TV is free, I’ll watch and work and share some thoughts about the music DVDs. I love to write, I love to analyze, and I love music. So, I think this will be fun and entertaining for all.

If you have recommendations for must-see concerts (that rock, of course), please let me know. Some of my favorite videos I own are Exit…Stage Left, Live After Death, Flight 666, R30. If you’ve never heard of those Rush and Iron Maiden concerts, then you especially need to read on. I may not get you to the high level of rockitude of somebody like Ronnie James Dio, but we’ll have fun trying!

First up…It Might Get Loud. Stay tuned...