Sunday, February 26, 2006

a few more quick thangs...

1) my sweetie's mom passed peacefully last thursday night. now kat and her sisters are all together, taking care of the funeral arrangements. busy with work stuff here and getting ready to move my middle dtr back in with us for a spell, but i'm thinking about her every day.

2) went along with goodwin when they played a birthday party after the arena football game at the american airlines center. they needed someone to help tweak their sound and damien's wife val didn't feel up to it. luckily, they're proficient at balancing their sound, so i had a pretty easy job, walking around listening to stuff a la andre and tweaking a coupla thangs here 'n' there, particularly when some drunk guy wanted to get up and sing "bad moon rising" but didn't realize you're supposed to sing, um, into the mic. to give the guy credit, he was left handed and did an o.k. job of playing the three chords upside-down on daniel's gtr. el presidente hisself was testing out a new homemade 2X12 cab with greenback celestions that proved to be a little more midrange-y than his 4X12. arena football is weird: _everything_ is sponsored, from the first downs to the penalties to the cheerleaders. because the dallas desperadoes scored 50 points last night, i can take my ticket stub to papa john's pizza and get a medium cheese pizza for free; woo hoo! the goodwin guys played great, the material from their upcoming sophomore c.d. sounded awesome (particularly "arm and mouth," which they still need to track), and they managed to pull off "february 3rd" sans rehearsal at the birthday boy's request. on the non-snazz side, the audience was polite but responded better to the covers -- "the monkey and me" by, um, the knack; "hungry like the wolf" (which tony wanted to introduce as "hungry like your mom"); and their usual "just like heaven" (with matt playing the signature gtr figure on his D string, which was cuttin' through like a razor for some reason) -- than they did to the 'riginals, and the staff unexpectedly turned up the lights in the middle of "airport," signifying the end o' the evening. and we saw a car fire in irving on the way home. hope the folks got out o.k., but it didn't look like it.

3) half-time activities at the game included a buncha kids from some dance school doing breakdance routines, including three tiny tots doing the whole zz top "sharp dressed man" routine. it occurred to me watching them that, to a younger person, it might have appeared that they were impersonating _a trio of matisyahus_ rather than the li'l ol' band from texas. similarly, my sweetie reported overhearing a convo between two seattle bimbettes wherein one of 'em was talking about the guy she's seeing who has a tattoo that sez "the who" and wondering whatthehell that was all about until her friend reassured her that they were a band that was _totally_ cool: "they did the themes to _all the c.s.i. shows!_" if pete townshend was here, he'd be turning in his grave, and perhaps realizing why, back in '65, he hoped he'd die before he got old.

4) "mighty 1190" (kfxr-am) here in the metromess just switched formats, from oldies-from-the-'60s-thru-now to _country_ oldies. this is actually good, as it now affords one who is so inclined the opportunity to hear george jones sing "he stopped loving her today" ("...and hung a wreath upon his door," wow) and burst into tears at a stoplight. (if you can hear possum sing this song without crying, you're not human. or at least need to live life a li'l bit more.)

5) took in "dave karnes night" at the wreck room friday. melee mouth (the intriguing lineup of karnage on drums, lee allen on bass/voxxx, and "confusajohn" stevens on gtr playing 'riginals by lee) wound up forfeiting due to lack of rehearsal time, but we got to see dave kick the traps with rahim quazi and sunward. rahim (ex-purple overdose, ex-ohno) plays a jangly melodic beatlesque pop-rock, and apparently has been getting some film work. the cat on gtr played a modded tele (why would anyone replace the lipstick tube from a tele? sacrilege!) with lotsa f/x and sounded like he was trying to sound like scott davis. sunward, fronted by ex-tabula rasa guy doug kershaw (_not_ the ragin' cajun, altho they play the same axe), sounds like radiohead (minus the uber-angst) meets the polyphonic spree (minus the grape kool-aid). their sound is big, dynamic, powerful, and jerko dabelic (who usedta play in a beatle coverband with ron geida and has a radiohead coverband up in denton) does a nice job of highlighting the dense (three chordal instruments when doug's not fiddling) soundscape with interesting colors 'n' textures. in the past week, karnage has also opened for allan holdsworth at hailey's in denton with a world-class jazz trio featuring clint strong on gtr and drew phelps on bass. their performance was videotaped and hopefully will lead to some other oppos for them out of the area, hint hint. meanwhile, a bill i'd like to see: sunward, alan, and the hochimen, maybe closing with a three-way fiddle jam between doug kershaw, doug polhamus, and reggie rueffer.

6) john shook gave me a copy of kulcha far i's unreleased cd, the future of which is kinda dubious now that roots 'n' kulcha frontguy chris hakata has pulled the plug on the enterprise. a pity, too -- it's a great rekkid, capturing all the signature strengths of what was in the process of becoming a great band. the confluence of shook's agile, inventive basslines, ron geida's compendium of classic rockgit (that's an adjective, not a genre) virtues, and jeffrey williams' solid one-drop provides a great foundation for chris to testify over. in the aftermath, shook's hoping to audition for triple-a, ron's playing jazz with james and myles on tuesday nights at the moon, and jeffrey's wanting to do a singer-songwriter thang, but hopefully they'll work again as a unit -- they're a strong triad.

1 Comments:

Blogger andrew m. said...

dang, sorry to hear about yr ma-in-law. my prayers are with yr wife and her fam.

the who/CSI parallel is a trip though. probably the same kinda folks who think otis redding's claim to fame is being the cat who wrote the jingle for that hires root beer commercial from the 80s...

6:04 AM  

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