Just recently saw Opeth/Mastodon/Ghost at the Palladium in Dallas. It was a good show overall. I enjoyed all three sets, but definitely enjoyed Opeth the most. The biggest con were the truncated sets since they were dual headlining. Mastodon played about 80 or so minutes and Opeth was shorter than that. It was a decent set list, mostly from the new album and a few select cuts from the past, most of which were regular vocals. They played a couple growl tunes at the end for their long term fans. They closed out with "The Grand Conjuration" from Ghost Reveries which is a pretty cool tune. I wish they would have played something from Blackwater Park, but hopefully I'll get another chance to see them when they're performing a full set.
Mastodon was high energy, but it was near impossible to understand the vocals, or even sus out exactly what the guitars and bass were doing at any given point. Loud and distorted but lacking a little on the clarity. Not that I was surprised by that. I think most of the fans (and it was a young crowd) were there for Mastodon and probably less than half were there for Opeth.
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If the three songs released so far are any indication, this album is going to be one of the all time Rush classics. Yes, I'm biased, but even taking that into consideration, this thing is sounding epic. Listen for yourself.
]]>The next week (Thursday, yes!) it's Opeth/Mastodon/Ghost for some metal mayhem at the Palladium. Aeyong will be skipping that one, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't enjoy it that much. A couple weeks after that it's Roger Waters performing "The Wall" in it's entirety (and apparently nothing else) in Austin. I had skipped the last few Roger Waters tours because I've always held out hope I could see David Gilmour and he has always been my preferred member of the band. But I came to realize that if I don't see Roger Waters now, I'll most likely never have seen any member of Pink Floyd live in my life, and that's a huge void in my concert going history. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Queen are probably the 3 biggest omissions that I wish I could rectify, but it isn't likely to ever happen. If Queen tours with Paul Rodgers (or even Adam Lambert) I'll go see them, because I love Brian May and Roger Taylor and Paul Rodgers is awesome (actually saw him twice with Jimmy Page in the Firm) and I can tolerate other singers if the band founders find them suitable.
Case in point would be Yes with Benoit David (although I'm not sure if he got fired now). We have seen the more recent lineup with Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White, Oliver Wakeman, and Benoit David and I think they did a fantastic job. I think the "Fly from Here" album is the best thing Yes (the more classical-ish, non Trevor Rabin lineup) have done since ABWH. I love the Trevor Rabin Yes as well, it's just a different band with him in it. Trevor is such a strong musical force, that the magnetic poles in Yes shift when he's in the band, more than with Steve (and I love Steve and consider him a primary influence).
Anywhoooo....
Roger Waters is in early May, and then about 6-7 weeks later is potentially the highlight (for me, anyway) of the summer with Van Halen at AA center in Dallas for the "A Different Kind of Truth" tour. A new album, with David Lee Roth. A really good, no great VH album, with David Lee Roth. Let that sink in. Have you bought it? Listened to it? No, I mean, LISTENED to it? If not, go do that and come back. Take a couple weeks of heavy rotation. Preferably on a good home stereo if you have one of those. No, not those crap logitechs next to your monitor. I mean a home stereo. Not the $199 HTIB that you got on black friday 7 years ago at WalMart. Ok, if necessary, go make some money, buy a respectable home theater speaker system (or go old school stereo if you want, that's perfectly acceptable, and you get style points from the audiophiles if it's a good set of speakers) and then listen to the cd or make sure you're listening to a lossless or high resolution audio format. Lather, rinse, repeat.
WARNING - MINI VH ALBUM REVIEW FOLLOWS THEN CONCERT DISCUSSION RESUMES LATER
This new Van Halen album is easily the best thing they've done since 1984. Sure, it would be different than the SH (or even Gary Cherone if you include him) era because of DLR and Wolfie, but it's not the novelty of having DLR back. I honestly considered DLR peripheral to most of the VH stuff I really loved, because it was always about 80% Eddie, 10% Alex, and 10% of the other two for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Michael Anthony sings great backing vocals and is a "decent" bassist (staying out of Eddie's way is his best skill), and DLR is the ultimate showman. Yada, Yada, Yada. I just always felt like VH could have been a Zeppelin equivalent (in importance, not as a successor to their sound) for me if EVH had a vocalist/lyricist and bassist that were in the same league as him. Imagine if Eddie had musicians as talented as John Paul Jones and Robert Plant or Freddie Mercury in Van Halen. Think of all the great music and imagine if you had someone like Roger Waters writing lyrics for it. See?
But all criticisms aside, DLR has truly gained some wisdom and honed his craft as a lyricist and singer since we last saw him and the VH boys. It's amazing because he's still the same vaudevillian/showman that he has always been, but he's gotten really good at it and his lyrics are so much beyond what they were in the past. Funny, irreverent, insightful, obscure, random. These are just some of the qualities to his new lyric writing. "Swapmeet Sally, Trampstamp Tat, Mousewife to Momshell in the time it took to get that new tattoo, tattoo, tattoo". I don't care what anyone says, those are perfect VH lyrics. It reminds me of Alice Cooper and some other great cerebrally funny lyricists through the years.
DLR manages to reference current popular culture (social media, music, mid life crises, etc) and mix it with classic Vh tropes (sex, drugs, and RnFR baby) while ensuring that it fits the feel of the music perfectly. This album actually makes me feel like the perfect VH lineup was always there, but in DLR and wolfie's (more about him soon) case, it just needed to mature (literally in Wolfie's case, he was an infant in their heyday).
On the subject of Wolfgang, or Ed Jr. (probably either is appropriate) he has really developed as a musician. We first saw him during the VH 2004 tour where he came out during EVH's solo (it was a running gag, EVH stops playing and the solo continues on the PA. A few seconds later, out comes a mini-Ed playing a Frankenstrat and it's Wolfgang, sounding like his Dad). Fast forward to 2011 and he's been the bass player since 2007 (maybe much earlier, not sure how long he's been playing bass). This dude has chops. He's a chip off the old block and now Eddie finally has a bass player that can keep up with him. It's actually changed the dynamics in the band quite a bit now, and I even think Eddie is approaching his tone differently (wah, anyone?) because of Wolfgang. More on VH later. Suffice to say, the new album is what the VH diehards have been hoping for all these years. All the people whining about the exclusion of Michael Anthony are seriously lacking in musical taste. And I think Michael's a respectable bassist and great backup singer. Wolfie's better, much better. And now it's the new and improved Van Halen. With 25% more Van Halen than ever before (see what I did there?). I don't know if any other living Van Halen's are musical (their Dad was, but I think he's probably passed on by now) but it would be interesting to see if they could pull off a VH quadfecta just for laughs.
BACK TO CONCERT CALENDAR DISCUSSION
VH in mid June followed by Boston in early July. Tom Scholz is essentially the only original member of the band now as far as I know, but that's fine with me, since Tom Scholz is Boston to me. Brad Delp is definitely out since he committed suicide several years ago. I haven't really kept up with them, but Boston and Scholz's guitar tone were defining sounds for me early in my guitar fandom. Don't Look Back was one of the earlier albums I purchased and really got into, replaying it on my turntable over and over. I know I definitely air guitared my ass off to that album. And, as established by Whitehead/Russell in Principia Mathematica, Air Guitar Worthy=Concert Worthy. It's in the appendix, look it up.
Closing out the presumably sweltering summer in August will be Iron Maiden back at the Smirnoff, I mean Superpages, I mean, whatever the hell they're calling it now shed. Iron Maiden is supposedly going to feature a big chunk of the set list from the "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" tour, so that should be cool. I was a bit letdown by the last set list in 2010, but I'm going to make sure I'm more familiar this time around. I have always been a Number of the Beast through Somewhere in Time era fan, but there are some other great Iron Maiden albums in there as well.
And hopefully concert season will be closed out by Rush in the early fall for their Clockwork Angels tour. All in all, it's going to be a good concert season.
]]>The Charvel was a good guitar but with the Suhr Modern, I really wasn't going to use it anymore. The intent with all my instruments is for them to fulfill a role sonically, and if they're redundant, I'll probably replace them or sell them. With the addition of the JT variax, my arsenal is going to be pretty stable until I add a PRS SE Angelus acoustic when they hit the market later this year. After that, it will probably be several years before the next new guitar (famous last words). It's a good thing my wife doesn't read this blog, or she would use it as evidence against me.
The L6 acoustic was good for what it did in its time, but I have grown more picky when it comes to acoustic tone, and I was just rarely using it at all. It would have been good as a swiss army knife guitar live, but once I saw the newer capabilities of 2nd? generation variaxes and found out that they were actually James Tyler designed guitars that were regular electrics in addition to being variaxes, it was an easy decision to replace the L6 acoustic.
One of the great things about the JT is that it has four times the processing power of the previous generation and they have used that power to make the most common alternate tunings as well as improved models of a variety of electric and acoustic guitars available at the flip of a switch. These guitars can be played like straight electrics, straight models, or a mix. In a way, this will give me capabilities that I haven't had since I sold the Brian Moore several years ago. To wit: dual guitar tones concurrently. I'm not sure how easy it will be (pretty easy I think), but it will be nice to be able to alternate quickly between electric and acoustic during the same song.
It's on the Fedexcellent express right now, hopefully it will be there when I get home tonight.
]]>Long story short, the office I was borrowing had been reserved for another PA but he hadn't ever used it yet (he already has an office). I didn't think it would be a problem since I would most likely only need it for one or two days. I had notified the chief and administrator when I told them my computer was down that I was going to be using that office. Apparently he had received his keys last week, and today was going to be his big move-in day. He walked into the office after 8am and I was preparing to see my first patient and I quickly told him that I had to borrow his office until my computer was fixed.
Without going into all the gory details, he essentially threw a temper tantrum and said I had to get out of his office and he was going to call security. I explained to him that this was cleared through the chief of the clinic, and we could talk to him about it. This guy refused to talk to the chief and said he would get security if he had to.
He was blowing smoke, because this wasn't "his" office anymore than it belongs to anyone. It's the VA and everything is government property. He then later barged in while I was seeing a patient and acted like an ass in front of the patient as well.
I spoke to the chief of the clinic about his behavior and the chief said he would counsel him later. I made a point of documenting the encounter in detail and sending it to the chief. I haven't seen Mr professional since then, I'm hoping he's coming to realize what an unprofessional ass he was and is perhaps rethinking his conduct.
It was really random. I don't know this guy at all, we haven't previously interacted much at all. I almost wonder if he has borderline personality disorder or some other mental illness. That does stand out as the single most immature episode of behavior I have ever seen in a colleague since I became a PA nearly 14 years ago. I expect that sort of behavior from privates in basic training, but this was just plain weird. What an ass clown...
]]>It's strange how certain things can validate you internally moreso than other events that have more significance for the world at large. Of all my accomplishments in life, finally getting close to playing songs like Eruption or any number of Tommy Emmanuel pieces means more to me than just about anything. Maybe it's easy to say when I'm on the inside looking out, at least as far as my military and academic achievements. I don't know. But I feel like it wouldn't matter. I had such an early connection with music and I still vividly remember many musical events through my life. It's probably pathetic in the eyes of others (not that I care) that I'm still pursuing musical goals that were born 30+ years ago. But this is what charges my batteries and makes me happy.
In retrospect of the last 8 years, I've made significant progress and also gone through a large volume of gear changes. When I resumed playing, I could still play basic chords and I sort of remembered the blues/major scales. It seemed like I progressed very rapidly at first, and after a few months I started playing primarily acoustic. I made an important decision at the time to start learning songs that were several years of practice beyond my current ability. What I have learned over the years is that progress on guitar, or any instrument, is based on plateaus. Or at least it seems that way. Regular, focused practice of the correct things (usually that means your weaker points) will be rewarded with improvement, although it may not be apparent for a long time.
Before I started playing guitar again, I spent my leisure time playing golf, video games, watching tv, reading books. I still have those hobbies (not so much golf) but they have decreased in relation to the amount of time I spend playing. What I discovered with guitar, and later all the instruments I play (keys, bass) is that you get back what you put into it. If you work hard at improving, you will. It may be hard to measure progress at times, but if you're spending regular time with your instrument (in an effort to improve) you will get better. That's not really the case with video games, tv, movies, books. Yes, you can learn and grow from these types of media, but I mostly read and watch to escape, not to grow. I do read non fiction and classics fairly often, but I mostly just want to be entertained.
For me, the big picture improvements (learning to play Eruption, being able to improvise over chord changes effectively, writing, etc) are the more long term goals you have for playing, but I have discovered that the incremental improvements are a big part of ongoing satisfaction as well. In the course of learning more difficult songs, little sequences within the songs are often points of challenge. It can be a fast run, or a difficult chord stretch, etc. When you finally get to the point where you can just play a sequence like that smoothly without having to stop (even if it's not up to tempo yet) it's an amazing feeling.
I've discovered that after about 3000 hours of practice (that's my highly accurate scientific estimate) I actually enjoy the busy work of being a musician. I stole that phrase from Brandon Sanderson's description of why he chose writing over chemistry. He's a popular fantasy writer with several best sellers but he went to college as a chemistry major. He said he enjoyed the big picture concepts of chemistry, but he really got bogged down with the tedium of lab work. However, he never minded the busy work of writing which can be hours and hours of daily writing and rewriting for months or years before a publishable novel is finished.
I feel the same way about music and being a musician. The real payoff is when you learn a song the whole way through and can just play it from an emotional standpoint without focusing on the physical task. This is quickly possible for simple songs (3 chord Dylan tunes for example), but takes years of work for others. However, along the way you see incremental improvements in the parts that make up the whole, and I derive pleasure and fulfillment from that as well. If I didn't, I would have given up long ago.
I think the only important quality that separates an accomplished musician from a "failed" musician, is that they wanted it more so they never quit working at it. Obviously that probably applies to any hard task that takes a long time to complete. There are several books and other published works out there about innate talent in relation to hard work. I'm firmly in the hard work camp. The generally accepted amount of time required for one to become a virtuoso musician is about 10,000 hours. This was based on various longitudinal studies of professional musicians and the common separation between the university musicians who would go on to become renowned and/or highly successful musicians was that they practiced more often for a longer period of time than their peers.
The simplest way for me to describe the long lasting appeal of music and being a musician is that it's like a never ending well for me. I always find something new to enjoy, whether it's totally new or just a new realization or discovery about something I already was playing. I also have discovered that I kind of like that music is so hard at times. I think that's one of the reasons why it's so much more satisfying to accomplish things in music. For me to be able to play Eruption represents 30+ years of wishing I could play it, combined with several years of practice (not consistently and consecutively for Eruption in particular) to get to the point where it's achievable. Even if I never played it for anyone, it's still a very significant milestone for me as a player and fan. And there's no other way to get that feeling. I've gone to hundreds of concerts over the years, and we still go (we have 6 upcoming between April-August 2012) on a regular basis because we (mostly me) still experience a high at concerts that nothing else can replicate. But the feeling I get at a concert is different than the feeling of being able to play a song by my idols or one I've written myself. Not necessarily a superior feeling, but a different one that can't be replicated by any other means.
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