Deutschlande.. into Nederlands...Groningen & Den Haag

Klaus Schulze
Trancefer (1981)

Doing a lot of 'old school electronic" here in Deutschland.Often when I'm here I listen to a ton of Beethoven, Bach, Haydn (ok he's Austrian but he rules) or some of the German electro-school like Eberhard Schoener, Ulrich Schnauss, CAN, Amon Duul, you name it.

Today the rainy quiet day was perfect for this brooding Schulze LP.... consisting of just 2 long tracks...it slowly morphs thru still interesting synth textures...driven by a live sounding drum pulse. Schulze was in Ash Ra Temple and he's originally the DRUMMER for Tangerine Dream, so his sense of rhythm, performed or programmed, is usually pretty interesting...this album however has the great Michael Shrieve on there (yes you know him from the Infamous Santana/Woodstock clip...and LOTUS/live in japan. He's still a monster today --check out the 90s stuff he did with Bill Frisell and Shawn Lane/Jonas Hellborg. Utterly Fantastic.)

Ahh..a truck stop. I'm serious, if you like Good Food- the truck stops in Germany are stunning... I have actually sat at a place in bavaria with ... a vegetarian menu section. People always, ALWAYS ask me how the hell I stay vegetarian in Germany -- it's a myth folks ...this is perhaps one the best, easiest places to be vegan/veg. Really. They get it, that's all. And no - Hitler wasn't a vegetarian. Here's just one little set of choices in a place that wasn't EVEN that great: All kinds of great fresh stuff, some of it organic even. But -our driver - Peter - who is fantastic --still went right into Burger King, saying about the other stuff "Ahhh, they only have crap here"!! Sigh.. Lots of fresh soups, stuff for meat-eaters, dieters, vegans, whoever. Sad to see our American Poison is loved everywhere. They may rail on our politics, but they love our grease. So-- take with a grain of salt when people tell you about 'the shitty food' in other countries. That's for my NEXT project - I am doing a project called "Tour Healthy" where i share some ideas that have WORKED in the field--- how to stay healthy, eat a great vegan, even raw diet, while on the road in ANY country. I have done this in Germany, Russia, Chile, Venezuela, Hungary, Bulgaria, Jamaica, England, Israel.....you name it.


So We're on a long series of highways....
the fall colors are amazing (who needs to go to New England?) and my soundtrack implies forward motion nicely, so it's all pretty trippy without any drugs...the hypnotic, meditative opiate of synth tones will always work for me. They're warm and organic, I never understand why people call this music "cold" or "inhuman".

We drive into Holland and you start seeing LOTS of windmills...one of the many cool things abt this country is --of course you get to see like 500 years of windmill technology!!! What the fuck are we waiting for!!??

Rollins Band
TURNED ON (Live 1989)

Well I'm a collosal Rollins Band fan...just a Rollins fan in general, I love what the guy has to say I love the Black Flag years, along with Bad Brains, Fugazi, that is some required punk rock/hardcore listening. I have every one of his albums, have seen every tour since "The End Of Silence"....the 80s band wth Chris Haskett, Sim Cain, Andrew Weiss, the 90s band with Melvin Gibbs replacing Weiss, and the completely new 2000s band with Mother Superior as his band, until the recent reunion to tour with X.

But his renaissance one man industry deal is just awesome. I don't live my life by it - but I'm intrigued by the possibilities offered by astrology, and as a fellow aquarius (2.09.65) to his (2.13.61) I find myself agreeing a lot with his outlook on the world - an innate fairness of judgement, a propensity to rip on all sides when stupidity is seen, general bonhomie until we are fucked with, then we will crush you. One difference is -- he could actually DO IT...!! I also learned a lot about touring reading his books, great series of travelogue, self -released stuff all available thru his website. His book Get In The Van documents brilliantly the Black Flag years, and YOU ARE THERE with his escribe verite style...check it out!!

But one thread that goes thru many of his "road diaries" (to be certain --blogs before there were blogs) is that -- they toured Europe a lot , and ....played Holland (and Belgium) all the time!!! The back of Rollins Band albums were the first places I read names like ....Nijmegen...Maastricht... Groningen and Eindhoven where we're going today. And when we hit Eindhoven one of our special guests in the audience will be the mighty Theo Van Rock, always listed as the fifth member of Rollins band...and without whose amazing engineering skills the band's might ..simply would not have been captured the way it was...WHICH WAS MASSIVE.

Chris Haskett is just stupidly unsung.....his simple PRS into Mesa Boogie approach with a couple simple pedals had a major head-crushing effect on me. One of the reasons I have a PRS today. Huge, post-sabbath riffs. Simple , direct and devastating. But he really got TEXTURE..and sometimes wasn't doing much AT ALL... just adding some atmospherics with a harmonic ..or one sustained note. Great. Tension and Release. This band had and still has -- such amazing power. But the bottom end was what it was all about - Andrew Weiss, towering under his mop of unruly hair, huge bare feet braving ANY and all surfaces. the dude was unreal onstage, storming around with this HUGE bass sound.

Blues based, soaked-in sabbath and hardcore punkrock, with a decidely funky edge and a fantastic drummer in Sim Cain. Out front you have this crazy, stripped-to-his-bike shorts fireplug of muscles, screaming his hoarse message of self improvement and wry social-observation. Calling people on their shit. Fortunately this very live band recorded a TON of their stuff and Rollins pumped out release after release in the late 80s...any fan of hard rock, metal and punk rock should check out the early stuff before they kinda blew up with the hit "Liar". And those albums with Melvin Gibbs kick ass too. DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT !

What's great about being alive today is you can just GO WATCH IT. We can all catch up on the shit we missed. Rollins Band at Youtube

Into Deutschlande...

Tangerine Dream TANGRAM (1980)

(PIC: the castle at Aschaffenburg)
Long 6 hr ride today......The mechanistic..sequencer-beat vibe and analog sound of Tangerine Dream has appealed to me for ages since I first heard them, probably some movie soundtrack. Most people are familiar with Tom Cruise getting laid on the train in Risky Business...that's Tangerine Dream on the soundtrack...

Then in the early 80s a couple things happened for me:

I stumbled across John Scheafer (SP??) and his amazing show NEW SOUNDS on WNYC in, um nyc, the public radio station. I had been listening to this station a lot at night-- studying with orchestral music on. I'm one of those snobs who insists on NOT calling it all classical music.

Classical is JUST ONE period of the music people are usually referring to when they say that -- there's a bunch of subdivisions, like musiqua antiqua, baroque, plainchant, romantic, modern, 20th c., minimalist, 12-tone, serial - -all kinds of terms to define WHAT period/style you're talking about. But much like the words "rock" or "jazz" it's become the catch -all phrase, accurate or not. SO- i'm cool with it but I try to not use the term erroneously.

So i had been listening to a lot of classical, and one night in 1983 after 11:30 or so, very stoned I'm sure, I flipped on my FM receiver (remember those...?) and WOW..this amazing music was coming out-- It was Laurie Anderson's "From The Air". I grabbed a cassette within seconds and was getting it all down, you did that almost daily in those days....and I STILL have the tape...(Interesting aside -- we JUST missed running into Laurie today -- she was checking into the hotel we were at, playing the same venue tonight - Adrian is of course an old dear friend, he was bummed that he wasn't gonna run into her. They did a couple records and a concert-movie back in the 80s...He DID see her solo show in Nashville a few years ago, tho' and they stay in touch a bit)

So I went on to become a giant fan of NEW SOUNDS, listening religiously every night and on sat and sun afternoons...taping EVERY SHOW until it became ridiculous... from that show I learned about Michael Hedges, Philip Glass, Scott Johnson, Laurie Anderson ..Steve Reich, Popul Vuh, Pierre Bensusan, got deeper into Eno, plus all kinds of Indian, African and one of my favorite types of music -- Balinese & Javanese Gamelan....

The other thing was --It just so happened in New Brunswick, NJ, where I was hanging out a lot, there was the greatest record store i have ever been in, just about. Except maybe Amoeba in San Fran..

CHEAP THRILLS was run by very cool people..but also it was part owned by a distro company in nearby Plainfield. Or maybe the guy Ed who owned Cheap Thrills was part owner of the distro , I forgrt. Either way -- they would get TONS of cut outs of great euro-avant stuff like Gong, Mike Oldfield, PFM, Gentle Giant, Cluster, Eno, the Canterbury stuff, Genesis, Synergy, FM, Saga, YOU NAME it. And LOTS of Tangerine Dream. So thru that whole period I built up a massive TD collection... LPs at Cheap Thrills would go for $1.99-$5.99, typically, it was insane, You DID NOT walk out of there without 20 Lps, every time !! It was nuts. And they would get new stuff, 1000s of pieces..it seems like DAILY....

So i built up this giant collection in no time of all the TD albums....it was a peak of my weed-smoking and mushroom days, and this music goes great with nodding out on some bud....pulsing...hypnotic trance-inducing trippiness...you would imagine these guys in some cold dark Berlin studio with all their proprietary Oberheim gear....taking acid and just creating these synth masterpieces....

I finally got to see them in 1986, it was great, really cemented my love for synths, the whole thing. A love that endures to this day with my Moog Voyager in my basement-studio and occasional visits to the Moog headquarters in my hometown......

Ludwig Van Beethoven
Symphony No. 1 in C Major
Symphony No. 6 in F Major
Overture: Leonore No. 3 Op . 72A
etc

Ahh Louis of the Beet-garden. Germany's most famous composer of his era. Love this guy.... he has the same fate as Led Zeppelin, and my other fave of the period Haydn (who taught Ludwig a few times) it's easy to overlook his genius 'cos everyone goes on and on about him...... and like Zep -- his most pedestrian, yet fine-in-it' s-own-right stuff gets worn into the ground.

Every fucking orchestra beats the Synphonies (many of which are amazing) to death -- while his later quartets and the trio stuff like "Archduke" are things of wonder. "Wellington's Victory" is a must listen.

He should also get major props for helping to develop the PIANO AS WE KNOW IT TODAY. It was Beethoven's demands of contemporary piano manufacturers that led to them going from a wooden frame to a METAL one...so it could stay in tune better , and have more structural integrity to withstand the VOLUMES he was looking for....to compete with his massive symphonic works. He also presided over great expansion in the SIZE of the orchestra. he wanted BIGGER and LOUDER always, so as a guitarist, how could I not love Beethoven?

Chopin gets a lot of (well deserved credit for pushing the piano to prominence but his stuff sounds pedestrian and bookish to me. Beethoven is the go-to piano guy, trust me.

At Rutgers University I minored in music and to a lot of history stuff, including a fascinating class called simply "Beethoven" . that was great as the course-book was written by a psychologist/musicologist who took a deep look at the psyche of this wacky genius. His story is a great one if you ever wanna learn some of his bio -- or just love period pieces like I do - I recommend two great movies "Beethoven's Nephew" and "Immortal Beloved" with the great Gary Oldman. The former looks at the central struggle of his last several years (besides going deaf) -- which was the custody battle for his nephew, and the bitter fight with his brother's widow. Great stuff, especially seeing how the german court system worked in the early 1800s. The latter was a great movie from the 90s looking at another central theme for the never-married, childless Ludwig....he had this love of his life....never conclusively identified but guessed at with all kinds of detective work. Every couple years someone proclaims that they KNOW FOR SURE IT'S "_______________" but it remains one of the great mysteries of classical music nerd-dom.

So rolling thru the hillsides of Germany I have this on--- I like to imagine old Ludwig sitting out in a field with some wine and cheese and bread, writing the "Pastoral Symphony"

Adrian Belew Power Trio
After dealing with the DOWNSIDE to german accuracy (i had a particularly inflexible hotel clerk fuck with me and over charge us due to a mixup) Completely would not budge. Gritting my teeth - I realized this rigidity...has two sides -- it's probably what gets them to make the best machinery, design stuff with such insane acccuracy (cars, tools, electronics, war machines) , but it can be a pain in the ass once in a while. I'll still take that over complete incompetent idiocy, which usually ALSO comes with attitude, anyday. Which is prevalent all around the world in varying doses....

So on the GREAT German side-- we get to this club and they have great gear - great sound, great crew working it!

Again -- the BEST shows on this tour have been when the band has a real live ROCK CLUB vibe..in a ROCK CLUB.... it's made for the sound of this band...they dig it and feed off the audience energy..this was such a show.... And the germans are extra crazy fans..."Young Lions" had a particularly wild solo tonight... and the improv in "Beat Box" keeps going further out.... and out....(here is the Aschaffenburg crowd at the end..)

The band really dug this one as well...always the clubs are what we want....and it keeps getting better..

Tonight - Marshall cabs again - Adrian is real happy with those..we are getting into some new gear choices..What an honor to be part of this -- here is one of the MAJOR guys that shaped my idea of guitar sound, sonics, effects, guitar-technology addiction, all of it...it's great to be out there with him bringing new stuff to the table and trying new stuff, shaking it up and seeing how his mind works...

And look what is coming up at this club..dammit!! I would almost fly in for this gig....Actually Adrian tells a great story about when he saw the real Emerson Lake & Palmer... with the James Gang opening, this was 1971 or 1973 or something...and the solo in "Lucky Man" kicked his ass so much -- he immediately set a goal to "make those sounds from the guitar". So- there you have one little piece of the man's musical influence. Add in his love for Hendrix and The Beatles and you have a little more...the rest.... is from outer space!!

Vevey - Day Off

Above: Our modest tour-van, from outside my Vevey Hotel Window
Ahh the rare 'day off' . Kinda sorta.
I woke up "late" haha, and since it was a hotel with a LAME internet pricing, i grabbed a 30 min slice for 4.00 CHF (swiss francs, 1 CHF = about $1.15USB right now..)

On tour -- there is a continual barrage of stuff to do - contact wise. There's the lame promoter who JUST WOULD NOT get back to you, even after 50 calls and emails. Usually it's the REAL owner's son..usually heroin is involved. These guys somehow keep staying in this biz..
Then there's just the continual number crunching, payouts for various bills, per diems, fuel money deposits perhaps, etc. The sound guy who NEVER got the several emails with inputs you sent him or his boss. The sound guy in 2008 with NO EMAIL (rare, but it happens). The booking agent who keeps sending out 3 year old info. Grrrrrr!!

Finally i said "screw this, dude take a break!!" and headed down to the lake...on the way there I dialed up:

DEEP PURPLE - MACHINE HEAD (1972) (25th Anniv. Re-master 1997)

I mean c'mon. How can you be at "the Lake geneva shoreline" and not go sing that while cranking THE GUITAR RIFF THAT KILLED THE 60s....??? It's just so great, still. So silly, so spinal tap -inspiring..

So, yeah, I'm that lame, I listened to "Smoke On the Water", right at that fabled lake. But I mean-- when one travels THIS far to sacred places in the rock pantheon, one must participate in ritual. I firmly believe that.


The shoreline was clean, pristine and the ducks were loving the day. This LP is one of my earliest encounters with hard rock -- I remember my cousin Christine bought this LP, and Alice Cooper 'Muscle Of Love". They also had Black Sabbath "Paranoid", and I remember learning the riff for "Electric Funeral" on some horrible out of tune guitar. In all cases the insane cover art is what blew us away...




"..Frank Zappa and the Mothers..were at the best place in town.... some stupid with a flare gun, burnt the place to the ground"

So then I had to hear, of course


FRANK ZAPPA and the MOTHERS OF INVENTION
KING KONG (fr. AHEAD OF THEIR TIME live 1968)

I have the distinct pleasure and good fortune to have been able to tour a few times with a few of the ex Mothers Of Invention, very often DON PRESTON, the original synth player for Zappa's groundbreaking band.


Above, THE GRANDMOTHERS fall 2001
Left To Right: Yours Truly/Andre' Cholmondeley (Tour Manager/Driver), Ken Rosser (Guitar), Don Preston (Keys, synths, vocals), Bunk Gardner (saxes, madness) , Billy Mundi , drums - I'm gonna guess Roy Estrada was taking the piccture..

What the hell does that have to do with anything -- well of course Don Preston - was actually JUST launching into his Moog solo on KING KONG...literally on the first note -- when the alarm went down -- FIRE!! FIRE!!! the bootleg is great and you can literally hear people clamoring to get offstage. The best part is ..Don is sometimes...um, well, let's say caught up in the music. You can be onstage trying to tell him to go to the bridge , or to turn off a sample, and he seems to be off somewhere in a state of bliss. Listening to the boot - I like to imagine they were trying to get his attention for several seconds before he realized what was up!

The 1968 version I head today is from an LP that came out aout 30 yrs later -- from the infamous Royal Albert Hall show--- turns out Frank had a 4 track live version sitting around that actually sounds incredible. A very key document of the Mothers -- some of this show can be seen on film in various spots. this is a great record too 'cos it has the Mothers doing "Progress" a crazy play/dramatic piece Zappa was working on at that point, a little piece of bizarre theatre that asked the questions about modern music vs. the classics...about tonality vs. dissonance and experimentation...

ANDRE' CHOLMONDELEY
Fire and Air (fr. ENIGMA WITH ATTITUDE 2006)

I did this wacky album a couple years ago -- and Don Preston was kind enough to let me use a sample of THE VERY FIRST AND ONLY NOTE of that famous Moog solo.... I sampled it and looped it , and used it as the basis for a piece I used the Alesis Airsynth for. Hence the name. A strange little instrumental weirdness. Don's part is the weird, rising dirty synth sound. So it was cool to hear it again after quite a while...near where a piece of the track got it's birth. You can check out my album on iTunes, or here

But, wow..back to hearing the rest of the Purple album after all that.....Lazy"...."Space Truckin"..the classic "Highway star"..."Maybe I'm A Leo".."Pictures Of home"...all complete blues-proto-metal classics. Ritchie Blackmore just digging into the pentatonic blues box, with his scalloped strat....so good!!

Now, the bonus tracks ---some quad mixes,who is gonna use THAT I have NO idea, and a B-side "When a Blind Man cries" a cool blues number.

I ran into the great Roger Glover - bassist for Deep Purple and also Rainbow... He was coming upstairs to leave BB King's in NYC...after a Steve Morse show. He was really cool, and I got to thank him for not only helping to basically INVENT HEAVY METAL but also for producing Judas Priest's "Sin After Sin", a great , dark kickass slice of their history. very diverse album actually, with some great ballads...but again I digress..

Fans of the band and rock-fans in general don't often realize it , but Morse is the longest running Deep Purple guitarist (!) having joined the band in 1994, and is still in the band, very busy. He has a great road-diary on his site. What a special human being that guy is.

I love the stuff Purple has done with him -- it really sounds quite different than his stuff.... or previous Purple. It's really rockin', sometime just basic sounding like AC/DC, but with the awesome Jon Lord distorted organ sounds. They have remained HUGE in all markets ..except the USA! So weird. They tour stadiums in south america, australia, europe, russia, all thru asia...but can;t get arrested in the USA. In fact-- the most successful tour they have done in the last decade was when they played...the entire Machine Head.


(Photo: Looking back at our hotel fomr across the street..)

I walked over to Lake Geneva, I mean Lake Léman... apparently the locals insist on that - the 'real name' .."Snobs call it Lake Geneva" I was told by a local musician !

Whatever you call it --it's amazingly beautiful.... a huge glacial lake ringed by mountain. On the side I walked near there were houses going up the side. A great sunny, crisply cool fall afternoon, people of all races walking their kids, dogs, lovers along the super clean lake's edge. I was blown away by how clean the water looked... really amazing. Couldn't find any garbage along the rocky shore either -- i had to SEARCH until I found ONE cigarette butt over by the grassy park, and I finally found a plastic coke bottle and threw it away. It's great -- like most places I visit here, it seems a higher % of people just... take pride in their country, they are VERY nationalistic...they just seem to channel it into..taking care of the place instead of feeling like they need to invade someone.

Deep Purple. Go crank some - Ian Gillan is simply one of the greatest rock vocalists....hard to quantify how many others rip his style off.

26+26 Oct, Vevey, Switzerland...

Vevey, Switzerland

YES - GOING FOR THE ONE (1977)

I'm enjoying Rick Wakeman's giant organ right now.
You know - the one at the beginning of "Parallels" on Going for the One. That thing is MASSIVE..and resides in a church somewhere around this lake...

Today we will drive into CH (switzerland) again...having been there last week in bellissima Lugano....what a city!! The ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO played there at the studios of Radio Svizzera -- the Swiss radio station...really cool and VERY weird crowd in that....NO ONE seemed to be under 40 yrs old.... really - his crowds are usually way more diverse. It was surreal. So that was the ITALIAN part of Switzerland... today we go into the FRENCH part and the coming weekend, the GERMAN part. Really an interesting aspect of this tour I hadn't thought about till Vevey..

Going for the One was the record YES travelled to Switzerland in 1976 to make with the reunited classic lineup -- in other words Wakeman was back in the fold after a few years with, ironically, Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz (see yesterday's listening highlight). It was an important LP for them as they had been out of the scene for a little while - and punk rock had come along and spat in the eye of all the bloated, overwrought prog-music that YES had been a big part of... and this LP does have a more lean sound..a couple shorter songs to balance the epic "Awaken" and "..Century"....and the album actually did great!

I love this album, it really has Howe reaching out into a more rocking sound, what guitar-addict doesn't dig his "soloing all the way thru" approach on some songs... He's the man. He needs an avocado once in a while tho' -- that macro diet...makes a lot of sense on many levels, dietary and energetic, but man it CAN make you look kinda grey and lifeless...Macrobiotics blows it on the "fat-avoidance" and "tropical-avoidance" thing.. but I digress.

YES came here and set up camp, I need to read more about it, and see ALL the videos, but I've seen a few that exist on youtube of the rehearsals. They are fun 'cos you can see Anderson actually making up his wacky lyrics on the spot, or it looks so. They seemed to just pick an incredible area, get away from the world as it were, and focus on creating...

Steve Howe-- burning pedal steel on the opener "Going for the One", divine classical tones on "Turn of the Century" , tasty jazz-guitar licks on "wonderous stories". As giant of a figure he is in the guitar world he is STILL , I think, underappreciated for his diversity...he , like my favorite guitarists, is an eclectist, and has dug into every friggin type of "thing with strings" made that I can think of -- trad stuff like teles, strats, Pauls, wacky older medieval stringed instruments, lutes, mandos, guitar synths (he dove WAY into this with fellow Brit-Vegetarian-Eccentric guitarist Steve Hackett when they did GTR in the early 80s. Shoulda kept that band INSTRUMENTAL, but there is some burning and interesting playing on that. There's even a book out there detailing Howe's crazy collection of rarities, probably all on the web too.

The masterwork "Awaken" is also on here..what a timeless tune...Just driving along with this in my ears, looking at the beautiful mountains and huge fields everywhere... I can imagine some of the inspiration these guys had, relaxing in such a place, THIRTY years more remote and undeveloped, wow!

This track goes all over the place, really is an odd Yes piece in many ways -- again the amazing sounding church organ they used is highlighted -- I remember reading that they used some kind of -at the time - cutting edge recording technique to capture the organ parts, via phone lines or something, from the church to the studio. This is also One of Chris Squire and Alan White's coolest tracks...we were so glad when they brought it back to the setlist a few years ago....

Finally, the bonus tracks ---There are some cool practice takes of "going" "parallels", "century" and "awaken". I love these and so happy they have done this for just abt every LP. It's a rare way to peer into the writing and rehearsal process of some of my favorite music.....especially these 6, 8, 10 min pieces, always interesting to see how parts evolved. "Parallels"..man oh man i;m glad they opted for using the church organ. Awesome.

Amazing Grace" is a solo/distorted bass take on the gospel/spiritual american classic , played by Chris Squire, sound like over some simple, probably Moog Taurus bass pedal. His dirty-bass sound is a thing of wonder, this reminds one of the solo in "Ritual" originally from "Tales from Topographic Oceans"

"Montreux's Theme" is a nice, short piece that highlights Howe and Squire --they have a wonderful BACH-ish counterpoint in there..

As we pull into town I am checking out "Vevey" another bonus on the re-release -- it's another short instrumental with a brooding pipe organ and what sounds like some kind of theorbo , lute , or that other wacky middle ages thing I can't remember the name of - that has the timbre of a harpsichord..but a lovely little baroque-flavored work..and Vevey is of course the town we work in tonight... It's near a lake, the same lake -correct name is Lake Léman - that Montreux is on, scene of the famous fire.


ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO: the gig tonight is at ROCKING HORSE... and it ROCKS

Another rock n roll club , bingo, a couple in a row, now we're on a roll. The owner is real cool- Kevin, he also owns a vinyl store nearby and the Slicks planned to go there the next day. A big Belew/Crimson/Prog fan- -he was personally excited abt this gig - you are seeing that more and more -- the younger promoters, mostly guys in their 30s thru 50s who grew up with prog and eclectic musics... and now are booking shows.. a great trend. We are seeing that, literally on this tour and this was another example. Guys who really know how to treat the musicians and keep them comfortable.





Damn!! look who's also playing here soon...!



A real rock vibe -- STANDING PATRONS...the smell of legal pot in the air here and there, and just a real excited crowd, ready to rock..Tonighht we have a pair of Fender Twins for Adrian, well actually we are fooling the gear nerds, since we only use the twins as 'speaker cabinets'..the power isn't even on..we are just running right into the speaker jacks. Twins are pretty cool for him 'cos a good one will have some ballsy speakers in it - but ALSO the legs attached so he can TILT the amps--- all so important for him hearing,...Anyway , guitar sounded great...!


BTW -- the setlist on this tour is basically (beware: SPOILERS!!):



writing on the wall
ampersand
dinosaur
young lions
beatbox guitar
matchless man
madness
neurotica
of bow and drum
big electric cat
e
three of a perfect pair
****************
thela hun ginjeet

They killed it -- always so great with a crowd to bounce the energy back. 'madness' and 'neurotica' were really killer tonight. I almost triggered the spoken stuff at the exact right times. Very difficult doing it with an iPod, in the US we drag around a sampler...
Curtain Call, Vevey CH

24 Oct - Driving Milano, Italia to Worgl Austria..

FUTURE MEMORIES LIVE: Patrick Moraz (1979)

Today we started the leg of the tour with our rented van and driver, Peter Ullrich. Peter is a real cool guy -- we're lucky that he is also a ex-musician (horn/classically trained) and now a music-maker "I play the computer" . He also taught me the right way to say "Behringer". (The "ger" is said with a hard "G" , as in "anger", not like "danger")

We took off from Milano IT by 8:30h and after negotiating some traffic we hit the highway. (Buildings above just as we got on the highway. Man this damn iPhone camera is not bad for what it is...)

Dammit !! As we drove away from the hotel we realize we were mere blocks from a fantastic section of town with load of fresh produce sellers, all seemingly right from the farm. Just what I live for -- the locals and their fresh fare....and some local fresh live food...

Always happens tho' . When I'm PLAYING on tour I get a bit more walk-around/explore time... but when Tour Managing, it's often mostly hotel-room time, ironing out stuff for upcoming shows..tweaking gear requests, planning interviews for days off, crunching some numbers .

Anyway nice drive thru northern Italia into Switzerland. Would totally move here in a minute, love it. And -- feeling luckier all the time that Cheri & I moved to Asheville NC...we have mountains as awesome as this, no doubt. Not the cool chalets etc . But really -- the peaks are kinda reminiscent...

So todays musical tie-in is Patrick Moraz.. just 'cos he's from the little land locked "neutral" place they call..Switzerland. Like I said -- there's no rhyme or reason to what triggers a particular musical choice during the day -- but I DO try to listen to someone or some piece somehow connected to where we are....

SWITZERLAND -I love this place, always liked the idea and first came here in 2006 on tour with Al DiMeola, for the AVO fest in Basel. A crazy end to THAT show was coming back to the hotel late night to have a beer -- and running into one of my fave drummers, the inimitable Vinnie Coliauta, at the hotel bar! Even better -- getting into a conversation with him about the crazy unanswered questions surrounding 9-11. Vinnie was in town with Herbie Hancock and Nathan East to play the next day. Sick!

I love to tweak my ill-informed republican pro gun friends and shock them with the info that 'evil socialist switzerland' actually has perhaps the most guns owners per capita on earth! Why? At one point it was the LAW that you had to own a gun, and the state could randomly check up n you - check yr gun , ammo, etc. You had to learn HOW to use, clean, hold, store, load a gun.

The state was the one who organized this, very sensibly. I think that's called A WELL REGULATED MILITIA. That's the part of the 2nd Amendment that EVERY gun nut I have queried on this wants to skip by. Test a pro- gun person on that sometime (when they're not HOLDING a gun....). Most of them FAIL the test -- if you ask them if the "2nd Amendment is iron clad" and they think it should be "law of the land". They always say YES OF COURSE, I LIVE BY THE 2nd AMENDMENT.

Well- I always then ask them - "Why do you think it' s ok to SKIP the 1st half of the amendment.??" you should pause and look at the Amendmment yerself....HERE

They love citing the example of Hitler being 'socialist' so that means socialist take your guns. The usual stunted mental capacity of the US gun nut. Using the one bad example of Hitler (who was just a MANIAC and inexplicable) --their logic goes --because Hitler seized guns... then socialism is bad 'cos he was a socialist.....huh??? It's fun watching the election circus from afar this year..and seeing the right sling around the word 'socialism', a concept few of their supporters , much less Ms. Palin, could actually define. Hilarious. Here's a woman who JUST got her passport at age, 43 was it?, telling us about socialism. Fucking moron. And she might win.
ANYWAY -- THE MUSIC !! Even though we are just passing thru today -- we're going to AUSTRIA after all....Switzerland rocks!! I am just starting to read about about their crazy history --and Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz is just one of their great imports......remember his early 70s prog-trio with Refugee with Brian Davison and Lee Jackson of the Nice (early band that Keith Emerson's was in....)

Patrick has.....so many great records like "the story of I", "Out in the sun" and of course the great Bruford/Moraz LPs and tours , which I was lucky enough to see in NJ back in about 1985, a great show at which I met keyboard/violin legend Eddie Jobson. I met Eddie again thanks to the week we all spent in Russia (Belew Trio, Tony Levin, P@ Mastelotto, Patti Smith Band, Keith Emerson, KTU ( gunn, mastelotto, pohjonen) [see my August/September blogs & photos abt this amazing trip at Robin Slick's IN HER OWN WRITE page.

This Moraz album is so unsung and ahead of it's time.... really it is.
I'm kind of a synth freak, I've had the pleasure off performing ojnstage wiith Don Preston while Bob Moog was in the audience (bragging, I know!! but I mean, C'MON, Bob Moog!)

I've owned three Moogs so far (RadioShack Rogue, classic Rogue and currently a Minmoog-Voyager RME) and countless synth classics like a Sequential Circuits Six-Trak, Korg Poly-800, Korg Poly 61 (the LAST non MIDI synth they made, in fact the first one was the Poly 61-M), Korg Mono-Poly, Emu Proteus, Emu World, Kawai K1 II-R, Ensoniq Mirage, various guitar synths, sequencers and samplers.

And I'm here to say that if you love 70s classic analog tones, creative music, and live solo performance - and haven't heard this album, do so. The reissue tacks on two introspective solo piano pieces "Black Silk Pt.1 , Pt. 2"

But the synths kick in for "Eastern Sundays Pt.1 , Pt. 2". What Patrick did was have a live performance on TV, you have to see the picture sheet in the LP to believe it, for 1978, amazing stuff for solo playing. He is in a room FILLED with at that point state-of-the art gear,...every major synth it seems is in there -- Moogs, Oberheims, sequencers, drum machines...and the goal was to create pieces of music for...Live TV. I think the experiment was a success.I've been spinning this Lp for 25 yrs or more and it's still fresh sounding....

You can now get this all on DVD -- and there's some great video of the event here

"Metamorphoses Pt.1 and Pt 2."
After some bubbly sequence and a funky drum patch sets up the groove.... Pat plays around with some textural stuff over the top of it -- white noise, sampled vocals, R2-D2 blips, percussive synth teases.... And then - throwing a sonic curve ball amidst all the technology....some good old fashioned PIANO takes the lead voice for a while.. I love that contrast. There's an almost Indian/tabla duel on some sort of electronic pads, and what sounds like sampled Gyuto Monks chanting.... I mean , this is realy an amazing album considering, again , that it's THIRTY YEARS OLD , and at times one would guess it's Aphex Twin or Bjork...


Part 2 goes deeper into the vocal samples...and some really cool funky Moog stuttering bass , all the while shifting moods. really cool driving music, some of the rhythms are very train-like, propelling...the one lame track is the closer/bonus "Paris In Bottle" the title gives it away, it's that lame "blowing on a bottle" pan pipish synth sound , a syrupy melody over an insipid little beat.. ugh! I wanna jump off one of these mountains when I hear this!


ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO:

The gig tonight was at a rock club KOMMA, cool place - bar with "rauchen" (smoking) downstairs. I like saying "rauchen" because it sounds like "rrr-rocking!" And tonight the band was "rrr-rocking!" as they do when it's a standing place with a rock -stage feel, light show etc. they are introducing this set to the new EU audiences, and that they did indeed.... as usual people soaked up "e" like they knew it already, (maybe they DID from youtube..?) great supportive crowd, the band sounded great....

Ade had a pair of 2x12 Marshalls tonite, sounded great. For sure we love the Marshalls, have been getting 4x12s (1960 A and B) but this was a sweet change. A tight sound , maybe a tad lacking in low end but cool...



A nice wide stage, and great sound system with Meyer speakers and subs (Meyer is just..the best, or close to it,. It's what they have at the Berklee performance center - the entire PA).
Here's the cool poster they made for the show -- we saw them all over town on the way to the venue.....



















We stayed in this amazing Austrian Chalet, the KRAMSACHERHOF....looking out the window you had lousy views like:



I like the Austrians. Some may say - you're crazy, Andre' -- they are the source of Hitler and so much xenophobia. Well- I respect that. They're up front about it! And hey -- WHY can't you decide to keep your country ANY way you want to -- if the majority says so?? Isn't that democracy, Isn't that what we SAY we want?? Until the voting disagrees with what we dream of ..?? I'm all for local rule.

Today -- at least the minority of people here, in places like switzerland, germany who think a certain way -- have the SPINE and BALLS to call it what it is. They actually form parties with names like "Keep Austria Pure" , "Switzerland for the Swiss" etc....and they campaign, run their candidates & issues, and win or don't win.

BUT THEY'RE NOT HIDING BEHIND some crap lie like "we're the party of Lincoln" while unleashing the same racist/fascist policies....or winking at vicious racists at their rallies. So here's to Austrian, Swiss and other real-politik. Tell me what you really mean. I prefer that.

Bilbao Espana, fly to Barcelona ES

TOUR THE PLANET...
MONDAY OCT 20 -
Bilbao Airport, Espana to Barcelona Airport
SPANISH BOMBS - The Clash
London Calling (1979 UK, 1980 US) -or- The Clash Live at Shea Stadium (Oct 2008)


"Spanish songs in Andalusia...."

"..Costa Brava..flying in on a DC-10 tonight.....freedom fighters died up on the hill"

"....Spanish bombs.... yo quiero infinito....yo te quiero, Oh ma corazon....!"

Wow. a history lesson....a trip thru the glory , fascism, civil war and fiery history of this place.....

What a great song!!

Punhcy riff, layer acoustics (!) and electrics that come in in layers, Strummer and Mick Jones great combo-vocals... I still loive Mick's voice -- he has a great new band called Carbon/Silicon with Tony James of Generation X.

Tthis is simply one of the greatest albums of the 80s, or really any time. so fucking timeless. I can't possibly calculate how much I've heard this LP....I've owned it on cassette..LP...CD...double-CD reissue.....or how colossal the Clash are to my personal mythology. Joe Strummer...man I miss that guy, Never saw the band, but caught Joe once with the Mescaleros, which was glorious.

A lot of people don't know i'm basically a DIY punk at heart -- paying attention politically and LIVING THE CHANGE not just placing your faith in the "next savior" , self -awareness and the whole animal rights influence from the straight-edge side...using technology to better things but fighting commercialism and materialism. The politics.... intense and direct and showed me a way to write angry songs that said something general and didactic....but kept it fun and not slogan-like. And they taught me early on that both sides usually need some critiquing, but fascism was the worst of all.

In 1980 I turned 15 on Feb 9. I got on the train and went down 3 stops from Hazlet NJ to Red Bank, and got "London Calling" with my allowance or whatever I had. I had heard a little of the Clash's debut album, and had taped their Sep 1979 radio concert, I was sold. It's all I wanted, and I wore that little cassette out, I still remember how exotic it was, this new music we had been hearing for a month or so on the radio, this band from England with so much intense, pure punk energy and slashing guitars had...blossomed into a kaleidoscopic blast of countless styles and textures..wow! acoustic guitars...horns... more deep reggae.....funk...rockabilly..and some bona fide runaway hits like "Train In Vain (Stand By me)" or "Lost in the Supermarket". still such an amazing album. Some stuff on there sounds like..really no one else. "Rudie Can;t Fail" and "Hateful"...wow.

I hate the term "ahead of it's time" but I guess it fits here. I also firmly believe nothing is really 'dated'. It may remind one of a time, or be identifiable by the sonics, but how can art be dated? Is Beethoven or Haydn "dated". You NEVER hear anyone say that. When the Beatles used a harpsichord on a track, was that "dated" since the instrument was 200+ years old?? Music fans can really be morons. Anyway -- if you don't know LONDON CALLING go run now and hear it. the brand new (oct 2008) release of the Shea Stadium show is blowing me away every couple days as well -- this was from the tour they did with the Who (my fave band) and David Johansen.


Today's setup time was very intense and difficult for me, maybe i'll revisit that later. Terrible personal stuff, and several days later I am writing a lot, still in therapy and making sense of the world. Somehow I held it together with the help of a very great, compassionate crew and the band. We were in a nice small club (300 cap), the kind Adrian prefers by a long shot.

(PIC: streets of Barcelona, w/typical quiet clean commuter tram. Evil Socialists!!!)

Nice tight setup again -- MARSHALLS, yeah! We had originally ordered fender twins for this tour, with the OPTION for Marshalls, but when Adrian used some Marshalls the 2nd date he fell in love with how they made his Johnson Millenium sound.


ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO:
the gig tonight was just great -- I think the band would rank it the best so far--- maybe tied with Vevey or something. I agree - very ROCK n ROLL energy onstage. Always for all of us performers -- a close, packed club is THE BEST , seeing the crazy increasingly buzzed crowd just a few feet from you is unbeatable, really! This place is called FORUM BIKINI, medium stage, very deep and again the band up front, tight. Didn't need my espanol as much tonight, I just kept my head low and got in there and did the job. Very much flying on auto-pilot this night.

Very psyched, energetic crowd, lotsa Crim fans again right up front singing all those words. The band was visibly pumped -= Adrian LOVES this kinda packed crazy vibe out in the audience....as I said The Crimson material went over extra well here in Espana.

The gear has been working pretty well despite a snafu or two....the Boomerang looper has been working fine --in Russia it was intermittent, driving us crazy. I thought it was a power-supply issue, but now it turns out it may have been a faulty XLR direct out on the amp. Fortunately the Johnsons rule and there are TWO channals of XLR out, so I just switched it and we've been golden. (PIC: Adrian Belew Power Trio rocking the nearly 300 happy Spaniards in Barcelona)


We stayed in the city of course, and it was great wheeling thru the clean, busy streets with our promoter for both Espana gigs, runner and general great new friend and music freak - -Sergio Merino. More cool modern architecture..even saw a classic bullring, being refurbished..into a shopping mall. wow. good for the bulls. Sergio explained to us that the Spanish anti-cruelty movement is very strong, and has really pushed back on this brutal, bloody sport. I didn't realize the bull was gutted and chopped up immediately , and sold at VERY high prices to restaurants nearby, so-- people as they poured out of the stadium, would go to their fave place, get some drinks and very soon eat some of the actual bull they just watch get tortured, gored and finally killed. I am glad humans have been headed steadily away from this kind of senseless behavior for centuries now, even tho' some people never will, and so it is. No reason to stress about that. I'm here to help those who want to move forward, and eat a compassionate diet.

SUNDAY OCT 19 - San Sebastien ES

TOUR THE PLANET...
SUNDAY OCT 19 -
Alitalia AZ0096
Milano Malpensa Airport, Italia -to- Bilbao Airport, Espana


(What else!??)
SONG FOR BILBAO - Pat Metheny Group - Travels (1983)
SONG FOR BILBAO - Micheal Brecker -Tales from The Hudson(1996)
Micheal Brecker/Pat Metheny/Jack DeJohnette/Joey Calderazzo//Dave Holland/Don Alias/McCoy Tyner


(Picture Of Bilbao by AC's new iPhone..) Finally I make it to Espana...wow!! I studied Spanish starting at about age 10, one course of it at Queens College in Georgetown Guyana, S.A. simultaneous with French, which sadly I never revisited (yet). Man - that was REAL schooling. Math, geometry, geography, science, english, spanish, french, gym, all at age 10. Wow. Imagine me in a little uniform - I loved it. I push back intensely on the idea the "uniforms cause uniformity" -do I see like I don;t live my own life, cut my own path? They were just cool, I was "in" and going to a real special school that my dad and uncles had been to...anyway, as usual, I digress. !!!

The point is -- I learned some spanish then, always loved it -- and then did 3 years in high school when I finally moved to NJ in 1978 (after 2 years in Brooklyn NY). So -- Spain/Espana -- always read about it , studied a little bit of the literature and dug the food, culture etc. So - a personal milestone to be flying here, the last big Euro-country I haven't seen, the last big colonizer/imperial power as well. man they killed some motherfuckers. Jesus.

All that's left to see here is all of Scandinavia, Belgium, and the tinies like Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco , and then the south-east europe like Greece, Turkey. With Adrian I just returned to Hungary, and went to Russia for a week with the Trio this aug/sep. I've been thru a bunch of Eastern Europe touring with Al DiMeola, and played concerts with Project/Object and/or Don Preston Akashic in Germany, Holland, England, Northern Ireland, Czech Repub. and Austria...

So Today we flew from Milan into Bilbao airport. So finally the place I imagine from the music will come to life...actually I have to say the song makes me think of brazil even tho' i've known for quite some time it's in Spain. I bet there's a Bilbao in Brazil, it just sounds like it, even tho they speak PORTUGUESE there not spanish. I bet you could stump Palin with that one.

After setup and before Adrian got there for soundcheck I got to step outside and get some amazing San Sebastian air and sun. WOW, again the SUN in Espana is incredible...really..otherworldy feeling as it hits your skin - what is it?? ! Is it psychological??? They really rock that in all their "come to espana" vacation ads etc, almost a cliche. well - I'll tell ya - the sun is intense!!

I got just within a block or two of the venue - right across the way I saw what I needed -- a fresh live fruit/veg tienda [shop]. I was happy to say I was able to do the whole thing in spanish "las uvas son Bio?" [are the grapes organic] since i saw the BIO sign...awesome, they were, and huge,juicy, incredible. Lotsa great grapes on this trip, and they have all been from pretty close, like France, Spain, Italy, etc..which always feels good.

Though that just reminded me (as I write this in the van days later) I snagged a VERY ripe kiwi at the breakfast buffet today and better have it -- wow that's good...not PC at all...Even tho' I sometimes inspire chuckles, and comments about about "eating nothing" and "empty calories" ..I am having such a great, energizing, super-diverse, food tour...enjoying the amazing fruits grown in europe like pears, apples, plums, olives, avocadoes, dates, grapes (and raisins), oranges, grapefruits, clementines, pomelos, and stuff imported from way south like bananas, kiwis and even a decent pineapple in Worgl.

As it's super easy to get organic food here -- they call it BIO (for biologique, basically french for 'grown naturally', biologically,not chemically), I have no problems getting great protein like fresh raw almonds, one of the ultimate protein and calcium sources we know of....also easy in the great truck stops to get some of my fave other high protein nuts like brazils, hazelnuts, cashews, the occasional peanuts, plus I always travel with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and some green foods...

SONG FOR BILBAO
a bouncy, fun groove sets it up - and a rare song by Pat Metheny in a way - the classic Roland GR-300 synth sound he has made his signature for 28+ years jumps right in and takes the MELODY LINE instead of showing up later in the song for one of the solos.... rarely does he do that...... after a long piano solo by Lyle Mays Pat goes for it, what a happy, sunny piece of music, like the region of Espana itself. I had the version from "Travels - Live" in my ears as we landed, then later as we drove the highway out of Bilbao area to San Sebastien thru beautiful remote hills...the newer version from the very awesome TALES FROM THE HUDSON by the late MICHAEL BRECKER. Pat, like Adrian is one of my favorites because he has tried just about every guitar advancement that has happened -- and writes on so many different type of axes.

VERSION 2 - MICHAEL BRECKER What a great record -- Jack DeJohnnette, McCoy Tyner, Dave Holland, the sorely missed Michael (died early in 2007), and Pat again, on the GR-300. A killer take on this classic tune. I love the GR-300, Pat, like King Crimson of course was one of the first to have it on a record with "Offramp"(1982), but many of you can evoke a memory of it instantly by thinking of King Crimson's "Sheltering Sky", the screaming melodic guitar-synth that comes in over the strummed chords...also it's doing the huge pads on the front of the Police's "Don't Stand So Close", and the reggae-stabs on "Spirits In the Material World". Just a brilliant synth. wow. I still remember hearing that for the first time...and Adrian and Fripp made it a signature sound in their 80s work.

Adrian's GR-300 can be seen in many 80s Crim videos, and also on the back of one of his greatest records "Desire Caught By the Tail", and it still sits in his gear-closet in StudioBelew. He got it IN japan on a Talking Heads tour - probably the first one to leave the country! See - what's unique about it - still -- is that there is NO PITCH ANALYSIS, the custom guitar has hex pickups-- that are using the STRING ITSELF as an oscillator source, you are processing the sound of the strings. So-- you can do everything you do on a regular guitar - -slides, pick scrapes, harmonics, and get something sensible back out. Similar to what is going on with the Roland VG99 technology, which I'm so happy to be a part of bringing Adrian back to - it's certainly a key piece in his new and changing arsenal- allowing him to do alternate tunings, offset parts, and soon backwards delay and other special effects...this too is NOT A SYNTH, instead processes the six individual string signals in amazing ways. BTW I am writing a book on Guitar Synth history.... more on that later...

ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO:
the gig tonight was at a theatre called Teatro Victoria Eugenia. They are introducing this set to the new EU audiences. For a theatre, people were pretty rocking but it always feels restrained when people are seated, and adversely affects the band a bit. This was also a special gig 'cos our booking agent in the EU - Wolfgang Scheel was visiting with his wife Julia. It was great to get to hang out with them a bit and have them enjoy a full show. they loved it and he's even trying to juggle his schedule to come see another show!

The stage was huge, but as usual I set the band up in a tight formation center/downstage.



(SOUNDCHECK IN SAN SEB.) It was a great sound system, and being so close they were able to generally avoid the "lost in space" aspect one can get on a huge theatre stage. Having a little spanish under my belt helped negotiate some gear wackiness, and it was deemed a good, enjoyable gig by the band, tho' everyone prefers a rock club !





As usual -- 'e' killed the crowd, people are always blown out by this new tune, the backbone of his upcoming new CD, the first one he'll record with the trio. The Crimson material went over extra well here in Spain, it seemed.

Julie has a nice loud Ampeg stack, and Ade had a pair of 4x12s (1960 A and B). they just sound great, now I am thinking abt getting a 4x12 for my Boogie head, but maybe, strangely the Line6 cabs..which sound amazing the couple times I have used them with DiMeola.

we stayed in this amazing , modern architecture hotel, very cool....clean edges, wild! And having just left a 2 day visit with my architect sister Lisa, I was hyper aware of the endless creativity of architecture... spain is well known for it's forward-looking ideas in building design, art in general, I mean they cough up Goya, Dali and Picasso for starters....

touring the planet....

[Pic: Your intrepid reporter In amazing Lugano Switzerland, Oct 2008. And, once again, I'm not even on the Intrepid...]

Well i'm back I guess...

jeez....haven't blogged in quite a while..I guess not since the Russia dates this aug/sep....and certainly not to my old page "robotvomit.blogspot.com"....inna while. I discovered there was a band and all kinds of stuff with that stupid name,... and needing a site more in line with my upcoming tour-management page .... i thought I'd start again with a cooler name that I can't use up..

You can find the stuff I wrote/pictures i took at:

http://inherownwrite.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html

It's been fucking non-stop. After the amazing RUSSIA trip... I flew back to Chicago..one day off in a hotel nr the airport...and started a 3-week tour with the Derek Trucks band . It was awesome, we went from Chicago to the west coast - and one fly date in Canada. Gonna post some pictures with that sometime soon - some great guys , what a crew.

Derek -- awesome human being and WOW, he kicks sooo much ass on guitar, the master of slide. I really learned a lot there AGAIN about guitar. I've now tour managed for Al DiMeola, Adrian Belew and Derek Trucks... each MASTERS in their corner of guitar-worldness. I, um , better go practice!!

Then I was home for three weeks-- almost every waking second finishing up the advance work on THIS tour AND the december Australia dates..AND the up-coming Project Object dates with Ike Willis and Ed Mann. Check out our newly refurbished webpages.... under development as we speak...www.projectobject.com

Right Now (15 Oct - 05 nov 2008 ) I'm on tour again with the ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO, primarily Tour Managing but also Guitar Teching for Adrian and Julie Slick , his bass player. We're crisscrossing thru most of Western Europe, and a bit of Eastern....and it's a spectacular time to be here, just as autumn season is in full swing....

Right now I'm going thru some insane stuff in my personal life that needs some mental soothing and distraction therapy, and writing has usually been that for me, so I'll give it a try.

Another balm, a major therapeutic is of course...listening to music.... and when I'm travelling, I often play a little game where I try to listen to some music relevant or connected in SOME way to the locale I am in, or even just passing thru or flying over...

So here goes some random notes about what I consider some cool music, and the places that inspire their choices on my iPod...and some tales from the tour. It could be that i'm in a place someone is from...or has played recently. OR maybe a song title fits in with a city name, or it's an artist's birthday or anniversary of a great release. Almost any excuse!! But my travels are indelibly music-connected -- or course starting with the REASON I am usually in town anywhere -- the concert I am performing, or that of the artist I am working for.

So - thanks for stopping by and enjoy my ramblings if you would be so kind.