TONIGHT, start the year off RIGHT!

OK, the real Vegas fireworks commence at 10:15 tonight in The Lounge at The Palms. I'm sure the guys will be memorializing the late James Brown in nasty fashion, too.

BTW- Save the date:

This Sunday, January 7th, 2 p.m. in the Summerlin Library Performing Arts Center, 1771 Inner Circle Dr, Las Vegas, NV 89134 (click address for Google map, zoom out), The Las Vegas Jazz Society hosts a concert by our own Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns. $20 general admission, $15 Sun City residents, $10 Jazz Society members. I will definitely be there. Spread the word, and y'all come. This is a very nice venue. Gonna be a great show.

A PLUG FOR MY MAN ROBERT CONTI

Guitar players, I'm not [bleepin'] ya, Robert Conti is a guitar genius, with an extensive library of great instructional products. Click his name for his website, or go to his MySpace page here.

POST GIG UPDATE

I had to split after the first set, so, I bet I missed some cool second show stuff. Renato showed up, he's in town doing things with Prince up the street. Our homie ace guitarist Drew Zingg came to hang as well. Robert Conti and I hung together for the first set. Tonight when I got there all the tables toward the front were already taken or reserved, so Robert and I sat at a table in the back right in front of Sonny's board.

Tonight I just shot from my seat; never got up. Zoomed in to telephoto range a lot, which is tough for sharpness, 'cuz any little shakiness hand-held in the low light gets magnified and blurs the image. See what you think.

The James Brown tribute was really nice. The band blistered their Marco Mendoza arrangement of "I Feel Good." Toward the end of that tune, Pepe does this long, blazing run of hyper-complex extended drum fills against a pedal-to-the-metal I-VII-IV vamp that is just crushing! You don't see how he's ever gonna hold the "1," he pushes the envelope so hard. And, always hits back on the "1" right on the money every time.

That's the thing in general that we all love about this band: NO.HOLDING.BACK.EVER! They push it to the firewall all night long. "Smooth Jazz" it ain't. No polite funk grooves with aural wallpaper motivic melody lines. Nope. This is healing accomplished through musical brain surgery.

BTW- Tomorrow night, Tommy Alvarado and the guys will be throwing down the funk and jazz at the E-String on Sunset in Henderson starting at 9 p.m.

And, please, let's have a big turnout Sunday in Summerlin (see above). Jerry promises the unveiling of two new originals, one composed by Nathan Tanouye, the other by Dave Richardson. You just know they are gonna be excellent.

A QUICK NOTE

In my December 28th post, I alluded to my dream of helping Santa Fe get out to the world (check the link to Toto's homepage, and the video montage therein of their worldwide concerts). Check this out. Back at the beginning of December I inserted a bit of hit counter/tracking code from Google Analytics "under the hood" in the blog. Here, in alphabetical order, are some locations outside U.S. borders from which we've gotten hits to date since December 2nd (Google or Wiki them for yourselves for more precise locations where it's not clear, I don't have time right now):

• Akersberga
• Alborg
• Auckland
• Basserdsorf
• Berkhamstead
• Bland
• Borjeslandet
• Brasschaat
• Buenos Aires
• Calgary
• Chambery
• Chezeneuve
• Corner Brook
• Dublin
• Enkhuizen
• Flackharp
• Gore Hill
• Gosksta
• Guadelupe
• Gunzendorf
• Hamilton
• Helenelund
• Hellevoetsluis
• Helsinki
• Heredia
• Huckingen
• Hunan
• Johannisthal
• Karlstad
• Kyoto
• La Plata
• Laknas
• Laufen
• Lidingo
• Lille Vroj
• Lisboa
• Lisbon
• London
• Looma
• Marle-le-Roi
• Mexico City
• Milas
• Mjolby
• Molnlycke
• Montreal
• Nacka
• Norseback
• Nottingham
• Nuenen
• Otsu
• Oxford
• Paris
• Ravnholt
• San Antonio De Posse
• San Mauro Di Saline
• San Nicholas De Los Arroyos
• Santiago
• Saskatoon
• Schifferstatt
• Seoul
• Singapore
• Tallinn
• Tbisili
• Timisoara
• Tokorozawa
• Toronto
• Trollhattan
• Tune
• Vaasa
• Vadened
• Viljandi
• Wanch
• Webster
• West Calder
• Yokohama
• Zwolle
  

'eh? Dudes, your passports better be up-to-date.

UPDATE FYI

Maybe you'll find this interesting. Just did a quick screen dump (Shift-PrtSc) of my latest Google Analytics dashboard page for the blog and converted it to a jpeg (click the image to enlarge).

Airbrushed out my account ID info in the URL window, other than that it's exactly as presented. We're gettin' hit from all over the U.S., and a good lick from western EU.