My UPS tracking number says that the shipment of "When The Curtain Goes Up" is in Vegas and on the truck for delivery sometime today, so, I'm gonna go out on a twig of a limb and say that we'll have them at the gig tonight. 10:30 pm, free show as always.
The band is gonna perform the entire new CD this evening, and we have a special guest artist you won't wanna miss. Join us in welcoming the band back after the November hiatus.
BTW, check this out. Rob Mader did this. Awesome.
See y'all tonight.
2:50 PM UPDATE
The UPS truck just dropped off our CD shipment.
Bring money, LOL! Exact change would be appreciated ($15). Cash only (no checks, and we don't have a credit card merchant account yet).
On two counts. [1] Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns return to the Stage this Monday night (Nov 30th) after their long hiatus so Jerry, Jamie, Eddie Garcia, and Rochon could go out on tour with our bro' Bill Champlin, and, [2] I now have a UPS Tracking Number from Disc Makers for the shipment of the new CD dupe run. I'm hoping it'll be here Monday. But, given the curtailed Thanksgiving Holiday work week, it would not surprise me were the CDs not to arrive 'til mid-week. Either way, we'll have 'em next week, and I have a pretty large number of pre-orders to process once they're here.
BTW, the blog has also been "dark" this week 'cause Cheryl and I have been down on the farm in Alabama at her Mom & Dad's place.
LOL, a quarter century ago, Cheryl and her brothers and sisterswere the ones bringing babies to the home place (our son Nick, and his infant cousins). Now, below we welcome (L/R below) Eli and Kinsley, offspring of our nephew Brian and niece Courtney.
Great trip. Good to be back, though, and I look forward to seein' y'all Monday night. ___
Brad and Tim and the cats will be doing a live recording during their gig tonight, so, everyone that can get by, please do (Decatur & 215). ___
Speaking of Bill, here's a shot Jamie sent me via his Blackberry. My friend Kurt and Bill backstage at the final Bichin Tour gig in Seattle last Sunday.
Born in New York City, Craig's earliest musical influences while he was studying classical piano in grade school would have been Prokofiev and Copland. When his love of the guitar transitioned him away from piano, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young would play a separate yet equally important influence. As his guitar playing progressed, he expanded his palette to include John McLaughlin?s Mahavishnu Orchestra and other fusion bands which would lead the way to a passionate appreciation for the styles of players such as Larry Carlton, Pat Metheny and George Benson.
Craig began his musical career playing in various bands and Las Vegas showrooms. From there he landed himself the position of guitarist as well as conductor for platinum selling jazz saxophonist Ronnie Laws. Soon after, an opportunity to play with top selling jazz vocalist Randy Crawford arose. At this time was also gaining a reputation as more than just a guitarist...
I'll be out of town, hate to miss this. ___
NEW MOVIE COMING
This oughta be pretty cool. I dig Jeff Bridges; fine actor, good musician, too. T-Bone Burnett is one of the producers (cool dude in his own right). ___
From Joe Brown's Las Vegas Sun review of Wayne's show:
“I had been warned that Wayne Newton can’t sing anymore. Apparently it’s been common knowledge for years that his voice is shot. But nothing could have prepared me for the ghastly noises that came out of the Las Vegas icon Wednesday night. Newton can barely speak, let alone sing. It sounded like the Vegas Chainsaw Massacre. Once Before I Go.”
“That somewhat maudlin, foreshadowing title indicates what Newton is really up to here.”
“The very strangest thing about this show is that Newton refuses to even acknowledge that his voice, once sweet and bell-clear, isn’t what it was.”
“Danke Shoen is basted in napalm and rolled in broken glass, Summer Wind sounds like a Santa Ana blowing through a brushfire.”
“It’ll never happen, but Newton might have a solid show if he de-emphasized the singing…and talked intimately about the really interesting stuff - including his multiple bankruptcies, and well, what the hell happened to his voice.”
Ouch! He's on the Musicians' Union Major Shitlist. ___
FUNNY (IIRC, WEDEMEYER POSTED THIS ON FACEBOOK)
O/T: BOBBYG BOOK REPORT
Been a while since I posted one of these. When I'm not obsessing over Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns and our extended tribe, I read and write a ton. Several of my latest hardcopy reads:
Great stuff, all highly recommended. Click the images for links.
SPEAKING OF MR. NEXT-OF-KIN
Took my Ma on a road trip to the dam yesterday, then to lunch at Macaroni Grill.
The circle of life, man..."Are we almost there yet?..." (repeatedly, LOL). It's lookin' like the viable jaunt radius is more like 10 miles from the nursing home. I pushed the envelope yesterday.
It was all good. Nice break from nursing home tray chow.
Speaking of the dam: Shot this while we were parked briefly on the Arizona side.
(Click the photo to enlarge) Lake Mead is now at ~42% of capacity, and falling. I track this monthly in an Excel sheet.
It's down more than 120 vertical feet.
Above, what it looked like 11 years ago, March 1998. Below, the spillway in operation during the July 1983 high water mark period.
My next policy blog post will be about drought and western states water policy (including my own take on some perhaps overlooked desalination potential -- a coupling with solar and wind energy).
Gonna call it "The Next Anasazi Ruin." (Hahaha...) ___
Remember, we're gonna be dark again Monday night. The band returns to The Palms on the 30th, and, with any luck, I'll have the new CD for sale at the gig. ___
First, last night at The Freakin' Frog. You wanna hear some serious straight-ahead jazz, go and hang here. I was proud of our local bro's. Thought I was in The Village.
Those are all the decent shots I could manage in the weak-assed lighting. Drummer was pretty much in the dark, as was Julian (on soprano). Notwithstanding, I gotta say, the cats were smokin'!
This site is dedicated to our service men and women everywhere, who defend us at great sacrifice to themselves and their families and at high risk to their own physical safety and their very lives. While we can never repay them, each of us can certainly do our part to help and support them. One great way to do this is to give those in our military that are musically talented the opportunity to be heard and the chance to realize financial gain from their music and talent and maybe even go all the way. 100% of the Download Profits Go To Our Military Artists.
I note that today, one of their featured "Top Artists" is our own homie Ric Ulsky. ___
UPDATE: I've had to enable "Comment Moderation" on all of my blogs. Just got hit by some asshat with a bogus hidden/anonymous screen name mass commenting a bunch of Kanji-type character gibberish across many of my posts.
THURSDAY NOV 19th UPDATE
One of Lenny's kids is goin' here. He wanted me to check it out, so I slid by and picked him up last night and we cruised over (S. Eastern at Patrick Ln).
It is way cool.
There was a cat givin' a guitar/theory class in another room to four youngsters. I was gonna shoot a pic of that too, but, then I thought, "hmmm...might be some parental consent issues there...nah..."
Lenny tells me that Jerry got The Hard Rock to donate a bunch of guitars to them, so kids who would otherwise not be able to buy an axe could use one here to learn on. That is very cool.
Richard tells me their website will be up very soon. I will post it and link it when it comes online. ___
That's as far back as I can go. The blog will be 4 years old this coming January. 637 posts to date. ___
BTW, got an email today from Disc Makers saying the new CD dupe run will be complete on Nov 25th. Maybe, just maybe I'll have the stash for our next Santa Fe gig at The Palms on the 30th.
Speaking of CDs:
I will honor the $2 shipping/handling thru the 30th, but there have been two USPS price increases since I first re-issued this product, and I'm gonna have to go up a buck soon. Of course, you can buy 'em at the gig for simply $10 ___
TOMORROW NIGHT
Jam session, 9 pm. 4700 S. Maryland Pkwy, across from UNLV. Our bro' Jeff Ray sent me the heads-up on Facebook. I will be there with my camera. Maybe I'll bring my electric axe, too. Ever since Jeff touched it, it plays better. ___
TUESDAY UPDATE
Above, that'd make a cool bumper sticker, 'eh? We essentially now own the Google search results. All you gotta do is enter "Fat City Horns" (you don't even need the enclosing quotation marks). Below, the first page of results, return entries 1 thru 9.
[click to enlarge] I set those wheels in motion when I started the blog (and when I bought and established the original "www.fatcityhorns.com" domain name), by embedding extensive "meta-tags" in the "under-the-hood" html code. In geek-speak, this is known as one tactic of "SEO" (Search Engine Optimization), and many companies pay for front-page positioning.
The other thing that helps with Google search result ranking is reciprocal linking. The Google spider/web-crawler algorithms see sites with large webs of reciprocal links as more worthy than those lacking them.
Tonight: Santa Rosa, The Last Day Saloon. Cheryl's goin'. She just got back to Walnut Creek at midnight last night from project trips to San Antonio and Omaha. Wish I was goin' with her tonight :( ___
SARA DAVIS BUECHNER
A MUSICIAN OF INTEGRITY "Buechner has it all... intelligence, integrity and all-encompassing technical prowess" (Tim Page, The New York Times)
"A pianist of exceptional merit, a musician of evident integrity, with an all-encompassing technique and natural sense of the composer's propulsive style....the pianisim never less than 100% committed and breathtaking" (Pianoforte Magazine, England). "What strikes you immediately about the pianist Sara Davis Buechner is the honesty and integrity of her playing" (Washington Post). "There is no struggle in Ms. Buechner's supple, articulate and nuanced performances... I can't imagine this music played with more integrity and affection" (Anthony Tommasini, New York Times).
Below: Check this out.
"Pianist Sara Davis Buechner performs Kouji Taku's Variations on a theme of Poulenc. April 5th, 2008 at Town Hall, Seattle."
Wishin' I was at the Bichin Tour Santa Rosa show tonight with Cheryl :(
I'm bringin' my Ma to the house tomorrow for pasta and key lime pie (Danielle and Keenan are comin' over), so I been slavin' over the sauce today (it's always better when you re-heat it after it's first been cooked).
What a difference 45 years makes. BobbyG 1964 (9 o'clock, nerdy-assed newbie road musician MoFo; that's Cuz Jojo at 4 o'clock):
Below: BobbyG tonight in my bathroom, camera on a tripod, aimed it into the mirror and then looked at my reflection in the lense, 10 sec shutter delay...
I'm fixin' to get a haircut. I don't usually let my remaining hairs get this long, so I shot this just 'cause. And then dropped it into my Adobe Illustrator promo sheet template. Uploaded it to my "other" MySpace page as well.
BTW, major props to Sony Repairs. They fixed the shit outa my Alpha 350 camera, and turned it around in 10 days, door-to-door, out and back in (I dealt with them directly, down in Laredo TX). The manager at Ritz Camera (where I'd bought it) told me "6 to 8 weeks." Dude, you were just tryin' to sell me another rig. ___
7:55 PM
Jamie just sent me this from Santa Rosa, from his cell phone to my cell phone: "Look who just showed up!"
My UPS tracking number says that the shipment of "When The Curtain Goes Up" is in Vegas and on the truck for delivery sometime today, so, I'm gonna go out on a twig of a limb and say that we'll have them at the gig tonight. 10:30 pm, free show as always.
Bring money, LOL! Exact change would be appreciated ($15). Cash only (no checks, and we don't have a credit card merchant account yet).
