As with almost every year around this time I'll be heading up to Montréal during the holidays for the fantastic Jazz Festival and to bask in the city's fun multicultural vibe and cool hipness.
So happy 4th of July y'all, don't let little dubya and his pals ruin the country
Wyclef, Shaggy and the Ska-Talites are doing a free outdoors show in DC, so I've been listening to ol' Wyclef.
There's a fantastic sample at the start of the "Hollywood to Hollywood" track off his 2000 "Ecleftic" album.
I finally found out what song that came from: Super Cat "Dolly my Baby"(Bad Boy Extended Mix, 1993) Featuring Third Eye, Notorious B.I.G and Sean "Puffy" Combs propelled by Herbie Hancock and the Headhunter's "Watermelon Man"
The results are in for this year's Spirit of Free Beer. My first ever homebrewing prize!
Click for full results:
SoFB is a nationally sanctioned homebrew competition, open to anyone, and organized by my local homebrewing Club, the Brewers United for Real Potables (BURP).
Yes I have been a proud BURPer for a good 6 years or so now. I've been sporadically and lackadaisically brewing beer for about 10 years now, yet i had never won or even placed in any of the 5 or 6 competitions I had entered.
This time I benefited from the direct help of the famed Wendell, it was Beth's lucky first brew and we got some kick-ass yeast slurry from a local professional brewer.
Not only did we win the 3rd prize in the hotly disputed Robust Porter category, but we won the top honor for Extract Brewing.
Taken a few hours after my first personal trip to the ER. At least it would make a good album cover and perhaps even gave us a name for the band: Iritis.
..where the first "i" is the most High. Jah, Rastafari!
"Andrea and Gabe at the opening for the National Museum of Health and Medicine's new exhibit, "Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics." When he starts dating, mom will proudly pull out this picture and he'll be totally mortified. All the scientists (and others who attended the event commented, "Oh, he's the green, smooth variety!" What a cutie!"
I just got done reworking it... "remixing" and "mastering" are too big words for something so raw that we laid down in just a couple of takes.
Music and lyrics are all from Francie's tainted soul, some snippets:
"Sail the ship with no name" "..backwards walking in to love dressed up as sin the cure for your purpose" "chasing piece of mind will soon be left behind"
Maybe he's been listening to too much Mars Volta lately.
Francie was going for the Pink Floyd melded vocals sound. I tried to embellish (read "bury") our voices with effects. But we just might need a real singer.
This song is radically different from our first, Houroub which is more of the east-west fusion i really love.
Speaking of which, i recently discovered an amazing Iranian-American singer/songwriter. Her name is Haale. This is what the NY Times wrote about her: "Percussionists provided driving rhythms...over which Haale's warm, supple voice unfurled like a curlicue of smoke. Her band's amplified rumble served as a reminder of the extent to which rock bands like the Doors and the Velvet Underground turned to the East for their most hypnotic efforts; here their borrowlings were reclaimed with interest."
There are numerous uncanny parallels with my Iranian-Spanish friend Atisu and our jazz-folky band during my student year of living in Toulouse, France. I'll try to dig up some of the tapes from a couple radio shows we played and post them up here for you to check out.
Ok, enough digressing, here's our latest, Pinkeye! Let me know what you think!
Our indoor soccer team is dragging along this season. The league screwed us up so consistently it looks intentional. First they caused us to miss an entire season and then they stuck us in the last division on a different day that we had requested.
For our game last night, 5 players (out of 10) didn't show up, some with good reason but most just didn't turn up, leaving the team severely depleted. The ragtag team still managed a win but it wasn't pretty.
At least there is still is some inspirational soccer out there: selfless and flawless. Enjoy:
A week-long jaunt around Southern California started on a great note we scored a free upgrade to a convertible red mustang.
In LA, we toured the sights such as the Frank Gehry designed Disney Concert Hall:
The Getty Center with its views of LA and somptuously designed grounds was not to be missed either:
I had to take the obligatory picture on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and pay my respects:
What's a trip to Cali without nice long walks on the beach...
We visited several beer locales, the original Pizza Port of Solana Beach was terrific and not only because I rocked the pinball machine there ;-) The best was hands down Stone Brewing in Escondido for its expansive tap and bottle beer menu, great food and a fantastic outdoor rock garden.
After months of delays, here finally is a song we recorded with a bunch of friends. I had been waiting to re-record and mix it better but it seems we never can find the time or when we do, we end up going off on tangents and playing other stuff.
This particular song is inspired by a personal fave, the group Niyaz. This was our second take with one mic in the middle of the room. No post-processing, the reverb comes courtesy of my brother's basement.
François on bass, is from South Carolina. As our resident philosopher and muslim scholar, he anchors the band with most of the writing when we're not just making stuff up as we go.
Binesh is our guitar shredder who can pulls off any Satriani, Vai and David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) licks you can think off. You can see why I gladly deferred the guitar duties to him. He brings peace and balance to us through his Nepalese Buddhist infused hair metal acrobatics.
Ahmed hails from Morocco. He's the only one who's actually classically trained, in middle eastern music theory. He plays the beautiful oud, pictured below.
My darling little nieces aged 8 and 10, including my spunky godchild - i'll let you guess which one of the two she is- are seasoned travellers. They have been to every single major continent and great little spots like the Galapagos and the Caribbean. At their current pace, they are going to catch up with me real fast on number of countries visited. I better get back out there fast!
Mono Lake, California, 1982 Photograph by James P. Blair
"Spires of limestone tufa rise from the shores of California’s Mono Lake. Tufa form when underwater springs rich in calcium meet lake water rich in carbonates, forming calcium carbonate, or limestone. The limestone precipitates in layers over time and can grow more than 30 feet (9 meters) high. Mono Lake’s tufa are particularly dramatic because water diversions have significantly lowered the lake’s level, exposing more of the columns.
(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, the National Geographic special publication, Our Threatened Inheritance, 1982.)"
With hits from Iceland, Alaska, the Hudson Bay (Ness!), Ascunción in Paraguay, Wellington in New Zealand, the Canary Islands, Jo-burg in South Africa, Dubayy in the UAE, Krung Thep in Thailand, Lagos in Nigeria... we all live in a small world indeed. Big props to the home island Mauritius and Morocco for showing up. Who's there in Singapore lighting up their part of the world?
These two rockin' tracks are from my bud MT's old defunct band: Maladjusted Butler. They unleashed their Civil Disobedience CD sometime around the turn of the millenium. "Bad Like Jessie James" is a wickedly reworked cover of the John Lee Hooker slow burner. These are ultra rare gems.
