Pinkeye

Here's our latest song with François and Binesh.

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!

Soccer Team Work

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:

10 Year College Reunion

Old Friends, Many Beers and Old Bay Crabs

SoCal Trip

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.



Check out a few more pix here:

200704 SoCal Trip

Houroub

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.

Cheers and let me know what you think of it.

Globetrotterettes

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!

Enjoy these pix from their latest adventure.

NG POD: Mono Lake

Sweet pix today on the National Geographic Picture of the Day


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.)"

Song of the Day: Nina Simone

Lilac Wine taken from
Four Women: The Nina Simone Philips Collection box set.

Also included is the remix version from Verve Remixed 3.
The last bonus song by Astrud Gilberto is also from that album.

A Small World

Thank you all so much for visiting this page!

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?

Many thanks again and be well.

Kafka's Revenge

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.

Mali Festival au Désert

One day i hope to make it to this annual event.
Here's a sweet slideshow of someone's journey to the festival.
And click on any of the pix below to check out the BBC's
audio slideshow of the event.

Galvanize

Q-Tip aka Kamaal Ibn John Fareed rips it up with the Chemical Brothers.

Behold the Tonguila

Bring together a Colombian and some Cuervo,
and then before d'ju know.....
Out comes the TONGUILA, menh!
On all attendees befalls a sudden hush.
Children are sent away. Women blush.
A swirl of thoughts... we're in stitches!
The party-meter cranks up a few notches.
The TONGUILA has struck, again.

Cluster F***

Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch: "As a comparison in the war in Iraq in 2003, the United States over three weeks dropped 2 million cluster sub-munitions. Israel in the war in Lebanon dropped 4 million in three days. It dwarfs any use of cluster bombs prior. You can take Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo and put them together and you’re not going to come close to what happened in southern Lebanon."

Song of the Day: Blood Witch

Melvins ROCK

buybuybuy

Blood Witch

RIP Alice Coltrane

Journey in Satchidananda

The Low End Quest

François and I have been looking for a new bass, something that would mesh better with our world/ethnic fusion aspirations. At first we were looking at an acoustic fretless like the Michael Kelly Dragonfly.









It comes in 4 or 5 strings and exists as a fretless...seemed perfect! It's a gorgeous instrument and the very first time we tried one we were both blown away by the warm organic acoustic fretless tone. But after doing more research and going back to hear it again it seemed rather poorly made. It buzzed, it sounded tiny and we saw a bunch of bad reviews online.

Then we found out about double stringed electric basses...
John Paul Jones uses an Alembic Series I Triple Omega 8-string in the epic Achilles Last Stand.

















Alembic made a gorgeous re-interpretation of that monster. But it's safe to assume it's a little out of our price range.

Well, the quest continues. In the meantime we can drool at the fantastic musicianship of John McLaughlin and Jonas Hellborg getting the best of both the fretted and fretless worlds with this double necked beauty.

Tones For Jones

Now here's one heck of a dream team doing a pretty radical interpretation of my favorite song off John McLaughlin's phenomenal 1994 After the Rain album which featured The Irrepressible Jazz Machine Elvin Jones in person.

John McLaughlin, Dennis Chambers and Zakir Hussain at the June 2004 Crossroads Festival in Dallas, TX:

The Ramen King

Momofuku Ando, 96, passed away this weekend in Japan.
He invented the instant noodle in 1957 after seeing long lines for fresh noodles. He founded the company Nissin, who brought us Cup Noodle and Top Ramen, spawning many imitators.

Thanks and Farewell Momo!

Iritis Set List