ADELAIDE GUITAR FESTIVAL.........

ADELAIDE GUITAR FESTIVAL

we flew on friday to Adelaide (check your maps now)...another city on the south east coast of Oz, where all of this tour is happening. There are a couple other coastal cities like Darwin on the north coast and Perth on the southwest... but -- otherwise...outback!!

Check out this sign in the airport - Damn!! there goes one of my fave things to do in a new city-- Drink the Toilet Flushing Water. Sheesh.

Adelaide was really cool, maybe my fave, cos quite a bit smaller, yet full on city with everything there..just a little more simple and old school. Incredible shops and again -- a ZILLION asian restaurants, just name the country and they had 4 restaurants. cool. This is also the home of COOPER'S BEER, who sponsored the fest..and dammit I never had one!! Not really drinking lately. I think -- after Russia -- where I was sloshed every fuckin day -- I decided to take a lil break! But I need to try a Cooper's.. I hear.

And how about this local honey?? Anyone wanna hazard a guess as to how they, um, make this?
I'm all for local ingredients and such...But --- what exactly is up here....? But, seriously, as a natural-food store shopper for 25+ years, employee for 15+ years, and owner for 10+ years, I went into one of the best stores i've ever seen anywhere, here in Melbourne, and one of the really impressive things is how strong of a local natural manufacturing base they have --Lots of great local organic items, and New Zealand, of course a massive source for natural foods..is one of the strictest places on the planet for organic growing methods, recycling, green industry, sustainable agriculture, etc. Good stuff.




So I knew I'd have a cool reunion in this town -- and indeed, we had just checked in when YONRICO SCOTT walked out of an elevator. He's the drummer from the DEREK TRUCKS BAND... I did a great 3 week tour with them this past Sept. It was incredible...watching Derek nightly was a joy and very schooling for me..The whole band and crew - really great players and people - check that band out! When that tour ended I knew that we'd all be at this Guitar Festival in december. Here's the Slicks & Rico moments after they met......

The band was to play a full set on Friday Night, then day off saturday to rehearse for Sunday ---which would be the AC/DC tribute (Isn't EVERY day a tribute to AC/DC??)

Here is the band rocking a nice outdoor crowd....We did lose quite a few people when the huge local pop-punk band GRINSPOON got done with their set..it was a weird pairing but hey - three cheers for diversity..


The trio brought it -- they always sound 'larger than life' on a giant stage with those outdoor systems....and there were some very happy locals....this was a real treat -- as ALL the gigs were, since Adrian doesn't get "down" here too often..People were really great after the show, telling the band how wild it was to even get this chance. One guy flew in from New Zealand for two shows..

I had a big surprise while looking at the program notes for this event.... the MC was none other than....WNYC's John Scheafer!!! Most of you are going...What???!..but if you live in the NYC or tri-state area, you'll know the very excellent WNYC, FM and AM, fantastic public radio, NPR affiliate stations. In the fall of 1983...i was studying in college, I ultimately got an As. Sc. in Computer Science. I got into the habit of studying with WNYC FM on...as they played great classical music. One night -- pretty damned stoned -- I came home and turned on my stereo-- which was still tuned to 93.9 FM...this...bizarre music poured out of it... I grabbed a cassette and started taping .. It turned out be Laurie Anderson's "From The Air"....more amazing music poured out of the box...Philip Glass, Keith Jarrett, Jan Hammer and Jack DeJohnette...maybe some Steve Reich...I was hooked!! In 45 minutes...the next direction of my life as a listener and lover of music took a severe turn.

I was listening to NEW SOUNDS with John Schaefer. At 18yrs old I was hooked on a ton of 'new' music all at once. The show was on nightly at 11pm...and John gets my eternal thanks for turning me onto so much amazing music, ..Popul Vuh, Penguin cafe Orchestra, George Winston, Michael Hedges, (in fact windham hill in general), Scott Cosu, Scott Johnson, the aforementioned Laurie, Philip Glass, Reich, and people I had heard of but never got to hear much - John Cage, John Zorn, on and on and on -- all the downtown NYC composers, Bang On A Can, etc. It was world music...ambient..electronic, experimental, japanese shakuhachi, Stockhausen..David Borden, Alvin Lucier, weird synthesiser music, you name it!!

This show CHANGED MY LIFE...I went onto minor in music and take a LOT of ancient music, world music and theory with Phil Corner..and electronic music/ tape-based musique concrete with Dan Goode...would I have done that without this crash course every night?? Maybe?? But I did -- and i thank john -- for being a HUGE part of who I am as a musical being..years later I met him when I toured with Don Preston - one of our stops was on the show - where Don performed solo and was interviewed. It was great..

THANKS JOHN

More Fun in Oz....

BACK IN BLACK --AC/DC's best selling album, the second best-selling album of all time, and
the biggest selling album by any band, with more than 42 million copies sold worldwide. In 2006 Back in Black was certified by the Recording Industry Association of America as the fifth best-selling album in the United States, with 22 million copies sold....
(wikipedia)


Australia's been really cool. I am bumming we are not going into the hinterland...the outback.....Melbourne was slightly diverse..but I see more black people in Germany!! Where are my aborigine homies!!?? Actually I saw a few aborigines around town -- I love their completyely unique, CRAZY big-curl afros. I have Ethiopian blood, and being on the east side, the highlands of Africa, perhaps early settlers came from the eats side. I gotta do more research there...but ourr TM here tells us what one would expect -- like the native tribes in what we call america today --- they get a raw deal here -- and lots of alcoholism, poverty and unemployment prevails. You'd be shocked to know that industry gets away with a lot more polluting and toxic stuff ...out where the aborigines live.

Sad shit. I hope to learn more about that.....bur for now we're here to spread...some music --After chilling for a couple days off in Melbourne we did the first gig there -- at THE CORNER.


THE CORNER HOTEL
a Good gig in general.....a few rusty spots....no gigs in a month but killin' energy. a really crazy crowd, maybe 350 or more people there...

Nice ROCK club..no damn SEATS...they were right up front STANDING, our best and biggest crowd thus far.... last time he was here a cpl years ago -- Adrian crowd surfed!! So--at the end of the show, he turned his back to the crowd and fell into their arms!! It was great, totally unexpected (well not TOTALLY) but very cool and wacky for him! (You can JUST see him in the live shot to the right)


Great high energy show... the sound in here a little high end , but it was dealable.

Melbourne: very cool city, got read more about the crazy history of this country.....

(RIGHT:CHECK OUT THE BANDS IN TOWN..if you squint, near the middle you can see the ADRIAN BELEW listing, right above "HOLY FUCK")

The stores in the downtown...one funny thing I noticed in all the rock / clothing type places.... THEY LOVE AC/DC !! haha you;d think that was a cliche, but ...maybe it's cos there is a new CD and tour, first since 2003...but EVERY music oriented/fashion place had AC/DC mugs, shirts, banners, even calendars in some cardshop in a mall I ducked into (relax, I was looking for an Apple store, and saw some geek walking in with a Mac keyboard...)

Lunch one day was some amazing Indian, in a tiny little place with a few seats. The kind of place Anthony Bourdain is always in. I love that guy, even tho' he hates vegans, or at least tools on us pretty constantly. It's cool. When I get to meet him I'll put things in perspective for him.

LEFT: Great Indian food!! REALLY great stuff here ---As good as ENGLAND, yes, where I've had the best Indian food in my life. Go ahead - laugh -- you've been totally lied to about food in england -- it's stunning if you get your ass out of cliche fish n chips shops. And - like here - IT's ACTUALLY FUCKING SPICY -- unlike what has happened in the USA - thanks to crybaby, pussy americans who keep fucking up EVERY spicy cuisine with their decades of WHINGING about "It's too spicy ..! waahhh!!"

THEN DON'T COME IN HERE THEN!!! THIS IS SPICY FOOD!! STOP Wrecking it for the rest of us!!

God.! where was I...?

Alright, alright, i know. Of course you can fidn good Indian in the US -- it shouldn't take so much looking, tho'.

Anyway --Of course!! -- here in Oz...we're basically in the same time zone as much of Asia! So -- consequently you have TONNAGE of Asian restaurants... Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Cambodian, Vietnamese. This little Indian place was awesome, of course it's a good thing I love Asian food, very easy to get 100s of animal-free dishes....thanks to poverty, consistent interpretations of buddhism, hinduism, islam and also sheer practicality most asians eat LOTS of vegetarian foods daily, whether or not they also eat animal flesh.

(LEFT: Wherever you go, whhatever country you;re in...some one has taken a shopping cart far away from it's store. Classic, global phenom...)


Off to Sydney, and THE BASEMENT
another historic city.. Umm.. there AREN'T many cities here, mate! So -- you get done with Aussie -historicc city travel VERY QUICKLY.. there's 21 million people on this island/continent..NY state has 19 million. This place is HUGE, actually bigger on dry land than the contiguous 48 states.

this club is kind of a jazz/songwriter place....maybe like the bottom line (NYC) in a basement. Small cap , maybe 200-250 PACKED?? we had a nice crowd of around 150-175, again -- the seated/tables thing is always a little un-nerving...show #2 so the band really started to hit their stride, the tour company we are hooked up with is awesome, Charney our local tour manager is totally cool and has done some great tours all around the globe. They have been getting exactly the backline we asked for, whch is rarer than you may think!

Great show. great watching the crowd from the side, You can really see how special it is..to live this 'remotely' and when you get artists you love playing here, so special to them. But -- I don;t wanna OVERPLAY that -- just about EVERY artist comes here at some point - certainly all the majors and tons of punk rock and inde bands.... they LOVE music here and with afair amount of festivals and a good economy, bands can afford to make it happen. If you;'re in a band GO TO OZ!

blogging from iphone??

hello there...
This just a shoutout from sidestage at the 1st Belew Australian gig in ages... And 1st with the power trio.
This is a tech-nerd experiment to see if I can indeed blog from my iPhone...

Let's see. Stand by for some pics and more info on how the tour is doing..
Cheers!!

In Australia at last....

G'day mates!!

Well, I couldn't resist. Get ready for TOO MANY silly puns and references..... sorry in advance.

Left: Here I am Rockin' IN AUSTRALIA to AC/DC's "whole lotta rosie" from the crushing live album IF YOU WANT BLOOD...

It's great to be here..wow...what a DAY (literally) of travel.... I started with 3 or so hours of air travel from Asheville NC to Nashville TN, then a short drive to BelewCentral, where I crashed in the Fripp Suite, then packed up Adrian's remaining fly-gear, and caught a 3pm flight to Denver, then LA. In LA I met up with the Slicks, and we hopped on the United flight for FOURTEEN HOURS to Sydney Aus, then hung about in that fine airport, until we flew to Melbourne, where we'll be for the next 3 days or so. TIMEWARP!! We left the USA on saturday...now it;'s MONDAY afternoon, we got here around 1130am...weird...

OF course in typical style I had to crank up some AUSTRALIA connected music for the flight over, mixed into my playlist - unrelated to OZ -was lotsa Fiona Apple (Tidal, Bootleg:Orpheum Theater Boston '97), the new McCartney album as THE FIREMAN, fantastic, not as spacey as the earlier stuff but plenty psychedelic/acoustic bluesy folk (of course), Steve Hillage "Green", lotsa Zappa music (incl. Lather, Sheik, Orch Faves, Mothers of Prev., and some great Zappa/gear interviews...) and of course AC/DC..the mighty rock champs from down under....

How much do I love these guys ??.... let me count the ways. Let's start with THEY ARE THE FIRST BAND I EVER SAW ONSTAGE at a real concert...I was 14, it was Madison Square Garden, (summer 1979) they opened for Ted Nugent...tickets were about $10....as were the T shirts and programs...wow! It was ..incredible... Somehow my mom let me go to that one..inexplicable. But it kicked my ass....and here I am. An unapologetic rocker, thru and thru.

Plus BON SCOTT was still alive...man oh man. Tragically he would die 5-6 months later...
Well - I went on to see them with Brian Johnson 2 or 3 more times thru the years...and will attend a show pretty soon on the SOLD OUT USA tour going on right now.

My fave Angus Young story - true or not (??) - is when some journo asked him:

"Angus..you've been accused of making the same album eight times..what do you say to that??"

Angus replied with a snarl:

" Tha's a durrrty lie !! Ah've made the same album TWELVE TIMES !!"

Ah yes. they are PERFECT. don;t ever fix it. I had the joy of running rehearsals for the AC/DC show when I worked at School Of Rock, Bergen NJ...what a blast that was.

Anyway -- of COURSE I also had to rock some MEN AT WORK (because I'm the corniest, silliest man alive..) As i was listening to them -- I came upon a store..and guess what they had for sale: Yes , the infamous yeast spread of Australia: VEGEMITE. Some of you may only know of it from the MAW song "down under"..it;'s a STAPLE here, as MARMITE is in the UK..similar stuff. Think of a combo of
Miso paste and peanut butter, perhaps??? A salty, yeasty conccoction they eat here with EVERYTHING...especially toast and cheese. Altho' our tour liasion suggested 'toast, avocado and vegemite' ..Hmm.. will have to try that, I've already rocked some on flax crackers - fantastic!

So - mark me down as Idiot Tourist. There I was in an airport natural food store..buying Vegemite while Men At work was on. I dare you to do something more stupid.






Hmm.. Then THIS stuff caught my eye.... Um... guys...what is this cheese MADE OF, exactly..?? "Tasty"..huh??

I love finding words and signs in other lands...that would mean crazy stuff back home...or vice versa, or viva voce, or whatever.

But wherever I go , it's a chance to see how fucked up humans are in their quest to torture, maim, abuse and then SLIT THE THROATS OF innocent, or even not so innocent animals. Today's entry in the "Slow To Evolve" sweepstakes is this little display of various JERKY products..including Emu, Kangaroo and Crocodile. Poor little bastards never saw it coming. Emu??? I thought they were ..endangered? Guess not. And - of course if someone "farms" them ..then they can hide behind that I guess.. Well...lotsa work to do...at least it's a few steps better than factory -raised, drugged up, irradiated cows, chickens and pigs, as in your typical all-american egg/cheese/ham breakfast ....BON APPETIT!

We're OFF today and tomorrow (Tues) as well...Adrian arrived in Sydney a few days before us to do press, he gets here (Melbourne) tomorrow some time....and our first gig is Wed in town. I dropped Allan Zavod a line, hopefully he gets it in time and can make it out to the show... Allan played keys for many great bands, his own jazz, classical and fused projects first and foremost, but also for the great 1984 Zappa tour ("Does Humor Belong In Music") video from the pier in NYC... and also some great Ponty tours and albums.


If you are in Oz or know someone who is.....

ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO
DEC 2008 - AUSTRALIA

03 WED Melbourne, The Corner Hotel
04 THU Sydney, The Basement
05 FRI- 07 SUN Adelaide Int'l Guitar Fest.
08 MON Newtown, New South Wales The Vanguard
09 TUES Newtown, NSW, The Vanguard
10 WED Cronulla, NSW, Brass Monkey
11 THU Bulli, NSW, Heritage Hotel

Back from the PROJECT/OBJECT tour....

(Ike Willis talks to P/O keyboardist Eric Svalgard at rehearsal, Wilmington Delaware, 13 Nov 2008)
Ah yes, a fun and fine time was had by all.... despite the OBSTACLES and attempts to stop what we do.... (more on that in a bit)

But -- Suffice to say ...it was fun, musical, and HISTORIC (Ed Mann and Ike Willis have not done an extended Zappa-music tour since....1988..!) We just did an 8 city tour (It was 9 until problems were visited upon us), and the fans out there ...you are so amazing, all of you!! thanks again...

Ed and Ike are the longest-running Zappa alumni, ever, and it's our distinct honor to have worked with both of them for so many years. Stand by for video links etc as things get put up..















Ed Mann sets up his gear, then meets some old fans - JAZZ CAFE', Wilkes Barre, PA 15 Nov 2008

Belew Tour, almost-Closer...LEVERKUSEN DE

Leverkusen....The Rockpalast sponsored GUITAR NIGHT

(LEFT: you can see the cool lineup we were part of during this festival, with Living Colour and Dominic Miller (Sting's longtime gtrist)

I'm Home now -- but reminiscing about what seems like a few days ago...we were nearing he finish line on this little tour.. (and the Finnish Line, we'd be close to that country soon)

It was such a great tour...after all the obstacles, brickbats and problems...we did it, I'm very proud of the whole thing, I did a lot of the early bricklaying work in the spring of 2008 to get this ball rolling -- and besides thanking The Slick Parents and everyone at TeamBelew, I have to thank especially my dear friend and EU booking agent Wolfgang Scheel at NovaConcerts for coming on board and booking a spectacular set of dates, all in such amazing parts of Europe, we all got a new appreciation for the physical beauty of the continent...from the air and ground.

The 2nd to last show of that EU tour ...We played at a 9 day music festival In Leverkusen DE, a great (2000 cap) venue that I had been to once before, in 2006 when I was Tour Managing/Teching for Al DiMeola. THAT show is immortalized on his recent video SPEAK A VOLCANO, clips of which I'm sure are on youtube. what is there is the final gigs (so far) that I did with him -- Israel, spring of 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kogs1RpHmlI&feature=related - really amazing stuff , filmed by my buddy Ehud Lazin.


ANYWAY...great time in Leverkusen.... we were on a bill sandwiched between Dominic Miller and Living Colour, one of my fave bands of all time.... I have been seeing them since sometime in 1985....well..before they were Living Colour and it was "Vernon Reid" then..."Vernon Reid Trio" etc.

1985...I went to see one of my guitar gods JAMES "BLOOD" ULMER (if you don't know him -- again , run to youtube now.....)

and there was this guy, unknown to me VERNON REID opening up--- I might have seen his name in the Village Voice playing small clubs...but there and then I became a Vernon Reid freak -- he was incredible, that much I remember. So-- started to scour the papers for ANY chance to see this guy . Yes the 'papers' (this is pre-internet, kids!!)

So I watched as his trio morphed and changed, I started finding him on recordings by Ronal Shannon Jackson, right around 1985 he and Bill Frisell released a duo record, "Smash And Scatteration" within which they played ALL kinds of instruments that fascinated and interested me...banjo, guitars, guitar synth, drum machines, all kinds of wild AND traditional sounds..

thru the years... Vernon kept breaking the rules (and still is!) in "My Science Project", GTR OBLQ (with David Torn and Elliot Sharp), Yohimbe Brothers (with DJ Logic & Leon Gruenbaum on the Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheepee), Masque and several other projects...touring with the great JACK BRUCE's band, doing Hendrix tributes with the Gil Evans big band, you name it!

Living Colour was just really great in Leverkusen, and especially cool to see them the night before the historic election..... I ran into Dennis Diamond - Vernon's longtime guitar tech and everything-gear-guy (there's Dennis at right)
None of the guys knew I was at the gig - so I had a blast seeing the shock on their faces one by one...

After Dennis... The first band member I saw was drummer extraordinaire Will Calhoun...who was walking back into the venue from sending out his ballot via priority mail of some sort.....half the fun was seeing the look on each of their faces as I surprised them - !!

It was a serious Geek-Fest as I hung out with Vernon for a while talking gear and checking out his extensive bank of effects, laptop and new amps (he's beta-testing the new Bugera tube amps and combos....)

(LEFT: Vernon Reid explains his sci-fi guitar signal chain as Dennis plugs a few things in...)

Vernon hipped me to a few new plug-ins he had recently discovered, and we talked about "Guitar Rig", a software amp/FX system he uses that we are checking out for Adrian as well. Notice the killer Roland VG-99 to Vernon's right ... IMHO that is just one of the sickest new devices to come down the pike in YEARS.... I don;t have one YET but I use the Boss GT-10, which has the same computing brain, just for a regular, mono guitar signal as opposed to 13-pin GK hexaphonic signal....I used that on the recent Project/Object tour....


Here is a part of Vernon's effects bank .. a Boomerang looper, the Roland FC-300 pedal (I love that one, very useful), an Eventide Mod Factor multi-modulation pedal, the yellow thing is a Digitech, I forgot which one.. is that the Space Station..? and a wacky custom pedal (the little red guy ontop of the Boom). Yikes!!!







ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO - LEVERKUSEN
(ADRIAN BELEW and his trio under the TV lights, in front of an energized crowd, Leverkusen DE, 3 Nov 2008)

An energetic, stellar show....fortunately captured forever by german TV WDR....an awesome multi camera shoot of a fine show. At this point the band has just one date to go...and this one was NUMBER EIGHT in a row... wow....

I think Eric was (unnecessarily, but understandably!) nervous that Will Calhoun was in the room...it pushed him into some cool new stuff....check out his drum solo...

the crimson stuff went over extra great tonight -- and as always "e" was great, the fans here really got it, a captive 'guitar audience'

This will be a real bonus to "introducing" this band to a whole wider , EU audience....a it was captured in expert German style...with a 5(?) camera shoot..stand by for ways to see the complete thing....

Hanging out with Vernon Reid the day after the show, I'm about to leave for our flights to Lithuania...

Lithuania by way of Latvia..was a surreal and wonderful.... We got there on election day for the USA, and for us the news of Obama's win came at about 3 or 4 am...my TV Was messed up so I found out by checking the net every few hours...I was pretty serene about it -- trying to not set myself up for disappointment in case it was ANOTHER Diebold election....but ..wow.. woke up to a new direction.

Obama can;t do it ALL....Let's see what we can do. It starts with CITIZEN ACTION on a daily basis..recycling..using less..eating lower on the food chain... buying sustainable products....paying attention to packaging...fuel usage...reproducing responsibly (or not at all)..supporting non-violence as a way of life...conflict resolution ...supporting green candidates....all of this will make a REAL change..and finally we have a president who would at least LISTEN to such talk.

Criss-Crossing Germany/Some Bad news...

Mothers Of Invention and Keith Emerson

Today is a bittersweet day....

Jimmy Carl Black left this earth

Keith Emerson celebrated his 64th year.


Keith did a version of LUMPY GRAVY, that made me happy to listen to today...celebrating both he and Jimmy Carl Black era of Zappa-musik.

I found out last night that the great Jimmy Carl Black has died, lost his long battle with leukemia and cancer....

What a great guy, a sweetheart to the end. I didn't know him well but he always stayed in touch and sent helloes my way thru common friends. I still remember the day I met him, Summer of 2000, it was a big Zappa festival in the middle of Illinois...ill planned -- hardly anyone showed up for the size and scope of the event...he and the other Mothers walked into the cafeteria..amazing!! Roy Estrada, Bunk Gardner, Don Preston... to meet them all at once ..still blows me away. They knew all about P/O and we hugged, shook hands, Jimmy had that wide perma-grin...it was amazing for a young Zappa freak....

We all went in and had a meal, it was great. Somewhere I still have un-developed pictures from that day. Remember developing film ?? Another things that has slipped into the past....now, like Jimmy.

Project/Object played at the fest, as did the Grandmothers...and Banned From Utopia with all the 70s/80s guys..unreal!! it was the first time Ray White sat in with us.. I think JCB sat in that day as well - doing Lonesome Cowboy Burt with us...

My fondest memory is -- at some point I was hanging out with the Granmothers....in their rickety mobile home they were touring in.....and you could hear Banned From Utopia was taking the stage.

So I had to literally pick between continuing to hang out with -- cmon!! the MOTHERS.... with Jimmy was rolling a joint the size of my finger...or see the Banned From Utopia, who I hadn;t seen live in 5 years!


Um..I opted for the joint with the 60-something year old legends. THEN i went out and saw the 40 and 50-something yr old legends!


We met Jimmy again in 2002 at the GREATEST Zappanale..the one where the statue was unveiled... the mayor (kapellmesister??) came and did a speech and promoted the whole thing..Ike Willis..Mike Keneally..Scott Thunes...Candy Zappa and Bobby Zappa were there....the Grandmothers...and I had the honor of playing the set with them - Don Preston, Bunk, Napoleon, Bob Harris, Roy Estrada..and Jimmy Carl Black on a couple numbers....with Miss Pamela dancing and Bobby And Candy Zappa watching a few feet from me...I was terrified for the 1st couple songs.. but it remains my pinnacle Zappa memory, along with taking Frank a sign and participating in his show for 30 seconds..

Jimmy - R.I.P !!!

Keith -Happy Birthday..play one for Jimmy!!

Hallow'een in Zurich CH

Today back to the 5+ hr drives.... this time we head south to Zurich, completing our SWITZERLAND TRILOGY ( to go along with the Netherlands Trilogy). We have played now in ALL THREE sections of CH (confederatione Helvetica, the official name of switzerland...)..we started in ..Lugano (Italian Switzerland)....stopped in Vevey (French Switzerland)...now in Zurich (German Switzerland). Such a crazy country!! What a nutty experiment...and it works..!
Again the EU truck stops and their great salad bar serves my Van-Floor Gourmet Table well.. some fine Insalata Verde with a garlicky broad bean salad, some kraut and tomatoes etc... wow.


ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO --THE SHOW
...another great show!! I was fooled - we all were- with this place when we got there and saw the little stage...the small amps.....it's a jazz club (Bill Frisell coming up next week...) and that always wiggs us out a bit...right away we were considered TOO LOUD ..and that is usually the case..... also the sound system is usually waaaaay inadequate buit no, this system was actually pretty ballsy...

but as i let the posters and listing on the wall sink in, I realized it was more diverse than "just jazz" -- they had funk bands, pop stuff, electronic...and the main floor area was open/no seats, so that was a good sign.

Sure enough - they crowded in there and were a rocking crowd!! It got pretty packed....

here as in in NL, some super-Crimson freaks were flipping out when they hit those numbers...and I was even surprised by the RARE appearance of "Elephant Talk"..very cool...

In attendance were some local friends of ours- including a transplant from the USA-- our dear friend and brilliant songwriter Chris Harford !! Chris is here for a couple months..it was still surreal to see him there, so far from our familiar haunts.

I started seeing Chris play...oh god..was it 20 yrs ago. ??? Holy Fuck the time is flying. I guess we're making the best of it tho'....

Chris.....I was put on the spot to describe his music to some local friends... urgiong them to go check out his weekly Zurich gig...I say it's utterly unique... he doesn't filter his emotions it seems.. just pours out his story for better or worse. Yes-- you can hear wide ranging influences...the Band..Joni Mitchell, Neil Young..the Clash...80s indie rock...Jefferson Airplane.....but ... Chris sounds like Chris...from a whisper to a scream.. just check him out!!

A great place, some great old and new friends, a club owner that LOVED the band and was a total sweetheart to us...a hotel across the street....some good food...
A great night, personally a great first visit for me to historic Zurich......

.. in Nederlands...To Eindhoven 30 Oct 2008

(PIC: bikes outside my window...)









Van Halen
Van Halen (debut)
Live Bootleg - 1982??

...people forget the VH brothers are Dutch -Indonesian!!.

As you may know..The Dutch..during their brutal, murderous imperialistic/colonial years.... slashed and burned their way into dominating Indonesia.....and moved some of the people to another colony ..Suriname. I was born next door to Suriname, in ANOTHER former Dutch colony - now called Guyana. When I was born in 1965 it was called British Guiana..confused yet..???

SO ANYWAY..... when I come to Netherlands at some point I always make a beeline for some amazing Indonesian and/or Surinamese food..there are a lot of Indonesian people here. And thank the gods...because such a union produced those fabulous Van Halen Brothers.....

To celebrate their incredible rock-genius I had to blast the untouchable debut album "Van Halen" and then a random concert from 1982...just fuckin' roastin, Eddie is when he's on. Unreal


Urban Dance Squad
Life n' Perspectives Of A genuine Crossover

Then a few tracks from another great dutch band....what a shame they only stayed "underground" in the US despite some close calls at getting a bona fide hit with "Deeper Shade Of Soul" on their first LP. This was the 2nd one, my favorite -- it's really all over the place and just...wow, such killer riffs and melodic ideas. this gets a lot of spins thru the years, it's so good and...timeless.

Saw them once with...was it Living Colour at Cornell University...?? I think so. God the years are rolling by. All good.

These guys were really unique -- Rude Boy's great hip hop moves over a LIVE band...that was all over the map--- kinda like Manu Chao meets Fishbone or something. they could go from soulful funky stuff to anthemic rock in a flash, always glued together with the turntable and funky bass. Kind of a pre-cursor to all the rap-hybrid stuff of the later 90s,

UDS always reminds me of that amazingly fertile, happy late 80s/early 90s time -- with Fishbone, Living Colour, Jane's Addiction , Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden, Faith No More, King's X, Red Hot Chili Peppers (Blood Sugar!), Bad Brains, Rollins Band, fIREHOSE, Voivod, Meat Puppets, Butthole Surferss, NIN...all the Lollapalooza nation stuff.

I listen to a TON of new bands, sampling them on iTunes and their myspace pages. But I don't often hear anything that's not a hybrid or derivation of a lot of the above bands.....there's some REALLY great stuff out there , you just have to seek it out.....music is alive.

Adrian Belew Power Trio -THE SHOW

what a killer show!! I'll keep saying it -- the band thrives-- like any good live band - on a rabid, involved and engaged audience. And this show, closing out the Dutch Trilogy (Groningen, Den Haag, Eindhoven) was just memorable stuff...

Started out with a spirited soundcheck, including trying out some parts for the "e" recording sessions coming up...

(PIC:SOUNDCHECK..eindhoven)
A soundcheck made extra special for me -- as my friend the great Theo Van Rock had shown up early to hang. As you may remember- Theo is the sonic architect behind the board for virtually all of the Rollins Band LPs/CDs whatever. Rollins always listed him as a band member, and rightfully so -- that band always had the most incredible sound, and he found a way to capture their might in the studio too....so he was there smiling approvingly at all the crazy math flying by....

The venue EFFENAAR is a stand alone building, with a big "zaal" (stage) and a small stage. there was another show that night so the enegry in the place was high wiith super-efficient dutch production and hospitality people scurrying about. With the hotel a 5 min walk away we were in great shape, able to get back and rest after soundcheck and a nice dinner at the venue, including some indonesian veggie curry, awesome...





'e'...the new work-in-progress the band has been doing.....this just rocks them every time -- it sounds better as they go along...the looping guitar stuff really becoming seamless...and the band keeps digging deeper for the improv stuff in 'beat box guitar' and 'madness'. Like everywhere here in NL, some super-Crimson freaks flipping out when they hit those numbers...Soon it was over with THELA HUN GINJEET, the usual encore of choice for this tour..

Just a great, high energy show.... the backliners brought EXACTLY what the band ordered, so everyone was happy -- the perfect Yamaha drumset, Marshall 1960 4x12 cabs and the Ampeg SVT w/8x10. Yes, they read the rider...
Actually, I can't hate -- virtually everyone on this tour has been really great here with the backline...VERY few snafus....i don't wanna bash -- but the CLUB THAT WILL REMAIN NAMELESS, BUT RUN BY AMERICANS, fucked us up on the gear a bit. Whatever.

We ended a great night with a stroll down to Theo's favorite bar for a quick nightcap and some conversation. He's currently doing sound in the NL, once in a while a small tour in the USA, and also some studio work with some of the guys from URBAN DANCE SQUAD. Cheers!

EINDHOVEN NL

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