Monday, December 8, 2008

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......
Link
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!

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

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!!