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I'm grooving to some piano jazz (Bill Charlap served up by http://www.pandora.com/ ) and reminiscing about last night's Leo Kottke Mike Gordon show at the Berlee Performance center. It was an interesting crowd... music geeks (students), phish heads, and hard core folkies and dedicated Kottke fans. The dude is 60 something, and I'm sure some of these folks saw him when he was 30.

Here's what I've found of a set list.

Disco
Living in the Country
William Powell
Ojo > Too Fast > Airproofing
Standing in my Shoes
Twice
Old Habits (Mike solo)
Invisible
From Pizza Towers to Defeat
Vaseline Machine Gun (maybe? - Leo solo)
I'm Going Back to the Old Home
Rings
Ya Mar

e1:
The Last Steam Engine Train (maybe?)

e2:
Jack Fig (maybe?)

It's pretty bad, I know. They definitely played Off the Grid in there somewhere.

It was an interesting gig. I haven't seen real acoustic music for some time - maybe not since I saw Peter Mulvey / Patty Larkin in Peterborough. That was 6-7 years ago. This was a nice treat. There was no onstage amplification, and a pleasant hall volume. Leo played both 6 and 12 string guitar, while Mike stayed with an acoustic bass guitar. The bass had plenty of articulation and may have provided a bit too much at times. Regardless they made a great pair.

When Kottke and Gordon were on, their syncopated interplay was captivating. Neither of them approach their instruments in a traditional fashion, and their combination just pushes so many boundaries. It certainly becomes more than the sum of its parts, and doesn't really sound like Kottke solo and sounds nothing like any of Mike Gordon's other projects. It isn't music that demands, but it is music that rewards.

In all fairness, there were a couple moments early on in the set when Mike and Leo didn't quite connect. It was probably due to sound issues. When they moved their mics the problems largely disappeared.

The highlights for me were the medley of Kottke tunes, and the pairing of Old Habits and Invisible. The two heartfelt songs draw on Mike's divorce and are quite gripping. Old habits was solo bass guitar and was quite impressive. Mike approached it like Kottke approaches his guitar quickly interspersing distinct notes and strummed chords. It was a real surprise. I knew that Leo played a solo song or two, but the Mike thing was a treat.
posted by Ben at (0) comments 8:31 AM

 

Here's a post to Lawyers.com that is of interest to me.  http://community.lawyers.com/messageboards/message.asp?channelId=16&subId=&mid=707798&mbid=40

It captures a lot of frustrations we have with our current living arrangement.  Fortunately, Dr. Strangelove has taught us that brinksmanship is a fun game.
posted by Ben at (0) comments 10:25 AM

 

Your Daddy Is Mike Tyson

What You Call Him: Daddy-o Why You Love Him: He takes you to church

posted by Ben at (0) comments 3:05 PM

 

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

posted by Ben at (0) comments 2:47 PM

 
Finding new music is so much work, and I've really been doing a lackluster job over the past year. I haven’t really stumbled on to many earth shatteringly good acts although my collection is starting to round itself out a bit. Picking up the mars volta CD added some intense darkness to my collection, and the merger with Kate's smashing pumpkins cds should help balance the portfolio some... But the bulk of what I listen to falls in the realm of jam bands, or a few stones throws away from them and I haven't even done a great job of keeping up with them. Yes its hard to listen to lots of new music when you try to grab a new Umphrey's show every week. Umphrey's is that good, so I can't complain.

One thing I stumbled onto at work while trying to bide my time before heading to Legal Seafoods to dine with our number 1 customer, I found the Relix podcasts. http://www.relix.com/radio/ Yes, I'm squarely planed in the jamb and court, but I'm still reminded of how out of it I've become.

I came to hear Trey's new single: shine.... which I think I heard on the river the other day, and kind of enjoyed but didn't recognize as Trey. There's an emotional intensity to the music that I don't think he managed to capture in the studio with phish, but the song and it's structure is pretty middle of the road for adult contemporary radio... It's not groundbreaking in that senses, but it's completely new to Ernesto G. Anastasio III.

After that, and a nice interview with drummer Russ Lawton, the player slipped into a piece on the Brothers Past. They're a band that's seen a fair amount of press, and had a decent buzz on the Umphrey's bort but I'd never given them a listen. The first selection was a delightful electro-pop tune with a concise and driving rhythm. I was hooked. Unfortunately, the second selection started out slow and dull but eventually morphed into a decent jam. I'll have to keep in mind their show at the Paradise on Armistice day.
posted by Ben at (2) comments 5:59 PM

 

We're wrapping up a couple days of on-site collaboration with a key customer here at work.  I loathed the idea of returning to heated technological debates, and stress filled discussions that could only lead to more work.  Fortunately, this meeting has been much more pleasant than I expected.  Yes, I got roped into long days and late nights of dining to entertain the customer.  We outnumber them two to one, and I spent last evening dining with the Key account manager and learning a different perspective on our business.   Every time a bioreactor gets contaminated, we loose at least 100 grand of business from downstream disposables that were not consumed by that batch.  He was also a cool guy.  

The food was quite good at Dalya's, a rather fancy restaurant that I had yet to visit.  Hopefully the meal at Legal Seafoods tonight goes as well.  I will have to eat something other than salmon.  That's my goal.  Maybe I'll talk to people from the customer tonight....  It would be nice to spend some time with someone who was involved in my project, but may not be in the future.  She focusses more on Chrom. anyway.  However she would probably enjoy hearing about the honeymoon.   She's also the only person from this customer that I feel I know.  A day and a half of meetings with two other engineers isn't exactly socially stimulating - especially since one of them was high-up enough to sit with our CEO at dinner.
posted by Ben at (0) comments 3:17 PM

 
It's over. I'm back; and things are starting to settle in.

I had no idea how stressed, mind tangled, and freaked I was before the wedding until a few days into the honeymoon when all of the kinks in my head worked their way out. I was in a bad state. As my groomsmen can attest, I didn't know the date, I was just plain out of my gourd. And I thought we were calm, cool, and handling it well. In reality it was like my enter life was being compressed through a key hole and re-ordered on the other side. I would have liked to use a prism analogy, but they tend to separate colors and not integrate them... running it backwards would stretch the metaphor too much.

The ceremony was powerful, at least where I was standing. I think our choices there worked out well, integrating portions of the church’s traditional high and low ceremonies. Repetition worked well. The readings were great. I got married. What else could I ask for? Really? Oh yeah, the weather was perfect.

I thought the reception was ok... although I felt pulled a million different ways. On one hand I had cousins that I haven't seen for 5-6 years, obligations to get to know Kate's family, and the fraternity brothers that drove all teh way from Ohio. I wish that I could have spent more time with everybody.

I think eminence front (the cav's into song) made some phi tau's crack up. I was pleased. We started to stress too much when we were picking out music, and needed something a bit light hearted to get us out of the funk.

I barely remember the first dance, I'm sure that it was awkward - but that's the way our day went. We started out a ball of nerves, and by the time we were spinning to Ether Sunday things had settled. It was an intense day. I'm really glad we decided to include last train home as a good bye song. Thank you Umphery’s. They encored in Providence with their version of the tune. Kate and I both love it, and wanted to include it. I think it worked.

Cotsa Rica was awesome. We have pictures and will probably put together a separate document for it.

My short must do list for others considering visiting this nation is

1. White Water Rafting on the Rio Pacuare Exploradores Outdoors Offers transport service from San Jose, or Puerto Viejo in the morning to the river and back again, to either site, or to the Arenal area. They had great guides, and excellent connecting service. The Pacuare was 18 miles of nearly continuous white waster with some excellent Class 4 rips.

2. Guided Nature Hikes - we started monkey spotting on our drive back from rafting, but it really helps to have a guide show you how to slow down and spot monkeys and sloths. Our first naturalist guide was tied into a snorkeling expedition in Cahuita.

3. Tabacon Hot springs and Resort - Close enough to Arenal for great night viewing, and with included access to an elaborate complex of hot an cold springs. Tabacon was a delight. Costa Rica has a reputation as a budget travelers paradise. You can slum it for $5 a night in hammock and ganja hostel conditions, get decent rooms for $25 everywhere else. If you're near Arenal, it's time to splurge. The rooms also include day and evening hot spring admission ($30/day/person) it's really not much of a stretch for a lot of luxury and class. We saw Arenal ooze lava from our dinner table.

4. La Paz Waterfall Gardens - It's a bit pricey, and very American, but the waterfalls are awesome. Also, they have an awe inspiring butterfly dome where Blue morphos nearly attack people.

5. Go birding. I'm not a birder but Costa Rica has a lot of weird birds. 20+ species of humming birds. Giant blue jays with gloves on their heads, toucans, parakeets. It's a lot easier than frogging. Those costa rican fromgs are well camouflaged, and know where to hide.

6. Buy a cat hammock from Neptuno's house of hammocks (the location near the La Fortuna waterfall). I've been to many a phish shows, and never met a character quite like Neptuno.

Here's my must not do list

1. Do not take a Costa Rican study tour of a coffee farm. This $25/per person tour wouldn't even be free in the states. It was educational about coffee farming, but nothing about roasting, or blending coffee. It was lame.
posted by Ben at (0) comments 9:09 AM