No doubt about it, it's 2014

First post of 2014 and this would be the natural time to reflect, publicize the resolutions, etc but not going to go there.  Managed to get an appalled rehearsal in and put most of one brand new song together over the holidays, called "No Doubt About It".  We even managed to pull off a run through of the ancient and venerable appalled chestnut "Free to Bleed", and got a clean take of the notoriously unrecorded "Fake".  Other musical events of the holidays:  DC and yours truly executed the Great 2013 Amp Bake-Off between a tweed Fender HRD and a Mesa Express plus 5:50 within the confines of Crazy Stranger.  Conclusion(s) - both are VERY LOUD.   Played standards with my brother JP for the first time... ever, really....on Christmas Eve, and it went really well! Our history of playing together has been spotty to say the least.  I have been inspired by the fabulous Lenny Breau/Brad Terry recordings ("Complete Living Room Tapes") so I was optimistic that a guitar/clarinet combo would work, and it was surprisingly good.  We even had some impromptu dancing going on for a while. 

Shout out to:
NYC guitarist Sean Driscoll and his most excellent blog somuchsound.blogspot.com!

somuchsound.blogspot.com 

I ran into this while watching, for approximately the millionth time, the video lessons Wayne Krantz did for Guitar World in 2012 on expanding chord vocabulary (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqJp-0PmHPo).  One of Sean's instructional videos on using ideas for using the metronome was included as a "suggested" link, and I really enjoyed his direct instructional style and wonderful sound/playing. His blog is very cleanly done and info-rich without being overly wordy (hint hint, note to self....).  One entry in particular resonated with me when Sean mentions being exposed to John McLaughlin through his older brother's record collection, which is exactly how I was exposed to him.  My early musical life was dominated by JP's polarized opinions and heavy leanings at the time into 70s fusion (George Duke, Mahavishnu, Herbie Hancock, etc).  Like Sean I came later to some kind of context for how great a player McLaughlin really is, but JM for me has been less about the playing (which I love, don't get me wrong) but more about his work ethic and relentless drive to improve and cut an individual and unique path.   In a lifetime of consuming millions of words about music and guitars a handful of things remain with me.  One was a wonderful interview of JM, by Robert Fripp, in the July '82 issue of Musician magazine - I read this in hard copy, so was 16 years old when it came out.  I searched recently online for this and was astonished to find the archive "Pages of Fire" (http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/mclaughlin/art/index.html).  The archive includes the Fripp interview, but also the Guitar Player April 1996 cover interview with Matt Resnicoff that included a quote that was like a knife going through me at the time that I still turn to for inspiration when things get low.   Will leave it there for now:


When did you discover how dedicated you were to music?

I left home when I was 15 or 16 and never went back. I wasn't doing too good at 16. I've been playing guitar since I was 11, and I had to work on that, but at the same time I did a lot of jobs just to survive. You have to live in hope that when you're up at six in the morning driving a truck and you get back at night just shattered, you can still make the extra effort to pick up the guitar and work. [Laughs.] Did somebody tell you it was easy when you came down here to this planet? They didn't tell me! And it's still not. But who wants it easy? If it was, everybody would be doing it. That's what makes it interesting, because you go for it and discover what you're made of. We underestimate our own capacities so dreadfully. I know that spiritually we have infinite capacity. We can do so much more than we think. And that's from the heart, man. Don't ever forget it.