Steve Walsh is rolling over in his grave. Actually, he’s probably at his castle on top of mountain playing his pipe organ and wearing a black cape, and can’t be bothered at the moment. But if he was paying attention, I’m pretty sure he’d fist pump a few times and do a handstand on his korg for old times sake. If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about then, well, you’re not as old as me. Either that or you grew up listening to Abba and Olivia Newton John.

The audience doesn’t deserve to be watching her though, with that flaccid response. I’d be hollerin’, flicking my bic above my head, and passing around the spliff.

Rock the f#$k on, girl.

This is a such a passionate performance. They sound great here.

Paying $500 for two tickets?

Nearly having an infarction during the one hour drive from work to home (usually twenty minutes) and then a two and a half hour drive from home to Oakland Coliseum (usually forty minutes)?

Waiting in line to buy us stadium food for dinner for twenty five minutes while sweaty drunk people pushed passed me like NBA players shouldering past a defender on the way to a two handled slam dunk that shatters the glass backboard?

Paying $38.50 for dinner? (Two enormo-police dogs. Two not so enormo-police beers (it was FatTire at least). One nachos.)

Paying $35.00 for a t-shirt?

Paying $20.00 for a program?

Seeing the Police, the one band I regretted missing as a young hooligan?

Meh.

Just kidding. I couldn’t bring myself to make the “priceless” joke. Though I suppose that was my original intent. Anyway, I really enjoyed the show, though a lot of other people didn’t it seems. I think the difference is that I like it when bands play things differently than the records, which they definitely did. I think maybe this is because I’m a (somewhat lapsed) musician and I like improvisation and new arrangements. Whatever.

My only complaints were that I ate my enourmo dog with no condiments because if I had to stand in another line I would have well, taken it, but I would have grumbled. And I didn’t want to grumble. Or stand in line. Or even find the damn relish. Also my feet fell asleep standing in my tiny tiny little area in front of my tiny tiny little seat because I didn’t even really have space to dance, which I wouldn’t have anyway, but still, did my space have to BE so damn tiny? A couch seat on turbo prop commuter flight is the frickin’ hearst castle in comparison, and besides the drunk couple next to me were continually slobbering on each other and singing along to the songs, but to each other in some disturbing romantic gesture, to each other like it was a high school prom and they were gazing into each other eyes under the mirrorball in the gymnasium, in their baby blue polyester, all the while batting me with random body parts like elbows, hands, asses, and god knows what else. I made a point of not really finding out.

Ah well, I’d do it again.

Here’s a couple of really really bad videos from my phone (you’ve been warned):

008.3gp (1.31 MB)
009.3gp (1.31 MB)
015.3gp (1.42 MB)

Tony is now twenty one and here’s his website.

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]]> http://blog.mikefullerton.com/2006/03/04/this-is-just-astounding/feed/ 1 http://blog.mikefullerton.com/2006/01/31/heres-a-video-of-me-drumming/ http://blog.mikefullerton.com/2006/01/31/heres-a-video-of-me-drumming/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2006 08:03:43 +0000 Mike Fullerton http://www.mikefullerton.com/blog/2006/01/31/HeresAVideoOfMeDrumming.aspx

Launch in external player

Check out this video of Thomas Boulvin soloing on the drums.

A couple of things to note.

1. the drums are tuned very well, to specific notes in fact. They don’t sound like big flabby farts like most drummers tune their kits to. Like this
.

2. see how he doesn’t hit the drums as hard as human possible? most people when they sit behind a drumset think you have put all their weight into each hit. Like this.
3. an “astinato” is a lengthy repeated pattern, so his feet are playing the same pattern over and over again while he’s going to town with his hands
4. see how he holds the stick lightly and they’re balanced in his hands?
5. see how he uses his wrists and hands? Arms just get the sticks to the right place. The wrists and hands do the drumming (well, mostly).

Anyway, all this added together shows us that this groovy cat can really play with the best of them.

Enjoy.

So I’ve slowly but surely ripping all my cd’s. I still have a few hundred to go. I am sometimes quite surprised by the stuff I find. One band I found that I like that you probably haven’t heard of is Red Delicious. They sound like the band Garbage, sort of, but I like them better. More melodic and much less over produced sounding. I never really liked Garbage.

Red Delicious is sort of a melodic Pop band, with catchy hooks and they just sound great. I have the CDs Acoustical Blur (can’t find any info on this one) and Emotional Blur. I think I bought them off of mp3.com a few years ago back when mp3.com was some sort of indie band dot bomb. I don’t think it’s the same company operating mp3.com now.

Red Delicious has a new cd called Addictions and Scars, but I haven’t heard much off it. I’ll probably pick it up though. More info here and here. There is a video or two on red-delicious.com and I think you can listen to the tracks there too.

B. just shouted at me from the other room, “I like this music! Where did you find out about them?” Well, there you have it. Chicks dig them.

BTW, I’m using Windows Media Player and ripping all the cds in WMA lossless format. Through my system the cd’s sound phenomenal and having them all on my computer is worth the price of admission. My computer has a big fat RAID array on it, so in case of failure I just have to swap in a new drive. God help me if I have to re-rip all the cds someday. This happened to Omar, the poor sod.

So ya’ll might not know that I play the drums. Started when I was about 14. That means I’ve been playing for, um, a while. Turns out though that I haven’t played much in the last couple of years. Mostly I think this is because most new music these days just blows. Playing the drums is a purely right brained thing, a trip into the indescribable, and nothing has been inspiring me lately. I just gotta say that most of the music that is popular these days makes me want to yak up something disgusting, put it into a envelope and send to the music companies. One quivering pile of yak per company.

One band I’ve really learned to respect and enjoy is Big Head Todd and the Monsters. They’re not flashy. They don’t sing about bad ass they are. And the only cap they’re busting is a comfortable ball cap. So there. What they do do is write great songs and play their own instruments very well indeed. They’re a guitar band, very blues based. Great vocals and catchy songs. They’ve been around a while and I first found out about them a few years back when I saw them open for Dave Matthews band. Check em out. “Sister Sweetly” is a good disk to start with. Give them a few listens, I guarantee they’ll grow on you. Interestingly, I could care less about DMB now, and I’m still listening to BHTM.

Check out their web site: http://www.bigheadtodd.com/index.shtml

Tell em’ I sent ya.