So today I got an bunch of angry and insulting messages on FaceBook from some dude I never heard of or met before… because I wasn’t sure what he was talking about or if I had actually met him before, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and answered his message asking for clarification but he went all out on a rampage for no reason!

Here is a copy and paste of our conversation (I blocked out his name with asterisks):

Between You and ************

************ July 19 at 12:50pm
see? I told you have nothing to be afraid of… the audio engineers and mastering engineers on the other hand…? why would you disrespect the musicians? we fill your wallet… not vice versa

Marc Urselli July 19 at 12:52pm
I am sorry, what are we talking about?

************ July 19 at 12:57pm
how worthless most of you people are

Marc Urselli July 19 at 12:59pm
I am sorry, I don’t know what you are talking about… you emailed me out of the blue… what are you referring to?

************ July 19 at 1:07pm
obviously wisdom has escaped you… pity.. thought you were worthy …

Marc Urselli July 19 at 1:16pm
dude I don’t remember meeting you, I don’t know what you got beef with me and obviously you are having a bad day, so let’s just drop this

While we are having this back and forth he chatted-up me on FB too:

1:08pm ************
where would you be without the men you hate.. like Keith Richards, Chuck Berry, Roger Waters, go polish shoes

1:09pm Me
hey man, what are you talking about? I don’t hate Keith Richards, Chuck Berry or Roger Waters… where do you get your info?

1:10pm ************
from the way the recording industry has treated artists ever since michael fucking jackson came around
and you ran like fucking girls to the panty section to ditch the true musicians

1:10pm Me
ok but what is your beef with me?
do we know each other?

1:11pm ************
i want to know why the hell men of power in the music industry go with little girl music instead of mans music
and until they don’t

1:12pm Me
again, I ask, what does this have to do with me?

1:12pm ************
i’m holding all of you involved in the music industry guilty of the shit on mtv
and thats the way it’s gonna be until i get my fame

1:13pm Me
could you please answer one question only for me: DO WE KNOW EACH OTHER?

1:13pm ************
i know what you do
and i know how weak you audio engineers are mentally
becuase you couldn’t sut down hip hop and pop
so that makes you weak

1:13pm Me
so the answer is we don’t know each other, correct?

1:14pm ************
go tell you masters what i said
i want them to know that i know that they are slaves to michael jacksons jock strap
so go smell it with them

1:16pm Me
dude I don’t remember meeting you, I don’t know what you got beef with me and obviously you are having a bad day, so let’s just drop this

Initially I thought that this guy is mentally ill or simply having a bad day, although it wouldn’t be a justification for heckling somebody he doesn’t even know. I decide to write this post and make his name public (in case he was bothering other people on FaceBook as well) but then I thought of his statement: “i’m holding all of you involved in the music industry guilty of the shit on mtv and thats the way it’s gonna be until i get my fame“. Maybe he is bothering other people as well hoping that somehow he’ll get some free publicity out of this, so I decided not to mention his name at all. Of course I could just block him on FaceBook (and if he keeps harassing me that is just what I’ll do).

It is true after all, we’ve been hearing over and over, that nowadays in order to get noticed you have to really come up with some great marketing stunts, you have to really fight for attention, you have to be original in how you get out there… I know it’s hard for everyone making music. There are a lot of struggling musicians out there trying to make ends meet while following their love and passion for music, but all of this still really makes me wonder: can a frustrated musician turn into a crazy fucking lunatic???

What do you guys think?

Bang on a Can is a collective of composers and musicians who, since 1987, have been writing and performing avantgard/experimental/new music. Their approach somehow speaks to a more “ordinary” and less “niche” audience and so, to some extent, they have succeeded in reaching larger audiences where others might have failed (or, depending on who you ask and where you stand, might have deliberately chosen to keep it a bit less accessible to filter out the casual listener from the really dedicated and interested followers).

The Bang on a Can marathon is a 12 hour concert (from noon to midnight) which takes place every year and presents pieces from a number of experimental music composers performed by musicians from anywhere around the world.

I’ve stayed for about 4 of the 12 hours and in that time caught Buke and Gass (a vocal+guitars duo with foot-operated tambourine and bass drum who played some interesting stuff and had a very powerful sound); german piano player Moritz Eggert (who played a few of his compositions based on falling fourths and fifths which were interesting in concept but at times felt a bit forced in their presentation); dutch performer Slagwerk Den Haag (four people writing and drawing with chalk on four amplified blackboards – see picture); Vernon Reid (who presented a piece based on the recordings of voices of some of the last people born in slavery – accompanied by Mazz Swift on violin and Leon Gruenbaum on Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeeee); Bang on a Can All-Stars themselves (performing a pretty powerful composition by Kate Moore – see picture); Mira Calix (doing some live laptop improvisation); Kyrgyzstan-based players (playing traditional pieces on traditional instruments); french upright bass player Florent Ghys (who performed a nice piece on his double bass playing along with two or three tracks of himself from a laptop and a video in sync with his playing – see picture); Burkina Electric (which consisted of three dancer/singers and a guitarist from Burkina Faso accompanied by two american composers/performers on electronics, mallets and drums; – the musical results were not always as interesting as the authentic dancing and singing); and finally the ensemble called “Signal” conducted by Brad Lubman who performed the BAM-commissioned piece “Shelter” in seven movements. Composed by the Bang on a Can founders Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, this piece reminded me at times of Glass, at times of JG Thirwell, at times of Zorn… I thought it lost some steam in the middle but I really enjoyed the last and the first two movements, especially the second one, my favorite; the piece featured a libretto sang by three great singers and some film projections by Bill Morrison and Laurie Olinder (for the video too, I thought the first and last movements were the most interesting).

Very interesting event all in all. I wonder how many people stayed for the whole thing, but it’s definitely an interesting event and it’s great that it is free, which further lowers the barrier of entry if you are trying to bring this music to the masses. I still prefer to see this kind of music in the quiet and dedicated confines of the Stone, but nevertheless I enjoyed it.

Yesterday night after Laurie Anderson’s record release party I had dinner with some friends and some new people, one of whom was this nice cool dude from Alaska who dresses like a rock star and has jokes and opinions about everything. Gabe (was his name) told me his band would perform the following midnight at the East Village rock’n'roll glamour striped-ceiling venue called Ella. The band (Dog Soldier) is a high energy quartet. They are kind of hard to describe but are a bit of a mixture of seveties rock, irish/british punk and metal. Gabe with his ripped shirt (at least while he actually had it on), low jeans, leather boots, blue eyes, thick beard and long blonde weavy hair looks like Zakk Wylde meets Chris Robinson and is a magnet for grabby groupies (most of the crowd tonight). His energetic stage presence and punk moshpit attitude reminded me of Iggy Pop but his voice is growly like Lemmy’s or Billy Gibbons’. Some of the band’s choirs sounded almost like the faster episodes of Type O Negative, but when they went all Irish on the crowd they echoed Dropkick Murphy’s… Other times thy sounded a bit like Big Elf or the Damned. Or was it just their looks? Who knows. What matters is I had planned to stay a few songs to check them out but ended up staying the whole show. They are a riot to watch! They have another gig next week at Roseland and then they are off for a few months on tour so catch them in town while you can.
I turned out to be an eventful night which included an industry party on a west side rooftop, a nice dinner and a movie, so adding a concert to top that all off made perfect sense to me, a real NYC night out! I love this town!

Those who were lucky enough to catch Frisell’s two week long residence at the Vanguard, were also fortunate enough to see the talentuous Eyvind Kang play his magic on the viola. But the really fortunate out there were blissed with a performance by Eyvind and his wife Jessika Kenney at Drom, where they played some of their new written and some improvised Persian-inspired music. The day after the show I was the fortunate one to be able to record their new music at EastSide Sound.
I’ve used my new and beloved Latvian JZ Black Hole microphone on Jessika’s vocal and a Beyer Dynamic MC740N on the viola and ran both through Neve-reissue Vintech X73 preamps and my MasterRoom II analog reverb to capture an intimate and marvelous performance of the two standing feet apart in same room and performing haunting music live for my lucky ears and my lucky mics.
Can’t wait to hear this record out in stores.

Again, not together, but I saw them both tonight. Richie played to a packed Highline Ballroom crowd that seemed like a mix of metal heads and strangely “normal” looking people (and of course, I’m sure, a ton of guitarist). Of course he kicks ass when he shreds on his axe, but his songs and lyrics are not the most original I have to stay. Nevertheless he’s a great player and he plays and sings his ass off. Reminded me a bit of Sambora vocally and you can hear echoes of Jimi and others in his playing, it’s just so fast and precise that it’s mindboggling.
Later my buddy Robby Angelucci (on tour with Frankie Valli, coming through the tristate area) walked over to Canal Room where long time Rolling Stones background singer Bernard Fowler and a great supporting band were giving their all to a nostalgic r’n'r crowd. Bernard’s voice is great (there’s something special when a black man signs rock’n'roll… like with the Livig Colour guy…) and his energy is uncompromised and dedicated. Keith Richards was in the crowd and was rumored would sit in but ended up not doing so. Great sound (mixed by the legendary Night Bob) and show nevertheless!

No I didn’t see the two of them live together. I spent the first half of the night at BB King’s to see The Moth’s finalis, where Bridget (whom I blogged about before) kicked ass with her stand-up comedy style storytelling and closed the night with a grand slam story about getting her mom stoned.
Then I ran down the West Village to see the Bitter End’s weekly installment of Oz Noy. I got there early and caught the second half of Lizzy Loeb’s set (if memory serves me right), a talented young singer songwriter who enlisted Shawn Pelton on drums for her record and this one gig tonight. After her Oz was up and was killing it with his riffs, licks, solos, sounds and pedal switching… The Oz Noy Twisted Blues Band tonight featured the great and fun Will Lee on bass, Rocky Bryant on drums & Jerry Z on keys (that was a first for me). Of course they killed it and when they were done it felt too short a set! Great musicianship.

Thanks to my AES membership I’ve had the chance to take a tour of the factory that produces one of the most beautiful instruments around. Seeing how 12′000 parts come together over the course of 9 months to create a single grand piano was definitely a treat and was worth getting up at 7am and taking 4 trains. It was fascinating and amazing to see it all happen in real life and equally interesting were other facts, such as that the original founder created the US-based company at age 50 as a European immigrant; that he was illiterate and yet his son created one of the largest libraries in the US; that his grandson helped design the NYC subway system to help the workers get to the factory (now remotely located near La Guardia airport, but once spread around in Manhattan).

During the tour I was able to observe all the stages of the making of a piano, including the wood carving by Santos and the final inspection by Willy Boot (picture), who’ve been with the company for 31 and 48 years respectively.

The artistry and craftsmanship that goes in a Steinway piano are incredible and truly make it a work of art, which is why by the end of the tour it was pretty clear why at Steinway they refer to the mass-produced instruments of the competition as “piano shaped objects” ;-)

I strongly recommend taking a tour of the facilities when you get a chance. I believe the tours are free and take place once or twice a week.
Even if you are not the lucky owner of such a gorgeous instrument you are sure to appreciate the process.

My good (and corageously fasting) friend Kaoru and I went to see Mary Halvorson tonight. She performed with a great band comprised of the great Trevor Dunn on bass, an impressive Tomas Fujiwara (subbing for Chess Smith), Jon Irbagon on sax (rumored to be a world champion at Dr. Mario) and Jonathan Finlayson (whose playing is almost as cool as his vintage Kellog’s fruit loops t-shirt). The quintet played great and it was the first time I got a chance to appreciate her compositions (although I had seen her playing before with Marc Ribot at Le Poisson Rouge). With long horn lines and harmonies punctuated by written free-jazz guitar structures leaning on the solid foundations of such a great rhythm section, the quinted effortlessly spaced from improv to form flirting with moody and delicate atmospheres and bursting flames in full on full out pieces! All the solos were killer! This young and humble composer is definitely one to follow and one whom I hope to work with sooner rather than later.

Sad news for industry professionals came today when it was announced that the legendary Walter Sear passed away. I had the pleasure of meeting him briefly at AES in New York a few years ago but unfortunately I never had the chance to work at his beautiful facility.

In the news: Studio Legend Walter Sear Passes at 79