One of the most genius videos I’ve seen in a long time! I mean the lyrics are just so deep. Thanks to Robert Lee for hipping me to this.
And while we are on the subject, check out the screenshot of this new Windows software. This is gonna be HUGE amongst hiphoppers and r&b/urban “producers” alike!
Working through my pile, one by one, today I listened to a record I mixed sometimes last year. The album was recorded by someone else in a studio in New Jersey I believe but they weren’t happy with the mixes they were getting so they came through the tunnel looking for a shinier sound at the other end.
It’s a mixture of Jazz and Brazilian music, a combination that young Japanese saxophonist Wataru Uchida has been exploring with the help of producer and bass player Nilson Matta.
Great NY-based Brazilian musicians such as Romero Lubambo, Helio Alves, Cafe Da Silva and Ze Mauricio make up the cast of this album. Eight tunes written by Wataru and by Baden Powell, to whom the album is dedicated.
Check it out.
They are just making travel harder with every day that goes by and they are the ones that take the fun out of traveling!
First laptops, then shoes, then liquids… It just goes on and on… When will it stop? My guess is never!
I bought a travel belt (all fabric with plastic buckle, no metal parts at all) specifically to speed up going through security and now they want me to remove it citing a “new procedure”! What new procedure? One they just invented today to annoy the hell out of me?
And check this out! These new body scanners they installed? I went through it today and they STILL padded me down!!! What the fuck?!?!$?!&?!?@?!
TSA has been checking people at airports for decades and yet we had terrorist attacks anyway. So what is the point? Terrorist have always and will always outsmart them.
If we fired ALL ground TSA personnel in every airport in the world and we put those people on planes with weapons and in incognito (just like Air Israel does, who coincidentally has NEVER had a terrorist attack on a plane!) then traveling through an airport would be a breeze and flying would be safer!
Wow, November has been crazy… Can barely sit still! JFK is my second home! Luckily I’m escaping this crappy rainy thanksgiving weekend weather for some sunshine!
Neubauten and myself have been missing each other by days for years. They don’t play in the States that often and every time they played in a European city I was visiting it would be either the week before or the week after my visit. This time finally the stars aligned! I happened to be in Italy on tour with Zorn the same week Neubauten were coming through and their only italian concert(s) were at the Estragon in Bologna so I got tickets for the first night and went. Oh boy what a show!
Being this Neubauten’s 30 year anniversary tour they really went all out and played for a staggering 3 hours! The current line up includes 2 percussionist (N.U. Unruh being one of them), a keyboard/sampler player, a guitarist (Jochen Arbeit) and of course Hacke on bass and Blixa on vocals. The six of them played songs from their entire discography to a packed audience of about 2000 souls. Needless to say the classics made the crowd go wild and the visual impact of what was happening on stage was overwhelming. You just simply can’t find another band today that has the type of sound they do and that does it all live. Their research for weird sounds and objects is amazingly creative and unique: who else would think of using a vinyl record mounted on the screw gun and amplified with a paper cup? or the tight and extended spring that when hit sounds like an electronic kick drum? or a bucket full of nails and scrap metal that is slowly emptied from a height of more than 6 feet creating a rain of metallic objects? To think that they’ve been doing this since 1980 is just mind-boggling!
Unfortunately I couldn’t go to the second show the following night but I’ve heard from people who went that it consisted in a shorter Neubauten set followed by a few sets of side projects by some EN members. Dulcis in fundus, the band then distributed about 200 drum sticks to the crowd and rolled out moving drum stations so that all attendees could participate in a noise-making hitting fest. Pretty amazing idea and great ending. Too bad I missed that.
Einsturzende Neubauten is still touring so I highly recommend that you go see them if you can. They should be in the States right about now in fact and I know they will be playing two gigs (one already sold out) in New York City on Dec 14 and 15.
Here’s some more pictures by a local photographer Elena Sartorari.
There’s also plenty of videos of the concert on YouTube.
I spent four days in Sao Paulo working with Lou Reed and in the weekend I’ve been here Paul McCartney, Smashing Pumpkins, Scissor Sisters, Pavement and others were playing in different venues across this megalopolis. Next week Jeff Beck, Twisted Sister, Stone Temple Pilots and more. In my hotel a copy of Time Out Sao Paulo with tons of suggestions on things to do.
I must say I am impressed. Is there really always this much going on here? Or none of the promoters are smart enough to plan around each other and end up overlapping all the major festivals in the course of a few weeks? And how many Paulistas can afford a $400 ticket to McCartney anyway? Obviously enough to sell out two nights in an arena… But is that really a good representation of Sao Paulo?
Even downtown at night cars don’t stop at intersections for fear of being mugged while idling the engine at a red light.
And in the morning the skies are filled with helicopters of rich people going to work and dropping their children off on the roofs of their private schools…
Walking around looking for a bar to have a drink in after a concert is almost impossible in the neighborhood of our hotel where every venue has an ongoing party with a cover
charge between $50 and $100. Parties everywhere!
I feel bad I didn’t get to see live music places like O Do Borogodo in Vila Madalena/Pinheros or their East Village (Rua Augusta)…
City of contradictions, even more so than New York, which for the first time ever felt small in comparison.
Still, NYC rules above all!
Got back from Zorn’s gig in Milan two nights ago and after just one day at home (which I spent working in the studio on a soundtrack for a film called “Addiction Incorporated”) I’m back on the road again heading to JFK airport to fly to Brazil with Lou Reed for two gigs in Sao Paulo.
Looking forward to the gig but less so to the 9 hour red-eye.
I just hope that this time Brazil will treat me better than last time I was there when I was robbed of everything and had to spend time and money to get emergency papers to be able to get back home.
My favorite place in Bologna. The picture’s lighting doesn’t do justice to the goodness of the food!
This family-owned place is small, run by a retired musician (as you can tell from amp in the bathroom), his sister and his mother.
Milan was a total blast!
Although it ain’t easy to mix 12 bands in one evening and deal with 11 stage changes and 60 channels of continuously changing audio with dynamics that range from classical strings solos to seven piece metal bands, but such is the incredible variety of Zorn’s body of work and honestly it is right up my alley. I love his music and all the variety so much that doing a show like this goes by very quickly and I enjoy every minute of it really!
Can’t wait for the next one.
Here’s two pics of the stage at its least mic-busy and least people-crowded moment.
