MikeSpace

I haven’t been feeling too bloggy lately, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention what a great time I had recently hanging out in the woods near Dansville, NY with Kathy and Mark and their great kids as well as some other suspicious characters. Bravo to Heather for still having the sheer self destructive enthusiasm to stay up till 5AM and help me euthanize many many beers! Jamming with Mark and Greg was amazing and really fun, and it was made even better due to Stephanie and her wonderful drumming. Mark played melodies on fiddle, and would switch to a mandolin for chording, and we improvised a lot (at one point sounding like acoustic Tool!). People would materialize from out of the darkness from other parts of the campground, check it out for a while, say some stuff, then they’d be replaced by new faces shortly. I was on cloud nine, I have fuzzy but happy recollections. I needed me a little more Renz in my life.
I should also mention Handsome Jack, who I saw at Merlins the other night – an interesting crowd, very styley, as they channeled The Stones and The Band and generally sweated up the joint. No waterfalls, however.
I am off to Varysburg this weekend for Woodstick, with Flatbed. Woo Hoo. My tent is shaped like a shark.

Went to NT the other day and saw Rik Emmett, the dude from Triumph. He was doing a rock band show, and he played a ton of old hits which were a bit on the cheesy side, but really not so much when you consider that noboby is ever gonna do them better – he wrote that stuff, you know. I don’t have any mega-hits of 80′s radio! So it rocked, and he did squeeze in some solo nylon stuff and some fusion. That was the 4th time I’ve seen him, twice with Triumph at Kleinhans, in like 79-80 (they were practically unknown, hitting Buffalo from out of Toronto, and completely on fire – insane guitar prog pyrotechnics), and once doing solo stuff downtown (classical nylon, but with the rock-guitar-guy body-language face-scrunch thing!). I’ve somewhere once heard NT referred to as “The Land of Lowered Expectations”.
Then more recently, and speaking of Toronto, I saw Muse in Canada. Kinda-sorta alternative rock, progressive rock, classical music, funk, electronica, and heavy metal. Holy crap, what a show. What a city. What a country. With health coverage. Cold War Kids opened for Muse and seemed barely beyond bar band skill, but Muse was absolutely fully pro – with incredible visuals, special effects, smokebombs, explosions, and a piano with 88 lights slaved to the keyboard. Not to mention stellar songwriting and absolute instrumental prowess. Amazing impassioned tenor-falsetto vocal performances, often while playing a guitar figure in an oddly juxtaposed rhythym, while operating the whammy effect at yet another rhythym. At times it seemed to me that they were slaved to some electronics, which is not at all suprising or disturbing, as that is a big part of their approach and sound, but they had it all so seamless as to make me unsure of it. The guitar was much more agressive than on LP, and he’s got some weird ones: one has a Kaoss pad built in for sound mangulation, one seemed to have a primordial theremin thingy attached, and they all have mad visual mojo. After the show I saw a car drive off with the gas station hose still in its tank, but there were no explosions. And some planes landed, but again no explosions. All in all, a nice visit to a swanky country.
These are Hanson Guitars: