MikeSpace

Well, life certainly has not been boring lately. It’s been so long since I’ve blogged, that I barely know where to begin to describe my recent experiential highlights. I guess I should start with Marks kind and generous invitation to go see Dream Theatre up at the University of Buffalo. A pretty fantastic performance I must say, and one in which the audience was fully engaged. Everyone stood up during the first song, and never sat down (despite the rather concert hall atmosphere of UB’s Center for the Arts)! I had a lot of fun watching all the aging metalhead freaks mill around with their terrifying hairsprayed girlfriends. Dream Theatre smoked, with a bearded John Petrucci ripping it up on his signature Music Man guitar, the drummer going bananas on his three kits(!), the keyboard and bass intertwining in an elaborate ballet of excess and bombast, and the singer, while sometimes slightly annoying, was without a doubt pitch perfect and spot on with a tremendous range. Their children were practically wandering all around the stage during the performance, with one little girl actually sleeping for 45 minutes on the side of the stage. The drummers kids came up and played during the performance (unannounced), and they all seem to be appreciating the fact that they had some pretty damn cool parents. A really fun show overall. On the way home I noticed that Broadway Joe’s was rocking, so I stopped in and while I unfortunately missed the live music, I did have the pleasure of meeting Miriam (Invader Mim), who helped me to evade a local scam artist, and was charming and entertaining and awfully cute. I also met Madeline White that evening, and she seems to be a very articulate, warm, thoughtful, compassionate and lovely human being. Also a wonderful guitarist and amazing singer and songwriter (check out her mypace page!). It occurred to me that evening that if this is Buffalo on a Monday night, then I must be in the right place – because it rocks!

Good parents.

I also had the pleasure of seeing Joelle and Doug playing at Allen Street Hardware Café, and as always those two were fabulous. It is really quite amazing to me the depth of talent and diversity of ability that both of them have. I wish that they played together more often, they really seem to bring good things out of one another. The intimate setting seems to bring out the sensitive and soulful side of Joelle’s abilities, and Doug, well, I really don’t know what to say – except perhaps yowza!

Moving right along, I have to mention that while on break during a performance by Nick and myself (more on that later), I had the pleasure of hearing Steve Baz‘s latest project Space Cakes playing across the street at Nietzsche’s. Holy crap, they sound quite unbelievable. I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for these guys and make a night of it. It sounded like virtuoso free jazz with a hard electric edge, and lots of improvisation. Neato!

Then, after spending a few days helping to install a public address system at Ani DiFranco’s church on Delaware Avenue (cheers to RPM productions Craig, and Klon of Klondike sound, not to mention Bob Hillman, supergenius’s all) it was off to Boston, Massachusetts for me. On behalf of one of my favorite human beings I drove a creaky beat up cube van across several states, and eventually arrived in what appears to be a marvelous place to be. While I got the impression from many of the people that they were not actually from there, nor were they actually intending to stay there forever, I did notice that much of the architecture had been there forever, and was gorgeous. Old Victorians, flying buttresses, elaborate Gothic’s, lots of brick and stone structures, many with crazy looking gargoyles, the place is swanky. It’s also very green — like Buffalo, they also benefit from an Olmsted designed parks system. The Berkshire mountains (outside of Stockbridge) were also quite impressive, with an amazing view that embraced both mountain ranges and wetlands simultaneously. Awesome! As I was driving along lamenting the stupid mirror on the stupid cube van, which would move when I achieved highway speeds and render me blind on the right side, and while experiencing excruciating back anguish, just when my spirits threatened to bottom out, a gorgeous blue Heron flew about 15 feet above my windshield and put all my troubles in perspective. It was just what I needed!

I will briefly mention the Feist and Elvis Costello show at the Art Gallery, not so much due to its musical excellence (which was uniform but somewhat uninspiring), but more so as an example of what this city does so very well; it was a great example of Buffalo people in late summer gathering outdoors to enjoy social and cultural goodness amidst urban splendor. And of course beer. Possibly too much beer. Mmmmmm, beer.

As many of you already probably know, the Irving Klaws totally rock. They are like a super fun blend of excellent songs, careening yet supertight arrangements, superior chops, sweat, blood and theremins. They opened for John Spencer‘s new group, Heavy Trash, which was notable not only for John Spencer’s remarkable rockabilly makeover, but also for his incredible backing band, which consisted of his other opening act Powersolo: a couple of freaky Dutchman who came across as a mixture of Mindless Self Indulgence, The Beastie Boys, Hank Williams Sr., and Primus, and were (to my tastes) completely wildly entertaining if not a wee bit scary.

Finally, last week’s Thursday in the Square: Charlie Hunter Trio. Man, sometimes I am so glad that jazz is not America’s most popular art form any longer. I was able to get myself in front and center for this one, and I couldn’t be happier. Charlie is really hard to describe, but if I had to I guess I would say that if you close your eyes while he’s playing you can clearly hear several guitarists and a bassist, and when you open them you realize it’s only Charlie. Really highly evolved stuff. He makes it all look quite effortless, but it’s something that’s absolutely unique to himself. He tricked me last time he came to Buffalo, in Bobby Previtte‘s band, by not doing any of that stuff he’s so good at, his whole contrapuntal thing, but instead just simply rockin’ out on a Telecaster with a slide and a fuzz box. Well perhaps not simply, quite elaborately and amazingly actually, but it was nice to see him do his multifarious ambidextrous contrapuntalizationism thing again. I got some great pictures from right down in front. Look for those in the Galleries soon!

So that brings us up to date, I’ll be down at the Elmwood lounge tonight, I think, playing with Nick at their open mic. Come on down and I’ll buy you a beer! We will also be at Staples on Allen Street this Thursday night at 8:00 p.m. It would be my pleasure to see you there!

Well I realize that it’s been quite awhile since my last post, but we’ve been having some fairly severe computer troubles down here at the org. Sadly we must say goodbye to Soulfood, the long serving and reliable electronic computing machine that has faithfully served for this last six years. A word of advice to electronic computing machine owners out there — when running four or more hard drives is recommended that sufficient cooling be attended to. Them puppies get hot! It is however my pleasure to introduce to you all our new atomic thinking machine — Brainiac Fingers. This swanky silicon supercomputer consists of an Athalon 64 4000+, bolted to a Mach Speed motherboard, and outfitted with a Geforce 7300 GT video card. And just to prove that this really is the 21st century, all that you are reading here now is being transcribed by software, as I speak into a microphone. How’s that for Star Trek nonsense?! Holy mojo, Batman — this thing really smokes; while Soul Food had to endure an endless parade of software of every description, as I narrowed down my preferences, Brainiac Fingers will benefit from all that was learned previously and will only get the software that I actually use. I someday hope to make available a complete list of the best software that I have found, as many people have asked me about this. Before Igor returned with all the pieces necessary to construct Brainiac Fingers, I was forced to utilize Sluggo, an elderly thought box with a Pentium III thinking unit; this was not a pleasure. Sluggo could only think of one thing at a time, and that none too quickly. It was excruciating, and made me very appreciative of these newfangled speed mongering computifiers. Active minds crave the multitask. Too much is not enough. A stitch in time saves processor cycles. Wash behind your ears. Buy low, sell high. Here is a picture of me at my desk, with Brainiac Fingers and a technician in the background: