hagen and i just spent the past two nights in milwaukee, having a good old time with drew. yesterday, we got to see ben folds at the brand new miller stage at the summerfest grounds. the show was really good, except they had the bass drum and electric bass sounds up too loud. i could tell that the monitor situation wasn't ideal because there was a lot of sharpness and i could see several times when the drummer was straining to hear the piano.
me, drew, hagen, and drew's friend vicky were all in about the 5th row, which was sweet. we got there a little after 5:00 PM in the middle of the Miller Rhythm and Blues Revue, which was a little creepy.
after that, Five Card Studs were up next. due to a little preparation on our part, we knew that this band had "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)" in their rep. drew and did not stop yelling for them to play it until they finally did.
Ben Folds was with his band and was excellent, minus the aforementioned setbacks.
it's almost time to go get some breakfast and get on the road.
hagen and i are going to milwaukee to see drew and to see Ben Folds.
i'm home right now. things are mostly pretty good. i'm gonna go play me some jazz music
huzzah! flying home in a few hours!
so some excruciating circumstances forced me to format my hard drives, meaning i lost EVERYTHING.
not technically everything. luckily, i have back ups of my arranging charts and some of my arranging mp3s on gmail.
UGH.
i'm rebuilding the army of music files on my computer.
first CD?
Rockin' The Suburbs, naturally
yes, this blog has sort of dropped off the planet in recent months. i'm doing very well, though.
today, I have my classical jury at 5:18. I'll be playing Bozza's Rustiques which is a tricky little number.
tomorrow, i have my jazz jury at around 4:16. i'll be improvising over some chord changes and playing my transcription of Blue Mitchell's solo on the tune "Top Shelf." it should be a grand old time.
the Great American Challenge played at Bruce Jam last week, which was a pretty good show, considering our bassist was unable to be there with us. i played some more left handed stuff on Rhodes and Organ sounds, and the bass parts were more or less covered. nothing beats having that low end. you don't miss it until it's gone.
a less than good part about that gig was that i left my bag with my power cord, two quarter inch cords, microphone and mic cord, and my sustain pedal for my keyboard at the gig. i was so busy getting over to my next event, that i completely forgot about it. as of right now, it is missing and the probability of retrieval and return seems unlikely. i'm going to have to make some trips to Guitar Center or something.
it's time for lunch, and then some more light practicing before my jury.