A week went by and now it’s July. To celebrate my birthday I went and saw Sungazer at the Blue Note in Manhattan. This was a different configuration than I’d seen the before. The core group of drums, bass guitar and keyboards was accompanied by not just a single sax player but by an entire big band! It was pretty mind blowing. They did big band arrangements of a bunch of their songs (plus a Duke Ellington number), which I’d describe as jazz-adjacent prog rock jam band. My kind of weird for sure. With the addition of the big band the sound was somewhere between Steely Dan, Zappa, and Joco’s Word of Mouth. I must say the band was awesome and the arrangements were great, but my only criticism is the band played just over one hour. I mean, I know how much work it is to compose, write out and rehearse all those parts, but you could’ve thrown in a drum solo and some stuff like that.
The hot weather continues, but not as hot as before. Last week I did couple more ten-mile bike rides. Trying to get out early in the morning these days to beat the heat.
It’s goal setting time at work, and in addition to the usual stuff, they want everyone to come up with and AI goal. Let’s see if I can have some fun with that…
For fourth of July we went up to Buffalo for a few days to visit my Mum and Dad. Kathleen and the kids were there, and Lizzy and Josh came over too. I must say my Mum was in much better sprits than she was back in June. My brother Jim and my nephew William came out to visit them for a couple weeks in June, and helped out with a bunch of things, so that made a big difference. Kathleen’s kids got me some awesome birthday presents. Charlie made me a 3-D printer dice jail in the form a castle, using a very cool filament that glows iridescent green blue and purple when you look at it from different angles. Way cool! And Abbie drew me a card with a picture of a Mimic that unfolds to show the teeth and gaping maw of the monster. Also Lizzy got me a pair of drumsticks from the Rock’n’Roll hall of Fame, and Michelle got me a comic book: Godzilla vs. Thor #1.
We drove up the evening of the 3rd and arrived late, stayed in a hotel in East Aurora, a cool little artsy town. I’ve always wanted to take some time to check it out. The day of the fourth we basically spent the whole time going the the park and sitting on my parent’s back porch drinking beers and barbecuing and listening to class rock. Perfect. In the evening we went to the fireworks show, which was great.
We got home last night and everyone was pretty tired. Today I had a much needed day off, but my list of thighs too is growing longer faster than my free time. Today my replacement MBox arrived and I plugged it in an it just worked with no additional hassles, at least for playback, so that’s lucky. Tomorrow I’m going to test out the recording side.