Still Rock’n’Roll to Me

The other night I took Jeannie and the girls to see Billy Joel at Madison Square for her birthday. Billy is one of Jeannie’s all-time faves and it was Michelle’s first arena concert, so they were all very excited. Billy’s grown on me over the years too. Last time I saw him was in the 80’s at the height of his pop phase and at the time I thought he was pretty cheesy. He spent a few years not doing much and somehow emerged as one of the all-time greats of rock. Now he’s not exactly touring, but doing one show a month at the Garden, supposedly indefinitely until he stops selling out. I might go back again in the summer.

He’s never sounded better. Since he’s put on weight his voice has more power and resonance, and a soulfulness it never had before. Billy’s piano playing keeps on improving too. He reminds me of Bud Powell, with hands like bear paws flying around while his fingers hardly seem to move. We had great seats BTW, directly behind the stage looking down at the band. I could see Billy’s hands quite clearly and I can tell you he doesn’t always follow the way the music is in the book!

Billy has a great band too. He’s got nine players and between then cover all the sounds from all his different styles and really nail the sound of the record. Horns, guitars, synths, drums, percussion, everything. This group has been together a long time and have a really good collective vibe and are really tight.

Yet at the same time the set was pretty loose. Billy kept on throwing in improvisations, bits of other songs, changing the lyrics to little jokes (“It’s a pretty good crowd for a snow day”), and extemporaneous raps between songs. He was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ coming to America, and threw in part or most of When I’m Sixty-Four, The Night Before, and A Hard Day’s Night, as well as Let It Snow and Layla as intros/interludes. At one point he looked at the next song on the set list (I could read it off the teleprompter) and played a different song entirely.

As far as the actual set goes, Billy played alot of deep tracks mixed in with the big hits, and skipped all of his songs I don’t like. Highlights include Miami 2017, Vienna, Zanzibar, Allentown, Movin’ Out, Captain Jack, New York State of Mind, Always a Woman, River of Dreams, and Scenes From an Italian Restaurant. I checked the set list from his January show and he did about half the same songs and half other stuff. The encores were Big Shot, Still Rock and Roll to Me, You May Be Right, and Only the Good Die Young.

Great show. Happy birthday honey!

Super Winter

January was very, very cold. Some people have told me it was the coldest on records in 20 years. It was down to 3 or 5 degrees a lot of mornings, and even on warm days it only got into the teens. It takes a lot of energy to endure the extreme cold and by the end it feels like a miracle to survive. Luckily no on in the family got sick, although pleanty of people were out at the office.

Last week two of the guys in our band called in sick for practice, the lead singer and one of the guitarists. So Mike the bassist and I split the vocals. Some of our songs worked better as a quartet than others, so toward the end of session we just started calling songs to jam. I called two from the Infinigon days that went over so well we added them to our set. One is Burnin’ for You by Blue Öyster Cult. The other is Money by Pink Floyd. I had heard Mike jamming on the opening riff to warm up once before so I knew he knew it.

February came and started with a really warm weekend. It was up into the 40’s on Saturday and the 50’s on Sunday. Everything melted, and I even started up my Mustang and let it idle in the driveway for 20 minutes or so. I thought of taking for a drive, but the roads were all full of slush and salt, so I waited.

Today it’s heavy snow again. Already to 6” or so since I woke up. And in the middle of if the tree people finally showed up to take the logs off our yard and cur down the stunp. They’re at it now with a giant truck-crane-claw and a chainsaw. I’ll bet the lawn underneath is totally trashed but at this rate it’ll be quite a while before I can see it.

Cover Up

Great news! my book, Origami Animal Sculptures has gone to print. Last week was a flurry of even-more-minor corrections and finally approvals. The publisher sent my comps of the final cover including the back and the return flaps for the dust jackets. I finally got to read the endorsement blurbs from fellow origami artists John Montroll and Marc Kirschenbaum. I sent out the requests months ago. Thanks very much for your kind words, John and Marc. Also the back cover looks really great with thumbnails of the models taken from Bob’s photos.

New Recording: Now and Forever

Here’s a new recording of Now and Forever, a jazzy ballad. You may recall Michelle came up with the lyric and the tune a couple years back (she was in third grade at the time; she’s now in fifth) and I helped her put it into shape and work out the arrangement. We recorded it for Jeannie for mother’s day. I liked it so much I decided to do my own version. I ended up making it a duet, so Michelle is still singing on the track. It came out very nicely.

I’ve also been experimenting with EQ on the bass, since that’s one of the keys to a really good sounding mix. Been trying to get more power and definition in the low end while removing the mud. You can hear new mixes of Is It Safe? and Black Swan.

I think this set of tunes is pretty much done, except for final mixing and mastering. We’re up to five, which is a good album side. Now it’s onto the next batch of partly-written tunes that need to get fleshed out. I’ll let you know in a while how that’s coming along.

Shepard Book

Last week I was extra busy cuz I got the third and final round of proofs for my book back from my publisher. By this point the layouts were all corrected and it was down little details like typos and subtle zoom issues on the steps. I had to make a few new corrections to some drawings, replacing a mountain fold with a valley or make a layer white. Out of almost 400 diagrams I only had to correct eight, so that’s not to bad. So it looks like this is. The next proof will be high-res pre-print master. Shiny!

Snowbound

We’re now a month into winter, and we’re back to cold and snowy. So far we made two trips up to Buffalo and Rochester, the first to visit family for the holidays, and then again just this weekend for my nephew’s baptism, for which Jeannie and I were the godparents. We’ve been making the trip from NYC to Buffalo for years. We estimate we’re up to a hundred times. Snow and freezing rain on each leg of the journey this time, which is not my favorite thing. Still it was a good time.

Now we’re back home and it’s another blizzard. We got about a foot of snow already and expecting more tonite. Everyone got sent home early from work and school. I shoveled once when I got home and it was light, fluffy powder, great for skiing. Too bad it’s only on the coast.

At work our department just moved to a new floor. My new office is pretty nice and in one of the better spots. I’m just down the hall from our CTO so I guess he’ll learn who I am. Last year I got an ergonomic chair and had my desk raised because I’m unusually tall and it’s bad for my back to sit a standard size desk designed for normal, puny humans. I alerted the move people about this because they normally don’t move chairs or customize desks, but they assured me it’d be no problem. But then Friday when the movers came they refused to move my chair and I had to persuade them. This morning when I came to my new office I found they raised my neighbor’s desk instead of mine. It took a while to get it all straightened out. Once I did I discovered my computer must’ve gotten bumped in the move because all it wants to do is run a low-level scan of the hard drive. I had to leave early because of the weather, so we’ll see what the outcome is next time back in the office.

Music Site Update: Elixr

Back from xmas break. Had a brief trip upstate to visit family and friends. Heavy weather driving both ways. Great to see everyone and glad the everyone is doing well. My dad got eye surgery and for the first time in my life doesn’t need to wear glasses anymore. Discovered the Hamburg Brew Pub.

The new year is off to a cold and snowy start. Last night we had a foot of snow, canceling my band practice. Both the kids had no school today, extending our xmas break. Took a good hour and change to shovel out, even with Lizzy’s help. Luckily the snowblower started right up after not being used for almost a year.

I’ve been updating the music section of my web site at zingman.com/music. I’ve added a link for The Relix, and added links to the new tracks on the Buzzy Third page, Is It Safe to Go Outside? and Black Swan, which prettty much bring me up to an album side. I changed the working title of the third Buzzy Tonic record to Elixr. It’s an anagram of Relix and also a play on the whole Buzzy Tonic theme.

I also came up with a logo, which makes a much better place holder for the eventual album cover than what I had before. This particular task has been on my todo list for a whole year; indeed made a sketch last xmas vacation. Constructing something like this in the computer is extremely tedious for me, so instead I drew it by hand and traced over in sharpie to get the right combination of precision and looseness. This is a technique I used a lot in college when I was studying design and architecture. Then I scanned it and played around with filters in photoshop until I caem up with something I liked. It’s been a long time since I used photoshop this way. I was able to achieve a rich look buy building up lots of layers of effects with varying transparency, a lot you’d build up layers using paint.

Even though I like how it turned out the colors don’t particularly match what I had going on the BZ3 page. Like I said it’s a placeholder for the eventual album cover, so I’ll continue to play with it. Meanwhile enjoy!

New Recording: Is It Safe?

Just in time for winter, I finally finished a rough mix of Is It Safe to Go Outside?.

Musically it’s sort of a power-pop song, but with some clever interplay of parts and a bass line that seems to turn the time around. The song was written by Martin and my version is based on his demo. In fact I kept his original guitar and bass parts. The song has been mostly done for a while, but it took a long time to track the backing vocals and piano parts. My velocity on the recording project is down this year, because first I was finishing my book and then I joined a band was focused on learning new songs and upgrading my gear. Now that’s all done and hopefully progress will level out again. I have a few more mostly finished songs that I hope to polish off soon, and then a few halfway-written ones to dig into in the new year.

Stumped

Well it finally happened. The electric company came and cut down our sick elm tree the week before Xmas. First time they came around the left the main trunk standing with the major limbs. Next time they came they cut all that down but left a ten-foot high stump and a huge jumble of logs all over the front yard. Apparently the trunk is so massive they need a special machine – basically a combi crane and saw – to hold it while they cut it down. Supposedly they’re coming back this week to finish the job and haul away the wood. Meanwhile our yard is a mess, but in an interesting way. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone. If anyone wants some wood for free, come and get it.

Reindeer Games

Rewinding again to catch you up, and like I said we been busy. Thanksgiving day we woke up and realized for the first time since Labor Day we have a stretch of four or five hours where no one had something they needed to do or anyplace they needed to be. We had TG dinner out on Long Island with family. A very nice day. Next day we declared Slack Friday, in which we all laid around the house and played videogames and that sort of thing, and diligently avoided the mall. Jeannie turned me on to Candy Crush. Finally something useful I can do on my Android thingie.

Last few weeks have been busy at work. Year-end reviews. Planning. Strategic planning, technical planning, roadmaps, many meetings. It looks like the whole middle-tier project is a go. More on that as it unfolds. We’ll be taking the ring to Mordor in a fellowship of nine companions. Hope we don’t run into any spiders.

We only have three weeks between TG and Xmas this year, compressing the whole works. Getting the tree up and all the decorations, doing the cards, shopping for gifts. We’re up to twelve nieces and nephews this year, as well as two wonderful kids, and a wife and siblings and in-laws and everyone else. I guess that’s a blessing if there ever was one. The good news is we figured out good gift ideas for almost everyone by now and have most of them bought.

We’ve gotten snow three times now in the last week, mixed with a bit of sleet and freezing rain. We have a good 6″ on the ground now, maybe more but not yet a foot. Also our front yard is full of giant logs. The tree people finally came to chop down our elm tree, but they only did half the job. They cleared away the minor branches, left all the big limbs on the ground and the trunk is still standing. It’s amazing how tall that tree is. Still over 100 feet without the crown. I wonder if I can sell the wood for lumber.

They’ve been canceling and rescheduling the kid’s event left and right cuz they’re all very skittish about the weather. Up in Buffalo they get three feet of snow and they just carry on, but not down here. Last night Lizzy had her Christmas show, rescheduled from Saturday, with her group Young at Arts. They’re very good and do fairly highbrow stuff like Benjamin Britten and Aaron Copeland, and some pop stuff too. Lizzy is in the a capella group, whose performance of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah was to me the highlight of the show. They had the whole hall spellbound. Michelle was in the Xmas pageant at ICS tonite, which was carols and the nativity story, very warm and festive. Saw lots of friends from school I haven’t seen a while.

Three more days until vacation. One more big demo deadline. We’ve all been extremely busy and can use a break. The big thing I’ve had to let slide is my ongoing recoding project. Over the weekend I finally finished tracking Is It Safe?, adding some backing vocals. I have three songs pretty much ready for mixing: Is It Safe?, Now and Forever, and Black Swan. In addition I have three older songs that I want to tweak/remix: Rocket to the Moon, Sea of Tranquility, and Karn Evil 9, 2nd Impression. This will give me an album side, with the ELP tune as a bonus track. My goal is to have this done by the new year and start in on a batch of new tunes in January.