The End

And in the end...

A lot of times I think about the present and think about how it is the end. The end of what? The end of various things, from trivial matters to big, important matters. The end of a jam session, hard day of retail, a day off, a day, a year, a decade, twenty years, thirty years. A life.

I was pretty sad the other day when I found out that Ginger Baker, drummer for Cream, the second rock supergroup after the Beatles had died. He was eighty years old. He lived a full life. Yet it still got to me. Ginger has always been my favorite rock and roll drummer. Before he was in Cream, he played jazz and blues gigs with Jack Bruce. I've seen him on video playing very good straight-ahead jazz drumming styles, something akin to Elvin Jones, Buddy Rich, and Art Blakey, the best of the best in the genre. 

Ginger's death made me think of a lot of other things that have come to an end. My best friend at work got transferred to another store, a promotion for him. We still hang out but a lot less often because his work is a lot farther, and his hours have changed. On top of that, a very good friend of mine seems to be too busy to hang out. The solitude of my home life has been removed due to a new housemate. My attitude about playing open mics has changed. Sometimes I'm just not feeling it and end up not going after practicing said songs to be performed. What's the deal? 

Sometimes I even go to the extremes of going through all my intellectual reading pursuits, discussing it with people in public, and with friends, and think to myself, "What's the point? Will anyone ever care about Littgenstein's Brown and Blue Books? Heidegger's Being and Time? Descartes? The Tale of Genji? A Distant Mirror? Floating Worlds?" The obvious answer is that it might not matter if they don't care because I care, that's the only thing that matters in a sense. Of course I don't mean this in selfish way, rather, so many people are so intellectually bankrupt they wouldn't care to discuss philosophy or literature. But that's subject for another discourse. 

Things change. People change. We have to keep on going, moving on, keep on grooving. The road we travel is a solo path even if you have a wife or girlfriend. Friends are great company but I've found that most of my friends, who are mostly younger than me, are a lot more arrested than myself, meaning, that most of our hangouts consist of me babysitting in a way. It's a sad realization. At first it was, a farce, now tis but a tragicomedy. That's a Marx quote, one of my favorites. 

Now we get to the crux of the matter. Everything you love will be gone one day. Enjoy everything you can and live with no regrets. Even just living life one year ago with the different dynamics is something I miss dearly.

Everything changes but in the end the song remains the same.

Purple Haze [Live]

Here's a live rendition of Purple Haze, played and sung by yours truly. With the Petie's Place open mic house band. Petie's Place is a bar in Tarzana, CA that hosts open mic sessions every Wednesday night. This is the first time I've ever done Purple Haze live. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/purple-haze

Orlando Figueroa-guitar, vocals
Art-bass
Jim X-drums 
?-keyboard

Blues Concert

On Sunday, October 28th I went to the b.l.u.e.s bar in Lincoln Park, Chicago. We saw this cool blues band, the Billy Flynn band. Flynn is this older white gentlemen with glasses, who plays a mean blues guitar. He played this semi-hollow body Epiphone or Gibson that had a vibrato arm, whammy bar on it. He had another guitar playing primarily rhythm guitar but took a few solos, a bassist, and a drummer laying down the beat. 

The second guitar player was really good, although his solos weren't nearly as unique or characteristic as Flynns'. The drummer played the same beats for most songs. The bassist had a great tone, playing an Ernieball music man bass. They played a lot of what I would call Chicago blues, meaning that electric city blues with influences from BB King, Albert King, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker, that unique city blues sound. 

Flynn's voice sounds nearly identical to aging Eric Clapton's voice, but I think Flynn is much more nuanced and careful with his guitar licks than say Clapton, who probably plays a lot more than this guy, a Chicago native. A lot of the songs were blues standards but a lot of them were also originals or songs going back to the 50s or 60s that were done by the greats of the blues tradition. 

The b.l.u.e.s bar is this small hole in the wall. Its even smaller and crappier than the bar I perform at open jams here in California. The mens room didn't have a lock, so that was kind of unexpected. The place is quite great though. The cover charge for the show was only $7 and there's no drink minimums. I did buy a Stella Artois which tasted great. There was maybe about 10 people there, the smallest audience I've ever seen for a concert. Well, this was a Sunday night in a college area so that's not too surprising.

I went to a classical and jazz concert during my trip to Chicago. I had to do a blues concert just to see three different genres, plus Chicago is a blues city, it would've been wrong not do see some great live blues. Flynn's guitar playing was inspirational, it takes me back to the roots of my playing, rock and blues. Sometimes all you need is one note to make a difference. 

Chicago blues! 

Hey Joe, Musical Update

Hello ladies and gentlemen how has life been treating you all? Life has been great for me. I've been really refining my jazz guitar chops. Unfortunately the metal band I was in broke up, now its just me and the drummer still jamming together. Yesterday I jammed with a jazz drummer and we're going to keep getting together to work on standards. He said he didn't want to do a band with me but that he wants to continue jamming. His reasoning? Said I have to work more on my time, especially my swing feel. 

That was a bummer but I think I'm going to take this opportunity to play with a real jazz drummer and improve my chops, particularly my swing feel and time in general. The metronome has become a true friend now. 

I've improved a lot and my music mentor, a new music composer named Frank Abbananti (find his music https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=labor+studies+cd+baby) has been teaching me music from across the country, via email. He's taught me many things about chord voicings, music theory, and practicing to become better in general. We exchange email often and I think about everything he says as if we were in an academic setting. 

He sent me a new music (avant-garde) piece meant for me to perform on electric guitar with distortion. I played through it today a couple times and my dad said it sounds like Robin Trower if he did new music. Pretty great compliment from pops. He's going to send me more pieces to work on and perform and my goal is to record it for my Soundcloud. 

In addition, he said the next time I go to Chicago I can perform these pieces with him on a concert. 

Anyways, why am I sitting here when I should be practicing?! 

But before you go check out this cover of Hey Joe, the guitar solo was especially inspired. Dig the Jeff Beck reference at the end of the tune!

 https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/hey-joe 

Jazz fusion pioneer Larry Coryell dead at 73

The other day I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and found out Larry Coryell had passed away. He died Sunday in Manhattan, at the age of 73. He died of heart failure in his hotel room. He had just been playing some shows at the Iridium in Midtown on Friday and Saturday. In this post I not only wanted to pay honor and respect to a great guitar player and jazz musician but also to shine light on his importance in the jazz and rock world.

He bridged the gap between jazz and rock in the sixties. He played on an album with John Mclaughlin, Chick Corea, and other leaders of the jazz rock fusion era that would go on to create great fusion with Miles Davis on the legendary Bitches Brew album. That early fusion record he did was an early staple of what would come later in jazz rock fusion, which would later develop into many forms. One of them being smooth jazz, jazz-funk, and more.

The other era of importance for Larry was when he did trio performances with Paco De Lucia and John Mclaughlin. This can easily be found on Youtube. In the video performances you can see Larry struggling a bit. It was drug addiction that unfortunately lead to him being replaced by Al Di Mieola for this legendary triple acoustic guitar team attack.

His most important band was a fusion group called 11th House. After that he focused on acoustic guitar. He switched off between fusion, straight ahead jazz, and acoustic for the rest of his career. Honestly I haven't heard anything new from him since I first found out about that trio acoustic guitar recording. But his musical importance in the jazz and jazz rock fusion world can't go unnoticed.

He was also a hell of a guitar player and a great jazz musician.

Rest in peace Larry. Jazz will keep on going strong thanks to great musicians like you. 

BB King and guitar music

     Today was a long day at work but on my lunch break I turned on PBS and there was a BB King documentary on. It was fitting for me because lately I've been listening to a lot of great guitar music. And in addition, its black history month, and who better to celebrate than BB King. We just lost him recently in 2015, he's safe, and he just might have been the greatest blues musician of all time.
     What I really like about BB is his guitar playing. His vibrato sings so sweetly and his guitar tone is so light, smooth, and jazzy. He's the most jazzified blues guitarist I've ever heard. He adds a lot of chromatic notes into his lines and its more interesting stuff than what other blues guitarists were doing. It sounds like BB listened to a lot of jazz at some point. For one thing he plays a semi-hollow body Gibson guitar and that gives him a big round tone that is more typical for a modal jazzer than a blues man. It was great to see a documentary detailing all of BB's accomplishments and seeing that his memory is still with us. Long live the King!
     Lately, I've been listening to a lot of great guitar music. John McLaughlin, Eric Johnson, and Robben Ford. This guy that comes to my work also told me to check out Mark Knofler's live version of Sultans of Swing .I'll have to check that out sometime but I've heard that Knofler is a phenomenal guitar player. I gotta say that I really dig Robben Ford's guitar style. He seems jazzy yet he plays such simple sounding stuff at the same time. Its a very interesting style where he never overplays. He's an interesting picker and at one point early in his career he played with Miles Davis. Listening to John McLaughlin has been a blast. I heard a while back that he had an album called Black Light that just came out but I haven't gotten it yet. I will get it because I'm tired of just listening to stuff on youtube, pandora, and soundcloud. I need new albums! I've already got a super big collection full of great stuff (mostly jazz, rock, and metal) and it wouldn't hurt to get more.
     In addition to guitar music, I've been listening to a lot of game music. I love the music selection from Smash 4, its just awesome! I particularly love the music from Metroid, Fire Emblem, Midgar stage, Legend of Zelda, Mario Bros themes, and Dream Land stage theme. I love it all really haha. I really like the idea of playing video game songs and turning them into jazz standards with interesting chord changes and voicings. Think of how awesome that would be to play that live!  Music has always been that one constant in my life. As Frank Zappa said,"music is the best."

Michael Landau Group at the Baked Potato

     Saw a pretty cool concert tonight at the Baked Potato. This is my third time there. This wasn't as good as the last show I saw there, but still better than the first show. I saw the Michael Landau Group, which consists of Michael Landau on guitar, Reggie Hamilton on bass, and Gary Novak on drums. I gotta say first of all that Landau is a great guitar player but I can see that most of his skills come from being a session player, and that perhaps he doesn't really have much of a career going for him in terms of the performer context. The one thing that surprised me was that he has such an amazing rhythm section, why don't they get to play any solos? The obvious answer is because Landau is the leader but with a bass player and drummer that good, its a bit wrong not to feature them. The style of music they play is more akin to blues-rock and progressive-rock, but most of what they played was based on the blues. There are moments where he adds some spice to the chords, maybe playing some slightly jazz sounding chords but I wouldn't call Landau a jazz guitarist. I noticed his favorite chord is a simple bluesy 9th chord. However, Reggie Hamilton sounds like a jazz bass player to me, I could see him playing jazz fusion or standards. Same with the drummer. When it comes to improvisation I'd say that Landau is great when it comes to great rock and blues licks, and he adds a lot of chromatic jazzy licks in there as well, but his improvisation only goes so far. However, he does have his moments and those moments were amazing! There were times when he pulled off these great blues licks that sounded just like stuff Jeff Beck would play. Another great thing about Landau's guitar playing is that he has a great guitar tone. He sounds like Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Johnson, all great players with great tone. Do I think he has his own sound and personality? Sound, probably not. But I do think he has his own personality and unique sound as a player, one of the all time great achievements in being a musician. Part of his own voice is that he rarely ever 'goes for it' when he's playing solos. By that I mean he never gets into a show off-y kind of thing, he's very relaxed and he's always holding back until just the perfect moment to cut loose with a flurry of blues based licks. It's actually amazing how he never overplays. If anything, he underplays, which me and my friend both agreed he did that.
     Now, let's talk about the rhythm section. Reggie Hamilton is an amazing bass player but he played much better bass just warming up before the show started testing out his 12-string bass with a huge neck. He played some jazz stuff on it but when it came to the band playing together, he was confined to simply playing root notes and background, not even really playing fills. He is another great example of not overplaying. But when you don't overplay to the point where everything you play is very simple, you run the risk of underplaying, which I felt happened for sure. I don't think regular people notice it that much but musicians can definitely tell. Its a shame because he sounded like a monster bass player when he was testing out some jazz stuff on his 12-string bass but when he was playing it with the band he was just playing single note stuff. A little underwhelming but he did have a great sound. It's hard to say who he sounds like as a bass player because I'm not familiar with enough great black bass players to say who's who, but he does sound like a funky bass player from the 70's, that's for sure. I think Hamilton is probably the most talented musician in the band, especially judging from the jazz stuff he was playing just testing out his bass before the show started.
     Next, Gary Novak is a good driving drummer. Again, he kind of underplays. I would say he had maybe one moment where he sort of kind of had a drum solo, but I don't think I can call it a drum solo because it was just a flurry of great fills, but it only lasted like 30 seconds. They could've let him stretch it out a little bit longer than that! His style is really good. He's a great all around drummer and he can even do a bit of that fusion stuff, he sounded great on the more moody jazzy sounding stuff, especially his cymbal work. I could see him working in a fusion context for sure, he would probably sound better than doing simple blues-rock stuff. He sticks to the rhythm mainly, and he doesn't really add too many fills, a great drummer for a leader who doesn't want a a drummer who shows off. He was really good.
     Lastly, it was a bit hard to enjoy the show because I was standing in the back. However, I was able to see all of the musicians clearly, especially the guitar so that was cool and satisfying for the money I paid. It's become a hang out place for me lately, but it isn't cheap. It was $25 at the door plus 2 drinks that came out to $14, not exactly cheap for me because I only work part time. However, it is worth the money and I did enjoy it. Even my friend had a good time. The sound quality was terrific too by the way. Everything in the mix was clear and sounded 'tasty', as they say. One thing I have to say is that every tune he played sounded the same. They all sounded like some kind of blues-rock jam with some quiet jazzy parts. At that point, he's not really playing songs, he's just playing an outline of a song just for the purpose of extended solos. Nothing wrong with that because I love solos, but this isn't really a band that plays 'songs'. Every time I go to these concerts I feel like I'm learning something on the guitar, and as a musician in general. Came for the fun with friends. Left with some great blues-rock guitar sounds in my head.