Live Jazz Muzak! 12/15/22! Saxophone and drums!

 Good evening, 

Here is today's jam session recorded on 12/15/22, featuring Jason Tomas on alto saxophone and Orlando Figueroa on drums. Usually I play guitar but I decided to switch it up to add some spice to my life. Songs in order are cminor blues improv, blue monk by t.monk, autumn leaves by jerome kern, and Spanish blues improv. Tomas played a Selmer alto saxophone, I played a limited edition pearl snare, kibaga practice pad, and a meinl cymbal with sticks and brushes. 

Recorded on laptop via Facebook then transferred to YouTube 

image ai generated, Replicant 

Live Jazz Trio! 9/14/2022!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC4eRvDbS88&t=218s&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RhMMStW7-8&t=1715s&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

Live Jazz Trio, recorded live from Facebook on 9/14/2022

Feather Robley on percussion

Jason Tomas on alto saxophone

Orlando Figueroa on 7-string guitar 

Thank You

Live guitar jam! 7/7/2022!

Howdy, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU-1HPMk3SU&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

This is a livestream from yesterday. I was suppose to jam with my friend Jason Tomas, who plays saxophone, but there was some kind of mix up, so I ended up jamming half the set jazz improv, and the rest more rock and roll. Thanks, enjoy!

Peace and Love

Live Performance! Jazz! 5/25/2022!

Hello, everyone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3NyHISwV8g&t=1097s&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

This is a livestreamed performance from yesterday featuring Jason Tomas on alto saxophone and yours truly, Orlando Figueroa on guitar. We played some improvisations and jazz standards. Take a listen to the music, leave a comment, and make sure to like and subscribe to my channel. 

Thank you!

Live Jazz Performance! 2/24/22!

https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/503683607883879

Orlando Figueroa, Guitar

Jason Tomas, Alto Saxophone

Recorded on a brand new Fender Squier with better tuners on them, given to me for free from a customer at work, going through my Marshall avt 275 on the clean channel setting. This was recorded yesterday, 2/25/22. Enjoy, thanks for listening. 

Live Jazz Performance! 2/17/22! Livestream!

https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/1141118989992125

This performance was done with a Fender Squire guitar that a customer from work gave me. Cheers, here's to a happy, healthy 2022! 

Live Performance 12/9/21!

https://www.facebook.com/100004840297787/videos/575826930149393

Good evening ladies and gents, 

Please take a listen and watch to our latest live performance recorded today, 12/9/2021, posted above. I did one thing that was noticeably different from our usual performances, a lot of times after playing with the pick I would lose the pick and just go pick and fingers for a more pianistic approach and softer sounds with the rhythms. This allowed Jason to stretch out more than usual, sounding almost like Eric Dolphy in a few of his solos. 

Thanks for listening

Happy holidays 

Live Jazz Performance! 12/2/21!

Happy Friday ladies and gentlemen, 

Check out our live performance from yesterday https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/607302963652309

We didn't play during Thanksgiving week and here we are back at it again. Things to note on this particular performance, I was more feeling/thinking more in the realms of rhythm, trying to think of the guitar as more of a drum, rather than a guitar sometimes when I'm strumming chords. My solos still go off into Mars here a lot, but my main focus was keeping that steady pulse. 

Thanksgiving week was tiring at work but I managed to get a lot of sleep that week and even today. Life is good! Happy holidays to you and yours. 

God Bless

Your Most Humble Guitar Player, 

O. Figueroa 

Live Music Performance 11/18/21!

 https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/884509442267455

Good evening, here's another live music from myself, Orlando Figueroa on guitar, and Jason Tomas on alto saxophone. 

I used my birthday guitar from my mother for this particular performance. I've used it before for our sessions, but this second time the tone was dialed in just right. There was a better bass sound, and I was able to get a lot of tonal range on certain chords in good moments using the tone selector switch. The guitar itself is a $160 guitar, as cheap as it gets, its a Rogue Rocketeer, something out of like a Sears catalogue in the 80s, but man, this guitar is actually good. Check out the tone. I use a basic Marshall avt275 amp on a clean setting, no pedals. 

For this particular performance I was focusing on my rhythm chords and really going all out on the solos in terms of off the cuff phrasing, [as I think I was trying to do lol]. Anyways, there was some great moments here, in between a lot of comping. 

Gracias por escuchar 

Jazz jam session 11/4/21!

https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/474208377194713

Here's footage from my jam session today. Featuring Jason Thomas on alto saxophone and Orlando Figueroa on guitar. 

Jason and I have been jamming for about a year now. At the moment we've been playing on my balcony and attracting all the neighborhood with our duo instrumental straight ahead jazz sessions. We play once a week for an hour but its been consistent enough for us to develop together musically. 

My jazz guitar style has improved a lot, and I've learned a lot about chord voicings, taking solos, and how to tell a story with a solo. 

In addition, another aspect of the music that I've been adding is the nature of the feelings of the moment. The time of day is a factor, my mood or attitude is a factor, Jason and his feelings are another, these sorts of variables that have been added to the music is something I've learned from other kinds of improvisational music, like world music, especially Indian ragas. 

At this point in the pandemic things have become much more strict. At Starbucks today, I had to show my vaccination card to sit down and dine in. I've decided to quit playing video games and spend my time focused on guitar, reading, and writing. 

Gracias por eschuchar. Bonne Nuit.

second keyboard performance

Hello,

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1710314755806518&id=100004840297787&anchor_composer=false

Here is my second keyboard performance with Jason Thomas on alto saxophone. Better performance and better sound quality on the livestream. Thanks, enjoy.

Hasta luego

Keyboard performance

 Hello, 

Today, for the first time ever, I livestreamed and performed on the keyboard in a jam session with my friend, alto saxophone player Jason Thomas. Orlando Figueroa on keyboard and noise. We played a minor blues, Blue Monk, Autumn Leaves, and improvised after the tunes. 

Enjoy, thanks for listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe to my YouTube Channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWcw8ouc3o

Jazz Music Live Stream

Hello all,

Here's a jam session from today, this afternoon. We just played improv, straight-ahead jazz style, as I know how to play it on the guitar. I've been getting more and more into jazz guitar, and Jason's alto saxophone playing has really pushed me. The key is blending in the guitar with the saxophone. 

Thanks for watching and listening. Have a great day! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyRVeekA-yw

The Importance of Rest

One of the things I, as well as others, overlook is the importance of rest. We live in a 24/7 news hour frenzy where new things are happening all the time. Including when most of the population is asleep in America during the late evenings. 


One of the things that have helped me to deal with the stress of today's turmoil is making sure I get enough rest. I've even experimented with changing my sleeping patterns. I'm mostly a late night sleeper. I like to go to bed at 2-3 am most days and wake up around 1030 am. For about a week I tried a morning schedule where I went to bed as early as 930 pm and woke up at 5 am. As you can imagine, if you're a night person, no matter how much sleep you get, you will not like being a morning person.

Anyways, I can't stress enough the amount of turmoil going on in the country right now. I believe that most of my friends, peers, and acquaintances have been lulled into a false sense of security. The reality is that COVID-19 is still running rampant, killing people every day, and the protests while itself is a good thing, is actually bringing out all the provocateurs and racists to the streets, where more black and brown people will get hurt by said racists as well as cops. What's a guy to do? 

Well, for starters make sure you stay informed and that you vote. Stacy Abrams had a good op-ed in the NYTimes yesterday about how important the vote is. Don't forget that. Read through a variety of news periodicals online and not just your favorites. Take part in political talks on Facebook if you like to get your point across to a lot of people. Always be aware that we are not safe right now, nobody is really safe from COVID right now, nor is anyone safe from police brutality, especially if you're a black or brown person or protester. If you aren't worried about anything you are completely oblivious. Not everybody has the luxury of being oblivious because we work hard jobs, have rent, and have family to support here or abroad. 

Remember those white people who stood on state capitol buildings because they wanted to go back to work during the height of the first wave of the pandemic? [They were carrying AR assault rifles, some of them.] That's what oblivious looks like. Protesting something so trivial in the middle of a pandemic. Now, some people have compared that to the protests that are taking place now, protesting the brutal murder of George Floyd. To that, I say it's not the same thing at all, yet the risk is the same, if not worse. The problem is that we have a serious pandemic sweeping the globe but nobody seems to take it seriously enough because if they caught COVID they had a very mild case or they don't know anyone that's died from the virus. Trust me, if everyone had a personal friend, family member, or acquaintance that died from COVID, every American would take this virus so seriously that we would've already quelled the disease like China, South Korea, and Japan. 

Start me up, I never stop. We are not like computers. We all need to make sure we get plenty of rest. The body must be shut down and restarted like a computer every day. Some of us need more sleep than others. I would say the average for me is 7 1/2 to 8 hours but I've done well with six hours as well. Although that isn't ideal. 

Today I had a lot of errands to run. I left the house at 1030 am and got back home around 5 pm. I was so tired from all the running around that I slept from 5 pm to 11 30 pm almost straight, waking up but not even getting out of bed. Obviously, for most people this would disrupt their day, they would fall behind on their plans and errands, not contact their friends and family, it would cause them to stay up much later, and overall they wouldn't like the experience. 

However, although I know that sleeping the day away isn't ideal I also recognize that I needed it and that sleep is more important than ever nowadays. Think about how important sleep is for our mental health and well being. Without sleep or only a little sleep, we would all be mindless zombies. I missed my usual daily activities today but in the end, I was greatly rewarded because I got enough rest, I feel great, and I'm fully recharged for whatever the night brings me as well as tomorrow's morning. 

Sleepytime, time, all the time. I can't stress enough how important sleep is. Most of the time when I'm irritated, annoyed, or stressed out its mostly because I'm too tired and need sleep. With all this chaos going on in American cities right now, the pandemic ravaging the land, the highest unemployment numbers in record history, and a possible rigged election already in the works for 2020, I would say that this is the most stressful time period of my young life. The kicker is that it could only get worse. 

The second wave of COVID could hit much harder and cause a longer and more extreme shutdown and quarantine. The protests and police brutality could fizzle. They could pass measures that attempt to reduce police power but in the long run they might never defeat systemic racism and the brutalization by cops unto black and brown Americans. Trump could win reelection and the United States could become an even more diffusive firepot led by a despotic Nero. 

So sleep it off. Tomorrow never knows. Keep everything in your memory and your records because everything going on right now is particularly noteworthy. This is a historic time period. Always be skeptical, always be questioning. Don't focus on the noise being made by idiots or people dumber than you. The future is you. The world outside is important but so are you and your own personal life. In order to be at your best, you need rest.

How Social Media Propels and Fuels Our Ignorance

Social media is a godsend in today's day and age. Think about it this way. I'm not a paid gigging writer but because I write daily on here my ideas are shown to countless thousands of people. Without it, I don't know if I would still be doing the blog. Would it be worth it if nobody read my writing?

Social media is important. But there comes a time when we have to see it for what it is and realize that deep down, social media propels and fuels our ignorance.

I'm a smart guy. I work in retail where most of the workers and bosses aren't so smart. I'm a big fish in a small pond in that aspect. When I go online on Facebook and interact with countless friends, peers, or even acquaintances, it's like my job times a million. What I mean to say is that intelligence drops down and everything else turns up to eleven. You can now see my point clearly. 

The problem is that social media has become a cesspool for bots, scammers, provocateurs, and hackers. Some of these are very easy to spot, others much less so. Most people on Facebook go on there to have a good time; they see what's new with friends and family, they like a few posts, they may or may not post something themselves, and then they continue on with their lives. But other people, myself included, often spend a lot of time on Facebook, not really sure what we're looking for, but we know it when we get it, that shot of dopamine; oh somebody liked my stuff! 

Of course, that's only one way of seeing Facebook. The other side of Facebook that I'm seeing right now is a lot more sinister than what it was originally intended for. After the brutal murder video of George Floyd was shown on social media, it's clear to say that pretty much everyone has seen it. Unless you live under a rock. But it's already having a bad ripple effect. Now there are pictures and videos of white people posing with their knee on their friends' necks, smiling, in a mockery of the murder of George Floyd. 

On top of that, the nationwide protests have sowed much discord on social media. My friends are my friends. Meaning that most of them are well to do, college-educated, professional people who, although they've never been brutalized by a cop before, they stand in solidarity with black and brown people and support them in the cause for more rules and regulations to stop these murders of black and brown men by police officers. It's what you would expect. But, at the same time, I think that just agreeing to stand with black people in and of itself isn't a solution, rather it's almost like a pat on the back, "my people systematically destroyed your race, and I'm sorry, but this is the most I can do," I get it. We get it, white people, you realize that the white power structure is rigged against blacks and you're sorry for it. But there's only so much I can take of my white friends posting BLM memes. The truth is that to be a true ally of black people you have to go a much farther mile, one that most white people wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. You can't just protest right now and say, "I'm an honorary black man now." It doesn't work like that.  

So I've seen a lot of that. And I've also seen a lot from the alt-right and conservative side as well. Now, I don't have too many alt-right friends but I have many conservative friends who are older than me. In terms of the alt-right, I've seen a lot of political propaganda supporting Trump and justifying the brutalization by police to protesters. I see a lot of young people that are Trump supporters trolling the left in posts, asking them questions, about facts. When has Trump or his base ever cared about facts? The reality is that it is Trump's actions that warrant his removal from office. Although he never tells the facts either. He always lies about everything. "I didn't hide in that bunker from the protesters, I was inspecting the bunker, I inspect bunkers." 

As far as my older conservative friends go, I can sometimes see their point of view. They're business owners and some of them even protected their businesses with guns out on the streets where looting took place. They support Trump no matter what but some of them also think that there's no right or left, they're both corrupt, but for whatever reason they still support Trump. Most of these people are in their 40s/50s, they have money, and some of them are musicians. The musicians lean more heavily towards the libertarian idealogy like the 1970s never ended. 

When you interact with all of that going on, as a real, legitimate person, you see that's all rather a waste of your time and efforts unless you want to come to some sort of understanding. When someone takes the time to agree with you on something they just read it off for a second, either react to it or don't, and then leave it forever in a vacuum. The people that really interact the most are the provocateurs, the ones that want to rile you up, the internet trolls that the internet is based on.    

Not to mention the countless articles that are distributed on social media. This is what people construe as facts. But the sad reality is that most of the articles I see shared on social media aren't from fact worthy websites. In fact, they're from crappy websites run on the old javascript engine, where there are ads in the news articles. Has nobody on social media ever heard of the guardian, the LAtimes, the NYTimes, or the daily news? How about WSJ? Nope, I've hardly ever seen articles from any of those reputable periodicals. But I see plenty of news from Buzzfeed. Some from Slate and Politico. Those last two aren't bad but still.

The fact that people use these illegitimate sources to prove their points and to show off facts, shows that we live in an era where facts don't matter, as these sources often report fake news, false facts, like the President himself. It's like 24/7 Fox News. This is a grievous blow to the historical accuracy of this time period we're all living in and to real journalism, which still takes place sometimes by people like Rachel Maddow and the Washingtonpost staff journalists like Robert Costa, Phillip Ruecker, and Ashley Parker. 

Moving forward, I think we all have to be a lot smarter when using social media. Things have changed so drastically from 2016 to 2020. Remember, social media was used by Russian hackers to help get Trump elected. Is that the kind of election we want to continue to have in the future? So we have to be more vigilant in detecting falsehoods from shared articles, proving, or disproving facts. Not only does the article have to report the facts but they have to get every detail of the facts right otherwise their merit is diminished and supports their enemies. You got that?  

This is a difficult thing to write about. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who agree with me on this or have similar thoughts on the topic. Personally, I only log into Facebook a couple times a day. After checking it out for five minutes I log off. By logging off it forces me to reset and think about if I really want to go back again and for what purpose. The times have not been kind to social media. And although the movement of the protests has been spearheaded by social media, remember that it was the widespread sharing of the brutal murder that sparked all this unrest in the first place. There was an anti-lynching bill today. Well, that brutal murder video was a lynching for the entire world to see. The internet has become an angry mob, but to what purpose, only time will tell.  I'm hopeful that positive things can happen out of all this. 

Lastly, I want to conclude by saying that one of the problems with social media is that your friends agree with you and those that don't, well they aren't your friends and you unfriend them because they're Trump supporters, too far left, or too far right, and not centrist enough. That's why I actually like having conservatives on my friend's list because I don't want to only interact with people who agree with me. To understand the complexity of the situation, you have to sometimes put yourself in another person's shoes, so if I can see why this 40-year-old businessman supports Trump no matter what, maybe I can learn more about what makes him or her tick, and come to an understanding between us, between them and the left, and the world. It's all about understanding. Of course, I disagree with them but when I see their points they make in favor of or against certain issues, I can see the slips and cracks where their reasoning is faulty, and show them the reason why they're wrong, explaining it to them in a way that we don't have to fight or attack each other, but recognize each other as fellow Americans with the right to share and express our ideas.

Sometimes you're being attacked not because you're black but because you're the smartest guy in the room. Always have friends that are not just allies, but are as smart as, or smarter than yourself, you want more of those kinds of friends. This ensures that if you make a blunder, they can always swoop in and save the day, whether it be a workplace conflict, business, or even social media. Imagine you make a great point on a post, only to have your much dumber associate tarnish it with some inane comment? 

Coders

Coders, The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

Coders is the latest book I read. Its about computer programmers. What it takes to be a programmer, what programmers actually do, which could be blue-collar work, hackers, etc. The book takes a much darker tone at the ending chapters about the rise of AI in modern society. 

Coders is written by Clive Thompson, a longtime contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a monthly columnist for Wired. A tech writer. 

The book starts out with a chapter titled The Software Update That Changed Reality. This, of course, is Facebook. Clive goes on to talk about how the Like button feature came to be. Its interesting but the Like feature itself is kind of a dumb feature. Then there are The Four Waves of Coders which basically tells the history of coders starting from the female lead 1960s to the rise of the nerdy male dominated field programmer in the 1980s, to today, where the field is being filled with just slightly more women and minorities. 

Myspace is mentioned as an important happening in the early 2000s but isn't given nearly enough attention. Likewise, gaming is only mentioned in the Neopets context until the very end of the book. Not saying much about gaming makes this book a little lacking, because for the most part gaming has become the most popular entertainment system in the world, surpassing movies even in revenue and sales. That makes it worthy of a entire chapter in this book.

There's a great chapter called 10x, Rock Stars, and the Myth of Meritocracy which basically states that there's a myth of the rock star programmer, who by himself, is better than 10 or 20 coders. Surprising some of the best programs and software have been written by only a one or two person team. This rock star myth can be true but Thompson goes to lengths to state that this "better than thou" attitude 'great programmers' are hard to deal with, and besides, most companies need a team of programmers to do their work. Sometimes its difficult to get these rock stars to work well with the less sophisticated co-worker.

The last couple of chapters gets more philosophical. The Rise of AI, Scale, Trolls, and Big Tech. These are the more dystopian aspects of the book. How Facebook got used by Russian bots to swing American perceptions during the 2016 election, possibly swaying favor to Trump. How Twitter is used by white nationalists to spread hate. Machine learning algorithms have taken a big role in modern society but there are inherent biases in therein. When Google tried to create a face recognition software it scanned a picture of a black person and labeled it as 'gorilla', which is, of course, laughable because you realize how incredibly machines and people are but its also horribly racist. There are some leaders in tech who think if the real world is racist then shouldn't these things reflect that? Of course, this brings a lot of ethics into the equation. Which is the reason why we need more women and minorities in tech. The general consensus is that having white programmer dudes create everything we use is a bad idea because they've made mistakes like not thinking of the rise of hate on their platforms, like how Twitter ended up being used by white nationalists and such. Programmers tend to be pretty mixed with their political beliefs. Some are libertarian but for the most part, accept the democratic policy. There aren't many conservative programmers. A lot of them think government should get out of the way but still apply social policies. They see through their work that a person shouldn't be shunned because of their race, gender, sexuality, rather by the strength of their code. This is a good thing. 

The book ends with Blue-collar Coding. At the very end, he mentions how the creators of the videogame Minecraft wanted to create a game that was fun. But kids were doing more interesting things with Minecraft than what the creators expected. Kids were learning how to build all kinds of grand buildings and displays using the game's lego block-style engine. At the end of the day the coders of the future might not all come from 4-year college institutions, but rather milennials/middle age folks looking to change their careers, young gamer nerds that want to code their own games, and people who do it a lot in their spare time for fun. In some ways, the programmer of the past resembles that of the programmer today because in both contexts the programmer's credentials don't matter, only great coding skills. It's one of the only jobs where you can find an employee with a college degree working with another employee who has no degree. Of course, if a programmer was trying to get a job at Google that college degree wouldn't hurt. 

No doubt this is a pretty boring nonfiction book not nearly as exciting as my science fiction novels I go through. However, this book got me more interested in programming, learning some programming languages, maybe trying to create my own games and apps, or find a job where I can tinker around writing code in whatever context. There's a future in programming and I'm in front of the computer a lot anyways so I might as well look into it. I also find it fun and exciting. Another book that is similar to this one is Steven Levy's Hackers, a very good book about the early computer revolution going back to the 1950s and into the 1980's Apple II computer and it even has extensive chapters on videogames like the first MMO [massively multiplayer online game], Richard Garriott's Ultima Online. That book was very engaging and exciting whereas this one was more informational. Now I have a very good idea of what it takes to be a programmer: good knowledge and experience of the languages and error messages, logical thinking skills, patience, ability to deal with frustration, and the ability to find and fix bugs, an act known as debugging. 

This is a new book from 2019 May. Definitely worth the read if you're into tech and interested in programming.

Legends facebook page

Check out this Facebook page here. This is a page dedicated to gaming that my friend and I are running. He's the admin and I'm a moderator at the moment. So far things are just starting out for the page. We need to get more likes and if you like what you see feel free to comment. We're also open to criticism and any ideas that could make the page better. For one thing I want to get more video gameplay in high quality. Thanks for checking it out.

Guitar, Music, Prince

     Let me start off first by saying its good to be back writing after not writing since the 16th. For me that's a long break. I was going to bed earlier and because I only write at night, work on the blog just wasn't getting done. Back to bidness as usual as they say.
     Lately things have been going great. I've been hanging out w/ friends, playing a lot of smash, and I even took up playing Yugioh again. I haven't played Yugioh since I was in middle school. Its a great game but there's not much complexity to it and a lot of the cards are super overpowered. Basically its the opposite of Magic the Gathering but I still like it. I bought myself a cyber dragon starter deck and I've had a lot of fun playing against my friends. We're just a couple of grown ass men playing Yugioh. Straight up nerds XD.
     In addition, I've been keeping up with anime. I started watching Yugioh GX which is the second Yugioh saga of the series. I think there's like two other series of that that are more recent. I just wanted to say that even though I love Facebook and social media I'm beginning to get bored by the feed and all the lame boring crap. I'm tired of the cat videos and the stupid memes people post. I feel like even though I'm a blogger and I post about my posts and stuff, that my content isn't as lame as that other stuff I see all the time haha. Even though everybody and their grandma is a blogger I feel like some blogs are super fake. Read a random blog post online and you'll see what I mean. Not very many real people out here. Anyways, what I really wanted to talk about was music related stuff.
     I've been getting back into practicing guitar. Today I even had a marathon session where I played for like 2-3 hours (w/ a break of course), I actually lost track of time because I was having so much fun. It was amazing! You know things are going great when every lick you play flows perfectly into the next. I didn't work on anything in particular or even play too much of any songs but I still had a blast. I just improvised in a free style. I've come to find that things sound really cool when I mix neo-classical metal shred licks with bebop and fusion lines. Its a nice little mix that sounds good on a clean toned guitar-mainly my Jackson, which has a super fast neck. I feel like if I just keep practicing a couple hours a day and organize my practice to work more on songs I would be on the right track. I haven't played or focused on the guitar for months now. A big part of it was the massive gaming time I was doing but I've learned how to balance it. "Time to tip the scales!" -Lucina
     In terms of listening music I've mostly been listening to a lot of rock and metal. But I'm still keeping up with some jazz as well. Saxophonist Henry Threadgill just got a Pulitzer Prize, so there's that. I'm a huge Threadgill fan so hearing him doing so good and getting recognized is great news. Even though I can't say I quite understand his music, Threadgill inspires me as a musician, peaking my intellectual avant-garde side of jazz being.
     Sad to say that Prince died. Although I haven't listened to much of Prince's catalog, just knowing how good he was as a guitar player makes his death a huge loss for the music community. He was one of the best rock and rollers of all time. His music went through other genres but I feel like he was Hendrix blues/rock guy at heart, especially when it came to his solos. My favorite memory of Prince was when I saw the George Harrison tribute concert on DVD and Prince played an amazing solo over While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Eric Clapton was once asked "what it was like being the best guitarist alive" and he said "I wouldn't know, ask Prince." 'Nuff said. Rest in peace Prince.

Link to twitter, facebook, and tumblr

There's tons of info on my facebook and I just started using twitter so there's less content on there. Enjoy!

https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150
https://twitter.com/fig_land
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/megasaxophone05