Siegfried comes to save Los Angeles

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

It's been a long time. Hello world. 

I've been okay. C'est la vie, as the French say. There's a lot going on in today's rapidly changing world. A lot of it is terrifying, especially for a 33 year old American male, but really, for anybody, the times they are a-change-in. 

We just came out of a terrible presidency by one of the worst people on the planet and Americans are still supporting him even to this day like he's God's gift to woman. America is becoming more and more totalitarian in every way, shape, and form, and believe me folks, its not just republicans who are Attila the Hun fans, it's democrats too. My work has cameras locked onto every cashier and in every aisle to make sure nobody steals anything. Sound familiar? 

On top of that there's record inflation, soaring gas prices, we can't afford rent, we can't afford groceries, our kids are continuously getting gunned down by madmen in schools, we can't afford children we already have, the climate has gone to the dogs, and the white people have decided to ban abortions but secretly allow their women to get abortion pills and stuff like that. Don't forget climate change. 

Covid isn't going away, and rather, is evolving faster than we can create vaccines for. The workforce doesn't quite know it yet, but they've been decimated by long covid and we don't know the full extent of the long term symptoms but one of them is being tired all the time and continuous brain fog. These victims can't even read a book, I'm afraid, they wouldn't have the attention span. On top of that, other countries are taking more control over the world and America has become a lesser. Trump made our country weak and Biden couldn't fix it. And now we're stuck. Interesting times. 

Companies are becoming less and less employee focused, even Union shops, and rather, instead, they've become more like sweat shops. Ironically, more like China. This has been happening since the American early days of the robber barons. 

Welcome to America, we're the gestapo now, and we support Atilla the Hun, and my name is Siegfried, I have blonde hair and blue eyes.

But seriously, what can one do with a mess like this one? 

There's nothing you really can do except vote Democrat for the Mid Terms. They're the lesser of the two evils, they at least attempt to do the right thing, although they're no angels either.

Part of the problem is that everybody is living in a separate world in this moment of time. Nobody reads the same news, nobody watches the same tv shows, nobody plays the same video games, nobody reads the same books, nobody can agree on anything, and most people aren't smart enough to take news, facts, and information and think for themselves, rather they believe what they hear and just naturally assume that's the way it is, that it is truth, that everything they see and hear is a fact. What happened to thinking for yourselves? 

I told my friends I take the bus in LA. They said, "Be careful! There's criminals on the bus who will rob you."

I said, "What criminals? Where? Did somebody rob you on the bus?"

They said, "No, but I just heard about it on the news."

Are they all really that scared? 

That's beside the point.

What we really need is a remote coalition government that isn't controlled by government, republicans, democrats, libertarians, socialists, communists, or our parents. We all need to come together to vote Democrat, a New Great Society, but only the true believers in the good are allowed in. Are you one of us? 

The end of the beginning. More work to be done tomorrow! 

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. 

Summertime 2021

How is life treating you? Well, things are getting better all the time, as the Beatles sang. It's summer, 2021, and life is pretty grand. I was left unscathed by COVID my whole time at work, and now I'm vaccinated as well, getting it early via my employment. 

Sometimes life feels like a jazz samba tune. You could say this is one of those times. 

I've been spending a lot of time reading books. A lot of science fiction, classics, philosophy, western canon. Jane Austen, Hegel, Hemingway, Sartre, Huxley, Joanna Russ, Robert Silverberg, Keith Roberts. The good stuff. Checkout my goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/56122996-og-space.

I still jam once a week, playing electric guitar, with my friend Jason Thomas on alto saxophone, you can find some of our recordings https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIrIXpTdHVM0VLWMB7Y84Hw. 

I've been on hiatus on writing lately because of the pandemic, and focusing more time to life, work, and people irl. 

Compare this post with summer of COVID post from last year, https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-summer-of-covid.html.

Crazy enough, I've made my own recorded documents about life since the day before the pandemic began, where I attended a punk rock show at the Maui Sugar Mill Saloon. You can find all the blogs, http://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html. At the time I jokingly referred to it as my plague journal, as I was reading books such as The Plague by Camus and The Decameron by Bocaccio. 

Now that COVID is supposedly ending soon in the US, I can't help but feel that things will never be the same. 

I listen to a lot of jazz and classical music nowadays. 

Peace and Love

Live Performance 2/3

Live performance on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, featuring Jason Thomas on alto saxophone and Orlando Figueroa on guitar. We played some jazz standards and did some improv. Sound is okay, not great, but the performance was a good one. It's a blessing to be able to livestream, record, and play music during a worldwide pandemic. Thank you for listening and stay safe. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_DERvGXm4o

Balcony Concert #1

Guten tag, 

Here's a livestream from two days ago that I finally uploaded from Facebook to YouTube, where it will hopefully get more views. We performed some standards and improvisation. We did the standards Freddie Freeloader, Blue Monk, Footprints, and Body and Soul, as well as a minor blues improv and improv based on a diminished chord. Orlando Miguel Figueroa on guitar and Jason Tomas on alto saxophone. 

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe to my YouTube channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifzXJhZ-55w

Live Performance 12/2/2020

This is a live performance from today, 12/2/2020, that took place from 430pm-530pm. Featuring myself, Orlando Miguel Figueroa on guitar and Jason Tomas on alto saxophone. We perform [in order], an untitled composition, Footprints, Freddie Freeloader, Blue Monk, a jam based on a diminished chord, and ending the set with Body and Soul. 

Watch the performance here, https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/1730748607096466

Thanks for listening and supporting our music. 

The modern improviser refuses to die! 

Jazz duo recordings [4/1]

Back again with more jazz duo recordings. I have two recordings that turned out sounding good. One thing to note is that on both of these cuts, my demenor was a somber one. The day before didn't go so well for me, and it shows in my playing. I think the attitude and/or spirit of the jazz musician isn't discussed as much as the music. It plays a big role.

As a result we ended up sounding not unlike something off the ECM, European jazz label. You hear these lush guitar arpeggios, and Jason [alto sax] is improvising over the top of it. I didn't really get into my typical straight ahead jazz guitar comping style. Instead I was rather subdued, and played back. 

Enjoy the tracks. 

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/going-home 
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/tune-up 

Update 1.04

     

     Hey, what's up everyone? This is just another short little update on what's been going on in my life lately. For one thing work has gotten to be very stressful, it hasn't been stressful at all until recently but I'll just have to deal with it in my own way-gaming, playing the guitar, and listening to fantastic music. Right now I'm enjoying the new Joe Satriani album called Supernova Shockwave. I gotta say that Satriani really does a great job of creating instrumental guitar anthems. His songs are short, punchy, poppy (but in a good way), melodic, and of course he shreds. On this album it looked like Satch was going more for different moods and styles on every type of song, it's really incredible and I've only heard the first two cuts. Apparently this is a concept album of sorts, but its instrumental-cool stuff Satch! That's his album cover on the top.
     Anyways, I just got reconnected to the Internet after being offline on my desktop for a couple days. It's nice being reconnected and back to PC gaming. PC master race guys, right? It's seriously great to be reconnected. I'll probably try to do a stream tomorrow, testing all my games streaming and checking out the quality of it. Hopefully it will be good quality and I'll be able to stream in my time off from work. I've done streaming before in the past but I think because I was connected wireless and the quality was bad, even for a game like Heroes of the Storm. Games I'm thinking about testing the stream on are Snes emulator games like Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and Chrono Trigger. But I'm also going to check out games like Starcraft II, Heroes of the Storm, Fallout New Vegas, and Bioshock. If this new internet can handle all those at 60 fps I'll be grateful and surprised. It should be able to technically because this internet is AT&T U-Verse, its supposed to be with fiberoptics and shit like that. I know the PC games I play don't exactly test out the latest graphics drivers on most high end PC's but these games I play are the most fun in my opinion. I'm still kind of new to PC gaming so I'm not all about the latest PC games like Witcher III, GTV V, and Batman Arkham Knight. I'm excited about testing the streaming potential today. I would've tested it out yesterday but I had a doctors appointment and didn't have much time left over for the day so I just relaxed, played some Diablo III, and went into work in the evening. Look out for when I tweet my streaming sessions on  twitter-https://twitter.com/fig_land. Also check out my Twitch page at twitch.tv/megaman1597.
     On a side note, the summer is almost over here in California and boy am I glad that is! I am tired of the heat of California's summers. Sometimes it was over 100 degrees! All in all I'm just glad to have a great internet connection back again. I really want to get back into playing Starcraft II competitively. I think I can get ever farther than I've ever been before in the ladder, possibly try to break into Platinum or Diamond maybe if I work at it and stick with it. Starcraft has always been my favorite game but I haven't stuck with it. I actually haven't really played it much for about a year now sadly because I've been getting into other games. The cool thing is that the new expansion for Starcraft, called Legacy of the Void is supposed to be coming out soon, maybe Fall or Winter hopefully. I am very excited for the last installment of Starcraft. I still remember when Wings of Liberty (the first SC2 expansion) first came out in 2010. It was a glorious time to be a PC gamer, and all I had back then was this (brand new, at the time) Lenovo laptop. I also want to get back into World of Warcraft but I know I'd have to make extra time for it and lose time for other things in life. :'( Like maybe I'd have to sleep less or something lol.
     Lastly, as I get farther into this Satriani album I notice that the rhythm section is amazing, especially the drummer, who I believe is Marco Minnemann, drummer for the Aristocrats. The cool thing about this album is that it isn't a 'guitar shred' album, its an instrumental guitar album, if that makes sense. There's less guitar pyrotechnics here and there's more in terms of songwriting and style, especially the style of all the musicians put together. I would say that although Steve Vai has gotten more attention, Satriani is one of the shred guitarists that is easy to love. I mean this guy made Surfing with the Alien, he's a ledge! It's awesome that he's still playing great guitar music. In comparison to Steve Vai's stuff, Joe is a lot more musical. You don't have to be into guitar shred to listen to an album like Supernova Shockwave. That's the mark of a truly great guitar virtuoso. It also doesn't hurt that he can sound like Jimi Hendrix.
    

Whiplash

     This is one of the best music movies that I've ever seen. I would put it second in my favorite movies about music after the Karate Kid's(Ralph Machio) guitar movie Crossroads, where he duels guitar shredder Steve Vai. This movie is about a jazz drummer attending Shafford Conservatory of Music, learning jazz and playing in Studio Band, which is a big band performance class. Shafford is a fictional school in New York. The student is Andrew Nieman (Miles Teller), a first year student who idolized Buddy Rich. The teacher who whips the students into shape is Mr. Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). Basically one late night Andrew is practicing the drums at the school and Mr. Fletcher just happens to walk into the room, asking him to play some rudiments, the one he asked was a double time swing rudiment. Their first meeting was awkward but you got the sense that from that first meeting Mr. Fletcher saw greatness in Andrew despite the fact that he seemed to lack confidence in his demeanor.
     So basically Andrew is in a lower level jazz band class where he's confined to turning the pages for the other drummer, who gets to play more than he does because he's first drummer. Out of nowhere during one of the classes Mr. Fletcher comes in looking to pick musicians for the Studio Band, which is the best band in the school. He asks Andrew and the first chair drummer to play their double time swing. Because Fletcher already knew Andrew could do it it was automatically a given that he was going to get chosen over the other guy, especially because Andrew already knew what he was looking for because Fletcher asked him to do it the other day before. So in a way Fletcher has already made his mark for Andrew, picking him over this other drummer named Conelly.
      Once Andrew is in the band he begins to realize that Fletcher is an asshole that cusses out and insults his students to get good results. He resorts to insults like 'no wonder your mommy ran out on you' and 'Jesus fucking Christ! I didn't know they allowed retards into Schaefer!'. He's a pretty funny guy but after all the insults are said and done you begin to despise him. I've had some interesting music teachers myself. In high school at Wauwatosa West I had a music teacher who sometimes had an attitude with the students, he had his good days and his bad days. But he was nothing like this. My first guitar teacher was a really cool hippie type that loved Hendrix and Jeff Beck. In college I didn't really stay long enough to find great music teachers but I wish I could have stayed at UW-Parkside in Wisconsin to work and learn from this great jazz trumpet player named Russ Johnson. This movie really reminds me of being in college. But I digress. So Fletcher goes crazy trying to get all the scores and the music right and eventually Andrew becomes first chair drummer in the Studio Band. But the only reason he became the go to drummer for the band is because at a music competition the original main drummer lost the sheet music for the tunes and he could only play from looking at the score. Andrew had the whole tune memorized so he played instead, gaining Fletcher's affection and main go to drummer in the band. 
     Eventually there's another big competition. I think this is what all the big music schools really try to do in colleges, do these music competitions to get their students noticed, maybe signed on record labels or get them to join prestigious bands or orchestras. So Andrew is on the bus getting to the comp but the bus gets a flat and he's running late. So he gets off and rents a car and gets to the place but he forgot his sticks in the car. So he gets back to the car to get his sticks but gets toppled by a truck! This part of the movie was totally easy to see because he was yelling and shouting on the cell phone to one of the other guys in the band, yelling 'I'll be right there!'. After he gets hit, he climbs out of the car and runs back the to place where the whole band is waiting for him. But he's so injured that he can hardly play. Fletcher tells him he's out and then Andrew goes ape shit, tackling Fletcher like a football player onto the ground and punching him in the face. 
     Next scene we have Andrew and his dad (Paul Reiser), talking to a school social worker about how Fletcher abused him psychologically and emotionally. She states that a previous student had gotten depression after working in Fletcher's class when he was a student, and that the guy had hung himself not too long ago. 'What does that have to do with me', Andrew asks. Then the woman says that whatever is being discussed will be confidential and that Fletcher won't know about it. Finally Andrew agrees to talk saying 'tell me what you want me to say'. 
     At this point its summer time and Andrew is working at some kind of cafe but still living in his small New York apartment. When he gets off he walks past a club where he sees a jazz band is playing with guest Terrence Fletcher. In this scene we see that despite Fletcher being an obscene, loud, and abusive teacher that he is really a beautiful cat. His piano playing here is so soulful and emotive, it's a wonder why he started teaching and wasn't just a jazz musician performing in clubs all the time. Sometimes you find music teachers who are great performers and teachers. But other times you'll find a great teacher who isn't such a hot performer, or vice versa. After Fletcher plays a great piano solo Andrew starts to walk away but Fletcher calls to him and they sit down and talk, like what happened between them was long forgotten and now they're best friends. Fletcher mentions that he's no longer working at Shaffer, and Andrew acknowledges the fact that he already knew this. After they talk Fletcher mentions that he's looking for a drummer that knows the scores to the tunes 'Whiplash' and 'Caravan', the two tunes that Andrew worked hard to master while in school before he dropped out. Andrew decides to do it because this would allow him to play with Fletcher (who was conducting) at the JVC Jazz Festival, a real life jazz festival that happens every year. But we don't know yet that Fletcher was secretly planning to screw Andrew here because once he's at the gig onstage at the festival they're about to play a song that Andrew doesn't have the score for because Fletcher didn't give it to him or tell him about the song at all! Then he goes over to Andrew and says 'you don't think I know it was you fucker'. Pretty crazy revenge he was getting here because Andrew didn't know the song but played anyways, making a fool of himself. The bass player was all like 'what the fuck are you doing man'. After the tunes over the audience still claps, which leads me to the idea that sometimes jazz fans are ok with whatever happens at a jazz concert, even if there are lots of mistakes. It is an improvisational artform after all and sometimes there are mistakes that can be made while improvising. It's not like classical music where if you miss a note on the page, the audience isn't satisfied with the performance. Anyways, so Andrew gets mad and runs offstage, hugging his father for support. Then he decides to get back onstage and he starts playing this wild solo, queing the bass player for the intro to 'Caravan'. Fletcher is actually happy about this and the whole song is fabulous. When the end of the tune comes in Andrew plays this totally Buddy Rich-inspired drum solo for like 10 minutes before he ques Fletcher to the ending of the tune. It was a great musical performance on the drums. This movie is all about drums and jazz drumming. I find myself to be a very rhythmic person, I even want a drum-set but can't really put it in my house because its too small here. My friends always say that they see me more as a drummer than a guitar player because of how I always air drum to songs that we listen to. The solo at the end was my favorite part of the movie because it shows that even though he dropped out of college and was down and out, he was still a great musician, all because of Mr. Fletcher's guidance. It shows that really all it takes to be great is determination, training, and will. It doesn't hurt to have a teacher or guy that yells at you to practice harder. 
     Lastly, the music in this movie was astounding. The music was composed by a guy named Justin Hurwitz. He also did the great film score for Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, another great music movie that I saw back when I was younger. The music is all big band oriented stuff because in college that's what the university jazz curriculum focuses on. The drumming was incredible, especially the last drum solo at the end. I would recommend this movie to any jazz fans and drummers. They would really appreciate it more rather than just the average movie watcher. However, that doesn't mean that a regular audience wouldn't enjoy it because the film got great reviews and premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, with critical acclaim for Simmon's performance. The film was inspiring to me as a musician. Even without musical training or conservatory school you can be a great musician!