The Huffington Post’s article said it best “The first few opening bars of The Swell Season’s set made it clear that the children had been put to bed”. 100% agree. When Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova hit the stage, the first thing Glen did was introduce the band as they were strapped themselves in to their axes and toms. The crowd roared in approval and at that moment I knew I was not the only one to frown upon She & Him’s overt negligence. Glen then strapped himself in to his busted up acoustic that literally will soon be more holes than wood. He proceeded to play solo with Marketa straining to support him vocally. He sang so hard that I could feel myself being quickly converted to his religion. I was already a member of the congregation, but now I’m born again. O….M….G!!!!! I can understand the feeling of being placed on a stage like that with a full house, after struggling for soooo many years. His energy wreaked of gratitude and satisfaction. Marketa, as usual, played it cool and took it all her stride. She’s humble and solid. I do wish she’d dress just a little bit more….I realize it’s part of the charm, in a Rickie Lee Jones kind of way, that she can wear a cotton nothing sack and still rock the house, but just a little attention to personal style wouldn’t hurt….I mean…just a tad. But that’s just me. I know. I know. I complain when they do and complain when they don’t. Understand, it’s important to have the entire package to me. When the outfit is over compensating for lack of talent, it pisses me off. When the outfit understates the venue and the amount of talent, i get it, but just wish there was a little more.

Either way, this was one of the best shows I have ever seen. Glen’s performance especially. He brought tears to my eyes. He made me jump out of my seat. He made me speechless and submissive. This is a talent that can sing with so much raw power and emotion and then in an instant have the softest sound that still reverberates over the heads 14,000 people. His guitar takes a beating along with it…masterfully. He’s untouchable. He’s en fuego!

He talked about playing Santa Monica Promenade as a busker. I knew he had busked (hence the movie), but to see him in this light, and then imagine him as one of the nameless faces playing The Promenade just put it all in perspective. I guess it just goes to show. Never give up on your art. Do it for the love of it. Build and they will come, or perhaps, in this industry, they may come…they may not, but do it anyway. Thanks Swell Season, for restoring my soul. Just the basics, and some of the best sound I’ve ever heard.

You can read more, and see and hear more at The Huffington Post. Here. Enjoy!

Tim Minchin. Man after my own heart. Yes…take your canvas bags to the supermarket. Goddamnit.

If you saw Taylor Swift’s performance at The Grammys this year, you will know what I’m talking about. The Grammys forbids the use of auto-tune or lip syncing. They also like pairing up artists of contrast or different eras. Putting Taylor Swift with a veteran performer like Stevie Nicks was simultaneous brilliant and stupid. Either the mastermind behind that arrangement had it in for Taylor or was stupid enough to believe that Taylor could actually hold her own. I love that the label issued a statement to the public defending Taylor’s out of tune singing as technical difficulties. Who on this earth would buy that? OMG! Anyway….I’m not here to talk about her….I digress.

Lady Gaga, love her or hate her, is the real deal. I know enough people connected to Lady Gaga to know that the tour was thrown together in minutes and was on the road virtually seconds after her songs were written and recorded. I know that ‘Teeth’ was being recorded in the studio in October and I saw the show in December. That’s almost unheard of. And, she has since completely redesigned the show to take it to Europe and is revamping it again to come back and tour the states as soon as she is finished in Europe. Every single penny she makes is put back into “The House of Gaga”, which from what I understand, is her own empire of set designers, fashion designers, producers and worker bees working in said house to constantly create and develop everything and anything to propel her music and her performances forward. This girl has a strong work ethic….and a drive that is very rare.

She has a very clear message which she unabashedly flaunted. She is entertaining. Her set is full of strong visuals, leaving no stone unturned. Costume after costume, costume within costumes. Even the piano was barricaded and designed to look like a broken down shack of rusty nails and drift wood, she had big black wings on her back and sat squatted on the piano stool by herself and played and sang a ballad really really well. I say that with enthusiasm because that is a big deal, especially with an artist who’s so young and whose music is so electronically driven. That girl can sing and play. I mean, she’s no Herbie Hancock, but she doesn’t need to be.

What blew my mind the most was the diversity of the audience. Sold out shows every night – yes. I know she’s got the gay vote, that goes without saying, so I expected a strong representation of the gay community. I also expected a strong presence of those under 21 years old, and I was not disappointed. What I didn’t expect in a million years was the presence of woman and men, both single and couples over 40…dressed to the nines – mardi-gras style. Mums and Dad’s with their kids, and not sitting down with their faces in their blackberry’s or waiting at the bar until it was all over, but dancing and singing and as into it as their children. Families dressed up like gaga. I’m serious. I’ve never in my life seen anything like it.

Gaga has wormed her way into the hearts of the insecure freak in many a demographic. If you were the wall flower in high school in 1975 or if you are the in-the-closet lesbian in junior high now, she is your ambassador and she knows it. Or maybe you just have a penchant for drama and dressing up, and if it’s as simple as that, she is your queen.

Ok…couple of criticisms. Had my friend Craig (who incidentally represents the queer vote) not called me and ordered me to take earplugs, I would have most likely bled to death in the isles or choked on my own vomit. Now, I’m not a light weight, I’ve been going to concerts since I was 12, and I’ve been in more rock bands than I can remember. I rarely plug my ears (I’m not proud of that, I should), but this was just offensive. It wasn’t that is was loud, it was loud and bad. Strong and wrong. Whoever does her sound should be fired. Distorted, bad levels, you name it. Horrid. There were times when I could only hear the drum loop and nothing else. I could hear the stomping of the feet on the stage and nothing else. Gaga struggled with the mic and the sound, and the show went on, but it was a black mark on the report card…that’s for sure.

Also, it wouldn’t hurt her to polish up her dancing or at least stop pretending she is a good dancer. She could finesse her in between song banter. It’s understandable though. Her rise to super stardom has been so incredibly fast that I think she is still learning to fill the shoes of the level she’s actually at. In a way it’s nice that it’s not so overly produced that it impersonal, but it’s definitely a few notches down from the type of production she is putting forward.

Yes…it was all very self indulgent. Yes…she is determined to be the biggest star in the world. But I’m sure we’ll see her put that celebrity to some use in time. Right now, I can’t imagine she has time for anything. She’s so busy grabbing hold of her constantly evolving and growing status. However she did pair with Cyndi Lauper recently to promote aids awareness, and I have faith that as she settles in to her new found mega stardom she’ll do more for her freaks. She’s a good Italian catholic girl after all.

Lady Gaga….an artist with a vision. An artist who is a woman and proud of it. An artist who will be around for a very long time and will never sway from her directive….world domination. Like it or not, she is here to stay.

The album, “The Best Is Yet To Come: The Songs of Cy Coleman”, was released September 15, 2009 on New West Records. It’s also on iTunes and various other internet sites. In his inimitable fashion, he completely re-arranged and produced the songs, making them fresh and at times, avant garde and unpredictable. Then, Dave chose to have different female artists perform songs. The production and new arrangements revived the lyrics and created a new indescribable genre in my opinion. It’s also some of the best singing I’ve ever heard.

Fiona Apple contributes two songs (her first new music in five years), alongside other artists such as Missy Higgins, Madeleine Peyroux, Jill Sobule, Nikka Costa, Sara Watkins and Patty Griffin, who sings The Best Is Yet To Come. It’s unlike any version you’ve ever heard of the song, and it’s Patty as you’ve never heard her before. This is what I’m talking about. Who would ever think of Patty Griffin to sing a song that is known predominantly as a jazz standard? It’s brilliant and it creates something unexpected. Something fresh.

Michael Perfitt recorded most of it, and various notable musicians played on it such as Jay Bellerose, Aaron Sterling, Mark Goldenberg, Benmont Tench, Lisa Coleman, to name a few, and of course Dave.

The Best Is Yet To Come, does the original songbook genre justice. I’m not talking about jazz as a broad stroke genre, I’m talking about vocal jazz, The Great American Songbook standard jazz. Know what I mean? This is how I want to hear it. Squeeze new life out of well known songs. Wake them up. Use instrumentation that is not typical. Anyway, you get the idea. It’s great. Really good for the ears and the soul.

Check it out!

Well, any sliver of judgment or thinking to counter his “I’m giving up” email, absolutely dissipated last night. Thank you Cinespace. After Cinespace last night, I was 100% with Mikey. I was done. Done like a dinner. Moving, leaving, giving up, WTF am I doing….D.O.N.E! It’s the first time I’ve ever stopped a gig and walked off stage in my entire life. Why? What happened? Well….this is a good one, brace yourself as you may need a crash helmet! I certainly did.

First let me say, (I’m free to say whatever I want right? It’s my blog and no-one is reading it yet!) I knew deep in my bones and my gut that it was going to be a badly managed situation. I have enough experience to judge by the correspondence leading up to the gig from the booking agent. But thought to myself, try a new venue, give it a shot, play to new people, be positive, don’t be pessimistic and so on. So I said yes to a small intimate acoustic show in what they were calling the V.I.P. lounge, early at 8pm, half an hour set. I’d been to the venue many times before, and even though it had been a little on the tragically hip, too-cool-for-school side for me, I’d had a good time and seen some wickedly good bands there. Figured playing in the acoustic lounge would be easy to warm people up for the bigger room and for me to “check it out”. So I do the stuff; read the contract, promote, rehearse, organize set lists, rehearse some more, invite special guests and friends, plan what to wear, coordinate with everyone else, car pool, get money together for musicians…grab my cds and my list and cards, read the contract again, arrive an hour before as stated.

We arrive and realize that the VIP acoustic lounge, is in fact the smoking lounge. NICE! Hey…be positive…set up, play for the nice smoking people and the people that have schlepped out to see you and paid $10 for the privileged. Set up done, sound check done. Just as we settled to wait until the curtain call (I say that to add to the comedy, as there was no curtain, or dressing room). We then noticed, right outside the glass doors separating us from the bar, a band was sound checking, probably 20 feet from us. That’s strange, we thought. Then said band starts, or should I say, THRASH METAL BAND starts!!!! Are you serious? Why oh why on god’s great earth would anyone book a thrash metal band to play in a small bar at 8pm? (Note: thrash metal should have a mandatory start time of any time after 11pm, and thrash metal should have an entirely different venue from any other genre that doesn’t have the word metal in it, but that goes without saying, right? Apparently not.) So I look at our designated engineer and he acknowledges my disdain. He leaves to try to get them to play a little softer (insert laughter here!). I say “Mate, this isn’t going to work, you know that right?” He begs me to try one song to see if we can “drown them out”, turn lemons into lemonade he says. We know it won’t work, I mean how can a 1950s Gibson acoustic guitar and an upright bass drown out a double kick drum and bass and guitar amplifiers and some guy screaming within an inch of his life? We give it a shot. But, halfway through “Cat Up A Tree” I apologize to the audience and tell them we will not be playing. I walk off stage. The sound man, in between spits and spats of frantic exclamations that “it’s not my fault!” tells me he will see what he can do. Kaveh (bass player) says “Fuck these guys! Let’s just go and get dinner with your guests and call it a night!” He was right. Engineer du jour returns and then the sound drastically died down from Thrash mania, so we decided to give it a second try. It wasn’t a great show, it was a decent show, but it wasn’t a great show. We were professional and did what we were there to do…albeit reluctantly, but did so for the friends, fans and smokers there who had paid to see us play.

In the light of day, I’m not ready to leave LA, but I am ready to be waaaay more trusting of my instinct and where I play in Los Angeles. you see I broke my own rules. There are rules to booking live shows, and definitely rules to booking new venues.

Rule #1 – Go to the venue! Go before you agree to the gig if you haven’t been in over 6 months. Go on the same night at the same time you are supposed to play. Venues change management regularly.

Rule #2 – Ask about the other rooms and ask what bands are scheduled at the same time before and after you. Their names, their style, their shoe size.

There are more rules…but these are the most important BEFORE you agree to a show in a new venue.

I have a dear friend, Jeff Dean who played bass in my band for about 5 years…the sponge brain era, he’s stupidly talented. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. We were backstage at a gig in Beverly Hills, we’d been barked at, moved, told not to touch the food (it was a private party), told not park in the valet area, to self park and the list goes on. Then finally they put us in the janitors area and told us to wait until we were called. I turned to Jeff and he said, deadpan, “Next they will lay us down and just piss in our mouths!” As hysterically funny as that was and still is when I think of it, I do feel like last night came close to that. At the end of it all, it’s not their fault, it’s my fault for assuming that they would take care or their artists and do their job well. Big mistake! It’s my fault for breaking my own rules. I guess it’s true, even in the worst situations, you do learn something. I apologize Mikey. You go and find that greener pasture. I support you 100%!