brief rejoinder

an interesting night for the world.  to think i’d started a post some months back… explaining why we were doomed.  my mood, if only for the evening, is a little brighter.

and with music present.  i find myself incapable of entertaining thoughts of sleep.  i write… as i sometimes do… through the night. strange how a single song can take so very long to come into sonic fruition.  and then… once there… with all the colors available to you… you must make a coherent smattering.  is it artistry, in the end, or — actually — madness?

i’ve left my futon in couch mode.  so that i sleep lightly (poorly) and return promptly to my work.

[what can i say, darling?  sleep is the greatest of all bores. ]

cleaning the mirror ii: thefoundation

it is a strange (perhaps: wondrous) sensation… to go mining back into your professional history and find your same murmuring self… murmuring more prematurely.  its… really…curious.

well all that is to say, the era of my life when i was the lead singer, keyboardist for thefoundation was probably on of the most formative periods of my life.  i lean heavily on the various and sundry concepts concieved lived there to keep me going with inspiration gets lean.  its crucial to note that when i came to college i had so little piano under my belt i could do little other than play the strange, syncopated fragments that i’d been able to create through trial and error.  a few lessons here and there… i think may’ve learned the minuet that everyone has to learn… (you know the one… trust me… you know it… ) and written few semi-trite songs.  notated painstakinly in my almost figured-bass notation language.  but not quite.

in the winter of 2002, i was led to the august auspices (and awful office) of Mr. John Esposito (who teaching in a mud-mired trailer just down the hill from the main music building.   he laughed aloud when i asked him if i should practice for like an hour a day or something.  “more like six hours a day” he said.  ha.

well, somewhere in there we incorporated my piano into the then burgeoning sound of MotherMing… mostly as a compositional device.  very occasionally (sp?) as an intergral musical element.  i spent the first year or so of the MotherMing years as the consumate front man.  in my signature (read: only?) basketball (read: shaq) jersey and zipper pants.  jumping up and down, screaming, urging the crowd on.  basically ignoring the fact that i couldn’t really: play.

(don’t get me wrong.  those were heady frackin’ times.  evidenced here, by my man Sam Mende-Wong at our final blowout concert/party.  in Bard’s famed Old[e] Gym[e])

later on, i wrote a few more keyboard songs.  tunes its likely you’ve never heard (the original City Is, I’ve Had Enough, Ab joint I… some others i’ll likely never remember that weren’t up to snuff.)  and it sort of became customary for me to do some gigs, some gigs up and about.  as i became SLIGHTLY more confident about playing keys, i was more and more excited about smaller venues where sitting would not be looked at askance (actually, i’ve always prefered smaller venues.  even when standing.  in the later days when i would begin to feel less and less excited about my rapping — it would only take the close, sweaty press of a packed house party writhing in the darkness to inspire what we used to refer to as the thirdset or the hiphopset… wherein kyle and elijah would jam out, hoffa would make turn is saxophone into some sort of strange acoustic synthesizer… and i would rattle off hundreds of bars of finished and unfinished rhymes.  and we’d all end up hoarse.)

by the end of sophmore year… things were beginning to crack a bit.  we played a good bit in NYC that summer.  and i managed to buy a stage rhodes keyboard.  which i left on the livingroom table in our apartment in the west village.  and played… all night, basically.

junior year, i hunkered down.  and did little else than practice and attend music classes.  seriously.  from about 9am to 9pm everyday (with my homeboy Johnny Ronsani.)  and by late november it became clear that the band was evolving.  with myself, hoffa, and elijah (and actually Kyle too, though he was a compsci major) in John’s jazz rep classes and playing together about 12 hours a week… it was getting the point where the old ideal could no longer.

so motherming broke up (the same day i had extensive dental surgery… it was great!)

…and thus the foundation came into being.

***

that is when i finally began my “music journal.”  or memoirs.  or something.  there is so much in here, its hard to remember the young man writing such things.  but i think its illuminating for those who would know thefoundation.  where the started… where they went… how they burned out.

forgive the sad… silly… youthful tone of this tome.  i was young.  infact, i wrote the brief preface in the days of MotherMing when we were recording that album.

***

along with the excerpts from that journal.  i am hoping to put up a number of thefoundation artifacts.  the first is the post-whitespace foundations.  of the “OR DIE tour” era.  perhaps i should first be clear.  there are, to my thinking, about six Foundations eras in the 2 and half years we played as a quartet.  the first was the pre-formative (December ‘03 - February ‘04); second, the formative (March - July ‘04… the chowhound/jargonkiss era); then theFoundation era (Late Summer ‘04 - May ‘05… we record the Whitespace album); The Lean Times (Summer ‘05 - December ‘06); post-whitespace/Chris Patton/thefundamental mixtape era (January ‘06 - May ‘06?); finally, The-Long-And-Beautiful-Break-Up (c. June ‘06 - August 8, 2006)

that is definitely too much information!  and yet my carefully, maintained… horrifically written… timeline enhancing notes, journals, and keepsakes make the clear distinctions.  i think it is completely obvious that i am a bit a maniac when it comes to histories.  (is this blog not evidence enough).  anyways.

the stuff i love most is in the extremes.  while there is GREAT stuff from the nearly Year-long period at the middle.  we worked alot.  played up and down the east coast.  concieved of alot of material.  had some of the best parties at 32 Broadway in Tivoli (complete with the totally inebriated band taking the stage and playing raucous thirdsets… sometimes with the aid of the now extinct B.P.M.)… and even in the Lean Times… when the band threatened to break up during that long slow fall after graduation.

the most exciting stuff comes, for me, when we were still trying to figure out what to play.  and how to play it.  how to exit from the pure funk/jamband zone and become something still more potent.  to incorporate the advance techniques of Esposito’s jazz rep classes… and the finally sure hand of the… ahem… keyboard player… the lessons learned from Meshell Ndgeocello’s Spirit Music Jamia… the lates sixties Miles Davis groups (who were rocking my world)… the muscular verbosity of Kurt Elling and the amazing awesomeness of Laurence Hobgood’s compositional craft… the free musicality of what Johnny was turning me on to (Charles Gayle, Mark Dresser…)… and then our own: thing.

it was at first — pretty awkward.  but eventually, the bits that didn’t really work… got left behind.  and we came to a confident new sound in White Space.  a sound i love.

but it took the crucible of hunger and lonliness to bring us out of the Lean Times in to the magic of the “Or Die” tour.  new happenings.  the music seemed to open up before us… like a flower.  no, really.  like a flower.  and out came many floating secret pollens.  and and what we could grasp.  we grasped and threw in.

… giving us… those last few glorious concerts and shows.  much of it undocumented.  but the beauty remains.  and what there is.  i share now.  from my heart.  to your ears.

evidence to the contrary

they say its all grit, grime, and gruesomeness.  and they are not entirely lying.  the whole pricture is hard to paint precisely.   but suffice it to say, one could get a good impression of the state of things from looking at my room on any given monday morning… a splay of seemingly endless sheets of hand-scrawled leadsheets.  fakebooks galore.  half-wet, half-drowned mugs of coffee.  broken pencils and spent pens.  single socks every couple feet or so.  and a severely depressed futon mattress.

that tells most of the tale.  of evenings and afternoons.  of long drives and stubby cigars.  thrice as many failures as successes, but something approaching (if asymptotically) satisfaction.

and occasionally, there are brilliant happy nights where great things go down.  toward that end — i give you this, the full video of Burundanga’s Farewell To Jud party from a few weeks ago.  i only hope it is as enjoyable to you as it was to me to play it.

akie

Burundange - Up On The Roof

ps. more mirror cleanings to come soon.  i took a brief Olympic break from writing.  but i’m back.  square and wistful as ever.

the resettling of vespucci

it was: good. very very good. insofar as working weekends go… it was pretty much tops. everyone knows that… no matter how good the gigs are… a weekend with multiple musical outtings can be pretty exhausting. hauling your gear first… to the car, then to the gig, unloading, playing, then reloading… then driving home (probably at like 1 in the morning) only to get up the next day… probably didn’t sleep right, right? probably went to be around 430. should have just stayed up til the 530-6a sweet spot and then slept till 11 or so. but no… down at 4…. maybe 5. up at eight. first things first… coffee. emails… (especially if, like me, you have yet reasoned out how to save up and make an excuse to buy an iphone just so you can check your emails ANYWHERE!) then… you got that second gig later, so you better go over the music (unless its like a jazz hit or something and you can just show up and play some standards.) do that. try to find everything you’ll need. then a little time with the sweetheart. sometimes difficult to remember where you are if your seeing notes or lyrics or fretting over a 13 bar verse section into a sudden tumbao. but with enough coffee, one can be in two places at once and mostly stave off anxiety for later… for later. maybe a shower? eh. maybe not. then into the car, to face city traffic… perhaps half of Flatbush is closed down. and you’re trying to hit three succinct spots in Brooklyn… all on opposite sides of the Park. better light a cigar for that. make it one place. make to the next. haul the gear back out. maybe up four flights? to a roof. (if you’re doing this with your new keyboard… the heavy metal and wood one… well be prepared to be sore on Monday) set up, perhaps. well maybe just block out positions then have a beer and some food. then cigar number 2? then set-up. well, then it might rain. you might try to rush the small stuff in and cover the big stuff. wait it out for a couple of minutes. then come back. check the clouds and re-engage. at this point you’ll likely have to deal with a slightly wily (perhaps very uncomfortable) landlord who is worried about cats being on the roof AND partying. so then there’ll be restrictions. and reasons to change the blocking. then maybe, reconsider. reblock. and then maybe one more time. then play. stop. drink, chat. play again… contemplate cigar number three. but then decide not to be totally decadent. play again. stop? well…. another tune… and then a finale… and then: stop. rap with the band. shake the hands. cards, numbers, promises. and then hit the gear again. call the sweetheart? say goodnight or try for a quick midnight rendez-vous (make sure you spell the french right and get the tense right [rhymes!]– cause she may be reading…)? ah… go for it. so pack up like a madman. and try to get the keyboard down alone. it goes in first. always. then back up for the rest of the stuff. the sundry accoutrements: keyboard stand, mic stand, music stand (and people ask me why i’m alway standing), amp, and bookbag (with the as yet unsmoked third cigar… let’s just say its a… what?… CAO Gold, maybe?) get that down. in the car. and drive back PAST the park. the downstairs is locked. so not sweetness at midnight. but a forlorn call, while you gun it back up to home. buy some crap food. park… about .333 miles from house. gather the bookbag (with all the music, clothes, and toiletries from this weekend), the box of cigars UPS delivered on friday that you just brought on the road with you, and — oh yeah! — the food. cover the keys with… blanket, sheet, winter jacket, some detritus from the floor (anything to make it not look like a keyboard… but like a crappy ford car with nothing of worth in it). come home. eat. tabulate. disrobe. and sleep.

yes, it can be pretty exhausting. that’s for damned sure. but… what if the gig on saturday night was at a great little bistro in Upstate, NY. tucked up in the ____(?)____ Mountains. and the band is a couple of cats you’ve played with before and are glad to see. well, even without a bass player and having to be creative with the two-hands (and the dwarfy.. late-to-the-instrument technique) but that all in all it sounds good. and even at times (dare i say: most of the time?) it sounded really good. well you’ll be pretty damned happy. and you’ll all be saying, “damn. we should play more often. we’d be killing this shit!” so that even the late drive back to brooklyn (a good 2.4 hours) is not so bad. (there IS a cigar involved, of course).

bedtime is cool. you’re ready to stay up til the come-up (sunshine, that is). but sleep ain’t halfbad. and its twice as nice with non-feline company. then, an early wake up could mean that you have to go it alone for a few hours. still feeling pretty good from the gig. you float over to the local cafe and get some frackin-serious Brooklyn coffee. drink. type. drink. type. then hang.

the second gig is private rooftop affair. not bread-a-la-bread, but its in Brooklyn. so bread is secondary to the pleasure of: Brooklyn Rooftop House Party for a Friend. and the view will kick your ass for days and weeks (even yours truly… afraid of heights over six feet and heights under… that part of the atmosphere where you start falling up. the music, is beautiful. a combination of cuban, soul, and the fire of many minds fusing. a particular sound: drums, el. bass, keys, congas, djembe, cello, and trumpet. many things are possible. one finds oneself singing. and then singing unencumbered. and the stark emergency exity lights, and the height, and the industrial/urban soul of the roof seems to take over. wind, and moon, and night press in. and, yes, the ancestors come down to this place. and dance. spirits. spirits. won’t you come on in the room?!

ah. when you finally get to sleep sunday night (its actually 605am Monday morning… just in case, he says.) you wake up just before noon. its monday. and, it seems like, a whole different America has come. and gone. he says.

find the cats. find the couch. and take it: slow.

—-

tomorrow night, i’m playing an Obama benefit in New York. at the Beechman Theatre up on W. 42nd St and 9th Avenue. Underneath the West Bank Cafe (think of Yishay’s photographs for some reason). and though its only for about 30-35 minutes, i’m pretty excited. got a couple of, as yet, unperformed arrangment of Stevie and Donny… that’ve been bouncing around the apartment (and my head) for sometime.

information?

http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4gjvw

and now: some colorful lights and meaningful sounds to lull me to sleep.

beauty in strangeness

Beauty In Strangeness

track listing:

1. Alive and Burning

2. Leave Autum (alone)

3. Beauty In Strangeness

4. Interlude # 1

5. the pequod

6. trio (for the end of time)

7. Tuesday Night Lights

personnel:

akie bermiss, fender rhodes keyboard

daniel beiber, upright bass

constantine anastasakis, drums

engineered by: Zach Dunham at Blum Studio April 2006

Co-Produced by: Zach Dunham and Akie Bermiss

(all compositions by Aamir Bermiss ‘Akie’ except: “Alive And Burning” by Daniel Beiber; and “Leave Autumn” by John Esposito; “trio (for the end of time)” contains material from Oliver Messiaen’s Quator Por La Fin Du Temps

cleaning the mirror

wow, well, i feel a little bad about this. a good week since the last post. and what do i have to show for it. a little less broke, perhaps. but wearing my month heavily about the shoulders. and even now, as i write this, i am readying to go out and get some food. maybe browse for books.

its the end of July and i am staring down the barrel of 2008 with, seriously, great trepidation. whenever i do get the opportunity to sit down and work on my own music i don’t seem to have much to say. i feel a constriction in my mind. like a pressure. is it past? is it present? i can’t certainly say. the tension of knowing that for all that has come before, there is greater pressure to do even better in the future. and to say what? to sing what? to be whom?

but then, while driving through CT on I-95 the other day i had a revelation. clean the mirror, clean the mirror, clean the mirror. every piece of work, every gig, album, blog post, journal entry… they are all bits and pieces of the reflection of the artist. and with each attempt to get back down the path comes the necessary cleansing of the pallette. but what would happen if, say, with each attempt one created a finished product that never saw the light of day? here is this path full of the shattered detritus of unseen semi-miracles. how can the mirror be cleaned? there is mess everywhere.

like a cluttered desk, nothing can be done here. i need to make some room for the new shit.

and so — to that end — begin the mirror cleansing series. hoping that by throwing out these things, i may find my mind a wider place. all these so many aborted foetuses! attempt upon attempt upon attemp to do each on to the best of my ability with those whom i deemed the best candidates as collaborators but almost everyone of them… snuffed out too soon. or finished, but never given the chance to shine. dead that. today we open up the annals and let the debris have its day.

first up was an easy one. while, to be blunt, there is enough aborted material in here (my mind? my harddrive? my cd book?) to cause a right-wing riot — its best to start with the completed works. the ones that smacked of “almost finished” and then came to no future. the best example is the trio date: beauty in strangeness.

sometime ago i wrote about this in my other blog. to save you the trouble of having to read my tortured musings here i will post the actual musical content above this… in an entry of it’s own. you know… just as music. here i’ll satisfy my need to explain… by explaining.

sometime in the winter of 2005, i was living in the rectory. making my rent every month by some miracle of saving, hoarding, and wishing. i was otherwise living ostensibly on $50 bucks a week from Bard College for accompanying jazz singers. Esposito scored me the gig and to him i am eternally grateful. i’d most assuredly have withered away to nothing in those chill and lean days. i was drinking a liter of sweetened, but dark coffee every morning for breakfast (i know it was a liter because i would wake up, brew a pot and pour the entirety of it into my large green Nalgene. then go to Bard to borrow John’s office and practice. i know it was sweetened but dark because i know i couldn’t really afford milk — i mean at 22 who really needs milk? — but i had bucketloads of sugar). Zach Dunham was working on his studio engineer chops and asked me if i wanted to try and put something together for him to record in the spring. like… some music and a band…and play in the studio… free of charge? AND he wanted me to use the rhodes… i mean we’re talking hog heaven. i, of course, first imagine way too much at once. spent all my numerous free hours with a bottle of wine (was giving piano lessons by that point. a little more bread for the creature comforts: heavy cream, red wine, and various edible meats) and my Casio Privia. my original intention was to do a trio with singer and then an electric quintet with sax and trumpet (essentially the senior project Sorce Band… with trumpet instead of trombone). but something happened. i wrote too much material, spread myself too thin. couldn’t hear it. and one day i was thinking about the piece Dan Beiber had written for Zach in his moderation concert a year earlier (entitled: For Zach, Alive and Burning)… and then i stumbled across an old CD Kyle Gann had give me of Messsiaen’s Quartet Por La Fin Du Temps (or some such thing as that, he says)… and the glorious finally violin/piano duet. ah… sublime, for sure. and it hit me. a fenderRhodestrio. yes! spoke to zach about it. he was game. rhodes, acoustic bass, and trap set.

now… the perfect band for this vision. had to be fresh. had to be new. had to be challenging. when i think about it now… its so very simple. Dan, Constantine, and me. in the studio, for a good two days. perfect. the dynamic had a beautiful blend in my becurs-ed head. that, i’d been to see Constantine play a number of times around campus. always really dug his playing. ears like no drummer should ever have. inexplicable timing. and a completely impregnable demeanor. and he played with a sudden shifting shunting changing time. hyper… fast… slow… incredibly loud… incredibly soft. like a man with a wheel-barrow going slightly uphill and then slightly downhill and the back up… and then back down…and the way up… and the suddenly — BLAM! — down. meanwhile Daniel played and, likely still plays, like a man being dragged down hill by a very heavy wagon. the further a song goes the deeper, it seems, his store of energy. his willingness to play out. his intensity. already, this would be a potent combo (in fact, i considered trying to initiate a duet… but i am wiser now than i was then, i suppose. and then i couldn’t figure out how to create the musical context). then add to it, me. i play, almost always, like a man trying to push an ass up a very steep ravine. blame it on my lack of technical prowress. i’m slow. got big, slow, clumsy fingers. but… they seem to find the rear part of the beat of the beat pretty easily. so i let them fall there. fat, slow, and deliberate. so, really… we had the whole beat covered, i guess.

and then, it was just a matter of material.

long story short: i wrote five pieces and arranged that tune of Dan’s. most of the songs were just expanded versions/forms of music from my senior concert: Beauty In Strangeness – my attempt to reconcile… well, much of what is in me. but, call it… over romanticism meets Sun Ra…; Leave Autumn (alone) – my extreme reduction of a John Esposito composition based on the melody of Autumn Leaves … backwards. that is, he turned it backwards. played it for us a couple of times. and i loved it. so i “sampled” without telling him for my senior concert. he was… surprised.; the pequod — essentially my sorrowful retelling of the story bits of Moby Dick. you know… but like… as if it were a level of some 8bit Nintendo game… like, i always think of MegaMan for some reason. underwater. its strange, i know. i apologize, i guess; and finally, the aptly named: trio (for the end of time) – is like what might happen if Messiaen and Ornette had jammed for bit. probably i was trying to emulate the terrific triple-meter masterpiece that was the Brad Mehldau trio playing She’s Leaving Home on Day Is Done. close? well, no. not really. but sort of its own, weirdo epic thing. which is probably, honestly, what i actually should have been going for. thank goodness for good collaborators.

for Alive and Burning, i basically just turned the chords around. slowed it way down. removed about half the changes. and kept Daniel’s beautiful melody, essentially, in place.

the only other track was an interlude Zach and I came up with to try and do some crazy mic-ing fo the rhodes. its… sort of worked… sort of didn’t… and we were basically being kicked out of the studio at that time. it was april 2006.

—-

later on, Zach did a quick mix of the tracks. all the blemishes still in tact. no splices or anything. some eq-ing, i’d bet. some compression? panning? not sure. he did his thing. and what remained. was this. which quickly… fell to the wayside. every now and again, i stumble across it. and i want to listen. and i’m pretty impressed with this thrown together conglomeration of individuals. it would have been cool to ever have played this music before an audience. it begged to be performed live.

i admire, more than anything, the three way counterpoint that comes through in the recording. the times sort of gliding in and out of synch. and yet, there is a remarkable — if somewhat forced — cohesion there.

today, i think, it might have sounded better with a real pianist. but wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for me. i am thrilled by the sounds herein. sorry — oh so sorry — that nothing came of them. and so… here i place them. part I of Cleaning the Mirror. i release this out into the world. in full form. though, not quite fully developed. not quite fully come of age.

may it bring you some… joy.

akie.

re-evaluation

it would have been, on monday, my mother’s 58th birthday.  how much time does one spend to reflect on this now.  precisely six months since her (very) untimely death.  is it enough to observe the day?  mightn’t i have gone to the cemetery?  or to church?  or stayed in.  i carried on today like it were any other day since January 14th.   work, play, work, play… smoke… play… smoke.

now — at bed time.  i wonder if i should have made a greater event of it.  but yet, it is only the first missed birthday. and, perhaps, it comes too soon on the heels of the passing to really provide any distance for reflection (one needs distance in order to reflect… or, at least, to observe what is reflected).

i suppose the greatest complication is: disbelief.  its still hard to believe.  and so, tonight, i go to bed.  with the usual heavy heart.  and the usual confusedire.  and the usual resigned perserverence.

what good is it to fight these things off just now?  let the summer stew me here.  i will trudge onward to autumn.  and, in winter, face that darker darkest heart of suffering.  and: there, perhaps, make my stand.  for now i go, begrudingly, easy.

i slide.

a NORDer country[part 1]

HELLO friends!

it has been quite the couple of weeks since our last rejoinder here. so much has happened. the second Burundanga show (now with Sita!) — making it two for two. more music is up on the site (myspace.com/burundangamusic) from that show. my younger sister graduated from Dartmouth College making it 4 for 4 for the bermisses and college. an essentially unprecendented percentage. and finally, the purchase of a long-awaited new keyboard. ever since about early fall 2004 (when my old Korg kicked the bucket after i flipped my car on the NY Thruway at 2 o’clock in the morning after the whitespace recording session AND all the older cats were making fun of me for trying to gig out with my rhodes) i’ve been using the first edition of the Casio Privia keyboards. lightweight (extremely light-weight), weighted keys, on-board speakers, and usuable (if not fantastic) acoustic and electric piano sounds. for a while that worked. i spent most of ‘04 - ‘05 using the Privia as my practice keyboard in my apartment. and i gigged with theFoundation on the rhodes exclusively. good thing to since the Privia was not really made for gigging. it was great for at-home use though. i remember writing “tuesday night lights” on it. in something like October of 2005, when i was just… ridiculously broke… mostly jobless… after John had put me in as the accompanist for the Bard Jazz Singers Workshop and i was getting a little bread… Bugalu called me to play the gig at the Black Swan in Tivoli. it took me a while to figure out how to connect my keyboard to an amp (it had 1/8″ inch outs… most instrument cables are quarter inches… i had to find a suitable adapter. it was a frackin’ nightmare). well after a couple of gigs there, i learned how to make the Privia sound, at least, acceptable coming through an amp. and have used it since on jazz gigs, blues gigs, weddings, and all that.

but in the winter of 2006 i saw the new keyboard player for the Eric Person band play a tiny red keyboard that, when he was finished with the gig, he put in a little red bag and put on his back. that was the first night i heard the Clavia Nord keyboard. in hindsight, i think he must’ve been using an electro, cause it was super-tiny. 66 keys. but the sounds this thing could make… i mean: wtf?! (to borrow from the hipsters). and this was in a jazz setting. anyway, i was jealous, but knew my place. and, at the time, had no idea what keyboard he’d been playing. just been amazed. a year later, i catch Aaron Steele’s Group A at a little dive in alphabet city, and his keyboardist is using the same little piano. richly, sexually red and a beauty in sound. some of the sounds were obviously home-made. mmm… it was good stuff. Aaron put me on the Nord Electro. and when it came time to buy (its been time for years): i looked to Nord. the stage pianos seemed the thing. not so light as the electros… but great power in processing… and weighted keys (which is a creature comfort of mine).

anyway… all this is pretty boring, i guess. the point is. i bought the 88 Nord Stage model yesterday. bit a hope and a prayer. but its about time i had a real keyboard. i love pianos… but i don’t get to play them often. and i certainly can’t drag my sustain-pedal-less rhodes out to every gig. so the Nord. mm-mm! i got it home yesterday afternoon… and basically haven’t stopped playing it. sent my eldest brother a happy birthday recording. and, in the heat of the excitement, started recording all sorts of things. things for the Mimetiks. things just for me. things for no one at all.

anyway… there’s this whole story i could tell you about Bach and the Well-Tempered Clavier…. but i won’t bore you further. instead… how about a reflection of my ecstaticness with this new instrument. the singing of songs, i wouldn’t dare have sung on the Privia… and only quietly sing in my room on the rhodes. please enjoy. there are more to come…

prettygirl (nordstuff)

akie

wired man. tired wren. many wrongs.

i face 4am with a steely resolve to wake up despite the nearness of dawn. though i have much to say, i think more can be gained by forestalling the saying to make you listen. last time i wrote about Burundanga. today: i give you the means to hear the past.

myspace.com/burundangamusic

be thou, then, satiated.

akie

Daniel’s Burundanga Big Band

here’s how it goes… a couple of months ago.  Daniel Jose Older — a bassist, composer, and filmmaker — comes into Saje while theMimetiks are cooking and raps at me about a band he wants to put together for a gig.  at 169 bar.  over the course of about a month i learn a couple of his songs and rehearse a bunch of times.  eventually we do a hit.  and it goes over pretty well.  but that’s it.

then Dan has to move.  and he does.  and then he wants to put another band together.  a more ambitious, more honed outting.  i intoned that i’m, of course, down.  over the course of a few MORE months, DJO holds some rehearsals at multi-instrumentalist Vince’s house.  we learn some new songs.  i give him some rides home.  we smoke cigars and all that.  eventually we he brings in Sita on vocals.  Omar on trumpet.  and finally (like three days ago) Dai — VERY recently from Japan — on drums.

most of march and april Dan, on bass, Omar, on trumpet, and I, on keys [wow.  that’s alot of commas…] work over Dan’s sometimes very idiosyncratically complicated songs.  it works out lovely.  Vince is out of town touring.  Sita is doing the same.  so we tighten up the “rhythm section.”  there’s alot of piano stuff to learn for Daniel’s Cuban-influenced compositions.  lots of lead trumpet.  we get that settled.  Dan books a gig at Saje for Monday night the 12th May.  On friday the 9th, he tells me we have a drummer finally.  a cat named Dai who is japanese and doesn’t speak very much english.

we all get together on sunday afternoon to rehearse for about two hours.  Dan, Omar, Dai and me.  it clicks.  we get to the gig on monday night.  vince is on the congas.  we set up.  and we play.  and, really, its good!  very, very good for a first certainly.

so now.  its looking like first Mondays at Saje.  maybe i speak too soon.  but the name of the band is the Burundanga Big Band.  and… we’re coming.

akie