www.vibesworkshop.com

I noticed that Khan Jamal became a member here about six weeks ago, and I've been listening to his album Peace Warrior over the last two days. His playing is just exceptional and soulful, and he is a recent discovery for me. I had heard of him as a result of a Downbeat interview several decades ago, but really never checked him out until he played on Matthew Shipp's album Equilibrium from a couple of years ago. It is my understanding that Mr. Jamal became ill after that album's release but appears to be recovering and playing again.

I went shopping for a van ramp this morning for my Hammond organ. Although I haven't made a purchase yet, I wanted to share a little bit of what I learned.

Past threads have discussed moving the vibes assembled (my preference) versus assembling/dissembling the instrument every time. To move the vibes already assembled, you need a van of some kind, so this is for those of you who own a minivan and might be interested in this topic.

For US members, tonight will be the second broadcast of the fantastic 2010 Dave Brubeck documentary Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way from 8:00-9:30 on Turner Classic Movies. It has only been broadcast one time on Dave's 90th birthday, and is not available on DVD. Executive produced and hosted by Clint Eastwood, it will definitely "make your day."

I'm amazed that this has not been released commercially, and hopefully it will come out soon so non-US members can have an opportunity to view it.

BANDSTAND: The area furthest away from an electrical outlet.
BIG BAND: Nowadays, an aggregation consisting of two musicians.
BROADWAY PIT JOB: A prison sentence disguised as a gig.
CABARET: A venue where singers do songs from shows that closed out of town.
CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME: God's way of telling you that you've practiced too much.
CATERER: A man whose hatred for musicians is unrivaled.
CHANTEUSE: A singer with an accent and no sense of time.
CLASSICAL COMPOSER: A man ahead of his time and behind in the rent.

I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to recommend the DVD of Gary and Makoto Ozone's Live at Montreux DVD from the 2002 performance. I was just websurfing last week at Amazon and discovered this, and I didn't even know that it was available. As much as I like the CD, the DVD adds that "third player" - the audience, and I think you'll enjoy this even more.

Does anyone know where I can obtain a chart to "Tanguedia III" by Astor Piazzolla? The piece is on Tango: Zero Hour and Gary has recorded it on his Libertango CD. I've searched several online sheet music retailers with no luck, so if anyone has a link to where I can buy it, I appreciate it!

It's one of the Piazzolla pieces that I think I could play on a gig - like Oblivion and a few others.

It's an interesting coincidence that the week after Gary was blogging about working with Astor Piazzolla, I received a phone call from a friend of mine inquiring if I wanted to play some tango gigs with him as a duo - he would play violin and I would play accordion. So I said okay on the condition that the music has to be played right - no shucking and jiving through a group of tango tunes, and Lou (the violinist) was completely on board with that.

I just read that Joe Cuba died yesterday on Sunday, February 15th. I only knew of Joe from his hit "Bang Bang" and that was the result of Cal Tjader covering it on Cal's Primo album (David Sanborn also covered it among others). The obituary mentioned that his bands were vibraphone-driven, so that piqued my curiosity to go to Youtube and see what was there to be viewed.