I can’t fall asleep, I ate too much pastrami.<\/p>\n
That’s a birthday tradition.\u00c2\u00a0 A movie, a sandwich at Langer’s and a hot fudge sundae.\u00c2\u00a0 Although it didn’t go down exactly that way today.\u00c2\u00a0 You see the movie was too long to make it to the gig so we went to the movie first which meant Langer’s was closed by the time it was over so we went to Brent’s in the Valley and then downtown.\u00c2\u00a0 Langer’s pastrami is hand-cut, they say it’s the best in the nation, but now that the neighborhood’s turned so bad, they close at four, and everyone tells me how great Brent’s is, and it is pretty damn good, but it’s thin-style\/machine cut meat.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s still pastrami.\u00c2\u00a0 And that leads to thirst and indigestion.<\/p>\n
We went to see "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo".\u00c2\u00a0 Salander was just a bit too pretty for my taste, and a bit too tall, but the movie was very well done, although a tad unsatisfying, since I knew what was going to happen, having read the book.\u00c2\u00a0 But it made me want to go to Sweden.\u00c2\u00a0 Live out the bleak winter.\u00c2\u00a0 With all that white snow and bitter cold.\u00c2\u00a0 The blast of heat upon coming indoors.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s so refreshing.<\/p>\n
And maybe these actors are stars in Scandinavia, but it was refreshing to see unknowns who weren’t young and pretty (except for Salander).\u00c2\u00a0 Cecilia Vanger and Erika Berger had smile lines.\u00c2\u00a0 Can you imagine someone on "Desperate Housewives" with smile lines?\u00c2\u00a0 Can you imagine watching "Desperate Housewives"?\u00c2\u00a0 They feed us TV so we won’t pay attention as they rip us off.<\/p>\n
And like I said, from the Westside to the Valley and then downtown for this Jeff Beck show at the Grammy Museum for two hundred people.<\/p>\n
You should have been there.\u00c2\u00a0 To see Jeff tapping, putting Eddie Van Halen to shame.\u00c2\u00a0 And the band was so locked in!\u00c2\u00a0 The drummer was incredible and when the keyboard player showed his jazz chops during the interview segment, his versatility was astounding, like Jeff said, he could PLAY!<\/p>\n
Yes, there was an interview segment after Jeff not only played songs from the new album, but "A Day In The Life" and BRUSH WITH THE BLUES!\u00c2\u00a0 My all time favorite Jeff Beck song.<\/p>\n
And Jeff had some interesting things to say.\u00c2\u00a0 About how the records we love most were done in a fit of pique, in one take, how we’ve got all this technology today, but it actually works against us.\u00c2\u00a0 And then he said artists repeat themselves out of cowardice.\u00c2\u00a0 And that he started in ballrooms, where he never got paid.\u00c2\u00a0 Ain’t that interesting, the best rock guitar player of all time (he said Segovia is the best GUITARIST of all time) started off playing for free and the hacks working harder at social networking than music are whining "where are the bucks?"\u00c2\u00a0 And he ragged on the critics too.\u00c2\u00a0 Saying he doesn’t win things. And when a questioner from the audience said that he plays slide in G, Jeff put him down to the point where the whole audience was aghast, then laughed.\u00c2\u00a0 WHO CARES?<\/p>\n
Yup, who cares about the wannabe.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve only got time for excellence.<\/p>\n
And the most fascinating bit of insight came as a result of another audience question, another guitar player asking…why does Jeff no longer use a pick?<\/p>\n
Because the great rockabilly players, the great Segovia did not.\u00c2\u00a0 It gave you options, you could play triplets, and it was clearer than ever at this point that the man in the sleeveless outfit might be a star, but first and foremost, he’s a MUSICIAN!<\/p>\n
What a concept!<\/p>\n
In an era of "Idol".\u00c2\u00a0 And "X Factor".\u00c2\u00a0 Those shows build train-wrecks, so that old men can make money.\u00c2\u00a0 But being a musician, you’ve got to do it for yourself, there may be no other reward.<\/p>\n
To see these four musicians on stage, watching each other, playing in harmony, playing in tune, was the antithesis of what we hear on Top Forty radio.\u00c2\u00a0 This wasn’t producer-driven.\u00c2\u00a0 The music was not built piece by piece.\u00c2\u00a0 It was organic.\u00c2\u00a0 Alive. And if you didn’t hear it tonight, you never heard it at all.<\/p>\n
And when it was all over, we went upstairs for the hang.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d like to say the conversation with Jeff was pithy and insightful, but it takes hours for these musicians to calm down from delivering, although he did riff with Felice about playing "Moon River" and "Peter Gunn".<\/p>\n
And when it was all over, I roamed the halls of the Grammy Museum.\u00c2\u00a0 They had Neil Diamond’s outfits.\u00c2\u00a0 The ones from the front and back covers of "Hot August Night".\u00c2\u00a0 Utterly shocking.\u00c2\u00a0 Like entering King Tut’s tomb.\u00c2\u00a0 And a Post-it with a handwritten note from the man himself saying he traded in his Martin D-18 for this Everly Brothers Flattop Gibson, upon which he wrote "Cherry Cherry", "I’m A Believer", "Red Red Wine"…all the hits you know and love.<\/p>\n
He started nowhere.\u00c2\u00a0 On a fencing scholarship at NYU.\u00c2\u00a0 He formed a songwriting partnership with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich.\u00c2\u00a0 And then he made it.<\/p>\n
Do you know how hard it is to make it?<\/p>\n
Just imagine, you’re broke, your family doesn’t understand you, you move to San Francisco, develop a new family and suddenly…<\/p>\n
That was the most poignant moment of the evening.\u00c2\u00a0 Seeing the handwritten notes from Janis Joplin to her family.\u00c2\u00a0 Pages long, talking about Ralph Gleason rave reviews, the $15-20,000 offers from major labels.\u00c2\u00a0 Trying to bridge the gap between daughter and mother with evidence of a success her parent just couldn’t understand.<\/p>\n
And they had Janis’ painted Porsche.\u00c2\u00a0 And an unretouched photo showing her acne scars.\u00c2\u00a0 She wasn’t beautiful, but boy could Janis sing.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what it used to take, talent.\u00c2\u00a0 But talent wasn’t enough, Janis made it, but the drugs killed her.\u00c2\u00a0 How can you go from being an alien, an outcast, to being everybody’s favorite?\u00c2\u00a0 You were nobody, now you’re somebody. Difficult for a poorly-adjusted kid to cope with.<\/p>\n
And seemingly all the stars of yore were poorly adjusted.\u00c2\u00a0 Start with John Lennon.\u00c2\u00a0 And put Jeff Beck in there too.\u00c2\u00a0 But man can he play.\u00c2\u00a0 And when he walks his fingers down that fretboard, when he picks those notes, when he works the whammy bar you can hear all the joy, alienation and frustration of the life he’s led, he speaks through his instrument, and you’re touched deep inside, you say to yourself, this is exquisite, this is life itself.<\/p>\n
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I can’t fall asleep, I ate too much pastrami. That’s a birthday tradition.\u00c2\u00a0 A movie, a sandwich at Langer’s and a hot fudge sundae.\u00c2\u00a0 Although it didn’t go down exactly that way today.\u00c2\u00a0 You see the movie was too long to make it to the gig so we went to the movie first which meant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-live-shows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-JM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2839,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838\/revisions\/2839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}