SamuelBLupowitz

Glad to see the Return to Forever Light as a Feather record on there. That album was huge for me in high school. I was playing a lot more bass in those days, so I may have been a little bit more focused on what Stanley Clarke was up to, but every time Chick kicked in the wah pedal on the Rhodes, I was captivated.

Yup, like I said ... they are really taking away my reasons not to buy one!

Oof, preset management being one of the only things that concerned me about getting one of these for live use, they're really killing me trying to get me to spend my money.

Lots I agree with in the above replies, and I just want to offer another perspective: The cost of housing is exponentially higher than it was 30 or 40 (or even 10) years ago. That impacts having a place to rehearse without pissing off the neighbors, and/or how much money folks have left over to rent a rehearsal space after covering that major segment of income. And I know everyone on this forum has been a part of the "the club gig rates haven't gone up since 1983" discussion -- if the gigging income hasn't gone up, that's even less you have to spend on a place to get together and make noise, never mind all the equipment (instruments, mics, PA) that goes along with that. That gives the monied corporate tastemakers even more of a voice in who we hear, and we know if we're seeing a tight band, there's an invisible financial advantage in place, however small it might be, 90% of the time. Surely that's always been the case, but the margins are a lot thinner, so the barrier to entry is ... higher? Taller? You know what I mean. And for an even younger generation, growing up now: how many of us got our start playing in bands rehearsing in our parents' garage or basement? What happens when your parents can't afford to buy or rent a house with a garage or basement? Like so many good things in this world, the issue is not lack of talent or desire or commitment, it's availability of resources.

Oops, that's my go-to Mellotron patch! 😆 If I'm going to cover those kinds of sounds on a keyboard, I want it to sound like a keyboard, so those do the thing for me. Flutes, strings, choir. But also, the nature of them being "Beatle Flutes" is often exactly why I use them. It's like how wearing star-shaped glasses gives the vibe of Bootsy Collins, or a top hat suggests Leon Russell, or an oversized suit makes people think of David Byrne in Stop Making Sense. Just a little bit of musical shorthand.

I mean, when someone says "let them eat cake..."

I mean, so much from the Zeppelin canon -- Whole Lotta Love, Sick Again, You Shook Me, Black Dog. Plenty of the old blues songs they swiped from, too (the "squeeze my lemon" stuff is lifted from Robert Johnson, and there's plenty more where that came from). Chuck Berry had "Reelin' and Rockin'," Ray Charles had "What'd I Say" receiving intense pushback. A huge swath of classic soul and R&B from the 50s through now is about sex, variously coded to make it past the censors and arbiters of what was appropriate (especially around race) of their day. There's so much of the Stones catalog in this category (Let It Bleed, Stray Cat Blues, Sweet Black Angel, Brown Sugar). And I mean, even Paul McCartney gave us "Hi Hi Hi," "The Back Seat of My Car," and "Why Don't We Do It in the Road." Meanwhile, I think what you're noticing in mainstream pop is a freedom and a sense of rebellion that was missing from that very heavily controlled genre 30 years ago. I'm honestly loving this era of pop that's more open and direct about sexuality (and not just heterosexuality), which was something that was constantly signaled to be deviant and impure in my post-Reagan suburban upbringing. Sure, plenty of very young female pop stars were given very sexual lyrics to sing and outfits to wear by their powers-that-be, but shamed in the media as Setting a Bad Example. Today there are a lot more pop stars who are more in control of their image and their songwriting, and not all of them feel beholden to the Madonna/whore dichotomy we used to see. There was so much "I'm a virgin" purity culture surrounding the Mickey-Mouse-Club-turned-sex-symbol public figures, even as their images relied on sexuality as a taboo to sell records. Consequently, I would argue that the "delicacy" you're missing is an honesty and openness that would have been inconceivable in the 90s, when Clear Channel had a death grip on anything on the airwaves. Even in the more rebellious classic rock era, you did not have Bowie and Elton John and Mick Jagger singing or even speaking openly about their same-gender relationships until at least the 80s (someone can check me on that, but I think the exception would prove the rule). Chappell Roan gets to sing about relationships with multiple genders on the same record. She gets to drive home the pain of feeling used by someone you have feelings for in "Casual" expressly *because* she's not romanticizing their physical relationship, she gets to sing "I'm just a girl that you bang on your couch." The frankness of it is incredibly powerful, in my opinion. And she has *families* at her concerts! I think that's incredible, and very important at a time when there is a LOT of political movement to punish and shame people around their sexuality, as it's become less shrouded in mystery, shame, and control over the past few decades. And sure, is there still a place for more artful lyrics, and could we argue that we're in a cultural moment where nuance and the ability to pay attention and close-read our media is sorely lacking? I'd agree with all of that, but I'd be careful about placing the blame on the artists or their fans, as opposed to the bigger industrial forces involved in "popularity" in the media. All that said, the OP wasn't really talking about sexuality in his distaste for hip-hop; he referenced the violence and criminality, which we can once again ascribe to The Rolling Stones (Street Fighting Man, Gimme Shelter, Sympathy for the Devil, Sister Morphine, Monkey Man) and plenty of punk rock (much of the Dead Kennedys' oeuvre, satire or not). In folk music, Pete Seeger saw a sign that said "private property" in "This Land is Your Land" and said "but on the other side, it didn't say nothin'." Woody Guthrie's machine killed fascists (and the fascists he was referring to were generally "lawful" -- they were businessmen and home-grown politicians as well as European dictators). And of course, his son Arlo got that citation for dumping that garbage, and it, to his delight, kept him out of a very legal war. 😉 Anyway, my point is prescribing amorality to a whole genre of music is reactionary, as well as lacking in cultural and historical understanding. Plenty of hip-hop is violent and even seemingly apolitical in that violence, but the same could be said of plenty of songs by Johnny Cash or Waylon Jennings. Never mind that a look into the social issues underpinning the communities where this music comes from can be incredibly revelatory. Music has long been a vehicle to express revolutionary and counter-cultural ideas, and expose ugly or hidden parts of society and force us to engage with them. That's a big part of what makes AI music-making so convenient for talentless corporate types who see art as one more thing they can control and bleed of its significance in order to more efficiently extract profit, regardless of the negative impact on people. That's much more interesting and important to me than "some of these artists live violent lives and write lyrics about it, so their whole genre must be worthless." So there's my soapbox for this morning!

I have a friend whose parent once complained about the overly sexual lyrics in the hip-hop she listened to. She countered with "The Lemon Song" from Led Zeppelin II. That ended that conversation. Seriously, hip-hop is a 40-year-old art form at this point. It might be beneficial to look into some of the historical and cultural background of that music if it still feels alien or threatening to you! It isn't what I grew up listening to, but as a working musician, it's been crucial to my development to jettison the "rAp iSn't MuSiC" prejudice that my parents' generation tried to instill in me and my peers, which is no different from the "rock and roll will destroy our American values" diatribes leveled at Chuck Berry and Elvis and the Beatles and the Stones.

The Moog Model D app is absolutely fantastic. When I went from using an iPad to using a MacBook with Mainstage for my virtual instrument needs, I needed both because I couldn't part with how great that app is (now I'm pretty sure there's a desktop version).

I've used a roc 'n' soc for almost a decade now, and it serves me well, but I've been thinking about getting one with the backrest. More and more I'm finding that I wake up the day after the gig with a lot of lower back pain from unintentional hunching over (and/or carrying my gear). Having a little back support might give me some relief, when I'm not jumping up to power stance...

Produced by Ben Folds! The perfect marriage of broad audience sensibility and quirky weirdness. I know you can't call this his "best work" because of that little English band he was in in the 60s, but I feel like Paul McCartney had a huge renaissance, and did some of his most consistently good solo work in his 50s and 60s, somewhere between 1997's Flaming Pie and 2007's Memory Almost Full. Admittedly, I have a bias: those are the records he put out when I was getting into my teens and at my peak Beatles fandom. But I don't think I'm alone in thinking that that post-Beatles Anthology run had him making some of his highest-quality songwriting and studio production of his post-Beatle years. 2001's Driving Rain, in particular, benefited from the chemistry with the musicians who would go on to back him on tour for the next 20 years and counting, Rusty Anderson and Abe Laboriel Jr. (plus the absolutely stellar Gabe Dixon, now of Tedeschi Trucks Band, on funkier, gnarlier keyboards than one almost ever hears on Macca's records). It was not a bad time to be growing up as a younger Beatles fan.

Burn it to the ground!

Some STELLAR synth bass playing on this track. And I'm very impressed with his ability to "play" the electronic drums on his keyboard controller like that. I've done that sort of thing for demos and it takes some real practice to execute well.

That may be the case; I'm sure he's grateful to hitch his wagon to Toto's mass audience and "actually getting paid!"

Oh man, I feel your pain on the extremely unsexy purchase of keyboard stands, but I have two of that same model you're using for the Rhodes; it's my favorite stand I've ever owned. That said, your biting-the-bullet with the Omega has my wheels turning; I've been struggilng with an ergonomic setup for my Korg Prologue above my dual manual Mojo, and it's hard to sort out positioning with all the pedals underneath. The Gator Frameworks doesn't have an optional second tier that I'm aware of. Glad your gig setup is feeling cleaner and sturdier!

I wanted to check in with our forum members who are gigging regularly -- especially in original music projects, perhaps in more niche genres -- about where and how to go about expanding a project's reach and booking more shows outside of one's home scene! I've been talking a bit on the forum the last few months about my organ trio, Pocket Bandits. All three of us are really eager to play more, better shows, and are willing to travel (not monthlong tour kind of thing, but regional driving gigs and short two- or three-day runs here and there). I'm trying to be strategic about making sure we play the kind of gigs that count and will help us build an audience. Obviously instrumental jazz-rock is a bit of a harder sell than a cover band, but we've also found it to be very accessible to new listeners and good at getting people on the dance floor at our gigs the past six months or so. I'm not expecting to make a ton of money, but I'm also trying to limit just going out of pocket to play gigs when you're three musicians with day jobs and mortgages in the vicinity of middle age. The goal is to be able to break even and eventually make a little money, and build a nice little reliable audience for ourselves where we can do a weekend in Boston or Philly and come away with a little extra money in our pockets and smiles on our faces. Not as ambitious as my childhood musical dreams, but hey, something to work toward. It's been kind of hit or miss trying to book breweries and wineries outside of town. Just trying to grind away at that. Clubs can be a little easier, especially teaming up with a local act, but making any money from a door deal is TOUGH these days with all the extra cuts the venues take. Festivals are high on my list -- especially jazz festivals, though we are definitely on the more rock/funk/prog side for anything that's too centered on straightahead jazz -- but I'm realizing with a lot of them, figuring out when and how to submit is a huge enigma! I haven't been actively trying to seek out new venues and new audiences on my own since before the pandemic, and not that booking was ever fun, but it feels extra challenging right now. Obviously I want to give venues their money's worth, but of course a new band is not going to bring in the same clientele as a Queen tribute band or top 40 act or whatever. And I'm not sure how it's feeling in other places, but ever since the pandemmy, my hometown music scene has had the same amount of musicians but a much, much more challenging, unpredictable audience draw (even for the better-known acts -- nobody is packing the clubs like they used to). Not looking at this thread as a way to commiserate about booking woes -- though lord knows I could do that all day -- but truly curious about folks' experience trying to build an audience for a project at a starting-from-scratch regional level. Maybe we can all share some helpful wisdom!

Getting OT but I had forgotten that you worked on this production, Dave -- it's one of my favorite productions of JCS that I've seen (I have a real soft spot for that show, but also a specific set of stylistic opinions about how it should be performed that makes me kind of a pain in the ass about it).

Oh, that is beautiful. Thanks for sharing and congrats to him!

I'm interested to hear your positive read! I saw the original film once, years ago, and mostly remember it focusing on the much-storied tension within the band. Get Back absolutely blew me away so I had no real interest in seeing the original cut again, but perhaps I'll take the (admittedly much shorter than the Peter Jackson version) time.

Awesome cover. Giving me Postmodern Jukebox vibes. Love the fast Leslie/percussion decay thing you're doing in the verses, too, and the overdrive on the choruses and your solo is WICKED. Also, the singer should serve as a reminder to us all that Billie Holiday is the grandmother of all rock singing.

Yeah, while I never bring the CP88 out *for* the synth, having that option makes the synth samples much more *usable* when they're needed. I'm already wishing this upgrade had existed in January when I played in the band for a rock choir (really) and the only place on that two-board rig that made sense to pull up the synth lead in Roundabout was on the CP88.

Wow, I thought I had read (maybe it was just speculation) in the CP88/73 thread that they had ended support or at least updates for these boards. Glad to know they haven't let them fall by the wayside! I love my CP88.

Hey thanks so much for all the very informative tips, friends! It is, indeed, a very obviously disconnected wire that is the culprit. Some soldering is in my future.

The top (9th) drawbar on the first set (the Bb "preset") for the lower manual on my A100 isn't making any sound. If I switch to the second set (the B preset), that drawbar works just fine; both sets work on the upper manual (when the percussion isn't engaged of course). For you experienced Hammond folks: is there an obvious fix for this? Or is it something I'm going to have to investigate further, or maybe call in a tech?

My organ trio did a live in-studio performance for a local podcast, and it was a good opportunity to bust out the clav as well.