On Peter Green and Early Fleetwood Mac

Did you know that Fleetwood Mac started out as a blues band? One of the pivotal figures of British blues is John Mayall – Eric Clapton joined John Mayall’s Blues Breakers after leaving the Yardbirds. When I was in 7th grade, one of my father’s co-workers played guitar, and he found out that I was […]

Roy Babbington continued

Earlier this year I wrote a post about one of my favorite bassists, Roy Babbington of Soft Machine, and their concert in Berkeley in January 2019. Here’s a photo I took at the show, just taken with my iPhone – I think they might be playing Fourteen Hour Dream: Part of the story was that I had […]

The Music of John Coltrane – First Contact

I recently remembered how I was first introduced to the music of John Coltrane. It was while I was in high school in Tokyo. I went to an international school (ASIJ) and played in the school jazz band for several years, though I didn’t really listen to jazz. I had a vague awareness of what […]

Lyrics and My Life

A few people know this about me – I have a very difficult time memorizing lyrics, and I actually don’t listen to lyrics most of the time. I don’t know why – the only time it really becomes a problem is when I want to sing a song with a band. I’ve been thinking about it […]

Mispronouncing Moog

Two of my favorite instrument companies of all time are Rickenbacker and Moog. If you listen to the genre of “progressive rock” then you have heard them a lot. Chris Squire of Yes and Geddy Lee of Rush – two of the gods of both prog rock and bass guitar – both used Rickenbacker basses […]

Paul Butterfield Blues Band appreciation

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band is a legendary group that I remember reading about in Guitar Player magazine – probably while I was in junior high school in Tokyo – but never actually listened to or even heard. I was aware that they had a song called East-West, but didn’t realize how significant it was […]

Easter Reflections of a Buddhist Bassist

One of the people I follow on social media is Bootsy Collins. He began his rise to fame as the bassist for James Brown, later joining George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic consortium. But Bootsy became a star in his own right, with hit singles from Bootsy’s Rubber Band, his Star basses and glasses, numerous collaborations with Bill […]