#EpicRushMemories

The recent passing of Rush drummer Neil Peart has affected a lot of people, myself included. A Facebook friend and I came up with the hashtag #EpicRushMemories – here are mine: I got tickets for the Vapor Trails tour show at the Shoreline Amphitheater in 2002 – received a call within a day or so […]

Pete Namlook Part 3 – The Ambient Cookbook II

I don’t remember where I picked this up – maybe Amoeba San Francisco? It’s a great collection – 4 CDs on one mp3 CD! Hours and hours of ambient music! This is a compilation of various artists from the FAX label, done in a continuous mix in four parts (originally the 4 CDs of the […]

Pete Namlook Part 2 – review of Sultan by Namlook & Burhan Öçal

Pete Namlook’s recorded output is quite diverse, partly due to his great variety of collaborators. Part of what makes Sultan stand out is the virtuosic playing of Burhan Öçal, on both stringed instruments and percussion. This really distinguishes it from other FAX releases which tend to be more atmospheric – the only similar one that […]

Pete Namlook Part 1 – The Evolution Of The Dark Side Of The Moog

This is the CD that started my fascination with Pete Namlook (and Klaus Schulze for that matter). I discovered it in a CD shop in Kyoto. I have an image of the store in my mind but not sure exactly where it was located, it wasn’t one that I regularly frequented. It was in the […]

On Peter Green and Early Fleetwood Mac

Did you know that Fleetwood Mac started out as a blues band? Let’s back up a little: one of the pivotal figures of British blues is John Mayall, and 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 […]

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 […]