If you live in the Los Angeles area and don’t have plans for September 3rd, why not spend the night by hanging out with Slash? The GNR/Velvet Revolver guitarist will be at the Guitar Center in Northridge, California for “Guitar Center Sessions: An Evening of Dialogue and Insight with Slash.” Slash will provide hands-on tutorials, talking about crafting his greatest songs and riffs and give career advice to those in attendance. Plus, there’ll be a book signing of Reckless Road: Guns N’ Roses and the Making of Appetite for Destruction. The whole thing is free and open to the public, so maybe show up well before the 6pm PST start time on September 3rd.

[Photo: Getty]

• Mel Henderson & Paradigm Shift @ The Clarion Riverside Hotel. "Led by Mel Henderson, Paradigm Shift reunites with Wycliffe Gordon, Marcus Printup and Gray Mayfield for an engagement that will feature tunes from their recent CD release entitled Street Expressionism.
• Mulgrew Miller vs. Johnny O’Neal @ The Hyatt Regency Hotel. "The return match of premier pianists Mulgrew Miller and Johnny O’Neal promises to open at the same virtuosic level on which their initial face-off ended in a draw. Drummer Rodney Green and bassist Ivan Taylor comprise the rhythm section for this memorable rematch."
• The Henderson/Owens Trio + 1 @ The Hyatt Regency Hotel. "The Mel Henderson/Ulysses Owens Trio will provide the musical backdrop for one of the jazz world’s fastest rising, internationally acclaimed vocalists."
• Ulysses Owens & the USO Project @ The Clarion Riverside Hotel. "Ulysses Owens Jr. returns as leader of the talent rich quintet of emerging jazz artists comprised of pianist Sullivan Fortner, saxophonist Tim Green, bassist Ben Williams and vocalist Alicia Olatuja."
• Seamus Blake Group @ The Clarion Riverside Hotel. "Seamus Blake returns as group leader after two previous appearances as a sideman in which he affirmed his recognition as one of the finest, most creative young players emerging in jazz."
• "Exodus Weekend at the Clarion" A wild weekend with two separate monster acts:
• Sylvia Cuenca Group with Joe Locke @ The Clarion Riverside Hotel. "Sylvia Cuenca, the hard driving drummer long associated with Clark Terry, returns again as group leader to mark the anniversary of the Exodus To Jazz series which she initiated in October 2006. This swinging quartet is comprised of guitarist David Gilmore, bassist Essiet Essiet and Rochester’s renowned native son, vibraphonist Joe Locke."
• Jeff “Tain” Watts & Ebonix @ The Clarion Riverside Hotel. "Critically acclaimed as the foremost percussionist carrying forward the mantel of jazz drumming, “Tain” appears on every Grammy Award winning jazz record by both Wynton and Branford Marsalis."
• Susan Pereira & Sabor Brasil @ The Clarion Riverside Hotel. "Sabor Brasil, one of the most popular Brazilian ensembles in the New York area, fuses traditional Brazilian styles with contemporary jazz."
• Freddy Colón’s Jazz Quartet featuring the legendary Candido Camero @ The Clarion Riverside Hotel. "Recently recognized as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, legendary Cuban-American percussionist Candido Camero joins Rochester’s popular Freddy Colon Jazz Quartet to generate serious Latin-jazz heat."
• Gabriel Alegria Sextet @ The Clarion Riverside Hotel. "With a fascinating polyrhythmic formula, Gabriel Alegria’s Afro-Peruvian Sextet continues to generate popular responses much like that achieved by Brazilian and Afro-Cuban musicians. This return engagement will keep you warm in January!"

As those who have been reading this blog for the past few years know, I went to many of the ETJ shows over the past couple of seasons and always come away with another "keeper" musical experience. So please on over to the Exodus to Jazz website, and check out the dates and times and get them into your calendar. There's going to be some terrific music again and I hope you get out and support the music so that they keep coming back.

Then there is the next level down on the "satisfaction" scale - the Ting Tings/MGMT show at McCarren Pool on July 27.  It poured buckets at the beginning of this show - everyone got drenched - but then it ultimately stopped and MGMT pulled out the day successfully.

Then there is the best-laid-plains-but-utlimately-complete-disasters such as the Blonde Redhead scheduled appearance at Pier 54 in NYC on August 14.  Even though it had been a beautiful sunny week, the clouds began looming late on this Thursday afternoon.  Still, I had my fingers crossed that Mother Nature was going to hold off this time. However, after two hours of waiting outside the pier in a steady growing rainfall - and despite the shows organizers having fought hard to try to get the show on - in the end, all of the equipment drenched, the stage in about a foot of water and the lightning illuminating the sky, the show was unfortunately called off for safety reasons by the NYC Parks Department.

Bummer.

So, it was with some trepidation that on the following night -  Friday, the 15th of August - new concert going BFF Nancy and I headed over to Lincoln Center and its Damrosch Park Bandshell for one of their Out of Doors free concert happenings.

No sooner did we get there that it started raining again.  Uh, oh . . .

Respected composer Rhys Chatham was to premiere his  A Crimson Grail for 200 Electric Guitars (Outdoor Version) performed not on the Bandshell stage but along the sides of the audience at Damrosch Park, to heighten the work's polyphonic effect.

However, once again, the rain made this impossible.  All of the amps surrounding the three sides were drenched, despite attempts to cover them.  It was too much of an electrical risk and unfortunately, this performance had to be canceled.

Rhys apologized to the audience and promised to bring this show back some time in the future.

However, the night was not a total loss as they were able to present to us the second scheduled co-headlining appearance of composer/guitarist Manuel Gottsching's electronic composition E2-E4.  This piece is today generally acknowledged as the influential starting point for early techno and house music. 

I captured some of this hour-long performance in more time-managable video clips:

E2-E4 builds from calm and quiet to multiple layers of texture and repetition, culminating in an ecstatic groove.

Collaborating with Gottsching for this first-ever U.S. live performance of E2-E4 was visual artist Joshua White and his Joshua Light Show, who created live visual projections designed specifically for this piece, projected on the suface of the Damrosch Bandshell.

The projection uses "liquid light" techniques developed at Bill Graham's Fillmore East during the late 1960s.

This performance and experience was nothing short of amazing.

So, in spite of the element and disappointment of part of this show being rained out, in the end it was yet-another enlightening New York concert experience.

The above clip is a perfect example of what would happen if we lived in a world without song leaks. After attending the video shoot for AC/DC’s Black Ice first single “Rock N’ Roll Train,” one fan was eager to show other AC/DC fans what the new song sounded like. But instead of just recording the song’s video playback on his cell phone like a normal person, this fan opted to get creative, dressing up like lead singer Brian Johnson and attempting his own YouTube version of the song. The result is a four-minute screech fest which in no way can possibly help Black Ice album sales. Right around when the guy starts air-guitaring Angus Young’s solo, we switch to our next video, made by another AC/DC fan. This video below is the by-product of what happens when a guitarist’s friend who attended the video’s filming “hummed” the riff to the guitarist, who was not at the video shoot. The guitarist’s interpretation sounds like a pretty kick-ass combination of Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Hold Back the Water” and KISS’ “Firehouse,” but it’s slightly more tolerable than the Brian Johnson impersonator. As reported yesterday, we’ll all be able to hear the proper version of “Rock N’ Roll Train” when the single hits radio August 28th.

Aug 16th: A select crew of NY's dripping-in-black art and music elite slink to the dim lit sticky floored cellar of the rock and roll club, LIT LOUNGE, to check out Nick Zinner's new photo exhibit. Lit's the only place in NY where grunge hasn't died. Or at least if it died, you can still smell its decomposition on Lit’s floor. One of my friends passed out on the bench in the basement of Lit and awoke to find a rat walking on his face. It's as charming as nails stapled into black leather. But on the days you want to revel in a shit hole, this is the best rock shit hole there is. That said, the Fuse gallery in the back of Lit was perfect staging ground for the Yeah Yeah Yeah's guitarist extraordinaire, "It’s OK, Don’t Look at the Road."

Zinner, who studied photography in college, is into streamlined minimalist photography- with a bit of Dash Snow street grit. He highlights things unkept- the beauty in the unbeautiful and vice versa.

In this particular exhibit, he's got 100 or more photos of used beds from all over the world. Bangkok, LA's The Standard.... You can't match bed with place or date if you tried. Instead, it's a motley maze of used and consumed bedroom detris, highlighting the mundane trial of touring, a place with no name, a bed with no identity, save the constant reminder you ain't nowhere near home sweet home.

There's also bigger pictures of a guy showing off his lip tattooed with the word punk, woman's asses in short shorts. In explanation Zinner says:

"I have become more fascinated with the ambiguity of an image. If you remove the facts and the dates and are just left with the image, that image to me is strongest, when each viewer can attach their own meaning to it."

Check it for yourself if you happen to be rolling in the east village of NY. It helps they're also fairly reasonably priced- you can buy a pict of the bed for $25 and the bigger pieces for ~$500.

ohhhh and pssst...Vice Mag also has a cool clipping of work by Nick and his charming girlfriend Aliya Naumoff who's an uber-talented photog on her own right: http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n7/htdocs/way-out-west-146.php.

"It’s OK, Don’t Look at the Road" (Photographs by Nick Zinner)
August 16-September 13, 2008
Fuse Gallery
93 2nd Ave
(between 5th & 6th Sts, 2nd Ave stop on the F)
NYC, NY

• The Secret Machines - "Dreaming of Dreaming"
• New Order - "Temptation" (Secret Machines Remix)
• thesecretmachines.com

From the melodramatic, cinematic climes of tracks like opener "The End Times" to the middle-eastern groove and pulse of "The 4", the first two tracks offer so much variety in themselves that each one to follow seems to get more and more away from whatever original idea the band had for a theme. Maybe this is because the band is more a loose collective of somewhere around a dozen musicians, all of whom have some say in the direction of these songs. At certain moments, the Chiefs sound like a Dick Dale cover outfit with a traditionalist middle eastern backing band in tow, at others they sound like Ennio Morricone worshippers. On a couple of tracks, they even explore the viciousness of extreme metal! These tracks are accredited to "Holy Vehm" and his darkened influence is much appreciated by me. However, the highlights, where Secret Chiefs 3 really shine, are the cinematic moments of epic peaks and rich valleys: "The Exile" is my favorite track. It sounds like it would fit in the best western film you've ever seen, as the hero rides off into the horizon after having saved the people behind him but is easily confused as a villain for his low tolerance and itchy trigger finger. At least that's my imagery; the band is going for something much deeper here, as the album is taken in context with their past works to come together in some grand overlapping theme I am not so knowledgable about but can appreciate nonetheless. 

I can imagine thousands of music fans having never heard of Secret Chiefs 3 and being severely cheated in the process. You can't pin this band down to any genre, but you could call them a world or tribal sort of band in that the foundation of their sound always seems to be something foreign or mystical, like a band who's travelled the world in a hope to collect every bit of influence they can to form it into one massive beast. And they pull it all off with skill, practiced grace and unbelievable musicianship that'll leave your jaw hanging. Book Of Horizons is an album that begs for your attention by the merits of it's own quality songs and by no other means, an album that is both totally unique and totally enjoyable. You absolutely need to hear this at some point in your life, as it shows an appreciation for music that goes beyond what most bands would even consider in their sphere of influences or their range of abilities. 

       Now the fondly familiar riffs I was referring to; often times you'll notice a riff or a vocal insertion that rings bells.  Though you cant put your finger on it, give it a try.  For instance, track four Dark Art which approches with a deep drum intro and progresses into a fine repetitive enjoyment of hills and choruses.  I'd rather not make comparison's, instead I'll say this is the most unique project I've gotten my hands on since Book Of Knots.  For those who are simpler rock fans like myself, this album will enter the webbing of your top ten.  Just start easy and smooth (Keep Palm And Carry On, Dark Art, Hindsight Is Nowhere, Ummer Of Love), and the rest of the songs seem to blend like a story of sorts. Three and a half stars rounded up for its unique cuts.

Guest appearances including; Primus' Les Claypool, visionary guitarist Marnie Stern, Team Sleep/Deftones' Chino Moreno, No Age's Randy Randall and Dean Spunt, !!!/LCD Soundsystem's Tyler Pope, The Flying Luttenbachers' Jonathon Hicshke, Satori/RX Bandits' Steve Borth, the Advantage's Robbie Moncrief, and Hill's Hella bandmates Carson McWhirter and Josh Hill.

Produced by Daniel Rey, the record features re-recordings of songs picked from the band's eight releases, but with an emphasis on their 1979 debut.

Again, rather than sound like pathetic grasps at youthful glory, the new versions show some of the initial spark of early punk. Guitarist Gord Lewis, bassist Steve Marshall, and especially, vocalist Frankie Venom rip through and give new life to Head's classics like "Let's Shake," "Some Kinda Fun" and "Teenage Drinkin Party." Of the dozen tracks here, a full half are from their first record, with highlights being "Ain't Got No Sense" and the classic "Little Boxes." All tunes are delivered with urgency and well, venom, as well as the sense of liberated fun that was early punk. The boys in Teenage Head remember what it was like to hear punk for the first time, and to suddenly feel as if they could have the world by the balls if only they'd get up off their asses and do something. They did, and they still haven't forgotten, and "Teenage Head With Marky Ramone," with a little help from another master, is another reminder for anyone trying to keep from nodding off into conformity.