Zuleikha had a concert with her “old” band yesterday, which is called “Brass & Co.” (she’s now a member of the Big Band which is more on a senior grade age level than the former). And during that concert yesterday we also heard several other bands from other schools and music schools, and some performances were really nice.
Like a girl in a small rock group who played keys and sang this one from Stevie Nicks:
Fleetwood Mac – Dreams [with lyrics]
Another brass band played Mark Ronson’s / Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk”, and while I like the original (which I played on the TV later at home for Zuleikha), I even prefer a newer video edit of it:
Old Movie Stars Dance to Uptown Funk
The same goes for “The Hanging Tree”, from “Mockingjay” of “The Hunger Games”, where Jennifer Lawrence’s original is good – but I like another one even more. This one is from Adriana Figueroa who also calls herself “adrisaurus”:
“The Hanging Tree” (Hunger Games / Mockingjay Original Arrangement) (Adriana Figueroa)
And here is Zuleikha playing it, without sound (don’t have a video of it):
Hunger Games on French Horn, Gross-Gerau 2019
As always, thanks for reading / viewing / listening.
Hm – I thought I had written about them before. Cannot find it, so here we go again; listen to this fine version of Desafinado:
Marc (Eliane’s husband) is playing an Eminence Upright here, quite a fine instrument when properly amplified – and I think on top of his rig I also see an Avalon preamp/DI, quite a nice way to get a signal from a bass đ
But listen to those musicians: Eliane Elias: piano, vocal – Rubens De La Gorte, guitar – Marc Johnson, bass – Rafael Barata, drums – all of them exceptional.
Switch this video to full screen, and read along while Dexter plays:
Wave/Dexter Gordon’s full (Bb) Transcription. Transcribed by Carles Margarit
It’s a channel on Youtube which I recently also recommended to my brother Willi who’s also a bass player like me.
And wow, did you notice the bass player on this one? I had to look him up of course, and it’s one of the greatest, NHĂP, according to the album’s AllMusic page.
Giants on their instruments, all of them. See me bowing in awe.
And thanks to Carles for the transcription of course.
If you thought that my post from yesterday showed some good bass player, you’re right. But listen to this one:
Esperanza – Body & Soul
Amazing, isn’t she? That’s maybe why she played in the white house in front of a president who knew good music (I bet he still does, but he’s not a president anymore).
Are you logged into Youtube, like me? Do you get personalized recommendations, and does your browser filter out ads and other unwanted stuff? Wondering what might be hiding behind all of that? Read on…
My browser (ESR versions of Firefox, mostly – the only more or less “free” one of the big browsers) doesn’t have many plugins installed, but one I couldn’t live without is ublock origin. It gets most of the unwanted crap out of my view, and sites which even try to circumvent this won’t be on my daily list of sites to visit.
But one thing it did as I just found out is to also reduce the opening (self-) ads from Youtube – you saw a short flickering, then the usual list of new videos comes up. Wondering what might be behind that blocked content, I decided to dig out another browser which I rarely use, and which isn’t personalized (means me not being logged into anything), and which also doesn’t have any plugins installed. At work this morning that was Epiphany.
So let’s see what was flashing away from my eyes this morning:
Youtube opening screen, unfiltered
Aha. “Youtube Originals”, yeah I remember, had seen some of these announcements before – looks like they’re trying to become more of a real content provider (to monetize that of course). Ok. Not for me, thanks.
Under it, “Trending”, which I also never see normally. The state of mankind is a poor one if these are the topics of interest, frankly. Don’t want to be reminded of that each day, thanks. So let’s scroll down a bit more…
… where it becomes even worse:
The infamous Googe / Youtube “Topics”
“Topics” – yeah, these I see as well, and these are frankly a pain in your lower end. Ok, I get it – Google / Youtube knows nothing about me at this point, because I’m not logged in, so they show me the topics of most clicks or views or whatever their algorithm might be – and oh man, is this really the world we’re living in? What a strange species we must be…
I closed that browser after this, sorry, but cannot stand it. Google / Youtube is mostly wrong about getting my interest, but at least I don’t see crap like that when I’m being logged in. Instead of that, I see the umpteenth recommendation of old Miles Davis stuff, or Ella Fitzgerald just because I listened to *one* of her songs lately – but that is still worlds apart from… THIS (there was no other word coming to my mind, sorry).
It’s not only Youtube and Google – Vimeo or DailyMotion or all of the daily news aggregators aren’t much better, no one really has any kind of “artificial intelligence” which might be even worth that description of its own. Computers are thick (“Computer sind doof”), as a German pop song of the eighties used to state. Mostly of course, it’s *us* who are programming them. And we want self-driving cars, really? Robots in medicine? Thanks but no thanks.
Ok – enough of brutal truths of reality for one morning – now hand me that blue pill again, thanksverymuch…
Other news, for my/our German readers: in case you didn’t notice it yet, the German Wikipedia will be switched off tomorrow for 24 hours. Their form of protest:
Protest…
So read all about it today while you can – tomorrow you’ll have to do with English or other languages.
Stumbled upon some videos with killer bass lines again lately – and here are two three of them. First, a cute one (and females seem to like it because of the man depicted there) of singer/bassist/professor Esperanza Spalding, with herself as main actress:
Esperanza Spalding – I Can’t Help It
Then, a duo. One of the greatest guitar players of all time, Joe Pass, but listen to Red Mitchell on bass on this one (which is again one of my most favourite songs ever):
Joe Pass & Red Mitchell – Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise (live)
Oh, and you probably knew already that Michael League from Snarky Puppy is a killer bass player also, didn’t you? Here’s some ‘making of’ of one of the songs from their latest album “Immigrance” which should be out right now:
Snarky Puppy – Xavi (Behind The Scenes)
Love that African polyrhythmic vibe of this one – the drums, the handclaps, everything. Oh, and the cats of course!
That’s all for now folks – and it’s all on my wishlist at the big dealer’s place…
As always, thanks for reading / watching / listening.
