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SELF-EXPRESSION SUPERNOVA: Joe Satriani just dropped three albums' worth of music-minus-guitar backing tracks. And then he called some friends to see how they'd play over some of them, with predictably awesome results.
Playing "Rate My Skype Room: Home Studio Edition" for a moment, I give the "most gear" award to Steve Vai, and the "most elegant atmosphere" award to Lari Basilio. Some excellent hatwear as well going on here.
LESSONS, SESSIONS & CONFESSIONS: This is a good a time as any to restate for the record that I - a primarily touring musician spending lots of time at home these days - am available for Skype private lessons and remote bass tracking sessions. Look at all those shiny basses - now including a certain special instrument I recently reacquired. đ
Looking further on the bright side, itâs been quite rewarding revisiting some of the denser material in my bassist repertoire (Aristocrats, Mike Keneally, Steve Vai, etc) from an educational perspective. Sometimes I forget everything I went through to learn this stuff in the first place! For the brave souls who want to enter that process, many treasures and surprises await. Regarding sessions, itâs always exciting to bring new instruments to the table, as well as revisiting some old ones. As Iâve said many times, the song will always tell you what to do.
I admit that the âconfessionsâ bit was just to complete a clever headline. (Wait, that *was* a confession, wasnât it?) I donât have anything to confess, other than, like so many of you, I have no idea when life will return to normal. Itâs a crazy world out there right now. Stay safe, and if youâre a musician, somehow, keep playing.
SCENES FROM THE FLOOD, ONE YEAR LATER: Hard to believe, but âScenes From The Floodâ dropped exactly one year ago today. (What a year, right?) Iâve said plenty about it, so Iâll turn it over to the folks whoâve heard it: How does it sit for you one year on? And if somehow you havenât heard any of it yet (always possible!), Iâm re-posting this one-minute promo clip for the album as a little birthday celebration. (Protip: If youâre thinking of purchasing this fine musical product, my website webstore is the best place to do it - vinyl, CD, or hi-res digital. There, I said it.)
For my part, I remain grateful it exists, grateful to everyone on the massive team that helped make it happen, and even more grateful for the incredibly generous reaction from so many folks who took the time to check it out. I know I have a tendency to be a bit wordy in text, so in an effort to avoid that, Iâll just say this: Aside from the video Iâm working on right now (and hope to release in the coming month), âScenes From The Floodâ says everything I could possibly want to say about our Very Strange Year. Itâs all there in the music, and one year on, I wouldnât change a single atom of it.
(Want to know more? Read more about it here: bryanbeller.com/index.php/scenes-from-the-flood)
TOBIAS UPDATE - THE INTERNET DESERVES A BETTER CLASS OF STORY: But, in this case, I canât really give it to you. Or, to keep going with The Dark Knight meme language, the tale of my stolen-and-returned Tobias Lacewood Tobias #1402 isnât the story we need in 2020, but itâs the story that 2020 deserves. And now Iâm going to have to break My One Rule: Never tell a boring story. But Iâm going to, right here, with as little drama as possible. In a timeline:
1991: The bass is built in Michael Tobiasâ shop in Los Angeles. Luthier/finisher/musician Paul Slagle becomes the original owner.
May 1992: I reach out to Tobias via phone during my senior year at Berklee College Of Music . Somehow (I canât remember this part) I am connected with Paul Slagle, who has one for sale (probably because there was a long backorder on new Tobias basses). I fly from Boston to Los Angeles to meet Paul, watch him play it at The Robin Hood Pub in Sherman Oaks, and buy it from him the next day.
May 1992-December 1994: It becomes my #1 instrument. I play it in a Metallica tribute show at Berklee, my Berklee Senior Recital, gigs with the blues-rock band 100 Proof, the Dweezil/Ahmet Zappa band Z (two tracks from 1993âs âShampoohornâ, plus a 3-week tour of the USA), and Mike Keneally (a few gigs in San Diego, and the recording session for 1994âs âBoil That Dust Speckâ).
December 31, 1994: The instrument is stolen (with no forced entry) from my North Hollywood apartment by a recently fired maintenance worker at the complex, who kept his uniform and made key copies. He had been in my apartment a week before to fix something (while still employed by the complex), and the instrument had been left out on display. Several eyewitnesses saw him entering and leaving my apartment minutes before I got home, dressed in uniform, carrying white garbage bags filled with âsomethingâ.
Early 1995: He was arrested, tried, and found ânot guiltyâ.
August 2017: I posted this message in the Talkbass.com forum, along with a picture of the bass:
âThis beautiful 1986 Tobias Basic with a lacewood maple top was stolen out of my apartment by a building maintenance worker in 1994. I bought it three years before and it was my #1 at the time I first moved to Los Angeles in 1993. The serial number is #1402. Somehow it never turned up at the local pawnshops, and since this was the pre-internet era, it's hard to know what happened to it.
23 years later, it's entirely possible that this instrument has ended up in the hands of someone who has no knowledge of its troubled provenance. If that person happens to be you - I will gladly pay a fair price for it. It's more than likely that the instrument stayed in California somewhere, but you never know.
What say you, TalkBass community? Any chance this shot in the dark hits light?â
September 1, 2020: A person e-mails me to say âI do actually own that bassâ. He is located just blocks from where the bass was stolen and bought it from someone locally in 1997.
September 5, 2020: I buy the Tobias back from this person, for the fair price I said I would in the TalkBass post.
And there it is. Or as Paul Harvey would sayâŠnow you know the rest of the story.
The only post-script is that I have just learned - literally as I was writing this post - is that Paul Slagle passed away in March 2020 after a long battle with leukemia. I had no idea as I hadnât been in touch with Paul since 1992, and I was planning on reaching out to him today. Rest in peace, Paul, and thanks again for being the first person to sell me this amazing instrument.
(Picture from March 9, 1994, at A.L. Gators in Baltimore MD, live from the Z âK.A.O.S.â tour)
TERMINAL VELOCITY ATTAINED: Fans of guitaristic majesty rejoice! The one and only John Petrucci just dropped his first solo album in 15 years. Watching him play his solo material live on the 2018 G3 tour gave me a whole new appreciation for what he does, and a couple of tracks from that live set (âHappy Songâ, Glassy-Eyed Zombiesâ) are on this album. Iâm particular to âThe Oddfatherâ and âGeminiâ, as well as the unexpected vibe of âSnake In My Bootâ. And of course, Dave LaRue and Mike Portnoy are killing all over it.
Iâm guessing that most people following me probably already know about this release, but just in case you somehow missed the news, go check it out and feel your lower jaw drop in awe.
John Petrucci - New Album 'Terminal Velocity' OUT NOW!
Terminal Velocity marks the first solo album by John Petrucci to be released in 15 years, as well as, his first through The Orchard Music on his Sound Mind Music record label. The artwork was created by Sean M. Smith at Echo Designlab (Stone Sour, Hollywood Undead, In This Moment). Terminal Velocity...
SELF-EXPRESSION SUPERNOVA: Joe Satriani just dropped three albums' worth of music-minus-guitar backing tracks. And then he called some friends to see how they'd play over some of them, with predictably awesome results.
Stripped x Three : âShapeshiftingâ, "Black Swans and Wormhole Wizardsâ and "Is There Love in Space?â
Join these rockers and express yourself over Joe Satriani backing tracks. Pre-order your copy of Stripped x Three today at https://t.co/gxqoyiRDMN
While you're thinking "what a shockingly amoral hypothetical" and his latest campaign manager is headdesking himself into a migraine, Bill Barr and Stephen Miller are in the back going "Right, just take the blue states out. We can do that."
Praising his own virus response as deaths near 200,000, Trump says, "if you take the blue states out, we're at a level I don't think anybody in the world would be at."
