If You Were Here, I'd Admit That I'm An Asshole. But Now It's Over and I Can' Stay Sober.

That 70's show is a show that I really enjoyed watching years ago but I try to steer clear of it. Do I really remind you of Eric Foreman from That 70's show? I don't know how many times people have told me that. It was all sort of ironic that my friend Oneida texted me saying that just that because I had JUST gotten the new David Bazan album AND That 70's Show was on mute at the time of the text. Who's David Bazan? Well, maybe if you read this blog more you'd remember I wrote a mini paragraph about him to set up the video I posted on this entry. But anyway, he's the singer of Pedro The Lion. What does that matter? Well, in the fall of 2006, I would HEAVILY listen to Pedro The Lion and would HEAVILY go over to a house and watch That 70's show. And here I am, near exactly 3 years later, in a COMPLETELY different world, still listening to David Bazan's music. Kinda nifty, huh? No? Yeah, I could see why that might not seem like a big deal cause artist come out with new music and life does go on, but I can't express to you how thick of nostalgia it carries and how just...right? October and Pedro The Lion/David Bazan are. His new album is fantastic. It's pretty much the same exact thing as Pedro The Lion but he dropped the name and just made it David Bazan. Only been listening to it for a few days so I don't have any clear favorites just yet but I do enjoy the less happy. I dislike the songs that kind of sound like Keep Swinging and prefer the songs that sound more like Arizona and Transcontinental.

One thing that's been on my mind lately is, "Wow. My program is outstanding. But am I learning these things to soon?" I'm playing some incredibly pieces right now but I'm worried I won't be playing them next year or the year after that. I mentioned a month or so ago that I would be playing Agustin Barrios Mangore's Un Sueno En La Floresta. No longer! I decided to finally, after, 4 years of having the music and loving the piece, to do Agustin Barrios Mangore's Variation on a Theme of Tarrega: Lagrima Variations. It involves the theme(obviously), slurs, a little thirdsy(not a word) part, artificial harmonics, tremelo, arpeggios, and classic Barrios shredding. I have never heard anyone play it and I've never met anyone else that knows the piece besides me and the guy I discovered it with. So I'm quite excited to be playing it. I start the Brouwer Sonata when I return from winter break. Me and Larry started working on the Grand Overture. A bittersweet bummer. Why? Well now I have to actually play it right. It really does piss me off on how bad of a teacher Mr. Hii was. How did he miss so many bad parts about my playing this piece? And that's because he was "giving me his all"? We're actually analyzing the piece and discussing how I should play this part this way because I play that part another way and just TONS and TONS of different things. Larry is just filled with endless great ideas and it really just blows my mind. I have so much music to be playing these days and I absolutely love it.

Last week someone on punknews posted an add for joining his band. Ever since he posted that I've been super super super ancy to join a band and play music. I posted an add on Craigs List saying I was available to join/start a band. Preferably join. I got a few responses. 2 from really really really bad bands. 1 from some old dude playing punk music. Then one from a 26 year old guy who apparantley likes the bands I've listed as inspirations, is a fan of punknews and plays guitar. That sounds awesome but at the same time, it's craigs list and I have that constant paranoya of it being a scam. Haven't responded to him yet. But man, I just want to branch out. I live in San Francisco, California, one of the biggest punk scenes in the country. It'd be criminal if I wasn't more involved. I don't care what kind of punk. I'll play pop punk, skate punk, beard punk, Bad Astronaut esque rock, ANYTHING. Only bad thing about me being in or starting a band is that I'm not in it for trying to make it big. I just want to casually play a few shows a month and just have a good time. I also don't even have the equipment to play a show so I'm not really that attractive of a band member.

Music rotation is great right now. I've got Thrice-Beggars, Swellers-Ups and Downsizing, Strike Anywhere-Iron Front, Hot Water Music-Never Ender, and David Bazan-Curse Your Branches. This is the first time I ever have a Strike Anywhere song in rotation. I'd always just hear a few songs off one of their albums and never got too into it so this change is nice. This is the second Hot Water Music album I put into a full rotation and since they have so many, I'm going to have at least one of their albums in rotation pretty much until the summer. And I've already expressed my feelings for Thrice, Swellers and David Bazan. All that talk of David Bazan would only make it fitting to post a video of him. Again, I really really really highly recommend you listen to Pedro The Lion and or this new David Bazan release. Really really mellow, great story telling songs. This video doesn't really do the album justice because he doesn't really use an acoustic guitar, and everything is very electronic.


Pedro The Lion-Curse Your Branches

Oh, falling leaves should curse their branches
For not letting them decide where they should fall
And not letting them refuse to fall at all

I'm Not Gunna Watch You Kill Yourself To Live

I DARE you to try not to think of The Grinch theme song while looking at this picture. I should photoshop a santa hat and paint his face green and we would be the perfect part. The dashing fellow you're looking at is Roland Dyens. A current guitar composer/performer and a lock to be remembered for the remainder of time. He gave a master class for us last Thursday and a concert on Friday. Out of the two, I was more impressed with the masterclass. Dyens is a very soft spoken, humorous guy. And it wasn't even in the whole "Oh man he's so famous so everything that comes out of his mouth is hilarious" kind of way. Just a funny dude. His teaching was incredible. So so so musical. I wish I could have played for him but I had nothing to play for him at the time. In intermission, we all went outside and he smoked a cigarette with the other guitar players. I was apart of the circle but didn't smoke but DAMN if there were ever a time I wanted to smoke a cigarette it was right there and then. Are you kidding me? Hanging outside of school and talking with Roland Dyens? Unreal. Probably the main thing I love about Dyens is that he is so musical. Why? Well, being a composer gives you such an edge over the rest of the performers. Being a composer gives you a different mindset. You think about structure more than you think about how technical and accurate your playing is. But that was all on youtube videos. Me and about 6 other guitar players caught the 9 to the Mission and gotta tell you, for Roland Dyens, the venue was kinda rough. Not super nice and if it's in the Mission, you gotta watch your back. The concert started out with about a 6 or 7 minute improvisation which I thought was maybe one of the better parts to the night. After that, he did a few compositions of his own along with some Villa Lobos. Gotta tell you man, I wasn't very impressed. Everything of his I had previously seen wasn't living up to this. He was kind of messy and his sound didn't carry very far. His musical ideas that I love so much were there but I just wasn't blown away like I thought I should have been. Highlights were when he played his arrangement of Chopin's Valse Op. 69 No. 2 and the fact he didn't play Tango En Skai.

It was a cold, rainy day on October 13th. But I knew I absolutely had to go to this show. Heartsounds, The Riot Before, Living With Lions and A Wilhelm Scream. Mapquest is dumb. I got directions and it told me to go all over the place and really all I had to do was take 9th street past a few intersections. So I knew that walking over there wouldn't be an issue. But walking back from the Mission is really sketchy. The show started off with Heartsounds playing their 3rd show ever. It showed. They messed up a good number of times and it was so sloppy. But OH MAN, Laura Nichol is 10x better looking in person. Especially with that AWS tattoo. But the songs they did pull off were fantastic. The Riot Before came on. I think I listened to them about 2 years ago and wasn't crazy about them. But they put on a hell of a live show. Really emotional. Really intense. Loved it and I want to start regularly listening to them now. Living With Lions was kind of cheesy live. I can't exactly explain why but that's the first thing I thought of. I enjoyed it though. I was texting a few friends from SF whether or not I would die on my walk back home at 12:30am. Most of them responded with "Are you with friends? Oh...no? Well...uh...walk in well lit areas." Then a friend in Oakland told me there was an Earthquake there and that we would later get it. So here I am thinking, "Great. Not only am I going to get jumped but the fucking earth is going to split beneath me." But worrying about that came later. A Wilhelm Scream was about to go on. This would be the first time I see AWS live without Joe which was kinda depressing. And it was the first I've seen them where there were a TON of people there. Amazing set. I was right in the face of Bri and Nuno the entire night. I accidently punched Bri's bass. I sang into the mic 1000 times. I 100% have never gotten more into a show than I did that night. Screamed my damn lungs out. Amazing time. Mike gave me a set list. I went up to Nuno and told him I'm from South Texas and he then asked "So yeh used to go to Neeer Miss shows, huh?" And I said yes and he then hugged me. While it was completely gross, it was kick ass. The walk home was rough. Luckily I had my black jacket and black beanie so NO ONE was gunna mess with me. It was really creepy when cars would just slowly drive by you and no one else was on the street. But it was only about a 20-25 minute walk so it went by really fast. Great night.

I'm no longer in a guitar funk. I actually feel decent for now. My right hand seems to be getting better at getting in position for good tone. Practicing a lot of technique is so rewarding. I have the Generalife down but it with out any power. Bach is sounding decent. But obviously there's a long way to go. Life here is still great as well. The weather is always beautiful. I started laughing to myself the other day at how used to this low 60's high 50's with sunny skies weather I am. I'm sure back in Texas it's awful. You can't walk 10 minutes down the street with out hearing a loud and obnoxious siren. School is great for the most part. It weirds me out at the opportunities we get here. Only thing I don't like about the school is that it's not extremely interactive. Or maybe I just haven't been here long enough to find those types of things. I mean I have tons and tons of friends here, but it's mainly because of Golden Gate Hall(my dorm). Only friends I've made outside of GGH are guitar players and a few that I've met at parties and such. The city is great as well. One not so great moment was when me and a few friends went on a 2am run to Pronto's pizza and saw the end a woman getting beat across the street. Cops showed up. She was hysterical. Weird sight. Then about 20minutes after that we saw a car run into a Walgreens. The hell? I know I probably say this a lot, but the situations I've gotten in with people here are just weird sometimes. The bonding that I've had with certain people here and the moments we've had over the period of a few months are just wild. Last night in particular was such a self defining moment for me. It's crazy to see how you react to people who do things you never thought they would do in a million years. This has nothing to do with music. BUT THIS DOES. Let's talk about senior year. Let's talk about senior party. Let's talk about driving for the first time. Let's talk about losing it. Let's talk about 2007. Let's talk about my favorite quote(there's not many since I don't really care for quotes). Let's talk about legitimacy. Let's talk about FEELINGS. My 3rd favorite album of all time.

Lagwagon-Gun In Your Hand

Look, I can appreciate this. I was young too, I felt just like you. Hated authority, hated all my bosses, thought they were full of shit. Look, it's like they say, if you're not a rebel by the age of 20, you got no heart, but if you haven't turned establishment by 30, you've got no brains. Because there are no story-book romances, no fairy-tale endings. So before you run out and change the world, ask yourself, "What do you really want?"

No Regrets. Just Rebirth.

This past Friday was an experience I'll truley never forget. Kazuhito Yamashita, arguably my favorite guitarist ever, was playing at the performance hall at SFCM and I got to see it for free. I also found out that I get to see the Beijing Duo which consists of Wang Yameng and Su Meng who are currently studying at Peabody. I've been listening/admiring them for their extreme talent since I was 16. Anyway. Sergio Assad(who I still freak out when I see him) introduced him out and right as he was getting to the "and now, here is Kazuhito..." I started to just freak out. I also started to laugh to myself at the fact that Mr. Hii would kill me if he knew I was getting this opportunity. Once the applause started I just looked to my friend and we were both just shaking our heads in disbelief on what we were about to witness. Kazuhito Yamashita is one of the best guitar players of all time. He breaks away from that typical asian stereotype of playing everything super fast and robotically. He is able to play at the fastest of speeds yet still maintain a world of drama. I have never heard and I don't think I ever will hear a guitar player match him in his prime. Such emotion. Such technical skill. His tone? Maybe not the tone of David Russell or Ricardo Cobo, but with his style of playing, it works. Plus, he plays Ramirez guitars. How many professionals use Ramirez these days? Anyway. Yamashita walked out and my breath was taken. I had never been so intimidated by a guitar player or really a human being in my life. He just had this presence that was overwhelming. He played an all Bach program and did it masterfully. He missed a few notes in the last fugue but it was still incredible none the less. A review was written and published about the concert just yesterday. I am 100% against it. The reviewer talked about how some of the things he did was unstylistic to Bach and this and that and this and that about how BACH SHOULD BE PLAYED. If you are heavily into classical music, you know that the argument of "how bach should be played" is a never ending one. Sure, you can't play it romantically and you have to show everything you need to do symbolize the Baroque era but if you do it so blatonly traditional and non original, then what the fuck are you play it for? There is absolutely no art in that. If you want that, then fuck, go to ANY student getting a PHD in Baroque music. Yamashita did everything I expected Yamashita to do. He used an amazing amount of colors, incredible technique and nothing but pure emotion. My only issue with his performance was that he was tuning through every piece during the piece. Every time he hit an open note he was tuning. But it's because of his playing so it's understandable. There was one point to where he between suites, he picked up his guitar while sitting in front of a dead silent crowd and he started just examining the bridge. I wish you could have seen my face. I was freaking out! Anything could have happened at that point! But anyway. While maybe he's not quite on the level he was when he was in his younger days, he is still one of the best in the world.

I've been going through some rough times with guitar. My brain and ability is being pushed harder than it ever has. The funny thing is that the person pushing me like this is the nicest, most positive, most relaxed guy on the planet. It almost freaks me out that he manages to blow my mind yet be so chill and happy about it all the time. You would think someone doing all this incredible damage and frustration to me would be someone with the attitude of Mr. Hii. But nope, just good ol' Larry being Larry. It's sickening how many mistakes and how many errors he points out to me that Mr. Hii never did. And all of Larry's ideas about Bach are just straight up BETTER than Mr. Hii's. Mr. Hii makes you play it like an amateur. Larry makes you play it like a professional. Playing the Generalife is quite possibly the hardest thing I've ever experienced. The attention to detail is incredible. Every note has a purpose. The hardest part is emphasizing the bass notes while keeping the hammer ons extremely light. I can not for the life of me do it. Every time I try, my brain just starts to hurt and I get super close to getting my guitar and smashing it up against the wall. I can honestly say every practice session this past week has ended with me kicking open my guitar case and roughly putting my guitar in it's case. Then I'm constantly dealing with tone. But at the end of the day I know that I'm so lucky to be bitching about such things. I've brought myself to where I'm at now by going through these struggles and eventually overcoming them. I never quit when something is too hard. Only time I've ever done that was 5th grade running club and I still regret that. This is 100% the greatest struggles I've gone through on the guitar but I know that once the semester is over, I'll look back and realize just how much I grew as a guitar player.

Aside from those frustrations, all my classes are going quite good. Only issue is my absences. Too many times I've been out during the week days and get home and don't exactly feel like going to class the next morning at 8am. Too many times being 3 times. But we only have 4 absences available so it's kind of an issue. Regardless if I go out at night, I still stay up till 2 watching Everybody Loves Ramon(wana fight about it?). So I really just don't get much sleep in general. But I find it weird that when I do actually get lots of sleep, I'm extremely tired through out the whole day. Probably more so than when I get my 3-4 hours of sleep. My Guitar Literature is really hard. He has us read 20-30 pages for homework and his lectures all over the place. He's a great guy and extremely smart, but just not a great teacher. His name is Richard Savino. He(along with David Tannenbaum. It's actually where they met and became friends. Now they're teaching at the same school. How bout that?) was on a nationally televised master class with Andres Segovia back in the day. Most famous because he was the guy that Segovia took away his guitar because he hated his playing. Now that doesn't mean he sucks. That's just how Segovia always was to people. It was really nothing out of the norm. And to even further express how much he doesn't suck, he was able to study with Segovia in Spain for 3 weeks in which they woke up early in the morning, played for Segovia at 5am, then practiced all day, then played for Segovia at 5pm. Intense! If you don't know who Andres Segovia is, basically all you need to know is that he is considered the "father" of the classical guitar. He played the classical guitar in such a revolutionary way that he put it back on the map and really made it popular again. Considered one of the all time greats. I don't agree as far as skill wise goes. He had bad tone and bad interpretations, and was an arrogant prick, but what he did for guitar is something no one can overlook. Anyway. I forgot to mention this actually. A couple weeks ago, I played on what is said to be the oldest existing guitar in the world. A Romantic guitar from the early 1800's. It was intense. Speaking of guitars, today I rented out a Smallman guitar. It's worth $24,500 and I only had to pay $4.88 for insurance for my month rent. The thing sounds like a canon and it's really what I needed for the whole mental issue of playing(I was feeling like I sucked).

Life here is still really great. I've experienced some great nights and just some straight up weird situations. Apparantely crime is on the rise in my area and we need to be extra catious which is kinda uncomforting. The weather is still just beautiful all day every day. High 50's low 60's with a cool breeze. Very rarely is there a ugly day. Next week is going to be quite the week. I'm going to see Heartsounds and A Wilhelm Scream on the 13th, Roland Dyens master class on the 15th and the Roland Dyens concert on the 16th. I've been listening to a lot of Thrice with their new record out. Usually we do the Thrice cover show every summer but me and Badih have been considering doing a winter show. Just 3 or 4 songs but this time, ALL from Identity Crisis. Maybe with a T&C encore? Nothing but fast songs! Sounds good, huh? And if it doesn't sound good, just watch this video of them playing it live.

Thrice-As The Ruin Falls

the pain you bring
far greater than all other gain