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guslA couple of weeks ago, I cut my whole hair for the first time. There's nothing quite like it. I was contemplated my hair for minutes afterwards. The next day I had it cut properly, shorter than I ever remember specifically having it (can you see my tendency to sacrifice readability for accuracy and detail?) The beard was only slightly shorter than the hair, so depending on how fast they grow, the beard may catch up sometime this month, but I have no idea which grows faster.
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I am trying to form a band. I dub the style EEII: energetic, eclectic, instrumental, improvisational.
Some of my role models for this project (who you should know about if you're into the above 4 qualities):
* Béla Fleck (mostly a jazz banjoist, Béla plays everything melodic: bluegrass, Middle Eastern music, Irish music, polka, gospel, Chopin, Bach, ... )
* David Grisman (the hottest mandolinist around today, plays bluegrass, Jewish music, choro, funk, ... , but he calls it "Dawg music")
* Bob Wills (fiddler, rather faithful to his style of swing and blues (ok, he's just EII), he was a prolific songwriter)
* Vassar Clements (fiddler, the inventor of hillbilly jazz, grand master of odd licks and triple stops, played for Bill Monroe and for the Grateful Dead).
* Django Rheinhart (melodic guitar player who invented gypsy jazz. Had only 3 good fingers on his left hand, so he invented his own style. Like Béla, he was into fast melodic textures. Played with Stephan Grappelli, and he was the boss!)
(the first 3 have bands attached to their name)
So I decided to start burning CDs of EEII music. The first one was of bluegrass, and I fit 22 songs on it. I plan to make a second one of String Swing (including gypsy jazz), and a third one of crazy avant-garde and fusion tunes & World Music. I may burn multiple copies of this collection to give away, just to get these good memes out there.
I made an appointment with a guitar player, Joan, who I thought played upright bass ("contrabaixo"). Turns out I knew him from playing on the beach two months ago. I noticed for the first time that he stutters. Now I know where his hot sister lives!
That same day I went to an "encontro de músicos", i.e. where all the musicians meet, and probably saw most people in the local music scene. The music was less than satisfying to me: it was mostly slow singing jazz, with some sambas in between. By the end, a girl was singing horribly out of tune, so that was my cue to leave.
There I got acquainted with two Danish pianists, Kristian and Carsten, who were visiting for Carnaval, and a local guitar-singer type, Sérgio. I witnessed an interesting interaction between them. Sérgio's English was very poor, but he insisted on joking around with the gringos, so he said "Denmark woman like [points to his dark skin]?". The gringos grinned, hesitated, and answered "why would they, when they can have men like us?"
"But no, Denmark woman like it!", he insisted in the annoying Brazilian way of poking fun by repetitive teasing. Anyway, I was quite amused, probably because of my America-induced oversensitivity to racial jokes. I ran into Sérgio on the street two days later, and he told me had dropped the gringos off at their pousada.
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We finally had high-speed Internet installed. I've already downloaded two full-length, TV-quality movies.
Now I'm waiting for a technicians to figure out how to connect my laptop without running wires around the whole place (I heard speculation about using the telephone network for it). I also activated my cell phone, and now I'm researching some phone extension systems for my dad (it's a big apartment and it's annoying to go after people for every call somebody gets).
-----------
I am trying to form a band. I dub the style EEII: energetic, eclectic, instrumental, improvisational.
Some of my role models for this project (who you should know about if you're into the above 4 qualities):
* Béla Fleck (mostly a jazz banjoist, Béla plays everything melodic: bluegrass, Middle Eastern music, Irish music, polka, gospel, Chopin, Bach, ... )
* David Grisman (the hottest mandolinist around today, plays bluegrass, Jewish music, choro, funk, ... , but he calls it "Dawg music")
* Bob Wills (fiddler, rather faithful to his style of swing and blues (ok, he's just EII), he was a prolific songwriter)
* Vassar Clements (fiddler, the inventor of hillbilly jazz, grand master of odd licks and triple stops, played for Bill Monroe and for the Grateful Dead).
* Django Rheinhart (melodic guitar player who invented gypsy jazz. Had only 3 good fingers on his left hand, so he invented his own style. Like Béla, he was into fast melodic textures. Played with Stephan Grappelli, and he was the boss!)
(the first 3 have bands attached to their name)
So I decided to start burning CDs of EEII music. The first one was of bluegrass, and I fit 22 songs on it. I plan to make a second one of String Swing (including gypsy jazz), and a third one of crazy avant-garde and fusion tunes & World Music. I may burn multiple copies of this collection to give away, just to get these good memes out there.
I made an appointment with a guitar player, Joan, who I thought played upright bass ("contrabaixo"). Turns out I knew him from playing on the beach two months ago. I noticed for the first time that he stutters. Now I know where his hot sister lives!
That same day I went to an "encontro de músicos", i.e. where all the musicians meet, and probably saw most people in the local music scene. The music was less than satisfying to me: it was mostly slow singing jazz, with some sambas in between. By the end, a girl was singing horribly out of tune, so that was my cue to leave.
There I got acquainted with two Danish pianists, Kristian and Carsten, who were visiting for Carnaval, and a local guitar-singer type, Sérgio. I witnessed an interesting interaction between them. Sérgio's English was very poor, but he insisted on joking around with the gringos, so he said "Denmark woman like [points to his dark skin]?". The gringos grinned, hesitated, and answered "why would they, when they can have men like us?"
"But no, Denmark woman like it!", he insisted in the annoying Brazilian way of poking fun by repetitive teasing. Anyway, I was quite amused, probably because of my America-induced oversensitivity to racial jokes. I ran into Sérgio on the street two days later, and he told me had dropped the gringos off at their pousada.
---------
We finally had high-speed Internet installed. I've already downloaded two full-length, TV-quality movies.
Now I'm waiting for a technicians to figure out how to connect my laptop without running wires around the whole place (I heard speculation about using the telephone network for it). I also activated my cell phone, and now I'm researching some phone extension systems for my dad (it's a big apartment and it's annoying to go after people for every call somebody gets).