T. Lev., Sid Smith, Pat M. and myself have returned from dining at a nearby Greek restaurant.
Sid considers last night's performance in Seattle was our best so far.
T. Lev. is a continuing source of hilarious and instructive learning stories for any Aspirant Gigster. T. Lev. as Buddy Rich's bass player, for example, is only one of the earliest in the life of T. Baldy Levin, professional musician. Tony's forthcoming book (nominally a guide to bass playing) is required reading.
Pat M. has an encyclopaedic knowledge of working players and thier various affiliations. We walked by a gadget shop on the one block walk to our Greek Pumperie, and in its window was a selection of hip flasks. Encyclopaedic info triggered associationally and immediately: I learnt from Pat of a recording engineer, of Pat's acquaintance, who had worked with me in a New York studio and was impressed to see Fripp pull a hip flask from his boot. The engineer was impressed. So am I. Pat didn't believe it. Dear Web-visitor, please draw your own conclusions: I'm only reporting the story.
Tuesday night in Vancouver: once again, I offer no reliable commentary, other than I enjoy playing with this team. And the dressing rooms were appalling.
Wednesday was the drive to Seattle, and a performance at Fenix Underground. Among the audience were most of the Seattle Guitar Circle, but at the end of the evening I was too tired to meet and vibrate.
This (Thursday) morning Bill Rieflin came by for a coffee. We discussed changes in drumming practice; the inevitable logic to be faced by recording musicians operating outside the mainstream: you become your own record company as well; how each of the ProjeKcts have been essentially defined by their drummers. And Bill's high spot of the P4 performance: T. Lev standing on stage with his hands in his pockets. "I've never seen anyone on stage standing with their hands in their pockets," said Bill, slightly bemused.
The high spot of our shows for Trey and myself, once we've blown our sprockets, is looking over to T. Lev to waiting to see / hear what he'll do next.
A Thursday drive to Portland. After calling Toyah, I immediately set off for bibliophiliacal tumescense in the music section of Powell's, and acquired the second edition (1999) of Deutch's "Psychology of Music". (I bought the first edition when soundscaping at The University of California, San Deigo, in 1983).
"The quality of the question determines the quality of the answer."
