This morning was a little depressing as I was unable to talk my daughter to the parade thanks to my former spouse.

I eventually got over this and did some paperwork and errands. while doing this I found another set of lyrics. I decided over the past few days to make word files of all the lyrics of all my songs. I now have a total of 24 three of which need to be written.

I then went to visit Billy & Anna Lisa for a Thanksgiving dinner. The food was excellent.

Billy then turned me on to a whole bunch of really good music. Bands I have never heard of. He also played this incredible version of Greg Lake doing 21st Century Schizoid Man with Gary Moore on guitar. It was not only outstanding they also did it at a much quicker tempo. Hearing Gary doing all of those incredible guitar licks in the middle at quite the tempo was astonishing. I wonder if Robert could do it at this tempo. He also played two songs from the new Toni Iommi & Ian Gillian CD. great stuff.

I also brought Pietro Russino's album Hynofolk for him to listen to. He loved it.

Billy then told me about a project that he was starting which will include a blog sight and new music. He mentioned that he decided to start this project on 11/11/11 which is National Metal Day. He also showed me an archive of every performance he has ever been to. It was really incredible to view this catalog.

We ended our evening at about ten. We had a great time.

This is just a test
take it with love and you will pass
You will be rewarded
if you do your very best
Nothing ever goes as planned
So don’t take anything for granted
If you do the world will kick your ass

Kimya Dawson

So No post yesterday because I got home at 7:30PM. I decided to take a little rest and woke up at 5:30 AM fully clothed. Obviously I needed this.

So today's plans are to try and visit Bob. I have to drop off a letter I wrote to try and help him get an Artist's residency in Peekskill.

I have sessions from 12:00 - 8:00

I plan to go to the Apple Store to buy an ipad for my daughter's birthday. I have a friend that works there and can get me a discount.

Tonight I'm going to The Village Vanguard.

So just a few things about yesterday.

I got the right arm replaced to my eyeglasses. expensive. I also talked to Ray about sunglasses. The one's I really want cost $350 by Maui Jim. A bit much. Now Ray is a genius in his work. I told him I purchased really cheap glasses just to get by. He then told me that If I don't want to buy expensive glasses he said the following. Take a pair of sunglasses and look at the inside of the lenses. Find something to reflect in the lens. Now move the lens and if the reflection changes shape there will be a vision distortion. It it does, not these will provide better vision. In the mean time I picked out a pair of Carrerra's and Ray will try to find the color tint I like.

I did some banking. We have a new ATM machine that allows you to deposit checks without an envelope. You can put in up to 30 checks and then it scans every check and prints out the scan for you. Very cool.

I went to Flushing to work on my new business plan. We also got into a very interesting conversation about my former partner. I found that a lot of the experiences I was having was corroborated.

I started to bring in my first person to the new business. I only need to bring in two.

It's 7:38 AM. Time for a shower, coffee and another cigarette. Then out to start my day.

Visited Bob this morning to drop off the letter. Good conversation.

Next BJ's. Spent more than I expected.

Next the apple store. I bought a 32gig ipad and a case.

One of the other things I have started interested in collecting old RCA 45 RPM record players. They only play 45's. I bought one last week. Today I one a limited edition Pinocchio turntable. It is very cool. The next one I am looking for is the Heckel & Jeckel Turntable. When I was a child i had this record player that came with special Heckel & Jeckel records. On the record label was Heckel & Jeckel all around the outside of the label, It came with this round glass like prism that you would put over the label. When you turned the table on Heckel & Jeckel would run around the label. It was so cool

The show at the Vangaird was Excellent and I got very lucky. I got there at 8:30 thinking that would be enough time to get a good seat. WRONG! The doors open at 8:00 and the place was jammed. I found a seat on the side but there was a poll right in front of me. I then moved down and now it was out of the way. Just before the show started I saw a seat across the club. I asked if it was available and they said yes. So as the guy was walking me to this seat I bumped into Bill Frisell who was getting ready to go onstage. I ended up right at the stage to the point that I was in the stage lights. Paul Motion was sitting two feet from me and I was sitting in the sam position he was so i was very close to sitting right behind the drumset. I watched him very closely. He is a master and he Never plays an idea twice. I was watching and could not figure out what the hell he was doing. but his playing was stunning. I also got exceptional view of Frisell & Lovano. They were about three feet away. Frisell was was facing me directly for the whole show and I could see everything he was doing. I am hard pressed to say that this was just a jazz show. Yes they did a few standards but their material was really etherial and very interesting.

After the set I went back stage to meet Bill & Joe (Paul was not there) Bill was very kind. I asked him about his new guitar. He is using a custom tele with a really strange pickup at the neck. When I asked him about it he said it was custom made and is the equivalent to a Charlie Christian pickup. I then asked if he had retired the Klein. He said he had. I asked if he wanted sell it. He said, " Oh I'm sorry I just sold it last week." He then told me he saw a beautiful Klein in the window at 30th street music and they were not asking crazy money. He said it was really nice with a rosewood neck and when he saw in the the window he thought it was his.

I then talked to Joe and told him that he lived near me. We had a really nice conversation about him and Scofield.

Guess where I am going in the morning?

While driving to Blue cliff monastery, I heard on the radio that today in 1941 the definitive recording of Take The A Train was recorded today. This tune and it's popularity put Billy Strayhorn on the map.

Drove to Blue Cliff Monastery for a day of mindfulness. Today was different than my last visit in December. Today seemed to be more work and required more of my attention during the Dharma talk. The talk was also 90 minutes with no break so concentration also be came a challenge. I was also internally challenged in a new way given what's going on these days. Nonetheless I'm glad I attended and will probably go in another six weeks. This seems to be the most reasonable attendance track for me at this time. I might in the future stay a weekend.

Home by 6:00 and rest for 30.

I go out to dinner to meet old friends. Old friends from the late 60's to early 70's.

This was a great dinner and meeting. We had so much to talk about when we were kids. It was great fun. We hung out for two and a half hours remminising. We talked about all the bands we played in - we were all musicians at the time. One is still a professional musician.We decided we will do this again in another month. Looking forward to this.

Home at 10:50.

Posting at 11:11

during Sunday's YGT meeting break Kevin was talking about joining facebook. Couple of days later, I thought I would check it out. I joined yesterday and today I spent some time looking for friends.I then got responses from others who want to be my friend. Seems pretty cool, I was all surprised to see how many family members were already on to befriend me. The next thing is now I have to learn how to navigate this how to contact people. And what's the best way to use facebook.

Today's been a fairly gray day weather wise, but the temperatures up so it's not horrible. Somewhere in the mid 40s. I'm hoping that this will be how the remainder of winter continues.

during a break today, I forgot to go out and buy a FireWire cable.

Weekend catch up

Saturday morning gave guitar lesson - looks like we will be on every two weeks.

Sunday was Children's church - two new songs today - One was Michael Row the Boat Ashore - didn't realize this song has four verses.

Home by 10:00 leave at 10:30 to Goldens Bridge. I set up the Pro tools rig and then I did some work on the music binder for church. I had a lot of loose music so put them in these plastic sleeves to protect them.

YGT meeting from 12:00 - 4:00
Worked on:

Gallery of Ghosts, Continuing to get better
Clockworks - We did a lot of work on the transition from the A to B section - it's starting to get tighter.
Thru the Smoke and the Haze - for some reason I had a lot of difficulty remembering how many passes for each part. I think we got one complete take.

Roiling - This is a fast piece and moving from one section to the next is a challenge. We actually dropped the metronome by 2 bpm which surprisingly made a reasonable difference. I'm pushing for 10 bpm. Alan also came up with and idea for an intro using the C section of the piece.

Usually when I get home from these meetings I start to edit. For some reason I have a technical problem - The computer will not se the interface. So now I have to figure out the problem. First Idea is the firewire is bad. I called alto music and they suggested that one of the firewire outputs is fried. I also emailed digidesign and waiting to hear back from them. I might take the laptop to the apple store to check its firewire connector.


This morning was laundry.

I made one more attempt with pro tools but no luck.

Out at two for sessions at Goldens Bridge from 3:00 - 8:00

Beatle news! Today is the forty fifth anniversary of The Beatles first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

I remember being glued to the TV I was eight years old.

A day of rest and practice.


HBO put the wire first series back on demand so I watched while doing guitar work

This evening the family made home made pizza;s . Kai got a pizza making stone for christmans.

Makes good pizza.

Posting because I feel like it today.

A strange wide open day but busy. Twelve degrees this morning.

Three sessions one no show.

A number of phone calls.

Out to BJ's to get office needs.

Back to Goldern's bridge to make more phone calls and finish session

Home to make tea.

Posting at 10:23