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If I only was a sponge

Sometimes I feel like the scare crow in the Wizard of Oz. Not because I feel I'm missing a brain but because i wish I was a sponge. I want the capability to immediately soak up all the information available for playing vibes. And I want it now. At my age sometimes you feel its risky to buy slightly brown bananas.

Tim Garland's Storms Nocturnes Project featuring Joe Locke & Geoffrey Keezer - Saturday Feb. 27th

I was lucky enough to get along to Ronnie Scott's on Saturday night, to see an absolutely fantastic gig. I rushed over to catch the late show, (all the early tickets were sold out, unsurprisingly) and a packed out club was treated to some amazing music.

Interesting Letter

I'll just pass this letter along for the real vibe geeks!

This guy called Nico got information and then went to a machine shop to get the work done on his yamaha!!!

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Tony, Thanks you for introducing Nico Vanderplas to me after telling him about my Yamaha YV2700 keybed problems with the sounds of the last seven bars in the high register.

Recommended DVD: Gary and Makoto

I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to recommend the DVD of Gary and Makoto Ozone's Live at Montreux DVD from the 2002 performance. I was just websurfing last week at Amazon and discovered this, and I didn't even know that it was available. As much as I like the CD, the DVD adds that "third player" - the audience, and I think you'll enjoy this even more.

The Dreamer by Joel Frahm

I've been messing around with this lick from Joel Frahm. I dug it because of the bebop and the 4ths and wanted to study it.

The side benefit from studying something like this is you can work on sticking ideas with vocabulary. I want to play this lick starting with my right hand.

But now I'm doing it with my left. I'm realize how much stick changes the 'feeling' of the lick when I play it.

For me there seems to be a difference with sticking's starting with each hand, based on what I did today.