Fanpulse®

A Musical Friendship

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 12:28:33 -0800

Did you know that, with over 200 live performances, Eric Clapton is the international record holder with the most concerts played in Japan. In 2014, he highlighted his love affair with the Mid- and Far-East with a tour through Japan, Singapore, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and released a wonderful documentary film, “Eric Clapton Planes, Trains and Eric.” Among other amazing tracks, it includes this beautiful performance of Layla…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKwQlm-wldA&fbclid=IwAR1zMpPA-pVy_NeL-u-a5sH8h1u51Q6DIgn3x9gEHwxPVauj5wLPMA76QNU

Decades earlier, in the 1960's, graffiti popped up around London proclaiming, "Clapton is God." So who does God look up to? The answer is JJ Cale! Clapton revered Cale as a songwriter and musician. In 2006, they collaborated on an album, The Road to Escondido. At the time, Clapton said, “This is the realization of what may have been my last ambition, to work with the man whose music has inspired me for as long as I can remember.”

Cale, who passed away in 2013, was the author of some of Clapton's biggest hits including After Midnight and Cocaine. Here is Cale and Clapton doing After Midnight together. Their respect for each other and friendship is obvious. Cale is the master of restrained playing but the intensity of his playing comes out in this performance…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wJDd_uu1JI&fbclid=IwAR2Nkh51piXcNPpXk7WLoQrvNDdAIqYA3Lj1LYFiK7y8PS45TI87P3L0AT8

After Clapton and Cale released "The Road to Escondido", Clapton did a world tour in 2007. There was a show in San Diego, on March 15, 2007, that I would have loved to been at. For starters, Clapton's band included Derek Trucks...Read More

No going back...

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 15:39:50 -0800

I want you to pretend...

It's January 1969 and you're a teenager. A friend comes over with a record album she just got and says, "You gotta hear this!"

You look at the album. It's a band with a funny name that you've never heard of before. That's not a surprise since six months earlier, the band didn't exist and it's only been a few months since they first performed in public. They don't even have a record contract. The lead guitarist paid for the production of the album out of his own pocket and a childhood friend engineered it. It had to be done fast and cheap so they recorded it in less than 36 hours.

Your friend puts the album on the record player and she turns it up to 11. Power chords begin to burst from the speakers and by the end of the four songs on Side A, your mind is blown.

And there's no going back!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=holyRgfST_w

What music took you to a whole new planet? Who turned you onto it? Let us know in the comments...

Passing the Torch: The Next Generation of Great Musicians

Tue, 12 Nov 2019 11:02:04 -0800

In a recent blog post about Playing for Change, the recording of The Band’s classic, The Weight featured a fantastic young guitarist, Marcus King from Greenville, South Carolina. I was intrigued, dug into his music, and one thing led to another. Namely, Marcus King led to Billy Strings who led to Molly Tuttle. If you’ve ever wondered where today’s brilliant musicians are, well, keep on reading!

These three share a number of traits. They’re all young, just a year or two plus or minus 25 years of age. They play and sing with a virtuosity that belies their years. And, not surprisingly, they all come from musical families.

Marcus King is a master of southern rock and blues. He started to learn guitar at 3 or 4 and has played professionally since age 11. A fourth generation musician, he formed the Marcus King Band in 2013 at the age of 17. At age 22, he made his Grand Ole Opry debut, playing Goodbye Carolina. For a taste of the power of his singing and playing, watch him jam with Gov’t Mule on Can’t...Read More

Playing for Change!

Sun, 29 Sep 2019 10:25:56 -0700

We are huge fans of the Playing for Change organization! Underlying their mission is something near and dear to our shared philosophy, connecting people through music. As the Internet proliferated, being able to jam with anyone around the world regardless of location or distance became the holy grail.

Playing for Change demonstrates how this dream can be made real. According to their website, “The idea for this project came from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people.” Playing For Change has traveled the world, recording musicians, both famous and unknown, as they collaborate and create “Songs Around the World.” The recordings are edited seamlessly into a video where we segue from musician to musician seeing them playing in their home country. Though they are spread across the entire globe, this is truly a family making joyous music together.

What makes it especially amazing is that while we see plenty of famous musicians -- Ringo Starr, David Crosby, Robbie Robertson, and Jimmy Buffet to name just a few – it is many of the unknown players who often steal the show. On The Weight and Gimme Shelter, Roselyn Williams sings in Jamaica with, “a voice that penetrates your very soul.” The Weight, by the way, was uploaded to YouTube just 10 days ago and already has over 2 million views! Char in Tokyo plays a soulful guitar and Ahmed Al Harmi from the Kingdom of Bahrain, blew me away playing a stringed instrument I didn’t even know the name of, an Oud.

On Read More

Dream Job...

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 14:45:25 -0700

During a job interview, you are sometimes asked what you would do with your life if you could do anything, if you didn’t have to work. The answer you’re supposed to give is some variant of making the world a better place. One woman told me that she would teach ballet to inner-city youth. When I was asked the question once, I really blew it. I told the truth and said I would be a professional poker player. That went over like a lead balloon. Perhaps I should have given my second answer. I would be Michael Lewis!

Michael Lewis is my literary hero. I buy every book of his, the moment it comes out. Hell, I preorder them on Amazon. In hardcover! Lewis has written 18 books that I am aware of and three of them have been made into really wonderful major motion pictures, all of which I love: Moneyball, The Blind Side, and The Big Short.

The sad truth is that while I consider myself to be an excellent writer, I’m not sure that I could ever do what Lewis is able to accomplish. His super power is taking a subject, often as dry as credit default swaps causing the housing bubble or sabermetric analysis in baseball, and making it come to life. He picks a handful of colorful characters and weaves their individual stories into a larger narrative.

My favorite character is Michael Burry from Read More

I'll have what she's having!

Fri, 30 Aug 2019 19:31:17 -0700

According to the MICHELIN Guide, New York City has over 75 Michelin-starred restaurants including five with the coveted three-stars. But when ny.eater.com recently wrote about the city’s, “most important and distinguished restaurant”, they weren’t talking about Thomas Keller’s Per Se or Eleven Madison Park, which was once named, “the best restaurant in the world.” It was Katz’s Deli they referred to, a delicatessen at the corner of Houston and Ludlow on the Lower East Side of New York, where they have been serving the planet’s best pastrami sandwiches since 1888!

I like fine dining as much as the next foodie. I’ve dined at The French Laundry in Napa’s wine country. I have a favorite restaurant in San Francisco where the homemade ridged pasta scented with truffles and foie gras is to die for. But the meal I dream of (often) is a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s with a large side of their sweet and creamy cole slaw, some half-sour pickles, and a couple of bottles of Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda. It’s heaven on a plate! Orgasmic, even. Throw in a square potato knish but I can pretty much guarantee that I’m going to be so busy stuffing my face with the pastrami that the knish will be wrapped up to be eaten the next day.

There are plenty of deli’s in the country with “acceptable” pastrami, some even that are pretty good. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a newcomer named Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen is decent. The Refuge in San Carlos, CA clearly takes their pastrami very seriously. In Los Angeles, Brent’s Deli and Langer’s Deli are both excellent. New York has lost some of its institutions, most notably Stage and Carnegie, but the advocates of Katz’s and 2^nd Avenue Deli are still fighting a religious war as to which is the best. And Kenny & Ziggy’s in Houston was pretty...Read More

Confessions of a Chocoholic

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 23:44:25 -0700

To say that I’m a fan of chocolate would be something of an understatement!

When it comes to wine, I'm an out and out snob. Only the best California cabernet for me. Give me Stag's Leap, Silver Oak, Jordan, and Opus One. Recently I learned the wonders of Stag's Leap Cask 23 and it's amazing how many rationalizations you can come up with for spending $200 on a bottle of 1993 red table wine.

But chocolate, ah -- that's another story. When it comes to chocolate, I'll take anything from the equivalent of Chateau Lafite Rothschild to the ilk of Ripple and Thunderbird. Now, don't get me wrong, wonderful Swiss or Dutch chocolate that melts in your mouth, covering your tongue and teeth and palate in its creamy sweetness is heaven but frankly, I've never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like. A Kit-Kat bar? Don't mind if I do. Hershey's? Sure thing. And half a bag of Nestle's chocolate chip bits works just fine in a pinch. I mean, they don't expect you to use all of them in the cookie dough batter, do they?

Mallomars. There is no substitute. They’re the Roll's Royce of chocolate cookie snacks. Marshmallow sitting on a circular graham cracker base, coated with a thin dark chocolate. There are really only three ways that a true connoisseur eats a Mallomar. The first and really preferred way is to grip the base in your fingers pointing the top of the cookie towards your mouth and bite off the marshmallow top, leaving just the chocolate covered graham cracker in your hand. Then pop the base into your mouth and wash it down with cold milk. The antithetical method works too -- gnaw away at the base until all that's left is gooey chocolate covered marshmallow melting in your hand. Pop that in your mouth and then lick the marshmallow and chocolate off your fingers. In a real pinch though, you just shove the marshmallow whole into your mouth, chew thrice, and swallow.

It was in the late 80's that Nabisco committed the Mallomar atrocity. Prior to then,...Read More

At Seventeen...

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 09:21:20 -0700

At Seventeen… I’m not talking about the song by Janis Ian but this post is about music and being a life-long fan. I have a theory that even as our musical tastes develop and mature, most of us will retain a life-long affection for the music and bands that we loved when we were seventeen. I don’t know if it has to do with puberty or the senior year of high school or simple teenage spirit, but the bands I loved then will always spur an emotional reaction whenever I hear them, even decades later!

For me, it ranged from Aerosmith and Queen to Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead. I saw Aerosmith three times at Madison Square Garden. The first time, they were the opening band for Black Sabbath (OZZIE!) but after that, they were the headliner. Aerosmith just announced a residency in Las Vegas! I guess they’re young enough to still rock but old enough to not want to travel.

I saw Queen just once at the Beacon Theater in NYC and Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden in their 1977 North American tour. Finally, throw in Meatloaf and Billy Joel. Meatloaf’s iconic Bat out of Hell album was released in September 1977 when I was 16. I saw him less than a year later on August 26, 1978 when I was seventeen. For the record, that was 40 years ago. What song can possibly be more appropriate to a seventeen year old that Paradise by the Dashboard Light? Unless it’s Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young?

This was the music of my youth which I will always love.

What was yours?

The Thrill of Victory

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 17:57:13 -0700

“The Thrill of Victory, …” If you’re of a certain age, you know exactly what phrase follows! “… and the Agony of Defeat.” Used for years in the opening sequence of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, the opening montage famously shows ski jumper, Vinko Bogataj crashing spectacularly at a ski-flying event in Oberstdorf, West Germany on March 7, 1970. ABC may have been talking about thrill and agony from the point of view of the athlete but what about the fan’s perspective?

With absolute certainty, I know the most thrilling moment in sports that I ever experienced. It was August 7, 2007 at 8:51pm PDT when Barry Bonds hit # 756. My sixteen year-old stepson and I had been “bonding” all summer over baseball. We paid beaucoup bucks to attend the All Star Game at AT&T Park along with its attendant events like the Home Run Derby and Futures Game. The All Star Game had its own thrilling moment, Ichiro Suzuki hitting the only inside-the-park home run in All Star history!

But it was Bonds that we craved. I don’t know what put the idea into our heads but we decided early in the season that we would be there to witness 756, even though there was not any certainty that it would even happen that year. Bonds finished the 2006 season with 734 homers, 21 short of tying Hank Aaron’s record and 22 short of breaking it. He had hit 26 homers in 2006, a vast improvement over his pitiful output of five home runs in 2005 when he was plagued with injuries, but a far cry from the 2000 to 2005 seasons when he averaged over 51 home runs per season.

A friend recently commented on how lucky we were to be there. In fact, there was little luck involved but there was a spreadsheet. All summer, we tracked his homers and built a forecast of when he would reach 756. We were filled with anxiety as we watched him hit numbers 751, 752, 753, and 755 at away games. But I was convinced that he would save 756 for the hometown crowd at AT&T Park in San Francisco. And our faith was rewarded!...Read More

Fans come in all shapes & sizes!

Sun, 26 Aug 2018 13:00:02 -0700

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