Category: Blog

This blog contains music, cats, and things of less importance.

Leo Nocentelli Breaks Down The Guitar Part On "Cissy Strut"

Thrilled to find this instructional vid from Leo Nocentelli himself, giving a demonstration of his guitar part on The Meters’ classic instrumental, Cissy Strut. This is from “The Secrets Of Funk: Using It And Fusing It!” DVD, available here. I’ve played this tune many times – we used to open with it as a sort of “sound check” number, especially on nights when we walked in without a sound check! You can’t really go wrong with it once you’ve got the swing. But there are some fine details you can hear in this solo rendition that I never quite caught before. Mr. Nocentelli starts it off slow before bringing it up to tempo, and then he mixes in some other Meters funk magic! Definitely today’s guitar lesson post. Check it out:

More Links With Your Coffee. And Goats.

victrola200pxJust few links that I found share-worthy this week, for a variety of reasons.

I think he’s completely wrong in his assertion that “Downloading music will not exist in 10 years.” Of course it will, as will CD’s, memory sticks, vinyl etc. But the rest of his points, and some of the comment threads are very interesting if this subject interests you. Digital Music News is full of good reads for musicians and music publishers etc. Things keep changing rapidly in this sphere, and there’s some spirited yelping on that site.

  • RH Reality Check – News, commentary and analysis for reproductive and sexual health and justice.

An excellent site with some great articles. I have it bookmarked. Remember bookmarks? I still use bookmarks.

This story puts the “W” in “Weird.” Complex, morally challenging, dark, twisted, and so very 21st century.

Maybe read this one after your coffee! Delightful scientific perspective asserting that we’re actually more doomed than we previously thought we were doomed. I have no idea if his suggested remedies are viable, or absolute quackery. There certainly is a lot of shrieking on both “sides” of the climate “debate” – which I put in quotes because human activity is changing the climate, period. We just don’t know how much, how fast, and what it all means short, medium and long term. One thing we all share in common is we inhabit this planet, which we are trashing like 7 billion Keith Moons unleashed in a nice hotel. Further studies.

Finally, here is a happy child playing with bouncing baby goats.

Beserkley Records Story on Joel Selvin's Podcast a Great Listen

My good friend Matthew King Kaufman, and bay area rock greats Earth Quake, started Beserkley Records in 1973 in where else, Berkeley! Matthew and his partners nicknamed their label “Home of the Hits” before they ever had a hit. They dubbed their very first album a “Compilation” of “Greatest Hits” called “Chartbusters, Volume 1,” before they ever released anything, much less dented the charts. Matt once released a single called “Silent Knight” which contain 3 minutes of complete silence. It was a success in jukeboxes, because bartenders or waitresses would play it occasionally just to make the music stop for a few minutes. All this may help to explain why Matthew’s record company title has always been “Reigning Looney” instead of “President” or anything else. He is one of a kind, and so was Beserkley Records. Fulfilling their own prophecy, Beserkley had major chartbusting hits in the 70’s and 80’s. As a Berkeley kid himself, Joel Selvin witnessed the story up close from the beginning. Matthew recently visited Joel’s Basement Record Library to play some records and talk.

This is a great listen. I love these records, and all the guys who made them. Brothers Robbie and Tommy Dunbar’s guitar playing still amaze and inspire me to this day. This is power pop at its best. Have a listen at: OpenSourceMusic.com

On the other hand, here’s how you DO get me to Like yr Band Page!

I felt a little bad posting this little screed the other day about bands asking people to “Like” their FB pages before hearing their music. Today I have a happy footnote to that!  A young band sent me a nice email asking if we could put them on a show sometime, with a link to their bandcamp page. So I popped over and pressed play, and it is freakin’ GREAT! So I’m a fan now. So, I went over to their FB page and clicked “Like” and added them to the Uptones’ likes as well. And now I’m posting it here. Because it really rocks my ass, OK? Not because I’m being nice. This is firmly in the East Bay punk / ska / power-pop tradition, and it really stands on its own merit. The lyrics are sincere and smart and passionate, the combo playing is tight and dynamic, the guitar playing and vocals are lovely and powerful, the production is marvelous and look. Here’s the thing. I pressed play on song 1, and it kept my riveted attention all the way to the end, and kinda made my morning. I like it because these kids put in WORK and turned in a real gem of an album, for which I have no problem sharing my “Like” with the world. Let’s see, will bandcamp let me embed this whole thing, along with Buy and Share links? Let’s see.. Yes! Like! Heh.. Where’s the “Love” button? Listen to this:

How Not To Get Me To "Like" Your Band Page!

Sigh. Invited to “Like” a band on FB. I go to their page. Band looks cool. I click Play and it prompts me to Like before I can hear ’em. Not doing it!

I’ve been sharing some of my bands’ music for free on the Internet since 1998. If someone likes us, great! But I’m not going to ask for a “Like” unless you actually like us and want to help spread the word about us. Gawd. That said, you can hear The Uptones at our FB page, heck yeah we’d appreciate your Liking! Love it even more if you like it enough to want to buy our music at iTunes or put it on a playlist in Spotify or play the Uptones channel in Pandora. We get a little revenue from that and it really means a lot to us. Encourages us to release more music, I mean we have a way to distribute our music world wide without having to invest in CD’s or deal with storage and shipping. It’s potentially a great new world emerging for recording artists as the subscription sites and youtube etc. all figure out how to pay the artists and copyright owners in this era of nearly universal access to recorded music.

But the work has to stand on its own merit! If you’re going to compete with a bazillion other records, compete! Make the best record you can, and then let people hear it somehow. I know it’s not easy to choose the best ways to get your work noticed in today’s crazy playing field, but the model of using a “Like” as currency before even hearing the work, is just kukoo. I might just “Like” the band that invited me, then listen to their stuff, but then I’ll be in the awkward position of having to un-Like them if I didn’t dig their music. Or leave the “Like” standing, thus recommending something I’m not down with, and diminishing the value of my real recommendations. I don’t Like either option.

Thus endeth the rant.

Your comments and rants and musical recommendations are always invited.

UPDATE, Jan 30!-> Here’s is how you DO get me to Like your Band Page!

Stiff Richards by Stiff Richards

This was recorded in about 3 days at Sharkbite in Oakland. One of the standout tracks for me is “Fell In And Out Of Art” by Paul Jackson. Typical of Paul’s compositions, the individual parts don’t make complete sense when played solo, but when they’re all played together, they create a moving tapestry of chords and melody and mayhem. It was fun playing guitar on that song, and the whole album. I sang lead on a few tracks as well, including our cover of the Nervebreakers’ “My Girlfriend Is A Rock.”

Available in all the digital places.

From Russia With Love: English Translations of Soviet Era Songs, by Andrei Marcon

Before Moscow native Andrei Marcon emigrated to California as a young man in the 80’s, he acquired some cassette tapes of Russian underground music, which were passed around person to person against the wishes of the Soviet authorities. He has since taken it upon himself to translate into English some of these songs which he loved as a kid. They were “hits” of a kind, in the Soviet era, in that many people heard and loved these songs, and shared and sang them. But it was all on the down low. Thing is, if you got caught distributing music, you could find yourself in serious trouble. You could be arrested, charged, convicted and even sent off to “the camps” for “unlawful commercial activity and/or private entrepreneurship!” Activities like building amps, hiring a sound engineer for a recording, organizing shows – anything where money changed hands – including duplicating and distributing cassettes, were all verboten.

Andrei Marcon Photo by John Seabury
Andrei Marcon – Photo by John Seabury

But music, being the universal language, has a way of getting around. Andrei related to me that in fact, western popular music was also passed around surreptitiously in this way. 5th generation cassettes of everything you can think of, found their way to the hungry ears of Russian music fans and musicians. I had heard about this back then. But what I didn’t know, is that there were also homegrown music stars in the Soviet Union, somehow recording and releasing their material to the public. Songs that connected with people were shared widely.

In that setting, there were some notable songwriters and bands, none of whom I had heard about until Mr. Marcon generously shared this information with me a few years ago. At that time, he sang and played for me a few translations he was working on, faithfully rendering these lost gems from his native tongue in his 2nd language, English. Since then, he has recorded and posted some of these versions on youtube. The results are brilliant, and in fact, if I didn’t know these were translations, I’d easily assume they were written in English.

Without further ado I’d like to share with you a few of these songs, performed solo by Andrei Marcon, starting with “The Fiddler” by Konstantin Nikolsky. You can also find these vids and more at Andrei’s youtube channel.

This next one, “Who Is To Blame” is originally by Alexei Romanov of Voskreseniye, a famous Russian band which started in the 70’s and remains active today.

And here finally is Voskresenye’s 1979 Russian undeground hit “I Have…”.

Hope you enjoy! Please share if you like, and who knows, maybe these versions will also be covered! Music traveling beyond borders and time, as it has always done.

UP-Fest in Berkeley, Friday, August 9th!

The UPTONES are doing a one-night-only midsummer show at Ashkenaz on August 9th, with The TITAN-UPS (the best Jamaican Rocksteady style band in San Francisco) and The RAVEUPS – an awesome band with guys from The Rubinoos, Santana, Psycotic Pineapple, and other bay area rock champs. It wasn’t until we had the show confirmed and the bands booked, that I realized all three bands have “UP” in their names. So I’m calling it an “UP-Fest.” ‘Cos I can.

If ya don’t know already, Ashkenaz is ALWAYS All-Ages, and they serve beer, wine and excellent food, AND they have a fantastic wooden dance floor AND a great sound system! Fact is, you can count the number of remaining venues in the east bay that can say ALL that, on one finger. I’m proud to bring The UPTONES show, with all my skankin’ foolz, to our stalwart hometown dance hall again, and I hope you will join us!