Back from Ol' Virginny'

A few things before I get into this...

I've been in Virginia all week with no internet, so I've yet to see that O'Reilly bit about me or contact that guy who was sending me hate mail. Now too much time has passed to contact the hate mail guy I think for it to still be relevant. But I'll still get around to watching and responding to it as soon as I can.

But here's some stuff I learned in Virginia... it's warmer, they have some good food... namely this place called Eppie's where white college kids make soul food, so you'd think it would really suck, but it was actually some pretty solid Jerk Chicken and the best corn bread I remember in recent memory...

What else? They had some awesome 15 year old kids playing the blues who ran circles around me while I was playing keyboard. It was funny. They were all like, "I thought you played guitar? Play for us!" And I was all like, "Ummm.... no dudes, it's cool, I'll stick to keys." I played a bit of bass and held my own though. S'all good. It did make me come to some serious truths though. That is, I'm pretty damn close to starting a career out of playing, recording, and listening to music and I'm not nearly as good as I could or should be. So I came home and am already trying to kick my ass and do some ear training, brushing up on sampling and learning to make better beats, re-reading my audio production books for the third or fourth time, and trying to find some people to play music with to get better because after playing with those kids (that sounded dirty... tee hee) for about an hour and a half I realized it was the first time I'd played music with other people in about a year and a half... which I'm convincing myself is part of the reason they seemed so much better than me. lolz!

The most important thing I learned while there (not really, but for the sake of keeping the blog short we'll say it is) is that Dave Matthews truly is a hack. The guy you should be listening to is Vusi Mahlasela. I had a chance to see Vusi speak and play a few songs and wow... lets talk about real folk music. Pain, love, forgiveness... this dude knows how to speak his shit, and half of it was in Zulu! I haven't had a chance to do a side by side comparison but the guy I was staying with just kept saying, "wait till you hear Vusi. Just wait. You'll see where Dave Matthews stole everything on his first few albums from." And well... it's true. It's the same thing, just better, because it's still got the soul. Sure that song Dave wrote about jerking off while spying on your neighbor sounded pretty "soulful" or whatever, but all the rhythms, patterns, and such are just stolen from Vusi. Let's get serious here...



(go ahead and skip like the first 45 seconds of that video or so. It's some dumb ad for the event he was playing)

There you go. That's a dude who had to build his own guitars as a kid because they couldn't afford them and could only listen to his own cultural music on pirate radio through people's windows because Apartheid didn't allow it. That's soul. I mean, I'm not saying Dave Matthews had it easy or whatever. I mean he had some early deaths in the family or whatever and he lived in South Africa too during Apartheid... but he was white. Totally different story. So then he just latched on to the sound he found there and turned it for a buck... or a couple million. I'm not saying that's totally wrong, but the only thanks he ever gave to Vusi was they collaborated on a song recently or something like that. All that means is Vusi has to open with it for every show he plays in the states. That's pretty shitty... but whatever Vusi seemed happy with it. Also, we gave him a cake and he was so adorably greatful. Pretty awesome guy.

And as much as I love to hate on Dave Matthews Band I have to give them some credit because in a roundabout way, they are the reason why I am able to sleep till noon and then sip on tea listening to Hank Williams for another hour or two before getting anything done... It doesn't make sense, but it does. Damn you Dave Matthews!