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Do You Know "Cliffs of Dover"?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:22:02 -0700

I have loved music for as long as I can remember, and the guitar since some time in high school. While most of my friends were listening to Greenday and The Offspring, I was immersed in Van Halen and Led Zeppelin. But as many times as I listened to "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" or "Heartbreaker", I didn't know I was meant to be a guitarist until I heard Eric Johnson play "Cliffs of Dover" for the first time.

I think it was my friend Charlie, who dabbled as a guitarist himself, who turned me on to that track. I still have the cassette that I dubbed from his copy of Ah Via Musicom, though I bet if you held it to the light you'd see that the tape has gone transparent. Johnson captured everything cool about guitar playing in four minutes and 10 seconds of soaring melody and blistering technique. As soon as I had heard it I knew I HAD to get a guitar.

Of course, learning how to play "Cliffs of Dover" is damn near impossible, as I found out for myself about a week after getting a Yamaha Pacifica strat copy for my 16th birthday. Instead I focused on the Jimmy Page and David Gilmour licks that were much more approachable by a beginner. Every so often I would revisit Eric Johnson's stuff, but even his "easy" songs were beyond me, and I gradually stopped trying.

That changed a couple of years ago when I decided to begin building my own amp. Since there was no way that I could try out vintage amp and pedal combinations to determine what style of amp I should build, I scoured websites, interviews in magazines, and websites for insight into how my favorite artists acheive their sound. In particular, how can you get a fat saturated lead tone from a strat? Johnson has a reputation of being a perfectionist and a bit obsessive of his tone, as well as being a strat player, so I decided to make a serious effort at learning how to play and sound like him. That's still an impossible goal, but this time I've managed to liberally steal from his impressive take on pentatonic soloing.

What I'm trying to say is that Eric Johnson's influence has played a big part in my own love affair with the electric guitar. Which makes it all the more awesome that I got to sit 30 feet from him when he played at The Birchmere in Arlington, VA, last January 8th. The Birchmere is a cool venue. The room with the main stage isn't all that big, which means that it's hard to get a bad seat. Plus, the stage isn't all that high, making it possible to take a picture like this before the show:

I realize this is a terrible picture, but it was dark and my cell phone camera isn't all that great. But man was it cool to get this close to Johnson's pedal board. For a brief instant, I wondered if I could have grabbed that Fuzz Face and gotten out of the building.

There was no opening act, so at a few minutes past 7:30, the band took the stage. Seating is first come, first serve, and we didn't get there until about an hour after the doors opened, so all of the seats on the guitar side of the stage were taken. This turned out to be a good thing. We ended up on the bass player's side of the audience. For one, not sitting directly in front of a Marshall full stack and a pair of blackface Fender Twins is better for your aural health. More importantly, Johnson spent most of the show facing the bass player, giving me an excellent view of his hands as he played. I basically got to attend a 2 hour master class by one of my favorite guitarists. And it was incredible. I don't love everything Johnson's ever played; I think his songwriting skills could use some work, and his stage presence is not all that impressive. But his technique and tone are impeccable. His ability to take build fast legato melodies from the boring old pentatonic scale has been a big inspiration on my own playing. I could watch him play all day.

Between songs, as Johnson adjusted his amp or changed the settings on his pedal board, some audience members would yell things to the stage. One guy yelled "do you know Cliffs of Dover?", which got a good laugh. "Know it?" Johnson replied, "I don't have to know it, I wrote it." He eventually played the song he's best known for at the end of the second set, and before the encore. First he played a several miniute long introduction, without accompaniment, in which he quoted liberally from the song's melody and solo lines before nailing the song's opening riff and blazing away. It was glorius. Time to start practicing again... ...

The First Day of Summer

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:02:25 -0700

Today was a good day. The past several weeks have been crazy, between long hours at work, and traveling out of town on the weekends. Today was the first Saturday I was totally free in what feels like forever. Remember when you were a kid and summer days were full of never ending possibilities? Today was like that, or as close as I get now that I'm an adult.

The morning started out with a long run. Susannah and I have been working on not sleeping in on weekends, so today we out did ourselves by getting up at 7 and hitting the running trails before it got too hot. I logged 7 miles, for the first time in over a year. I'm beginning to feel like I'll be in good shape for the Army Ten Miler in October. We both made it back to the house at the same time, and had showered, eaten breakfast, and watched some TV by noon. That's the whole reason why we've been trying to get up earlier on Saturdays: normally we would be lucky enough to be done with our runs for lunch at noon, and I wouldn't get to the stuff I really wanted to do until 2 pm or so.

Next, I did some serious practicing on the guitar. The Inconceivables are playing at a block party at The Village of Leesburg next weekend, and I haven't been practicing as much as I should lately. I spent a solid 3 hours going over tunes, practicing the tunes and licks I'll be including in my solos, and working out the amp and pedal tones I'll be using. It was a really productive session. I've been very happy with the guitar tones I've been getting out of my rig lately. I've got three basic settings I use: a clean sound, a dirty/overdriven sound, and a lead sound. Usually I can't get all 3 of them to sound good, and the lead tone is the toughest one to get right. Last weekend I revisited my entire effects chain, and have come up with settings for my pedals that let me nail all 3 sounds. The result is that playing is more fun, as I don't feel like I have to fight my guitar to sound good. Today's 3 hour sessions went by really fast.

At around 5, Susannah and I headed to Landsdowne for an early dinner. Typically we order in, but today we decided to eat out and it was nice to sit outside and enjoy a leisurely meal together. Afterwards, we walked to the comic book shop across the street from the restaurant so I could pick up the comics they hold for me. It had been almost 2 months since the last time I picked up my stash, so there were tons of them waiting for me. Then we went to Haagen Daz and got ice cream, where I had a chocolate malt that reminded me of the ones that I drank at my grandmother's house as a kid.

Now I'm home, with stiffness in my quads and sensitive fingertips to give me a sense of accomplishment, a whole stack of comics waiting for me, and a free evening to read them. My inner 16 year old is happy, and life is good. ...

Faith and Magic in the Night

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:00:09 -0700

It took me a long time to warm up to Bruce Springsteen. I was familiar with his big hits ("Born to Run", "Born in the USA", etc), but I was well into my 20s before I could establish an emotional connection to his music. It's not as if I did not appreciate his music before then. In the summer of 2000, Springsteen generated some controversy when he performed the song "American Skin (41 Shots)" at a concert in New York city. The song was a reaction to the killing of Amadou Diallo by police officers, and he received some flack for his performance from some fans and long-time supporters that should have known better. I was not one of these; I found the circumstances surrounding Diallo's death appalling. I thought it was cool that Springsteen had the stones to make his statement on the issue while playing at Madison Square Garden and remind us all that great rock 'n' roll is rooted in dissatisfaction at the way things are. The incident inspired me to fill some big gaps in my record collection by picking up copies of Born to Run, Nebraska, and Darkness on the Edge of Town. I listened to all 3 of these albums, understood the themes that ran through each of them, and...that was pretty much it. I wasn't strongly moved by them.

Whenever I would admit this to a Springsteen fan, their response was always the same: you need to see him live. I would get this from people who weren't even rock fans. I remember the girlfriend of a co-worker, who was, if I recall, a real big Phish and Grateful Dead fan, telling me that she always hated Springsteen until her mother, of all people, had dragged her to a concert that had completely changed her mind. With so many people telling me variations of the same thing, I figured I would have to go to a show one day and see for myself.

I got this chance on October 6th, 2007, when I saw Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band perform at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia. My friend Joe, the biggest Springsteen fan I know, spent the whole ride to Philly trying to convince me that I had no frame of reference to comprehend what I was about to experience. He was right. Holy crap, I'd never seen anything like this. The band hit the stage and the sound was tremendous. You know the opening sequence of "Saving Private Ryan" where the sound cuts to show the effect of explosions on Tom Hanks's hearing? My experience at the Philly show was like that. They hit the opening chords of "Night", and for the first several seconds I couldn't hear anything. It was like I was listening to them with my head underwater. Then my ears adjusted, and I was completely overwhelmed by the intensity of the show. When the band played Born to Run, the houselights were turned on, and I just watched the crowd. I didn't think the arena could contain the energy generated by the performance. While the E Street Band was on stage I felt part of something much bigger than myself. I was completely awestruck. I don't know any other way to put it.

Having seen the performance potential of these songs, I decided to revisit the originals. So, after the show, I started listening to Springsteen's entire catalog. His album Magic had just been released, and it ended up living in my car's CD player for weeks. I love that album; it might be my second favorite after Born to Run. I also made it to 3 additional shows, including one in Hershey, PA, where my younger sister Molly came with us and saw her first rock concert. In seeing these shows, I experienced another Springsteen truism: no two shows are alike. For one thing, the set lists on any given pair of shows can vary tremendously. Springsteen takes advantage of his extensive back catalog by constantly changing what is played one night to the next. Few big-name acts do this. When The Police had their reunion tour a few years back they played the same exact set list, with only one or two changes, night after night. This isn't a problem for the fan who goes to one show to hear the greatest hits package. But serious fans of a band or for fans of music in general like to hear more than just the regurgitation of a bunch of singles. At a Springsteen show, you get this. Songs and arrangements change constantly. The band never gets bored, and neither do you. The show isn't about presenting songs to an audience, it's about creating a shared experience.

As the Magic tour turned into the Working on a Dream tour, Springsteen took this a step further by playing complete albums. The last show I saw, in Washington, DC on November 2, 2009, featured Born to Run in its entirety, from beginning to end. I love that album; it's at the top of my list of the greatestest rock albums of all time. Seeing the whole thing live was something else. By the time this concert ended, I was convinced that the E Street Band is the best rock 'n' roll band on earth.

I mentioned earlier that great rock assumes dissatisfaction with the way things are. It's subversive, and at the heart of every great rock song is rejection of the status quo. Music that conforms, or seeks to re-enforce the party line, just isn't rock music. When I was a teenager just beginning to understand the power of music, I had few specific grievances to be mad about. I lived in a nice house, went to a nice school, and was raised by good parents whose worst offense was to insist I be home before midnight. My whole future was in front of me, and I had no reason to suspect that I would not get to live happily ever after. Put another way, Springsteen was not about to write a song about me. As I got older and went into the "real world" (whatever that is), I began to realize that the path that was laid out in front of me was not the one that I wanted to follow. The longing for something better, something meaningful, that appears on all of Springsteen's albums resonates with me now more than ever. His songs, even the saddest ones, fill me with hope for the future. That's what his concerts offer: a chance for thousands to come together and share the belief that it's not too late, that we can make it if we run.

The news of Clarence Clemons's death came in a text from Molly. He had suffered a stroke the week before, and his prognosis wasn't very good, but I didn't know any of this. I've been really bad about listening to the news lately. The Big Man was a sight to behold, and at the shows I went to he always seemed to get the strongest crowd reaction. Surely the band isn't going to be the same without him. It's really sad to think that I'll never see him perform again, but I do take comfort in knowing that I did get to see him a few times while he was around. Rock, at its best, helps us transcend the tedious nature of our lives, and reminds us what it means to be truly alive. Clemons's sax sound was warm, larger than life, and full of hope, and we're all worse off for not having it with us any more.

Now I have renewed my committment to experience more rock 'n' roll. There are way too many gaps in my record collection where greats such as Bob Dylan or The Clash should be, and there are countless bands to discover and experience. Bands like U2... ...

Under a Full Moon

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 07:57:08 -0700

Here is a picture of the moon as seen from my deck taken last Tuesday (June 14th) at just after 9 pm.

The real view was much more spectacular; the moon was large, exceedingly bright, and the details of its surface were clearly visible. My picture does not do it justice, but I like the results all the same. It was taken by placing my Olympus E-410 on a tripod, using the manual setting, and using a 2 second exposure. I have not done much experimenting with night photography, and I had trouble getting an exposure that preserved the moon's surface details while also preventing the sky from appearing as a black velvet curtain. I'm sure there are lots of things I could have done to make a better picture. In the end I decided that I liked the effect of having an overexposed moon on a lighter background, which enhanced the contrast between the tops of the trees in the lower portion of the frame and the sky. I also think it's really cool that I caught some stars in the picture too. (I was so focused on the moon that I didn't really notice the stars until I opened the picture for editing on my laptop.)

If the weather is clear this weekend, I might try to take some more pictures of the night sky. My house is on the edge of the Washington, DC suburban sprawl and close to Dulles airport, which means that there is too much light pollution for serious star gazing. Maybe I'll get lucky and this won't get in the way of a good picture. ...

In which my sister graduates from high school and I feel old

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 13:50:35 -0700

I was 14 when my sister Molly was born. I remember figuring out that I would be 32 when she graduated high school and having a difficult, if not outright impossible, time imagining myself being that old. Well, she graduated this past Thursday, and I feel ancient.

The last few days were spent watching talking about homebrewing beer with my brother Tom (who makes a damn fine Belgian-style ale), looking at old photos with my other sister Emily, taking Molly to pick out a new iPhone, checking out the new Brewer Family Library with my dad, helping my mother prepare for Saturday's graduation party, and then partying all day Saturday and into Sunday morning. I'm beat.

I took a whole bunch of pictures, but I have been very unimpressed with the results. The lighting in the gym and auditorium where the graduation ceremony took place was terrible. I'll have to do a bunch of editing to create a gallery that will be just ok. Oh, well. In the meantime, here is a shot of Emily and Molly after the ceremony.

...

A Vote for Reason

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:20:42 -0700

A few years ago, while on vacation in Florida, I spent the better part of an evening discussing the existence of god with my wife and her family. The conversation inspired me to pick up a copy The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins from the airport bookstore on the way home. At the time I don't think I would have called myself an atheist, but I had long since given up on religion- my Catholic upbringing had cured me of that years before. Any lingering beliefs on the possibility that their exists a supernatural being that has a personal interest in my affairs were gone by the time I had finished the book. Since then, I have been following the "new atheist" writings of Dawkins, Chrisopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet, and others.

I've been planning to write an essay about my beliefs (or lack thereof) for a while now. In the meantime, I wanted to take a second to plug The RIchard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. The foundation seeks to refute religious fundamentalism with, well, reason and science, and their website is refuge for all of us that feel like we're surrounded by dogma. The site is full of articles and videos of really smart people demonstrating that the natural world is much more beautiful and interesting than anything that claims devine inspiration. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about the world around them to check it out. ...

Views from Offa's Dyke

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:45:04 -0700

My posts on Wales are slow in coming, for all of the usual reasons. I was going to describe the trip one day at a time, but I've decided to skip ahead and talk about day 4. That was the day we took a hike on Offa's Dyke path.

Offa was a king of Mercia during the 8th century AD. Legend has it that he built an earth wall to separate his kingdom from the threat of Welsh invasion from the west. The truth of this has been left up to the historians, but today you can hike along Offa's Dyke Path, a 177 mile north-south trail that roughly follows the Welsh-English border. The northern end of the trail goes through the Clwydian Range, a series of mountains and hills we could see from our cottage.

Most of Wales seemed to close for the entire New Year's weekend; at least, none of the museums or national sites we wanted to see were open. Susannah and I decided to use that time to hike along the trail. The day was misty, cold, and damp, but this didn't stop us, and we set out at around 11 am. The cottage owners' son, Carl, who lived in an apartment adjacent to the cottage, told us that we could pick up the trail by walking straight down the lane. Sure enough, after about a mile's walk we saw a sign with the acorn symbol that marks the path.

As soon as we left the road, the trail climbed steeply into the mountains. It also crossed lots of fields full of grazing sheep. These fields appear to be private property, but since the path crosses them, pedestrians are allowed to pass over the land. In fact, where the path crosses a fence there is typically a small foot stool that allows hikers to go over the fence with little difficulty. At some of these crossings the fence even had a door for dogs to go through. I think that's pretty cool. We saw this type of thing all over Wales, and not just on the dyke path. I don't know if this is a hold-over from a time when people had to walk or ride a horse in order to get anywhere, but I think it's neat that walkers are given free passage over the land.

As you can imagine, the view got better and better as we got higher and higher. The cottage and its nearest village are surrounded by green fields, which in turn are surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Words won't do it justice, so I've uploaded the pictures I took into the photo gallery. We ended up going much higher than we thought we would be able to (walking uphill for 3 hours is not easy). I kept pushing to go to the top of the nearest rise, only to find beyond that the trail would go higher still. Eventually we decided to turn around to ensure we had plenty of daylight left to get us back to the cottage.

We eventually got home around 4 pm or so. By this time we were starving, but it was too early for dinner. Susannah suggested that we have tea- tea, crackers, hummus, Stilton cheese with dried apricots, and shortbread cookies. This might have turned into the best meal we had the entire time we were in Wales. We'd certainly earned i ...

In Ten Years, A Lifetime

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:44:02 -0700

Until a few months before my 12th birthday my family lived in New York, not too far from where my most of my mother's extended family has lived all their lives. This meant that we spend a lot of time - holidays, birthdays, etc - with my grandparents, aunts, and cousins on my mother's side. I have a lot of good memories from this time. Even though it happened quite a lot, it always felt like a special treat every time we would visit the family. Family get-togethers were always fun, and I laughed a lot. Mostly this was because of Grandpa. If he were still alive, today would have been his 91st birthday.

I've been thinking about Grandpa quite a lot lately. The recent holiday season is at least partly to blame for this, as many of my memories of him involve Christmas. (One year he bought a cheap singing Christmas tree from the local drugstore, an obnoxious, plastic tree with animatronic eyes that would sing Jingle Bells for 30 seconds if you walked past it. He thought it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever seen, and he took great delight in showing it off to my siblings and me by setting it off continously.) Also, recent events involving our family have underscored how much joy has left our lives since he passed away.

Grandpa was fun, and everything he did for us grandkids reinforced the unconditional love he had for all of us. I'm the oldest of his 8 grandchildren. My brother and I were the only boys, and I always suspected that he relished any chance he could to hang out with the only other "men" in the family. He would take us out for ice cream, buy us presents, take us to baseball games (he (along with my mother) took my brother and I to our first major league baseball game), and spoil us rotten.

He also told us stories. Oh, how I loved the stories. Most were hysterical; they may not have ever really happened, but you didn't care because they were too good to dismiss for merely being unlikely. He told us that he went to a funeral of man who had died in sitting in his favorite chair. Apparently he had been in the chair a long time before he was discovered, for rigor mortis had set in, and during the wake the body sat up straight in the coffin. Some stories gave us dirt on other family members; these were usually funny as well. I once asked him how old his brother-in-law, my great uncle Johnny, was. His answer: "Well, when I married your grandmother, he was 10 years older than me. Now I'm 8 years older than him."

For me, though, the best stories were his World War II stories. He attempted to enlist after Pearl Harbor, but a childhood bout of rheumatic fever convinced the army that his heart might not be up to it, so he was forced to stay home while his brother and most, if not all, of his friends were shipped overseas. While they were away he kept close tabs on what was going on. 50 years later he could tell you anything about the war. Roosevelt was almost a god (though this could be because he "brought back the beer"); McArthur and Patton were bastards. He could do an excellent imitation of Winston Churchill and the "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech. (When I was on my honeymoon in London, we got to tour Churchill's war room. I bought Grandpa a cassette of Churchill giving this speech, but he died before I was able to give it to him. I kept the tape, but have not been able to bring myself to listen to it.)

By most accounts, Grandpa was very close to his brother Jim, who was 2 years older. My own brother and I are two years apart, and we were constantly told how we were just like Grandpa and Jim. Sadly, Uncle Jim died in the early 1960s as a result of an illness that had its origins in some of the rough conditions he had to endure on the Western Front. The impact his death had on my grandfather wasn't obvious to me untill I interviewed him for a college oral history project. I was a history major, and credit a lot of my love for the subject as result of all of Grandpa's stories. The interview focused on life during on the home front during the war, and I asked him if he knew anybody who had died in the war. The whole tone of the conversation changed as he replied "are you kidding?" and proceeded to list at least a dozen names of buddies who never came home. "And of course," he said, "my brother Jim".

The last big family event that occurred before he died was my wedding on December 28, 2000. I don't know if I'll ever be able to put in to words how greatful I am that he was able to make the trip to Kentucky despite his failing health. Three weeks later, on January 17, he passed away. Life in our extended family has been a lot less joyful ever since. Grandpa's easy going nature provided levity to many family dramas, and the void of his absence is always the largest (and most painful) when we are all together. I loved him, and miss him terribly.

When I finished the 5th grade, the last before moving to the intermediate school, my elementary school gave us autograph books for our friends to sign. Grandpa wrote the following in mine:

As if there will ever be a chance that I might forget.

Perhaps the biggest reason why I've been reminded of him so often lately is that it's easy to see his influence on my siblings. Whenever I need to remember how much fun it was to be surrounded by such happiness, all I need to do is spend time with my brother Tom and sisters Emily and Molly. You guys rock. Never doubt that you are awesome. ...

Trip to Wales- Introduction

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:43:10 -0700

This year Susannah and I decided to take a trip to Wales in celebration of our 10th wedding anniversary. We had a fantastic time, and I am finding it really hard to get back to my normal routine.

The cottage we stayed in was supposed to have WiFi, and I had planned to blog daily about all the cool stuff we got to do. Unfortunately, the WiFI connection sucked: Susannah's laptop could not connect at all, and mine would only connect for a few minutes at a time if I put tried to connect from one spot in the kitchen. I ended up not writing or posting any blog updates while I was away.

I plan to fix this over the next week or so by writing about some of the experiences we had while away. Stay tuned for further updates. ...

Post Christmas Hangover

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 13:42:07 -0700

Christmas was a lot of fun this year. Susannah and I, along with my brother, his girlfriend, and my two sisters, spent the holiday at my parents' house in Pennsylvania. For the first time in a long time (maybe ever?) we did not have to travel to visit other relatives once we got there. Instead, we spent 3 full days eating, having a good time, eating, opening presents, and eating some more. I had a great time; I'm pretty sure we all did.

Now I'm back home, stuffed and exhausted. (Nobody in my family seems to like sleep all that much...) In two days we fly to London and begin our trip to Wales. It is damn near impossible to concentrate on work, which sucks because I have a lot of stuff I have to clear off of my plate before we leave. What's the key to forcing yourself to be motivate ...