Sadly Alice Coltrane passed away on my birthday, this past Friday. She was 69. Strangely I did not find out until today after reading Floodwatch. His tribute is better than anything I could write – so one should read it.

A lot of people just consider her “John Coltrane’s wife” – but she was way more than that, in fact her career as a successful musician predates their marriage and continued well on past John’s death. Her harp playing was perhaps the best in the world, no doubt in the jazz world. She was also an accomplished pianist and composer. If you don’t already own Universal Consciousness, you should do yourself a favor to your mind, body and soul.

What’s moderately bizarre is that I picked up a McCoy Tyner record called Extentions on Saturday with Al at the Soundgarden. The reason I picked it up was because I saw on the back of the record that Alice Coltrane played harp on it. Sadly she passed away the day before.

RIP Alice.

There’s something about Herbie that’s just incredibly fluid and emotional that truely speaks to me on a non-pretentious level that a lot of jazz can hit on quickly.

Aside from the super heavy keyboard mix, the DVD was rather incredible. Cool multiple angle features which were cool for the first 5 minutes then I forgot about them. Terri Lyne Carrington laid down funk and jazz grooves like there was no tomorrow. I also noticed she had a Remix cymbal. Matthew Garrison played the bass and really impressed me. Being the son of Jimmy Garrison must be a tough thing to ride on your shoulders, but he held his own and then some. Wow.

My only complaint was that the only Headhunters era song we got was Chameleon. I really would have loved to see a live version of Watermelon Man or Hornets from Sextent. Yum.

Regardless, it was a great Netflix find. Do it do it.

Saturday was spent in Takoma Park at David R’s house mixing down our found sounds from our minidiscs on to his computer in Audacity. Audacity is this great open source sound editor. If you are looking for something to edit music or sounds, this is your software. Simplicity at it’s best.

So our podcast found sound project, dubbed: Silence Is So Accurate finally came through on Saturday [photos]. We had been talking about this idea for a few weeks now, if not months while we were collecting our original sounds. Our concept was to find sounds and collect them. We’d find everyday sounds that are most often overlooked and we would piece them together in to a cohesive sentance. There is no limit to length or the amount of sounds or the amount of layers of sounds. It was pretty liberating creating this with David. Especially with him at the wheel on the computer. So check it out. Enjoy it and try to listen with headphones as it will better your experience. And listen often. Comment there if it moves you. We’ll try to have a new podcast next month.

After I left David’s I went to our neighbors house to check up on the 3 dogs I am taking care of for the weekend. They are so cute. And then we packed our overnight bag and headed to Baltimore to meet Nan and Bob and my parents at Cafe Hon. It was fun. I got the cod. My parents got the salmon. Tasty! After that we went back to Nan and Bob’s house and had dessert and coffee and tea. Shortly after my parents left, I got really tired and layed down on the pull-out couch and watched cable tv. That was pretty much all we did on Sunday as well. It is always nice and relaxing there. It’s like our summer home.

Sunday night David R. picked me up and we headed downtown to Twins to meet up with David O. and a coworker of David R’s. It was Sunday’s open mic night where all these musicians come out and play jazz. Typically it’s peope who have never met each other. But they leave their egos at the door and and lay down serious shit. There was this girl who was just learning to play jazz, but she still got up there with these serious jazzcats and layed it down like she’d been playing for 40 years. It was inspirational and liberating and amazing. I feel like this is my new Brickskeller. This method spoke to me. What was really cool was recognizing the Miles Davis or Coltrane cuts they played. I knew the music. It felt good. It felt home.

Friday we went to a semi-vege restaurant and then headed to this bar in a strip mall that turned out to be my most favorite place in Baltimore. It was this little dive, but a swank dive where they had killer good jazz. And mind you, it WAS in a strip mall. What the fuck?! It was really good jazz. Not whiteboy impersonations of it. And about halfway in to hanging out there I realized, me and Emily were the only white people there sans the bassist in the combo. The door man even made me take my hat off. It was cool. I felt at home with the good music and down to earth people. I need to go there more often. Fuck bars who spin records. Cos that’s all they do. Get it in your head. We all have a random button on our CD players. After that, we came home, but got a call from Maria asking us to come out to this place to hang. So we did that for a few. Maria can be a little much when in large groups. But she was mega cool with just a few people there. I was suprised. It was nice.

Saturday we went for a long walk around Emily’s hood. We went to this nice little cafe she had never been to and we both shared a roast beef sandwich with munster cheese. My favorite cheese. Lactaid to the rescue. It was just nice walking around in a city. One of my favorite things to do indeed. Then we came back home and got ready for dinner. We went to dinner at this place that Emily’s father had given her a mad huge gift certificate to for Christmas. So we all splurged and got two filet’s. They were tremendous. And I got this salad called an “iceberg wedge” and it was litterally just that. 25 cents worth of lettus for 5 bucks with bits of bacon. Gotta love swank cuisine. Eh. But it was really good. And we seemed to only talk about seducing the pre-pubescent bus boy and having sex in public. There was also this old lady couple sitting near us and one of the ladies talked like Marge’s sister. Uncanny.

After dinner we ran to Johns Hopkins to meet up with her friend Jessie to see the Sankofa African Dance Troupe. It was just great. And Jessie is one good looking girlie. I was in tears for the first half of the show. Just blew my mind away. I liked how the dancing wasnt perfect. It was very communal and not pristeen like your typical dance groups. It was just another way to do things and I liked it much more than traditional dance. Why dont people go to clubs to do this. It’s much more social. Fuck clubs who spin records. Anyways. If you get the chance, go see this group. It’s real. It’s moving. And the drums are immense and powerful. I need to play my djembe more. Nothing is better than covering your drum heads with your own blood. Nothing. Except for spinning records so hard that your fingers bleed. After that me and Emily headed to a bar to see a friend of hers that was spinning records. He was down to earth. The bar was boring. Never got the bar scene. I guess I was always spoiled in that I only had the sole pupose to being in bars to play in a band. Maybe it’s just me, but i’d rather chat with my friends in a cooler place than that. Eh.

Sunday we didnt do much of anything during the day. We ran around Rockville to get Bill a gift for his birthday. And we headed to Marrakesh in NW DC to celebrate his birthday. It was Moroccan food. It was 7 courses. It was really good. Chicken with powdered sugar is the bomb digity. There was even a belly dancer and the lebanese beer was good. My father learned lebanese at one point. Perhaps when he was stationed there in the Navy. So that was a lot of fun. Much more fun than I expected.

It’s monday. I am off. Prince is coming. To the Warner Threatre. My company owns it. I am gonna get good seats, I hope! I will see Prince. I will live life. I also took a buttload of fotos this weekend. Check them out.