We had seats in row three close up and really enjoyed watching the guys play.   On many songs their left hands were  just a blur as they walked bass lines.     A couple things I did notice is on most all songs all they really concentrate and their eyes never leave the keyboard.    Also I noticed their hands are really playing far apart much of the time with the right hand doing a bunch of work in the last couple octaves.       Bob Seeley was a friend of Mead Lux Luis and apparently visited him many times.   Bob had a piano stool there he showed us along with a picture of Mead setting on it.   I’ve seen that same picture in a couple books and on the internet so it was kinda neat to actually see that stool that support Mead’s frame which was big.  

Seeing them play live was good inspiration for me .. I got to work on getting my left hand moving.   I think alot of the tunes they played had to be moving along at 146 bpm .. maybe faster.

Owens Center for Fine and Performing Arts

After near a dozen lessons spread over four months I’ve completed my  Owen’s College  Community piano lesson offering.    It was fun, interesting and I surely improved greatly on my sight reading.    Owens College has a music education department and a newish building called the Owen’s Center For Fine and Performing Arts which houses music classrooms, practice rooms and a theater.    My instructor Dr. Lynda Dunn had decades of experience and got me going on some great books from Alfred’s publishing called Alfred  Piano for Adult Beginners.   

Owens Practice Room

Something I found hard was playing the acoustic Yamaha piano which the practice room had.   Between a different chair height and keys that pressed harder than what I have at home I had troubles warming up each week.    Of course  just playing for someone else (the teacher) wasn’t so easy for me either as I just get nervous and the brain stops working.    The big thing about lessons is they make you practice hard because you don’t want to look like an idiot at the next lesson.     I’m continuing on with the sight reading practice a bit every day.  I’m also doing better at  finger type exercises now as  I’ve found I can now sight read and play the notes in those long exercise riffs.    In all the lessons were a good experience.   I think I’m pretty good at learning on my own but as I mentioned a little pressure to practice hard sure helps speed the learning process.

A couple miles from me on Briarfield Blvd. is a newer place called Vino 100 I had never been to.   I saw in the Blade’s Club line up an acoustic guitarist Calen Savage was playing there so I checked it out on on my way home from Degage.    Vino 100 is  a wine shop and bar combination and appears to me to be a  yuppie hangout which isn’t quite my glass of wine.   From the street you just see a wine shop but once inside right behind the wine displays is the bar area.  It’s not a large place by any means however there was a  noisy crowd there for a Thursday evening filling most of the seats around the bar and tables in the room.   The music was ok but unfortunely the area they had the entertainment at wasn’t on a raise stage and was tucked back in  a  corner not viewable from much of the main room.    I listened for a bit and left, maybe someday they’ll get a piano player.

A few weeks back I finally made it over to check out the new Shawn’s  in Waterville.   This place is basically Shawn’s Backdoor South and even looks the same inside and has plenty of big screen TV’s.   What’s nice is there is a ton of standing area around the bar and people seem to really enjoy hanging out there.    When I was there Johnny Rodriguez was playing  for a packed house on a Saturday evening.    I went back a few weeks later and got my Jigg’s dinner on St. Patty’s day there.    

Of the three of the places I mentioned above I definitely like Shawn’s the best.   It has a  home town friendly atmosphere to it.

Several days later I got a small package and with two DVD’s and two CD’s with ugly marker pen labels which wasn’t a good sign.     I then proceeded to look at the disks and seen most everything was compressed with Winarchive which has an file extension of  .rar.      They supplied a trial version of Winrar which work great and after a couple hours I have uncompressed 369,000 some files to a new ONEMGMIDI folder on my second 250G drive on my PC.   There were several folders on the DVD’s I skipped then some as they were labeled with foreign names on genre I’m not interested in.   

So did I get my monies worth?   Yes then some.   Surprisingly there was also some nice sheet music in .PDF format.   I don’t want to say what was on it but that alone was worth several times the cost.     The distributor of the set did warn there were duplicates and he was right on that.   It appears many of the files were downloaded by a robot via the Internet as the file names were often  like  “Mustang Sally  some.site.net” .     Fortunately it’s very easy to tell which are duplicates as you just sort the list by file size!   

So how do I find anything in a directory with hundreds of folders each with anywhere from a few to 1000′s of files?   Windows XP Desk Top search to the rescue!   I downloaded the most recent version from Microsoft.com.   Then I right clicked on the Properties of my ONEMGMIDI folder.     Under advanced options there is a make Search enabled option, I clicked on that and then came back an hour later after Windows indexed the files.   Luckily the file names for the most part are very good for searching on with blanks between words in the song title.    For Desktop Search  to find them I had one more step and that was to add my ONEMGMIDI folder to it’s list of file folders it searches.

WOW …  it works great !!!!     I search for the word  like  “Mustang ” and get back  a list of 60 entries for the song Mustang Sally.  There are many  duplicates but still probably there are 5 different good versions along with 10 short demo and simplified versions.    I searched for  ”Art Tatum” and found a folder with like 80 excellent songs he is featured on.      I’m very happy with this purchase, this will save me a lot of time in the future.   Quite often a MIDI file version will have tracks that are pretty close to the original recording which often is a version too difficult for me to play or the piano and keyboard tracks are boring background fillers.   What I look for is a piano based arrangement of a song that has a good bass for my left hand and a nice piano lead for my right .. then I’m all set!!!!

So when the next Tuesday evening came I drove the short 4 miles into Maumee and caught the first set which started not long after 9.    Mark Mikel was actually was a three man act with Mark playing acoustic, a bass player and another guy doing backup vocals and a good job on tambourine.   They played great oldies like Mr Tambourine Man,  Norwegian Wood,  Like a Rolling Stone.   The only downside was they played loud like all groups seem to do these days.   My hearing seems to be a bit sensitive to loud noises nowadays but I’m also beginning to think many long time musicians have lost some of their hearing and just don’t realize how loud they get.    I had to wait for a break before trying to order anything at the bar.  Why they don’t just dial it down to level 6 or 7 I just don’t know.   I’m thinking someday the government will impose an audio level ban  (no one thought they’d ever ban smoking either). 

The Village Idiot bar itself was a nice cozy setup, one big room around 50 x 50 in size with a high 20 foot  ceiling with a raised stage in one corner.  You have a good view of the stage from just about every seat in the house.    They had PA speakers mounted above the stage and good spot lights which lit up the musicians nicely.    The Village Idiot also has a pizza kitchen and several people got pizza while I was there and it looked and smelled great.    I hope to get back soon and hear some of the other acts  they have there.  With winter and cold weather moving in now to northwest Ohio I’ll be ready to get out of the house a bit more in the evening.

The band called Green Eyed Soul from Windsor was a male and female twosome.   Both could sing great and the male played short sax riffs sometimes and keyboard the rest of the time.   He was also busy starting backing tracks kept I believe on a laptop and adjusting  volumes on a mixer.     The backing tracks were loud and sounded good.   For the most part this was pretty much a karaoke style act but a good one.  They knew all the words and even little backup vocal spots and were in duet mode on some songs.

When I got there I was excited to see a Roland XP 50 keyboard on the stage which I read later came out around 1995.   It looked to be maybe a 61 key keyboard.    The guy would do a few stabs and a several melody note riff often at the beginning or end of a song.   Most of the time he was just playing a chord it look to me with the right hand.   I really couldn’t hear much keyboard over the backing track and sometimes I think he might have been hand syncing.   Keepin mind he also was doing a lot of vocal at the same time.

I only stayed for first set and was disappointed that every song used a backing track so I didn’t get to hear any solo keyboarding.      One thing good was is that they kept the crowd on the floor with  barely a 5 second break  between songs.    I was very impressed by the way they came off and their energy kept the crowd going.   I really need to experiment using backing tracks.   My Juno Stage has a built in Song Player .. I should be all set!

On my  Thursday early evening visit to the Degage Jazz Cafe in Maumee Ohio pianist Jim Gottron served me up some delectable jazz piano.  Jim even did a nice Boogie Woogie song per my request which sounded great from the club’s Yamaha upright piano.   This was my first visit to this club since it changed over last summer from Ragtime Ricks 2nd Edition to the Degage Jazz Cafe.     Degage is located on river road in the big old historic building just a block or so north of downtown Maumee.    There was no  cover charge on the Thursday I was there but do expect a cover charge for the jazz groups on the weekends.    

What I  liked most about my Thursday evening visit was the music started just a bit after seven.   Though I like going out and hearing groups play I don’t like waiting until 10:00pm to hear them.   I’ll definitely be going back again and be an early music bird.    Jim’s first set ended a bit after 8 and thus I left and was home in time to practice my own keyboard playing a bit before retiring for the evening.    The food menu there looks great and of course they have a full bar.  The people were friendly and though you can wear anything most were outfitted in business casual attire.    This is definitely a great spot to meet friends for a couple drinks and hear live jazz.

The film was mainly clips of MJ rehearsals of songs for the “This Is It” concert and many of them had hot dance routines going on at the same time.   They even had special green screen video  shot and special stage outfits made. It’s really terrible that the show never made it to a full dress rehersal as that would have been just spectacular.   The film really showed what made the man MJ respected in music circles.   At age 50 he could still sing and dance with the best of them.

The format was a band played about 40 minutes, then a quick 10-15 minute break and then the next group played.   The groups  used the same furnished drum set, amps and PA system so change over was pretty quick.   The big stage, dim lights and stepped theater seating making listening and viewing great for the audience.   I definitely will go back again next year.   The Maumee Indoor has been host to quite a few musical events so be sure to check their special events schedule every month or so.

I stayed about 2 hours and seen 4 different groups.    Unfortunately none of the groups I saw had keyboard players but still this was a great way to see a bunch of musicians doing their thing.   The only complaint I have is that the volume level was too loud, especially if you were setting up close like I like to do.   Blues Society volunteers served beer and munchies and even had Ts and CDs from a couple of the groups on sale.    People with wrist bands from the Blues Battle also got free admission to the Village Idiot, which is a local pub a block away with live entertainment.

I believe this was the first time I’ve seen him.  I arrived about 9:15, payed the $1.00 cover and got a good seat at the bar with a view of the small stage.  The place was near packed and it was a 30ish crowd but there were people of all ages there.   It was quite obvious to me at least a couple dozen people were there to hear Johnny Rod play and had gotten seats in front of the stage. 

The show wasn’t all just Johnny as he had a bass player and another guy doing backup vocals and sound control.   They sure played some good old songs and Johnny switched from 12 string to electric with ease.   He also played harmonica and guitar simultaneously on several songs.   I also noticed he had an Apple notebook on stage which he used to bring up some lyrics for a couple songs.    Add to that he uses a drum machine which never gets very loud. They did have a few false starts but they are a real relaxed bunch as is the crowd. Some of the songs they played had a lot of vocal harmony in them and the vocals sounded good over the PA system in Shawn’s.

I’ll definitely go back and see him again.  I really enjoyed listening to those old hits of the 70′s and 80′s.