June 23rd: Just Another Fine Wine Tasting at Java Monkey

Back in Decatur for a most excellent evening of semi-adventurous jazz musings for a Spanish themed wine tasting. It was great weather for the quartet of Adrian, Jason, special guest Randy Honea, & myself. Randy has some remarkable straight ahead chops. He plugged into an older Pod (the red one) & employed a terrific Leslie patch, giving us a MMW/Sco/Hunter vibe that made for some great fusion forays. We got through Ade's chart of "Fred's Life", you know, the 1st tune on the 1st Charlie Hunter album. It is supremely hard to play, and no offence to Adrian 'cause I don't have the drive to completely figure it out, but I don't think it's 100% accurate transcription-wise.  At any rate, it's one of those heads that incorporates sharps & flats and is blazingly fast.  We also played Scofield's "Hottentot" which is a great jam.  I love those chords in the bridge, the ones that are decending with the bass pedaling.

 According to this, they are Bb7, Bbdim7 (think A7(no root/no A)/Bb, Bb11 (Ab/Bb), Ab11 (Gb/Bb).  Cool stuff.  Other things we played were more in line with what we usually do.  This was the day I picked up my Eden head from ABG, but I played through my old Genz Benx ML 200-112T.  By the way, when I say old, mine is the older design when it was a wedge/kickback shape.   Apparently, that design has lost favor since it apparently is not conducive to low end box design.  I've been happy with mine over the years.  I would try to find something close to it when it comes time to replace said combo.  Perhaps a 15 would ultimately push more air, but the 12 is almost as low in frequencies & the footprint is nice & small.  Sometimes that is an important consideration on a small, crowded stage.  Well, I was excited to try out the new rig, which I did at home the next day and on the gig the day after that.