From: owner-good-noise-digest@smoe.org (good-noise-digest) To: good-noise-digest@smoe.org Subject: good-noise-digest V3 #97 Reply-To: good-noise@smoe.org Sender: owner-good-noise-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-good-noise-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk good-noise-digest Tuesday, October 24 2000 Volume 03 : Number 097 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Intro/Gorka's Bass Players [Wayne Renardson ] Gorka Connections...long post [ThePsyche@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 07:10:03 -0500 From: Wayne Renardson Subject: Re: Intro/Gorka's Bass Players One fine day Martin H said: WR>...but they are solid. I have been inventing (trying to anyway :) my own lines. MH> Tell me more. Would love to share thoughts and riffs. I do the same. Kindly keep in mind this crude analysis and observations are based only on "...Bottom Line" so..... I also apologize for anyone not interested in analysis. I am also aware of Greg Steele's fine site but have purposefully avoided reading the charts. I want to hear, rather than see, the changes. Word has it that bass players are paid not to read quickly (tho it sure helps) but to hear quickly :) I tune to 440Hz. I noticed Land of BL begins on C#m and is, I believe, in that key. The One That Got Away begin on B, The Sentinel puzzles me and I find it very difficult to grasp. Dream Street begins on F#, followed by Mean Street, also in F#. Seems a bit odd to run them both together. Love Is Our Cross To Bear (seems to be a favorite with lotsa folks) seems to be based on a descending D maj chord. Jailbird is Ab to Bb/ Eb to Db etc. Italian Girls starts F to Bb7. Stranger in My Car is Eb to Db...Promnight In Pigtown (man is this one poignant tune) in F#... The point of all this is that in addition to Gorka's lyrics, either he prefers playing in these keys or the production process managed to speed or slow the tunes to alter keys. For a bass player, this is great practice, playing in such keys as B. Maybe not for you, but for me, anyway:) Do you find his key choices to be a tad offbeat? Thanks for the info on Manring's frequent role in Gorka's music. Had no idea they hooked up so often. All the more reason to go buy more music. I think with my limited exposure it will be most interesting to note how Manring's bass lines add to the melodic/harmonic structure of the tunes. I noted your recommendations. Doesn't "Between 5&7" contain 'Blue Chalk'? I heard Maura O'Connel, an incredible Irish songbird, cover this tune and thot--still do---that it is the best song about drugs I have heard...and I think I may have heard one or two:) I will pick this album up today. Be interested to hear what Manring does on ten-string bass. Don't think I have heard one. But some players have truly weird notions about bass. Last week a guy was in my house. He played a few jazz riffs on piano and sounded good. He was a bright, articulate sort and we chatted about music. When I told him I was studying bass he commented, "Yeah. I thought about trying bass. Should be easy. It only has four strings." I asked him why he supposed people did not make the same absurd comment about a violin or cello? The room fell deafeningly silent. MH> All is great in Ak, and while not knowing your former wife, this avid kayaker knows the beauty of PWS. Well , maybe you should know my former wife:) Maybe not in the biblical sense. She is very bright and charming. Also handsome as hell. Once took a Mob ride out on PWS with a 19-year old guy who was drinking Schnapps at 8am. In the middle of the Pacific, surrounded by huge ice floes, the motor stalled. Whoooops.....three hours later, it started, and I have never been so happy to hear an outboard engine in my life. When we hit land I went into the famous bar (The Pipeline) that the captain of the Exxon Valdez got wasted away in before he wrecked the ship. That dark Guinness beer sure tasted wonderful. Wayne Renardson Nashville ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 10:05:27 EDT From: Smithfinn@aol.com Subject: Re: good-noise-digest V3 #96 Dear Wayne and others, If you enjoy Michael Manring, you should see "The Artist Profile" video on John Gorka. Michael shares the stage with John in many of the songs and is featured prominently. It is an amazing video. A link to where you can purchase I think is on the first page of our web site (www.geocities.com/thegypsylife). Saturday night's concert in Cedarburg, Wisconsin was fabulous, though not as intimate an experience as the night before. It was still a small venue but the cafe the night before was so perfect, nothing could compare! I'll let Bryn write up a review. I continue to be in awe of this man and his music. I told John he had to check out the "Muscle John" photo and that we promised to put REAL photos up soon. Susan ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 09:58:04 -0500 From: Wayne Renardson Subject: Re: good-noise-digest V3 #96 One day Susan Said: S> I told John he had to check out the "Muscle John" photo and that we promised to put REAL photos up soon. Thanks for the video tip on Gorka/Manring. And I saw this photo. I thought possibly John had decided to give up an impoverished life in music and go to work for the WWF---think he'd look good mud wrestling Hulk Hogan....sure make lots more money, anyway :) Wayne Renardson ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 18:06:47 GMT From: "Mike Smith" Subject: Saturday Night in Cedarburg, WI This was the second show I have seen John Gorka perform at, and, like the first, he left my in awe of his tremendous talent. Not only does he have an incredible voice, but he is one great guitar player (and piano player) to boot. To be able to put them together so well makes for one very enjoyable night in Cedarburg. I got to hear a song I had never heard before, Let Them In, on piano, and I can understand why many people claim this is there favorite song, beautiful. Another song was from his upcoming CD called Oh, Abraham, which makes me wish his new CD was out right now. The rest I knew, a mix of old, slow, and negative, and new, fast, and positive (if you've been to one of his concerts you know what I'm talking about). As I was leaving the concert, I was standing next to Patty Larkin's parents who were in attendance (John mentioned them, and of course their daughter who will appear on his new CD, during the show) and overheard her mother say she thought JG was 'this huggable bear' and what she liked best was his demeanor. I'm not so sure about the huggable bear part, but she hit it right on the head about his demeanor. He just seems like a very likable, very funny guy. Someone you'd like to have as a friend. A very, very, talented friend. Mike _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 21:36:33 EDT From: ThePsyche@aol.com Subject: Gorka Connections...long post Here I sit at the end of a busy Monday, moving through the day on only three hours sleep, I wanted to write to all of you. We had a house concert last evening, the culmination of a week of music. It has been a pretty neat week...one of those times when the moon and the stars and the planets all lined up just right to fill my world with music. Susan and I got the web site up and running last Monday and the feedback from all of you has been wonderful and really makes the time spent worth it. I best let you all know right now that Susan is the HTML gal and I feel like my contributions have been *less than* except that she keeps assuring me that my *off center* sense of humor and writing is vital to the site....I hope so. Thursday night I got to experience a singer/songwriter I had been hearing about for a while, Kevin So. There is not much I can say because he is too good to believe. This guy has that "thing" that makes it hard to put into words. He is destined. Amazing lyrics and guitar and funny and pretty damn cute too! If he comes to your area, do not miss the opportunity to hear him. His site is kevinso.com, check him out. Then Saturday, I got to take a Gorka Journey. That is something I have done often in the past 5 years. My best friend Shirley and I hop in her truck or my truck and head out on great adventures, much of time spent driving and listening to music and talking....some of the best memories of my mid-life are those trips with her. Gorka was always the icing on the cake. This journey was very special. This time the one hour trip was shared with five other music hungry souls. The cool thing about this group was that I had met most of these people online and we had connected as a result of John's music. Two folks in the car were Justin Roth and Chris Cunningham, singer/songwriters who were staying with me and would be performing a house concert for us. I met Justin a few years back online, talking about Gorka and we have become good friends. I met Chris through Justin. In the waaaay back part of the truck was my friend Dennis and his fiance Qiu Min. I met Dennis five years ago on the David Wilcox email list. He is my special music buddy and this was our first Gorka show together....unless you count the 40 minute phone call this summer when he called me from Festival in the Pines and let me listen in on a Gorka set....yea, it is a true friend who understands your music addiction and feeds it. Dennis has a great website at Lovelady.com with lots of music sound bytes and videos. We started the evening at a pre-show party in Shorewood, hosted by Steve. I met him online too, as a result of John's music. I think he knows almost as much about John's music as I do, but his 14 year old son Emmett is the real Gorkaphile in the house. Waiting at Steve's when we arrived was Susan Finn, online friend, fellow mother folker and her husband Tim. We shared a pre-Gorka Italian Girl feast. I sat with this group of folks, around a big dining room table, the red wine flowing, sharing our stories and enjoying the community of Gorka. It was a joyful evening. This trip to Cedarburg was my 15th Gorka show. Imagine that. It was a wonderful show. I like hearing the standard Gorka songs, but when he pulls out some of the old stuff I get lost in the moment. I wish played more of those lost songs. This time, it was Italian Girls that really hit me hard. I agree with Mike (wish we had hooked up) that Oh Abraham made me want that new CD. (When can we expect to hear it David?) John was friendly and approachable and relaxed during and after the show. It was a pleasure to talk with him and just about beg him to check out the fan web site. FYI John is having an official site done....I would love for him to check out our site and......ah nevermind, one can dream. The ride home was sweet. Talking music and stuff and laughing and yawning. This was indeed one of the best Gorka shows I have been to, but this time, it was as much because of the community of Gorka friends as it was the show. I think it would be pretty cool if John did one of these Folk Cruises that some of the folkies are doing now. Christine Lavin has one coming up and Eddie From Ohio just finished one and January 2002, Ellis Paul and Don Conoscenti are having their own cruise. Wouldn't it be great to have a Good Noise Cruise? I even heard John joke about it the first time I ever heard him. He introduced the song Mystery To Me as coming from his days as a singer on a cruise ship. That image alone is funny but add the lyrics of that song to it and he got big laughs. Maybe we should put a ladybug (are they infesting your neighborhood like they are mine?) in management's ear about that one. Personally, I never had any interest in going on a cruise until I heard about these. I think we ought to take over a whole ship and have an on the water Folk Festival....sort of a Carnival Knowledge Cruise with all the Flem Tam artists. Heck, I'd even volunteer to work that one! Sorry this got so long but I always feel like this after connecting with music the way I did this week. Connecting with the people made it just that much better. Adios friends. Bryn what she eats is what she feels, Benson ------------------------------ End of good-noise-digest V3 #97 *******************************