March 25, 2005 at 6:09 PM

The cough is mostly gone, I am so thankful for that. Getting sick really changes your perspective on things.

So anyways I was driving to the local violin shop to get some new strings and I passed The newport, the local campus music hall and saw on the marquee that steve morse and the dixie dregs are playing here in a week. Im not sure but I think Jerry Goodman will be playing with them but Im not sure. I think the last tour they did they had 2 violinists.

Some of you know I played guitar fopr 20 years before I started on the violin and Ive always loved fusion music. Fusion is a mixture of rock and jazz: blaring guitar, synthesizer and jazz at a loud volume. One of my favorite fusion bands of all time was The Mahavishnu Orchestra. When they first formed, John McLaughlin was just out of bands with Miles Davis and the amazing dummer Tony Williams. Mahavishnu was unique - John's guitar, the great keyboard playing of Jan Hammer on a moog synthesizer, and of course Jerry Goodman on violin and I totally I loved the sound and even payed alot of money to get some rare videos of them. Alot of people dont know it but Jean Luc Ponty was supposed to be the original violinist of Mahavishnu but he was unable to get a visa because he was french so Jerry Goodman was recruited.

I'm not sure if Jerry is still playing with the Dregs, he did some records with them but has been playing with the phenominal Gary Husband. Gary is an amazing drummer who I saw in 1992 with Alan Holdsworth, he now plays piano and has his own band that Jerry plays with some time. I might add Allan Holdsworth is the most inventive soloist alive, he invented his own sound and the things he does with scales and melodies are totally rediculous.

When I started playing guitar 20 years ago, my teacher introduced me to Paganini and Michael Rabin and that made me want to play violin. But I was in school and had no time to learn violin and no money to buy one so I kind of got stuck with the guitar, but for 20 years I was so infulenced by violin music and played some bach on guitar. When I finally did finish college, it was Jerry Goodman that really made me get a violin and I started lessons. Lately I have even been trying to play a Mahavishnu tune "A Lotus on Irish Springs". Anyways, it will be great to see Jerry play live.

cheers
scott
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March 25, 2005 at 6:09 PM

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