I was talking to a friend of mine and was asked what music have I been listening to lately.  I listed off a few but when I came to band, Brazzaville, he was dumbfounded.  He had never heard of them.  It didn’t surprise me.  Even though the the main guy from Brazzaville grew up and is from Los Angeles, they are better known overseas.

I’ve put together a short bio for future reference, and you can read about the show Skye and I went to in early January here.

Excerpt from iTunes’ posted Biography on Brazzaville.

“Led by Beck saxophonist David Brown, Brazzaville’s exotic, globally minded indie pop was as much a product of Brown’s extensive travels as it was the Los Angeles coffeehouse scene from whence most of its members came.  Born in L.A., Brown had been a teenage runaway and heroin addict before cleaning up and finding a new lease on life from his love of traveling the world on the cheap.  He criss-crossed Europe, South America, and Asia, picking up musical influences from the Far East, Brazil (bossa nova), Africa, and France (cabaret pop), among others.  Eventually, he returned to California, where he studied the saxophone at L.A. City College.  There he first met Beck, and was introduce to a community of artists and musicians centered around the Los Feliz/Silverlake area of L.A.  When Beck hit the big time, he tapped Brown as the saxophonist in his touring band, and invited him to play on the Odelay album.

In 1997, during the world tour supporting Odelay, Brown conceived the idea for Brazzaville, taking the name from the capital of the Congo, which in a recent study had been branded with the worst quality of life of any major city in the world.  Brown added guitar to his instrumental repertoire (which grew to include piano, trombone, and percussion as well), and when he returned to Los Angeles in 1998, he put together a diverse line up of musicians.

Brazzaville recorded a self-titled debut album and released it on Brown’s own South China Sea imprint in 1999.  It received favorable review of its hybrid of indie pop, lounge jazz, world music, and noir-sh atmosphere.  Later that year the Engine label picked up the record’s distribution rights and reissued it under the title 2002.  The follow-up Somnambulista, released in 2001, their third full-length, Rough on Pockmarked Cheeks, appeared in 2002.  Afterwards, Brown relocated to Barcelona and assembled an alternate European lineup of Brazzaville.”

Since this write up on iTunes Brazzaville has release a few more albums, Hastings Street and East L.A. Breeze both in 2006, 21st Century Girl in 2008, Brazzaville in Istanbul in 2009.  Brown has also released a new album titled Teenage Summer Days in 2009 under his name David Arthur Brown.  For more information visit their website Brazzaville-Band.com.  While you’re there check out their Band Manifesto.  It begins with, “Brazzaville is dedicated to the naïve idea that the world is a beautiful place filled with wonder.”  Enough said.

Here is a quick video I put together in response to “Squirrel Fight” that was posted on YouTube.

I added Lalo Schifrin’s “Enter the Dragon” score to this with some minor editing to the original post.  It’s amazing how this music goes with anything. I used it before for a work video I put together to show how to regrip too. It makes it much more interesting.

Subtitles were also an addition. Click on full screen to be able to see the subtitles better.

I dedicate this video to The Bean and FG.

Enjoy.

I first heard the group Brazzaville back in 2003 really quite by accident. I had just set up my computer network at our condo and I wanted to check out the download speeds using our new DSL.  A friend of mine from a previous computer company I had a worked for had a few CDs ripped on his server for me to download to test my speeds.  I know, it’s a nerd thing.  I downloaded Brazzaville’s first three albums because one of the albums sounded different and intrigued me. Somnambulista.

Years earlier I saw a special screening at the Director’s Guide Theater in Los Angeles of the German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). They were screening that with Blade Runner (1982), one of my favorite movies, where the art director, David Snyder, was there in person to talk about the visual similarities between Dr. Caligari and Blade Runner. One of the main characters in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was a somnambulist, a sleepwalker, who was under the mind control of Dr. Caligari.  So when I saw the Brazzaville album, Somnambulista, I thought to myself, “Clever name, let’s check these guys out.”

The music is like nothing I have heard before.  It’s a fusion of rock, lounge jazz, and world music with a familiar attitude.  Growing up in Southern California, I was able to identify with some of the lyrics about Los Angeles. I connected to the music and the lyrics that are so poetically written in the word painting style of one of my favorite writers, Jack Kerouac.  Since then I’ve bought all their albums and have been amazed ever since.

Fast-forward 2009.

Earlier in November, I received an email from Facebook about an event I was invited to.  It was from David Arthur Brown, the lead singer from Brazzaville.  It was for a show in January at The Echo in Echo Park.  I told Skye when I got the email.  “Okay, I know what I would like to do for my birthday.”  We bought tickets and waited for January 6th.

Although family time is very important, our new year’s resolution this year was to have at least one ‘date night’ a month, just Skye and me.  Since the birth of our 2 year old we’ve noticed we hadn’t really gone out as ‘adults’ in a while, occasionally but not regularly.  Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with Skyler; he is such a joy to be with.  Once a month isn’t that bad, in way it’s really a win-win situation.  Skyler gets to spend the night over at Nana and Papa and eat ice cream and cookies all night long and Skye and I get to go out to diner and show.

I did a quick search on the Internet as to what kind of restaurants were in the area.  The Echo is off of Sunset Blvd. just north of Echo Park.  The restaurant that caught my eye was called, Masa of Echo Park.  It is an Italian bakery and Café, known for great Chicago style pizza.  My review to be posted.

After dinner we headed down to The Echo, it was just a couple of doors down.  We stood in line to wait for them to let us in.  The line wasn’t too long we were probably 7th or 8th in line.

The doors opened at 830pm, the first show was at 9pm.  The Echo is a rather small but clean venue.  I was impressed.  There was a bar one side, house left.  The stage and a ‘dance floor’/ general admission area about the size of a 2 1/2 car garage.  It wasn’t big but it was big enough.  The opening band was just okay.  They called themselves, Salt Petal.  I really can’t comment on the music much.  The lead singer sang and played the accordion, which was cool but other than that it was really quite unmemorable.  I guess the bad thing was that I feel she didn’t make a connection with the audience.  Still, live music is much better than sticking in a CD until the main event.

10pm and the main event.  Brazzaville was on stage.  Before starting David introduced himself and the band and said if we wanted to hear any songs, just shout them out and they would play it.  They started off with a nice number called “Love is the Answer,” a song about a runaway from their Hastings Street CD.

I was really impressed with the musicality of the band and their leader.  The band was having a good time and the audience was having a good time.  What surprised me was how grateful and polite David was up on stage acknowledging the applause.  He seemed very personable and very passionate about his music.

Now for the drama.  So we were standing about one-third back from the stage, a perfect view of the band when I leaned over to Skye to say, “Wow, we can see the stage.”  Normally when we’d go to events the tallest people or people with the biggest hair will stand or sit in front of us.  I had spoke too soon.  I’m all for enjoying yourself and having a great time, however, there was a group of three people that shoved their way in front of us, an older gentleman, an older lady, and what was maybe their twenty-something year old daughter, not sure.  What I am sure of was that the two women were on their way to being drunk and already past obnoxious.  The guy just kept to himself and kept beat to the music, but the women just bounced around, sang along, would knock into me or Skye with their beer in hand spilling here and there; the big kicker, the older lady’s hair smelled like dead flowers.  Seriously, if you’re going to push your way to the front of a crowd and act obnoxious, please don’t put on old lady perfume. Please, for the love of God! It took me two weeks to get rid of that smell…  I digress.

The concert was awesome, it being a small venue made it even better.  I just wished it could have been a little longer.  The best part of the evening was towards the end when David asked the audience what song we wanted to hear.  Skye asked me what Skyler’s favorite song was that we play in the car for him when he is tired.  “Peach Tree!” she shouted.  Another random voice shouted from the crowd “Yeah, Peach Tree.”  David’s response, “Oh, that’s a good one.”  I was able to record the song on video.  It really is not a very good recording, mainly because I was not using a tripod, and the other reason, because the dead flower hair woman in front of me came back from the restroom halfway through the song and knocked me a few times.  All I could do was laugh.

Okay, the back-story to this song for me.  It’s the first song on their East L.A. Breeze CD.  When Skyler was about 3 weeks old we were going to visit my parents for the weekend in San Diego.  It was our first major car trip that was going to be more than 10 minutes.  Being first time parents everything about babies was pretty much new.  We got 5 minutes down the road and Skyler was still crying uncontrollably, I was about to turn the car around when I switched the music over to this CD.  It’s one of those songs that paints a picture, layer upon layer.  It starts off with a shaker,  chh, chh, chh, chh, chh, chh, chh, chh, then on top of that a smooth count in “One… two…one, two, three, four.”  Enter the guitar and standing bass plucking softly, then violin and it haunting theme, then the poetry of song.  Skyler stopped crying instantly; he sat there in the back wide-awake, just listening.  We headed to San Diego with no problems we just had to play this song a few times until he fell asleep.  To this day I have this CD in the first position on the CD changer in the car.  Skyler is almost 3 and their music still captivates him and me.

More videos can be seen on my website at CounterPointPhotography and on my YouTube Channel.

To hear samples or purchase check them out on iTunes .  For more information visit their website Brazzaville-Band.com.  Check out their Band Manifesto.  It begins with, “Brazzaville is dedicated to the naïve idea that the world is a beautiful place filled with wonder.”  Enough said.

This was the last song to close the set, “Single Apartment.” What a great night!

Skyler's New Drums

Here is a short video of Skyler when he first saw his new drum set for his 2nd birthday. He really loves them. Even though it’s for a 3 year old, the next day he had figured out how to use the bass drum pedal. Enjoy!

I created a 20 minute slide show for my son for his 2nd birthday.  This is just one of the songs that is in the slideshow.  He really loves drumming so here is a little show case of that. The music is great; it’s performed by The Dirty Sock Funtime Band. They have so many other great songs too.

So here is my plug for my wife’s choirs at Long Beach City College.

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A Mother’s Day Celebration in Song featuring Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem
Sunday, May 10, 2009 2:00 PM
Admission: $10
Students/Seniors: $5

Our Savior’s Lutheran Church
370 Junipero Ave.
Long Beach, CA 90814

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Here is a quick post of the new Winn Commercial with Butch Harmon talking about the new Triple Line corded grips.

Well, the last few weeks we have been trying to finalize our new product for 2009 upon which we have. Which just means that now I have a ton of more stuff to do before December 1st comes along. Product photography has been completed and now layouts for the 2009 advertisements have gotten underway. I thought I’d just share some of the comps I’ve come up with to get some of your imput. I’m not super happy with the layout as it pretty much looks like the one I did a year and half ago. The owner gets stuck in past and sometimes its hard to fight a fight that ultimately, at this point, it is not worth fighting. The copy is not final yet so don’t worry about that.

New for this year is our product called the Triple Line. Mainly geared for players who prefer a firm grip, that akin to rubber cord grips.

The other new product being introduced is the 2009 Winn Giant! Yes it’s big, if you ask me, it too big. Since last year the market has been going crazy with oversized putter grips. We’ve taken it one step beyond.

Here is a Campaign push that we are trying to get through. Essentially it will be an ad that will change periodically with new people who use our Winn Grips. In this comp I’ve used a couple of players I’ve met in Sacramento who signed a release for us to use their image in our ads. In the middle slot I’ve used Sam Harris teeing of at Scholl Canyon. If this goes through I’m going to need Sam to fill out a release form to use his image in these nationwide advertisements. So far it looks like this is going to go through.

If this works I’ll be asking if you all out there who use Winn grips to send me a photo of you using the grips and I’ll try to incorporate them in an up coming ad.

Skye’s choir had a great performance for their end of year concert. Mom and Dad came along to listen to the choir. This time they were able to hear them in a concert hall instead of from a high school auditorium like how it was during the LBCC tour to Mammoth. Skyler did great and the evening went well.