Happy New Year 2005

Hey folks,

It's been a busy couple of days. I played a new year's eve gig with the Wet City Rockers reggae band, at the Alpental resort of the ski area at Snoqualmie Pass. The house was packed and we had a lot of fun. Fortunately the weather was mild, so the drive up and back from Seattle was easy. But is was a very late night of couse - 3:30 AM when I finally got myself home.

By the way, when you read my posts, click on the links on people's names to find out the good work they are doing also. Many of my friends have very interesting projects and/or good music happening. It's definitely worth a click to see what they are doing.

On today, New Year's Day, I went and saw my friend Immaneni Ashok perform Carnatic Indian vocal music. The theme of his concert was the god Rama, and he sang a six-part composition depicting the highlights of the story of Rama, called the Ramayana. He also sang a couple of other ragas. He had a very good violinist named Raman Iyer with him and a younger guy named Karthik Gopalratnam playing the rhythmic accompaniment on mridangam . Very good musicians.

I ran into my good friends Subhan and Shanti there and we all meditated to the music. Shanti's mother was there too, and she enjoyed the concert although it was quite a bit different from the western operas that she attends. We went to a South Indian restaurant afterwards in Bellevue, and I rounded out the night with a Bollywood movie rental that I will watch after I make this post.

Thusrday night I recorded some keyboard tracks for Sanjeev and Chandana. I went over there with Tony and it was good. They're good folks and very good musicians. They have a wonderful little boy, two years old, named Zev.

I case you haven't figured it out yet, the culture of India is a major influence on me. I had a Buddhist monk give me a past life reading many years ago, and he said the majority of my recent incarnations were in India, Tibet, and he also said I was alive at the time of Confucius, although I was not a direct student. Who knows whether that's all true or not. All I know is that when I was preparing for my trip to India in the 1990's, everyone weas warning me of the massive culture shock I would experience. Nothing of the sort happened. India felt like a homecoming for me, and I had never physically been there. Go figure.

Happy 2005!