It’s our first year watching the Super Bowl on our new Samsung flat screen LCD and Bose home theatre system. For the most part the picture and sound has been nearly immaculate, with the occasional bad pixelation.

And then there’s the half-time performance of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Tom Petty? At the Super Bowl half time performance? You’re kidding, right?

Well, then Fox’s audio department sure seemed to drop the ball this year — while the visuals were enough to keep me interested, the audio SUCKED. All you could hear was Tom’s voice, the guitars, and the snare drum. The low end was nowhere to be found and my subwoofer patiently waited for a little action, occasionally putting out a barely audible off-tempo thud.

FOX Network, you sure dropped the ball this year at the half time performance. You’ve had your fun, now I think it’s time to let the real networks do their job and cover the Super Bowl.

Filed under: Artists, Music, Performance
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I think that I have outdone myself with perhaps the longest entries that I’ve ever entered into my blog — but when you’re reflecting on over thirty years of personal music history, you ought not expect a short essay. But I promise that this will be the last part of this three-part series.

It was such a simple thing that really sparked this whole reflection, seeing my music out on last.fm and wondering why it is that I just cannot seem to pick up my guitar these days or pour myself into creating new music in GarageBand. The reality is, I’ve been thinking about this for the past few months and just have not nearly the same enthusiasm or drive to create new music like I have over a year ago.

(more…)

Filed under: General, Music, Orthodoxy, Performance, Recording, Spirituality
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Okay, one more for today. This one’s for all the Mario Brothers geeks out there.

And yes, he’s not just playing the flute but providing the most stellar beat box to it.

Filed under: Gaming, Music, Performance
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One night as my wife and I were enjoying an evening of Cirque du Soleil programming on A&E I saw advertisements for a production called Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy coming to the State Theatre here in Minneapolis. Excited that Cirque was coming into town, I decided to get us the best tickets possible and payed roughly $50 each, landing us fifth row tickets with relative ease.

Well, when we arrived we were greated by a relatively simplistic set and a black and white program—no fancy CMYK or spot color printing to make it stand out. Fairly ordinary and lacking any pizazz. In reading the playbill I grew a bit concerned, thinking this doesn’t sound like the kind of Cirque du Soleil performance that I was anticipating. “Never bug a Lady Bug” “Bugs Climb Too” “Lady Bug Bop” ??? Uh, do we have the right theatre?

The house lights came down and the production begain with some so-so music and B-level acrobatic routines. The costumes were marginally imaginitive and the song-n-dance routine reminded me of something that Valley Fair might put together if they had a slightly bigger budget. To better describe it, it sorta had the whole gay-off-broadway sound but scored for kids, with most of the songs in basic major chord patterns and all-too-happy-sounding American songs with very bland ethnicity laced in the audio track.

I wondered where the dream-like, imaginitive characterization of Cirque would start to show but was progressively disappointed in the production.

The ONLY redeeming qualities of this production were the asian contortionists and the balancing duo. Their respective acts were creative, inventive and entertaining. The contortionists performed some crazy formations and balancing acts on one another in very graceful ways and the balancing duo were a great combination, weaving humor and near-clumsiness into their act.

But everything else? So so. There was some good jump rope acts and some okay aerialists, but all in all I felt like I was watching the people who didn’t make the cut with Cirque du Soleil.

The thing is, I wouldn’t have been so critical about this performance if they didn’t bill themselves as being like the original Cirque. Make no mistake…CIRQUE DREAMS IS NOT CIRQUE DU SOLEIL. It’s an overly-priced kid’s version of Cirque. The real deal at least doesn’t dumb down their performances and music for the sake of making it seemingly more accessible to kids—kids still enjoy it for what it is. But with Cirque Dreams, I often felt like I was watching a production put on by some pseudo Disney Kids theatre theater company. [They don't deserve the "re"]

All in all it wasn’t a horrible performance. Some seemed to enthusiastically enjoy the show. Natalie and I weren’t all that thrilled, though. Frankly, if they didn’t have the asian contortionists and a few of the aerialists, the show would have been a SEVERE waste of time and money.

Now let’s talk music, shall we?

I mentioned how it sounded like kids music all too often. Well, the center-stage female vocalist (”The Lady Bug”) had the whole jazz-hands-I’m-almost-as-feminine-as-the-gay-men-in-this-production thing going on and didn’t deliver a convincing production. She was too stale and stiff and offered no real meat to the performance. It also didn’t help that the music, the score and the words to the songs were TERRIBLE. I listened as closely as I could to make out the words and they were ALL FLUFF with no meaning at all, riding on over-used, stereotypical feel-good-psuedo-gay-broadway songs. I almost hate to put “broadway” in there, as a production like this would never make it within a hundred miles of broadway. They’d probably be shooed out.

All in all, I would probably not have made such a big stink if we had payed maybe $20 each to see the show. But the fact that Cirque Dreams is trying to model themselves after Cirque du Soleil and are charging SOOOOOO much money for the performances, they are opening themselves up for criticism.

If Cirque Dreams is coming to your area, don’t bother. Stay home and watch the real thing on TV. Or better yet, take the trip to Vegas and see their Vegas production.

Filed under: Culture, General, Performance
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This morning tickets go on sale at the Saint Paul Ordway Theatre for Monty Python’s SPAMalot. Assuming that it wouldn’t be busy down there, I slept in until 9:00 and casually made my way down there, only to see a large flury of activity and a long, complex and winding line of people.

At the door they were handing out labels to give to you for the order in which they call ticket ordering—I’m 542. According to the ditsy girl at the door, I may or may not want to wait and just order online. She told me that they’re starting to get over a hundred orders placed in an hour and that it may be picking up. Well, if she’d stop to think that it’s only been an hour and a half, she’d realize that she hasn’t much historical data to make such a judgement call.

Even if they were averaging over a hundred orders per hour, that’d put me at waiting until AFTER noon-o’clock. Considering that I have to leave my place around 12:15 for Cirque De Soleil this afternoon, I don’t think I’m going to hang out around here much longer. [I'm actually at the Dunn Bros just a few blocks away taking advantage of their lovely, free WIFI access. Thank you Dunn Bros. Their yogurt parfait was good.]

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This evening I took my buddy Isaac to see Runway 36 perform at their CD release party at Club 3 Degrees (my first time at that club). They had just finished a project with their local record label FS Music, having recorded at Fuzzy Slippers Studio in Saint Paul.

They were pretty good and had a great deal of energy, particularly their guitarist Mike. He reminded me of a younger Angus Young (of ACDC fame). Maybe not nearly on the same calibur of skill level as Angus, but he was quite fun to watch. I wish I had that level of energy.

My only real critique of their show is that they went on too long with their planned “curtain call.” There was a point when they had a bunch of people on stage and had the crowd all participating — that would have been a fabulous point to end the show. Leave them on a high and wanting more. Never give them too much. I felt Runway 36 crossed that line…but they were still fun to watch.

The first opener though — Allies in Chaos — they were also a great deal of fun to watch. A bit like Incubus, they were unpredictable, funny, and had a TON of energy. Granted, I couldn’t understand A SINGLE WORD comin’ out of that boy’s mouth…most of it just wailing and screaming various phrases and words. That said, they were still a blast to see.

Don’t ask about the band between Allies in Chaos and Runway 36…they weren’t that good in my opinion. I’ll spare them the bad press and withhold their name. They sounded like they were trying to pull off a U2-meets-Morrissey thing. But the “lead singer” wasn’t that good — kept rounding up and down to his notes. The guitarist was okay and the bass player animated. But they need to spend some more time in the rehearsal studio.

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Well, I’ve been a busy boy this week, recording more and more improv tunes. Just this week alone I’ve got ten new ones…not all are great, but a number of them aren’t too bad if I say so myself. So stop over at michaelmiles.org and head over to the mp3 downloads page and check ‘em out.

Filed under: Music, Performance, Recording, Updates
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I saw a video of Prince at a Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame concert on YouTube. He performed this incredible guitar solo that was flawless.

Click here to watch the video.

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Just when you thought that you had to go on tour to make the big bucks…some have come along and found a better way. Bring the tour to your basement — literally.

After the runaway success of the Arctic Monkeys, who built up their international following on the internet from their base in Sheffield, Sandi Thom, a 24-year-old Scot, is using the web to entertain nightly audiences put at more than 60,000.

Seating at the venue underneath her home in a Victorian terraced house in Tooting, south London, consists of six stools bought from Ikea for about £3 each.

Thom uses a webcam to record a nightly performance before broadcasting it on the net later in the evening. In the past eight days she has entertained more than 250,000 fans worldwide. By contrast, her live audiences usually total about 200 when she plays in clubs around Britain.

More from the source >>>

This artist, Sandi Thom has a good thing going for her. And despite its success and the degree of visibility that she achieves, she is missing perhaps one of the most important factors and reasons for doing music [in my mind anyway] — and that’s the connection and interaction with the audience; feeding off of their energy and giving it right back in the performance.

Sounds like an interesting premise. It’s working for her anyway.

Filed under: Artists, Performance, Websites
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Well, the weekend started off pretty great with a show at The Riverview Cafe in South Minneapolis. For not having performed since earlier this summer things went pretty well. I did manage to really blow a Norah Jones tune, but despite that the other material went really well.

In video game news… (more…)

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