Marcus Miller
 

For those into music, I saw Marcus Miller last night. If you don't know who he is, you likely have heard him. He has played on and produced an amazing number of artists, but he is best known as one of the most amazing bass players ever to walk the earth...oh yeah, and he played with/produced Miles ;)

He was at Royce Hall at UCLA which is a great place to see a show. Had about 12th row seats, an amazing singer named Lalah Hathaway opened, then Marcus blazed onstage. I highly recommend the new album (I bought it from ITMS today). It has (and he played last night) among other things, cover versions of:

Boogie on Reggae Woman (Stevie Wonder)
Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven !?!)
Power of Soul (Jimi)

and he closed the show with:

Frankenstein (Edgar Winter). Jaw dropping stuff. The trumpet player, Patches Stewart is amazing. And the title track has Eric Clapton on lead vocal, and is a wonderful Marley-inspired reggae tune.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0007DBJ6E/102-1848067-9412130?v=glance

If there is one thing I miss about California, you just wrote it...the nexus of music. All paeans to the rest of the country, but, damn.

Not to hijack your thread, but on the topic of underappreciated session guys, Michael Brecker is here in Philly in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. They held a mass screening this weekend in hopes of finding a donor.

Marcus, Brecker, Gadd et al, man those were the days.

So have you heard of Michael Manring? Got to see him do a solo show in a college lounge with maybe 150 people. Simply amazing. Got my love of the sound of a fretless bass listening to him.

He was with Windham Hill long ago doing but have not heard of him in a while.

I've met Manring at NAMM. I play Zon basses, and say hi to Joe Zon every year at the show. Manring is a Zon endorser and quite the original "voice" on the instrument.

Marcus has a link to a letter from Brecker's wife about his plight:

http://www.marcusmiller.com/news_entry.html?newsid=137&color=8

And speaking of "those were the days", there was a one-off group that did some shows in Europe: ERIC CLAPTON (guitar & vocals), STEVE GADD (drums), MARCUS MILLER (bass), JOE SAMPLE (piano) and DAVID SANBORN (saxophone)

:eek:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AMJFX6/102-1848067-9412130?v=glance&n=130&v=glance

That is quite the lineup. Could they keep ego's in check?