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The Guzheng is a multi-stringed instrument from China that dates back more than a thousand years. Moyun is a young woman who plays pop songs on the Guzheng and posts videos on Youtube and the Chinese equivalent site Bilibili.

Guzhengs come in several sizes, vary in the number of strings and depending on the sound desired can be metal or nylon strings. Plucked with finger picks similar to a Western Zither, the Guzheng has a series of bridges dividing the strings with high notes on a short side and low notes on a long side. This allows for more resonance in the sound and gives the player a full range of high and low notes. Typical of the style, pressing one string on the long side gives a vibrato or pitch bend sound typical of Chinese music.



Here is a short introduction of Moyun and her Guzheng:

Okay, so you paid $350 for a front row ticket to see your favorite singer. Does that give you the right to throw things on stage in an attempt to hit them?
Stories pop up weekly about things like this happening all around the world and It's getting worse. I used to think it faded away in the 70's with Rolling Stones concerts hired the Hell's Angels to do security.

One bizarre story was a (not too famous) group who played a small night club where the fans (loose word to describe the patrons) used spoons to heat pennies on the table candles. They would flick them to the band members onstage. A hot penny striking it's target and landing on your skin would cause 2nd degree burns. Now, that's paying your dues!

Maybe the best 'rough crowd' was from the movie The Blues Brothers where they had chicken wire between the stage and audience!

Randy Meisner was the original bassist, singer and co-founder of the EAGLES. He was 77 years old and died due to complications of (COPD) Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary disease.
Randy left the band in 1977 and though he avoided any reunions, he was present for the 1998 induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Name that tune started as a TV game show in the 1950's where contestants competed to correctly identify songs. It had gone through changes over the years, but the main part of the game had contestants stating the lowest number of notes to be played for them to identify the song. The host would then say "Name that tune."

In my travels this morning, I came to an exit on the highway where street beggars would usually stand on the corner holding signs usually stating they are homeless, some actually saying they were willing to work for food. Today, it was somewhat different. Technically, he was a beggar, but he came with a guitar and portable amplifier.

The thought came across my mind...is he a beggar or a street musician busking?
He was mumbling and I couldn't guess what song he was playing, but I considered his status as a busker and not a beggar.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a $5 bill, folded it and when the light changed to green, I was able to roll the window down, move up, and handed it to the guy.

Five bucks is enough for breakfast at McDonalds.

I wasn't interested in the 1960's folk music scene and too young for the coffee-house crowd. I knew who Bob Dylan was and knew he was an influence to the musicians I listened to, but I didn't listen to his music directly.

Dylan has been a major figure in the popular music culture for more than 70 years.
My friends used to make fun of his voice and how Tom Petty with a similar likeness, could have been his son. There was a funny skit on Saturday Night Live about that.

It wasn't until a generation ago that I started listening to some of Dylan's songs. Yes, never too late. He's 82 years old now and had gone through health issues, some related to drugs, financial trouble and he keeps on rolling along.

The video is one of my favorites. It's from a concert in Madison Square Garden with a stage full of musical greats.

My Back Pages by Bob Dylan.

Techno and Trance are not just some kind of electronic music styles , it is a life style and a love for music, beats and memories we made in our youth. Techno had been proven to increase mental health and positively influence anxiety and depression issues.

Noone can stop us :)

The Foo Fighters are back in the studio and on the road with drummer Josh Freese.
In this rehearsal video, Josh blasts out some beats like he's been in the band for years.




Freese — a session and live drummer has performed with everyone from Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails to Paramore and Devo.

He replaces Taylor Hawkins, who died just over a year ago while on tour in Bogotá, Colombia.

I'm moving some things around tonight and came across a bunch of CD's that looks like archived music I transfered to another computer. On it was several tunes of Irish Uilleann pipes.

I'll have to do a time-line one day to see when I started to study pipes and when I actually gave them up. As best as I can recall it was shortly after a roommate came over with a VCR rental of the show Riverdance. I was blown away with the solo by Davy Spillane!
I checked the song credits and started doing research on the instrument. We were in the early days of internet and materials were hard to find.

Long story short. Irish bagpipes differ from Scottish and other bagpipes in that they are driven by dry air pumped into the bellows. The others are mouth blown and the reeds are wet. The main difference is more control over the sound with Uilleann pipes with tapping and note bending.

I located a music store in Maine who had pipes from different pipemakers. 2 from America and 1 from Canada. During that time I bought and sold several sets including some made in Australia by 2 of the best pipemakers in the country.

I had no background in traditional Irish music, but I bought some video tutorials and struggled to learn the instrument. A generation earlier, I studied oboe in the school symphony and stupidly abandoned the thought of a scholarship when I changed my journey to a decade of rock music. So, in my head, the pipes should have been easy. They weren't.

Anyway, it was Davy Spillane who toured in the first Riverdance show and listening to Irish pipes again tends to pull at my heartstrings...