Sunday, February 18, 06:38 PM Margie

The continuing battle with the chest infection following the medical-mistake-induced aspiration is a difficult one. Ian must take breathing treatments to open up the bronchia and allow him to cough up all the junk in his lungs, additionally he must wear an oxygen mask giving him moist, heated air to further encourage him to cough. The breathing treatments include a drug that makes his heart rate go through the roof...

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Tuesday, January 30, 08:37 AM Margie

Sorry for the delay, it's been a rough couple of days. Ian has a chest infection of some sort, which is either pneumonia, or he has aspirated something when drinking. His breathing difficulties have affected everything and the pain has returned. I stayed with him all day Sunday, through the night and all day yesterday when he began to lo...

You may have noticed that since the beginning of August, my journal entries have been non-existent. I think it’s time to explain:

About a week before I left for my European sojourn with CJ3, I started having difficulty swallowing food. Prilosec cured this problem albeit only temporarily. On August 10th, 2006, I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. This was to be the start of what has become a long journey. And I’m still...

Monday and Tuesday were spent in rehearsal at Tim’s. Chris had a difficult time initially (this isn’t easy stuff folks!) but things improved as we went along. Wednesday night we played at La Ve Lee. A good place for a warm-up show. Much better than doing it on the first night in Spain. But in doing so it did create a rigorous test of endurance. We had a 7am flight the next day, so after packing up following the end of the show I got to bed at 2am and got up at 4am. Tim picked...

There’s an ancient Chinese thingy; I don’t know if it’s a saying or a motto or someone giving someone a blessing or a curse. More likely a curse. So for now I’ll call it an ancient Chinese thingy. It goes: “May you live in interesting times”. Or words to that effect.

Well I guess someone, somewhere must have laid it on me, ‘cause these sure are interesting times. Of late, some of them have been extremely good and some ex...

The time she ees flying.

Since last post mucho go on. First I type weeth Mexican accent.

There that’s better. OK so I haven’t posted in a while and I’m getting complaints. Right Joe?

Well in a nutshell:

Jody flew in to LA and we recorded the second CJ3 alb...

The show in Wilmington was most enjoyable. It was relaxed and fun. I was a little apprehensive about how we’d play, being that we hadn’t played with Jody since the CD release party last November, plus no rehearsal. But these guys are professionals and with a few run-throughs at sound check, plus a discussion of the forms during dinner, we managed to come up with something pretty decent. Imagine how it would be if we toured on a regular basis! Well, that is the plan. And hopef...

Spent a very quiet weekend at home. And a good one at that. Margie and I ate good food (that she cooked) and watched some good TV. Watched Liverpool beat Chelski to go through to the final of the FA Cup. A thrilling game and biased or not, the best team won. Watched the Lakers lose on Sunday and we crammed in the Sopranos, Fun With Dick and Jane and an interesting movie about sports betting with Mathew McConnahey (or however you spell his name), the great Al Pacino and Rene R...

So let’s do a very brief “get up to date” since the last thing I posted was the musical encounter with EVH.

Between then and now I went down to Rancho Mirage to do a jazz trio gig with pianist Ed Vodika. Ed played in Earl Palmer’s band for about five years and needless to say Earl, who lives close by was at the show. After the show we all had dinner together. ...

Thursday, March 16, 2006

With the tracks completed, Nigel took his entire system to his Mac expert chum and they proceeded to trouble shoot just what was wrong with his computer. Apparently nothing. All the files loaded perfectly and Nigel was a happy camper. Until he got home.

After setting up his computer he found he couldn’t load anything from his hard d...

Tuesday March 14, 2006

Nigel arrived in the morning of Day Two to continue our one-day session with his new hard drive.  Unfortunately, Nigel who is new to ProTools, had only downloaded the sessions onto the drive and not the audio files. 

Human Error 1 – Technology 0

A trip to Nigel’s house was undertaken to download the ...

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Sometimes we musicians in this modern day and age go through periods of technological madness. The road to hell is paved with bad technology…and human error. So it was this Saturday starting with a call from Mathias saying he couldn’t find the power supply to his keyboard. Rather than spend the best part of the morning getting my kit and bodily parts together, M and I spent it calling round looking for very rare power ...

March as is said, comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. The latter to the delight of many Scotsmen. And we here in Southern California are being well and truly lioned. Buckets of rain, some of it in actual buckets, pounding our windows as we speak. Not that you could hear much, due to the noise of the rainy buckets as trees shake violently back and…oh, it just stopped. Well no matter. I’m sure it will start again soon.

Quite a while since my last post and much has happened.

I finished the Las Vegas sessions a day early and it was a good job as things transpired. During our stay there Margie contracted some kind of lurgy and on what was to be the last tracking day was laid up with a temperature and a nasty cough. So having finished on the Wednesday, we set off on Thursday back to LA, Margie wrapped up in the passenger seat, wracking cou...

The drive to Vague-arse was a little hairy in places. There were severe winds in the desert and SUVs and semis were dissuaded by police notices from taking the freeways. Still that didn’t stop them and we passed many semis lying on their sides by the side of the road sleeping peacefully.

Because of the winds we arrived a little later than expected at around five. I knew we were getting close when I began to see signs for...

The NAMM Show is over for another year. I’ve been going to the show pretty consistently since about 1981 and I think this may have been my most favorite one. A good reason for this was my playing the Yamaha Groove All-Stars last night. I’d been pretty nervous about performing in front of and with my peers but everyone and I do mean everyone, was kind and supportive to one another and it was a real mutual love fest. Yes, there were some reference...

Arrived at the NAMM Show yesterday. It took an hour and ten minutes to get there and an hour and ten minutes to park. Visited Shure, Hudson Music, Yamaha and Zildjian where I participated in the autograph session along with Peter Erskine, Steve Gadd, Dave Mattacks, Alex Acuna, El Negro, Steve Smith and Clayton Cameron to name just a few. Then at ten to four we rushed over to the Cerittos Performing Arts Center for the Yamaha Groove All-Stars rehearsal. I say rushed but only ...

Happy New Year to you all and especially Tiny Tim Cratchit and Alastair Sim and the very large goose, or was it a turkey?

It’s been a busy week and it looks like busy-ness is continuing well into February. I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing, as in music. Those of you who read this drivel may have noticed a dearth of prose in this ‘ere journal lately. Not that the spirit isn’t willing, it’s just that other things seem...

CJ3 is getting some fine reviews from various places including Downbeat, Jazz Times, All about Jazz and Ejazz, plus Bob Comden wrote a glowing review in LA’s Jazz Scene paper about our CD release gig. I also did an interview for Goldmine which I think will be in the next issue, plus Jazziz has a review coming out and I’m scheduled to do an interview with them in the New Year. Couple with this the fact that the album is now finally available from DGM as well as Voiceprint and ...

For the past week or so I’ve been having humungous problems on the studio computer. Things crashing, seizing up, going bump in the night, ghosts in the machine stuff. While able to work, it has slowed things down and has become a pain in the arse. I’ve tested the system for viruses, though I seldom go on the net with this computer, I do sometimes have to download stuff and send and receive music files so one never knows. However, it doesn’t appear to be the problem. What I th...

Shed, shed, shed, shed, shed, shed, shed! I’ve been doing a lot of woodshedding on the CJ3 project in preparation for the up-coming CD release show on November 11th. Fortunately I have the tracks to play to including the new stuff which has only been demoed. But it’s great ‘cause I can take off the drums and play along just like those “Music Minus One” tapes. Jody has the same thing without piano and Tim the same without bass. So hopefully when we finally get together to rehe...

M and I are off to the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tomorrow to see a Mr. A. Belew and associates perform his musical endeavors. And on Friday we will be attending a further performance of all things Belew at the Key Club in Hollywood. I’m really looking forward to it, not least seeing Ade and Martha. It’s been well over a year since I left Nashville and I haven’t seen them since then, so I’m anticipating some fun. The only down thing will be my frustration in not being...

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday on Planet Crimson and to jtmack for posting birthday wishes on the CJ3 site. I’m truly touched. Thank you.

And happy birthday to you Sebastian. Libra is the coolest sign aint it?

Tonight we’re have a small birthday dinner, a few friends over and Marjita is cooking Cubano!

Well Liverpool FC managed to snatch a draw from the jaws of victory this morning and now I’m sitting in the studio making “music minus one” versions of the CD tracks and the newer stuff we worked up last month for the next album and to supplement the shows.

By “music minus one” I mean that I’m making takes of the songs without the piano and then without the bass and of course one without the drums, so that each of us ca...

Well, finally my first blog on the CJ3 site and it has to be a short one. Not that I can’t be blogged, quite the contrary, it’s just that I’m a bit blogged down at the moment. Where did this word “blog” come from anyway? What happened to “diary” and “journal”? I thought “journal” was pretty modern, I mean, it’s not Samuel Pepys’ Journal is it? But Samuel Pepys’ Blog? Now that’s a complete load of old blogglers!

Anyway, ...