I’m still in Taipei. We’ve added one tiny extra solo gig, in conncetion
with the “pub” performacnce of the students I work with. It’s on Tuesday.
Last
week was full of good and bad news. The worst, to me, is the news of
Adam Yauch’s passing. I will never ever forget the impression the
Beastie Boys made on me at the Open’er gig some years ago – it was
raining cats and dogs, the mud practically pulled shoes off your feet,
yet I spent a couple of (soaked) hours unable to wipe the grin off my
face. Let me just say that “Hot Sauce Commitee pt 2” is the best
sounding album in history, and when it came out last year I immediately
dusted off the older CDs. But I don’t think that is all – if you observe
the outpouring of genuine sadness and grief after Yauch’s death, even
from people you’d never have guessed were BB fans, you’ll just see that
he was this incredibly charismatic person who accumulated, through what
he did and how he did it, a massive cloud of positive energy around him.
And we all wish that such people stay on our musical and human horizon
throughut our lives, happily, ever after. That’s why it is so hard to
believe that we will never see or hear him again.
I don’t know (by MCA) by Gaba Kulka
There’s a sweet
little song on “Hello Nasty” performed by MCA. I sat down in my Taipei
hotel room yesterday with my uke and my computer, and recorded a little
cover of it. It’s called “I don’t know” and I hope you forgive the
sketchy nature of it. It helped me quite a bit, this is for you.