I like surprises. On Tuesday night, my friend Tom Higley took me and Jason to Rose Hill Drive’s CD release party at the Fox Theatre in Boulder, returning the favor after we brought him to the Steely Dan show a few weeks ago. I’d never even heard of the band before (they are homegrown in Boulder, and their name comes from a street in the city) and they just blew me away. This power trio has a totally authentic vintage sound, thanks to the Vox and Ampeg amps, a Rickenbacker bass and a sunburst Les Paul, with shades of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and early Led Zeppelin in evidence.

While paying homage to this early hard rock and proto-metal sound, they also manage to interpret it all through a modern lens: they’ve got a tight (and even funky) modern groove sensibility and sound that is ultimately unique and non-derivative. I love it when a band’s musical DNA is totally identifiable, yet the resulting sound is something new and fresh through the alchemy of mixing and mutating influences from previous eras. And these guys put on a powerful, high-energy show. Download the album or pick up the CD. And if you have a chance to catch them live, you won’t be disappointed.

Technorati Tags: Boulder, Music, Rose Hill Drive

One of my all-time favorite bands is Steely Dan, and one of my all-time favorite venues is Red Rocks in Morrison, Colorado. When I heard that The Dan was playing at Red Rocks, with the added bonus of the amazing Michael McDonald sharing the bill too, I knew I had to see this concert. In fact, I even scheduled my move date to Boulder around this show, which took place last Monday, July 31st. And thanks to the efforts of my colleague, fellow musician, and good friend Jason, we were able to obtain excellent seats (eighth row) for the event. Jason and I used our two extra tickets to bring along our new Boulder friends (and fellow musicians) Tom Higley and David Haynes.

This was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen: the quality of the live sound and the level of performance and musicianship exhibited by the band were incredible. Becker’s and Fagen’s legendary perfectionism were evident in all aspects of the show, and they went through their (extensive) catalog of hits and even played a few I wasn’t expecting to see live, including Aja and FM as well as my personal favorite Steely Dan tune, Kid Charlemagne, which contains (IMHO) one of the best rock guitar solos ever recorded. Larry Carlton recorded that solo back in the day, and he has even stated publicly that it is his own personal favorite solo as well.

The only two complaints I can offer was that I found guitarist Jon Herington’s solo on Kid Charlemagne to be a bit of a let-down relative to Carlton’s masterpiece. Generally, when I see a live show, I prefer an improvised guitar solo, but sometimes the better choice is to cop the original note-for-note. And while I was very happy that Steely Dan played a broad selection of their hits, I was surprised that no material from Becker’s or Fagan’s solo albums nor the band’s most recent works appeared in the set list.

Fagen’s Kamakiriad is another one of my favorite albums, and I was also hoping to hear Cousin Dupree given the recent tongue-in-cheek brouhaha that has erupted between Mr. Dan and Owen Wilson. Finally, while poking around the blogosphere as I sat down to write this post, I found a couple great reviews of the show that are well worth a read, one from Steve’s Round Midnight, and the other from the Lefsetz Letter.

Steely Dan’s music heavily influenced the evolution of rock & roll. They brought a new level of performance and musicianship to the genre and seriously expanded rock’s harmonic and rhythmic palette, borrowing liberally from jazz and R&B, while also extending the universe of subject matter for lyrics, owing to Fagen’s erudite and wry word-smithing. Steely Dan helped move rock & roll from a “guitar, three chords and the truth” to a horn section, half a dozen chords (including the muMajor), and an acerbic dose of ironic-postmodern commentary.

As we sat and watched the show, our group (all music nerds) often exchanged awestruck glances after particularly acrobatic bit of performance, and we scratched our heads trying to figure out what makes Donald Fagen’s mannerisms and stage-presence so, um, unique. As he sang and played his keyboard while wearing dark sunglasses, he jerked from side to side and displayed a pair of rather large canines when he opened his voluminous mouth wide to belt out a high note. Mr. Fagen is truly a weird looking dude. And when he stood up to walk around, his odd gait and arm motions were vaguely reminiscent of Bela Lugosi. Then it hit us: Donald Fagen is the Transylvanian Ray Charles. You heard it here first.

Technorati Tags: Colorado, Michael McDonald, Music, Red Rocks, Steely Dan

The fine folks at Namaste Solar just finished installing a 3.01 kW grid-tied PV system consisting of fourteen SunPower panels on the roof of our garage behind our new house in Boulder, CO. Now I have to wait a couple weeks for inspections and for Xcel Energy to tie it in to the grid and install the net-meter, at which point this system will be generating enough clean, zero-emissions electricity to cover a significant portion of our home’s energy needs. I would have loved to have completely cancelled out our electric bill, but we used all the south-facing roof space we had available to us, and ran out of room for additional panels.

Fortunately, Namaste was able to get their hands on the highly efficient SunPower SPR-215 panels, so we were able to maximize the wattage per square foot on our limited roof space. And thanks to Boulder’s 300 days of sunshine per year, we’ll be getting good bang for our buck on this system, which should pay for itself in about ten years, or substantially sooner if energy prices rise more than 5% annually, which I think is a pretty safe bet. And to think that all this power used to just heat up the roof and interior of our garage. Now it can keep my beer cold. Pretty cool.

For the stat-obsessed, here are the basics on the system:

• Electricity production: 4268 kWh/year
• CO2 emissions reduced: 8741 lbs/year
• Equivalent reduction in vehicle miles driven: 9561 miles/year
• Equivalent number of trees planted: 336

If you’ve got the sunshine, roof space, money and inclination, why not install one on your house? There’s a $2000 Federal Tax credit available, and several states now offer substantial rebates (Colorado included) that can cut the cost of the system by up to 50%. Before I decided to move to Colorado, I was investigating putting one up on my house in California, where the payback was even quicker (about seven years) due to the higher energy prices. As energy costs rise and as new technologies become available that make PV cheaper and more efficient, the payback window will ultimately shrink to the point where it would be a bad idea to not install a PV system.

Technorati Tags: Boulder, Clean Energy, conservation, Green Energy, Renewable Energy, Solar

We’ve made the big move from Silicon Valley to Boulder, Colorado. Here’s the view from our back deck. It is nice to be back in Colorado after seventeen years in the Bay Area. And maybe someday, I’ll even be able provide a link to our house on an online map. But for now, our home doesn’t exist in cyberspace.