berkleebassist » music

Playing a gig @ GURU Grille on 3/25 @ 9:30pm

Jeff — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 02:30:00 +0000

So, I’m being reunited with my old friend & fellow Berklee grad Matt Sorensen. He & his girl, Jennifer, have been playing some of her tunes together, but they’ve been lacking in the low end, so I’m stepping on in & bringing the bass!

We’re playing a place in Plymouth, MA, called the GURU Grille; it’s an Indian restaurant + music room, should be a lot of fun.

Coltrane & Davis

Jeff — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:14:55 +0000

Coltrane & Davis

An old gem, courtesy of the impossible cool

(Via the impossible cool.)

Garage a Trois does Hendrix

Jeff — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:58:41 +0000

Just damn awesome.

Playing a gig @ The Precinct tonight!

Jeff — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:11:58 +0000

Kept meaning to send this out sooner, but oh well. A band I play with is playing at Precinct, which is at 70 Union Sq., Somerville tonight.

The whole night starts at about 8pm, we go on at 10:15pm sharp, cover is $5 (and it all comes our way, so you’d be supporting us directly!)

We play a mix of R&B, reggae, and jazz, and tonight it’s Richard Matra on tenor sax, Keith Cornella & Neil Itzler on guitars, myself on bass and Tony Hall on drums.

Hope to see you there!

Matrajah (3rd set, my band):

Jalopy (2nd set):

Evan Laflamme (opener):

The Precinct’s Yelp page

The Precinct’s Facebook page

Cee-Lo Green says “F#$k You!”

Jeff — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:56:09 +0000

A brilliantly hilarious song by Cee-Lo, with a really cool typographical video. Check it.

So far, so good…

Jeff — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:27:10 +0000

So it’s been a few months into 2010. I’ve made good on my promise to plug back into the music scene; been playing almost every Sunday with Rich Matra’s reggae/jazz band Matrajah. My friend JoBeth got me the spot, and Rich has liked my playing so far. The band is definitely a rotating ensemble, with Rich holding down tenor sax & sometimes vocals and myself on bass, but the drum chair & the guitar spot have been different almost every week. This week though, JoBeth returns to the drum throne, and Neal Itzler is on guitar, so that’ll be great.

Neal, oddly enough, was my first semester ensemble teacher at Berklee, so it’s kinda bizarre to be on the bandstand with him, but he’s a killer guitarist, and definitely helps keep things together on the bandstand.

Along with that, my buddy Andy hit me up to start a rock cover band, and, while I was tired of the cover scene a few years ago, I’ve recharged enough by now to give it a shot. We had some mutual friends lined up for the guitar & drum spots, but they had to pull out after realizing they were over committed. So if anyone out there wants to play some rock music, say the word!

As for work, that’s been going well! Still doing things exclusively with Elative Marketing, my friend Kyung Min’s company, and that’s worked out really well. Money is still tough though, since it comes in spurts (for example, I’m waiting on two big checks this week, which will be my first paychecks since mid-February), so that’s a bit hard, but I’m definitely learning greater discipline, which is really good for me. I’ll be posting some follow-up posts about some of the sites I’ve completed recently, and discussing them in greater depth on the Elative blog.

I’m still not fully adjusted back to being single, but then again the last time I was single for more than about a month was in 2005 (Amber & I got together February 2006). I still see her, and there’s a part of me that still feels a twinge, and I sometimes find myself wondering “what if it had worked out?” But I made my decision, and as painful as it was, I still think it was the best one for both of us.

The weather has finally turned warm this week (after a monsoon-like three day rainstorm), and that’s kinda what prompted this post. A little “spring cleaning” as it were. Oh, and so far, I’ve made good on my Project 52 commitment, so that’s almost one quarter down. We’ll see how I do after another few months.

Oh, and those of you lurking, reading my posts, come on now, you can comment you know! I even enabled the ability to log in using your Twitter account if you want to. I’m still working on the Facebook Connect thing, that’s a little tougher, but I’ll get it.

Is that a gig?

Jeff — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:12:01 +0000

It is! I’m playing a show tomorrow night with a band called Matrajah, at the Woodbine Club, located at 57 Blue Hill Ave, Boston MA.

More from the Basement

Jeff — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:10:59 +0000

So, I know I just posted about this, but I watched a few more of these, and the version of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” is just a really awesome, different take on the song. If I could, I’d embed it here, but there’s no mechanism for that at the moment, so head on over and check it out.

Live music like it’s meant to be

Jeff — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:48:39 +0000

Found a new favorite website, courtesy of, of all places, Deus Ex Malcontent. It’s From the Basement, a website set up to showcase live performances from artists in a studio setting. Filmed entirely in HD, sans host and audience, and lovingly produced by Nigel Godrich, the engineer & producer best known for his work with Radiohead. His credits list is impressive even beyond his work with that group, but what I’m really keen on is just how awesome everything looks & sounds in these recordings. The one that sucked me in though, is actually a recording that’s not on the website, but available for purchase as part of a video album on iTunes, In Rainbows — From the Basement. Thankfully, there’s a YouTube version of the video. And so, I present Radiohead’s “All I Need”, From the Basement:

Artists win when music is free

Jeff — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:03:32 +0000

So I came across this article a short time ago, and found it to be evidence of something I’ve felt to be true for some time now: that only the labels and the “big business” model of distributing music lose when music is free. Times Online, the online arm of The Times of London, has the full story, but here’s some highlights:

This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see.

It shows the fate of the three main pillars of music industry revenue — recorded music, live music, and PRS revenues (royalties collected on behalf of artists when their music is played in public) over the last 5 years.

[…]

The most immediate revelation, of course, is that at some point next year revenues from gigs payable to artists will for the first time overtake revenues accrued by labels from sales of recorded music.

Huge stuff, and I’m willing to bet that the same holds true (albeit in larger numbers) for American artists. There’s some great graphs that clearly demonstrate the trend included with the article, go check it!

(via Times Labs Blog)

berkleebassist » music

Playing a gig @ GURU Grille on 3/25 @ 9:30pm

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Coltrane & Davis

Garage a Trois does Hendrix

Playing a gig @ The Precinct tonight!

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Cee-Lo Green says “F#$k You!”

So far, so good…

Is that a gig?

Related show

More from the Basement

Live music like it’s meant to be

Artists win when music is free