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The jazz festival was incredible and featured several headline acts including a faculty all-star big band, Roy Hargrove (trumpet), Joe Locke (vibes), and an amazing percussion ensemble from Alma College.  There was also lots of music in the clubs in town Thursday-Saturday night.

It was truly an incredible week of music.  I didn’t play as much as I thought, but I learned more than I imagined.  I saw some great musicians play in some great small venues, while hanging out with a bunch of like-minded jazz players.  I’m already looking forward to next year…

Seattle, when I moved here in 1995, used to freak out when it hit 90 degrees.  have vivid memories of that since I moved here from Milwaukee, WI where that was pretty common in the summer.  The official temperature for Seattle today was 98 -- a record for any July 11, and just 3 degrees shy of our all time record high temperature ever recorded. 

There is a high-end personal weather station that is maintained by a guy that is located a couple miles from our house.  His awesome website is www.kirklandweather.com and it collects data from the station at his house.  Below, I've capture the temperature log from his site for today (from the Stats page).  Pay special attention to the temperature recorded at 15:50 (aka 10 till 4pm) today.

Ouch.  Now at 10pm it is still nearly 80 degrees.   Anyone want to chip in and help us buy central air?

This past weekend I had the pleasure of going to Atlanta to stand up as the Best Man in the wedding of my good friend Tim Clark.  I flew out Wednesday, and it was a whirlwind trip.  Tim and Jen are a great couple, and I’m extremely happy for them.  The weekend was great fun, and everything went off without a hitch.   

Here are the best of my photos – these represent the pre-wedding activities from the Groom’s perspective…

Thusday and Friday morning:

Friday - the rehearsal and dinner:

Saturday - before going to the church:

At the church, before the wedding:

The Newlyweds:

While I was in Atlanta, I also had a chance to visit my Dad and his wife Jan, and I was fortunate enough to have a short visit to see my Grandmother.

It was also another spectacular approach back into the Seattle area, and I got another incredible view of the mountains.  This view is from the north with Mt. Adams on the left, Mt. Rainer in the middle, and Mt. St. Helens on the right.

Mary and I went to Las Vegas last week for four nights to recharge after our wet Seattle winter.  It turns out to have been perfect timing because Las Vegas was having warmer than normal temperatures with each day in the upper 80s to mid 90s while we were there (and about 15% humidity).  It was the perfect way to get rid of the moss growing behind our ears.

We flew down last Sunday and got settled in to our room at Mandalay Bay’s “THEHotel”.  This is a tower behind the “regular” Mandalay Bay tower that is comprised of all suite rooms, and a different, hipper décor.  Our room was their normal size suite, but was surprisingly large at just over 700 square feet.  It had 1.5 bathrooms too.  It was pretty swanky...   Sunday evening we split a burger at a fun restaurant called the Burger Bar where you could pretty much get anything you want on a burger.  We shared one with olive tapenade.  We also started our pattern of having drinks we don’t normally have at home, and tried their pomegranate martinis – a fine way to get settled in to Vegas.

After a stroll around Mandalay Bay to get our bearings, we went for a walk down the Strip to Bellagio.  There have been lots of changes since last we were in Las Vegas which was 3 years ago for me, and 4 for Mary.  In a spot that used to be a couple of older smaller casinos there is a massive construction project called City Center which is said to be the largest single construction project in Las Vegas’ history.  They are working on four different towers on a 66 acre piece of land.  Zoiks!  We made it to Bellagio, which hasn’t changed much, and we had a nice meal in the bar at a restaurant called Olives where we each had a salad and split a mushroom pizza.

Back at Mandalay, I decided to spend some of my gambling money, and in a span of about 20 minutes I won $100 at a $.25 slot machine, and then another $100 at a roulette table.  It’s not supposed to be that easy, but it made for a fun first evening in the casino.

On Monday Mary got up and had an appointment at the spa.  She’s been working hard in school and was looking forward to getting pampered – and she earned it too with an awesome 4.0 for this quarter.  We met up for lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Border Grill where we had lamb tacos (which we both remember enjoying from a prior trip to Mandalay).  Here’s Mary looking very relaxed having just spent the morning at the spa.

That evening we went down to the newest property on the Strip called the Wynn.  It’s named for the owner Steve Wynn.  The first highlight of our visit to this property was checking out the Penske/Wynn Ferrari/Maserati dealership that is located (conveniently!) right off the casino.  It is a little sad that they charge $10 just to walk through the showroom, but after they told us about their current inventory we knew it would be worth it.  We’ve seen plenty of Ferrari’s living in Seattle, but this was something special.  They had several F430s, several F360s, Steve Wynn’s 599 GTB, and even an Enzo – but the price of admission was worth it to see Roger Penske’s FXX.  This is an extremely rare track-only Ferrari that is an evolution of the Enzo.  Ferrari only made about 30 of them, and to get one you needed to be invited by the factory (and pay them about $1.5 million).  For your trouble the car came with driving instruction and track services so you could drive it with factory support. 

The best part of our visit was that while we were in the showroom they had to move an F430 that was being delivered.  We got to hear 2 different F430s start up and move (they’re much quieter at idle than we expected, and there was no cloud of exhaust that older Ferrari’s generate).  They also had to move the 599 which has a lovely V12 growl.  Outside the showroom we also heard someone drive away in an F360.  It was a nice Ferrari concert that we were pretty lucky to witness.  Sadly, they don’t allow any photos inside the dealership, and it was impossible to take a good photo through the windows from outside.  Here I am outside the showroom…

We had another great meal in the bar area of a restaurant – this time at Wynn’s Corsa Cucina.  Over dinner we figured out that if I started with $20 on black at the roulette table, and won, then doubled my bet and repeated that I would only need to repeat that bet 19 times in a row, and then we could go back and buy a Ferrari.  Mary had osso bucco ravioli, and I had a chop salad and a meatball pizza – everything was fantastic, and it was a nice chance to relax before the evening’s real entertainment.  Here’s a photo of my dinner – note I’m having another fun cocktail this one was called a Testarossa (to carry on the Ferrari themed evening).

One of the only things we planned in advance of our trip was the show we saw Monday night.  We bought tickets several weeks ago to see Spamalot (a Brodway musical production based on Monty Python) which opened at the Wynn last month.  Our friends Julie and Barry raved about seeing it on Broadway in New York and we missed seeing it in London last September by one week.  We were happy to finally get a chance to see it in person, and they have made a few obvious customizations just for Las Vegas – it was fantastic.

We ended our first full day at a bar at Mandalay called Red Square where they specialize in a wide selection of vodkas.  We had some interesting drinks, and had a great time people watching.  There was a group of people that had a vodka tasting that involved putting on fur coats (provided by the bar) and going into a walk-in freezer to taste a variety of different vodkas.  They came out looking quite cold…

Tuesday we decided would be shopping day – or more specifically, gawking day.  Las Vegas claims it is one of the best shopping cities in the world, and I suppose if you’re after high end designer type shops, that may be true.  We had a good time wandering through the giant malls and gawking at a lot of wacky expensive things.  We started in the Caesars Palace Forum Shops which is gigantic.  They have a store called Exotic Cars at Caesars Palace that sells lightly used exotic cars and charges $5 to walk through.  Once again, we found that they had a couple of rare cars in their inventory worth seeing so we paid the admission and went in.  The first was a Porsche Carerra GT.  We’ve seen one here in Seattle (at our auto show a couple years ago), but they’re still worth seeing again.  And a rare Ferrari Superamerica (a berlinetta bodied car based on the 575, and one of only 599 made).    At least this showroom allowed photos:

We spent a while wandering through Tourneau (“The World’s Largest Watch Store”), some fancy clothes stores, and a couple jewelry stores.  At the Harry Winston jewelry store we looked in a case that had a diamond ring and matching earrings.  They were big diamonds – around 5 carats each – and the matched set was $1.5 million.  Technically, I’d only need to win and double my bet on black 21 times…  Since we were having fun looking at jewelry, we went into the DeBeers store.  The salesman at this store was very fun and as we gawked at some nice 3 carat diamonds, he opened the case and started handing them to Mary to try on.  They were in the $40-100K price range.  Mary looked particularly nervous as he kept handing her diamond rings to try on.  In an attempt to get a sense of scale, I asked him how large the yellow diamond was that we had seen in a different case.  He remarked that it was just over 7 carats and that we should have a look at that one too.  After he casually handed it to Mary and she had it on her hand he told us that it was $410,000.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Mary that nervous!

Tuesday afternoon we learned that a contact through my local drum shop (who happens to be the drum tech for Blue Man Group at the Venetian) was able to get us “friends & family” tickets to the 10pm show that night.  We decided to start the evening with a cocktail at the bar on top of our hotel called Mix.  The main attraction is the view from the 60th floor, and we enjoyed the view from a table on an outdoor patio.  Here’s the beginning of the sunset glow over the strip (with Mary’s martini):

Before Blue Man, we decided to try the buffet at the Wynn for dinner, which is right next to the Venetian.  As buffets go, it was really nice and had an amazing selection of food (shrimp cocktail, crab legs, prime rib, pork loin, osso bucco, wild mushroom ravioli, a create-your-own pasta bar, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, sushi, and lots more).  There were also a great selection of deserts in nice small portions so you could try several without a tremendous amount of guilt (we tried the raspberry tart, chocolate macaroons, bread pudding, and strawberry shortcake).  We didn’t think this was better food or a better value (it was $35 a person) than we had at the restaurants on the previous nights, but it was worth trying and fun to try so many different things.

After dinner while we waited for the theater to open we wandered into a gallery at the Venetian and were extremely fortunate to see some amazing art for sale – they had several original drawings by Charles Schultz (including Snoopy as the “flying ace” drawn in green crayon) on one wall, and on an opposite wall, several by Dr. Seuss (including a lovely rendering of Green Eggs and Ham). 

The Blue Man Group show was fantastic.  Our contact gave us 2 amazing tickets just next to the sound board.  The show hasn’t changed that much since we’ve seen it when it was at Luxor, but it was still a great, fun, energetic show, and quite the privilege to attend as guest of their drum tech.

On Wednesday we headed back to Bellagio to see the current exhibit at their Gallery of Fine Art.  They are currently featuring an exhibit of Ansel Adams' work.  As a hobbyist photographer, and a big fan of Christopher Burkett (a northwest nature photographer who was a student of Adams) we were happy to have a chance to see these photos in person.  Several of his famous photos were on display including “Moonrise, Hernandez” and “Moon and Half Dome”.  The exhibit also had a collection of memorabilia including some early letters he wrote to his family, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom presented to him by President Carter.

Our last full day ended with an incredible meal.  This was the only other thing we had planned in advance of getting to Las Vegas – dinner at Craftsteak at MGM.  This was a referral from Julie & Barry who have eaten at their location in New York.  Julie described their mashed potatoes as the best she’d ever had, and now we know why (a 1:1 ratio between Yukon gold and butter perhaps?).  The meal was fantastic – we had an amazing arugula salad, the magic Yukon gold puree Julie had told us about, diver scallops, a 10oz fillet mignon, and an assortment of mushrooms.   It was all spectacularly delicious. 

We went a bit over the top by having liquid chocolate cake for desert, but Las Vegas is more than a little bit about excess…

We flew home on Thursday and had a great window seat on the plane – this gave us one last great (although slightly hazy) view of Las Vegas (our hotel is the gold tower in the lower left corner), and as we got into Washington State, it was a beautiful clear day and about 65 degrees – which gave us a stunning view of our local mountains.  We had a great time, and are happy to be back home…

Today was Seattle’s Chinese New Year celebration.  This was part of the motivation for me taking a photo safari this morning.  My sister provided the motivation for me to go check it out as she and her family are wrapping up their current study of China with their own Chinese New Year celebration. 

I got to the International District (Seattle’s version of Chinatown) about an hour before the main festivities started, and that proved to be a good idea.  I got to witness two traditional Lion Dances.  Here’s a passage from an entry on Lion Dances from Wikipedia.org:

“During the Chinese New Year, lion dancers from martial art school will visit the store front of businesses to "choy chang" (採青 lit. picking the greens). The business would tie a red envelope filled with money to a head of lettuce and hang it high above the front door. The lion will approach the lettuce like a curious cat, consume the lettuce and spit out the leaves but not the money. The lion dance is supposed to bring good luck and fortune to the business and the dancers receive the money as reward. The tradition becomes a mutual transaction.”

This morning all I really noticed was that the dance appeared to be focused on a particular store front, and there were firecrackers and lettuce being tossed around by the lions.  It’s fascinating to have found this description as the troupe of dancers I saw walked around several blocks stopping for several dances.  Looking at the photos I took, that’s exactly what was going on.  Here are some photos of the lion dancers.  Note the one of the store front – the remnants from the firecrackers are in red on the ground, and the lettuce is still hanging from the doorway with a red envelope attached to it.

At noon the main festival started and there was a dragon dance in front of Union Station where the festival was being held.  This involved more firecrackers, drumming, and, of course, dancing.  This went on for about 10 minutes and then the dragons and lions made their way into the building.   The dragon was quite large – as best I could see was at least 8 sections.

The crowd was massive, and I went into Union Station briefly, but only saw vendors trying to get me to buy a new cell phone, so I decided instead to have a quick bite to eat before heading home.  It’s the year of the boar after all, so I had some sweet and sour pork.  Yum!

I am pleased to officially launch one of my current drumming projects:  

www.peteharrisquartet.com

Having had a couple days to reflect on my first NAMM show, I have to conclude it was fantastic.  I had more fun, saw more gear, saw more great drummers, and heard more awesome music than I ever imagined I would - and my expectations were pretty high at the start.  This entry has highlights of the non-drumming things I saw and a wrap up. 

By far the most interesting non-percussion item was the Continuum Fingerboard.  This is essentially a midi controller that at first glance appears shaped like a keyboard, but in place of keys there is a red, soft sponge-like surface that can be played in three dimensions: left to right like a normal keyboard; up and down toward or away from where you sit; and in and out by pushing into the surface.  The demo was really fantastic – they had it setup where you could slide left to right to change the pitch, add effects by sliding up and down, and change the volume by pushing in.  That’s about as well as I could describe it without having an audio clip. Have a listen for yourself here.  If only the full size controller didn’t retail for more than $5000 this would be a fun gizmo to play with.

Electronic instruments were well represented around the show including a cool synth machine with lots of knobs and cables from EAR and a booth full of synthesizers from Moog.  There was also a booth exhibiting nothing but tubes.  Seems like a funny thing to want to see in person…

I saw a couple people enter the world’s fastest drummer competition.  To compete you have to play a pad hooked to a “drumometer” that measures each stick hitting the pad.  The goal is to play as many single strokes as possible in one minute.  The record is just over 1250 strokes.  I saw a guy register 907.  Fast hands indeed.

I was surprised to see at least four different companies displaying their full line up of ukuleles.  I guess I didn’t know they were so popular.  There were at least that many people selling banjos also.  Tim, here’s a wall of banjos for you:

There was a company showing a Maui Xaphoon (also referred to as a “Pocket Sax” that I thought was super cool and it turns out they won an award from NAMM for best in the “Small Goods Rule” category.   I got to see the full line of Bach Stradevarius trumpets and Selmer Paris Saxophones.  As I understand it, if you were a trumpet or sax player this would have been super-cool. 

I saw a lot of stringed instruments that seemed to have more strings that you’d expect.  I saw a great performance by Jerry Marotta on drums with Tom Griesgraber playing a Chapman Stick (which is a 12 string instrument held vertically but played by tapping on the fret board).   Here are some interesting multi-stringed instruments: 

There were LOTS of boutique guitar and amp makers, and big guitar companies showing very high-end custom guitars.  I met a guy at dinner on the third night who told me he had purchased a guitar from a small company that makes three guitars a month and have a price starting near $15,000.  The photos below are:  a wall of Taylor acoustic guitars, a Martin acoustic guitar that was priced at $49,999 (zoiks!), 6 Paul Reed Smith “Private Collection” guitars (starting price is about $3,000), and a wild looking guitar from a maker called Teuffel.

At NAMM you can really see and try any musical instrument you want.  How about a very slick multi-colored upright bass?  A midi-church organ?  Or a room full of Bosendorfer pianos - if only I could play, could have sat down and played any of the nearly a dozen pianos they had... 

I should also note that by coincidence I got a chance to have breakfast with my dad on Saturday.  I hadn’t seen him in a while, and it was nice to be able to catch up with him.

So let’s see if I can summarize these amazing few days:

There were a LOT of artists there.  I saw 35 great drummers and I’m certain there were more that I missed.  I got to see several of them play (Gadd, Hakim, Gottlieb, both Marotta brothers, and Purdie).  I saw Carmine Appice get a cymbal commemorating his 40 years of drumming.  I even met a Playboy Playmate.

I saw nearly every musical instrument you could imagine from booths with just a couple instruments (Teuffel) to booths that had a 200 person theater and dozens of instruments you could walk up and try (Roland).  I heard music in nearly every style/genre you could come up with from a hip-hop band in the Roland booth to classical piano in the Bosendoerfer suite (they had their own isolated room).  I heard dozens of people trying out gear that turned into mini concerts that drew their own crowd.

I was not surprised to see a huge Apple booth with a demo theater, and lots of demo macs for people to try.  I was surprised to see a complete lack of anything that resembled a Windows PC – anyone who needed a computer seemed to be using an Apple.

The best part about the whole show for me was the acknowledgement and respect I got by wearing the credentials showing I was there on behalf of the Donn Bennett Drum Studio.  Donn is clearly very well known in the drumming world among the artists (Jeff Hamilton and Danny Gottlieb both mentioned they were interested in checking out the shop when they next come to Seattle), and the manufacturers who all seemed to either know Donn or know of his shop.   Donn:  thanks a bunch for giving me this chance to go – I had a blast and am looking forward to this kicking off a great year of drumming.

Now, I’d better go catch up on my sleep…

Wow.  I was expecting today to be a pretty cool day, with the possibility for lots of artist sightings.  The second day of the NAMM show didn’t disappoint at all.  Seriously: wow.

Today’s show opened with a great band called Wicked Tinkers.  They are a Scottish band playing traditional celtic instruments in a hip modern way.  I have to say they rocked even more than the last band I saw wearing kilts (no offense Graeme - I think we just need more practice).  Check out their web site for sound clips and video. 

My main goal for today was to spend some time beyond the main exhibit halls in the smaller areas where there are newer, or smaller companies that don’t need (or possibly can’t afford) the main-hall exhibit space.  This proved to be a fascinating area to explore.  Around the exhibits today I saw some great products.  There were cool cymbal and stick bags from a new company debuting their products here at NAMM called Mono.  I found slick practice pads from E-PAD - finally a compact, but sturdy practice pad I can strap to my leg for warming up before a gig!  I had a great time exploring the Factory Metal booth – and actually bought a new hand-hammered by the owner stainless steel ride cymbal – it doesn’t look like a jazz cymbal, but it is sure going to be one in my hands...  I also got some decent pictures of a some bigger exhibits from Taye, Sonor, Keller Shells, Zildjian, and a wild creation from Orange County Drums & Percussion that they call the Lou Rider.

It was also artist sighting day – there were a LOT of pro musicians around.  Of note to me and drummer enthusiasts:  

• Jason McGerr (Death Cab for Cutie)
• David Garibaldi (Tower of Power)
• Greg Bisonette (Toto, ELO, and more)
• Steve Smith (Journey, Steps Ahead, and more)
• Dave Weckl (Chick Corea, etc.)
• Chad Wackerman (Frank Zappa, James Taylor, and more)
• Abe Laborie, Jr. (Paul McCartney)
• Joe Calato (founder of Regal Tip drumsticks – invented the nylon tipped stick)
• Joe Satriani (guitar wizard)

At the end of the exhibit hours, I witnessed the NAMM Jam.  This was a large group of artists on stage together.  I don’t know everyone that participated, but the ones I know included:  Alan White (drummer for Yes – and a local Seattle friend of Donn’s), Don Wilson (guitarist for the Ventures), and Goldy McJohn (organ/keyboards for Steppenwolf).  If you know me at all, you’ll know that Steppenwolf isn’t on my list of favorite bands, but this photo of me with Goldy is just proof of how amazing NAMM is – after their set I was close enough that it was really easy to get a photo with him, he was a really nice guy – and one heck of an organ player.

Tonight was a great night full of incredible live music.  Of note, I caught the opening few tunes of the Tony Levin Band (he’s probably best known as the bass player for Peter Gabriel).  They were great.  Very loud, but great.  Then, I ended up at John Pisanos Guitar Night  – he is a legendary jazz guitar player and it was a treat to see him play.  It turns out that Eastman also hosted another group called MB3 which has Danny Gottlieb on drums – Danny is an amazing drummer and it was the first time I’ve seen him play live.  It was fantastic to see him play up close, and to get a chance to meet him after the set.